Robert M. Doran

Terrorism and Cultural Theory: The Singularity of 9/11

The essays in this collection seek to interpret the events of September 11, 2001 from the perspective of cultural theory?that is, from the perspective of the anthropological and social forces that motivate human beings and give meaning to their thoughts, actions, and feelings. Addressing the events that shape our world and our worldviews, particularly those possessing a symbolic dimension that cries out for interpretation, explanation, or reckoning, cultural theory brings us back to integrated modes of thought that have by and large been lost with the increased specialization and compartmentalization of the academy and of intellectual life in general. But to call cultural theory //interdisciplinary/, is already to ratify the divisions this concept presupposes, and that cultural theory itself calls into question. Though the contributors to this volume work within various disciplines, their approach is necessarily holistic?because of the very nature of the event, which resonates on many levels (anthropological, social, historical) and in diverse spheres of human activity (religion, politics, the media). In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, there was indeed, among the Western intelligentsia, a great effort to come to terms with what had happened. For the attacks appeared to have been aimed not just at the United States but at the Western world itself, with New York as its symbolic capital. Transatlantic intellectuals such as Jacques Derrida, Jiirgen Habermas, Noam Chomsky, and Rene Girard gave interviews;1 cultural critics such as Jean Baudrillard and Slavoj Zizek published short, polemical tracts;2 and the journalists and political scientists produced all manner of books on jihadism, Bin Laden, and Al Qaeda. This frenzy of intellectual activity coincided with an upsurge of interest in and fascination with the Arab Muslim world among the general public. Programs in Middle Eastern studies were created or expanded; enrollments in Arabic language courses

The starting point of systematic theology

The article proposes that Bernard Lonergans four-point hypothesis linking the four divine relations with four created participations in divine life can join with the theory of history proposed by Lonergan and developed by the author to form the unified field structure and so the starting point of a contemporary systematic theology. The hypothesis allows for a new form of the psychological analogy for the divine processions, one that is related to but distinct from the analogy found in Aquinas and the early Lonergan.

Bernard Lonergan and the Functions of Systematic Theology

The author affirms Lonergans notion of the principal function of systematics as an understanding of the mysteries of faith, but maintains that his development of method in terms of functional specialties calls for emphasis on other functions and aspects as well. Seven areas of developments are suggested, all regarding elements already given at least marginal acknowledgment by Lonergan but, it is claimed, not sufficiently emphasized in his work. The suggested development includes a vision of the future of the discipline.

The Nonviolent Cross: Lonergan and Girard on Redemption

Bernard Lonergan and René Girard provide succinct statements of the meaning of redemption. The article, having raised the question as to how the statements relate to one another, argues that Lonergan provides a heuristic structure for understanding redemption, while Girard supplies much of the data that the heuristic structure would organize. Complementarities between the two thinkers are highlighted, along with a few differences.

Being in Love with God : A Source of Analogies for Theological Understanding

The article seeks a psychological analogy for the divine processions that is found within the order of grace itself. Hints from Lonergans later writings are developed to yield an analogy that begins with the dynamic state of being in love with God. The analogy is compared with earlier variants of the psychological analogy, and suggestions are made as to how it can be developed. St Ignatiuss times of election are appealed to in order to show how the earlier analogies are compatible with the one being suggested here.

Addressing the Four-Point Hypothesis

The author accepts two of Charles Heflings corrections, but the second in a qualified fashion: Lonergans appeal to love as a starting point for the psychological analogy is open to an analogy based in religious love. Christiaan Jacobs-Vandegeers article in the March 2007 issue of this journal highlights the distinction of sanctifying grace and charity. The author here amplifies that distinction more than in his previous article. Neil Ormerods theological arguments for the distinction and the hypothesis based on it are warmly welcomed.

Are There Two Consciousnesses in Christ? Transposing the Secondary Act of Existence

Bernard Lonergan has proposed an original thesis concerning two consciousnesses, divine and human, on the part of the incarnate Word Jesus of Nazareth. But he has not specified how these are related to each other precisely as consciousnesses. He has also retrieved from Aquinas the notion of a secondary act of existence bestowed on the assumed human nature of Christ. The article draws on but also modifies Hans Urs von Balthasar’s correlation of person and mission as a way of transposing the secondary act of existence into the condition of possibility, or ontological ground, of Jesus’ mission consciousness, and then uses this transposition to begin to answer the question of how the divine and human consciousnesses are related to each other.

Book Review: Lonergan and Historiography: The Epistemological Philosophy of HistoryLonergan and Historiography: The Epistemological Philosophy of History. By McPartlandThomas J.Columbia: University of Missouri, 2010. Pp. x + 214.

the moment when all fragmentation is overcome: the audience is the author, the author is the text, the word is the image, and word and image are the doing” [199]); but missing from his analysis is an appreciation for the school of lived religion that theorizes religion as a network of relationships between figures both sacred and secular. More troubling is W.’s excessive reliance on the scholarship of others— in particular, Margaret Miles’s nearly 40-year-old Image as Insight, which he cites at length throughout the book (was there no more recent literature on the subject of the visual in Christian culture to which W. might have turned to supplement his analysis?). While W. ought to be applauded for giving credit where credit is due, one is left wondering where his own intellectual contribution and authorial voice lie. Nonetheless, the point— that image and enactment “work together [with the written word] to weave a seamless fabric that exhibits the full meaning of its subject” (37)—is well taken.

44.95.

The author follows up on one of his own earlier suggestions to the effect that systematic theology should be a theological theory of history. But, basing much of his reflection on suggestions discovered in Lonergans works, he complements this suggestions with three other senses of the expression system and history: (1) anticipating the ongoing succession of systematic theologies; (2) gaining explanatory understanding of the past seriations of systematic theologies; and (3) grounding the contribution of systematic theology to praxis in history.

System and History: The Challenge to Catholic Systematic Theology

This paper has a twofold purpose. First, I wish to show that the intentionality analysis of Bernard Lonergan may be employed in the elaboration of categories explanatory of a process of psychic self-appropriation as an aid to the self-knowledge of the existential subject. Second, I wish to suggest the implications of psychic self-appropriation for the theological method proposed by Lonergan. The movement of my argument is thus reciprocal: Lonergan enables the construction of a semantics of depth psychology; this semantics complements Lonergans attempt to construct a method for theology. The two parts of my argument will be taken up, respectively, in the second and third major sections of the paper. The first section attempts to clarify the notions of the psyche and of the existential subject and to discuss the relation between the referents of these two terms that seems implicit in Lonergans later work.