Antonio Garcia Martinez's Key Ideas from Method in Theology
by Bernard Lonergan

Heavily inspired off of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Hermeneutical Circle of Understanding, Lonergan proposed to reverse the philosophical approach to questions, as to bring to light the importance and power of a well formed Theology.

The Ancient Greeks wanted to promote the Metaphysics by Ordering their Philosophy as:

1. Metaphysics
2. Epistemology
3. Ethics

Lonergan found that one could not rely on the ever changing (yet helpful) metaphysical laws as grounding or as a basis, and how we must instead focus on the operations of the mind. He proposes a new order:

1. Cognitional Theory
2. Epistemology
3. Metaphysics
4. Ethics

Lonergan’s Theory is meant to represent the operative faculties that occur in the human mind, and explain how we come to know and understand things. As we progress, we can address specific issues in a given level.

1. Experience: The Data we work with, either by the senses or the imagination
2. Understanding: How we, ourselves, understand the data. We ask questions, and we update our understanding
3. Judgements: Our affirmation, whether our understanding of something is enough to us to say that it is true.
4. Decision: We must make a choice, how do we act based on our understanding and judgements?

Insights are immediate acts of understand that occur when we actively work through something and try to understand it.

”Eureka!!”, shouted Archimedes upon his discovery

That’s an insight. It’s a sudden clarity that organizes information, and prompts deeper thinking. It allows us to go forward to judgement, providing us answers to the intended questions we ask. Sometimes insights are so strong and particular, that they have no further relavent questions result from them. We call these invulnerable insights. Lonergan went into excruciating detail on the idea in his predating Magnum Opus ‘Insight’.

Judgment is both a level and a distinct act. It allows us to act on certain notions, and reflect. Different judgements result from different objects and questions.

Types of Judgments:

• Judgments of Fact: An assertion of existence (e.g., "It is raining").
• Judgments of Value: An assessment of personal significance (e.g., "This artwork is beautiful").
• Judgments of Preference: Expressing Inclinations (e.g., "I prefer tea over coffee").

Lonergan wants us to judge objects and notions beyond ourselves (transient), and pursue such notions as to avoid bias and pursue something that we find good.

Lonergan wants us to be better. To put it bluntly. Just as being Selfless, is the most redeeming quality one could have, considering and judging based off of ideas and objects beyond our selves and our biases (referred to as Transcendental Notions), can help us determine what is important and good for us.

Lonergan calls these particular goods. And as a part of our gregarious nature, lonergan finds that as we pursue out particular goods, we take on roles, that let us incidentally and purposefully contribute to our communities and what he calls the Good of Order .

As we pursue these particular goods, and work to understand more notions, and judge more values, and act, and authentically question and improve ourselves, we work towards Lonergan’s True Idea of Good, Self-Transcendence.

We transcend, go beyond our previous selves. We get better, understand faster, it is a never ending, cumulative and progressive cycle. As we change (convert), we improve ourselves, reform ourselves. As we accept new values, we undergo Moral Conversion, from Satisfactions to Well-Judged and good values.

In our endless pursuit, our capacity for truth, and ourselves, expand.

In this idea of Self-Transcendence, and the beauty of the pursuit, and love we have, does religion come into play. Religion not only asks, but it requires the user to Self-Transcend. To consider ideas, a love, a God, one has to move beyond themselves.

The rest of his ‘Method in Theology’, pursues the cognitional theory in the context of theological inquiry, and the understandings that must be undertaken if we wish to convey and interpret scripture and doctrines appropriately

I invite you to take a read, go past these fundamental beliefs, and explore Lonergan’s brilliant mind and love for God.