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In this book, Matthew Ogilvie
sets out to explore, clarify and explain “systematics”
as a functional speciality within Bernard Lonergan’s Method
in Theology. In other words, Ogilvie seeks to explain the
methodology of systematic theology as proposed by Lonergan. In
taking on this task he strives to understand one of the more
important figures of latter 20th century Catholic theology. In
a way, Ogilvie works on doing for systematics what Robert Doran
has done for dialectic within theology.
To ground his task of exploring systematics, Ogilvie faces the intimidating task of accounting for a considerable number of foundational matters. So the book begins with chapters that: (1) introduce briefly Lonergan and his work, (2) explore the impossible conditions under which Lonergan found early 20th century theology afflicted, (3) examine the shift from older, outdated “classicist” models of science, philosophy and history towards their modern forms, and then (4) outline the changes and developments that were necessary to bring Catholic theology into the modern context. Ogilvie accounts for these matters with both clarity and precision. The early chapters of this books thus double as a good general introduction to Lonergan that would serve well any student who wanted to know more about this theologian.
Ogilvie’s next chapter on “Lonergan’s Intentionality Analysis” is not only a good foundation for understanding systematics but it serves well as an explanation of Lonergan’s cognitional theory. Insight shares an honour with Hawking’s A Brief History of Time as being one of those works that many people feel compelled to read, but have trouble getting past page 29. Creditably, Ogilvie provides both an orderly exposition of Lonergan and a number of useful examples that combine to provide an accessible coverage of just is taught within Lonergan’s cognitional theory. In particular, Ogilvie deals at much length with the act of insight. It is hard to find a better coverage of the matter and the reader who has any doubt over one’s understanding of what Lonergan means by "insight" will have many questions answered here.
Ogilvie then proceeds to an overview of Lonergan’s theological method before he proceeds to chapters specifically on systematics. One suspects that an experienced Lonergan scholar who wanted to know more only about systematics could skip immediately to chapter seven, though one would miss out on some illustrations, background material and responses to critics and misinterpreters [one notes that the contributors to Looking at Lonergan’s Method are subjected to sustained attack].
Driving Lonergan’s idea of systematics, and Ogilvie’s explanation of it, are (i) the distinction between understanding and judgement, proposed by Aristotle, emphasised by Aquinas and taken up strongly by Lonergan and (ii) Vatican I’s affirmation of the human capacity to understand something of the divine mysteries both through analogy with what we humanly know and by their interconnection between each other and the end of humanity. To that end, Ogilvie spends chapter seven explaining much of the process of systematics, chapter eight on understanding by analogy and chapter nine on understanding by interconnections. Ogilvie explains systematics as the constructive presentation of Christian mysteries in ways that make them intelligible within our contemporary culture. Systematics thus enables the theologian to present a “coherent and grounded statement of Christian faith’s meanings and values” to the modern world (172). On this function of systematics, it becomes clear that Ogilvie presents Lonergan as part of a growing, developing and continuing tradition, traced especially through the First Vatican Council (DS 3016/TCF 132) and Thomas Aquinas (Quaestiones Quodlibetales, IV,q9a3 [18]).
The chapters on analogy and interconnections are particularly vital and a great contribution to Lonergan studies. As one finds in Method in Theology, Lonergan identifies systematics’ function with analogy and interconnections – as affirmed in Vatican I’s Dei Filius. That much is true but neither Lonergan, nor the Council, really clarify what is meant by analogy and interconnections.
Ogilvie embarks on an extensive uncovering of what Lonergan may mean by analogy (and the considerable evidence he assembles suggests that his interpretation is accurate). He shows how Lonergan, especially in his earlier writings, used Thomist forms of analogy but that he later went beyond specifically Thomist analogies, to develop and use his own forms of analogical understanding. As found within the “notion of being” (187) Lonergan transcended scholastic distinctions of attribution [proportion] and proportion [proportionality] by introducing a new paradigm of analogy based on the knowing processes of human inquiry.
This latter notion of analogy means, as Ogilvie points out (219), that one is freed from ties to particular forms of relations in analogates. This leaves one free to discover the way that a notion penetrates other objects in whatever way one may find that penetration. Thus, one is not bound to the relation forms proposed by others. Rather, by discovering analogical understanding within the very operations of human intellect, one is not dependent on others, but a person enjoys full cognitional independence. In this way, Ogilvie discovers within Lonergan a way for the theologian to be not only faithful to one's sources, but also to enjoy genuine independence. That point evidently contributes to the Vatican’s discomfort with analogy that we note below.
While understanding by interconnections is perhaps better known, Ogilvie explains in detail what Lonergan means by this understanding. The goal of this understanding is an arrangement of the many teachings we have about God into such manner so that one "truth" may be apprehended as the ground of some second "truth.” Importantly, Ogilvie presentation of Lonergan means that the interconnections are not merely "rhetorical parallelisms" through which we can construct models of relationships between the divine mysteries. Rather, they reveal real relationships between the mysteries that are intelligible and accessible to human intellect.
Together with Ogilvie's reflections on analogy, this chapter shows how systematics presents a unified understanding of the mysteries that makes the mysteries assimilable by human intellect.
I mentioned before that Ogilvie attends to a number of Lonergan’s critics. He despatches them with strong evidence – sometimes savagely so. Having said that, it seems that Ogilvie deals only with those who actually criticised Lonergan, rather than those who today may express reservations about his value. One would have in mind the postmodernist movement that is all but dominant in many Catholic circles. To say that Ogilvie does not deal with postmodernism and its possible criticisms of Lonergan is an understatement. Ogilvie deals only with postmodernism is passing fashion, and only to dismiss it as a viable option for Christian theology. With Doran, he labels it “deconstructive normlessness” and he cites the Sokal Social Text hoax as a key example of how critically based understanding can be traded for “lazy tolerance and deconstruction” and how meaningless nonsense can be published in place of scholarship (305). Certainly, the Social Text episode showed a stupid mistake on the part of some postmodernists. Yet one is not sure if this event is cited as an isolated incident or an exemplar of the wider postmodern movement.
Ogilvie may want to clarify this point in future publications. But what is the relation of Lonergan’s systematics to the postmodern movement, which as Ogilvie readily acknowledges, is the dominant intellectual force of our time (304-6)? In the first place, Ogilvie rejects postmodernism because of his evident admiration for modern science and its manifold methodological achievements. In discussing the shift from classical (and classicist) horizons to modern horizons, Ogilvie discusses most often the shift from classical to modern science. One observes also that while Ogilvie repeatedly emphasizes Lonergan’s efforts to bring theology up to the standards of modern science, philosophy and history, it is science that is Ogilvie’s (and apparently Lonergan’s) touchstone and standard for judgement. That would explain Ogilvie’s citation of Sokal as brute fact – it is as if he is saying science is right, postmodernism is wrong, and we should get on with life. One also notes that, like modern science, Ogilvie presents a Lonergan perspective that is totally realist. Both in cognitional theory and theology, Lonergan and Ogilvie share the scientific worldview that there is an external universe of reality and that this universe can be known, albeit imperfectly, by the attentive, intelligent and critical mind. When Ogilvie, Lonergan and the great mass of modern scientists hold forcefully to a real world that exists independently of human minds, it is easy to understand their impatience with a movement that embraces claims like Derrida’s pontification that that there is no reality outside the text. That is not to say that Ogilvie ignores the reality of social influences upon knowledge. With Lonergan he acknowledges these, but he regards the external reality as normative – not the knower. Thus, rather than a relativism of knowledge, Ogilvie embraces what Lonergan elsewhere calls a “perspectivisim” by which variations in knowing are acknowledged, but they are subjected to critical scrutiny.
One would also say that one of the basic inconsistencies between Ogilvie and postmodernism would be the differences between constructivity and deconstruction. Systematics, as Ogilvie presents it, is an eminently constructive affair, building upon past achievement and creatively, even pro-creatively crafting something that was not previously there. Postmodernism, on the other hand, is most renowned for its deconstructive aspects. And, to pursue a metaphor, postmodernism seems as if it would explain a flower by pulling it to bits and presenting us with a neat analysis of dismembered petals. Ogilvie, on the other hand, presents systematics as an activity by which one takes the seed of revelation and nurtures it in the right environment so as to produce a beautiful (and intact) flower.
I should also mention some further points of contention, even controversy. In his discussion of analogy and interconnections, Ogilvie criticizes Anthony Kelly’s position on analogy and interconnection (233). This criticism is made delicately, and it is evident from other citations that Ogilvie holds much respect for Kelly’s work on the topic. Yet Ogilvie is clear in his disagreement with Kelly. Ogilvie holds that a useful analogical understanding precedes understanding from interconnections. When Ogilvie makes the point initially (233) one is puzzled as to whether he is making a merely academic point or just playing semantics. Yet one suspects, when Ogilvie takes to task the Vatican, that this is more than mere word play. Again, Ogilvie emphasizes Vatican I’s affirmation of both analogical and interconnecting understanding – that double approach is critical for his account of Lonergan. Yet in pursuing Vatican I, Ogilvie makes the point that The Second Vatican Council, The Catechism of the Catholic Church and Pope John-Paul II have all misrepresented or ignored Vatican I’s teaching (292-5). In this criticism, Ogilvie’s work takes a pastoral turn seen in a later statement (302). Without pursuing an analogy with what humans naturally know, Ogilvie would regard theology as being inaccessible to everyday Christians. One supposes that the rigorous pursuit of logical interconnections without connecting doctrines with the lives and experiences of people would be the failure of a Church to embrace the analogical dimension of systematic theology. Ogilvie does not say it in this work, but one suspects that this would be his criticism of Humane Vitae, an encyclical that did much to affirm logical connections between procreation and union, but did nothing to express this teaching in terms meaningful to people – with the disastrous pastoral results that followed.
One also observes that in responding to her apparent misunderstanding of Lonergan, Ogilvie lays a serious charge against Karen Armstrong – author of the widely circulated A History of God. Ogilvie regards Armstrong’s misunderstanding of Lonergan to be the result of an isolated quotation, taken out of context from a book by Tracy. While Ogilvie makes no mention of plagiarism, he certainly presents the evidence of something along the lines of the work of Stephen Ambrose that is currently under close scrutiny.
Having said much about what is in the book, I might say that I was disappointed not to see a historical development of Lonergan’s thought. Ogilvie says much about Lonergan’s other works, but one does not find in this book the tracing of the historical path that Lonergan’s work took. Perhaps such a task would have resulted in too large a book, or it has been done already, as in Boly’s The Road to Lonergan’s Method in Theology.
By way of criticism one could also say that while Ogilvie’s work is a good book about Lonergan, it is almost exclusively about Lonergan. Ogilvie’s own contributions to systematic theology are kept largely hidden. One may get an impression of what Ogilvie would write – or will write in future works when he notes that Lonergan wrote for an audience of the 1960s-1970s. In at least acknowledging the presence of postmodernism, Ogilvie proposes that Lonergan cannot be left in stasis, but that new developments in systematics must be brought to bear, lest systematic theology descend into another period of anachronism and decay. I would, for one, hope that in future works, Ogilvie will explore new developments and new insights which should, if successful, provide a dynamic contribution to the method of systematic theology.
In conclusion, this book is a clear, accurate and relatively easy-to-read exploration of Lonergan on systematics. It is the product of a deep thinker who can nonetheless communicate his ideas with clarity. I would recommend it to anyone who wishes an in-depth understanding of Lonergan on systematic theology, and the early chapters are recommended highly for a good general introduction to Lonergan.
Reviewed by Yuri Josef Koszarycz, Senior Lecturer (School of Theology, McAuley Campus), Australian Catholic University
