Archival Material: Early Papers on History, Volume 25 (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan)

Review\nArchival Material: Early Papers on History finds its rightful place in the series, since it expands, explains, and is a commentary upon a central developing preoccupation throughout Lonergan's oeuvre: 'progress, decline, and redemption.' - Andrew Beards, academic director at the School of the Annunciation, UK\nThese early essays, in addition to exhibiting the brilliance of the young Lonergan, reveal much about the concerns and problems which motivated Lonergan's lifelong effort to develop a method for theology. As Hegel's early theological writings anticipated his entire mature system, so these early papers illuminate Lonergan's life project in a way that none of his other early writings do. - Mark D. Morelli, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director, Los Angeles Lonergan Center, Loyola Marymount University\nThis collection of papers provides a snapshot of Lonergan's early development. As such, it represents part of what informs the more widely known thinking of Insight and Method in Theology. Every student of Lonergan wants to know the whole story and would be grateful to have this volume at the ready. - Jim Kanaris, School of Religious Studies, McGill University\nIn the mid- to late-1930s, while he was a student at the Gregorian University in Rome, Bernard Lonergan wrote a series of eight essays on the philosophy and theology of history. These essays foreshadow a number of the major themes in his life’s work.\nThe significance of these essays is enormous, not only for an understanding of the later trajectory of Lonergan’s own work but also for the development of a contemporary systematic theology. In an important entry from 1965 in his archival papers, Lonergan wrote that the "mediated object" of systematics is Geschichte or the history that is lived and written about. In the same entry, he stated that the "doctrines" that this systematic theology would attempt to understand are focused on "redemption." The seeds of such a theology are planted in the current volume, where the formulae that are so pronounced in his later work first appear. Students of Lonergan’s work will find their understanding of his philosophy profoundly affected by the essays in this volume.