Philosopher · Contemporary
Bernard Lonergan, SJ
1904–1984 · Transcendental Thomism (critical realism)
Canadian Jesuit; professor at the Gregorian 1953–1965 and Regis College, Toronto.
Began from St. Thomas's doctrine of the inner word and of operative grace and built, in “Insight,” a philosophy of the knowing subject: experience, understanding, judgment, decision, with being as “whatever is to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation.” “Method in Theology” maps theology onto those operations in eight functional specialties, and his economics sought a Catholic alternative to both Marx and laissez-faire.
Why he matters: The most rigorous of the transcendental Thomists and the one who stayed closest to Thomas's own texts; his “Grace and Freedom” is still the best account of what Thomas actually held on operative grace, before Bañez and Molina.
Where to be careful
Starting from the subject's operations rather than from being, as Gilson and the Laval school complained, concedes ground to Kant that Thomas never conceded; his “historical consciousness” can be read in a historicist direction he did not intend.
School of Thomism · Transcendental Thomism
Maréchal, Rahner and Lonergan: begin with the knowing subject, as Kant did, and show that the dynamism of the intellect reaches being and God. Fertile and contested; its critics say it starts where Thomas never would.
Others in this strand: Karl Rahner, SJ
Reading
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Insight: A Study of Human UnderstandingBernard Lonergan, SJ · Long and demanding; the introduction and chapter 11 (“Self-Affirmation of the Knower”) first.
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Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas AquinasBernard Lonergan, SJ · What Thomas held on grace, before the schools quarreled.
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Method in TheologyBernard Lonergan, SJ · Theology as a set of operations; the chapter on conversion is the heart.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.