Conversation with Fred Lawrence

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Conversation with Fred Lawrence on the return journey from Galilee.

FL suggested a paper on the Trinity. I could not follow all of what he said, but this seems to be it: most people begin with persons and go on to the three relations which are persons. They tend to forget the relations of origin – which are two. These are the intelligible emanations. This would not be so bad if it were not for the fact that this governs most of what follows. “The hypothesis [which one?] governs most of what follows.” Lonergan: about the most blessed Trinity: 4 relations, 3 persons, 2 emanations, 1 God, no understanding. Notional ?? something.

This probably in connection with my remark that Ratzinger and Augustine / Thomas / Lonergan are asking different questions.

Augustine: the first person to come up with an analogy that is properly spiritual.

Remarks on Al Ghazali: he respects reason, but also knows that one has to go beyond reason. Meaning? [not supernatural but] that beyond reason there is love, the love of God.

About Heidegger. Leo Strauss, being a Jew, said that H was the greatest philosopher of the 20^th century. Hannah Arendt and Hans Jonas found a way of forgiving and reconciling with H: he did not know what he was doing.

H was ambitious as a young man. he was small of stature, but he could, already when young, wrap people around his little finger. He was the bright young thing as a Catholic seminarian, chosen for ?? by his bishop.

He told Engelbert Krebs: the system of Catholicism is something I cannot accept. But I do not stop being Christian.

1919: the reading of Augustine. He found all his key BT concepts in Augustine. The next year: Aristotle. He said he found many things of Augustine in Arisottle, minus the Christian context. So he found a way of pulling Augustine out of his Christian context. That was BT.

Later he rejected the transcendentalism of BT: Dasein was too much the centre. Man is more receptive than at the centre. That is one of the reasons why he was unable to apologize for his Nazi involvement.

Why did he go with the Nazis? Because he had ambitions. One of them being that of being Plato’s philosopher king. He hoped that by joining a political wagon, he might be able to transform German education. In 3 months he was disillusioned. He went to a meeting of top German educationalists, and found that they wanted something completely different from what he wanted.

And John of St Thomas / Deeley. Representationalist. Mirroring. They do not know the activity of questioning and insight on the two levels. They place all their weight, the weight of objectivity, on the representation, and they do it by trying to reduce all the subjective side. That is why the phenomenologists reject them: they neglect the intentionality side of things.

Tritvam saranam gacchami

Tritvam saranam gacchami: "taking refuge in the eternal subjects." A pregnant phrase found in Lonergan's The Triune God: Systematics (CWL12: 409)

More completely: there are also obstacles to the achievement of authenticity, among them the ambivalence that marks both the belief and the friendship of temporal subjects. Because of this, “we must take refuge in the eternal divine subjects. Let our belief, then, be in the eternal Word made flesh, let our friendship be in the Holy Spirit; and in the Spirit through the Son let us dare to cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’” (The Triune God, CWL 12:409) 

Balthasar's rejection of the psychological analogy

From Neil Ormerod I learnt something new this morning:

Hans Urs von Balthasar has been particular scathing of the approach of the psychological analogy. [18] According to Hunt, Balthasar “eschews a consideration of human consciousness as primary analogy for the Trinity of divine persons, and is deeply suspicious of any kind of turn tothe subject”.  Balthasar rejects any analogy based on “the human mind and its acts of intellect and will” since “both processions must be understood as processions of love”. [19] For Balthasar, “only love is credible”.  In its place Balthasar seeks to find analogies for the Trinity in the paschal mystery, in the death, descent into hell and resurrection of the Son. [N. Ormerod, "The Psychological Analogy for the Trinity: At Odds with Modernity," Pacifica 14 (Oct 2001) 286-87. See http://lonergan.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/09005-Ormerod-Trinity-Analogy.pdf as of 2 Oct 2012.]

Perhaps Ratzinger's remarks on the person need to be understood also in the light of Balthasar's rejection fo the psychological analogy.

How Great Ye art

Phil has been speaking all day about the Trinitarian God and eschatology and things. He has been saying, for example, that the hymn "How Great Thou art" should really run "How Great Ye art". "Thou", according to him, indicates the "Hebrew God", whereas the "Ye" takes into account the Trinitarian God.

There is a sense in which the "I" is always a "We" as well: the three persons and my little I.

So when Lonergan writes "As we have been saying...", the "we", quite beyond his intention perhaps, indicates the action of the three. And this, I would think, fits in very well with human instrumentality; with the idea of understanding as a pati, as a passion rather than an action, and with the stumblings of Heidegger and the postmoderns towards the decentering of the isolated Cartesian subject so as to recognize the emergence of insight and action from sources far beyond this kind of isolated subject...

Lonergan on the Trinity

Was sitting with Bob Doran this afternoon for lunch. Asked him about the reviews of Lonergan's The Triune God: Systematics. He said he had not seen them, but that there were a few. According to him, he said, Lonergan's was the greatest systematics of the Trinity since Thomas Aquinas. Lonergan was far more detailed on the psychological analogy than Aquinas...

Bob says that the companion volume, The Triune God: Doctrines, should be out by the first of August. That is something to look forward to.