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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Can the existence of God be rationally demonstrated? This question has occupied philosophers and theologians for centuries and in a particular way since Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. This essay will examine the question of the knowledge of God as it is met by two contemporary Catholic theologians, Bernard Lonergan and Hans Küng. These two scholars are not chosen arbitrarily for comparison. Not only is each of them on the forefront of current theological development, but I shall argue that on the question of God the ambitious, but ultimately unsuccessful, efforts of the former are significantly complemented by the latter.
1 Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972).Google ScholarPubMed To be sure the whole of part 1, “Background,” in treating of feelings, values, beliefs, the human good, meaning, religious experience and the question of God and the discussion of conversion, as well as the discussion of the theoretical, systematic and transcendent exigencies of differentiated polymorphic consciousness in part 2, “Foreground,” serve as a propaedeutic for exposing the horizon within which God is apprehended. A critical argument for the existence of God is conspicuously absent. Cf., e.g., pp. 101–24.
2 Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1965)Google Scholar.
3 On Being a Christian (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1976). See Section 2, “The Other Dimension,” 57–88Google ScholarPubMed.
4 For an elaboration of this cognitional theory see Lonergan, 's “Cognitional Structure” in Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan (ed. Crowe, Frederick; New York: Herder & Herder, 1967) 211–37Google Scholar.
5 Insight. 654.
6 For the complete argument see Insight, 634–86, and Tyrrell, BernardBernard Lonergan's Philosophy of God (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1974)Google Scholar.
7 Albertson, James, “Review of Insight,” The Modern Schoolman 35 (1957–1958) 238Google Scholar.
8 Hepburn, Ronald, “Method and Insight,” Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy 48 (1975) 153–60Google Scholar.
9 Mackey, J. P., “Divine Revelation and Lonergan's Transcendental Method in Theology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 40 (1973) 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Burrell, David, “How Complete Can Intelligibility Be? A Commentary on Insight: Chapter XIX,” The American Catholic Philosophical Association Proceedings for the Year 1967 (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1967) 252Google Scholar.
11 See “Theories of Inquiry: Responses to a Symposium”in A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J. Lonergan, S.J. (ed. Ryan, William and Tyrrell, Bernard; London: Gaston, Longman & Todd, 1974) 40–42Google Scholar.
12 For astute observations on the implicit influence of “fourth level” experiences in the theistic argument of Insight see Nelson, Jon, “Transcendent Knowledge of Insight: a Closer Look,” The Thomist 37 (April 1973) 566–77Google Scholar.
13 Phillip McShane, “An interview with Fr. Bernard Lonergan, S.J.,” in A Second Collection, 224.
14 See Tyrrell, Lonergan's Philosophy of God, 118–19.
15 See Lonergan, Bernard, Philosophy of God and Theology: The Relationship Between Philosophy of God and the Functional Specialty, Systematics (London: Gaston, Longman & Todd, 1973) 45–59Google Scholar.
16 See Blessed Rage for Order: the New Pluralism in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1975).Google Scholar Tracy argues that in the present pluralistic context five basic models of theology can be discerned: orthodox, liberal, neo-orthodox, radical and revisionist. In the revisionist model the basic meaning of the Christian tradition and the general scientific world view of secularity are both embraced dialectically with an understanding that one can “revise” the other when either fails to meet certain critically grounded criteria.
17 There are, in all, eight “functional specialties,” four of which mediate the meaning of past tradition: research, interpretation, history, dialectic; and four which mediate that meaning to the present situation: foundations, doctrines, sytematics and communications.
18 On Being a Christian, 69.
19 Ibid., 70.
