Redeeming History: Social Concern in Bernard Lonergan and Robert Doran.
Gallagher, Michael Paul
Redeeming History: Social Concern in Bernard Lonergan and Robert
Doran. By Gerard Whelan. Analecta Gregoriana 322. Rome: Gregorian
University, 2013. Pp. 254. 27 [euro]
The book's title offers a clear indication of its central
argument. Whereas Bernard Lonergan is often seen as a dogmatic
theologian who went back to philosophy to rethink the foundations of
truth, he is less frequently perceived as having a passion about the
drama of history and in particular about overcoming the realities of
poverty, injustice, and unbalanced economic systems. Whelan wants to
remind us that it was "social concern" that initially
energized the intellectual commitment of the young Lonergan, even though
it seemed later to retreat to being a minor theme in his symphony. W.
also seeks to situate this core concern within Lonergan's theology
of culture as a battleground, with its complex story of progress,
decline, and, potentially, religious redemption. Thus after eight
chapters directly on Lonergan, W. gives us three on Robert Doran's
development and expansion of Lonergan's work, with particular
reference to these social dimensions.
"Redemption in history" was a recurring expression in
Lonergan's earlier writings, and in this light he read in some
depth authors such as Arnold Toynbee, Christopher Dawson, and later
Wilhelm Dilthey. W. leads us through the various stages of
Lonergan's thought and the background research that led to his two
key books, Insight (1957) and Method in Theology (1972). W. also
stresses the centrality for Lonergan's soteriology and Christology
of the "just and mysterious law of the cross," where love is
shown to be "stronger than all negations of love" (131). Some
of W.'s accounts can seem rather too dependent on summaries of
other commentators on Lonergan (Richard Liddy, William Mathews,
Frederick Crowe, Neil Ormerod, and others). Nevertheless the book's
overall originality remains: while paraphrasing or reporting on much
primary and secondary reading, its key argument is that what can be
called Lonergan's option for the poor has not been sufficiently
recognized, and indeed that he himself is partly responsible for this
lack.
In this light W. agrees with Doran that Lonergan's
publications after 1965 (the year of his major illness) can remain
uneven. This is not to say that there are not crucially important new
insights but rather that some are more developed than others. In
particular the social perspective, W. argues, tends to lack detailed
attentioneven though as is mentioned in the conclusion, Lonergan's
style in Method in Theology can soar into eloquence when touching on the
suffering and healing of history. The key criticism is that Lonergan
"drifted away from carrying an option for the poor into the heart
of his account of theological method" (246). Or, less negatively,
W. contends that although this core social preoccupation of the early
Lonergan remained part of his horizon, its subdued presence can be
easily missed. Thus W. aims to recover a crucial but underdeveloped
aspect of Lonergan's overall vision, a worthwhile goal.
The chapters devoted to Doran's work offer a fine account of
his corrective or at least additional interpretations of Lonergan. Doran
has developed not only the possibility of a fourth or "psychic
conversion" (in addition to the three explored by Lonergan:
intellectual, moral, and religious), but he has deepened the notion of a
"dialectic of culture" in the drama of history. By revisiting
some sections of Insight that Lonergan surprisingly did not touch on in
Method, Doran has deepened the agenda and pushed it in the direction of
an option for the poor, seeing the world's situation as a source
for systematic theology. Thus he gives more urgent and contemporary
attention to "the transformative power of religious values"
(221), exploring such topics as globalization.
W. aims to reread Lonergan's work with the help of Doran in
order to highlight its original passion for the healing of history,
retrieving the importance of this concern. Toward the end W. adds a more
autobiographical grounding of all these ideas to a narrative and
commentary on his own experience as pastor of a large parish on the
periphery of Nairobi. In his final chapter W. finds support for this
social emphasis in the early months of Pope Francis, with his famous
off-the-cuff statement that he hoped for a poor church for the poor. In
short, Redeeming History, while drawing on various Lonergan experts,
produces a welcome book on social and cultural horizons of his work, in
ways that can be increasingly relevant for theology.
Michael Paul Gallagher, S.J.
Gregorian University, Rome
DOI: 10.1177/0040563914542314
