Abstract
This article presents an overview of Lonergan’s psychological analogy of the Trinity with some proposed clarifications and developments. By way of presentation, it introduces the readers to Lonergan’s early psychological analogy in his Triune God: Systematics in the context of contemporary theological reflection on the Trinity. Two developments are then presented, the first, following Robert Doran, is to develop the analogy as a proceeding Word of affirmation or God’s eternal Yes. Several examples are presented to show the provocative nature of this proposed development including the Church’s relationship with the Jews, Mariology, and Barth’s Christology. Second, I explore an interpretation proposed by Doran in order to reconcile the earlier analogy with Lonergan’s later analogy in light of Ignatian spiritual theology, therefore retaining the fittingness of both analogies. Finally, I propose a qualification of Doran’s fecund solution.
‘The psychological analogy is just the side door through which we enter in for an imperfect look.’ —Bernard Lonergan
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‘… divine lovableness uttering the eternal Yes and with that Yes breathing the eternal Proceeding Love, and so that will enable us to be not only images of but also participants in the divine processions.’ —Robert Doran
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Bernard Lonergan once answered a query concerning the value of his Latin course manuals on systematic theology, which he used during his years at the Gregorian University, stating: ‘there are chunks in those books that I think are permanently valid.’ 3 Charles Hefling has taken this understatement as a context for at least two substantial articles on Lonergan’s Christology. 4 Several years ago a two-volume critical edition work of Bernard Lonergan’s Trinity was made available through the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (CWL). 5 Heretofore these volumes were not readily accessible because they were written in Latin and because the existence of several manuscripts and fragments called for a comprehensive and critical edition. Lonergan designed them as teaching manuals rather than as a treatise; however, the editors delivered a complete critical edition with Latin and English facing pages in the printed version that will no doubt function as a treatise. Lonergan’s Triune God now stands to become the third best known work after Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972). 6 However, this does not mean that Lonergan’s work on the Triune God is easily accessible to the reader. 7 Perhaps the more important volume, at least for the purposes of systematic theology, The Triune God: Systematics, contains a style and method reflective of an age of theological discourse that has been surpassed by a dramatic shift in theological methods, although this latter shift is accounted for in the later work by Lonergan in his Method in Theology (1971). This means that communicating Lonergan’s ‘perhaps permanently valid achievements’ in his psychological analogy of the Trinity stands in need of clearer exposition.
In this essay, I present Lonergan’s development of the psychological analogy of the Trinity with a view towards drawing out some of its implications for a deeper understanding of the nature of the Triune God’s benevolence and also to demonstrate the implications for its development by elucidating three examples of its application: (1) the Church’s relationship with the Jews, (2) Mariology, and (3) a potential rapprochement with Barth’s Christology. Finally, I will address an issue pertaining to an ongoing puzzle regarding the contrast between Lonergan’s earlier psychological analogy, from his Latin theology, and the later analogy in the post-Method in Theology period, which he espouses in an essay on Christology. I will present Robert Doran’s proposed solution to this puzzle that places both analogies in the context of Ignatian spiritual theology, which, besides offering a provocative solution to the puzzle, is appropriate given Lonergan’s Jesuit formation. I offer a couple of qualifications concerning Doran’s development. First, however, I begin with a few comments on the context of Lonergan’s contribution in relation to contemporary Trinitarian theology.
Lonergan’s Trinitarian Theology in Contemporary Context
Theologians speak of a renewal and revival in Trinitarian theology. 8 Such a renewal is complicated by a number of factors. 9 There are many dialectical tensions to navigate, and it may take centuries for theologians to effect this renewal. First, there is the perennial tension between affirming the one nature of God and the three divine persons, which when distorted range from monarchianism to subordinationism to trithetism. 10 There is the tension between the understanding of the divine persons as persons and the contemporary necessity to focus on the relationality of the three divine persons. 11 The latter is further complicated by the limits of our own ability to apprehend the mysteries of God, since in that mystery the divine persons are relations. There is the further fruit of the turn to contextual and empirical approaches in contemporary theological method which beckon theologians to turn to other cultures, religions, and intellectual disciplines for insights for a theological understanding of the mysteries of the triune God. With these new approaches a question has arisen as to how the mystery of the Triune God might be related to the world’s religions. 12 The feminist critique of patriarchal expressions of God and, with this, the question of Sophia loom as deep questions to be addressed in such a revival. 13 Further, there is the need for clarification of the immanent Trinity versus the economic Trinity following Rahner’s axiomatic statement regarding the unity between the economic and immanent Trinity. 14 Related to Rahner’s axiom is perhaps an attempt to negotiate the tension between the abstract theoretical accounts of the Trinity, with which the psychological analogy is often associated, and the concrete social relevance of Trinitarian doctrine. 15
These remarks do not exhaust the list of tensions that accompany a revival and renewal of trinitarian theology. But such a renewal ought to go hand-in-hand with a revival of what Anne Hunt calls a ‘trinitarian imagination’ that ‘extends and enriches the entire theological enterprise.’ 16 On the one hand, Lonergan’s trinitarian theology can address some of these concerns, while on the other hand, the contemporary exigencies provide a challenge to creatively draw out the implications of his trinitarian theology.
On this account, Gerard O’Collins helps to establish a broader context in which reflection on the Triune God takes place. While it does not address all of the tensions listed, it does help to put Lonergan’s approach in context: (1) faith seeking ‘scientific’ understanding, or fides quaerens intellectum scientificum, ( 2) faith seeking worship, or fides quaerens adorationem, and (3) faith seeking social justice, or fides quaerens iustitiam socialem. In all three descriptions, the word seeking (quaerens) has a significant function.
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All three of these approaches to faith are necessary for an integral approach to an understanding of the Triune God. Moreover, one could further argue that each of these aspects conditions the other, so that an adequate analogical understanding of the mysteries, insofar as those mysteries can be understood rationally, provides a basis for orthopraxis both in worship and in social justice. Likewise, faith seeking authentic worship and universal social justice guide, validate, and call forth corrections for the understanding of the faith. Further, distorted practices in worship and social praxis can often flow from an inadequate grasp of the doctrines that theology seeks to understand.
Lonergan’s theological contribution to understanding the mystery of the Trinity pertains to O’Collins’s first way: fides quarens intellectum. However, a further clarification would be needed, since O’Collins is writing for a more general audience. It is helpful to distinguish between the affirmation of the truth of the doctrines of the Trinity, on the one hand, and the understanding of those doctrines through faith. In Lonergan’s two volumes on the Trinity, he addresses the former in the first volume, The Triune God: Doctrines, and he addresses the latter in the second volume, The Triune God: Systematics. It is the second volume, as well, that contains Lonergan’s own original contribution to the development of the psychological analogy, at least his early formulation of the analogy. Later, as we will see, the basic emphasis of his psychological analogy shifted from intellect to love. Moreover, Lonergan’s attempt at an analogy is one that is derived from the intellect and will of human beings. This is in contrast, for example, to Hans Urs Von Balthasar who, suspicious of the turn to the subject, draws his trinitarian analogy explicitly from Christian sources and specifically from the dramatic accounts of the paschal mystery. 18
We are just beginning to unpack the theological significance of Lonergan’s psychological analogy. However, as previously stated, in this article I will focus on the second volume, The Triune God: Systematics. In that volume, Lonergan seeks to advance the psychological analogy unearthed by St Augustine in his De Trinitate and developed further by Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologiae. 19
Briefly, the argument of Lonergan’s The Triune God: Systematics proceeds as follows: Lonergan turns to human intellectual consciousness and deliberation as a starting point. He takes Vatican I’s acknowledgment that we can seek only a limited understanding of the mystery of God ‘from the analogy of what is naturally known’ (TGS, 171; DB 1796, DS 3016, ND 132). He follows Aquinas’s axiom-like presumption that what is most like the Holy Trinity in us is our minds (TGS, 615; Summa Theologica I, q. 93, art. 5–7). This gives him the basis to deduce that the intellectual emanations in human knowing and loving form an analogy for the processions in the Triune God, generation, and spiration (Chapter 2). From the processions he moves to the relations (paternity, filiation, active spiration, and passive spiration) (Chapter 3). This leads him into the discussion of the persons (Chapter 4), then how the persons are related to one another (Chapter 5), and finally to the persons in relation to us, i.e. the missions (Chapter 6). He proceeds in a systematic step-by-step process which culminates in elaborating how those with sanctifying grace participate in and imitate each of the four divine relations. In this paper, I am going to focus on the intellectual emanations and how they are invoked in the psychological analogy.
The Most Fitting Intellectual Emanations for the Psychological Analogy
Turning to the human mind, Lonergan proceeds by honing in on which intellectual emanations are the most fitting for the psychological analogy. He does so in three steps: (1) the identification of intellectual emanations as most fitting for an analogy of the processions in God, (2) among those, a further specification of what types of intellectual emanations are more fitting, namely those according to the mode of processio operati (to be explained below), and (3) among those, a further specification of what types of emanations according to the mode of processio operati are the most fitting—namely those that pertain to an exercise of human autonomy—those existential moments where we deliberately constitute ourselves as knowers and lovers. It will not be necessary to repeat his systematic arguments for each of these steps. 20 However, it is worth noting here that his way of proceeding is not unlike Augustine in his De Trinitate, when he hones and sharpens his psychological analogy from Book IX, speaking of mens (mind), notitia sui (self-knowledge), and amor sui (self-love) to a further refinement in Book X, speaking of memoria, understanding, and will. 21
Lonergan capitalizes on a distinction between two types of intellectual emanations: those emanations where act proceeds from potency, or processio operationes, and those where an act proceeds from act, or processio operati. 22
In terms of Lonergan’s levels of consciousness, an example of processio operationes, or procession of an operation, occurs when the act of understanding or insight grasps the possible intelligible unity in the data or the relations in the data. The intelligible content is potentially true because it is subject to the further scrutiny at the level of judgment.
A second example of emanations from potency to act pertains to memory. 23 An instance of remembering is from potency to act since the ability to remember is potential. A third example of a procession of an operation concerns the fourth-level operation, decision, that is, as an emanation of an act of will from a habit. While habits increase the probability that we will act in a certain way, insofar as our transcendental intending impels that our doing is to be consistent with our knowing, still there are no guarantees. This is also due to the dialectical nature of human spiritual development as ever a movement toward authenticity and a withdrawal from authenticity. Given this situation, the emanation of an act of the will from a habit is one from potency to act.
By contrast, Lonergan specifically references four examples of emanations of processio operati, from which one will form the basis for Lonergan’s psychological analogy in the Triune God: Systematics. The four examples match his cognitional theory in terms of experience, understanding, judging, and deciding. At the level of experience, when a desire emanates from an act of seeing, there is processio operati, a procession of act from act. Second, from the act of understanding or insight one derives a definition. Defining is an act (definition) that proceeds from an act (the insight). At the third level of judgment, the intellectual emanation proceeds from a grasp of sufficient evidence. In terms of Insight, Lonergan calls this the reflective insight and it gives rise to a judgment of fact or the complex or compound inner word. The operation of judgment, as a compound inner word, positing a synthesis, proceeds or emanates from a grasp of sufficient evidence. 24 The word that proceeds is an answer to the question ‘Is it so?’ In the cognitional theory there are only two possibilities for a true judgment, the affirmation or the negation—‘Yes’ it is the case’ or ‘No it is not the case.’ Of course, if one has not grasped the sufficient evidence then one should refrain from a judgment, or declare ‘I don’t know.’ But once the evidence is grasped, all things being equal, the emanation of the complex inner word should follow automatically. 25 At the fourth level of operations, decision, there is an emanation of a decision (‘act of choosing’) that proceeds from a practical judgment (TGS, 149). I presume Lonergan means that a practical decision of what is to be done emanates from a true judgment of value. However, in my own interpretation, in the case of a practical judgment, the grasp of value can be rational, rather than a direct affective grasp, so that the most intelligent course becomes the way in which one ought to proceed. As we will see, this non-affective grasp of value will be key for understanding a further aspect of Lonergan’s psychological analogy in the Triune God: Systematics.
Having distinguished between these two types of intellectual emanations, Lonergan argues that the acts according to the mode of processio operati, those operations where act proceeds from an act, rather than an intellectual procession in which an act proceeds from a potency, are more fitting for the analogy of the processions in the immanent Trinity. 26 This is because in God there is no potency, and we are seeking the most fitting emanations for such an analogy (TGS, 389).
But here I wish to emphasize a point that can be easily overlooked in Lonergan’s psychological analogy. While it is true that Lonergan argues that the intellectual emanations according to the mode of processio operati (from act to act) are more suitable than those of processio operationis (from potency to act) for a psychological analogy, it seems clear that there are certain emanations according to the mode of processio operati that are more fitting for the analogy and those are emanations at the fourth level operations—decision. Decisions can occur in different manners. Lonergan distinguishes three kinds: (1) practical decisions (getting things done), (2) speculative (pursuing a line of inquiry with an ultimate goal of contemplative appreciation or delight), and (3) self-constituting decisions ‘an exercise of existential autonomy’ (a decision that makes oneself or constitutes one to be a particular kind of person) (TGS, 177, 179).
Here Lonergan indicates a preference. Namely, the intellectual emanations involved in the acts of human knowing (third level of judgment) and doing (fourth level of decision) or, in other words, those that pertain to affirming the true and doing the good. He asks: ‘[W]hat is more intimate to us or of greater excellence within us than to be intellectually constrained to the truth [third level—judgment] and morally obligated to the good [fourth level—decision]?’ (TGS, 389). To narrow it even further, Lonergan has in mind specifically those emanations according to the mode of processio operati that pertain to an ‘exercise of existential autonomy’: Accordingly, it seems that the trinitarian analogy ought to be taken from the exercise of existential autonomy. When one asks about the triune God, one is not considering God as creator or as agent, and so one is prescinding from practical autonomy. Nor is one considering God insofar as God understands and judges and loves all things, and so one is prescinding from speculative matters. But one is considering God inasmuch as God is in himself eternally constituted as triune, and so one takes one’s analogy from the processions that are in accordance with the exercise of existential autonomy. (TGS, 179, emphasis added)
So, the most fitting intellectual emanations according to the mode of processio operati in the earlier analogy for Lonergan pertain to the judgment and decision in the ‘exercise of one’s existential autonomy.’ As a Jesuit, it is quite likely Lonergan had in the back of his mind the exercise of human autonomy indicative of the three times of election in the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises. However, I will return to this topic in the final section of the paper when clarifying his two analogies in light of Doran’s proposed solution.
Clarifying the Earlier Analogy
In this section I would like to clarify the analogy for the processions by first addressing the question concerning Lonergan’s nomenclature with respect to judgments of fact and the judgment of value. In The Triune God: Systematics, he is still working towards a fully differentiated fourth level, and does not yet account for the role of affectivity in decision-making and action that would be in place by the time of his writing of Method in Theology (1972). In the latter text, especially in chapter two on the Human Good, he presents the grasp of value almost exclusively as an affective one. It is quite likely that his engagement with phenomenology and existentialism as exhibited in his 1957 lectures at Boston College 27 and, as importantly, his study of feelings and affectivity that came with his reading of Max Scheler, Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Susanne Langer, and Rosemary Haughton enabled him to more fully differentiate the fourth level of operations that is implicit in Insight but not explicitly differentiated in terms of the subject’s affectivity.
By contrast, the emphasis on the ‘notion of value’ in Insight, as exemplified by chapter 18 ‘The Possibility of Ethics,’ is one where the decision and choice flow from an intellectual obligation in rational consciousness: ‘… willing is rational and so moral … the same intelligent and rational consciousness grounds the doing as well as the knowing … [through] the exigence for self-consistency in knowing and doing.’ 28 There is no explicit or elaborate account of the affectivity in evaluation and decision-making; rather, I would argue the apprehension of value is rational-non-affective. 29 In such cases, one is impelled by a rational necessity for consistency in one’s knowing and doing: ‘acceding to that demand and deciding reasonably.’ 30 Those familiar with Lonergan’s philosophy will note here that ‘deciding reasonably’ is distinct from his later nomenclature of deciding responsibly. 31 Doran has pointed out that the ethics of Chapter 18 is analogous to the Ignatian third time of election where the grasp of value is not grasped directly by the affectivity (as in the first two times of election) but rather with one’s rationality, so that to know the good is to do the good. 32
Recall Lonergan’s distinction of three different applications of fourth-level operations (practical, speculative-contemplative, and existential). Interestingly, in chapter 18 of Insight, a chapter on ethics (fourth level), most of it pertains to the practical. In that chapter, there is mention of the speculative (but mainly in relation to the second level rather than the subsequent levels) but nothing of the existential per se, although the existential dimension is hardly absent, given his discussion of moral impotence. 33
We find evidence in The Triune God: Systematics that, at least by this point, there is no account of an affective grasp of value; rather, it is rational in the sense of a practical judgment of value. He states: ‘A processio operati is illustrated … by the act of choosing taking its origin from a practical judgment’ (TGS, 149). This example of a practical judgment is likely there because of the lengthy discussion of practicality in Chapter 18 of Insight, although there is no explicit mention of a judgment of value in that chapter, where one might expect it. 34 There is an explicit mention of it, however, in the section on the analysis of belief in chapter 20 but it is not developed. 35
In The Triune God: Systematics, the editors tell us that Lonergan uses the phrase ‘practical judgment or judgment of value’ (iudicium practicum seu iudicium valoris) in an earlier trinitarian manuscript, Divinarum Personarum. However, with respect to the psychological analogy, Lonergan does not continue to invoke the notion of a practical judgment of value in later versions (TGS, 181, n. 24). I suspect the reason that Lonergan invokes the term ‘practical judgment’ in the first place is that such a judgment is a clear example of a rational non-affective grasp of value. Practical judgments occur in our daily living to the extent we take the most intelligent and efficient course throughout our daily living without much direct involvement from our affectivity when making practical decisions and getting things done in our day to day affairs, although this does not mean that affectivity is not involved at all; rather, it means that the grasp of value is not directly grasped by affectivity but is almost automatic as impelled by one’s rationality. I suspect that Lonergan did not develop the analogy of the practical judgment because it does not speak to the ‘exercise of existential autonomy,’ from which he claims an analogy of the processions should be taken (TGS, 177–79). Many practical judgments, insofar as they are answers to the question ‘What should I do (or not do)?’ are self-constituting in an existential sense. Still, many practical judgments are not self-constituting in the same dramatic way as an exercise of existential autonomy. 36 Therefore, it may be that practical judgments of value would have been appealing to Lonergan initially because the grasp of value in many of those types of judgments is a rational non-affective grasp and therefore conducive to the earlier analogy, but the appeal would have waned as he realized that practical judgments of value are often very common and are not always self-constitutive in the same dramatic way as an exercise of vertical liberty or as an exercise of existential autonomy. In the latter case, the question addressed is “Who am I to be?” and is likewise self-constitutive in a deliberately existential manner.
What is lacking in Lonergan’s fourth level operations at this stage, more precisely, is the affective grasp of value. 37 The grasp of value in Chapter 18 of Insight and in The Triune God: Systematics, I would contend along with Robert Doran, although he does not use my nomenclature, is a rational non-affective grasp of value. I interpret this to mean that in a rational non-affective grasp of value, as Lonergan envisages it in Insight, when deliberating, the judgment of value follows automatically from the judgment of fact as impelled by rational necessity. Still, at the risk of confusing the actual structure of intentional consciousness with the account of that structure, how do we apply this to the psychological analogy in The Triune God: Systematics?
In adverting to the two processions I interpret this as follows: (1) the first procession is analogous to the inner word proceeding from a non-affective grasp of evidence of true value and (2) in the second procession the decision/action proceeds from the grasp of evidence and the proceeding true judgment of value; (3) finally, in the last section of this paper I will revisit Doran’s argument that the Ignatian third time of election is an appropriate analogue for this early analogy since it is a rational grasp of value and also an exercise of one’s existential autonomy.
In Assertion 2 of Lonergan’s The Triune God: Systematics Lonergan likens the two processions in God to the two intellectual emanations in human consciousness: ‘Two and only two divine processions can be conceived according to the likeness of intellectual emanation, namely, the procession of the Word from the Speaker, and the procession of Love from both the Speaker and the Word’ (TGS, 181).
One may be tempted to think that Lonergan has the third-level judgment in mind for the first emanation because of the definitions he provides: ‘the speaker (dicens): the principle of intellectual emanation inasmuch as that principle is determined by the act of understanding’ (TGS, 181). However, he had addressed this earlier in the Verbum articles when he states: ‘As complete understanding not only grasps essence and in essence, all properties, but also affirms existence and value, so also from understanding’s self-expression in judgment of value there is an intelligible procession of love in the will … rational appetite can be moved only by the good that reason pronounces to be good.’ 38 For Lonergan ‘the will is an appetite that follows the intellect’ (TGS, 495). Accordingly, ‘when we judge some good as obligatory, by the very fact that we so judge, through our intellectuality, our rationality, we spirate an act of will’ (TGS, 139).
In The Triune God: Systematics Lonergan specifies that the act of will (love) proceeds from ‘the principle of intellectual emanation inasmuch as that principle is determined by both the act of understanding and the consequent word, when that word is a judgment of value’ (TGS, 181). Again, he states: ‘Still, just as all formal truth proceeds from a grasp of evidence, so also all intellectual love proceeds from a judgment of value’ (TGS, 355). Hence, from the Word spoken another intellectual emanation proceeds from the grasp of the evidence and the proceeding true judgment of value—an act of love that proceeds from a judgment of value.
… that very reality which the divine persons are is an intellectually conscious ordering. Paternity is the intellectually conscious ordering from grasped evidence to the Word to be spoken and to the Word spoken; and this paternity is the Father himself. Filiation is likewise the intellectually conscious ordering of the Word spoken to the grasp of infinite evidence from which it is spoken; and this filiation is the Son himself. Passive spiration, finally is the intellectually conscious ordering to the infinite good grasped by intellect and affirmed in an eminently true judgment [of value]; and this passive spiration is the Holy Spirit himself.’ (TGS, 417, emphasis added)
One may not be accustomed to Lonergan’s use of the phrase ‘grasp of evidence’ in a judgment of value, as one would be in the grasp of evidence in a judgment of fact. However, in Method in Theology, Lonergan states that the two types of judgments are similar in structure but not in content, so a grasp of evidence would be involved in both judgments but the content of the grasp would be different. 39 We can presume therefore that a judgment of true value occurs once grasp of evidence for it occurs, even though for the most part such a direct grasps occurs through one’s feelings or at least the evidence for that grasp occurs by way of advertence to one’s feelings during a deliberation. 40
To conclude this section, let us summarize the account for the judgment of value in the psychological analogy in the Triune God: Systematics. The Father generates the Son in the manner that a true affirmation of a judgment of value proceeds from a grasp of the evidence (for value). As a grasp of true value, the proceeding Word is a perfect likeness of the Father who generates the Word. 41 In turn, the Father and Son spirate the Holy Spirit in the manner that love proceeds from that the grasp of evidence and the word of true value as one principle. 42 I would add to this, following Doran, the judgment of value from which the spiration originates is analogous to a rational non-affective grasp of value. 43
God’s Eternal ‘Yes!’
Before continuing to Lonergan’s later analogy, I explore a fitting corollary to the earlier analogy (although it pertains to the later analogy as well). It presumes that the proceeding Word is an affirmation or ‘Yes.’ Following Doran, I draw out this development because it enriches our understanding and helps to further support, from an intellectual point of view, the connection between the processions and the missions. 44
First, I have interpreted the first procession, generation, by viewing the Father as analogous to the grasp of evidence in a rational non-affective grasp of value and the Son as proceeding from that grasp as the Word, a true judgment of value. Second, the expression of either a judgment of fact or a judgment of value is either an affirmation or negation. Lonergan does not specify whether the proceeding Word is indeed an affirmation or a negation in his analogy, for it is not necessary since he is most interested in a true judgment. However, given the context of the divine plan of salvation, which in Chapter 6 of The Triune God: Systematics he develops the missions as extensions of the processions by introducing the notion of contingent predication or created external terms as a consequent condition, it is fitting to specify that the proceeding Word as analogous to a true judgment is an affirmation or Yes. However, before speaking about its fittingness in the missions or economic Trinity, I will first speak to its fittingness in the immanent Trinity.
In clarifying Lonergan’s early analogy, within the immanent Trinity it is more fitting that the procession of generation occurs according to the mode of the expression of a grasp of value as an affirmation or proceeding Yes, rather than, say, a negation or No. Moreover, this Word proceeding as an affirmation or Yes would of necessity be eternally spoken. 45 In the immanent Trinity, the three divine lovers eternally affirm their love for each other, and it is the abundance of such love that the just are ultimately invited into through grace by way of the missions. This fittingness lies in the analogy of an affirmative judgment of value since for Lonergan one of the principal questions that a judgment of value addresses is: ‘Is it valuable?’ The answer to that question is an affirmation or negation but is concretized by an act of consent. The judgment of value is good insofar as it grasps true value rather than apparent value. By virtue of its convertibility, it is true that it is good. 46
In terms of the second procession, spiration, from the grasp of evidence and the true word of affirmation of value, there spirates love, which is analogous to the Father and the Son together spirating an act of love that is consent. The love spirates from the Father and Son pronouncing that it is not only true but also good and such goodness is analogous to love proceeding from a genuine obligation. From the proceeding Yes of the first procession there follows a proceeding consent or decision of the second procession. 47 Along these lines, consider Lonergan’s statement in Method in Theology with respect to a man and woman who are in love, but have not avowed their love. For him, they are not yet in love. 48 In other words, they are not in love until they have made the commitment, that is, until they move from the ‘Yes we are in love!’ to a genuine consent, ‘I do,’ or vow. However, this is hardly a non-affective rational grasp of value but rather an affective one; but the distinction between affirmation (‘Yes, we are in love!’) is distinct from the consent to a relationship (‘Yes, because this is valuable let’s get married!’). The latter means that there is a commitment of a mutual sustained self-donation to each other.
In terms of the analogy, within the immanent Trinity there are two eternal processions that reflect a love affair between the three divine persons: an eternal Yes of proceeding true value, and an eternal spirated act of love that is divine consent, and these processions account for the dynamism in God.
In terms of the economic Trinity, there is a fitting link between the eternal Yes proceeding within God through both generation (Word) and the eternal consent of spiration (Love), on the one hand, and the missions of the Son and the Spirit, on the other. In a word, God’s Yes to fallen humanity (a humanity symbolized by Adam and Eve’s ‘No’) overcomes the alienation between God and human beings within the broader divine plan of salvation.
For Lonergan, the missions are the processions with external created terms that are consequent conditions as Lonergan argues in Assertion 15 (TGS, 439). 49 The proceeding Word of true judgment of value is revealed in the mission of the Son as God’s Yes to humanity. At this point, I will indicate briefly in three examples how this Yes harmoniously coheres with the original covenant with the Israelites, the fiat in Mariology, and a key aspect of Karl Barth’s Christology. I will not be able to go into significant detail but would hope to show the provocative nature of the analogy of God’s eternal Yes for a further elaboration of the divine missions in history.
God’s Yes to the Original Covenant
The Church’s relationship with the Jews is a unique and complicated one. 50 Even 50 years after Vatican II, there is still a challenge for the Catholic Church to define its precise relationship with Judaism. On the one hand, the Jews are not another religion in the sense of other religions relative to the Catholic Church; on the other hand, they are not Christian. This complexity is perhaps exemplified by the fact that in the Roman Catholic Curia, the Commission for the Religious Relations with the Jews falls under the auspices of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity and not, as one might expect, under the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue. Whether the Church has a mission to the Jews, such as it claims to have with other religions, is one example of the ongoing theological questions surrounding the relationship with the Jews, and this issue is not made easier when the notion of mission itself is in the throes of a paradigm shift.
Many of the challenges in the relationship concern the Ancient or Original covenant (I prefer this nomenclature to ‘Old’). Supersessionism would seek to replace the Original Covenant with the New Covenant. And while the latter approach has been largely discarded as an inadequate theological solution, 51 the question of the exact relationship between the two covenants, if one believes there are two, is a continuing theological conundrum. 52
In terms of the analogy above, at least from a Christian perspective, there is a way around this conundrum—it occurs by way of covenant expansionism. This is my own terminology in preference to the nomenclature of ‘extension.’ This is neither the ‘hard supersessionism,’ i.e. replacement theology, nor what David Novak calls the ‘soft supersessionism,’ 53 an attitude that still presumes the Jews must explicitly acknowledge Christ.
The incarnation of the second person of the Trinity as the first-century Palestinian Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, is simultaneously God’s ‘Yes,’ a judgment of true value on the Original covenant, and the incarnation expands the covenant from the one initiated with the Israelites to the rest of humanity. The biblical exegesis that lays the groundwork for this hypothesis can be found in Norbert Lohfink, SJ, The Covenant Never Revoked: Biblical Reflections on Jewish–Christian Dialogue, where he states: ‘The “New Covenant” is nothing else than the unveiled, no longer covered “Old Covenant” which radiates God’s splendour already contained in it.’ 54 In other words, God’s Yes in the incarnation of Jesus is at once God’s affirmation of the Original Covenant with the Jews as true and good, and this affirmation continues to hold for them throughout history, dare I say, whether or not the Jews affirm the Christian claims about Jesus. 55 Therefore, the Church has no mission to the Jews per se. Here I am going further than Hans Hermann Henrix to state that if the Original Covenant has been never revoked, as many Catholic scholars have accepted following John Paul II’s statement to this effect, then the Jews faithful to that covenant would be saved by that covenant and have no further obligation. First and foremost this honours the truth claims of the Original Covenant. Second, however, if, as Henrix suggests, that Jesus is the ‘Torah incarnate,’ from a Catholic theology of religions point of view, does this mean that the salvation of the Jews comes through Jesus implicitly, through God’s eternal Yes in the incarnation, and therefore allowing the Church to hold to its truth claim that salvation is through Jesus? 56
All this reflection is more complicated in the post-Holocaust context, where such questions are heightened. 57 Therefore, I would add to this that to the extent that Catholics are to speak of any mission to the Jews at all, it is a mission with a quite different emphasis, one wherein the Church is to help keep the memory of the Shoah alive, in part as an acknowledgment of the ugly truth of human history, but also in order to prevent such occurrences in the future. 58
Finally, such a ‘mission,’ so to speak, would occur in the broader context of the Church’s developing social teaching wherein the prophetic stance of the church is to condemn the violent scapegoating especially of minority groups, the vulnerable, and the poor, not only outside but within the Church’s confines as well.
The Yes of Mary’s Fiat
The analogy of God’s immanent eternal Yes as it translates into the economy of salvation coheres with the Marian fiat (Luke 1:38). Her Yes is discussed first in the patristic theology that begins to draw parallels between her and Eve, namely, ‘the disobedience of Eve in succumbing to the fallen angel’s (serpent’s) suggestion, and the obedience of Mary in her fiat (yes of consent) to God’s will, as communicated through the good angel.’ 59 This Yes of Mary includes her unique role in the redemption. 60 In the words of Prof. Frederick Jelly: ‘Because Mary did say “Yes” to the divine will for her, it has become possible for us to accept the fruits of Christ’s redemption into our lives.’ 61 In other words, as an ecclesial, or representative soul, or model (Lumen Gentium 3/65), there is a sense in which her Yes is an extension of and cooperates with God’s eternal Yes in the economic plan of salvation. 62 As has been stated in previous work: ‘Her role in the divine plan should not be equated with Jesus’ role nor should it be excluded or diminished.’ After all, the humanity of Jesus is comprised in part of Mary’s DNA. 63 She is a significant participant in God’s eternal Yes to humanity in the divine economy and at the same time her Yes is the beginning of humanity’s explicit Yes. This is to say she has a privileged role in the economy of salvation as a representative soul whose consent or fiat is the beginning of human cooperation in the visible earthly mission of the second person of the Trinity.
Karl Barth: Jesus as God’s Yes
A third aspect of the fittingness of the processions as God’s eternal Yes as seen in terms of the economic Trinity is its coherence with a fundamental aspect of Barth’s Christology. To that extent, it opens up a rapprochement and dialogue between Barthian and Catholic theology on the issues of Trinitarian thought, the psychological analogy and the relationship between the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ.
The analogy of God’s eternal Yes fits rather adroitly with Barth’s Christology when he states: ‘In the one man Jesus Christ what was invisible becomes visible: in Him God utters his “Yes.”’ 64 Likewise, in the Dogmatics he states: ‘… the Yes of God in Jesus Christ being their sum and meaning and substance [referring to the promises in 2 Cor. I] … That the Yes of God is in Him is one thing. But this Yes of God spoken in Him has it in itself to be the power by which there is an Amen to the glory of God’ (IV/3: 11). 65
And again: ‘It is the will of God that the Yes which He as Creator has spoken to His creation should prevail’ (III/2: 143). While Barth would have eschewed the psychological analogy, I find it striking that his analogy of God’s Yes corroborates this proposed development of Lonergan’s psychological analogy on this point. The Word proceeds from the Father in the manner of an affirmative true judgment of value.
In the context of the fallenness of humanity and its potential for bias, sin, and evil, Jesus is the resounding Yes of healing and elevating love. The Yes of God’s love flows over into the Christian mission: ‘God as his Saviour from sin and death has said a new Yes to him in his humanity … If he lives in Christian love, he lives in the power of this new divine Yes which frees and saves himself and his humanity from sin and death’ (III/2: 281). The effect of this affirmation on the human heart makes one capable of graced acts of charity, to love God, one’s neighbour and one’s enemy (III/2: 282). Barth states: ‘… Christian love, the love that includes humanity, is the life of man in the power of the new and saving divine Yes to the creature’ (III/2: 282).
This Yes, which Barth at least implicitly likens to God’s Word, wherein God’s Yes is a pure act of graciousness, evokes a response from human beings, in humility, with a corresponding Yes. However, Barth is careful to retain the disparity between the two affirmations— the human Yes or response ‘can never have more than the force and reach of an echo’ (III/2: 187–88). I surmise that the Yes from human beings is consonant with Lonergan’s explicit act of vertical liberty and Ignatius’s Two Standards with the corresponding election, especially when Barth states that the human responder ‘is in the decision or not at all’ (III/2: 188).
Further, we find in Barth’s rhetorical style not only a divine Yes but also a No. The action of the Son as incarnate is analogous to the action of God as creator, and just as the latter separates light from darkness, the Son levels judgment on truth and reality: ‘His Yes to the real and His definitive No to the unreal’ (III/2: 51–52). God’s No is directed at the sinfulness of humanity, albeit it is a ‘No for the sake of Yes.’ There is no contradiction here because ‘The judgment of God [No] is not in conflict with His mercy [Yes]’ (III/2: 32). As John Webster insists, despite his polemical tone at times, Barth always emphasizes the affirmation of God’s exuberant salvific power. 66 Indeed, Webster titles a chapter of his book on Barth, ‘The Deep Secret Yes,’ a phrase which Barth invokes in his response to Paul Tillich but harks back to Martin Luther’s commentary on the Canaanite Woman (Mt. 15: 21–28) (see I/I: 177–78). This brief interaction between Jesus and the woman reveals ‘the deep secret YES over and above the No.’ 67 God’s love is exuberant: ‘What does the great voice from the throne cry now in view of the resurrection and return of Jesus Christ? … Thus a decisive, all embracing and confirming Yes (and not a No) is said here to the testimony of God’s definite and distinctive dwelling on earth’ (II/1: 482). While these passages suggest the judgment is an affirmation of truth about the testimony, in a complementary way, Lonergan’s analogy would focus on value in addition to its truth. Hence, the testimony is not only true, but also good.
While this is not the place to go deeper into this exploration, I hope to have demonstrated the potential harmony between the centrality of the affirmation in Barth’s Christology with my proposed development of Lonergan’s psychological analogy as God’s eternal Yes. Whereas in Lonergan the Word proceeds as a judgment, in Barth that Word uttered is a resounding ‘Yes!’ Whereas in Lonergan, the analogy is explicit and begins with the processions immanent in God, in Barth can we ask whether the analogy is implicit taking its starting point from the missions, thus reopening a potentially fruitful discussion?
To sum up this section, fleshing out the fittingness of the processions of God as proceeding affirmations and consent provides an intelligible basis for construing more clearly the relationship between the processions themselves and the missions in the Triune God. The mission of the Church, as an extension of the missions of the Son and the Spirit, harmonizes with these proceeding affirmations by responding with a Yes! to God and a Yes! to the good news that is the Gospel.
The Later Analogy
It is perhaps significant that Lonergan’s remarks concerning his later psychological analogy were written after the chapter on religion (Chapter 4) in Method in Theology. In that chapter Lonergan emphasizes being in love with God as foundational to authentic religious living and likewise to systematic theological reflection. This helps to explain why Lonergan’s later analogy from ‘Christology Today’ is drawn primarily from love. 68
The psychological analogy, then, has its starting point in that higher synthesis of intellectual, rational, and moral consciousness that is the dynamic state of being in love. Such love manifests itself in its judgments of value. And the judgments are carried out in decisions that are acts of loving. Such is the analogy found in the creature. Now in God the origin is the Father, in the New Testament named ho Theos, who is identified with agape (I John 4:8, 16). Such love expresses itself in its Word, its Logos, its verbum spirans amorem, which is a judgment of value. The judgment of value is sincere, and so it grounds the Proceeding Love that is identified with the Holy Spirit. There are then two processions that may be conceived in God; they are not unconscious processes but intellectually, rationally, morally conscious, as are judgments of value based on the evidence perceived by a lover, and the acts of loving grounded on judgments of value. The two processions ground four real relations of which three are really distinct from one another; and these three are not just relations as relations, and so modes of being, but also subsistent, and so not just paternity and filiation but also Father and Son. Finally, Father and Son and Spirit are eternal; their consciousness is not in time but timeless; their subjectivity is not becoming but ever itself; and each in his own distinct manner is subject of the infinite act that God is, the Father as originating love, the Son as judgment of value expressing that love, and the Spirit as originated loving.
69
In brief, the Father is analogous to originating love, the Son proceeds from the originating love as a judgment of value, expressing that love. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as originated love (an act of charity).
Fundamentally, the basics of Lonergan’s proposed theological understanding of Trinity have not changed. What has changed is his emphasis on the starting point of the analogy. Whereas the earlier analogy focused on ‘understanding—true value—love’ the later analogy on ‘being-in-love—(true) judgment of value—loving.’ He explains: My systematics on the Trinity is in terms of Ipsum Intelligere, and then the word and proceeding love. You can now start off from Agapē. 1 John 4.4–9 and 4.20: God is love, where God is ho theos. Ho theos in the New Testament is God the Father, unless there is contradictory evidence, and there’s no contradictory evidence in 1 John. So it is the Father that is Agapē, and the Agapē is being in love, Absolute Being in Love; and the Logos is the Eternal Judgment of Value; and the Spirit is the Gift; and the person gives his loving, the act of loving; the Spirit is proceeding love from the Judgment of Value. A minor change: the structure remains the same, but we shift from orthodoxy to ortho-praxy.
70
The Cohesion of the Earlier and Later Analogies: A Hypothesis
A puzzle Lonergan left behind, perhaps unwittingly, is how the two analogies he offers are to be intelligibly related to each another. Are we to prefer one to the other? 71 We have seen that Lonergan distinguishes them by claiming the earlier one to be expressing orthodoxy and the later one to be expressing orthopraxy. This is intriguing to be sure; however, what weight are we to afford these spontaneous comments by Lonergan responding in a Q&A session? For example, I would argue that both the earlier and later analogies reflect an orthodoxy and an orthopraxy. For example, they are both orthodox because the Word does eternally proceed from the Father as a true judgment of value in the earlier analogy and in the later analogy, and that there is a biblical basis for both: ‘I am the way, the truth and life’ (John 14: 6). Moreover, both analogies provide a basis for good praxis because both pertain to the ‘exercise of existential autonomy,’ which Lonergan states in the Triune God: Systematics (TGS, 179) is from where the emanations according to the mode of processio operati should be taken.
In order to relate the two analogies, therefore, I would take Doran’s hermeneutics of Lonergan’s fourth level operations as a lead. Therein he interprets the fourth level of Lonergan’s theory of consciousness (deliberation, evaluation, decision, action) according to Ignatius’s three times of election. 72 Following Doran’s logic, I agree with him that the earlier and later analogies reflect the third and second times of election respectively in the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius with one qualification that I will address in short order. However, first, I briefly summarize the three moments of election and why they are fitting for the Lonergan’s psychological analogy.
There is a sense in which the Ignatian Exercises are a laboratory for the exercise of one’s existential autonomy. The four ‘weeks’ of contemplation, prayer, and spiritual direction are intended to create a period of liminality, in Victor Turner’s sense of communitas, wherein there is a heightening of attention brought to the direction of one’s life and the exercise of one’s freedom. 73 These are not the common everyday choices one makes but rather the exercise of explicit vertical liberty, which Lonergan speaks about in Method in Theology. 74
While many retreatants make the Exercises for their own personal discernment of God’s will for them, the sphere or space created by the Exercises is an existential trajectory for choosing for or against God (transcendent value). For example, Ignatius prepares the retreatant through a meditation on Hell, not for fear of going to Hell, but so that people realize the seriousness and weight of their freedom. He also presents a meditation on the Two Standards, where one sets one’s intention for or against God. 75 At one point in the process, one is invited to make an election. The election or choice is an exercise of existential autonomy that pertains to a basic commitment to God, as it pertains to one’s personal circumstances of discernment.
There are three ways in which these elections can occur. In the first moment one can grasp true value immediately and have a clear sense of direction and consolation in one’s choice: the will is attracted to the good immediately and ‘without doubting.’ 76 In the second moment, which is often more common, one’s feelings with respect to a discernment are confused or ambiguous. Adverting to one’s affectivity, one discerns true value based on the experiences of consolation and desolation. 77 This is because feelings respond to both satisfactions and to value, so in the Exercises, through prayer and spiritual direction, one must come to discern the true value by adverting to and distinguishing the truly valuable over apparent value or satisfaction. Ignatius proposes rules for discernment that assist one to navigate the maze of one’s emotions and authentically tease out, as the case may be, the true value over the apparent value, as one’s choice becomes clear.
The third time of election occurs when the affectivity is not a strong pull either way in the discernment. In ‘a quiet time … the soul … uses its natural powers freely and tranquilly.’ 78 In such a case one invokes the use of one’s rationality simply to weigh the pros and cons and decide according to the greater weighted option. If one chooses in accordance with God’s will, consolation will follow; if not, desolation will follow. Now let us return to Lonergan’s two psychological analogies.
Here my analysis would differ slightly from Doran’s suggestion and argue that the later psychological analogy of love in Lonergan pertains to the first time of election, rather than the second, because the grasp of value is affective and immediate, and the direction is clear—there is no discernment of value. While I agree with him that the early analogy is in accordance with the third time of election I would tweak his analysis agreeing that the second time of election is analogous to Chapter Two on the Human Good in Method in Theology where discernment is pertinent in the discussion of true versus apparent value. However, by contrast, the first time of election is in accordance with Chapter Four ‘Religion’ in Method in Theology. In the latter chapter Lonergan’s example does not focus on the discernment involved but rather on the immediate grasp of value proceeding from a state of love. One is in love, the grasp of value proceeds from that state of being in love and the Word proceeds as a ‘Yes this is good!’ The act of loving or gift proceeds from the state of being in love and the grasp of and judgment of value. The immediacy of this grasp of true value is a fitting analogy for the Triune God. As an analogy, it is an exercise of one’s existential autonomy, since falling in love and being in love constitute ourselves as lovers and determine our subsequent horizons of knowing and loving. 79 In Method in Theology Lonergan speaks about this falling/being in love in terms of transvaluing our values (à la Nietzsche), and how, as long as it lasts, it operates as a first principle from which the rest of our lives are ordered and determined.
Of course the analogy would be by way of the mode of processio operati. The divine persons do not fall in love since their love is eternal; they are always in love with each other. But this immediate grasp of true value such as when a person falls in love with another person or with God (transcendent value) is the most fitting analogy and exemplified by the first time of election.
In the third time of election the grasp of value is rational non-affective. One of Ignatius’s suggestions is that one makes a list of pros and cons and then decides accordingly to the greater weighted list: Should I do A or B? or Which is better, A or B? This third time is unique and perhaps even rare since it is an exercise of one’s existential autonomy but one that does not include a direct affective grasp of value.
Once one has an exhaustive list of pertinent pros and cons the analogy according to the mode of processio operati would begin when the grasp of evidence actually occurs. After adverting to the greater weighted list the evidence becomes clear. The judgment of value proceeds from the grasp of evidence. In the case of the third moment of election, the moment one completes the list the judgment of value proceeds from a grasp of evidence but it is one that is grasped rationally and not directly grasped through the affectivity, although the affectivity is involved in making the lists. Accordingly, the decision/action proceeds from the grasp of evidence and the judgment of value.
Finally, this does not mean that Doran’s suggestion of the second time of election is not relevant. It simply needs a qualification, of which he would agree, namely that in the second time of election, wherein most human beings spend their time discerning between apparent and true value, the analogy of the procession would have to begin at the grasp of true value and not possible value. The grasp of possible value would be according to the mode of processio operationis (from potency to act) and the divine persons do not discern. Lonergan’s earlier analogy would pertain to Ignatius’s third time of election, as Doran has said, while either the second or third would pertain to the later analogy, so long as the analogy begins at the grasp of value.
Therefore, theoretically, all three moments of election can express the psychological analogy because: (1) each pertains to intellectual emanations according to the mode of processio operati, and (2) these emanations pertain to an exercise of one’s existential autonomy and the Spiritual Exercises are designed specifically for such a purpose. The structure of Ignatius’s moments of election, as Doran’s breakthrough interpretation has suggested, enables us to retain both of Lonergan’s analogies together in an intelligible way without being forced to choose one over the other.
Conclusion
We have been expositing, clarifying, and proposing developments to Lonergan’s psychological analogy of the Trinity. We began by placing Lonergan’s psychological analogy in the context of contemporary theological reflection on the Trinity and went on to clarify the early analogy in terms of proceeding Truth and Goodness. From there we argued that it was fitting to articulate the proceeding Word as a true affirmation of value, as God’s Eternal Yes, and that this helps to clarify the link between the internal processions of God and the missions. Limits of space permitted us to only suggest rather than explore more deeply the provocative nature of God’s eternal Yes in terms of (1) the affirmation of the original covenant with the Israelites and the affirmative expansion of that covenant to others, (2) the archetypal Yes of Mary’s fiat as an extension of God’s Yes and in the divine plan of salvation, and (3) in Barth’s implicit analogy of Jesus Christ as God’s Yes in the creation as well as fallen humanity’s re-creation. Following Doran, we then suggested that the difference between the earlier and later analogies can be understood in terms of the three moments of election respectively in the Ignatian Exercises, thereby retaining the fittingness, orthodoxy, and orthopraxy of both of Lonergan’s analogies. Whether the Word proceeds analogously to a judgment value grasped rationally and non-affectively in the earlier analogy, or whether it proceeds affectively as in the later analogy, God’s eternal Yes is our origin, our present reality, and our hope.
Footnotes
1.
Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, Collected Works of Lonergan, vol. 2, ed. F.E.C. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 216.
2.
Robert M. Doran, The Trinity in History: A Theology of the Divine Missions (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 161.
3.
Bernard Lonergan, A Second Collection, ed. W. Ryan and B. Tyrrell (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1996), 212.
4.
Charles C. Hefling, ‘A Perhaps Permanently Valid Achievement: Lonergan on Christ’s Satisfaction,’ in Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 10 (1992): 51–76; and ‘Another Perhaps Permanently Valid Achievement: Lonergan on Christ’s (Self-) Knowledge,’ in Lonergan Workshop, vol. 20: The ‘Not Numerous Center’: For Insight’s 50th Anniversary and Method in Theology’s 35th Anniversary, ed. Fred Lawrence (Boston, MA: Boston College, 2008), 127–64.
5.
Bernard Lonergan, The Triune God: Doctrines, translated from De Deo Trino I: Pars dogmatica (1964) by Michael G. Shields, ed. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (CWL), vol. 11 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009); Bernard Lonergan, The Triune God: Systematics, translated from De Deo Trino II: Pars systematica (1964) by Michael G. Shields, ed. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 12 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007); henceforth I will be citing The Triune God: Systematics parenthetically as TGS.
6.
Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 3, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992); Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, reprint edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).
7.
Marmion and Nieuweuhove relate the following anecdote: ‘Bernard Lonergan is reputed to have caricatured clerical students’ memorizing the essential elements of the Thomistic doctrine of Trinity in terms of the 5-4-3-2-1 formula (five notions, four relations, three persons, two processions, one nature) to which he added “and zero comprehension!”’ Declan Marmion and Rik Van Nieuwenhove, An Introduction to the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 16.
8.
Marmion and Nieuwenhove, Introduction to the Trinity, 24ff.
9.
Peter Phan summarizes a variety of these issues, such as the starting point for reflection on the Trinity, the issues of the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity, the role of the Holy Spirit, the analogy of gender in God, and the challenge of Trinitarian dialogue with other religions. See Part I of Peter Phan, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity (Cambridge: University of Cambridge 2011).
10.
Marmion and Nieuwenhove, Introduction to the Trinity, 16 ff.
11.
For a more recent attempt to emphasize the relationality and apply it to contemporary exigencies, see Gloria Schaab, Trinity in Relation (Winona, MN: Anselm Academic, 2012).
12.
See for examples of other contexts see Veli-Mati Kärkkäinen, The Trinity: Global Perspectives (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2007), esp. Part IV; for examples of the Trinity in relation to religions, see Phan, Trinity, part V and Anne Hunt, The Trinity, 139 ff.
13.
For examples, see Patricia Fox, ‘Feminist theologies and the Trinity,’ in The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity, 274–90; Anthony Kelly, The Trinity of Love: A Theology of the Christian God, New Theology Series 4 (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1989), 250–55.
14.
Karl Rahner, The Trinity, (tr.) J. Donceel (London: Burns & Oakes, 1970), 21–24. See also, Marmion and Nieuwenhove, Introduction to the Trinity, 24ff. I suspect that Rahner’s axiom is not fundamentally opposed to Lonergan’s approach as long as one adds that there is a difference between the immanent Trinity and economic Trinity so that the missions (economic) are extensions of the processions (immanent) but with the addition of contingent external terms as created consequent conditions (see ‘Assertion XV’, TGS, 439 ff); however, this addition from Lonergan’s perspective makes all the difference. Moreover, these external terms can speak to the concrete effects of the Trinity in history and make it relevant to the various exigencies of our times. For example, the mission of the Church including its social mission become an extension of the missions of the Triune God; see John Dadosky, ‘Ecclesia de Trinitate: Ecclesial Foundations from Above,’ New Blackfriars 94 (2013): 72, 78. But such a discussion takes us beyond the scope of this essay, so I refer the reader to Doran’s The Trinity in History.
15.
Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. W. V. Dych (New York: Seabury, 1978), 135. I will not attempt here to justify the legitimacy of the psychological analogy, but I refer the reader to Peter Drilling’s essay, ‘The Psychological Analogy of the Trinity: Augustine, Aquinas, and Lonergan,’ Irish Theological Quarterly 71 (2006): 336–37.
16.
Hunt, The Trinity, 4.
17.
Gerald O’Collins, The Tripersonal God: Understanding and Interpreting the Trinity (Paulist, Kindle Edition, nd), 3–4.
18.
For an attempt to bring these two approaches together, see Anne Hunt’s excellent article ‘Psychological Analogy and Paschal Mystery in Trinitarian Theology,’ Theological Studies 59 (1998): 197–218.
19.
For an overview, see Peter Drilling, ‘The Psychological Analogy of the Trinity,’ op. cit.
20.
Doran has done so quite extensively in chapter 11 of his Trinity in History.
21.
St Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, OP, The Works of St Augustine Vol 5, ed. John E. Rotelle, OSA (New York: New City, 1991), 68.
22.
Doran transposes the emanations of processio operati to the language of autonomous spiritual processions. An exploration of this welcome move as well as his developments of the psychological analogy and the four-point hypothesis lie beyond the scope of this paper.
23.
Lonergan does not use this example but see his Triune God: Doctrines, 661 n 85, where he refers to Augustine’s use of memoria in De Trinitate, where Augustine speaks of a true word proceeding from the storehouse of memory. This would be analogous to an act of will proceeding from a habit and therefore would be from potency to act rather than from act to act.
24.
On reflective understanding, see chapter 10 of Lonergan’s Insight.
25.
Lonergan states: ‘What we know is that to pronounce judgment without that reflective grasp is merely to guess; again, what we know is that, once that grasp has occurred, then to refuse to judge is just silly’ Insight, 304.
26.
Lonergan states: ‘“Divine procession is internal procession but it is neither a procession of an operation nor a processio operati”, the reason being that, as regards absolute existence, in God there is only one infinite act. In God the originating act and the originated act are distinguished only according to relative existence. It is in this connection that the word “mode” is used’ (TGS, 157).
27.
See Bernard Lonergan, Phenomenology and Logic: The Boston College Lectures on Mathematical Logic and Existentialism, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 18, ed. Philip J. McShane (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).
28.
Lonergan, Insight, 622.
29.
I use the term ‘rational non-affective’ because for Lonergan, even affective grasps of true value are strictly speaking rational. This is not unlike the position of Carl Jung when he states: ‘Thinking and feeling, being discriminative functions, are rational.’ See Carl Jung, The Essential Jung, ed. Anthony Storr (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), 144.
30.
Lonergan, Insight, 637; Lonergan also states on the same page: ‘… the emergence of an obligation is the emergence of rational necessity in rational consciousness.’
31.
See for example chapter 1 of Method in Theology (esp. p. 9) where he clearly differentiates the rational level from the responsible level.
32.
Robert Doran, SJ, ‘Ignatian Themes in the Thought of Bernard Lonergan: Revisiting a Theme that Deserves Further Reflection,’ Journal of the Lonergan Workshop 19 (2006): 94–95.
33.
See Lonergan, Insight, 632–39, 650–56.
34.
Strictly speaking, the judgment of value is not there per se, but it is implicit in his discussion of practical insight, reflection, and decision (see Lonergan, Insight, 632–39).
35.
Lonergan, Insight, 730.
36.
This would address Lonergan’s comments in the section on the ‘Moral Imperative’ in Understanding and Being, where he has in mind self-constituting practical judgments of value. Bernard Lonergan, Understanding and Being, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 5, ed. Mark Morelli & Elizabeth Morelli (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), 232–33.
37.
An affective grasp of value would also be rational but the apprehension of value occurs indirectly in one’s feelings rather than with one’s intellect.
38.
Lonergan, Verbum, 209.
39.
Lonergan, Method in Theology, 37.
40.
See note 25 above.
41.
‘To have the formality of generation in the strict sense, this likeness in nature must result by virtue of the emanation itself’ (TGS, 193).
42.
This is consistent with what Lonergan says in the Verbum articles. See Lonergan, Verbum, 151, 208.
43.
Such grasps of true value occur in what Ignatius describes in the third time of election. It does not mean that feelings are not involved in the deliberation; therefore, it does not negate Lonergan’s comments in Method in Theology that ‘apprehensions of value are given in feelings’ (p. 37). However, in such times of election, albeit rare, the direct apprehension is non-affective and not directly grasped by one’s feelings, although feelings are involved in the deliberation. Those unfamiliar with this Ignatian context or those who have not experienced this may have difficulty with this interpretation of the earlier psychological analogy.
44.
See Thesis 5 of Doran’s Trinity in History, 32–33. Doran states: ‘That outer word not only flows from a participation in the invisible mission of the Word through the ultimately ineffable Yes that flows from the gift of divine love. It also begins a participation in the visible mission of the eternal Word, the eternal Judgment of Value, by calling for and entering into the collaboration that generates publicly shared understandings and publicly shared affirmations’ (ibid., 89, emphasis added); ‘… there proceeds the eternal Word of the Father saying Yes to it all, and from the Father and the Word together there proceeds the eternal mutual Love of Father and Son that is the Holy Spirit …. the Father now is infinite and eternal being-in-love, Agape that generates a Word, the eternal Yes that is the Son, a Word that breathes love, a Yes that grounds the Proceeding Love that is breathed forth from Agape and from its manifestation in such a Word’ (ibid., 158, emphasis added).
45.
‘In God, however, who is eternal, autonomous intellectual necessity is likewise eternal, the ordering to the word to be spoken is eternal, the word is eternal, and the relation to the word spoken is eternal’ (TGS, 375; cf. 376, 387); of course spiration is eternal as well (TGS, 461).
46.
See Lonergan, Method in Theology, 37.
47.
Lonergan links ‘consent’ with deliberation. See Lonergan, Insight, 720.
48.
Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, 112–13.
49.
See also Doran’s discussion and development in Trinity in History, 40ff.
50.
In addition to the rivalrous tensions that have existed between Christianity and Judaism following the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, one further issue concerns the death of Jesus. See Mary C. Boys, ‘Facing History: The Church and its Teaching on the Death of Jesus’ in Christ: Jesus and the Jewish People Today: New Explorations of Theological Interrelationships, ed. Philip Cunningham et al. (Grand Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2011), 31–63; I am grateful to Andrea Di Giovanni for turning my attention to some of the passages in this section.
51.
See for example the dialogue Steven Englund, John D. Levenson, Donald Senior, and John Connelly, ‘Getting Past Supersessionism: An Exchange on Catholic–Jewish Dialogue,’ Commonweal (21 February 2014), 13–26.
52.
See for example, David E. Holwerda, Jesus and Israel: One Covenant or Two? (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1995); John Pawlikowski, ‘Reflections on Covenant and Mission,’ in Marianne Moyaert & Didier Polleyfeyt, eds, Never Revoked: Nostra Aetate as Ongoing Challenge for Jewish–Christian Dialogue (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans/ Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 75.
53.
David Novak, ‘The Covenant in Rabbinic Thought,’ in Eugene B. Korn and John T. Pawlikowski, eds, Two Faiths, One Covenant: Jewish and Christian Identity in the Presence of the Other (New York: Sheed & Ward, 2005), 66.
54.
Norbert Lohfink, SJ, The Covenant Never Revoked: Biblical Reflections on Jewish–Christian Dialogue (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1991), 39.
55.
Hans Hermann Henrix’s essay ‘The Son of God became Human as a Jew,’ in Christ Jesus and the Jewish People Today, 114–43 at 138.
56.
Admittedly this is a theologically complicated issue and my comments are exploratory.
57.
See for example the questions raised: Alan L. Berger & David Patterson (with David P. Gushee, John T. Pawlikowski & John K. Roth), Jewish–Christian Dialogue: Drawing Honey from the Rock (St Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2008), 143 ff.
58.
This is exemplified by the document issued by the Commission for the Religious Relations with the Jews under the leadership of Cardinal Edward Cassidy titled ‘We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah’ (28 November 1997) at the request of John Paul II.
59.
Frederick Jelly, OP, Madonna: Mary in the Catholic Tradition (Huntington, IN: OSV, 1986), 69.
60.
‘Her wholehearted ‘Yes’ to the Father’s will was not only an affirmation of her free acceptance of the unique gift of redemption for herself, but also her consent to share uniquely in her Son’s work of redeeming us all’ Jelly, Madonna, 157.
61.
Jelly, Madonna, 157.
62.
Dadosky, Ecclesia de Trinitate, 72.
63.
Ibid.
64.
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 6th ed., trans. Edwyn C. Hoskyns (London: Oxford University Press, 1933), 178; I am grateful to Prof. Joseph Mangina for turning my attention to some of these passages.
65.
Parenthetical References are to Karl Barth, The Church Dogmatics, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956).
66.
John Webster, Karl Barth (New York/London: Continuum, 2000), 21.
67.
Webster, Karl Barth, 44.
68.
Space does not allow me to explore the rich development of the later analogy in terms of memoria, judgment of value and gift. See Doran, Trinity in History, 33–34.
69.
Bernard J. F. Lonergan, ‘Christology Today: Methodological Considerations,’ in A Third Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, ed., F. E .Crowe (Mahwah, NY: Paulist, 1985), 93–94; Doran, Trinity in History, 35–36.
70.
71.
If Anthony Kelly does not explicitly prefer Lonergan’s later analogy (he does not address the earlier one explicitly but rather focuses on the analogy in Aquinas), at the very least he is quite enthusiastic about the later analogy, given its experiential point of reference in human subjectivity. See Kelly, The Trinity of Love, 149 ff.
72.
‘Ignatian Themes in the Thought of Bernard Lonergan: Revisiting a Theme that Deserves Further Reflection,’ Journal of the Lonergan Workshop 19 (2006): 83–106.
73.
For an overview of the Spiritual Exercises, see Part V ‘The Spiritual Exercises’ in George Traub, ed., An Ignatian Spirituality Reader (Chicago, IL: Loyola, 2008); see also Victor Turner, The Ritual Process (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine De Gruyer, 1995, re-print), 94–97.
74.
Lonergan, Method in Theology, 40.
75.
David L. Fleming, SJ, Draw Me into Your Friendship: A Literal Translation and a Contemporary Reading of the Spiritual Exercises (St Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1996), ‘Hell,’ 58–59; ‘Two Standards,’ 110–11; ‘Election,’ 133ff.
76.
Fleming, The Spiritual Exercises, 138; Doran concerning the first time of election states: ‘that conscious representation of “gratia gratum faciens” and its word of value judgment are so dominant that the loving decisions and actions flow spontaneously forth from them in a way that admits no doubt as to where they come from or whose life is being reflected in them: “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me.” This corresponds to Lonergan’s modification of an Augustinian maxim, “Ama Deum et fac quod vis, Love God and do what you will.” In these instances, the apprehension of values in loving affectivity stands to judgments of value, not as direct insight, which may be right or wrong, but rather as reflective insights, grasping the fulfilment of conditions, stand to judgments of fact. Whereas in the second time the apprehension of values in feelings is an apprehension of possible values, in the first time there are no further questions, and one knows that this is the case.’ Doran, Trinity in History, 161.
77.
Fleming, The Spiritual Exercises, 138.
78.
Ibid.
79.
Lonergan, Method in Theology, 104–5. Lonergan states that being in love is an exercise of one’s vertical finality (40).