The Eros of the Human Spirit The Writings of Bernard Lonergan, SJ
By Elizabeth J. Snedden
Sister Elizabeth J Snedden, RSCJ, has twice had the benefit of a Lonergan Fellowship at Boston College. She is originally from Auckland, New Zealand where she currently lectures in spirituality and theology at Good Shepherd College, and The Catholic Institute of Theology of New Zealand. She has taught for many years in Sacred Heart Schools in Australia and New Zealand, and holds a doctorate in Theology from Melbourne University of Divinity in Australia.
You are invited to a book launch
Saturday, December 9, 2017 3.00 – 4.30 pm
by Dr Kathleen Williams RSM of Yarra Theological Union, Melbourne
who will be introduced by Dr Mervyn Duffy S.M of GSC
In the ATRIUM of the Auditorium at Baradene College,
237 Victoria Avenue, Remuera.
Parking available through gate 2
I recently took part in a symposium in honour of Dom Sebastian Moore, giving a talk on Sebastian’s debt to his ‘two teachers’, Bernard Lonergan SJ and F.R. Leavis, the Cambridge University literary critic. I wish I had read Elizabeth’s book, The Eros of the Human Spirit, before the symposium because she has ‘opened up’ Dom Sebastian’s thinking on desire and religious conversion for me in her section on Moore in chapter 5 of her excellent book. What is more, Elizabeth may be interested in my interpretation of the role of the two trees, of knowledge and of life, in Genesis chapter 3, in my book, The Fall and the Ascent of Man, (University of America Press, 2012). In my book I interpret the eating from the tree of knowledge as symbolising the moment and occurrence of hominization, taking this to be an event in the evolution of human beings; but God debars the human couple from eating from the tree of life – see especially the final speech in Genesis 3 where God says, ‘Behold the man has become like one of us….But lest he reach out and eat also of the tree of life…’ I consider the fulfilment achieved by the eating of the tree of knowledge and the failure, through deliberate divine prevention, to eat also of the tree of knowledge to sum up the basic human situation, that humans are fundamentally oriented to the tree of life but can only achieve it on God’s terms. The two trees might be understood as analogous to Lonergan’s ‘two vectors’, one from below upwards, creating, and one from above downwards, healing. Of course, I have much more to say on this theme in my book, but I feel that it fits snugly with much that Elizabeth says in her book.
I might add that I have taken part in a number of Lonergan conferences and Fred Lawrence is a friend.