Method in Theology stands with Insight as Bernard Lonergan's most important work. It is Lonergan's answer to those who would argue that in this time of cultural change and dissolution, the believer is afloat on a sea of multiplying theologies, without rudder or compass. Lonergan was resolute in his refusal to be defeatist on this point. While agreeing that theology must continually change to mediate between religion and culture, he worked out an integral method to guide and control this ongoing process. Method in Theology is the fruit of this labour. This critical edition has benefited from extensive research into Lonergan's typescripts and from consulting the recordings from several institutes where he lectured over the course of the work's development. Lonergan's intention was to provide a set of methods that would guide a collaborative community in the ongoing construction of a theology that would move from recovery of the data through resolution of conflicts to contemporary formulations and applications. With this work, the cognitional theory of Insight: A Study of Human Understanding underwent a surprising set of developments in the form of what he calls functional specialization.

Continuing where Volume 23 left off, Volume 24 of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan traces the background to Lonergan's notion of functional specialization as it emerges in his Latin courses and seminars on method. This volume contains editorial reports based on Lonergan's handwritten notes for two courses in 1963, both entitled "Method in Theology." Also included is the lecture "De Notione Structurae," dating from 1964, along with an English translation on facing pages. Together with Volumes 22 and 23, Early Works on Theological Method 3 provides readers with a thorough presentation of the data on Lonergan's development through the 1960s as he worked out what became the classic book Method in Theology (1972).

This collection of essays, addresses, and one interview come from the years 1966-73, a period during most of which Bernard Lonergan was at work completing his Method in Theology. The eighteen chapters cover a wide spectrum of interest, dealing with such general topics as 'The Absence of God in Modern Culture' and 'The Future of Christianity, ' narrowing down through items such as 'Belief: Today's Issue' and more specialized theological and philosophical studies, to one on his own community in the church ('The Response of the Jesuit ...') and the illuminating comment on his great work Insight ('Insight Revisited').

This book is a reprint of the first edition published in 1974, edited by William F.J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrrell of Gonzaga University, Spokane. The editors contribute an important introduction in which they emphasize that Lonergan's central concern is intentionality analysis, and that two major themes run through the papers: first, the clear emergence of the primacy of the fourth level of human consciousness, the existential level, the level of evaluation and love; secondly, the significance of historical consciousness. These papers, then, besides the unity they possess by appearing within the same seven year period, share a specific unity of theme.

Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), a professor of theology, taught at Regis College, Harvard University, and Boston College. An established author known for his Insight and Method in Theology, Lonergan received numerous honorary doctorates, was a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1971 and was named as an original members of the International Theological Commission by Pope Paul VI.