Abstract
The issue of redemption is no marginal concern in the writings of Bernard Lonergan. Though the places where he tackles the subject directly are not numerous, the issue itself pervades his work as an aspect of his views on the nature of history. His principal treatment of the classical themes of soteriology is found in three of the 17 theses of his Christology, De Verbo incarnato. It is the aim of this article to bring to the attention of scholars the distinctive approach of these three theses, leaving to another occasion a broader treatment of the significance of the redemption in his work generally.
In the published work of Bernard Lonergan on theology, classical soteriology has not been a major theme. The Trinity, Christology, and grace were the main topics to which he devoted significant reflection and writing. However, his position on the nature of redemption is quite distinctive in itself and by that fact alone surely merits the attention of scholars. Furthermore, it has important implications for other areas of his work where redemption is seen as one of the basic movements in human history. From early on in his career he lists these movements in a constantly repeated triad: progress, decline, and redemption. 1 For his principal manual discussion of the nature of redemption one turns to three theses, nos. 15 to 17 in his Christology, De Verbo incarnato. 2 There is also a largely parallel discussion in a Latin work, usually entitled De bono et malo, but up to the time of writing, this work has not yet been published. 3
The three theses of De Verbo incarnato may be described as follows. The first is a comprehensive presentation of the main scriptural material relevant to the theme. The second thesis, the longest of the three, is a discussion of the meaning of satisfaction. It includes a complex account of the various schools of thought about the matter, against which the author establishes and explains his own position. The third thesis presents what the author sees as the heart of our redemption, namely, the transformation of the world according to a process which he calls ‘the law of the cross.’ However, his exposition of soteriology which we have in De Verbo incarnato is a dense and difficult piece of writing. It will be the purpose of this article, not to explain the whole sweep of his thought on redemption, but to pick out the main lines of what is distinctive in his approach to the classical themes of soteriology, principally as found in De Verbo incarnato, and to present it under four headings, as will be apparent below.
Divine Justice
I begin with the theme of divine justice which is central to the debates that have surrounded the theology of Christ’s cross, at least since the time of St Anselm. It seems appropriate to begin with this theme since it introduces us from the outset to a basic orientation of our author’s entire message, namely, away from a juridical approach or one based on the divine anger towards one based on God’s redeeming love. In entering into this subject-matter Lonergan relies on two main sources for his thought. For the scriptural aspect he invokes the work of Stanislaus Lyonnet in order to break the stranglehold which the notion of punitive justice (justitia vindicativa) had on the thought of many theologians. 4 For a base on which to build the whole edifice of salvation, satisfaction, and the causality of redemption, he turns to Aquinas’s philosophical theology and in particular to his notions of divine transcendence and of the order of the universe which that transcendent causality calls into being.
In his treatise on redemption Lonergan did not present either of his two sources at any great length. For the first, one would have to go to Lyonnet’s own writings, to which Lonergan frequently refers. 5 The second is explicitly present only in incidental remarks, the significance of which would pass one by unless one were already familiar with Lonergan’s study of divine grace, where divine transcendence and divine causality are explained at some length. 6 In the biblical tradition the norm of justice is, in the first instance, the Law, and ultimately the divine covenant. In the Thomist tradition the norm of justice is ultimately the divine wisdom, from which comes the plan of God for the order of things in this world. To this context Lonergan refers when he gives his basic definition of divine justice as that by which the divine will makes its choices according to the order of divine wisdom. 7 In this definition we can already see that Lonergan is on the side of those who take an intellectualist approach rather than a voluntarist one.
With this notion of divine justice Lonergan can transcend the more concrete notions of justice with which many theologians are content to operate. He observes that ‘the order of divine wisdom or of divine justice includes in itself every other actual order.’
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When one’s view of divine causality falls short of this kind of transcendence, the order of causality easily becomes distorted. In this line of thought the interconnection between things has to be explained simply by finite causality; and so we get a tendency to represent created things as acting on God and God as responding emotionally to finite causes; we hear of divine anger at sin, of divine appeasement through inflicting punishment, and of Christ as a kind of scapegoat before his Father in what is called penal substitution for sinners. With his transcendent perspective Lonergan was able to cut through all such imagery, but the suggestion that the Father punishes the Son in our place was a spark that inflamed Lonergan and moved him to pen the following unforgettable paragraph:
Anyone who says that it was from God’s retributive justice that God the Son was scourged, crucified and died, is taking for granted either [a] that the Son has incurred or assumed guilt; or [b] that God’s retributive justice proceeds on the mere fact of the existence of wrong-doing, irrespective of any consideration of guilt in the person punished, whether the guilt be original or actual or assumed. The first assumption [a] is not Catholic; the second [b] is either immoral or amoral; hence it is not easy to see how the conclusion differs from blasphemy.
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By this forceful statement Lonergan has excluded in an absolute way any suggestion that our Lord on the cross could be the object of God’s punitive justice (justitia vindicativa). By this very fact he also excludes, with equal emphasis, one of the standard interpretations of redemption in western theology, namely, that of penal substitution as articulated in a rigorous way by the theologians of the Reformation. According to this latter approach Christ took the place of all sinners as the object of the anger of God, who visited on him the punishment incurred by the sins of the world. 10 For Lonergan, however, the deprivations and sufferings which our Lord endured on this earth, while they may be seen as materially the same as those which are experienced by humanity generally as part of the punishment for their sins, in Christ’s case they are not formally punishment, since in no way has he contracted them as the result of sin. 11 Lonergan applies here Aquinas’s distinction between such deprivations as sinfully contracted and as voluntarily assumed. 12 As a result in no formal sense is Jesus punished for our sins, and in no formal sense may the theory of penal substitution be applied to the cross.
However, despite this forthright exclusion of substitution theory, when Lonergan approaches the issue on the level of what he calls here a ‘symbolic mentality,’ he softens his stance. 13 This symbolic mentality corresponds to that technical meaning of ‘common sense,’ as distinct from theoretical understanding, familiar to readers of Lonergan ever since Insight. 14 By this distinction Lonergan is able to weave his way through symbols and paradoxes without losing his firm grasp of principle. He has given to his theology a subtlety not always appreciated and an instrument of analysis waiting to be exploited more fully. A case in point is precisely the issue we are considering. Having taken up the adamant position on the level of systematics, which has been outlined above, he can then surprise us with the following statement: ‘When images and feelings are dominant, the passion and death of Christ can scarcely be grasped otherwise than as the Lord’s substitution for sinners.’ 15 Theoretically this statement seems to contradict the forceful paragraph quoted above. In practice, it is Lonergan finding room within his approach for the feelings and emotive expressions of a living faith as he returns from the level of theory to the level of ‘common-sense.’
Finally on this topic of divine justice we might notice the reference to retributive justice in the paragraph from Lonergan quoted above. 16 Under the general heading of divine justice Lonergan makes a distinction between two kinds of justice, which he sees as part of an even more fundamental one between two quite different contexts within which a number of the basic notions in this treatise arise. 17 One of these contexts is more personal, the other more juridical. The distinction between these two contexts comes about in so far as the whole redemptive process can be seen to have two different goals or outcomes.
In one context the outcome to be envisaged is the forgiveness of sin and the remission of the debt of temporal ‘punishment’ incurred by sin. In the other the outcome is the due punishment of the sinner. In the first context we have satisfaction, praying for pardon, the granting of pardon, compensation for the offence, reconciliation, and saving justice (justitia redemptiva). 18 In the second we have guilt, offence, judge, police, prison, punishment incurred, inflicted and endured (justitia vindicativa). Though we might use the words ‘justice’ and ‘punishment’ in both contexts, their meaning is quite different as one moves from one context to the other. 19 Lonergan grants that in the concrete the two contexts overlap and are rarely separated, but he insists that the failure to distinguish them and the two sets of notions results in considerable confusion. It will become apparent as we proceed that this distinction is quite fundamental for Lonergan’s approach to the entire subject-matter. Not only does it point to the opposed position against which he develops his distinctive notion of satisfaction, but it also indicates the parameters within which the process of transformation takes place, which for him defines the very essence of redemption and what he calls the law of the cross.
The Cause of Redemption
The second theme to be considered is that of the divine efficient causality. Where redemption is understood as essentially God’s transformation of the world, how we understand causality has to be central. Ever since the 1930s Lonergan was moved by the question of a possible philosophy and theology of history and by a concern with universal order. In his studies of divine grace these interests were developed further, particularly by his acceptance of the Aristotelian cosmic system and the Thomist concept of universal instrumentality. 20 All this ensured that he approached the issues of divine causality, whether as regards grace or as regards redemption, against the background of a comprehensive philosophical and theological vision of world order. We have already been introduced to this context when he defined divine justice in terms of divine wisdom. The significance of that remark, however, was not immediately apparent in De Verbo incarnato. In fact, it points not only to his fundamental concern with questions of world order but also to the whole intellectualist bent of his thought, to which reference has already been made.
In his account of the order of the universe, priority is assigned to the divine act of understanding. Of that divine act he writes as follows: ‘The unrestricted act grasps in itself the total range of possible world orders, and it is within the orders that the things are known.’ 21 By this statement he is distinguishing himself from the position of conceptualism, ‘which places conception before understanding and things before orders.’ 22 From this it follows for Lonergan that the conceptualist ‘argues from the natures of the things that are ordered and so he can conclude only to what is necessary.’ 23 On the contrary, placing understanding first, and the many possible orders within which things are known, gives one a more flexible view of world order and of how things are inter-related within their order as a fact.
Issues in the theology of redemption are problems about how various realities are ordered to each other. One asks why salvation follows on Jesus’ sufferings, why does punishment follow on guilt, how is the bearing of our crosses helped by the cross of Christ. The fundamental principle in Lonergan’s approach to such questions lies in his understanding of the order of the universe which has just been outlined. In other words, the order between things is determined, not primarily by the things themselves, but by the divine creative plan in the mind and choice of God, who plans all things in his loving wisdom from an eminence strictly outside time. He quotes Aquinas, ‘God therefore moves all things to their proper ends by his intellect.’ 24
It is really only from this perspective that one can make sense of divine transcendence over all creation. Created realities do not move God to this or that, but God in his eminence as ontologically prior to all created realities, and the orders between them can in his freedom choose any one of a series of universes and plan the order of things within the universe of his choice. Not only is it the case that all created things are caused by God, but even the mode of their emergence and the relationships between them are part of his plan from the beginning and so are created by him. 25
At first this position might appear to leave one with a world dominated by fatalism and predestination, but such is certainly not Lonergan’s mind. This is why he spends so much time in his study of grace in vindicating a place for the contingent as well as for the necessary within the one divine plan. As a result, contingent events can be determined by the divine plan in the mind of God and so issue from the divine wisdom. In other words, Lonergan finds intelligibility not only in the necessary but also in the contingent. How God in his absoluteness can be the determinative cause of the contingent is not immediately obvious. It is an issue which Lonergan had to face up to, especially in his study of grace, in order to explain the primary instance of contingency which is freedom, namely, how divine freedom can work in and through human freedom, the first as the cause of the second, while still leaving room for our choices to be truly ours. 26
These are complicated issues indeed, but they are a help to understanding the order in which significant events of redemption occur, establishing the link between guilt and punishment, suffering and forgiveness, satisfaction by one and salvation for another. Too often theologians have assumed, particularly when their background is a conceptualist one, that the connection between such events has to be a necessary one, on the model of a logical deduction. 27 For Lonergan, the link can also be contingent, for it is simply part of the particular order of things that is freely chosen by God for this particular universe. As a result, the link can be one of appropriateness rather than simply of necessity. 28
There is a cryptic sentence of Aquinas, which Lonergan quotes at one point in his treatise. It repays careful consideration, for it gives us, in a nugget of Thomistic wisdom, the key to understanding the divine transcendent cause. ‘He (God) wishes this to exist because of this; he does not will this because of this.’ 29 In the redemptive context it is not a question of balancing offence and honour (Anselm) or guilt and pain (Reformers). The reality lies rather in the concrete decree of God’s loving wisdom by which he chooses the appropriate order in which forgiveness is to flow into the lives of his servants.
Though indeed forgiveness is offered to all, it does not come about by some automatic and indiscriminate amnesty. The evidence of Scripture is rather that forgiveness and the remission of the consequences of sin are to follow on the way that people cooperate with God’s loving initiatives. This they do by responding in love and penitence, in forgiveness of one another and in solidarity with the whole race of suffering and sinful humanity, beginning with the sinless Saviour, who was made sin for us all (2 Cor 5:21). It cannot be said too often: the connection between these events does not issue from some necessary law of logic but primarily from the freedom of divine choice in establishing the appropriate order in which redemption comes to us.
One cannot deny that there is appropriateness in the arrangement which the Lord has chosen, and in that appropriateness we should notice in particular how God’s gift of cooperative grace enables us not only to contribute to our own salvation but to that of our fellow human beings as well. By this grace our Lord has brought meaning to the apparently meaningless. The sufferings that come to us in life can not only be accepted as part of the sanction that we endure for our own sins but also, as we will see below, something we can bear for the sake of our fellow human beings.
Satisfaction
The starting-point in the New Testament for Lonergan’s notion of satisfaction is the statement of the early kerygma that Christ died because of sins (propter peccata). 30 In this expression he considers that all the later developments on the theme of satisfaction are contained in embryo. 31 The apparent simplicity of the statement gives little hint of the complexity of the discussions that flowed from it. Two points in particular help to demarcate the distinctive path which Lonergan has chosen to follow. First of all, he distinguishes satisfaction from redemption as such. Ever since Anselm there has been a tendency among a number of theologians to identify satisfaction with redemption. Aquinas, however, saw satisfaction as only one of a number of aspects within the redemptive process, and with this our author agrees. 32 For Lonergan, satisfaction is not the essence of redemption. In his approach that place is assigned to that transformation of the world to which we have referred more than once. Though satisfaction is indeed important in a theology of the cross and all-pervasive in the unfolding of the Lord’s passion, it is still secondary within the redemptive process as a whole.
The second distinctive position of Lonergan lies in locating satisfaction within consciousness or subjectivity. The redemptive process is a profound reality within which the causality of grace is at work both consciously and unconsciously in those who are justified. Especially among those authors who identify satisfaction with redemption as such, it is understandable that something of that unconscious aspect should cross over into their notion of how satisfaction works. In this way it will easily be seen as a kind of impersonal systemic process, something like a commercial transaction or even a mechanism, by which sin and its consequences are taken away, as when the Saviour’s sufferings are understood as formal punishment in our stead.
Lonergan is quite different. For him, it is a matter of conscious relationships between persons. It belongs to that part of the redemptive process where people are involved consciously in responding to God and to Christ. While the causal influence of the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ enters human affairs both unconsciously and consciously, for Lonergan, satisfaction belongs to the area of interpersonal relations and so is located within the field of consciousness, albeit at the same time under the influence of the causality of grace. He finds it on the level of the personal relationships between Christ and the Father, between Christ and sinners, and between Christ and the justified; he then specifies it further as that by which Christ’s love for his Father and for humanity outweighs the offence of human sin. 33
The Motive of Christ
Lonergan poses the question, why did the Saviour not come on earth in glory and power but came rather in weakness and deprivation to complete his work in the sufferings of the flesh? It was because of sin. As that divine ordinance passed into the mind and heart of Christ, not only did he act on our behalf in view of the ultimate goal of the abolition of sin, but in solidarity with us he let himself be subjected to sufferings because of our actual sins and because of what they mean in our lives. For Lonergan, then, the phrase ‘because of sins’ underlines the motive of Christ in accepting his passion and death. It is part of the way in which the Lord summons us all to repentance and shares with us the struggle which that repentance entails. We might notice that this emphasis on motive fits in with what we have just seen to be one of the basic orientations of Lonergan’s thought generally, which is to consider things under the aspect of consciousness and, where possible, under the aspect of personal relationships. 34
This is a significant step for the theology of satisfaction in particular. At the end of the section above on divine justice it was noted that Lonergan makes a fundamental distinction between two contexts within which the basic notions in the treatise have their meaning. On the one hand, there is the context in which retributive justice is determinative. In the other context the focus is on forgiveness and satisfaction. This distinction is essential for his notion of satisfaction since it marks how he has set aside the rigorous juridical context, which too often lies behind the notions of justice and punishment. Love, not retributive justice, is the basic principle of Lonergan’s notion of satisfaction, God’s love, on the one hand, and Christ’s love for the Father and for the human race, on the other. Personal relationships, not some abstract law of retribution, set the framework within which the whole matter is to be approached.
This shift of context is also relevant to another basic notion in this treatise, namely, that of sin. From the point of view of the Bible, sin is the ultimate source of the moral evils of this world. There are two aspects of the problem, which the reality of sin creates. The more immediate aspect concerns what sin means for sinners. The deeper aspect concerns what sin means for the world’s relationship to God. Already in his philosophical masterpiece, Insight, Lonergan has given some attention to the first of these aspects, putting before us what we might call an anthropological notion of sin, namely, ‘the failure of free will to choose a morally obligatory course of action or its failure to reject a morally reprehensible course of action.’ 35 In this definition one should notice that Lonergan interprets the notion in terms of what sin means within the human person, and this emphasis is also found in his treatise on redemption, where sin is sometimes described in classical scholastic language. 36
In the discussion of satisfaction, however, the theological aspect is to the fore. There sin is described as an evil human act where the evil is identified as offence against God. 37 The notion of offence presents sin in personalist terms. It arises where there is a conflict of wills between two persons. This evokes the whole personalist context referred to above, and satisfaction is located on the same plane when we are told that it is the polar opposite of offence. 38 While our Lord detests human sinfulness because of what it has done to the human race, even more fundamentally does he detest it and grieve over it because of its offensiveness to the Father’s love, and so it comes about that the primary focus of satisfaction for our author has to be the gravity of sin as offence against God. What motivates his detestation of sin and grief over it is, in the first place, its offensiveness to God, and so all he does on the cross to meet the plight of sinners can be offered to the Father as an expression of his anguish over the world’s rejection of his Father’s love. Great as is the offence of human sin to God, the splendour of Christ’s love for the Father and for the children of God is greater still. The expression of that love in the passion, which outweighs all the offensiveness of human sin, contains Christ’s great act of satisfaction to his Father.
The Formal Notion of Satisfaction
Such then is the broken world which lies before the Redeemer as he comes to save us. The reality of sin in our world means, at once, the destruction of so much that is authentic and beneficial in human living and, at the same time, the height of offensiveness to God that it is something which any upright person can only detest and grieve over, and clearly such a response was present in our Lord to a supreme degree. As we know from the gospel, it could on occasion bring him to tears (Lk 19:41). This is the situation which our Lord is set to remedy, and he does so firstly by inviting sinners to repent and to mend their ways. It is at this point that pain and suffering enter the picture. If people are to overcome their selfishness and withdraw from the grip that their self-indulgence has upon them, they are going to experience pain and struggle, and this pain can be seen as a kind of punishment or inner sanction arising from the very nature of their actions. To support them in this, our Lord himself embraces his passion and death out of solidarity with the plight of struggling sinners.
In the Catholic tradition the heart of true contrition lies in such hatred of sin and grief over it, which we have just described. 39 Part of the meaning of our Lord’s passion and death is the fact that by the cross our Saviour brings before penitent sinners these two qualities, which are already present in his own heart and are the very qualities they need if they are to overcome their sinful state. 40 This line of thought brings our author to the point where, having set aside the common notion of a satisfaction based on retributive justice, he chooses to identify satisfaction with the very aspect of the passion we are now considering. Our Lord’s closeness to sinners, and his desire to lead them out of their plight by communicating his feelings to them, can only sharpen and inflame his own hatred of sin and grief over it. It is this very disposition in our Lord, deepened by his solidarity with sinners in his sufferings, which is singled out by Lonergan as the content of Christ’s act of satisfaction and as something he can offer to his Father to outweigh the offence of our sins. The formal notion of satisfaction then is reached when our Lord’s sufferings are understood as the public expression of his detestation of sin and of his grief over its offensiveness to God and over the harm it does to the human race. 41
The aspect of expression is central here, since only in that way can the depths of our Lord’s inner attitude become known and appreciated by those whom he wishes to influence in a human way as well as in a divine way. 42 This is in line with one of Lonergan’s primary principles about the incarnation and redemption generally, namely, that redemption is ‘an act of communication,’ a personal communication from God to people of the fact that he loves us. 43 He applies this also to our Lord who ‘accepted his sufferings because they provided an opportunity for him to communicate at once his love of us and his detestation of sin and his sorrow for our sins.’ 44 Of this, Lonergan writes with feeling: ‘Christ the Son of God … could detest sin as sin is to be detested, and because of his love of us could feel a sorrow such as no sorrow can equal.’ 45
From the general teaching of the faith Christians would know that they are the cause of these sufferings in their Saviour. Any human being open to repentance cannot but be stirred by seeing the cross and be moved to grief over the sufferings of their Friend. The more they are moved in this manner, by that very fact, the burden of their own struggle for repentance is lessened. He quotes Aquinas to the effect that the more intense is the penitents’ love, the less is their experience of pain. 46 As a consequence, in that indirect way, the Saviour may be said to have taken their sufferings on himself. Christ expiates our sins in our place, not according to some impossible juridical balancing of one person’s pain against another person’s guilt, but simply according to an incalculable interchange of love and compassion between two human hearts.
Interpersonal relations of their nature have many facets. Having made such relationships the all-embracing context of his approach, Lonergan is able to open up his notion of satisfaction to a number of different aspects, all contained within the over-riding reality described in the formal definition which has just been explained. In this way our author is able to include in his approach various aspects and emphases found in the Catholic tradition to which he refers in some secondary descriptions. 47 Evoking Anselm, he describes satisfaction as a work done in God’s honour as a compensation for the offence of sin; with Aquinas he speaks of the offering to the one offended of that which he loves equally or more than he hates the offence; he refers positively to Pius XI on Sacred Heart Reparation. 48 The personalist aspect is particularly evident when he describes satisfaction as the voluntary acceptance of the punishment for sin so that pardon may be appropriately asked for and granted. 49
The use of the word ‘punishment’ in this last description merits some comment as it touches on some of the more sensitive issues that have already arisen in this article, which it will be useful to draw together at this point. At one extreme there was Anselm, who tried to avoid the term altogether in relation to the sufferings of Christ but, as Lonergan points out, tradition was predominantly against him. 50 At the other extreme there were the Reformers, who tended to apply the term to Christ in a rigorous sense. With his distinction of matter and form Aquinas struck out on a middle path, which Lonergan follows.
As regards the sufferings of Christ, materially they are the same as those of any human being subjected to the same circumstances. 51 Formally, however, as has been explained above in the section on divine justice, Christ’s sufferings are not punishment in any strict sense of the term, because in no sense have they been contracted by sin and guilt on his part. They have been assumed voluntarily by him out of solidarity with the plight of sinners and are endowed with whatever meaning that moved his mind and heart in embracing them. 52 In this way the sufferings of Christ are transformed from being instances of God’s punitive justice to being manifestations of that redemptive justice by which God is said to be just and justifying (Rom 3:26). 53 It is, as our author says elsewhere, punishment transfigured into satisfaction. 54 Here already we see at work that transforming power, which in the next section we will find across the entire field of the redemptive process, constituting the movement by which evil is turned into good. For Lonergan, this transforming movement is the very essence of redemption.
The case of the satisfaction offered by repentant sinners is not quite the same as that of the Redeemer. The pain sinners experience has to some extent been contracted by their sins and so ranks as punishment in some more formal sense of the term. However, in so far as this pain is accepted willingly by them in the context of their repentance, it too is transformed by being drawn into the sphere of God’s ‘redemptive justice’ and can be offered to God for the sins of others as well as for their own. This last point raises the topic of vicarious satisfaction to which we now turn.
Vicarious Satisfaction
Satisfaction as vicarious is satisfaction for others, where ‘for’ is understood by Lonergan to refer primarily to the motive of the one offering satisfaction; and that motive is, as suggested above, the detestation of sin and grief over it. 55 The term applies both to our Lord satisfying for our sins and to that aspect of the sufferings of this world by which Christians can offer satisfaction not only for their own sins but for those of other people. This is yet another way in which this notion of satisfaction breaks the purely juridical mould. Lonergan makes the point that the foundation of satisfaction is the union of wills according to love. 56 In the case of Christ, it is not only a question of his love for his Father but also for his friends; in the case of Christians, it is a case of their love for Christ and for others in Christ.
To explain this, Lonergan appeals to a principle of Aristotle that love makes two people one in affectivity, so that what we do through our friends we are seen to do ourselves. 57 This union in affectivity throws some light on how Christ’s sufferings count as our sufferings, and our sufferings count as the sufferings of those for whom we pray. When Lonergan invokes this principle, he speaks mainly of Christ’s satisfying for others. He does not say much about Christians offering satisfaction for others, but he does refer to it in passing. 58
However, the analogy of human friendship running through the above account needs to be qualified. More than once Lonergan warns against understanding satisfaction in a Pelagian way. 59 The knowledge and love that we are dealing with are supernatural. In the human analogy the friendship of those concerned precedes the exercise of satisfaction. In the case of Christ and the Christian, the satisfaction carried out by Christ is the cause of the knowledge and love with which sinners learn to detest their sins and to grieve over their offensiveness, this knowledge and love being the gifts of his grace. Furthermore, when Christians are inspired to imitate their Saviour in making satisfaction for the sins of others, the efficacy of their prayer and sacrifice cannot be explained adequately except by the power of Christ within his mystical body, his satisfaction being the principle of all satisfaction and its cause. 60
Always present for Lonergan in questions of the communication of grace is the reality of Christ’s mystical body, the Head imparting life and grace to the members. 61 The issue of satisfaction is no exception, and this corporate mystery is part of the explanation of how satisfaction enters our lives. Lonergan invokes it explicitly in explaining how Christ’s work of satisfaction becomes our satisfying for our sins, but he is less explicit about it when speaking of the way the various members of the mystical body can, through Christ, make satisfaction for one another. 62 However, this aspect is at least implicit in his understanding of how Christians belong to one another in Christ’s body so that one member can atone for the sins of others in the way the Church ordinarily understands this great mystery. Lonergan’s notion of satisfaction is essentially a communion of suffering within the loving relationships of the body of Christ.
The Law of the Cross
Lonergan’s soteriology reaches its central point with our fourth topic. He calls it ‘the law of the cross.’ For him it represents the very heart of the redemptive process. The term ‘law’ here is not to be taken in a juridical sense, though he does speak of it as a precept. In that light it has been remarked that Lonergan’s soteriology is not primarily a doctrine addressed to the mind but a precept addressed to the heart. 63 Certainly it does embody the ultimate practical orientation of Lonergan’s thought. He himself once described this law as ‘a line of spiritual development.’ 64 It tells us the way things must normally go if we are living the principles of the gospel and following the order of things established by God as his solution to the problem of evil.
With his teaching under this heading Lonergan lifts his soteriology above the tangled web surrounding the discussion of atonement and expands it to embrace the whole of human history. 65 One of the aims of his masterpiece, Insight, was to provide a general analysis of the dynamic structure of human history, and, in one place, he tells us that the law of the cross is the theological component in that analysis. 66 The problem to be faced is the very problem of evil in our world, and clearly this is one of the greatest questions that confront us in this universe. For this, philosophy has no real solution; nor has Christian faith got an explanation, but it has a kind of an answer when it points to the cross of Christ.
Sometimes we might wonder why God does not simply intervene and abolish evil in one thunderbolt of his power. Certainly that is not the way in the order of the actual universe which he has chosen. Whether another universe would be preferable is scarcely for us to say. Lonergan embraces the viewpoint of the Fathers of the Church and of Aquinas that God chose to save us by justice rather than by power. 67 Instead of choosing a universe in which overwhelming power or force would be dominant, he chose rather a universe in which faith and love would lead the way. It is a universe where, with Christ as the pioneer of their faith (Heb 12:2), people would learn to undergo the evils of this world and to change them from within. Such is the order of things which Lonergan sees as set before us in the New Testament. 68
The essence of redemption, says Lonergan, lies in the transformation of the world, a grace to be mediated to the world by those who follow the light that God gives them. 69 Redemption then is not by the abolition of evil or simply by liberation from evil, but by the transformation of evil into good. 70 He has a favourite quotation from Augustine in which to encapsulate the point: ‘God judged it better to bring good out of evil rather than not to allow any evils at all.’ 71 This is also in line with St Paul who wrote, ‘Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’ (Rom 12:21).
This transformation of the world is what is at stake in the law of the cross. The law is described by our author in three stages. 72 First, there is the way that sin leads to death and guilt leads to punishment of one kind or another. Then there is the way that the pain of punishment can be transformed when it is accepted out of love and self-sacrifice for the sake of a greater good. In the final stage such a transformation is accepted by God, and the good to which it leads is blessed by him. It is important to stress that for Lonergan the transformation to which the law of the cross refers begins within human interiority. It is a matter of the insights which move people’s minds and the choices that govern their actions. 73 Progress and decline in human history are ultimately determined by the way people understand their situation and respond to authentic human values. In a world under the reign of sin, redemption comes, not by a change in God, but by a change in people.
Just as sin itself cannot be understood without considering the aspect of human interiority, as was pointed out above, so redemption entails a transformation within human beings themselves, which is to lead in turn to the transformation of the world. It is a passage from death to life in that people die to the untruths and disvalues of the reign of sin and are reborn to the light of truth and authentic living, both individually and communally. All the evil in human and voluntary affairs can be seen as in some way the result of sin. This is something against which all good people will have to struggle in one way or another, some more vigorously than others, accepting the burden of that struggle with greater or lesser generosity, as the case may be. But always the burdens and trials of that struggle, when endured with love and obedience, can be transformed into the virtue that saves, as Jean Higgins put it. 74 This pattern is reflected particularly in the penitential process, where we see not only people being converted by the power of God’s operative grace but also by the grace of conversion cooperating with their minds and hearts to turn their struggle with the results of sin into occasions for loving God all the more. 75
In the abstract, this law of the cross may seem to make no sense, to the Jews a stumbling block, to the Gentiles folly (1 Cor 1:23). One could say, however, that there are intimations of it that are discerned by human wisdom, as when our Lord speaks of losing life to find life (Matt 16:25 par), but it only becomes an effective force for human living as a result of the concrete history of its supreme exemplar, our Lord himself, in his death and resurrection. 76 From there, meaning overflows into the lives and self-sacrifice of all who live by the values of Christ, in particular in all those who explicitly make Christ’s dying and rising the inspiration and pattern of their own struggles in this world. In Christian teaching this relationship then comes under the influence of the grace and power that are won for all human beings by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and so it is drawn into the corporate mystery of what we call the body of Christ mediating Christ’s divine life to the world. If at first it seems disproportionate to expect that those who live according to this law might contribute in any significant way to the solution of the problem of evil in human history, then the believer will be able to give this claim more credence by recourse to the mystery of the body of Christ as the corporate mediator of God’s redemptive causality in history.
The Body of Christ
It is not commonly realized the significant place assigned by Lonergan in his theology to the mystery of the ecclesial body of Christ. This is doubtless due to the fact that nowhere does he develop the theme in a comprehensive way, but those familiar with his writings cannot but be struck by the fact that references to this truth keep cropping up even in contexts that do not, strictly speaking, require it. 77 Already in his philosophical work, Insight, he spoke of ‘a deep and widespread interest in the doctrine of the mystical body.’ 78 In Method in Theology it enters into his description of theology itself, the first phase of which introduces us to the knowledge of the body of Christ, while its second phase is knowledge of God ‘as he is known through the whole Christ, Head and members.’ 79
The significance of this doctrine in his own mind is bound up with his emphasis on the good of order and on the essentially communal nature of human life. In one place he remarks that, when faith becomes explicit, the good of order is that of the mystical body. 80 Elsewhere he tells us that the good of order is the proximate end of the divine missions, and one of the expressions of that good is the body of Christ. 81 It is not so surprising then that his vision of a world redeemed culminates in the body of Christ. We have seen that the process of redemption comes about in the transformation of evil into good, but the good, the ‘supreme good’ (summum bonum) into which the evils of this world are transformed is precisely ‘the whole Christ, Head and members, both in this life and in the life to come, according to all their determinations and concrete relations.’ 82 On a later page our author, speaking of the economy of salvation, describes the body of Christ as the form of this economy, where the matter waiting to receive it is the human race as infected by sin, both original and actual, alienated from God and divided in itself, both individually and socially. 83
Conclusion
In the later period of his life Lonergan did not return to the classical issues of soteriology in any sustained way, his writing at that time being focused mainly on methodological issues. This article has been based on Lonergan’s Roman manual, De Verbo incarnato, written in the middle period of his life, since that is the most significant statement of his position in published form. It is, as was remarked at the outset, a dense and difficult piece of writing. By contrast to such complexity, one well might wonder at the conclusion of our reflections whether or not there is any one aspect that helps to characterize his approach in a particular way. One feature which stands out and which is worthy of consideration in that regard is the way that he constantly brings the various issues back to the question of the love of God. Lonergan’s soteriology is one rooted and grounded in God’s love for us and in our being liberated to love him in return and to love our fellow human beings for his sake. This aspect, of course, is only stating the essence of Christianity, but the point is the way it is vindicated and implemented with growing clarity as one moves through the argument from one section above to another.
In the section on divine justice, with his distinction of two contexts and two meanings of justice, he laid the groundwork for his basic contention that love, not retributive justice, is the foundation of it all. Love is a matter of freedom, and the second section grounds the entire treatment in a vindication of divine freedom and choice in the order of the universe and in the way God’s plan of redemption flows from his loving wisdom. The relevance of the two contexts just referred to becomes even clearer in his treatment of satisfaction, which he presents as that by which Christ’s love for his Father and for humanity, offered to the Father on the cross, outweighs the offence of human sin. In this section he sets aside the common notion of satisfaction as a punishment which allays the divine anger according to some abstract juridical justice; he presents it rather as a conscious relationship between divine forgiving love, on the one hand, and human penitential love, on the other. In the fourth section then the underlying dynamism of the movement from a regime of retributive justice to one of redemptive justice is revealed as the transformation of the world according to ‘the law of the cross.’ In this way Lonergan’s soteriology fits into a general picture of Christianity according to which our existence as Christians is understood as a progress from decline to redemption and as a movement from death to life (Matt 16:25f; John 12:23–25).
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
1
See Joseph A. Komonchak, ‘Lonergan’s Early Essays on the Redemption of History,’ in Lonergan Workshop 10: The Legacy of Lonergan, ed. Frederick G. Lawrence (Boston, MA: Boston College, 1994), 159–77.
2
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato (Rome: Gregorian University, 1960). In this article references will be to the second edition (1961) and to the third edition (1964). Where two editions of a work have been mentioned, page references to both will be given, with the earlier one placed first.
3
There is an unpublished translation: Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Supplement to ‘On the Incarnate Word,’ trans. Michael Shields SJ (Toronto: Lonergan Research Institute, 1987). This work is referred to below as Lonergan, Supplement. It may be consulted in one of the various Lonergan Centres such as that in Milltown Park, Dublin. A lengthy description of this work is given by Frederick Crowe, Christ and History: The Christology of Bernard Lonergan from 1935 to 1982 (Ottawa: Novalis, 2005), 99–128.
4
In this article the expression ‘justitia vindicativa’ is translated as ‘punitive justice’ in order to avoid the possible emotional overtones of a more literal translation.
5
De Verbo incarnato, 403 / 457; 405–6 / 459–60; 445 / 496C; 466 / 516; 494 / 544.
6
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. James Patout Burns, 1st ed. (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971); 2nd ed., Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 1, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2000).
7
De Verbo incarnato, 464 / 514 citing STh I, 21.1, ad 2.
8
Ibid., 464 / 514.
9
Ibid., 484 / 534. Translations of texts of De Verbo incarnato are made by the author of this article. The two letters [a] and [b] have been introduced into this quotation by this author for reasons of greater clarity. See also ibid., 447 / 497.
10
Ibid., 440–43 / 494–96A.
11
‘Punishment as such is not inflicted justly unless on account of one’s own guilt, either original or actual’ (ibid., 456 / 506).
12
STh III 14.3.
13
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 484–86 / 534–36.
14
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 2nd ed. (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1968); 5th ed., Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 3, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1992), chaps. 6 and 7. For a more succinct explanation, see Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972), 81–85.
15
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 485 / 535.
16
For our author ‘retributive justice’ refers to the sanction of both good and bad deeds; the good is sanctioned by rewards and the bad by due punishment. The latter is called ‘justitia vindicativa,’ here translated as ‘punitive justice,’ as we have seen above (ibid., 464–65 / 514–15).
17
This distinction of contexts is basic to the entire treatise and is made frequently throughout (see, for instance, ibid., 435–36 / 489–90; 458 / 508; 477–79 / 527–29).
18
Lonergan does not use the phrases ‘saving justice’ or ‘salvific justice,’ but he once speaks of ‘redemptive justice’ (ibid., 454 / 504), and he refers more than once to the idea (see, for instance, ibid., 480 / 530), as well as by referring to it in citing the notion of justice in Rom 3:26, which implies it (see ibid., 479 / 529; 494 / 544; 466 / 516).
19
He also speaks of ‘double justice’ and ‘double punishment’ (ibid., 494 / 544). Elsewhere he speaks of ‘the justice of the cross’ as distinct from ‘juridical justice’ (Lonergan, Supplement, 103).
20
For an explanation of the latter ideas, see Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, esp. chap. 4.
21
Lonergan, Insight, 695 / 717.
22
Ibid. On the same page Lonergan associates conceptualism with voluntarism. His embracing of the intellectualist tendency, as opposed to a voluntarist one, is fundamental to his thought, as I have set out at somewhat more length in Raymond Moloney, ‘The Freedom of Christ in the Early Lonergan,’ Irish Theological Quarterly 74 (2009): 27–37, esp. at 28–29.
23
Lonergan, Insight, 695 / 717.
24
See Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 80 / 82 and 84 / 86, citing Thomas Aquinas, De substantiis separatis, 14.
25
Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 108 / 109.
26
A full discussion of the issue forms the substance of Lonergan’s book, Grace and Freedom (see especially Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, 103–15 / 104–16). In the course of his three redemption theses Lonergan refers several times to what is sometimes called the three-lane highway of divine willing, though he gives there only a summary explanation (Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 400–401 / 454–55); however, this account presupposes what has been said about freedom in De Verbo incarnato as well as what is found in Grace and Freedom (Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 373–80 / 427–34).
27
This is illustrated especially by Lonergan’s discussion of Anselm’s principle, ‘Either satisfaction or punishment’ (Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 450–51 / 500–501).
28
See the discussion referred to above (Lonergan, Insight, 695–96 / 717–18).
29
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 478 / 528, citing STh I 19. 5.
30
For a more detailed consideration of Lonergan’s text on satisfaction than will be given here, see Charles C. Hefling, ‘A Perhaps Permanently Valid Achievement: Lonergan on Christ’s Satisfaction,’ Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 10 (1992): 51–76.
31
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 499–500 / 549–50.
32
Aquinas speaks of five key aspects of redemption of which satisfaction is only one (STh III 48 and 49); Lonergan follows this lead (Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 393 / 447; 430–31 / 484–85).
33
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 393 / 447.
34
Compare Lonergan on the Trinity, where the initiation and strengthening of new personal relations are given as part of the goal of the divine missions (Bernard J.F. Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 12, ed. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, trans. Michael G. Shields (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2007), 497.
35
Lonergan calls this ‘basic sin’ (Lonergan, Insight, 666 / 689).
36
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 400–1 / 454–5; 454–5 / 504–5; 504 / 554.
37
Ibid., 394 / 448.
38
Ibid., 438 / 492.
39
Council of Trent, De sacramento paenitentiae, chap. 4 (Heinrich Denzinger and Adolf Schönmetzer, eds., Enchiridion symbolorum: definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, ed. Peter Hünermann, 33rd ed. [Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1965], no. 1676 [hereafter DS]).
40
Having raised the question of the penitential process, Lonergan develops an analogy for satisfaction from the sacrament of penance. This is omitted from this article for reasons of space (see Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 494–98 / 544–48).
41
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 498–502 / 548–52.
42
Ibid., 500–501 / 550–51, citing STh III 48. 2, ad 1 and 48.6, ad 3.
43
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Philosophical and Theological Papers 1958–1964, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 6, ed. R. Croken, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1996), 5–7.
44
Ibid., 23.
45
Ibid., 22.
46
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 469 / 519; 490 / 540, citing Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles III 158.6 (hereafter SCG); the passage is quoted in English in Lonergan, Philosophical and Theological Papers, 11.
47
We might notice here how he rejects the view of Abelard as an oversimplification (Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 396 / 450). For more on Lonergan and Abelard in this context, see Charles C. Hefling, ‘Lonergan’s “Cur Deus Homo”: Revisiting the “Law of the Cross,”’ in Meaning and History in Systematic Theology: Essays in Honour of Robert M. Doran, SJ, ed. John Dadosky (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University, 2009), 145–66, at 161–62.
48
Ibid., 488 / 538; 487 / 537, citing STh III 48.2; 461 / 511.
49
Ibid., 458 / 508.
50
Ibid., 471 / 521.
51
Materially considered, Christ’s sufferings constitute what Lonergan means by ‘expiation’ (ibid., 434 / 488; 509 / 559).
52
Christ’s meaning, incarnate in his passion, constitutes his sufferings as objectively good (simpliciter bonae) (ibid., 493 / 543). They are directly willed by the Father, even though in their physical and sensate aspects they are willed only indirectly by God. How Christ’s passion can be willed by God is a problem for Lonergan, referred to several times in his treatise, arising from concerns fully explained only in Grace and Freedom (see Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, esp. at 109–15 / 111–16).
53
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 493–94 / 543–44.
54
Lonergan, Philosophical and Theological Papers, 10.
55
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 434 / 488; 486–87 / 536–37.
56
Ibid., 460 / 510.
57
See Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 461 / 511, where he cites Aquinas SCG III 158 and Aristotle Ethics 13.3.13, 112b.
58
Ibid., 461–62 / 511–12.
59
Ibid., 469 / 519; 461 / 511.
60
For the last point Lonergan cites the Council of Trent, De sacramento paenitentiae, chap. 8 (see Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 490 / 540; DS 1689–91).
61
Lonergan supports a statement to this effect with a quotation from the Council of Trent, Decree De Justificatione, chap. 16 (see Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 427 / 481; DS 1689–91).
62
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 476 / 526, citing STh III 48.2, ad 1 and 49.3, ad 3.
63
Vernon Gregson, ‘The Faces of Evil and Our Response: Ricoeur, Lonergan, Moore,’ in Religion in Context: Recent Studies in Lonergan, ed. Timothy J. Fallon and Philip B. Riley (Lanham, MD: University of America, 1988), 125–39, at 125.
64
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, The Method of Theology: Institute Given at Regis College, Toronto, July 7–18, 1969, unpublished typescript in two volumes made by Nicholas Graham from the tape recording (Toronto: Lonergan Research Institute, 1984), vol. 2, 598–99.
65
In writing this section I have found particularly useful Jean Higgins, ‘Redemption,’ in The Desires of the Human Heart: An Introduction to the Theology of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Vernon Gregson (New York: Paulist, 1988), 201–21.
66
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan, S. J., ed. William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrrell (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1974), 7.
67
For instance, Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 5.1.1 (Patrologiae cursus completus, series graeca, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne [Paris: J.P. Migne, 1857–66], 7.1121 [hereafter PG]; Augustine, De Trinitate 13.17 (Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne [Paris: J.P. Migne, 1845], 42.1026–27 [hereafter PL]); Aquinas, STh III 46.6, ad 6.
68
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 505–6 / 555–56.
69
Ibid., 493–94 / 543–44.
70
Where Buddhists speak of liberation from suffering, Christians can speak of the transformation of suffering.
71
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 465 / 515; 534–35 / 584–85, citing Augustine Enchiridion 27 (PL 40.245).
72
De Verbo incarnato, 506 / 556.
73
At first, for Lonergan, progress and decline are understood very much in terms of the occurrence or non-occurrence of insight (see, for instance, Lonergan, Insight, ‘Preface,’ xiv / 8). Later the aspect of values enters in more clearly. Later still, he speaks of the occurrence of self-transcendence or of its being refused (Lonergan, Method in Theology, 55).
74
The language of this paragraph is dependent on that of Higgins, ‘Redemption,’ 215–17.
75
Behind the line of thought in this paragraph lies the important principle of our cooperation with grace, strongly vindicated in his dissertation (see Lonergan, Grace and Freedom, index); and it is, of course, fundamental to our living of the law of the cross. The principle is referred to more clearly in the soteriological context in Lonergan, Supplement, 80–81.
76
‘Jesus Christ did not invent it’ (Hefling, ‘Lonergan’s “Cur Deus Homo,”’ 153).
77
For two brief essays on the topic, see Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Shorter Papers, in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 20, ed. Robert C. Croken, Robert M. Doran, and Daniel Monsour (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2007), 77–82, 108–111.
78
Lonergan, Insight, 743 / 764. According to Crowe, this doctrine was ‘a strong influence’ on Lonergan (see Crowe, Christ and History, 172).
79
Lonergan, Method in Theology, 135.
80
Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Understanding and Being: The Halifax Lectures on ‘Insight,’ in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 5, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1990), 380–81.
81
Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, 495.
82
Lonergan, De Verbo incarnato, 503–4 / 553–54.
83
Ibid., 516 / 566.