Thomas E. Hosinski "Lonergan and a Process Understanding of God"

From Religion and Culture: Essays in Honor of Bernard Lonergan, S.J., ed. Timothy P. Fallon, S.J., and Philip Boo Riley, Albany, State University of New York Press, 1986, 63-78. Fr. Hosinski argues that the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Bernard J. F. Lonergan are fundamentally compatible. The text of his dissertation defending that proposition is available elsewhere on this site.

To speak of Lonergan and process theology in the same breath usually signals a debate. The discussion, we suspect beforehand, will compare, evaluate, judge and finally side with one against the other. Certainly almost all philosophers and theologians who have addressed this topic have understood Lonergan’s philosophy of God to be at odds with the interpretation of God presented by Alfred North Whitehead or Charles Hartshorne. It is difficult to disagree with this stance—and difficult to envision any other type of discussion—so long as we confine ourselves to Lonergan’s conscious intention, his stated philosophy of God in Insight, and his own judgment: in Lonergan’s own mind, his philosophy of God is at odds with a process understanding of God.[1].

Despite this state of affairs, I intend to address this topic in a most unexpected way. I will not directly compare Lonergan’s philosophy of God to Whitehead’s,[2], nor will I debate their relative merits. Instead, my concern will be entirely with the inner dynamic and the implications of Lonergan’s own thought. In my estimation, the implications of the important developments in Lonergan’s post-Insight thought ought to have an effect on Lonergan’s philosophy of God. Although they have been applied to the context in which the philosophy of God is done, they have yet to be applied fully to the understanding of God that results from the inquiry. Reflection on this will lead me to advance the novel and unexpected thesis that Lonergan’s thought can be a resource for a process understanding of God.

Although this thesis certainly goes beyond what Lonergan himself intended and is evening opposition to his own stated judgment, I hope to show that the dynamic of this thought and the pursuit of his insights can lead legitimately in this direction. Moreover, such an approach might help to persuade both those influence by Lonergan’s thought and those influenced by process thought that it is actually possible for them to have collaborative discussions.

Since the thesis that Lonergan’s thought can give rise to a process understanding of God is novel and unexpected, I must begin by discussing the grounds which support such an approach to Lonergan’s thought.

The tasks of the philosophy of God and the functional specialty of systematics are distinct but, as Lonergan has argued persuasively, this does not mean that they ought to be separated.[3]. In fact, as Lonergan points out the philosophical and the religious questions of God are related fundamentally in several ways. Stemming from a common root in what, on a theological analysis, can be called “religious experience,” all the questions of God are trying to discover the ultimate ground and final end of our experience as subjects.[4]. The questions are distinct because of the contexts in which the inquiry is pursued, but even so they are cumulative and the strictly philosophical questions lead into the strictly religious questions of God.[5].

The strictly philosophical questions of God ask about the ultimate ground of our experience. They arise when we reflect on the implications of our subjective experience as it has been philosophically been analyzed and understood. They are “wondering” questions, which begin with the structures of experience and ask what make our experience, so understood, possible. Thus reflecting on the implications of the human subject’s cognitional experience, Lonergan raises the questions concerning the ultimate ground of the intelligibility and the contingency of the universe.[6]. Reflecting on the existential subject’s moral intentionality, Lonergan raises the question concerning the ultimate ground of value.[7]. But the philosophical questions of God do not end here. As is implicit especially in the moral question of God, the philosopher can also ask about the final meaning of human experience and the universe. In this form the question becomes more “anxious” than “wondering,” more existentially acute. It is moved by craving for importance, for meaning, for purpose, for fulfillment. The “anxious” question is distinct from the “wondering” questions, yet they are related since both ask about the ultimate ground of the universe in different ways. Whereas the wondering questions ask about the ultimate ground in the sense of wanting to know what makes experience possible, the anxious question asks what experience means relative to that ultimate ground; it asks about the character of that ground.

Here the final philosophical question of God merges with the strictly religious question of God, which always asks about meaning and fulfillment. In the anxious, unfulfilled form, the strictly religious question asks, “Is there anyone or anything I can love without restriction?” And when we examine religious experience, we find religion preoccupied with discovering the divine character and the consequent meaning of our experience. As Lonergan expresses it, the strictly religious question of God (in the fulfilled form) emerges from the experience of being in love without restriction and asks, “with whom am I in love?"[8]” Thus the questions of God are cumulative; the philosophical questions are drawn to and merge with the strictly religious questions of God.

Furthermore, Lonergan has argued that the ground of the answers to all these questions is to be found in religious experience.[9]. Faith, the knowledge born of religious love, answers our anxious questions in experience because in faith we apprehend a boundless love poured into our hearts; we experience the character of the God we seek. But religious experience also discovers in itself the answers to the “wondering” questions raised by reflection on our cognitional and moral intentionality. This may be a “clouded revelation.”[10] (because the subject lacks the proper differentiation of consciousness), but religious experience brings with it a conviction regarding the ground of the universe, so that even if we do not know how, cognitively and reflectively, nevertheless we know with our hearts that God is the answer to all questions for intelligence, reflection, and deliberation concerning the ultimate ground of our experience. Thus, Lonergan can argue, in actuality the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are one and the same, and so the philosophy of God and the functional specialty of systematics, though distinct, ought not to be separated.[11].

Now if all of this is the case, then it seems to me that it ought to have some effect on the idea of God. If the ground of the answers to the cognitional and moral questions of God is to be found in religious experience, then certainly it seems reasonable to hold that the testimony of religious experience ought to have an important role in the understanding of God that emerges from those inquiries. If the questions of God are related, then it would seem that the answers to those questions, as expressed in ideas, would also be related. Moreover, if the questions of God are cumulative, then it would seem that any answers proposed to the “wondering” philosophical questions are in an important way incomplete until they have been united with and complemented by the understanding of God derived from religious experience. The very idea of God itself ought to reflect the fact that the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus are one and the same.

Lonergan, I believe, has pointed in this direction. In a brief but rich and tantalizing set of remarks, he has shown how the testimony of religious experience transforms the idea of God as it emerges from reflection on our moral intentionality. “Without faith the originating value is man and the terminal value is the human good man brings about."[12]” But when a subject has been transformed by religious experience, when the subject’s values have been transvalued by the supreme value known in faith,

originating value is divine light and love, while terminal value is the whole universe. So the human good becomes absorbed in an all-encompassing good. Where before an account of the human good related men to one another and to nature, now human concern reaches beyond man’s world to God and God’s world.[13].

In short, religious conversion leads to moral conversion and moral conversion reveals to us the supreme value in the God with whom we are in love. Cognitive reflection on this experience enables us to understand that God is the originating and supreme instance of moral consciousness and that we find value in the world and in our moral intentionality because both we and all our fellow creatures are God’s terminal values. Conceiving of God and the world in this way, Lonergan states, has certain implications.

To conceive of God as originating value and the world as terminal value implies that God too is self-transcending and that the world is the fruit of his self-transcendence, the expression and manifestation of his benevolence and beneficence, his glory. . . . To say that God created the world for his glory is to say that he created it not for his sake but for ours. He made us in his image, for our authenticity consists in being like him, in self-transcending, in being origins of value, in true love.[14].

In cognitive reflection on what we know in faith, we gradually come to understand that the self-transcending moral intentionality found in every human subject has its ground and fulfillment in the self-transcendence of God. Our subjectivity is in God’s image.

Lonergan’s analysis of God as the supreme self-transcending subject implies that the idea of God is to be conceived by analogy with the structure we discover in our own subjectivity as that structure is enlightened by the testimony of religious experience. I am in complete agreement with this approach, but when I turn to Lonergan’s discussion of God in Insight, I do not find this approach exemplified there.

Although he provided a new context, Lonergan never revised the content of the notion of God presented in Insight.[15]. Yet Lonergan’s brief discussion of God in Method in Theology leads me to believe that it is a fruitful line of inquiry to consider how the post-Insight developments in Lonergan’s thought might affect not just the context for the philosophy of God but also the content of the notion of God itself. Such a development of Lonergan’s thought can be faithful to his methodological insights and might bring greater coherence and unity to the idea of God as it emerges from Lonergan’s philosophy. My reasons for suggesting this line of inquiry can be presented most easily by first directing attention to several methodological issues.

First, it is important to notice that when Lonergan discusses the question of God as it arises from an analysis of our moral intentionality he actually raises a double question, or a question with both objective and subjective sides. He asks for the ultimate ground of the value we feel in the world (the objective side) and for the ultimate ground of the subject’s moral intentionality (the subjective side).[16]. Because he asks the subjective side of the question, Lonergan comes to conceive of God by analogy with the structure of human moral self-transcendence: God is discovered to be the supreme self-transcending subject. But when discussing the question of God as it arises from the two cognitional questions, Lonergan raises only the objective side.[17]. He asks for the ultimate ground of the intelligibility and the contingent existence of the universe.[18]. But he does not ask for the ultimate ground of the subject’s ability to understand the intelligible or to make virtually unconditioned judgments of fact. It is clear that the subjective sides of these questions are implicit in Lonergan’s thought. But if we raise them explicitly, it might lead us to reflect on the ultimate implications of understanding God analogically by reference to our experience of ourselves as knowing subjects. I will pursue the importance of this point below.

Second, it is important to notice that the two cognitional questions of God are metaphysical in character. Lonergan explicitly asks for the ultimate ground of the intelligible, contingent universe. Yet the analysis designed to answer these questions is expressed only in cognitional terms (concluding to the existence of the unrestricted act of understanding). Lonergan does not express these questions or pursue his analysis in terms of his own metaphysical elements. It might prove interesting to consider what would result if this cognitional analysis were complemented by an expression and an analysis in Lonergan’s metaphysical terms as well. Furthermore, since we are attempting to discover the metaphysical characteristics of God and God’s relation to the world, it seems methodologically reasonable to ask that this be done.

A third methodological issue concerns Lonergan’s procedure when, in Insight, he attempts to show that the unrestricted act of understanding is properly called “God.” It may help to set this in context. If we carefully examine Lonergan’s procedure in Chapter XIX, we find that in the first eight sections of the chapter.[19] Lonergan prepares the ground, raises the questions, and performs the analysis which conceives of the transcendent and unrestricted act of understanding as the ultimate ground required by the intelligibility and contingent existence of the universe. Having established this, Lonergan attempts to show in section nine that the unrestricted act of understanding is properly called “God.”[20]” In light of Lonergan’s later discussion of the philosophical and religious questions of God, let us ask what Lonergan is attempting to do methodologically at this point. It seems to me that he is no longer addressing the strictly philosophical questions of God; in the new context provided by his post-Insight thought, these questions are effectively met by the first eight sections of Chapter XIX.[21] Rather in section nine[22] Lonergan seems to be trying to answer the strictly religious question of God by deriving the character of God from the implications of the philosophical conceptualization of God as unrestricted act of understanding. Yet Lonergan’s procedure in section nine seems to be at variance with his procedure in discussing God in Method in Theology and this suggests that a procedure different from the one Lonergan actually follows in Insight might be possible within the framework of Lonergan’s thought.

In Method in Theology Lonergan reflects on the implications of religious experience in order to conceptualize the character of God in relation to moral intentionality. He develops an understanding that presents God as exhibiting or exemplifying the same structure found in human subjects. God, like human subjects, is originating value and the world and human subjects are God’s terminal values. Certainly we could understand God to be transcendent in the perfection with which God illustrates this structure: God is perfectly related to all terminal values by means of divine feelings, whereas we are severely limited in this regard. Yet neither the perfection nor the transcendence of God prevents Lonergan from conceiving of God as exemplifying the basic structure or moral intentionality and self-transcendence.

Yet when we examine how Lonergan conceives of God in section nine of Insight, it is clear that his discussion immediately makes God a radical exception to structure of cognitional process. This is obvious in the first major implication Lonergan derives from the unrestricted act of understanding. He argues that since the unrestricted act of understanding must be invulnerable as understanding, it must also be unconditional knowing.[23]. The observation I would make here is that this argument does not depend on Lonergan’s own brilliant analysis of cognitional process, which ahs shown that knowing is always a complex process of distinct acts and operations. Understanding is not knowing but is always a grasping of potential or possible intelligibilities that may have relevance for knowledge. Knowing, in contrast, always requires a reflective grasp of the possible intelligibilities as given in experience. Knowing, in short, always requires judgment; and judgment rests on encounter in experience. But when he comes to God, Lonergan makes God the radical exception to this structure. Unlike all cognitional structure with which we are familiar, in God understanding and knowing are identical and occur in a simple act.

I would argue that instead of making God a radical exception to the affirmed structure of cognitional process, one could pursue an understanding of God and God’s knowledge as supremely illustrating this structure, just as Lonergan did in the face of the moral question of God. Such an approach would have the merit of employing generalized empirical method, utilizing the affirmed structure of cognitional process, subjectivity, and being, and calling upon the testimony of religious experience just as Lonergan does in Method in Theology. Generalized empirical method would not allow us to invoke exceptions to what has been discovered in our previous inquiries. Rather, the starting point would be that we have no reason to think that God’s knowledge and (God’s being), transcendent and perfect though God may be, is ontologically different from the structure we find in our knowing. After all, the entire philosophical conception of God is based on the assumption that we may conceive of God by analogy with the structure we discover in human subjective experience. If God’s transcendence is taken to mean that God must be an exception to the structure of human cognitional process and becoming, then how can we ever be sure at what point to invoke the exception? It seems far more reasonable to assume that God is not an exception to the structure—though God may very well be transcendent in the perfection of how God illustrates it—and to try to work out an understanding of God in these terms. Moreover, such an approach would allow us to unify Lonergan’s understanding of God as derived (in Method in Theology) from reflection on moral experience with an understanding of God derived from reflection on cogntional experience. We could then understand how God is the supreme illustration of all levels of our subjective experience.

There is another feature of Lonergan’s development of the notion of God that I must consider since it would seem to preclude any process conception of God. This has to do with the attribute of perfection and what is derived from it. After having shown that the unrestricted act of understanding can be understood to be the primary being, Lonergan goes on to argue that “the primary being would be without any defect or lack or imperfection.[24].” But later in the analysis, when Lonergan turns to the relation between the primary and the secondary intelligibles (or the relation between God and the world), he argues that “the perfect primary being does not develop, for it is without defect or lack or imperfection.[25].” The clear presupposition of this argument is that development is inherently a “defect or lack or imperfection.” Yet I believe it is possible to argue that this presupposition can find no ground in Lonergan’s own metaphysics.

In the climactic moment of Lonergan’s metaphysics, there occurs the insight into the isomorphism of knowing and the known. The ontological structure of being is discovered to be isomorphic with the affirmed structure of cognitional process. This results in a metaphysics of being understood as a dynamic process of becoming.[26]. The ontological elements conceive of each actuality as a process, an emerging act of form developing from potency.[27]. Moreover, Lonergan’s cosmology, the world view of emergent probability, envisions the universe as a whole as a process of self-transcendent development.[28]. The affirmed structure of being in Lonergan’s metaphysics is a dynamic process of becoming, a process of development. This metaphysics offers no ground that I can find for holding that development per se is inherently an imperfection. This presupposition of Aristotelian-Thomist metaphysics appears to be at odds with the implications of Lonergan’s own metaphysics. Moreover, God’s transcendence and perfection do not demand this presupposition; in the understanding of God Lonergan worked out in Method in Theology, God’s transcendence and perfection are shown not by making God a radical exception to the self-transcending structure discovered in human subjectivity, but by having God supremely illustrate that structure.

Thus it seems to me that it is possible to develop an approach to the understanding of God that differs from the one Lonergan actually took in Insight but which is in accord with the implications of his later thought. since I have argued, however, that the notion of God must also be expressed in terms of Lonergan’s metaphysics, I must first outline a reformulation of Lonergan’s ontology that includes the most important developments of his post-Insight thought. This will make it possible to outline a process understanding of God based solely on Lonergan’s own thought.

One of the hallmarks of Lonergan’s post-Insight thought is the attention he devoted to the fourth level of the human subject, the level of “rational self-consciousness,” the level on which the human subject deliberates, evaluates, decides, and acts.[29]. This fourth level, Lonergan argues, sublates the first three levels of empirical, intelligent, and rational consciousness. But even as Lonergan is speaking of this sublation and the emergence of the “existential subject” as “human consciousness at its fullest,” he notes that this fourth level emerges and sublates the first three “when the already acting subject confronts his world and adverts to his own acting in it.[30].” The importance of this remark for my present concern emerges when we consider Lonergan’s discussion of feelings and value in Method in Theology.

Lonergan distinguishes between non-intentional states and trends (“feeling” such as fatigue or irritability for the former and hunger or thirst for the latter) and intentional responses (“feelings” such as joy, sorrow, love, hatred, tenderness, or veneration).[31]. Intentional responses relate us to objects in terms of apprehended values. Such a response has two elements: the recognition of value (which is feeling’s “absolute” element), and the preferential ranking and selection of values (which is feeling’s “relative” element).[32]. Decision is the making of a judgment of value, the selection of which value we shall attempt to actualize. From our decisions flows our conduct.[33].

It is important to note that this fourth level of human subjectivity is driven toward the actualization of value by the presence in the subject of the transcendental notion of value.[34]. This notion is an orientation in the subject toward the good, and it is the urgency of this orientation that calls, leads, or draws the subject to self-transcendence. Thus just as the first three levels of human subjectivity are driven by the immanence in the subject of the notion of being, so is the fourth level driven by the immanence in the subject of the notion of value. Further, since the fourth level sublates and unifies the first three, so does the notion of value sublate the notion of being. If we consider this in light of Lonergan’s ontological element of finality, we can say that the notion of being is the presence of finality in knowing, and the notion of value is the presence of finality in our deciding and acting.

Lonergan is clearly aware that he is presenting the ideal possibility of how our knowing and acting can be unified.[35]. As I pointed out above, Lonergan recognizes that before ever the subject can attempt such rational selfconsciousness the subject is already acting in the world. If acting can only be understood as the result of a decision to pursue the actualization of some value selected on the basis of feelings, then clearly such a process goes on without benefit of reflective knowing in all of us much of the time. Lonergan himself notes that long before rational consciousness differentiated itself, feelings apprehended values and that feelings were expressed in and evoked by symbols.[36]. This implies that in our actual experience the existential level of subjectivity is prior to the cognitional levels.[37].

My point in reviewing this is that it can be generalized and related to Lonergan’s ontology. If the human subject acts on the basis of a decision to pursue some value, apprehended and selected by means of feelings, then we can argue that “decision” occurs very often without the benefit of judgment in the sense of reflective judgment. If we can further admit (as Lonergan does in Insight.[38]) that animals exhibit emotion and conation, we have a basis for generalizing the notions of value, feelings, purpose, and decision beyond the specifically human case. If we were also convinced that this whole area of our experience is so important that it must be generalized and reflected in our ontology (because the notion of value sublates the notion of being), then we would try to connect it integrally with the ontological elements of potency, form, act, and finality. But first we would recognize that subjectivity itself must be generalized so that each ontological act is understood to be a subject. This is necessary because we can only understand feelings, responses based on the grasping of value, selection among values, and the formation of purpose as operations of a subject.

Lonergan affirms that the fundamental facts of the universe are “acts of form developed from potency.” They present themselves as the result of a dynamic process of construction and there is a true sense in which each of these concrete actualities is unique (central act). But Lonergan’s ontology does not suggest that one ought to conceive of these “acts” as subjects, as agents of their own construction. There are, however, at least two aspects of Lonergan’s thought which seem to demand such an interpretation. Both concern the implications of the metaphysical insight into the isomorphism of knowing and becoming.

First, Lonergan’s cognitional theory argues most persuasively that knowing does not occur in a vacuum, but within a subject as a complex functioning of that subject. When Lonergan works out the implications of the insight into the isomorphism of knowing and becoming, he discovers in the structure of becoming a parallel to all the dynamic and functional elements of knowing except for this one: that knowing is always by a subject. It seems to me that the insight of isomorphism demands this further parallelism of knowing and becoming, that just as it is subjects who know, so it is subjects which become.

There is a further reason in Lonergan’s ontology which seems to demand this interpretation. Lonergan draws his notion of “finality” in the dynamic structure of becoming from the correspondence to the notion of being as the unifying drive in knowing. Just as the notion of being drives and unifies the process of knowing, so does finality drive and unify becoming. But the notion of being is identical in his thought with the unrestricted desire to know being; it is the Eros which drives the subject through the cognitional process. Ontologically, finality must play the same function. It is the unconscious “heading for being” that develops form from potency and results in a unified concrete act of form. But unless we are to conceive of “dead matter” pushed and prodded by some unintelligible force, we must conceive of finality as an experienced drive. This seems to me to require the further notion of a subject as the developing center experiencing this unconscious “orientation” toward and “heading for” being.[39]. Lonergan’s notion of finality seems to demand that we postulate a subject experiencing the drive to actualize form from potency.

If we conceive of ontological act as a subject, we can then generalize the notions of value, feelings, purpose, and decision so as to connect them integrally with the ontological elements. We could do this not by postulating yet another “elemental” level of becoming, but by integrating value, feeling, purpose and decision with the functions of relations of potency, form, act, and finality. The grounds for doing this are in the structure of the acting subject (the “existential” subject). The intentionality of the acting subject sublates all other levels; the notion of value sublates the notion of being. This is the immanence of “finality” within the acting subject. If the insight of isomorphism grasped that the structure of knowing and acting must be isomorphic with the structure of becoming, that, indeed, our acting exhibits the ontological structure of all becoming, then the pursuit of value (and with it, feelings and decision) would be understood to be integral to becoming.[40].

If finality is immanent in the developing act and is experienced by the developing center of that act, then we could understand it as a purposive or intentional desire to actualize some form for itself. Finality, as experienced, constitutes the “subjective aim” of the developing ontological act.[41]. In other words, finality inherently orients a subject toward the value of being. The developing subject is “attracted,” so to speak, to being because of the values inherent in the potential or possible forms it finds given for it. the developing act is related to these forms by means of its “feelings.” Thus one could speak of the developing act grasping “forms” in its potency by means of its “feelings.” These feelings would be understood to be the subject’s unconscious but intentional responses to its potential forms, valuations of them for the becoming of the subject (act). Recalling that there is both an absolute and a relative element to feeling, we can understand that such feelings would embody both the recognition of value and the preferential ranking of the values in the forms. The standard for the preferential ranking of the values is contained in the “subjective aim,” the “pull” of finality as it is experienced by the developing act.

We could also distinguish between feelings that grasp and respond to the values inherent in possibilities or forms and feelings that grasp and respond to other actualities. The basis for such a distinction is in cognitional theory, for Lonergan has distinguished between two kinds of insights: the insight that grasps an intelligibility, which leads to understanding; and the reflective insight that grasps an intelligibility as virtually unconditioned, that is, as given in the facts of experience, which leads to knowledge. Thus we could speak of insights having to do with possible intelligibilities and insights having to do with encountered intelligible actualities. The ontological counterpart to this cognitional distinction would be what we might call “conceptual” and “physical” feelings.[42]. The physical feelings orient the developing ontological act toward other actualities which form both the immediate ground of and the limit on the potency of the developing act. The conceptual feelings enable the developing act to grasp and respond to the values inherent in both potential forms and other ontological acts.

Ontological act, then, is the result of a process of becoming. Through its physical feelings the act has been oriented with regard to other actualities. through its conceptual feelings the developing act grasps and responds to the values inherent both in actualities and in potential forms (which together constitute the potency of the developing act). Because of its subjective aim or finalistic drive, the developing act ranks all the values in its potential forms and selects the form it shall attempt to actualize. This selection is ontological “decision.” Ontological act, in other words, emerges as the result of a process of “decision” among potential forms based on the “preference” of one form over others. Both the drive and the standard for such “selection” is inherent in the “subjective aim,” the immanence of finality in the developing act.

It is no doubt evident to the reader familiar with Whitehead’s philosophy that such a reformulation of Lonergan’s ontology in light of his later thought bears a remarkable resemblance to Whitehead’s ontology. While limitations of space prevents both a thorough expression and any defense of this reformulation, I hope that my brief remarks have at least illustrated both that such a reformulation of Lonergan’s ontology is possible and that the grounds for it can be found in Lonergan’s own thought. I will now try to show that the results of my analysis thus far make it possible to formulate a process understanding of God in dependence on Lonergan’s own thought.

I have argued above that it is important to raise the subjective sides of the cognitional questions of God and that both the questions and the analysis designed to answer them ought to be expressed in metaphysical terms. The two cognitional questions as Lonergan expresses them ask for the ultimate ground of the intelligibility and the contingent existence of the universe. Expressing the subjective sides of these questions, we would ask for the ultimate ground of the subject’s ability to grasp intelligibilities and to make virtually unconditioned judgments. When these questions are expressed in terms of Lonergan’s ontology as I have reformulated it, the result is one set of questions (since ontological act is understood as a subject). The questions would have the following form.

If ontological acts depend on intelligible forms and potency, then what is required to ground ultimately the dynamic universe of emergent probability? First, each developing act must be endowed with its potency, that is, the general, specific, and particular conditions that make that emergent act possible. But what is the ultimate ground of all these conditions? Second, each developing act requires its potential intelligible forms. These forms are really possible precisely because of all the conditions which constitute the potency of the act, but if they are merely potential and not actual, where do they come from? How is it possible for the developing act to grasp forms that are merely potential and not actual? Third, from among these possible intelligible forms the emergent act will select the one it shall attempt to actualize. But the ability to select and the drive to actualize some form depends on the present of finality in the developing act. Once could say that finality is the very dynamism of becoming, its very “life.” But where does this dynamism come from? It cannot explain itself, and so it seems that the emergent act must derive the living dynamism of its own becoming—its ability to develop form from potency—from some ultimate ground. Taken together, these three questions outline all the conditions required for the occurrence of an ontological act.

The questions heuristically point to the required answer. The ultimate ground must be an act, but it cannot be a temporal act since every temporal ontological act requires all these conditions for its occurrence. As the required ground of these conditions, the required act must transcend temporality. Second, this act must somehow be the ultimate ground and source of all potency and all intelligible forms. Finally, the required act must be the source of the finality immanent in all temporal ontological acts. Employing generalized empirical method we can, as Lonergan has done, conceive of a transcendent and unrestricted act of understanding as the answer required by the questions. The unrestricted act of understanding is the transcendent, eternal, complete, and unrestricted grasp of all intelligible forms. It is unconditioned and not contingent in any way. In the unity of this unrestricted act of understanding we find established the relationships between all intelligible forms; these relationships constitute the ultimate ground of all the conditions which form the potency for the occurrence of temporal ontological acts. In the complete and unrestricted nature of this act of understanding we find the required source of all potential intelligible forms grasped by developing acts of form. In the creativity of this unrestricted act of understanding we find the dynamism which grounds finality immanent in each ontological act. This is only a rough sketch, but it is enough to indicate that thus far the understanding of God retains almost every single attribute Lonergan works out for the unrestricted act of understanding as he addresses the cognitional questions.[43].

At this point, by philosophical reflection we have discovered the ultimate ground of the universe, the ultimate ground of all subjective experience. The “wondering” questions have been met; we know what makes our experience possible. But now the “anxious” questions arise. If the ultimate ground of the universe is God, what is God like? What is God’s character? Generalized empirical method would require that we examine this notion of God in light of the already affirmed structures of subjectivity. We would not presume that the necessary transcendence of the unrestricted act of understanding means that it is a radical exception to the structure of cognitional process and being. Rather, we would attempt to work out an understanding of God by analogy with these structures. Moreover, since we are asking the final philosophical question which merges with the religious question of God, we will have to take into account the testimony of religious experience.

Doing this reveals that our notion of God is not yet complete. We have found thus far that God is the ultimate ground of the universe, that God gives the potency, the intelligible forms, and the finalistic drive to each ontological act. But reflecting on the implications of cognitional process and the structure of becoming, we would recognize that all of this has to do with possibility. The cognitional questions ask for the ultimate ground of all the conditions that make contingent existence both intelligible and possible. These questions can be met by conceiving of an unrestricted act of understanding. Thus far God has been understood to be the supreme illustration of understanding. But understanding has to do with possibility. In cognitional terms, understanding the product of insights grasping possible intelligibilities. Thus metaphysically, our notion of an unrestricted act of understanding postulates that God as ultimate ground has infinite “conceptual” feelings grasping, evaluating and organizing all intelligible forms. But this in itself offers no ground for conceiving of God as knowing anything. Knowing, as we have affirmed in cognitional theory, is based on reflective insights into intelligibilities as given in the facts of experience. In both cognitional and metaphysical terms this means that knowing is always based on encounters in actuality. Understanding is accomplished through “conceptual” feelings, but knowing always requires “physical” feelings (since it is through physical feelings that the subject is related to other actualities). Thus to conceive of God as an unrestricted act of understanding does not in itself offer any basis for conceiving of God’s knowledge. Note that it is the structure disclosed by cognitional theory that establishes this.[44].

This reveals to us that our notion of God is incomplete, that we have actually conceived of God as a truncated subject. As unrestricted act of understanding, God must enjoy infinite “conceptual” feelings; God’s grasp of possible intelligible forms is complete, unrestricted, transcendent, unconditioned and perfect in every way. But subjectivity, as the structure disclosed by cognitional theory and metaphysics has shown us, involves more than ”conceptual” feelings or insights into possible intelligible forms; it also involves “physical” feelings or reflective insights into intelligible forms as given in experience. It was not incorrect to have conceived God as unrestricted act of understanding, for that is the answer required by cognitional questions of God. Nor was it incorrect to conceive of God as transcendent and completely unconditioned in this respect, for in order to answer the questions we must hold to God’s complete and unconditioned transcendence as ultimate ground of all potency, forms, and acts. But reflecting on this in light of the affirmed structure of subjectivity, we discover that this is not yet a complete notion of God, since we cannot yet conceive of God as a full subject, nor can we yet conceptualize either God’s knowledge or God’s love. Both knowing and loving are dependent on encounters in experience with the known or love actually. Neither are mere “conceptual” operations. Our notion of God thus far has conceptualized only God’s understanding of possibilities. When we turn to religious experience, we find it testifying most forcefully that God both knows and loves the world. There must be, then, some way of conceptualizing God’s knowledge and love.

On the strength of the testimony of religious experience and following generalized empirical method, we would employ the affirmed structure of subjectivity as our analogical guide. We could then conceive of God as supremely illustrating every level of the structure of subjectivity. Cognitionally, we would predict that God’s knowing illustrates the same structure as all knowing exhibits: God knows by grasping together the intelligible possibility and the givenness of that intelligibility in the facts of actual experience. Metaphysically, this means that God, like all subjects, must have “physical” feelings which relate God to the actualities of the universe. God’s knowing is then an integration of God’s conceptual feelings of what is possible with God physical feelings of what is in fact the case. Physical feelings, by their very nature, are dependent on their objects; they are thus necessarily conditioned and occur in dependence on actualities. This implies that God’s physical experience and God’s knowledge must have to do with an aspect of God distinct from God’s function as ultimate ground of the universe, since in the latter function God must be completely unconditioned.

It is difficult for us to think of God in this fashion, especially if we are accustomed to thinking in the Thomist tradition. But this is the direction in which we are led when we conceive of God as a subject who supremely illustrates the structure of cognitional process and being. If we are patient and work out all the implications, the result is not incompatible either with reason or with Christian faith. For example, conceiving of God and God’s relation to the world in this way immediately resolves the classical problem concerning freedom of contingent events which are rooted in the necessary and efficacious knowledge of God.[45]. Every ontological act enjoys a true, though limited, freedom as it develops itself. God creates by providing the potency, the intelligible forms, and the finalistic drive; but the developing ontological act is finally free to develop itself. Or, as Whitehead might say, God creates by providing all the necessary conditions for an actual occasion and “luring” the creature to create itself on this divinely-given ground. Once it has been endowed with the necessary conditions which make it possible, the self-formation of an ontological act is free. Ontological act, then, is not caused by knowledge of it as actual, but by understanding of as possible. Finality, derived from God, includes the gift of freedom and is the world’s share in God’s own freedom. Once the developing act has become actual, once it has developed itself, God’s physical feelings encounter it and know it for what it has made of itself. This divine response in knowledge and love makes possible the next moment in temporal becoming.

Thus by analogy with the structure of our own subjectivity and the structure we find in all becoming, Lonergan’s thought could give rise to a process understanding of God and God’s relation to the world. Instead of regarding God’s knowing and being as an exception to the structure of cognitional process and becoming, we can understand them to be the supreme illustration of that structure. God develops the divine experience in an everlasting act of self-transcendence in relation to the world. God’s perfection and transcendence are exhibited by the completeness of the divine conceptual and physical feelings and in the infinite wisdom and love involved in their integration. God is a trans-temporal act which develops as all self-transcending acts develop, but which infinitely transcends all the limitations of knowing and becoming by temporal acts in the world. If at first we find it incredible that God can be both absolutely unconditioned and also dependent, incredible that God is both necessary, infinite source of every ontological act and also dependent on the world for physical feelings, in the end we are able to understand how this incredible fact can be, and we understand it by conceiving of God as a subject with the same basic structure as all subjects, except that God is the everlasting and perfect subject who illustrates that structure to an infinite degree. Our subjectivity is truly in God’s image.

It can be shown, I believe, that such an understanding of God allows us to include the testimony of religious experience within the philosophical understanding of God. Religious experience, as is clear in the biblical witness, testifies that God is affected by the world. But the Thomist understanding of God could not express this within the philosophical idea of God. I am not saying that it was not expressed; surely Aquinas expressed it if one takes his entire theological system into account. Yet it was difficult to reconcile the transcendent, completely unconditioned God to which the philosophical analysis concluded with the God of Scripture. This is precisely what gave rise to the observation that the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were not the same. If we are to show that they are the same, we ought to try to exhibit this in the very idea of God. This is possible, I believe, if we are faithful to the implications of Lonergan’s thought; and it would enable us to fashion an idea of God that is both intelligible to our culture and service to our faith.

My proposal raises a multitude of questions, but I hope that my brief remarks have at least illustrated that such an approach to Lonergan’s thought is both possible and in accord with the implications of his thought. in conclusion I would simply note that such a process understanding of God based on Lonergan’s thought has much in common with Whitehead’s philosophy and that to recognize this gives good reason for collaboration than contention between Lonerganians and process theologians.

Notes

[1] See Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Philosophy of God, and Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1973), pp. 64-64. (Hereafter cited as PGT.)

[2] I have elsewhere compared Lonergan and Whitehead at great length and defended the thesis that their philosophies are fundamentally compatible. See Thomas E. Hosinski, “Process, Insight, and Empirical Method,” 2 vols. (Ph.D Dissertation, The Divinity School, University of Chicago, 1983). (Hereafter cited as “Process.”).

[3] See Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, 2^nd ed. (New York: Herder and Herder, 1973), pp. 337-344 (hereafter cited as Method): and PGT, pp. 11-14, 33-35, 45-59.

[4] See PGT, pp. 50-58.

[5] See PGT, pp. 54-55, 58.

[6] See Method, pp. 101-102; PGT, pp. 53-54.

[7] See Method, pp. 102-103; PGT, p. 54.

[8] See Method, pp. 105-107; PGT, p. 54. For the “anxious” form of the strictly religious question of God, see PGT, p. 55.

[9] See Method, pp. 115-116.

[10] See Method, p. 116.

[11] See PGT, pp. 11, 14, 50-52; and Bernard J. F. Lonergan, A Second Collection, ed. William F. J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrrell (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), pp. 120-121, 131-132. (Hereafter cited as Second Collection.)

[12] Method, p. 116. See Ibid., pp. 47-52 for Lonergan’s analysis of the structure of the human good which forms the background here.

[13] Method, p. 116.

[14] Ibid., pp. 116-117.

[15] Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study in Human Understanding, revised ed. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1958), “General Transcendent Knowledge,” pp. 634-686. (Hereafter cited as Insight.)

[16] See PGT, p. 54; Method, pp. 102-103.

[17] This was first pointed out by Langdon Gilkey, “Empirical Science and Theological Knowledge,” in Philip McShane, ed., Foundations of Theology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972) pp. 76-101; see pp. 83-84, 94-97.

[18] See Insight, pp. 641-657; Method, pp. 101-102; PGT, pp. 53-54.

[19] Insight, pp. 634-657.

[20] Ibid., pp. 657-658.

[21] I cannot take the space to substantiate this at length; see Hosinski, “Process,” 2: 587-594.

[22] Insight, pp. 658-660.

[23] Ibid., p. 658.

[24] Ibid., p. 658.

[25] Ibid., p. 661.

[26] I can find no place where Lonergan uses this exact expression, but this clearly represents his position. For example, see Insight, pp. 444.451.

[27] See Insight, Chapters XV and XVI, pp. 431-529, esp. pp. 483-487, 497-509.

[28] See Insight, pp. 115-139, 259-267, 451-483.

[29] See especially “The Subject,” Second Collection, pp. 79-84; also see Method, pp. 14-16, and Chapter 2, “The Human Good,” pp. 27-55.

[30] Second Collection, pp. 80, 81; my emphasis.

[31] Method, pp. 30-34.

[32] See Ibid., pp. 30-32, 115.

[33] See Ibid., pp. 36-41.

[34] See Ibid., pp. 34-36.

[35] See, e.g., Ibid., pp. 39-40.

[36] See Ibid., pp. 64-69, esp. pp. 66-67.

[37] Lonergan’s analysis of religious experience supports this position; see Ibid., pp. 104-107.

[38] See Insight, p. 183.

[39] It is interesting that Lonergan speaks of such unconscious “orientation” toward and “heading for” being, but never pursues what this implies ontologically. See Insight, p. 355.

[40] There will no doubt be objections to extending the notions of feeling, value, purpose, and decision to the ontological structure of all becoming. However, some support for such an extension of these notions can be found in Lonergan’s brilliant (and completely overlooked) discussion of genera and species; see Insight, pp. 259-265, and Hosinski, “Process,” 1: 396-398, 450-452.

[41] I have deliberately chosen one of Whitehead’s technical terms (“subjective aim”) because such a development of Lonergan’s ontology corresponds quite closely to what Whitehead meant by this term. See Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected Edition, David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, eds. (New York: The Free Press, 1978), pp. 19, 47, 87, and passim (see Index).

[42] I have again deliberately chosen Whitehead’s technical terms (“conceptual” and “physical” feelings) because such a development of Lonergan’s ontology corresponds exactly with what Whitehead means by these terms. See ibid., pp. 236-243 and passim (see Index).

[43] I am referring here to what Lonergan discusses in sections five through eight of Chapter XIX, Insight, pp. 644-657.

[44] In his presentation at the Lonergan Symposium held at the University of Santa Clara in March, 1984, Michael Vertin argued that Lonergan discusses God in cognitional terms in order to maintain critical control over the discussion. I would not disagree with this intention, but I would argue that by making God a radical exception to the structure affirmed by cognitional theory, Lonergan has inadvertently subverted what he hoped to achieve. If cognitional theory is to provide both the meanings and the relations for metaphysical terms and is to control critically the metaphysical discussion of God, then the metaphysical description of God and God’s relation to the world cannot be based on a radical exception to the structure disclosed by cognitional theory; instead, it must be based on a faithful employment of that structure. Though Vertin and I will no doubt continue to disagree, I am grateful to him for a conversation in which he helped me to understand more clearly Lonergan’s intention in this regard.

[45] Even Bernard Tyrrell acknowledges that Lonergan’s response to this problem does not establish or attempt to explain how it can be possible and true both that God necessarily and efficaciously knows from all eternity each contingent act and that contingent acts are truly free. See Tyrrell, Bernard Lonergan’s Philosophy of God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), p. 160.

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