A Second Collection

A Second Collection Synopsis

This collection of essays, addresses, and one interview come from the years 1966-73, a period during most of which Bernard Lonergan was at work completing his Method in Theology. The eighteen chapters cover a wide spectrum of interest, dealing with such general topics as 'The Absence of God in Modern Culture' and 'The Future of Christianity,' narrowing down through items such as 'Belief: Today's Issue' and more specialized theological and philosophical studies, to one on his own community in the church ('The Response of the Jesuit ...') and the illuminating comment on his great work Insight ('Insight Revisited').

This book is a reprint of the first edition published in 1974, edited by William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrrell of Gonzaga University, Spokane. The editors contribute an important introduction in which they emphasize that Lonergan's central concern is intentionality analysis, and that two major themes run through the papers: "first, the clear emergence of the primacy of the fourth level of human consciousness, the existential level, the level of evaluation and love; secondly, the significance of historical consciousness. These papers, then, besides the unity they possess by appearing within the same seven year period, share a specific unity of theme."