Complete Bibliography of Lonergan Studies

Reviews

This noteworthy publication is the result of a team effort lasting a biblical seven years; it must be judged worthwhile in three different respects:

1. The team publication offers something previously unavailable in this field: a solid overview of the biblical, patristic and scholastic sources of the doctrine of infallibility; the controversies from Ockham and Luther to Febronius; the history of the definition in the First and Second Vatican Councils; as well as a survey of the postconciliar discussions raised, above all, by Hans Küng. The copious footnotes make the German reader familiar with, besides the literature already generally known here, the less known or totally unknown literature of the English speaking world. The person who is interested in factual information will be grateful for this achievement alone. Because of the wealth of information and the multiplicity of details it is, naturally, impossible to provide a concise summary.

2. Of especial interest is the way that the infallibility debate, at a distance of space and now also of time, has been taken up and carried forward in the sphere of American theology. Well informed, impartially weighed and differentiated, it has concurred in the end on a "moderate infallibilism." This last term originated with the Lutheran theologian G. Lindbeck, has been taken up by A. Dulles (p. 389 n. 6) and is in the above-mentioned volume defended especially by R. Kress. Kress' treatment, formulated in a happily straightforward style, clearly and decisively sets aside all the polemic, rhetoric, logical short-cuts and pseudo-arguments of which this debate has been full, in order to come to the matter itself, and carry it forward. Philosophically Kress exposes the untenability and self contradiction of the criticism of propositional truth (p. 274ff), as well as does T. Tekippe himself (p. 230f); theologically Kress envisions the problem of infallibility in its only appropriate context: a sacramental understanding of the Church (p. 284ff). The two contributions by G. Fagin move in the same direction.

Taking a larger view, beyond the contributions of the work at hand, of the other literature abundantly cited and used there (especially the works of A. Dulles, J. Hughes, McSorley, J. Ford and others, as well as the collection edited by J. Kirvan in The Infallibility Debate, New York 1981), one doesn't get the impression that in "professional" Catholic American theology the voices which are heard in the documentation volume of L. Swidler, Küng in Conflict

(Garden city, N.Y. 17o1), alone define the field. A person is much better able to distinguish between the "moderate" infallibility, such as was defined at Vatican I and II, and the excessive ultramontane theoretical and practical explanations, which are often wrongly taken in the infallibility debate to be the only true interpretations and thenthe extremes contact each otherare in turn criticized. The well-known results of the official Lutheran-Catholic dialogue, Teaching Authority and Infallibility in the Church: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue IV (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1980)cited approvingly in the book under reviewshows that a moderate position is ecumenically in no way hopeless, but can, at least in the USA, be discussed with some hope of success.

3. As the subtitle already indicates, the co-authors of this volume were interested in subjecting Bernard Lonergan's Method in Theology (New York 1972) to an experimental implementation on a concrete individual question, one discussed often and heatedly. This is so much the more significant, as Lonergan's transcendental method has often been criticized as too formalistic. This method has up until now been hardly discussed in German theology, while in the Anglo-Saxon theological world whole Lonergan congresses take place, and a noteworthy Festschrift has been published (Creativity and Method. Edited by M.L. Lamb, Milwaukee, 1981).

As a result of this experiment one can well conclude that this method is throughout calculated to confer an order upon the theological discussion, and to bring somewhat under control and to objectify the odium theologicum and the all too biased or journalistic treatment of theological topics. That is already a great deal, in view of the very heated and polemical way the infallibility debate has been conducted. Admittedly the method leads in the historical section to a certain awkwardness and repetition; especially from the hermeneutical point of view is it hardly possible to make a clear separation into three different functional specialties of Research, Interpretation and presentation of the overall context of History. But the real difficulties lie, as the authors themselves point out, in what Lonergan calls "Dialectic" and "Foundations," and so in the more systematic sphere (understanding systematic in its ordinary, wider sense, and not in Lonergan's narrower meaning), more precisely in the fundamental significance that Lonergan ascribes to conversion. The authors operate out of the conviction that, in Lonergan's view, fundamental personal options, presuppositions, intellectual horizons and so on, which stand "behind" opposing positions, must be brought out into the open and objectified (cf. esp. p. 197). They must however finally admit a certain naivete (p. 325) and too high a degree of abstraction in this method (p. 327), leaving aside altogether the fact that, while a judgment about the intellectual and moral conversion of an author may possibly be admissible, a judgment about his religious conversion, especially in the case of a living person, would be highly arrogant (cf. p. 229), and could easily lead back to the dark times of Reformation and Counterreformation polemics. But of what use is a methodical criterion, which a person cannot in practice employ? From a purely pragmatic point of view, the authors are consistently on the right track when they affirm that the method is no automatic process, but rather a vision and a coherent whole of creative proposals and guidelines; the concrete application of the method in no way renders superfluous the creativity and the competence of the individual scholar (p. 332). A final judgment on Lonergan's initiative would have to discuss his entire concept of transcendental theology, a project which understandably exceeds the scope of the work under discussion.

Within all the limitations that attend such a teamwork prolonged over years (on this see pp. 329ff), this work will be recognized as a successful and important contribution to a discussion which, with all its often slanted and distorted ways of stating the question, still has the advantage of raising an until now overlooked, and perhaps even repressed, fundamental methodological question. Surely, that discussion has not yet come to a conclusion. But the volume under review shows at least the boundaries within which Catholic theology may operate, with some prospect of reaching a wider consensus.