The subtitle of the first part of this book speaks of “a vision and an invitation.” I speak of a vision, and I will present in this first part some of the principal emphases to be developed in the work that follows both in this book and in hoped-for subsequent volumes, where I attempt to contribute to a new Catholic systematic theology for our time. But I speak as well of an invitation, because, in the last analysis, such a theology must be a collaborative enterprise, the work of a community of people building on common or complementary foundations, employing...

It is within the context set by chapter 1 that I would situate this book entitledThe Trinity in History: Missions and Processions. In very brief compass, I am attempting to begin renewing the basic dogmatic-theological context, the Trinitarian, Pneumatological, and Christological parameters for all other systematic-theological statements, and to do so with explicit attention to the already mentioned demands regarding interiority, history, and the world’s religions. Within those renewed doctrinal parameters, the rest of systematic theology would be constructed, on solid Trinitarian, Pneumatological, and Christological grounds. The renewal of the parameters will be in terms of the categories provided...

I have already mentioned the requirements of contingent predication about God. Before we go any further, it would be best to explain more fully what this means. Lonergan states the basic principle very succinctly: “The principle in all of this is that contingent truths, whether predicated of the divine persons commonly or properly, have their constitution in God but their term in creatures. Therefore, although the external works of God are necessarily common to the three persons, the missions in the strict sense are necessarily proper, since a divine person operates by reason of the divine essence but is not...

In the sixth chapter ofThe Triune God: Systematics, Lonergan moves immediately after the statement of the four-point hypothesis to the question of the order of the divine missions. His later developments in light of the interreligious context of contemporary Catholic theology prompt me to suggest a change in the theological doctrine that he proposes there. The mission of the Holy Spirit is a universal reality, not something limited to the biblical religions. This theological doctrine is part of our starting point in a theology of the divine missions, a theology of the Trinity in history. “A theology mediates between...

The conclusion of the previous chapter brings us back to the social dimensions of grace. These would be fleshed out, as it were, in a theology that would articulate the constitution of what, in the second divine mission, Jesus preached and inaugurated as the reign or kingdom of God. In order to spell this out in a bit of detail, I will discuss the other major component of the unified field structure that I am suggesting, the notion of history, and particularly mission in history. My notion of history can be found in the theory of history expressed inTheology...

The only way in which anything that is done in theology can be intelligibly related to anything else that is done in theology is through understanding theoperationsthat are performed by all members of the community of theologians and thehorizonswithin which those operations are performed. Then there is a sense in which it is valid to speak of the entire discipline as in some sense a system, since a system is precisely what emerges as various elements in a given domain of data are intelligibly related to other elements in that domain. From the standpoint of operations...

I have appealed to the four-point systematic-theological hypothesis expressed by Lonergan inDivinarum personarumand again in the revision of that document that constituted thepars systematicaofDe Deo trino.¹ I have also called attention to the earlier appearance of the hypothesis in class notes that Lonergan wrote for a course in 1951–52. Despite its heavy overdose of Scholastic language, which must undergo fairly massive transposition in the contemporary context without the loss of the metaphysics entailed,² the hypothesis contains the core systematic conceptions around which other special theological categories can be integrated.³ Again, as I phrased the...

The four-point hypothesis begins as follows: “[T]here are four real divine relations, really identical with the divine substance, and therefore there are four very special modes that ground the external imitation of the divine substance.”¹

The four real divine relations, as relations, are paternity, filiation, active spiration, and passive spiration. Active spiration is really distinct from passive spiration, but it is also really identical with paternity and filiation considered together as one principle only conceptually distinct from these two really distinct relations. To say “yes” and to be the “yes” utteredareto breathe love. For the Father to beget...

The transcendental orientation of which we have been speaking participates in uncreated light not only in its movements from act to act but also in its movements from potency to act, but the latter participation does not offere the created analogy for providing us with a glimpse of divine procession. This preliminary created participation in uncreated light is “the source in us that gives rise to all our wonder, all our inquiry, all our reflection”;¹ it is our desire to know, the notion of being; it is also the transcendental notion of value. In us those notions are potential. Ultimately,...

In my interpretation of Lonergan’s Trinitarian systematics I am slowly introducing as well some developments upon the theory of history that I first presented inTheology and the Dialectics of History. In this chapter I continue along those lines before returning explicitly to Lonergan’s chapter on the divine processions and to linking that work with his theology of the divine missions within the context of a theology of history.

In a posthumously published paper entitled “Sacralization and Secularization” Lonergan offers a set of suggestions for discriminating “(1) a sacralization to be dropped and (2) a sacralization to be fostered; (3)...

The context has been set for a more thorough exploration of Lonergan’s theology of divine procession and divine mission, not simply on their own, but within a theology of history. The movement to Lonergan’s own text in these last two chapters may seem abrupt to some readers, but the point of it is primarily to link what we have said about “religious values” in terms of participations in active and passive spiration with the “personal values” that constitute the authenticity of the subject and decisively affect the development of genuine cultural values, the social values of a just good of...

I wish now to introduce some considerations that will relate the previous chapter to a number of the points made in the two preceding chapters. These considerations will include the four questions that Lonergan adds to the three assertions of chapter 2 ofThe Triune God: Systematics.

I begin by recalling the intriguing suggestion of Jean-Michel Oughourlian that “the real humansubjectcan only come out of the rule of the Kingdom; apart from this rule, there is never anything but mimetism and the ‘interdividual.’ Until this happens, the only subject is the mimetic structure.”¹

The significance of this remark...