The Method of Theology 2:2
Sku: 30400A0E060
Archival Number: CD/mp3 304
Author: Lonergan, B.
Language(s): English
Decade: 1960
Description:
CD/mp3 304, second part of second lecture in the 1962 Institute 'The Method of Theology.' Sponsored by Rev. Conrad Dietz. The lecture begins with a few further remarks on the opposition between the sacred and the profane. The relationship is illustrated not only by contrasting a purely symbolic mentality with a more differentiated one but also by contrasting Augustinian-Bonaventurian with Thomist tendencies in theology. For the former, other sciences exist only to serve, to provide symbols of the divine. They have no function of contributing any truth of their own. This manifests an incompleteness in the differentiation between the sacred and the profane. Thomism, with its acceptance of Aristotelian science, involves an acceptance of a full differentiation between the sacred and the profane. The opposition of subject and object includes the difference between the subject as subject and the subject as object. The subject as subject is the subject as present to self. Even when one objectifies oneself, one is not only present to oneself as object but also as the subject who is doing the objectifying. The two never coincide. Again, the differential in this opposition is time, history. The historical process that brought out the opposition between subject and object was the emergence of individualism during what Jaspers called the axial period. The antithesis between the world of common sense and the world of theory is just as fundamental. The two differ in aim, in object, in language, and in the structure of consciousness. In fact all three fundamental distinctions have their foundation in the very nature of human consciousness. If one breaks down these ultimate differences and combines them, one derives four 'worlds': interiority, community, theory, and religion. The differentiation between them occurs in time. A theology that would bring time or history into the medieval achievement has to be familiar with the distinctions between these various worlds. But theology must also find some way of relating the worlds to one another. Among the relations that can occur are mediations of one world by another. One development, by its co-presence with another, produces a modification in the other. For instance, philosophy can be said to mediate the religious life: there will be a precision, a clarity, an exactness, to the religious life of someone who has studied philosophy that is not found in the religious life of one who has not. Again, approaching the history of a past period with a contemporary knowledge of economic theory is an instance of mediating commonsense knowledge by theory; one's knowledge of history becomes more exact and more comprehensive simply by the co-presence of a theoretical development. Not only can the world of community be mediated by theory, but also theory can be mediated by interiority. Again, religion can be mediated by community, by the church, but one knows the church better, and its ultimate aim, God, if one mediates it by theory, through theology. The first ten tracks of this disc were recorded from the Hoffman tape mentioned in the liner notes for the previous lecture. The last five tracks, beginning with 41, had to involve a 'voice-over' by another reader, since all tapes of the original recording were distorted by the presence of another recording in the background. The voice heard on these tracks of this disc is that of Robert Doran of the Lonergan Research Institute, Toronto.