Fundamental Theology and the Dynamics of Conversion

FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND THE DYNAMICS OF CONVERSION IN ONE of his better known essays, Bernard Lonergan points out that theology is entering a new age and cannot continue to be what it has been since the sixteenth century .1 Whereas it used to be a deductive science resting on premises taken from Scripture and church documents, it has become a predominantly empirical discipline, resting on data, which have to be interpreted by complex processes and techniques . This new theology, if it is not to be the dupe of every fashion, needs a new foundation. In seeking such a foundation, Lonergan, building on the analogy with other empirical disciplines , concludes that it is possible for a science to have identity and unity even though all its laws and conclusions are subject to revision. What the scientist relies on ultimately is his method. By method Lonergan means a set of recurrent and related operations leading to cumulative and progressive results . Although methodology can to some extent be set forth in explicit rules, mastery of method requires long experience of the way the science operates. Each science is a particular dynamic way of generating knowledge. Applying these principles to theology, Lonergan then points out that the empirical theology of today is a reflection on religion . The foundation is not a set of objective statements but rather the subjective reality of the persons who reflect upon their religious experience, and especially upon the basic process we call conversion.2 Conversion, for Lonergan, means a radical 1 B. J. F. Lonergan, "Theology in Its New Context," A Second Collection (Philadelphia : Westminster, 1974), pp. 55-67. •Elsewhere Lonergan states: "As oonversion is basic to Christian living, so an objectification of conversion provides theology with its foundations," Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), p. 130. 175 176 AVERY DULLES, S.J. shift in a person's apprehensions and values, accompanied by a similar radical change in oneself, in one's relations with other persons, and in one's relations to God. The subject of theology, then, is the person undergoing conversion to God. Conversion, as an ongoing process, is for Lonergan correlative with living religion. Reflection on conversion, he contends, can supply the new theology with the foundation it needs-a foundation which is concrete, dynamic, personal, communal, and historical. Religious conversion manifestly possesses each of these five properties. My aim, in the present essay, is not to analyze the nature of theology in general but rather to reflect upon the aims and methods of a single specialization, fundamental theology. The notion of fundamental theology is much controverted in recent literature. Some authors seem to look upon it as a kind of philosophy of religion; some as a strictly rational apologetic for Christianity; some as a generalized reflection on the categories of religious discourse, and some as an introduction to theological method. Karl Rahner has distinguished between " fundamental theology " and a " formal theology of foundations "; and then again he has made a distinction between both of these disciplines, it would appear, and what he calls a" firstlevel reflection" on Christian faith.3 I have no desire to dispute the terminology of Rahner or any other authority, but I intend in these pages to set forth, as simply as I can, my own conception of fundamental theology as a reflection on the structures of religious conversion and, more specifically, those of conversion to Christianity. * * * The assignment of the fundamental theology, as I understand it, is to show how the decision to become a Christian can be a responsible exercise of human freedom. In order to carry out this assignment, I shall contend, the theologian will 3 K. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Seabury, 1978), pp. 8-14. See also his article, "Formale und fundamentale Theologie," LTK9 4:!'l05-6. FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND CONVERSION 177 have to adopt categories of thinking which would not be available apart from revelation and faith. He will have to look on reality empathetically from the believer's point of view and to experience faith, as it were, from within. Christian faith, in my estimation, cannot be justified by public criteria offered in common human experience. It might be...