The Triune God: Systematics

by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Daniel Monsour (Editor), Robert M. Doran (Editor)

Buried for more than forty years in a Latin text written for seminarians at the Gregorian University in Rome, Bernard Lonergan’s important work on systematic theology, De Deo Trino : Pars systematica , is presented here for the first time in a facing-page edition that includes the original Latin along with a precise English translation. De Deo Trino , or The Triune God , the second part of which is the pars systematica, continues a particular strand in trinitarian theology, namely, the tradition that appeals to a psychological analogy for understanding trinitarian processions and relations.
The psychological analogy dates back to St Augustine but was significantly developed by St Thomas Aquinas. Lonergan advances it to a new level of understanding by bringing to it his extensive exploration of cognitional theory and deliberative process. Suggestions for a further development of the analogy appear in Lonergan’s late work, but these cannot be fully comprehended and implemented without the background provided in this volume. With this definitive translated edition, one of the masterpieces of systematic theology, will at last be available to contemporary scholars.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology

880 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2006

About the author

Fr. Bernard Joseph Frances Lonergan, SJ, CC (Ph.D., Theology, Gregorian University (Rome), 1939; B.A., University of London, 1930), was an ordained Roman Catholic priest of the Jesuit order. As an economist and philosopher-theologian in the Thomist tradition, he taught at Loyola College (Montreal) (now Concordia University), Regis College (now federated within the University of Toronto), the Pontifical Gregorian University, Harvard University, and Boston College. He was named by Pope Paul VI one of the original members of the International Theological Commission.

He is the author of Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972), which established what he called the Generalized Empirical Method (GEM). The University of Toronto Press is in process of publishing his work in a projected 25-volume collection edited by staff at the Lonergan Research Institute at Regis College.

"Lonergan is considered by many intellectuals to be the finest philosophic thinker of the 20th century."
—TIME Magazine

Reviews

[Ejansand · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m very much a completionist when it comes to books, so I’ll be upfront and say I’m logging this a read before I’ve finished all of the various appendices that follow the main texts, but even as I read through those really all I can say about this book is “Wow! This is great!”

As I spent the majority of a semester working through the text and its sources, as well as writing several papers on Lonergan’s systematic thinking on the Trinity, I feel I can say that as comfortable as that might make me with the text I definitely need to read it again, and again, and probably again after that to get the whole of it. Lonergan is an incredibly good - and original - reader and interpreter of Aquinas; though this book is in the old-school scholastic “manual” form, actually reading it is about as far from a manual-like experience as you can get. In fact, the manual style actually makes Lonergan’s thinking easier to follow because it provides a) a clear outline and b) groundwork (via theorems, theses, and definitions) that facilitates a deeper understanding of the incredibly dense material in here.

Now, on to the actual content. This book is the second part of a two part course Lonergan taught on the Trinity while at the Gregorian in Rome (the first part a dogmatic segment, the second a systematic one), and it seeks to advance an analogical conception of the Trinity rooted in the psychology analogy as sketched both in the broader tradition and, much more deeply, in Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology. Though a summary is not really possible, the best way to give an account of the work is this - Lonergan advances what Aquinas implies in his use of the psychological analogy, connects his (Lonergan’s) cognitional theory with Aquinas’s, and shows how this path offers a way towards an analogical conception of the Trinity that is grounded in Tradition of the Church and offers a glimpse “but through a glass darkly” into the infinite mystery of God’s Trinitarian Life. But, as there always must be when considering the mystery of the Trinity, there’s so much more here that helps work towards that end. The philosophical legwork is a masterclass in itself, and the Appendices offer painstaking accounts of Aquinas’s metaphysics which should really be published and studied on their own. At this point I’m waxing poetic about this text, but man, it was amazing! I look forward to reading the “Doctrines” segment of Lonergan’s course to see how he works the parts together.

A final note - you can tell in reading “Systematics” that Lonergan did not treat his theological work as a mere intellectual enterprise. It wasn’t for him or his gratification, but to increase our (that is, his reader’s and student’s) devotion and love for the Triune God. This is something I find rather lacking in a lot of academic theology, and it’s something anyone studying theology would be wise to learn from.

[Pierre Whalon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astonishing textbook on the Trinity... stunningly original but standing on the shoulders of Aquinas as well.