by Stephen Tong S.J.(董泽龙)
Introduction
Though Bultmann and Lonergan belong to two different traditions, they share the common concern and effort of trying to accommodate the Christian faith to our modern world. Faithful to his Protestant tradition, Bultmann focuses on the distinctive role of Scripture and kergyma as the word of God. The influence and impact of the word of God on Christian life has unfortunately diminished since the Enlightenment. Baptized by the modern and scientific worldview, Christians nowadays generally find many scriptural messages nonsensical since supernatural intervention in daily life, which is so vivid in the Scriptures, has no longer any role or place in our scientific mindset. Bultmann laments that this kind of stumbling block covers and even suppresses the genuine meaning of the kerygma, which has nothing to do with looking for God's direct intervention in human life. Therefore, his project is to strip off the so-called mythological elements of the Scriptures so that the inherent challenge of God's word can once again confront its hearers.
Appropriating his Catholic tradition, Lonergan is concerned with the congealed understanding of faith and theology in terms of an exclusively classicist mindset and culture. If our world is moving towards the recognition and validation of pluralist cultures and religions, doing theology can no longer remain in the ghetto thinking that the only valid way is to start with self-evident premises, followed by logical deduction and settled in foreseeable conclusions. Otherwise, theology is destined to become irrelevant. Our scientific mindset starts with data and experience. From scattered and random data to attaining truth and value, everything is under the control of method. To develop a good method is to study and discover the inner operations of the subject. That is why Lonergan focuses his study on the transcendental structures of human consciousness. He strongly believes that only when rooted in this solid self-correcting method can a theologian mediate the Christian faith to various cultures and make it sensible to them.
The following pages comprise two parts. The first part is an attempt to study and present succinctly the rationality of Bultmann' project of demythologization and Lonergan's thought on method. Though their directions and categories are very different, their horizons merge in certain area. Thus, in the second part a comparison is presented in order to facilitate an understanding of their similarities and divergences. They both agree on the prior action of God's love or God's word, and the significance of the responsibility of the subject or the hearer of the word. Their disagreement finally dwells on their basic difference in epistemology.
The Meaning and Purpose of Demythologization
1. The Horizon of Eschatology
The starting point and basic assertion of Bultmann's project of demythologization is that "Today nobody doubts that Jesus' conception of the Kingdom of God is an eschatological one,"(1) which is the heart of Jesus' preaching and message. There are two things at stake in this statement, namely, the kingdom of God and eschatology. While the former is a category of space, the latter is one of time. The kingdom of God seems to be an emphasis on the transcendent realm that is in contrast and actually in conflict with the human world, agenda and construct. In this sense, God and God's will are always the Absolute Other that is beyond human reason and grasp. Bultmann once exhorted the assembly in his homily, "Has our old picture of him fallen to pieces? If so, then we must first of all be grateful that we have lost our false conception;... New sides of his infinity constantly emerge, strange and enigmatic;... never static and at rest, but constantly ready to yield anew, to allow itself to be raised anew."(2) This conception of the kingdom of God, logically, renders any present understanding of God inadequate and surpassable. Therefore, no present should simply be an attachment to or a repetition of the past, but should always be opened to the future. This is the rationality for the other side of the same coin, namely, eschatology. Eschatology means the doctrine of the last things, implying the dimension of the future for the sake of shedding light on the present. If the Greek perceives the present as decided and emptied by the future and final destiny, Jesus and the New Testament writers see the present in the light of the final judgment of God at the end of time. If the Greek's vision implies humility and fatalistic submission, Jesus demands of human beings first and foremost responsibility toward God and repentance.(3)
Furthermore, borrowing the insight of St. John, whose Gospel shifts the cosmological eschatology to an historical eschatology, Bultmann affirms the "once-for-all" of eschatology while he denies the legitimacy of other once-for-all statements about God. There is a paradox here. The once-for-all eschatological Christ event affirms that the only genuine encounter with God happens in concrete history and time, rather than in any so-called timeless statements of truth. So, if I follow Christ, I am to let this eschatological moment, as the only timeless truth, reveal itself in me here and now through the kergyma and demand my personal response.(4)
2. The Notion of Freedom
Related to his eschatology, Bultmann situates freedom proper as the bliss after death when Christians have an untroubled relationship with God, which has been mythologically but properly described as a worshipping community that sings hymns of praise and thanksgiving. This kind of freedom, however, is different from the platonic mythological picture of dialogue in the transcendent realm, and from its conception of freedom that the spirit is finally liberated from the body and is satisfied with perceiving the truth. Christian freedom is freedom from sin and the old self, the yeast that is incompatible with the God's holiness. The difference between these two understandings is due to distinct conceptions of human nature. For Bultmann, the Greek conceives human nature as not subject to time or history, while the biblical conception of the human being is essentially temporal and historical. The former understanding directs human ideal living towards static and quiet contemplation, while the latter perceives the ideal Christian life as ongoing towards a future of the totally new. However, this newness is not visible because it is hidden with Christ in God. "It does not yet appear what we shall be." (1Jn 3:2) (5) This tension renders faith, hope and love dominant dispositions for Christians to cultivate by the grace of God.
Dialectically, this eschatological freedom has been achieved once and for all in the Christ event, which is always present in the proclaimed word, not as timeless truth, but as happening here and now. In this sense, the eschatological freedom justifies and demands the existential freedom to take up responsibility here and now. This inner logic grounds the rationality of demythologization, in line with the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. If this doctrine frees Luther from the works of law, it frees Bultmann from the sphere of knowledge and thought through the project of demythologization. Both of them aim to emancipate people from deceived and enslaving security. For Luther, it was the security of good works. For Bultmann, it was the security built on objectifying knowledge, which renders to Christians the illusion that they have got hold of God and thus become blind and deaf to God's word spoken here and now and calling for their action and response. In this sense, established security through reason renders Christians not blessed or free for God as the eschatological vision shows.(6)
3. Demythologization Proper
Bultmann understands demythologization as a hermeneutical method to discover the meaning of the Scriptures. This method dwells within a dialectical tension. Negatively, it is an abandonment of the biblical worldview that has become a stumbling block for understanding God's word for us. "To de-mythologize is to deny that the message of Scripture and of the Church is bound to an ancient world-view which is obsolete." (7) In fact, our modern world is shaped by science, to which a mythological cosmos makes no sense. A modern person does not look for transcendent intervention or miracles, as those in the biblical worldview did, to explain daily events or solve their related problems, whether they might be physical sickness, family finance or national security. If the scriptural message still sticks with non-sensible mythological expressions, its actual and important meaning as God's word to us here and now becomes elusive, if not totally inaccessible. For Bultmann, the essence of the scriptures is "kergyma, that is, a proclamation addressed not to the theoretical reason, but to the hearer as a self." (8) The perennial message of God's word is to challenge the hearer, shaped by whatever worldview, it might be, to give up personal sinfulness and security, and become a new person in Christ. This understanding of giving up is structurally correlated with Bultmann's eschatology and notion of freedom. Bultmann is fully aware that this kind of giving up and option for freedom is a stumbling block for the hearer, as Paul has already acknowledged. If this is a genuine stumbling block inherent in the kergyma, however, the mythological worldview as a stumbling block for our modern Christians is a false one. In order to render the hearers capable of focussing on and being challenged by the genuine one, the mythological worldview has to be removed by demythologization. Here, Bultmann has no intention at all of incorporating the modern worldview into the kergyma, since any worldview for Bultmann, in spite of its usefulness, is simply a human construct or reasoning that shapes and promises illusive security, and falls short of putting our total trust in God.
Positively, demythologization is equipped and engaged by the categories of existential philosophy to sharpen the exigency of the kergyma. Taking demythologization as a hermeneutic method, Bultmann is aware that interpretation is always based on principles and conceptions as its presuppositions since God's word has to be mediated through human language shaped by certain philosophical categories. But two things are at stake. First, if presuppositions cannot be removed from the beginning of interpretation, nevertheless they should not determine or foresee its outcome in advance. "An exegesis which, for example, makes the presupposition that its results must agree with some dogmatic statement is not a real and fair exegesis."(9) This statement is certainly consistent with Bultmann's suspicion towards any human construct or worldview that aims to explain everything in certain logical and foreseeable ways. Second, which are the adequate presuppositions? This question is related to that of the philosophy one should adopt. Certainly, this adoption is not arbitrary, but should contribute to the understanding of the kergyma, which demands an existential response to God's word in freedom from sin and freedom for love. In this sense, Bultmann sees the value of existential philosophy whose categories are not supposed to replace God's word, but can enhance the sensibility and exigency of the hearer towards it. This kind of dynamic is similar to that by which understanding a musical text presupposes one's being musical, or understanding a book on mathematics presupposes one's ability to think mathematically. Unless a person intends to live an authentic life, the essence of God's word does not make sense to him or her. When we Christians encounters a scriptural text, our main interest or purpose is not so much to receive historical or political information as to let it say something to our actual present existence so that we can hear the truth about our life and our soul. Existential philosophy exactly demands the truthfulness of existence too. Its own logic forbids itself to tell anyone how to exist, but affirms that one must exist. While its categories give no answer to the question of our personal existence, they sharpen our awareness of the need to take up personal responsibility and make us open to the word of God. In this sense, Bultmann rejects the criticism that demythologization turns Christian faith into philosophy. An existential analysis of love does not lead a person to understand how he must love here and now, apart from making clear to him the timeless truth that only by loving can one understand love. The response and power to love in a concrete here and now finally depends on the encounter with God's word. Bultmann delineates sharply the difference between faith and theology. While faith is entirely an existential event, theology is a disciplined interpretation of faith, utilizing existentialist categories as tools of thought. It is not too reckless to say that theology is simply a handmaid of faith.
Furthermore, Bultmann's existential concern does not allow any possibility of valid investigation of God's self "because we cannot speak of what God is in Himself but only of what He is doing to us and with us."(10) However, he tries to dispel the fear and accusation of being entirely subjective in demythologization. No doubt, demythologization partly depends on personal experience, perception, and decision, but its objective basis is God's word in the Scriptures. A person cannot discover his human-God relationship by looking into himself; it can only be made real by his encounter with the demythologized word of God.(11)
4. The Understanding of God As Acting
Demythologization is to affirm that God is acting in the world. However, this action does not happen among worldly actions or events; it rather happens within them. The recognition of this reality can only appeal to the eyes of faith, not to the evidence of any causal relationship between events.
Bultmann makes it clear that demythologization does not exempt one from using symbolic language or images, since he acknowledges that "Mythological conceptions can be used as symbols or images which are perhaps necessary to the language of religion and therefore also of the Christian faith."(12) However, he denies the valid use of these symbols and images in a general sense. For example, images such as God as creator or God as acting do not refer to any event without myself being involved in this event. The analogical use of the symbolic language must correlate with a personal or an existential reference. "When we speak in this manner of God as acting, we conceive [of] God's action as an analogue to the actions taking place between men...It is in this analogical sense that we speak of God's love and care for men...and it is in this analogical sense that we call Him Father."(13) Here, Bultmann denies the legitimacy of affirming God as the creator of the world or Jesus as the saviour of the world, apart from my relationship with God as creature and with Jesus as my saviour. The strength of faith is to accept that the former statements in general cannot be proved so that faith transcends the causal relationship that can be proved in this world and thus stands in a privileged position with regard to theoretical reason, without succumbing to the latter's logic and demand.
1. Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958), 13.
2. Rudolf Bultmann, Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann, tr. by Schubert Ogden (New York: Meridan, 1960). This passage is Used by Roger A. Roman, Rudolf Bultmann: Interpreting Faith for the Modern Era (London: Collins, 1987), 48.
3. Jesus Christ and Mythology, 26.
4. Cf. Ibid, 81-82.
5. Cf. ibid, 28-31.
6. Cf. ibid, 82-84.
7. Ibid, 36.
8. Ibid, 36.
9. Ibid, 49.
10. Ibid, 73.
11. Cf. ibid 49-59.
12. Ibid, 67.
13.Ibid, 68-69.
A Presentation of Lonergan's Method Related to Interpretation
1. Cognitive Theory
Lonergan's theology is a theology of the subject. The study of the subject's operation towards truth and value is Lonergan's lifelong project. He sees that an existential subject is a subject by degrees. It discerns different levels of consciousness. In a dreaming state, we are only potential subjects without freedom to think or act. However, we become experiential subjects able to perceive and feel about the sensible world when we are awake. When we follow our desire for intelligibility and go on to inquire about our experience, to understand its possible meanings and implications, we arise to be an intelligent subject. Then the rational subject sublates the experiential and rational when it desires to check if its understanding is correct, marshals the evidence pro and con and finally judges it to be or not to be. Finally, the responsible consciousness sublates the rational one when the former follows the intention of the good, the question of value to deliberate, decide and act on what is truly worthwhile. Therefore, there are four operations in our consciousness, which Lonergan subsumes in four transcendental precepts, namely, be attentive in experience, be intelligent in understanding, be reasonable in judging and be responsible in deliberation.(14) "Transcendental" has two meanings here. First, obedience to the four transcendental precepts is not an automatic process but one that is achieved by the subject's engaging in the process of self-transcendence. Second, every genuine knowing and acting, without exception, has to go through these operations in our consciousness. The self-appropriation of these transcendental precepts is what Lonergan means by method, whereby one approaches truth and value.
In his cognitive theory Lonergan affirms first that knowing is a compound of many operations, not a single uniform property. Objectivity in experiencing the immediate world is attained by sensing and intuition, yet it is not the only level of knowing. In the mediated world of meaning, objectivity is approached by questioning, which governs the exigencies of human intelligence to investigate and understand, and of human reasonableness to judge the virtually unconditioned. What is grasped in understanding or judging is not some further datum added on to the data of sense. In fact, it is unlike all data but consists in an intelligible or reasonable unity. Second, apart from being a thinker, the subject is also a doer who deliberates, chooses and acts as a free and responsible agent for making of the self. If knowing is for the sake of being, acting is for the sake of value. Value here not only refers to a particular good but also to ordering goods for the sake of the truly good. Being and value are both transcendental notions, i.e., their entirety is beyond the reach of the subject, yet always present in its activity of knowing and acting. They guide the person towards their greater fullness. Just as we can only have limited knowledge of being by knowing this and that and other beings, the actualization of value can only be found in this or that act of a good person.(15) Therefore, what is finally at stake is the subject who, by the effect of self-transcendence, attains objectivity in knowing and becomes the principle of goodness in decision and action.
Cognitive theory affirms that human knowing is a dynamic structure. Instead of just being a single part -- sensing, or understanding, or judging -- knowing consists of their combination as a dynamic structure, an immanent moving from one part to another for the whole. Moreover, these parts function differently, so they cannot be understood in an analogous sense. If knowing is like this, so knowing what knowing is follows the same structure. First, it is the experience of one's experience, understanding and judgment on our different levels of consciousness whenever we perform them. Second, through insight comes understanding the experience of these levels as an inevitable elevator if we want to know. Finally, by exigency comes judgment asking whether this understanding of human knowing is true. In order to doubt or reject this understanding, however, the knower has to go through the foregoing process of cognitive structure again, i.e., the denial is self-referentially inconsistent. So the judgment has to be true.
Lonergan succeeds in affirming the irrevocable structure of human knowing. This irrevocable structure of human knowing is important because, first, objectivity is thus granted on three different levels, namely experiential, normative and absolute, corresponding to the three components in the cognitive structure. Second, it refutes the mistaken notion of knowing as seeing, which cannot help but lead to naive realism or idealism. The former affirms reality by generalizing the simple experience of seeing, a naive affirmation often without genuine understanding, while the latter denies knowing reality at all. Third, it provides a critical analysis to situate our knowing on the level of being, namely, reality again, so that the Kantian wound between phenomenon and noumenon is healed. Fourth, it provides the basis for taking human knowing as a continuous and progressive enterprise, overcoming the classic or static approach. Finally, it provides also the justification for functional specialties in a complementary and dynamic whole for method in theology.
2. The Realms of Meaning and Differentiation of Consciousness
If cognitive theory discusses the operation of the human mind and heart, then realms of meaning represent how our mind and heart structure reality. Transcending the animals' life that is merely submerged into the world of immediacy, the human world is basically mediated by meaning. Meaning orients individuals, organizes groups and communities, and forms cultures. Corresponding to his differentiation of human consciousness, Lonergan names the realms of meaning as common sense, theory, interiority and transcendence, and to these four he later adds scholarship and art. This differentiation is another dimension of his anthropology, in addition to cognitive theory.
Common sense deals with persons and things that are related to us. It represents the visible universe that we encounter. By transcendental precepts we reach insight, judgment and decision to meet the exigency of the situation in an appropriate way. Theory, bracketing the usefulness and practicality of things to us, provides the systematic and explanatory view of things in their mutual relationships. Theory develops terms, definitions, formulas, and constructs models with special kinds of technical language, laws and universal principles. Interiority emerges by adverting to and heightening our conscious operations and the dynamic structure that relates them to one another. That is how the transcendental precepts are discovered. Transcendence absorbs the compartmentalized world of meaning into a silent and all-embracing self-surrender to God's love. Scholarship is the realm of language, exegesis, literature and history. By using the subject's common sense language, it aims at understanding the meanings of the words and deeds of other people in different places or times. Its interest is not in a universal explanation, but in the intentions inherent in particular events. Finally, art is the realm of beauty in expressing ideas into objects or movements by commanding form???.(16)
Culture is informed by meaning. Different realms of meaning represent the variety and fecundity of cultures. This analysis is a phenomenological rebuttal of the classic and single notion of culture. If theology is to fulfil its task of mediating between the matrix of cultures and the role of religion within that matrix, the theologian is required to be capable of dexterously shifting from one realm of meaning to another in his studying or communicating the religious message for different readers or audiences. But what is the condition of the possibility of accomplishing this task? It lies in going back to the transcendental precepts, namely being attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible.
3. The Notion of Conversion
Conversion is the about-face of one's horizon by renouncing the core characteristics in the old one, leading the subject into a greater depth and breadth in truth and value. There is a hermeneutic circle between transcendental precepts and conversion. It is by the grace and event of conversion that the subject becomes self-transcendent in attentiveness to experience, in the intelligence to reach insight and understanding, in the reasonableness to seek out the virtually unconditioned, and in the responsibility to make a decision. On the other hand, it is the cumulative operations of the transcendental precepts which engender the possibility of conversion.
There are three kinds of conversion, namely, religious, moral, and intellectual conversion. Religious conversion represents a person totally falling in love with God, a recognition or initiation of ultimate concern in one's life. It is a recognition or initiation because any intentionality flows from the eros of the human spirit. As Aristotle says, everyone desires to know. Also, Augustine sighs deeply that his heart is restless unless it rests in God. This eros rooted in us initiates and is prior to all human enterprises, knowing and acting, but we may perhaps not recognize it. We search for the intelligibility of the cosmos but are oblivious to its intelligible ground. In fact, any question about human beings is finally a question about God. When this love is recognized, it signifies a surrender and faith without limits or qualifications, without conditions or reservations. This love is not simply an act but rather a state of self-surrender, from which other acts flow. It gives us a new horizon that transvalues and transforms because it surpasses the old one where originating value is only human beings and terminal value is the good that human beings bring about. Now, the originating value is the divine light and love, while the terminal value is the whole universe. As a result, human concern reaches beyond the human world to God and God's world; and human development is not only in skills and virtues but also in holiness.(17)
On the one hand, this self-transcendence into God's domain represents reaching the utmost outpost. On the other hand, human self-transcendence is ever precarious. In our dialectical advancement we tend to lose balance and downgrade the reality of God. For example, we may overemphasize God's transcendence but neglect God's immanence so that God becomes remote and irrelevant. On the contrary, God's immanence may be so overemphasized and transcendence neglected that the religious symbol becomes idol, ritual becomes magic, and recital a myth, etc. Meanwhile, in religious conversion faith has to discern the value of believing the word of religion, of accepting the judgments of fact and the judgments of value that the religion proposes, because faith is not an isolated or individual affair but has roots in a religious community. This community inherits the tradition initiated by the divine entry of God into human history and calls for a response. This call is expressed in various forms, including imperative ones, such as the command of love of God and neighbour. It might be expressed in narrative, such as the story of the community's origin and development; or in the ascetical, such as the teaching of spirituality; or in theory, such as the teaching of wisdom, the goodness of God and the manifestation of God's intentions. The genuineness of all these expressions has to be under scrutiny.(18) While this kind of discernment in faith constitutes the whole of theology, it should simultaneously enhance the possibility of self-transcendence for the sake of deeper conversion, avoid pitfalls or downgrade God's reality. Here comes a point of methodology, of the "how" which keeps our balance in check.
Moral conversion involves the change of the criteria of one's decision and choices from mere satisfaction to values, opting for the truly good, to a point even against satisfaction if it conflicts with the value to be upheld. It is a time for one to exercise vertical freedom and to set up, or radically change, one's basic horizon. The drive to value rewards success in self-transcendence with a happy conscience and saddens failures with an unhappy one. Here, moral conversion presupposes the judgments of value that differ in content but not in structure from judgment of fact. They differ in content because what is judged to be real need not be approved. However, they share the same criterion, namely, the self-transcendence of the subject to reach what is independent of the subject. In fact, judgments of value are felt to be true or false in so far as they generate a peaceful or uneasy conscience. Of course, the purpose of judgments of value is not merely knowing but also doing. Sin lies in the very dichotomy between knowing and doing, i.e. one does not follow what one affirms to be truly good. Moral conversion implies a decision and choice to make knowing and doing congruent and consistent. Furthermore, judgments of value should occur in a context of growth, i.e., one advances the judgments from agreeable to vital, from vital to social, from social to cultural, from cultural to personal, and from personal to religious value, to being in love with God. In this sense, moral conversion aims unceasingly at following this Ordo Amoris to higher values, until one's love of God is complete. At this point values are whatever one loves, and evils are whatever one hates. At this stage one becomes a self-transcendent person or, in an Aristotelian sense, a virtuous one who represents the incarnated principle of benevolence and true loving. However, as mentioned above, conversion is not an automatically ever-advancing process. Deviation from the order and relapse often occur because of neurotic needs and attachments. Therefore, a normative pattern of recurrent and related operations is revealed to check our deviation.(19)
Intellectual conversion is "a radical clarification and, consequently, the elimination of an exceedingly stubborn and misleading myth concerning reality, objectivity, and human knowledge."(20) Lonergan illustrates the dialectic opposition between naive realism, empiricism, idealism and critical realism as an example of intellectual conversion. He contends strongly that it is necessary to distinguish the world of immediacy, which is reached by our senses, and the world mediated by meaning, which is reached by our consciousness or insight. Knowing the latter is not some kind of inner looking or sensing, as the naive realists believe, as if there were some inner images that we could see or touch. In fact, knowing is achieved by a structure of operations, namely experiencing, understanding, judging and deciding. The reality known is not just looked at; it is given in experience, organized and explained by understanding, posited by judgment and belief. Therefore, knowledge is not restricted to sense experience, as it is by the empiricist, who takes understanding, judging and believing as merely subjective activities, Nor is it as envisaged by the idealist who, includes understanding and sensing as knowing, yet thinks of the world mediated by meaning as not real but ideal. Only the critical realist acknowledges the facts of human knowing and insists that the world mediated by meaning is the real world. This demonstration sets up a paradigm to engender intellectual conversion and rebut intellectual myth. Objectivity in the world of meaning has its appeal to us. It is not reached just by our sensing or by a mental construct, but by a self-transcendent subject who is willing to go through the transcendental structure of operations inherent in our consciousness.
These three conversions occur in a single consciousness and one sublates the other. Sublation means that what sublates goes beyond what is sublated, bringing something new and distinct on a new basis, yet keeping the sublated intact, preserving all its characteristics and carrying them to a fuller realization within a richer context. In this sense, moral conversion sublates the intellectual because it sets the subject on a new, existential level of consciousness and establishes the person as an originating value. At the same time, it does anything but weaken the subject's devotion to truth. In fact, it needs the truth in accord with the exigency of the rational consciousness before the subject can deliberately respond to value. On the other hand, the search for truth now has a richer context and stimulation for the pursuit of all values.
Similarly, religious conversion sublates moral conversion because the subject finds its capacity and desire for self transcendence in fulfilment and joy in this other-worldly love, which provides a new basis for all values and doing good. The originating value goes beyond the human being and takes root in God, the ground of all intelligibility and commitment. This new basis in no way negates or diminishes the fruits attained by moral or intellectual conversion. On the contrary, now all human pursuit of truth and good is placed within a cosmic context and purpose, and this love even grants to the subject the power of accepting the inevitable suffering required to undo the effects of decline due to human inauthenticity towards truth and goodness.(21)
From a causal point of view, however, it is religious conversion, God's gift of divine love, which appears first so that the taste of this love reveals values in their splendour to the subject. The subject, in returning love out of a deep sense of gratitude, is then determined to give up the wrong doings and mere satisfaction of the old horizon, in order to do the genuine good and follow all the commandments which are rooted in this totally Other. Next, this deliberation, or moral conversion, leads the subject to discern the truths taught by the religious tradition, and in such a tradition and belief lie the seeds of intellectual conversion.(22)
14. Cf. Bernard Lonergan, "The Subject", A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J., ed. By William F. J. Ryan, S.J. and Bernard J. Tyrell, S.J. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974), 79-81.
15. According to Aristotle, "Virtue...is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which a man of practical wisdom would determine it." (Nicomachean Ethics, II, vi, 15; 1106b 36ff) There is, therefore, no definition of virtue without its embodiment in a virtuous person. This whole thrust leads Lonergan to situate personal conversion as the foundation of doing theology.
16. Cf. Bernard Lonergan, Method In Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 83-84, 273-274
17. Cf. Ibid, 116, 240.
18. Cf. Ibid, 110-111, 118. This attention originates from and corresponds to Ignatius' caution on the afterglow of consolation. The origin from God might not be doubted, but the thinking and acting after it should be checked by the transcendental precepts.
19. Cf. Ibid, 35-39, 240.
20. Cf. Ibid, 238.
21. Cf. Ibid, 242.
22. Cf. Ibid, 243.
A Comparison of Demythologization and Method
The thrust of demythologization dwells on the exigency of being responsible to the challenge of God's word here and now by freeing oneself from attachment to the achieved yet illusive security in certain established worldviews, in the light of the eschatological judgment of God. This kind of operation seems to fit into the fourth level of consciousness in Lonergan's framework, where the subject experiences the love of God flooding his heart by the Holy Spirit and then taking this love as the originating value to decide and be responsible towards one's life. It is a dynamic from religious conversion heading towards moral conversion for higher values and the truly good. Lonergan would agree that this operation does not rely on the attained knowledge in one's worldview. Though the dictum goes that there is no love without prior knowing, Lonergan argues that in religious matters love precedes knowledge and the very beginning of faith is due to God's grace. This love is the cause that leads human beings to seek knowledge of God.(23) Bultmann has a similar understanding: "Man has a knowledge of God in advance, though not of the revelation of God, that is, of His action in Christ. He has a relation to God in his search for God, conscious or unconscious ... The question of God and the question of myself are identical."(24) In line with Pascal's famous insight, the heart has its reasons that reason itself does not understand, Lonergan sees that the heart's reasons are the discernment of, and intentional responses to, values as knowledge attained by faith, distinctive from the factual knowledge achieved by experiencing, understanding, and judging.
If this is granted, Bultmann is certainly right that whatever the outdated mythological knowledge or the prevailing scientific knowledge may be, it has little or even nothing to do with one's encounter with God in faith. Concerning the conditions of the possibility of one's conversion towards higher values or responsible action for God, Lonergan emphasizes the prior love of God, while Bultmann focuses on the power of God's word, its eschatological vision and its inherent judgment. Lonergan seems not to confine the flooding of God's love in our heart to reading the Scriptures or listening to the kergyma only, though they are certainly its privileged mediation. The Holy Spirit, however, is free to grant a similar consolation without previous cause. "Of itself, then, in as much as it is conscious without being known, the gift of God's love is an experience of the holy, of Rudolf Otto's myterium fascinans et tremendum. It is what Paul Tillich named a being grasped by ultimate concern. It corresponds to St. Ignatius Loyola's consolation that has no cause, as expounded by Karl Rahner."(25)
About the problem of myth, Lonergan distinguishes the different functions of meaning, namely, cognitive, efficient, constitutive, and communicative.(26) Lacking distinctions, primitive consciousness blends cognitive meaning insensibly with the constitutive, and the result is myth. The distinction between mere words, the meaning of the words, and the realities meant by the words is a later achievement of the mind. Demythologization seems to represent an effort to recover the cognitive meaning by discarding the constitutive one. The constitutive vision of the end of the world at hand must give way to the eschatological exigency of the present. But the question is: is the eschatological exigency the only cognitive meaning in the Scriptures? Lonergan seems to prefer the polymorphism of human consciousness that can raise different sets of questions towards various actual cognitive meanings. Let us take an example: God is vengeful. In a not-yet differentiated consciousness towards some deep religious experience, a primitive mind stuck in naive realism would definitely perceive God as somebody-already-out-there who does not tolerate injustice and evil deeds. Bultmann would definitely see this proposition as myth and would likely discard the constitutive meaning of an angry God and emphasize the myth's cognitive meaning of a call to abandon sinfulness here and now as our responsibility before God. However, a psychiatrist seems to see something more:
In fact, clinical evidence suggests that atrophy of the religious sense in man results in a distortion of his religious concepts. Or, to put it in a less clinical vein, once the angel in us is repressed, he turns into a demon... for time and again we watch and witness how repressed religion degenerates into superstition. In our century, a deified reason and a megalomanic technology are the repressive structures to which the religious feeling is sacrificed...Soon the only thing that would be left of all his science would be the atom bombs he possessed.
.... In concluding this chapter we might venture to say that God is a 'vengeful God' indeed, for neurotic existence in some cases seem to be the toll that a crippled relation to transcendence takes on man.(27)
From this passage, we can almost see the ontological import of 'God is vengeful' that reacts to the suppressed transcendent dimension that the human being is supposed to be.
As a whole, Bultmann's horizon does not allow the legitimacy of making propositional statements about God or belief. This has much to do with the problem of objectifying conceptuality. Rooted in Neo-Kantianism, Bultmann understands the word 'objectify' as designating the object-making activity of reason. When he uses it, it does not refer to thinking that is oriented towards what is genuinely objective, but to a mental construct that provides a model for external reality. In this sense, Bultmann's thinking is in line with the Kantian distinction of phenomenon and noumenon. What we can know is only the phenomenon, constituted or structured by human reason and categories. The reality remains unknown. In light of this, theology should not pretend to know God or use the objectifying mode of thought. God is not our mental construct, but the 'wholly other' than us. "To speak of God in concepts appropriate to a mere construct of Reason is to make God into an idol."(28)
Therefore, it is Bultmann's epistemology that prevents him from making any general statements about God or belief. This paper cannot make a detailed study, discussion, and critique of the Kantian problematic, but a few points can be made to shed light to the contrast between Bultmann and Lonergan. First, Lonergan does not see knowledge as simply immanent to the subject or as the construct of reason by the subject, though it is attained through the subject's reason. In fact, genuine knowing is a self-transcendent process. In experiencing, the sense data is given to the self that is different from illusion. The subject needs to be attentive. In understanding, the mind raises questions that might be different from the established answers and then forms certain ideas or insights. The subject is to be intelligent. In judging, evidence needs to be marshalled so that the conditions can be fulfilled. The subject is to be reasonable. In this sense, objectivity is reached by authentic subjectivity that goes through the transcendental precepts. Second, there might be a certain confusion about what judgment is. It seems that we need to know all the conditions about the world or God, before we can make a judgment about either. Since it is impossible to know all the inter-related conditions, we cannot then make a judgment. But Lonergan distinguishes two kinds of questions. There are questions for intelligence which ask what, why and how. There are questions for reflection, which ask whether the former answers are correct. The limited commitment of judgment to answer 'is it so?' is different from the ongoing understanding of comprehensive coherence. The latter is the ideal of human intelligence. Judgment is to the effect that no matter what the later understanding of the universe might be, at least this is so. Is God vengeful? If the meaning is about an angry God already out there to punish our wrongdoings, the conditions are not fulfilled. If it means that the violation of our transcendent constitution finally makes us suffer, the judgment is right.
Third, the distinctive fourth level of consciousness in terms of decision and value is not isolated from or in conflict with the other three levels in terms of knowledge. In fact, as Aristotle says, "everyone desires to know." Part of the intentionality of feeling towards values is exactly knowledge itself. Lonergan understands their relationship as sublation. The higher levels of consciousness sublate the lower. In this sense, knowing God has no inherent or a priori conflict with commitment to and responsibility to God. Lonergan surely acknowledges Bultmann's concern about the danger of knowledge as becoming one's attachment to security. The problem is also similar to what the hermeneutic of suspicion uncovers, the so-called orthodoxy as the mask of ideology for self- interest. Lonergan describes it in vivid metaphors:
Such devaluation, distortion, corruption may occur only in scattered individuals. But it may occur on a more massive scale, and then the words are repeated, but the meaning is gone. The chair was still the chair of Moses, but it was occupied by the scribes and Pharisees. The theology was still scholastic, but the scholasticism was decadent. The religious order still read out the rules, but one wonders whether the home fires were still burning...(29)
Lonergan sees the problem as the loss of common meaning due to personal and collective inattention, or failure to understand, or undetected rationalization. The attachment to security or self-interest is as great as the problem of inauthentic knowing. In this sense, conversion is to be threefold, not simply religious, moral, or intellectual, but all three are necessary.
Finally, an existential exigency in terms of decision and responsibility alone is incomplete and often neglects the objective hierarchy of values and the place where the truth lies. Existential commitment can be without a moral face. The incident of Heidegger's life-long and controversial connection with Nazism shows the limitation of his existential philosophy. Certainly, this limitation was already there in his description of Dasein. But the right description does not justify his wrongly actualized philosophical commitment. Applying the existential categories to theology, we still need to be attentive, intelligent, and reasonable to do moral and intellectual discernment for understanding God's will here and now for me as well as for others.
23. Cf. Ibid, 123, 283.
24. Jesus Christ and Mythology, 52-53.
25. Method, 106.
26. Cf. Ibid, 76-81 see their elaboration.
27. Victor E. Frankl, Man's Search For Ultimate Meaning (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing, 1975), 75-76.
28. R.A. Johnson, Rudolf Bultmann, 25.
29. Method, 80.
Conclusion
The contribution of Bultmann's demythologization is to recover and emphasize the cognitive meaning of eschatology and the kingdom of God as the entry point of interpreting the kergyma, transcending the stumbling block of mythological language. It confronts Christian authenticity to have faith in God though living in a mundane world that is short of any horizon of the transcendent. In fact, this reality of secularization is actually the best accommodation for sharpening and fostering the genuineness of faith. For Bultmann, any human construct seemingly facilitating the justification and persuasiveness of faith exactly contradicts the essence of faith. A person of faith has no other support or reliance than God, not even his own intelligence or reason. What dignity of faith and what a noble mission we Christians are called to! We cannot but admire Bultmann's conviction of God's presence in the world without seeing God's trajectory. His scholarly work has no doubt encouraged many to reach up to the splendour of faith.
On the other hand, we acknowledge, from Lonergan's point of view, the limitation of Bultmann's perspective of the Scriptures that focuses only on the cognitive meanings of eschatology and the kingdom of God. The polymorphism of human consciousness and the momentum of human eros, in fact, not only envisage the exigency of human freedom and responsibility here and now, but also raise questions about understanding different dimensions of reality, whether they are social, political, historical, psychological, etc., and marshals evidence in order to make judgments on them. Lonergan sees no conflict between these operations as Bultmann does. Many differences between the two figures can be boiled down to their basic epistemological stands. While Bultmann sees the objectifying process of reason simply as a human mental construct, which falls short of reaching reality as such, Lonergan believes that the transcendental precepts lead the subject to attain truth and value in an ongoing process.
Finally, both Bultmann and Lonergan remind us of possible pitfalls. If in philosophical terms Heidegger understands this pitfall as our forgetfulness of Being, in theological categories Bultmann sees our problem as hanging on to good works in terms of technological and rational achievements, losing sight of forfeiting the established security and instead placing total trust in God here and now. In a similar way, Lonergan understands our progress and authenticity as always precarious due to our refusal to engage with the transcendental precepts. Consequently, truth is ignored and lower values prevail. From different perspectives and using different categories, both of them see the same significance of the authenticity of the subject that can no longer simply be attached to the past. There is no "second hand" faith. Each one has to actualize his or her self-appropriation of faith before God and for God by being attentive, being intelligent, being reasonable, and finally being responsible.
Bibliography
1. Bultmann, Rudolf. Jesus Christ and Mythology. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958.
2. New Testament And Mythology and Other Basic Writings. Edited and translated by Schubert M. Ogden. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984.
3. Existence and Faith: Shorter Writings of Rudolf Bultmann. Translated by Schubert Ogden. New York: Meridan, 1960.
4. Johnson, Roger A. Rudolf Bultmann: Interpreting Faith for the Modern Era. London: Collins Liturgical Publications, 1987.
5. The Origins of Demythologizing: Philosophy And Historiography In The Theology of Rudolf Bultmann. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974.
6. Lonergan, Bernard. Collected Works Of Bernard Lonergan, Vol. 3: The Insight. Edited by Frederick E. Crowe & Robert M. Doran. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992.
7. Method In Theology. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996
8. "The Subject", A Second Collection: Papers by Bernard J.F. Lonergan, S.J. Edited by William F. J. Ryan, S.J. and Bernard J. Tyrell, S.J. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1974.