ABSTRACT
Bernard Lonergan (1904–84) is frequently described as one of the most important Catholic theologians in the twentieth century. This description may or may not be correct, but at any rate it is somewhat imprecise, for although one of Lonergan’ ambitions was to modernize theology and bring it up to date, he believed that this project demanded that he went beyond his own period and included history – since contemporary thinking cannot renew itself. New thinking presupposes a tradition. On the one hand, Lonergan could claim that “[a]ny present is powerful in the measure that past achievement lives on in it.” On the other hand, he adopted – without contradicting this claim – Pope Leo XIII’s dictum that one should increase and perfect the old by means of the new: vetera novis augere et perficere (1879). Lonergan thus resolved to develop Neo-Thomism’s interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’ thinking with the help of Kant’s critique of knowledge and in the form of the so-called Transcendental Thomism with which the name of Karl Rahner is also associated. In this way, he resolved to develop the First Vatican Council’s intentions with the help of the principles of the Second Vatican Council.
