Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, Volume 2)

341 Pages·1997·39.8 MB·English

by  Bernard Lonergan

COLLECTED WORKS
OF BERNARD
LONERGAN
VERBUM:
WORD AND IDEA IN AQUINAS
edited by
Frederick E. Crowe and
Robert M. Doran
Published for Lonergan Research Institute
of Regis College, Toronto
by University of Toronto Press
Toronto Buffalo London
COLLECTED WORKS OF
BERNARD LONERGAN
VOLUME 2
VERBUM: WORD AND IDEA INhgiAQUINAS
www.utppublishing.com
Bernard Lonergan Estate 1997
Printed in Canada
ISBN 0-8020-4144-2 (cloth)
ISBN 0-8020-7988-1 (paper)
Reprinted 2005
Printed on acid-free paper
Requests for permission to quote from the Collected Works of Bernard
Lonergan should be addressed to University of Toronto Press.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Lonergan, BernardJ.F. (BernardJoseph Francis), 1904-1984
Collected works of Bernard Lonergan
Vol. 4, 2nd ed., rev. and aug. First ed. (1967) published separately. Vol. 5,
2nd ed., rev. and aug. First ed. (1980). Vol. 3, 5th ed., rev. and aug.
First ed. (1957). Vol. 10. Revising and augmenting the unpublished text.
Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 2.
Verbum : word and idea in Aquinas.
ISBN 0-8020-4144-2 (v. 2 : bound) ISBN 08020-7988-1 (v. 2 : pbk.)
I. Theology-2Oth century. 2. Catholic Church. I. Crowe, Frederick E., 1915-
II. Doran, Robert M., 1939- . III. Lonergan Research Institute. FV. Title.
6x891.L595 1988 230 088-093328-3 rev.
The Lonergan Research Institute gratefully acknowledges the generous
contribution of the MALLINER CHARITABLE FOUNDATION, which has made
possible the production of this entire series.
The Lonergan Research Institute gratefully acknowledges the financial
assistance of the JESUITS OF LOYOLA, MONTREAL, provided by the Loyola
Jesuits Special Fund, toward the publication of this volume of the Collected
Works.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Pub-
lishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
Contents
Editors' Preface, FREDERICK E. CROWE / vii
Introduction: Subject and Soul / 3
1 Verbum: Definition and Understanding / 12
1 The General Notion of an Inner Word / 13
2 Definition / 24
3 Quod Quid Est / 29
4 Insight into Phantasm / 38
5 Emanatio Intelligibilis / 46
6 Conclusion / 59
2 Verbum: Reflection and Judgment / 60
1 Composition or Division / 61
2 Judgment / 71
3 Wisdom / 78
4 Self-knowledge of Soul / 87
5 The Unity of Wisdom / 99
6 Conclusion / 104
3 Procession and Related Notions / 106
1 Procession / 107
2 Actus Perfecti / no
3 Pali / 116
vi Contents
4 Potentia Activa / 121
5 Duplex Actio / 128
6 Species, Intelligere / 133
7 Object/ 138
8 Nature and Efficiency / 143
9 Conclusions / 148
4 Verbum and Abstraction / 152
1 The Analogy of Matter / 154
2 The Immateriality of Knowing / 158
3 Formative Abstraction / 162
4 Apprehensive Abstraction / 168
5 Sense and Understanding / 179
6 Conclusion / 186
5 Imago Dei / 191
1 Ipsum Intelligere / 192
2 The Necessity of Verbum / 199
3 £b Magis Unum / 204
4 Amor Procedens / 209
5 Via Doctrinae / 213
6 Epilogue / 222
Appendix / 229
Editorial Notes, FREDERICK E. CROWE / 253
Works of Lonergan Referred to in Editors' Preface and Notes / 263
Bibliography of the Works of St Thomas Aquinas / 267
Index of Concepts and Names, FREDERICK E. CROWE / 269
Index of Loci, ROBERT M. DORAN and JOHN DOOL / 291
Lexicon of Latin and Greek Words and Phrases,
FREDERICK E. CROWE / 305
The Robert Mollot Collection
Editors' Preface
The posthumous discovery in Bernard Lonergan's papers of his student
writings of the 1930s1 has led us to revise considerably our view of the
course of his life and career, and in particular of the place in it of the work
presented here in a new edition. For some time the assumption prevailed
that he had begun his academic life as a Thomist, with the five verbum arti-
cles marking the completion of this phase, and from that basis had gone
on to incorporate into his thinking developments of the seven centuries
that followed Thomas. But we know now that his interests in the 19305 were
economic, political, sociological, cultural, historical, religious, rather than
gnoseological and metaphysical. The latter aspects always figured largely in
his thought - and in 1927 he had expressed an initial interest, which he
never lost, in cognitional theory2 - but their context was found in thinkers
like Hegel and Marx and Spengler, and somewhat later Toynbee, rather
than in Aristotle and Thomas. The restoration of all things in Christ
(Ephesians 1.10) was closer to a motto for him than 'thoroughly under-
stand what it is to understand.' The human good proved to be more of a
1 A manila folder, which Lonergan numbered 713 in the organization of his
papers and labeled simply 'History.' It contains unpublished student writings
from 1935 on; we follow the custom of referring to it as File 713.
2 A letter Lonergan wrote to his Jesuit friend, Henry Smeaton, dated 20 June
(1927). See also Caring about Meaning: Patterns in the Life of Bernard Lonergan,
ed. Pierrot Lambert, Charlotte Tansey, Cathleen Going (Montreal: Thomas
More Institute, 1982) 45, 49, 51. (All letters referred to in these notes are to
be found in the Lonergan Archives. Letters identified only by their date are
from Lonergan to F. Crowe.)
Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan
viii Editors' Preface
magnet than was cognitional theory. It was in the social order that the res-
toration would take place and the human good be realized, so there was a
crying need for a summa sociological
All this emerges from examination of his student writings. In the hind-
sight they provide, we are able to discover this early interest running like a
thread through the period from the 1930s to the igSos, appearing in previ-
ously unnoticed ways in his writings and lectures. The need for a summa
sociologica translates nearly forty years later into general statements like the
following: 'There is the love that is loyalty to one's fellows: it reaches out
through kinsmen, friends, acquaintances, through all the bonds - cultural,
social, civil, economic, technological - of human cooperation, to unite
ever more members of the human race in the acceptance of a common lot,
in sharing a burden to be borne by all, in building a common future for
themselves and future generations.'4 It translates in a much more specific
way into - what may otherwise appear as a mere foible - his return to eco-
nomics in the last years of his life.5 For this is found to form a close unity
with his beginnings; the need remained what he had seen it to be fifty years
earlier, the dialectic of history working itself out in the life of everyone but
especially in the technological, economic, social, cultural, and religious
spheres of human endeavor.
Having said all this to put the present work in the perspective of Loner-
gan's life history I must complement it with an insistence on the founda-
tional character of this verbum study. There are those who would rate it as
the fundamental breakthrough in the history of his thought. Certainly, it
holds a key position in sequence with the two masterpieces that followed it.
If it is true that for a thorough understanding of Method in Theology^ we
3 'Panton Anakephalaiosis,' a paper in File 713 dated 28 April 1935, published in
Method: Journal of Lonergan Studies 9:2 (October 1991) 139-72, at 156.
4 'Variations in Fundamental Theology,' a lecture of 1973 at Trinity College,
Toronto, p. 10 of the autograph; see also p. 11 on 'the programs of eco-
nomic, social, and ecological reformers.' (The lecture was repeated with
some revisions at New Haven in 1974.)
5 This was his preoccupation from 1975 to 1983, while he was Visiting Distin-
guished Professor at Boston College; his courses there will be published as
volume 15 of the Collected Works. We speak of a 'return' because his interest
goes back to the 19305, and in 1944 he produced a manuscript 'Essay in Cir-
culation Analysis,' which figured largely in his Boston College courses.
6 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (London: Barton, Longman & Todd,
and New York: Herder and Herder, 1972; 2nd ed., 1973; reprint of 2nd ed.,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990, 1994, 1996).
The Robert Mollot Collection
ix Editors' Preface
must go back to Insight: A Study of Human Understanding,1 it is also true that
our understanding of Insight is greatly deepened by a grasp of the work on
verbum; to see that, we have only to realize that the simple phrase 'insight
and formulation,'8 which is so central to Insight, encapsulates in three
words the main point of the two hundred pages of verbum.
i Developing Acquaintance with Thomas Aquinas
So how did Lonergan get to the verbum study? To broaden the question,
what led him from the general background of his early interests to invest
eleven of the best years of his life (1938-49) in 'apprenticeship'9 to Thomas
Aquinas? The cause, it seems, was simply a happy accident. In the summer
of 1938 he had finished the regular course of Jesuit formation and was
awaiting the new academic year in order to proceed to Rome and begin, as
mandated by his religious superiors, doctorate studies in philosophy. We
do not know whether he had a specific topic in mind for a dissertation. We
do know that his particular interest at this time was the philosophy of his-
tory, and though he did not hope to focus on that area immediately,10 it
seems likely that he would look for something in the circle of his interests
at the time.
Unexpectedly, however, and for reasons that had to do with the needs
of the Gregorian University, where he was slated to teach on completion
of his doctorate, he was switched from philosophy to theology." In
consequence he arrived in Rome somewhat at a loss for a dissertation
topic, and so readily accepted a suggestion of Professor Charles Boyer
that he study a knotty question of divine grace in the writings of St Thom-
as.12 It was by this happy accident that Thomas came to dominate his
7 Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (London: Longmans,
Green & Co., and New York: Philosophical Library, 1957; 2nd ed., 1958; 5th
ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992).
8 Insight 298-302. Our references are to the 1992 edition.
9 I borrow the term from William Mathews, his biographer, who, however,
applies it more widely: 'Lonergan's Apprenticeship 1904-46 ...,' Lonergan
Workshop^ (1993) 43-87-
10 Letter to Henry Keane, his Provincial Superior, written from Milltown Park,
Ireland, 10 August 1938: 'As philosophy of history is as yet not recognised as
the essential branch of philosophy that it is, I hardly expect to have it
assigned me as my subject during the biennium [of doctoral studies].'
11 Bernard Lonergan, A Second Collection 266 (in 'Insight Revisited').
12 Notes made by Lonergan in preparation for the defense of his dissertation,
Lonergan Archives, Batch I-A, Folder 16.
Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan
x Editors' Preface
thinking for several years, while he finished his dissertation (1938-40),13
rewrote it for publication (1941-42),14 began that research into the
Thomist intelligere which I will presently describe, and so came to write
the verbum articles that became the present volume.
What was Lonergan's acquaintance with Thomas in the fall of 1938? It
does not seem to have been very extensive or profound. The philosophy
taught at Heythrop College, England (1926-29), was not Thomist.15 His
regency (1930-33), a period of teaching between philosophy and theology
that was part of Jesuit training, was not a time of study. And when he was
free to return to study in the summer of 1933, it was Augustine he worked
on.16 At that point he did finally turn to Thomas and found him better
than he had been led to believe,17 but there is no evidence of the fascina-
tion Thomas held for him after his doctoral work.
But after two months of theology in Montreal at the College of the
Immaculate Conception (where he was later to begin his career as profes-
sor of theology), his religious superiors transferred him to Rome to con-
tinue his basic theology (1933-37), and go on to a doctorate in philosophy
at the Gregorian University.18
New influences now came into play. There was, to begin with, an article
by Peter Hoenen (it is just possible that Lonergan had already read this
before leaving Montreal):
In !933 I had been much struck by an article of Peter Hoenen's in
Gregorianum arguing that intellect abstracted from phantasm not only
13 He had finished his dissertation in 1940 and was waiting in Rome to defend it
when the war took a sudden turn and his superiors at one day's notice
ordered him back to Canada. In the turmoil of the times he did not defend
the thesis until 1943, when the Gregorian University authorized the College
of the Immaculate Conception in Montreal to hear his defense. The doctor-
ate itself was not granted until 1946, when he was able to submit the required
copies of his dissertation to the Gregorian.
14 Bernard Lonergan, 'St. Thomas' Thought on Gratia Operans,' Theological Stud-
ies 2 (1941) 289-324; 3 (1942) 69-88, 375-402, 533-78. Published in book
form as Grace and Freedom: Operative Grace in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas,
ed. J. Patout Burns (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, and New York:
Herder and Herder, 1971).
15 'Insight Revisited' 263.
16 Letter to Henry Keane, January 1935, p. 3.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.: 'At this juncture FT Hingston [then Provincial Superior] paid a flying
visit to the Immaculate where I had begun my theology. I was to go to Rome.
I was to do a biennium in philosophy.'
The Robert Mollot Collection