Thesis advisor: Frederick G. Lawrence / There are two aspects, and thus two aims, of the dissertation. Primarily, the dissertation is an interpretation. It seeks to understand Louis Massignon's understanding of Islam as it developed across three stages of his life and work. Secondarily, the dissertation is methodological. It takes Massignon's experience as a test-case and attempts to show that, as a possibly relevant hypothesis, his understanding of Islam warrants further attention by contemporary theologians working on Catholic-Islamic dialogue, Catholic-Islamic comparative theology, and Catholic theologies of Islam. The dissertation consists of six chapters. The first is an introduction to the questions and the relevant secondary literature. In it I establish the work of Massignon, primarily a scholar of Islam, on the relationship of Islam to the Catholic Church as <italic>theological</italic>, that is, as faith seeking understanding, and as <italic>conversational</italic>, that is, as constitutive communication. In Chapter Two, I establish Massignon's Catholic beliefs and examine his early and fairly traditional position on the question of Islam's relationship to the Catholic Church. I focus primarily on his apologetic treatise, <italic>Examen du &ldquoPr&eacutesent de l'homme lettr&eacute&rdquo par Abdallah ibn al-Torjoman</italic> (1917), in which he presents the contrast between the Christian and Islamic apologetics in stark terms, arguing for the superiority of the Christian position at every turn. I argue that the Examen should be read less as a condemnation of Islam than as an articulation of Massignon's Catholic beliefs. In Chapter Three, I examine &ldquoL'h&eacutegire d'Ismaël,&rdquo the second of <italic>Les trois pri&egraveres d'Abraham</italic> (1935), in which Massignon articulates what the secondary literature has called his five-point <italic>credo</italic> of Islam, namely, that the God of the Muslims is the same as the God of the Jews and Christians, the Qur'an is in some sense inspired and retains a conditional authority, Muhammad is sincere and can be understood as a negative prophet, Islam has a positive mission in the divine economy of salvation vis-à-vis the Church and Israel, and Arabic, the language of revelation in Islam, has a particular spiritual vocation. This represents the second stage of his life and work. In Chapter Four, after considering the possible (and likely) influence that Massignon's work exerted on the statements on Islam in <italic>Lumen Gentium</italic> and <italic>Nostra Aetate</italic> as proclaimed at the Second Vatican Council, I establish the bases for a nascent Massignonian Catholic theology of Islam, whereby the two religions enjoy a complementary relationship such that the Church knows and communicates explicitly what remains implicit in Islam, while Islam provokes the Church toward greater fidelity, charity, and hospitality. In Chapter Five, I turn to the third stage of Massignon's life and work in which he was increasingly concerned to establish practical means for encouraging Muslim-Catholic understanding. I focus on the <italic>Badaliya Annual Letters</italic> (1947-1962) in which he articulates the philosophy of the Badaliya prayer sodality that he co-founded for the purpose of interiorizing the rites of Islam and praying with and for Muslims. I focus on Massignon's understanding of substitute mysticism, which I argue is actually an expanded understanding of Redemption such that through participation in what Massignon calls the <italic>secret of history</italic>, and what Bernard Lonergan, S.J. would call the <italic>Law of the Cross</italic>, the saints of Christianity and Islam (and other religions) knowingly or unknowingly participate in the saving mission of Jesus Christ. At the conclusion to each main body chapter I suggest possible lessons that one might draw from Massignon's engagement with Islam at that particular stage, and in Chapter Six I summarize the findings and the limitations of the dissertation and suggest possible lines of further enquiry. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

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Religious diversity has become a central topic in the philosophy of religion. This study proposes a methodological approach to the topic by exploring the division of tasks set out by Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984). Lonergan's methodological framework, which he called functional specialization, provides a generic differentiation of tasks, each of which is central to the overall project of understanding religious diversity. This thesis explores the relevance and utility of functional specialization as a methodological approach to religious diversity in the philosophy of religion. / The first chapter is an analysis of the literature on religious diversity as a topic in the philosophy of religion. It unearths the dominant concerns in the field and some of the obstacles which continue to hinder the development of this enquiry. The second chapter provides the epistemological grounds of functional specialization. While the division of tasks outlined by Lonergan's methodology is useful simply insofar as it differentiates the tasks of academic enquiry, there are more theoretical grounds by which this division is justified. / The third chapter provides an explanatory account of the operations and tasks involved in each of the eight functional specialties. It elucidates these specialties by drawing upon relevant analogies from outside the field of religious studies. The fourth chapter brings together the two main concerns of the study by suggesting ways in which functional specialization can make a methodological contribution to the enquiry into religious diversity. It organizes the distinct but related tasks which constitute the philosophical study of religious diversity, demonstrates the current trends regarding each of these tasks, and suggests ways in which they can be made more effective. / Lonergan's notion of functional specialization makes an important contribution to the philosophical debate over religious diversity in significant ways. It provides an effective methodology which delineates both the fundamental tasks of scholarly enquiry and the operations involved in these tasks. It explains how current work in the philosophy of religious diversity could benefit from a clear delineation of the relevant tasks. It provides a framework which is open to collaboration among scholars of diverse philosophical and theological viewpoints.

Bernard Lonergan's economic writings have not been fully evaluated by economists although two recent papers by Burley (1989a, 1989b) show that work has begun. The purpose of this dissertation, therefore, is to situate Lonergan's (1944) economics essay, Circulation Analysis, in the history of economic thought of the period as well as to present a Lonerganian cycle model. / Circulation Analysis examines fundamental macrodynamic processes to explain fluctuations. It was written in the early 1940s following a period of controversy and debate that led to the current paradigms of economic dynamics. The two sides of the debate are exemplified by Harrod (1936) and Hayek (1933 (1928), 1939), in particular. The controversy ended with World War II and the emerging hegemony of the Anglo-American approach, which separated macrodynamics into growth theory (long-run supply problems), and stabilization theory (short-run demand problems). / This dissertation argues that this dichotomy is unsatisfactory and proposes Lonergan's pure cycle as an alternative paradigm. Lonergan's pure cycle restores the importance of supply-side dynamics in the short-run, without denying the primacy of demand issues in the analysis of deviations. A Lonerganian approach views demand shocks as essentially monetary, but also contends that the distribution of nominal income can cause shocks, if it is not synchronized with changes in real variables. / In this thesis a Lonerganian model is presented that uses a Kydland-Prescott (1982) type of "time-to-build" technology. The model is subjected to permanent productivity shocks to investment, which explain, with a lag, equilibrium output. The monetary and distributional shocks to demand, which are temporary, can then explain the deviation of actual output from its equilibrium value. The model uses a Beveridge and Nelson (1981) approach, which specifies changes in growth rates of variables as a function of permanent and temporary shocks. The shocks are identified because the model is recursive: first, the productivity shock determines investment and equilibrium output; then, the monetary shock determines prices and sales of consumer goods. Simulation results are presented.

Within the thought of Bernard Lonergan, is described a universal dynamic structure immanent within intellectual, moral, and religious consciousness. In Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, his analysis of the invariant pattern of that structure grounds a cognitional theory, an epistemology, and a metaphysics which then enables him to propose an ethic based on the structure of the good as immanent within every act of rational self-consciousness. In later works, principally Method in Theology, his orientation shifts to incorporate a new notion of value, which is distinct in that it is apprehended through feeling. The result is an ethic oriented to the transcendental objective of value and developed from the patterns of cognition which apprehend that value. This thesis studies that shift, and focuses on Lonergan's admitted sources to it: Max Scheler, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Jean Piaget, Susanne Langer, Abraham Maslow, and existential thought generally. In reconstructing it, the thesis finds grounds to differentiate the cognitional theory based upon analysis of intellectual as opposed to affective operations, their invariant norms for authentic operation, and their contents in facts and values respectively.

Thesis advisor: Patrick H. Byrne / My first aim in this dissertation is to elucidate Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus through the writings of Bernard Lonergan, SJ. My second aim is to elucidate Lonergan’s thought by adducing it, in action, in Oedipus Tyrannus. Instead of analyzing what a classical text means to its own time and place, I undertake a philosophy of classics, exploring various philosophical problems by using Sophoclean texts. The paper incidentally discloses an interpretation of Oedipus Tyrannus that is at odds with some of the leading authors in the secondary literature while remaining consonant with others. I use Woodruff and Meineck’s 2003 translation of Theban Plays throughout because I find the translation refreshing. It is my hope that this paper, like all good papers, raises more questions than answers. In Chapter 1, I recruit Lonergan’s three basic observations about human knowing to explain Oedipus’ cognitive journey over the course of the play. First, Lonergan notes that underpinning all human knowing is the spirit of inquiry; the pure, unrestricted desire to know, which Lonergan calls “the supreme heuristic notion.” Second, he observes that the structure of human knowing is invariant. No matter who you are – mathematician, scientist, commonsense knower, etc. – all human knowing follows a dynamic but invariant structure Lonergan calls the “self-correcting cycle of learning.” This cycle moves from inquiry to insight to judgment to decision. Third, this invariant, self-correcting cycle, underpinned by the pure unrestricted desire to know, operates within dynamically shifting patterns of consciousness, modes of human knowing, that are circumscribed by our concerns, expressed by the kinds of questions we ask. Human consciousness is “polymorphic.” Using these three points as touchstones, I elucidate the dynamism of Oedipus’ cognitional structure by tracing the self-correcting sequence of his 132 questions until he arrives at his famous insight, which is simultaneously a virtually unconditioned judgment, expressed by his cry: Oh! Oh! It all comes clear! Light, let me look at you one last time. I am exposed – born to forbidden parents, joined In forbidden marriage, I brought forbidden death (Lines 1181-1185). With the concrete situation known and understood with clarity (σαφής), Oedipus’ consciousness should now become sublated into the structure of ethical intentionality. This sublation occurs the moment an agent says, “Okay. I understand and know the situation. Now, what should I do?” Typically, an agent begins to ask questions of value, questions which, in Patrick H. Byrne’s words, intend “practical insights into possible courses of action.” The goal of questions for intelligence and questions for judgment is to grasp, respectively, understanding and a virtually unconditioned judgment of fact. Likewise, the goal of questions of value is to “grasp of virtually unconditioned value” until, ultimately, a judgment can be made about that value in a decision which implements the value in action. Instead of “ascending” into an “ethics of discernment,” however, Oedipus’ development remains arrested, in a static state of undistorted affectivity that makes moral conversion impossible. The play ends with Oedipus hovering in a liminal state, somewhere between Lonergan’s rational consciousness and rational self-consciousness. This liminal position of distorted affectivity lends credence to Marina McCoy’s claim that, “Sophocles does not reject the rational in favor of a tragic vision that is anti-rational or non-rational; rather, the rational itself includes an affective element.” In Chapter 2, I point out the various “interferences” in the dynamic, self-correcting sequence which I argue imbues Oedipus’ journey with its especially tragic and ironic dimension. I argue that the tragedy (and irony) of the play pivot on the “polymorphism” of Oedipus’ consciousness. A corollary to this argument is that we may understand some of the muddled thinking and the bitter intersubjective quarrels in the play – including but not limited to Oedipus v. Tiresias, Oedipus v. Creon and Oedipus v. Jocasta – through the prism of Lonergan’s discussion of “bias.” My discussion of bias naturally leads to an interpretation of the play that finds Sophocles indicting, not wisdom per se, as Nietzsche argued, but those who fail to understand what it means to correctly understand; those, in other words, who would deign to reduce understanding to a simple matter of “taking a look,” to use Lonergan’s phrase. I argue that the symbolism in the drama staunchly affirms Lonergan’s well-known claim that, “What is obvious in knowing is, indeed, looking. Compared to looking, insight is obscure, and the grasp of the unconditioned is doubly obscure. But empiricism amounts to the assumption that what is obvious in knowing is what knowing obviously is.” In Chapter 3, I enlarge the focus of my analysis from Oedipus’ single consciousness to the milieu in which that consciousness operates – Corinth, Thebes and, finally, Colonus. Viewed through a prism of Lonergan’s social theory, Thebes, and to a lesser extent Corinth, become exempla of “cities in decline,” symbolized generally by their hostility to questioning which, specifically, allows various biases to reign. I discuss the Greek concept of pollution, beginning with the familiar distinction between agos and miasma, and suggest that we may treat the idea of pollution in Oedipus Tyrannus as a metaphor for what Lonergan’s called the “long cycle of decline” and its root cause, “general bias,” the unprincipled privileging of the immediate and concrete over that which is non-present. The byproduct of this bias is “the social surd.” In an essay entitled, “The Absence of God in Modern Culture,” Lonergan notes, in cultures exists the “disastrous possibility of a conflict between human living as it can be lived and human living as a cultural superstructure dictates it should be lived.” I argue that there many junctures in the play in which the failure of insight and the triumph of oversight is compounded by if not caused by the dictates of Theban and Corinthian cultures, starting with Laius and Jocasta’s decision to murder their child, a choice which is then echoed by Polybus and Merope’s choice to suppress the truth of their son’s origin. I then point out that the most obvious operative bias here is group bias, symbolized by various characters’ commitment to violent patriarchy which neglects female voices of reason. I show, following McCoy and Christopher Long, that Colonus, courtesy of Theseus’ leadership, represents a possible antidote to this group bias through healing love. As Oedipus says of the space of Colonus in 1125, “In all my wanderings, this is the only place/Where I have found truth, honor and justice./I am well aware of how much I stand in your debt,/Without your help I would have nothing at all.” For Lonergan, if the mischief of bias is to be conquered, the ultimate ground for that conquering will come from a liberation outside the agent’s own native resources. Colonus gives us a glimpse of this third mode of self-transcendence, religious conversion, which, for Lonergan, is an unrestricted being in love with a “mysterious, uncomprehended God.” On the one hand, this viewpoint would seem to represent a juncture at which Lonergan’s thought simply does not and cannot apply to a classical text, such as Oedipus Tyrannus or Oedipus at Colonus. Lonergan’s notion of unrestricted being in love (with God) and his further distinctions of operative and cooperative grace would seem to be anachronistic. And yet, Lonergan claims that unrestricted being in love is “interpreted differently in the context of different religious traditions.” I argue that there is a sense in which Theseus’ almost otherworldly commitment to reverence (aidos) for the sacred space of Colonus, and his compassionate commitment to care for the stranger (xenia), more closely approximates or, at the very least, anticipates the almost supernatural dynamism of the authentic moral conversion Lonergan seems to have in mind. There are moments, in other words, in which Theseus relies on the dynamism of his own native intelligence and others in which something beyond him seems to be at work, as if a precursor to the supernatural moral disposition of the father in Luke’s “Parable of the Prodigal Son.” I conclude this chapter by noting that implicit in my argument is the premise that Oedipus Tyrannus cannot be read without adverting to Oedipus Colonus, without which the full sweep of the conquering of bias cannot be appreciated. From this premise I then deduce that the pessimistic Nietzschean reading of Oedipus Tyrannus, at the very least, requires more context. And while it is certainly possible to read Tyrannus separately from Colonus, insofar as they are not part of a traditional cycle, including Colonus in an analysis of Tyrannus discloses a further development in Sophocles’ thought that we may use to retroactively assess Tyrannus philosophically, especially vis-à-vis nihilism. Chapter 4 is devoted to a discussion of Lonergan’s metaphysics of human freedom and its relation to willingness, moral impotence and liberation. Here I apply Lonergan’s rich and complicated discussion of human freedom in Insight to offer a viewpoint that is contrary to deterministic readings of the play. In Oedipus Tyrannus: Tragic Heroism and the Limits of Knowledge, Charles Segal advises us that to offer any fresh approach to Oedipus Tyrannus one must “remove a few layers of misconception.” Segal’s first misconception is this: “This is not a play about free will versus determinism.” He adds that “the issues of destiny, predetermination, and foreknowledge are raised as problems, not as dogma.” I will suggest here that if this assessment is accurate, the unintended irony of the play is that it nevertheless affirms a principle (dogma?) in spite of itself: that human freedom is enlarged by human intelligence, insofar as intelligence specifies, via practical insights and practical judgments of facts and values, a range of choices for the will to select. It follows that ignorance, bias and moral impotence, in blocking or shrinking this range of choices, limit our effective freedom to the point at which we are incapable of fully actualizing our essential freedom. Here I recruit Lonergan’s provocative image of the “surrounding penumbra” to describe “moral impotence,” in which he says, “Further, these areas are not fixed; as he develops, the penumbra penetrates into the shadow and the luminous area into the penumbra while, inversely, moral decline is a contraction of the luminous area and of the penumbra.” This image is particularly apt in describing the ways in which Oedipus enlarges the “luminous area” when he is authentically questioning, only to watch it contract into darkness when he is not – an equation symbolized by the Sophoclean trope of blindness. Finally, in an “Epilogue,” I conclude with some observations about the way in which Sophocles is often presented in undergraduate philosophy classes. I concur with Yoram Hazony who writes, in The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, “I do not believe the dichotomy between faith and reason is very helpful in understanding the diversity of human intellectual orientations.” Likewise, it is unclear to me as to whether couching Athens as somehow opposed to Jerusalem is good pedagogical practice. In a similar mode, equally unclear to me is whether couching Sophocles as somehow opposed to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle is good practice. Yes, contradistinction has its pedagogical merits, but it can also wash away nuance. I then suggest, by way of a conclusion, that if we must have a dichotomy, a better alternative, even pedagogically speaking, may be to use Lonergan’s dichotomy of the friendly or unfriendly universe. For ultimately, we are faced with one existential question: is our universe a friendly one? In Method in Theology, Lonergan asks, poignantly: "Is moral enterprise consonant with this world?...is the universe on our side, or are we just gamblers and, if we are gamblers, are we not perhaps fools, individually struggling for authenticity and collectively endeavoring to snatch progress from the ever mounting welter of decline? The questions arise and, clearly, our attitudes and our resoluteness may be profoundly affected by the answers. Does there or does there not necessarily exists a transcendent, intelligent ground of the universe? Is that ground or are we the primary instance of moral consciousness? Are cosmogenesis, biological evolution, historical process basically cognate to us as moral beings or are they different and so alien to us?" The phrase “friendly universe” comes a bit later in the text, when Lonergan adds, “Faith places human efforts in a friendly universe; it reveals an ultimate significance in human achievement; it strengthens new undertakings with confidence” (117, my italics). Notice the connection Lonergan adduces between religious conversion, or the unrestricted being in love with God, as the ground of the friendly universe. And yet, as I mentioned earlier, this unrestricted being in love is, as Lonergan points out, “interpreted differently in the context of different religious traditions.” After all, Socrates was no Christian; but he did believe the universe was friendly. In this context, I argue that Sophocles ought to be aligned with Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, not to mention most Biblical texts, against the truly opposed counter-position, “nihilism.” While it is certainly true that, in Oedipus, Sophocles heard that “eternal note of sadness on the Aegean,” as Matthew Arnold once wrote, Sophocles also seems to have heard in Colonus a note of compassion and wisdom and love and the hope for a construction of a community in which human striving is not in vain. As Oedipus tells his daughters, But there is one small word that can soothe – And that is ‘love.’ I loved you more than Anyone else could ever love, but now Your lives must go on without me. (1610-1619) / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

Thesis advisor: Dominic Doyle / I argue for a performative reading of the Summa theologiae in relation to Thomas Aquinas’s coordination of the trinitarian processions with the trinitarian image and the process of teaching and learning. Specifically, I argue that the Summa is skillfully arranged in order to initiate the student into the graced process of conceiving words about the Triune God that burst forth into love—the very processions by which we are ad imaginem Dei and become more like God. Learning to speak truly and love rightly prepares students to preach about God within their culture, just as Thomas’s own efforts to preach the trinitarian mystery indicate. My argument takes into account Thomas’s life as a Dominican preacher and teacher in thirteenth-century Europe as well as his theology of the mixed life of contemplation and action. With respect to the latter, Thomas maintained that the Dominican must draw in contemplation what he will pour out later on in preaching (contemplata aliis tradere). Thomas wrote the Summa theologiae with this pastoral orientation in mind. In light of this historical context, I argue that the Summa is a performative text and transformative encounter with sacra doctrina written to prepare Dominican students to hand on the fruits of their contemplation. This interpretation of the Summa theologiae and Thomas’s trinitarian theology enriches standard contemporary interpretations of the psychological analogy. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Jeremy D. Wilkins / The basic question of this dissertation is, “Why a crucified God?” The history of this question is traced through strategically chosen increments in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Lonergan. Each contributes in some important way to the development of a tradition that focuses on the choice of divine love and wisdom to answer evil through the justice of the cross rather than by coercion. In light of these earlier transpositions and Lonergan’s own development, this dissertation examines the meaning and justice of the cross, as epitomized in Lonergan’s Law of the Cross, and re-contextualizes this law in relation to our collective responsibility in and for history. This teleological re-reading of Lonergan’s soteriology brings to the forefront that a fitting remedy to the problem of a dis-ordered love is a re-ordering and (re-)ordered love, not coercive power. According to Lonergan’s Law of the Cross, the intrinsic intelligibility of redemption is the transformation of evil into good by love. This love, caritas ordinata et ordinans, is understood by analogy with the antecedent offer of diffusive friendship and by analogy with sacramental penance. The restoration of right order through the cross is fitting because, if the laws of nature and history are not suspended, retaliation would only multiply the objective surd. The constructive part of this dissertation further specifies ontological conditions for the fittingness of the cross by bringing the lex crucis into dialogue with Lonergan’s general theory of historical process. In continuity with the emerging world order (as subject to classical, statistical, dialectical, and genetic laws), the cross manifests an orderly communication of divine friendship to sinners. Correspondingly, the justice of the cross regards, not retributive justice, but the possibility of justice among sinners. This possibility, it is argued, is inaugurated by Christ’s transformation of suffering into the means of a new finality in history, the probabilities of which are decisively shifted in the cross event and concretely realized through the emergent agape network, the higher integration of the human good of order through the whole Christ, head and members, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The justice of the cross, then, is an emergent agapic justice which proceeds from the dynamic state of being in love with God as its principle and is realized in a dialectic unification of all things in Christ, constituting the “cruciform” transformation of human (inter-)subjectivity and the recovery of human progress as ordered to the eschatologically definitive reign of God. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

No description available.

No description available.