A New Exodus?: Method and Theology Today

This collection of essays examines a series of contemporary methodological issues in theology, in conversation with Bernard Lonergan's proposal in Method in Theology on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary. The 'New Exodus' in prospect is a passage from the current state of theology to a more effective future. Fifty years ago, Bernard Lonergan, SJ, sought to propose a new architectonic for theological thinking that could replace the antiquated structures of Scholastic thought to provide a different kind of unity for theological inquiry. Lonergan’s alternative was to go behind the procedures of the natural sciences to the underlying operations of the human mind that constitute the dynamic structure of human knowing and doing: attention and recall; inquiry, insight, and formulation; reflection and judgment; deliberation and decision. Grounding method in the empirically verified, dynamic structure of these operations, he provided a rationale for theology’s post-classicist, historically-minded re-conception of itself as a methodical form of inquiry.