Thematically focused on the theology of redemption or what is called in theology "soteriology," each of the two sections of The Redemption addresses biblical literature and significant moments in the history of Christian theology, and especially the work of Anselm of Canterbury. The second part of the book presents a significant treatment of the problem of good and evil, and introduces the important category of cultural evil. Most significant from the standpoint of Lonergan's original contribution is the treatment accorded in both Part 1 and Part 2 to what he calls "the just and mysterious law of the cross." The treatment of biblical literature contains a valuable distinction between "redemption as end" and "redemption as medium." Beginning with theses 15-17 from Lonergan's Collected Works, The Incarnate Word, this volume also includes rare and never-before-published texts originally written in the late 1950s.
Fr. Bernard Joseph Frances Lonergan, SJ, CC (Ph.D., Theology, Gregorian University (Rome), 1939; B.A., University of London, 1930), was an ordained Roman Catholic priest of the Jesuit order. As an economist and philosopher-theologian in the Thomist tradition, he taught at Loyola College (Montreal) (now Concordia University), Regis College (now federated within the University of Toronto), the Pontifical Gregorian University, Harvard University, and Boston College. He was named by Pope Paul VI one of the original members of the International Theological Commission.
He is the author of Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) and Method in Theology (1972), which established what he called the Generalized Empirical Method (GEM). The University of Toronto Press is in process of publishing his work in a projected 25-volume collection edited by staff at the Lonergan Research Institute at Regis College.
"Lonergan is considered by many intellectuals to be the finest philosophic thinker of the 20th century." —TIME Magazine