Date of Award
4-1975
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Theology
First Advisor
Matthew L. Lamb
Second Advisor
Patrick J. Burns
Abstract
Three major thinkers figure heavily in the work which follows: Bernard Lonergan, Paul Ricoeur, and Carl Jung. A fourth, Martin Heidegger, is in the background and plays a very important part. Yet this work is not primarily a study of any one of these men, let alone of all four of them. My concern is systematic theology, and more precisely the reconstruction of systematic theology that is going forward today. It is a methodological concern, a search for theological foundations. In this, it is most closely related to Lonergan's work and attempts a complement to his search for foundations.
Not all of the questions raised by this work are satisfactorily answered within the limits I have set myself. In particular, l do no more than hint at what I believe is the complete foundation of a specifically Christian theology, I try to point to one direction in which we can come to that basis in a methodologically verifiable way. The substantiation of this claim must await a future work critiquing Jung's notion of the Self. I chose not to include this analysis and critique in the present work, mainly because I came to suspect that to do so would more than double the length of this dissertation.
I have many debts to acknowledge. It was at St Louis University that I was introduced to philosophy, and I must mention the names of six men who taught me various aspects of this enterprise and inspired me with their obvious familiarity with the philosophical habit: George Klubertamz, Edward Foote, James Collins, Leonard Eslick, William Wade, and Linus Thro. At Fordham University William Richardson helped me through many of the pages of Heidegger. My professors at Marquette University have encouraged the direction here taken ever since I suggested it to them two years ago. I am indebted to many friends for the long hours they have spent with me in discussion of the matter treated in this dissertation. I wish to single out two of them: Vernon Gregson, to whom I owe the term "psychic conversion," and Sebastian Moore, by whose recent theological reflections on the Crucified I have been profoundly affected. A very special tribute of thanks must be paid to the two men most instrumental in mediating the experience which lies behind my work. My debt to Bernard Lonergan for the change his work continues to effect in my understanding of myself and of our age is obvious from the pages wh1cn follow. I thank him also for the personal encouragement he provided during what was for me a very happy semester at Regis College in Toronto. Charles Goldsmith's skillful and delicate exercise of a very sensitive maieutic art was indispensable for the proposed coniunctio of method and psyche which is the principal point of the pages which follow. Last and foremost, I w1sh to thank Matthew Lamb for agreeing to direct this dissertation, for his correct warning concerning where I would run the danger of missing the point, and for his sharp clarification of the central issue of the interrelationship of theology, philosophy, and depth psychology.