Ryliskyte, Ligita

Ryliskyte, Ligita. Cur Deus Cruciatus?: Lonergan’s Law of the Cross and the Transpositions of “Justice over Power.” PhD Thesis. Boston College, 2020. The basic question of this dissertation is, “Why a crucified God?” The history of this question is traced through strategically chosen increments in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Lonergan. Each contributes in some important way to the development of a tradition that focuses on the choice of divine love and wisdom to answer evil through the justice of the cross rather than by coercion. In light of these earlier transpositions and Lonergan’s own development, this dissertation examines the meaning and justice of the cross, as epitomized in Lonergan’s Law of the Cross, and re-contextualizes this law in relation to our collective responsibility in and for history. This teleological re-reading of Lonergan’s soteriology brings to the forefront that a fitting remedy to the problem of a dis-ordered love is a re-ordering and (re-)ordered love, not coercive power. According to Lonergan’s Law of the Cross, the intrinsic intelligibility of redemption is the transformation of evil into good by love. This love, caritas ordinata et ordinans, is understood by analogy with the antecedent offer of diffusive friendship and by analogy with sacramental penance. The restoration of right order through the cross is fitting because, if the laws of nature and history are not suspended, retaliation would only multiply the objective surd. The constructive part of this dissertation further specifies ontological conditions for the fittingness of the cross by bringing the lex crucis into dialogue with Lonergan’s general theory of historical process. In continuity with the emerging world order (as subject to classical, statistical, dialectical, and genetic laws), the cross manifests an orderly communication of divine friendship to sinners. Correspondingly, the justice of the cross regards, not retributive justice, but the possibility of justice among sinners. This possibility, it is argued, is inaugurated by Christ’s transformation of suffering into the means of a new finality in history, the probabilities of which are decisively shifted in the cross event and concretely realized through the emergent agape network, the higher integration of the human good of order through the whole Christ, head and members, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The justice of the cross, then, is an emergent agapic justice which proceeds from the dynamic state of being in love with God as its principle and is realized in a dialectic unification of all things in Christ, constituting the “cruciform” transformation of human September 2020 5 (inter-) subjectivity and the recovery of human progress as ordered to the eschatologically definitive reign of God. Ryliskyte, Ligita. “Conversion: Falling into Friendship Like No Other.” Theological Studies, 81/2 (2020) 370-93. In the context of contemporary vicissitudes, this article examines how Lonergan’s grasp of the meaning of redemption illuminates our understanding of Christian conversion. Lonergan’s Law of the Cross implies that the effectiveness of Christian conversion hinges on one’s antecedent willingness to undertake suffering for the sake of the transformation of evil into good. His analogies for Christ’s salvific work with the sacrament of reconciliation and with friendship further clarify the christomorphic, penitential, and community-building character of conversion, which proceeds from the total, transformative, and diffusive falling into friendship with God.

Fred Lawrence on "Lonergan on Authenticity"

Frederick Lawrence	7 Jun 2020, 02:22 (1 day ago)
to me

Dear Ivo,

I just finished reading your paper, "Lonergan on Authnticity." I must say, it is superb in every respect, especially the comparison and contrast between 'genuineness' and 'authenticity,' and then your way of showing how the latter sublates the former.

I also appreciated very much your careful tracing of the step-by-step evolution of his thought on authenticity through the different texts cited, proving once again that "concepts have dates.." 

Then the way you used the elements underlying authenticity toclarify the relationship between philosophy and theology.

Penultimately, as regards functional specialization, with respect to the varying role of conversion in the first phase while hearing the Word may be done in the context of faith, it is also completely valid to consider it as data to be supplied by the different modes of research, and then interpreted, integrated on the level of history, and discussed dialectically (rather than apologetically or eristically), and raised not simply by way of moving from the descriptive to the explanatory plane but through horizon-analysis to the criteria related variously to the intellectual, moral and religious conversions, and on into the direct discourse of foundations, doctrines, systematics, and communications.. I loved the underscoring of dialectic and foundations as the core of theology. 

Finally: initially, the comparison between unauthentic and authentic objectivities via the world of immediacy and the world mediated by meaning, and concluding with the reference to 'spiritual exercises' capped off by that lovely quotation.

Perhaps, the part concerning the prelude to what you had to say regarding theology ought to be an appendix to the Accompaniment document. but I suppose it is too late for that.

Providentially/ coincidentally, this morning we received from Frank Braio, part  of the closest of his associates as I suppose you are, too, the news that Phil McShane is struggling with the consequences of stage 4 cancer. It made me feel that I was honoring what he stands for while reading your paper.

As you must have already thought, Pentacostal fire has taken on a whole new meaning in the U.S. during this past week.

In Him, 

Fred & Sue

Ligita Ryliskyta, Cur Deus Cruciatus

Fred Lawrence - Coelho, 10.04.2020:

In accord with the season, on Wednesday afternoon, Ligita Ryliskyta, a Lithuanian medical Doctor, defended Cur Deus Cruciatus on the Law of the Cross in Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and Lonergan--the most extraordinary dissertation I have ever been associated with! She is also a member of the Sisters of the Eucharist in Jesus, a community founded by a Lithuanian Jesuit during the Communist take-over of that country. Ligita said that the community was very courageously involved in the underground resistance at that time. Her father's family--as "enemies of the regime"--were put in a vegetable cart and driven 4,000 miles to Siberia. When they left, her father was 5 years old, and when the family survivors finally returned, he was 16.

Coelho - Lawrence, 10.04.2020:

this Lithuanian doctorate: is it really the best you have seen? or just extraordinary in some special sense? I am curious. last year I visited Lithuania, it was a glorious autumn week, I can't tell you how beautiful the country was. and then finding the old Indo-European gods there... the ones mentioned in the Vedas... 

Lawrence - Coelho, 10.04.2020:

Yes, it was by far the best ... and I've been involved in quite a few splendid ones. Her research on Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas, and the headings under which she interpreted and documented their specific contributions to the genesis of the comprehensive intelligibility that Lonergan called the Law of the Cross were just amazing. Then, after presenting her understanding of Lonergan's explanatory elucidation of his theses on redemption in DVI and the now published notes on the Redemption, which are much more expansive than the theses, she synthesized the way they stand in relation to Lonergan's tripartite philosophy of history, as well as its implications spelled out in light of emergent probability in Insight, Ch. 15 on genetic method. On top of all that, she surveyed every stream of liberation and political theology, which she took seriously, and while never selling short their various contributions, brought out how the explanatory account made possible by Lonergan could aid in strengthening each and every one of their more descriptive approaches--something she would be able to do with serene wisdom, if she felt called to do so.

Slavoj Zizek and John Milbank

·         Zizek S. - Milbank J., La mostruosità di Cristo. Paradosso o dialettica?, Transeuropa, Massa 2010 (Originale: Zizek S. - Milbank J., The Monstruosity of Christ, The Mit Press, London 2009)

·         Zizek S. - Milbank J., San Paolo reloaded. Sul futuro del cristianesimo, Transeuropa, Massa 2012

Byung-Chul Han and Lonergan on correlation

By chance, Rossano Sala. The visit to his mezzanine office. The gift of his book, L’umano possible (his PhD thesis), and Byung-Chul Han’s L’espulsione dell’Altro (the author is Korean, writes in German).

Han 10 attacks correlation: correlation means: If A, then often B. But one does not know why it is like that. Correlation is the most primitive form of knowledge, which is not even able to identify the causal relation, the relation between cause and effect. It is like that. The question about the why of things becomes superfluous. Nothing is therefore, understood. But to know is to understand. In this way the big data make thought superfluous. We entrust ourselves without hesitation to It’s like that.

The paragraph begins this way: even the greatest accumulation of information (the big data) yields a very reduced knowledge. On the basis of big data, correlations are identified. [Algorithms?]

But put this in relation to Lonergan’s take on correlation. L does not despise correlation. And he does not identify “cause” with “efficient cause.” He finds place – and here he is so unlike Heidegger, and perhaps now Han – for the knowledge that characterizes empirical science. He finds place for correlation. Empirical science is based on correlations. Pure empirical science, as opposed to technology, is not directly interested in efficient causes, it concentrates on formal cause – which is the form of the thing, the object of understanding…. Now that is a very different approach.

See Insight, CWL3:101: immanent intelligibility, formal cause. P. 62: correlations, measurements, things related to one another. 

Lonergan's great distinction, which I have not found in others, is between experiential and explanatory conjugates. Experiential conjugates: things as related to us: colours as seen, sounds as heard, etc. 

Explanatory conjugates: things as related among themselves. Here the key step is measurement. the difference between heat as felt and temperature, which is a correlation of correlations. 

When people like Han ignore this, they are indulging themselves on the level of description, however sophisticated. 

Then of course there is a difference between Aristotelian science and modern science.

Han’s notes figure Heidegger and Scheler. Baudrillard, Kant, Nietzsche. Hegel, Adorno, Blanchot. Lévinas, Sartre, Zizek, Foucault. Kafka, Orwell.

Gift

Philosophy and theology of gift: from Rossano Sala:

Zygmunt Baumann
Slavoj Zizek
Byung-Chul Han, L'espulsione dell'Altro (Milano: Nottetempo, 2017)
Sala, L'umano possibile. Esplorazioni in uscita della modernità (Roma: LAS, 2012). Publication of PhD thesis in Milan. Preface by Sequeri.

Sala speaks of the anthropology of gift that is necessary for a theology of vocation.

The problem is the Cartesian individualism underlying Western culture.

The rediscovery of the person. Person in the Trinity is total gift, relation as substance.