The Method of Theology 1:2

CD/mp3 302, part 2 of first lecture in the 1962 Institute 'The Method of Theology.' Sponsored by Msgr. George Martin. In the first lecture of Monday, July 9, Lonergan spoke first of operations, and then moved on to a discussion of the subject. He begins the second lecture of July 9 by rounding off the initial treatment of the subject with a discussion of 'absolute authenticity and inauthenticity.' The influence of Heidegger shows here, but Lonergan points to chapters 7, 18 and 20 of Insight as providing indications of his own notion of authenticity. The discussion then moves from the subject to objects, but objects considered from a methodological viewpoint, and so through the operations of the subject. A consideration of objects through operations enables one to consider theology in terms of time and development. And consideration in terms of development introduces the notion, crucial to these lectures, of the dogmatic-theological context. The dogmatic-theological context is the remainder that has developed in the course of dogmatic and theological development, all the rest that is relevant to understanding correctly any theological statement. It is a nuanced whole that is taken for granted in theological or dogmatic discussions, and it has developed in the course of history, as the capacity for differentiated operations has itself developed. There will be other ways of classifying developments, and some of them will be introduced later, but this is a start on the matter, and it indicates how the traditional notions of material and formal objects can be combined with ways of thinking that take history more seriously than did the medieval context. Operations, the subject, and objects, then, constitute the first three topics covered on this first day of the Institute. The fourth and final major topic is the nature of methodological consideration itself . Such consideration is immediately of operations, mediately of subjects in terms of horizon and authenticity, and through the operations of the subject it is consideration of objects. And methodological consideration of objects is comparative, genetic, and dialectical. Comparison picks out where the turning points are in any development, where the key points are, where the key differences are, as Lonergan did in the praemittenda to the analytic or dogmatic part of his De Deo trino. Genetic considerations and dialectical considerations are two ways of considering further the differences. Genetic analysis makes explicit what was implicit, whereas dialectical considerations reduce differences to the presence and absence of religious, moral, and intellectual conversion. Dialectical analysis, by introducing a normative element, effects the transition in theology from the history of the doctrine to the doctrine itself. In this way, we might say that the later notion of the two phases is prefigured or foreshadowed. The lecture ends with a discussion of two senses in which method is transcendental: a Scholastic sense, and a sense that might seem to be Kantian, but with something of a difference that is not explicated in the lecture itself.

Database and descriptions © Copyright 2017 by Robert M. Doran

 

Audio restoration by Greg Lauzon