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Article Excerpt
ROBERT DORAN'S MUCH DISCUSSED What Is Systematic Theology? has stimulated a renewed interest in systematics. (1) Building on an earlier work in which he developed the notion of psychic conversion as a theological outcome of Lonergan's intentionality analysis, (2) Doran treats the nature of systematic theology, raises some critical methodological questions, and through these sets the objectives and grounds of systematic theology. In this work--in the tradition of George Lindbeck's and Alister McGrath's (3) classics--Doran essentially agrees with Lonergan about the nature and function of systematic theology. Although he insists that Lonergan's distinct emphases be preserved, Doran sees a need to refine Lonergan's explication of systematics and suggests several ways of developing that understanding, (4) arguing that the development is "required by the very dynamic exigencies that gave rise in the first place to [Lonergan's] developed account of theological method." (5)
Doran brings Lonergan into conversation with Wolfhart Pannenberg by contrasting Lonergan's emphasis with Pannenberg's methodological procedures in his multivolume Systematic Theology. (6) Doran does not develop the kind of result a conversation between Lonergan and Pannenberg would yield because, for him, Pannenberg is not doing what Lonergan does in systematics (the seventh of his functional specialities). (7) However, the conversation between Lonergan and Pannenberg could be fruitfully explored around their mutual concern with what Maurice Blondel long ago described as "the relation of dogma and history, and of the critical method and the necessary authority of doctrinal formulae." (8) Dogmas are, for Pannenberg, "eschatological" and "provisional." (9) He also speaks of dogmatic statements and the theses of Christian doctrine as "hypotheses" because systematic theology, in his view, attempts to develop models about the world, humanity, and history as they are grounded in God. (10) By contrast, for Lonergan and his method, which is rooted in modern science, systematic theology is "to be taken as a model. By a model is not meant something to be copied or imitated. By a model is not meant a description of reality or a hypothesis about reality. It is simply an intelligible, interlocking set of terms and relations that it may be well to have about when it comes to describing reality or to forming hypotheses." (11)
My aim here is to show that the methodological approaches of Lonergan and Pannenberg are potentially complementary, once it is acknowledged that Pannenberg's work is closer to what Lonergan means by "doctrines" rather than by "systematics." Still, there are differences in cognitional theory that need to be addressed: the criterion of truth, realism versus idealism, proof or argument (Pannenberg) versus conversion (Lonergan) as ground of theological doctrines. Thus I will show how a clarification of methods proper to systematic theology advances an understanding of the mysteries of faith by comparing the seventh of Lonergan's functional specialties, systematics, with Pannenberg's Systematic Theology, volume 1. I will work with this hypothesis; although the two systematicians present a more nuanced and elaborate position in chapters prior and subsequent to the ones under examination (in addition to a more elaborated position in their later works), Lonergan in systematics and Pannenberg in Systematic Theology, volume 1, say essentially what they want to say about systematic theology. This hypothesis is supported in part by Pannenberg's clear statement that the methodology of the individual chapters of his trilogy varies according to the topic pursued. (12) His general starting point is the theoretical enterprise of logic and the authority of Scripture. Lonergan, on the other hand, began with the same science as mediated to him through his study of Aquinas and medieval Scholasticism, but effected a shift from logic to method by the time he worked out the functional specialties. I will show how the different theological methods of the two theologians yielded specific kinds of results and how these methods shaped their understanding of mysteries of faith. By so doing I will show how a comparison by contrast of Pannenberg's claim that systematics deals with the truth claims of dogma and Lonergan's insistence that the chief function of systematics is an understanding of the truths of faith helps one attain, in Doran's memorable phrase, "mutually self-mediating advantages of dialogues."
I should, however, point out that one cannot discount Doran's insight that our age is more interested in hermeneutics and history than in doctrines and systematics, and that a conversation between Lonergan and Gadamer or Ricoeur, or even Heidegger, is more apt to yield these mutually self-mediating advantages of dialogues. (13) But such conversations have already been set in motion by Matthew Lamb and Frederick Lawrence, who relate Lonergan's method to that of Dilthey and Gadamer; and by Joseph Flanagan, who contrasted Lonergan's methodological approach to knowledge with a purely logical or conceptualist approach. (14) What I wish to highlight is the significance of methodological clarifications for the basic work of theology and how such clarification charts a new course of dialogue between Lonergan and Pannenberg, a dialogue that can enrich an understanding of the function of systematic theology.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS
A preliminary remark is in order before I explore the dialogue between Lonergan and Pannenberg. Although there are similarities between Lonergan's and Pannenberg's work, there are also significant, consequential differences. Lonergan was born in 1904, Pannenberg in 1928. Lonergan was Roman Catholic, traditional, and Jesuit in training. Pannenberg was generically Lutheran but not "practicing" and began his systematic investigation with a more personal "religious experience." Lonergan was schooled in a Scholastic and Thomistic curriculum; Pannenberg's work (initially) has a Barthian and Kerygmatic flavor. Lonergan began a review of his tradition with a "Generalized Empirical Method" that guided his intricate methodology. Pannenberg came slowly to realize that he had to organize and systematize his experience in order to give human reason a place in Christian theological construction. Lonergan stressed the subject but also the intersubjectivity and the affective conversion necessary to speculative and constructive thought. Pannenberg was influenced by the analogia tes pisteos (analogy of faith) and the "I-Thou" tradition. Both men stressed the body/person unity. (15) For Lonergan, systematics is only one of the functional specialties. It depends on the prior steps. The similarity, however, between Lonergan and Pannenberg, although incidental, is fruitful for dialogue.
LONERGAN: SYSTEMATICS AND THE AFFIRMATION OF REALITIES
Frederick Crowe's discovery of scribbling and comments by Lonergan in a book by Husserl at the Regis College, Toronto, library is significant for a proper understanding of Lonergan's method and the shift in his thinking. Based on this and similar findings, Crowe estimates that between 1947 and 1953 Lonergan was indebted to Husserl's Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology, though there is no single reference to this particular work in any of Lonergan's writings or lectures. (16) Simultaneous with this indebtedness was Lonergan's dependence on Martin Heidegger, Max Scheler, and more especially the intentionality analysis of Maurice Blondel that effected in Lonergan a shift from faculty psychology to intentionality analysis (or phenomenology) in which he distinguished four levels of conscious and intentional operations: experiencing, understanding, judging, and deciding, each successive level sublating the previous levels by going beyond them and setting up a higher principle. New levels introduce new operations, preserve the integrity of the previous levels, and extend their range and significance. Intentional acts are correlative to their objects since the phenomenon examined in phenomenology is a unified reality that comprises not only an intending subject and an intended object but also their correlation. (17) For Lonergan, the four levels of consciousness demonstrate that the intellect is oriented toward absolute mystery and is preceded by God's gift of love that God offers to all of humanity. The gift is basic to systematic theology in that it provides the origin and basis for inquiry about God and illuminates apophatic (negative) theology, which is content to say what God is not, and kataphatic (positive) theology, which inquires into whether God is an object. Lonergan's shift from faculty psychology to intentionality analysis has some far-reaching consequences: the basic terms and relations of systematic theology will no longer be metaphysical but psychological. Knowledge of intentional consciousness can also develop, admitting of revision of earlier views.
Lonergan admits to the shift in his thinking that helped him in methodically articulating the operations of a theologian. "While I spoke in terms of a faculty psychology, in reality I had moved out of its influence and was conducting an intentionality analysis." (18) He assigns eight distinct tasks (functional specialties) to this operation and explains in great detail how each task is to be performed. In treating the seventh specialty, systematics, which is concerned with promoting an understanding of the realities affirmed in the previous specialty, doctrines, he to all intents and purposes discusses systematic theology. (19) His functional specialization lends itself to a distinction between systematics and doctrines, the former presupposing the latter. Unlike doctrines, which aim at increasing certitude and establishing facts, systematics aims at promoting understanding. The relation between doctrines and systematics is similar to that between natural theology (philosophy) and speculative theology (systematics). (20) Systematics takes over facts...
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