Methods of academic theology (pro et contra of Bernard Lonergan)

Abstract

The article is devoted to the development of special aspects of the methodology of academic theology, determined by the internal methods of Orthodox dogmatic theology. The development of methods of theology is becoming an urgent problem of academic theology in the modern Russian educational space in connection with the approval of the Higher Attestation Commission of the new specialty 26.00.01 “Theology”. Taking into account the specifics of the subject of theology as a new academic discipline, problematic questions remain on the applicability of the research methods of the humanities and natural sciences in it. A separate task is to develop our own method of Orthodox theology. The experience of foreign theology includes not only hermeneutical methods, conditioned by textual research, but also epistemological methods conditioned by the research of the meaning and structure of the theological cognition of reality. The foreign experience contains several developments by authors, one of which is the methodological approach of Bernard Lonergan, described in the work Method in Theology. Lonergan’s method has a neo-Thomistic origin, therefore it is not able to reflect the notion fundamental for Orthodox theology — irreducibility of the hypostatic existence of God and man to the existence of the same entities. This is largely due to the Western problem of the Latin theological inculturation of the Eastern concept of “hypostasis”, created on the basis of Greek-language ancient philosophy. However, the humanitarian potential of Lonergan’s method allows the theologian to systematize and structure the sequence of cognitive operations when performing a wide range of theological studies. The principle of hypostasis, which preserves the fullness of Orthodox theology in academic theology, is followed by the method of antinomination of theological judgments, created by Chalcedonian theology to express the hypostatic unity of incompatible entities.