Aesthetic, moral and religious

I think we are called to move from "I like / I don't like" to "it is good to...", and then finally to "embracing it as God's will for me."

Or: from the aesthetic to the moral to the religious (Kierkegaard).

Moral conversion is from satisfactions to values (Lonergan). I would think it is from the aesthetic to the properly moral. The aesthetic is a broader and more significant category. It is more than merely 'satisfactions.' It is refined taste, for example.

And religious conversion is not necessarily theistic. Provided there is universal loving, a loving 'without limits', I think we are dealing with the properly religious (Lonergan). But it is possible to go further (not without an at least implicit intellectual conversion) and recognize not merely love but Love / God / the God of Jesus.

Specific to the Christian faith is not the gift of God's love, but the mediation of that gift in Jesus. (Lonergan)

Kierkegaard and objectivity

Wonderful gloss by Fred Crowe on objectivity as the fruit of authentic subjectivity: he brings in Kierkegaard.

The Concluding Unscientific Postscript has as subtitle: An existential contribution.
The two divisions of the volume are: The Objective problem concerning the Truth of Christianity" (less than 1/10 of the work), and The Subjective Problem.
The subtitle of the latter part: The Relation of the Subject to the Truth of Christianity.
Four examples of "thinking directed towards becoming objective", among which: "the problem of what it means to die." Not death as a universal topic, but an existential understanding of death.

Kierkegaard is followed up by Ignatius of Loyola and the Two Standards. And then Crowe becomes quite ill-mannered: he threatens to speak in oratione recta. Phil McShane would love this.

See Crowe, "Theology and the Future: Responsible Innovation," Appropriating the Lonergan Idea (1989) 273-4.