a brief sketch on liberal christianity and marxist christianity

[Hugh Williams]

Listers all,

I immersed myself in John Raymaker’s and Pierre Whalon’s AIRR(2023) text and I’ve come to certain conclusions:

·        Both Lonergan and the AIRR text, at certain moments, have characterized this work in social theory (and on economy) in terms of a liberal-marxist dialectic-dialogue in search of some needed/necessary higher synthesis.

·        The question, problem, issue when specified in terms of a Christian-Marxist dialogue is immense and yet I am convinced of its high relevance for our times.

·        There is this realization about the pervasiveness of liberal Christianity and liberal Christians in the West; how we all have been liberal Christians; one cannot help being so in western culture.

·        Privately, close friends have raised concerns about the effect on one’s personal health of these prolonged and even fevered reflections on matters, such as the GAZA genocide and the climate change catastrophe, over which, it seems, one has little or no effective influence.

·        However, I have realized that these reflections are about this central and even fundamental question the serious study of Lonergan recurrently raises for us all – this necessity of trying our best to move from personal authenticity to collective-communal authenticity no matter how misguided these efforts and attempts might be …

·        The liberal view, as I have come to understand it, tends to see personal authenticity in terms of a change in consciousness that is somehow always to be prior to collective-communal authenticity, whereas the Marxist view, as I understand it, does not see things quite this way.

·        My question then is this - is there now this great need to consider what I’m calling Marxist Christianity? And to do this for the sake of a more serious and effective pursuit of this synthesis and collective-communal authenticity that is sought and asserted to be necessary.

Further Commentary:

This AIRR(2023) text of Raymaker and Whalon, again, has led me into an in-depth study of Robert Doran’s and Edward Schilleebckx’s treatment of Marx and the Marxist tradition. This was done in the interest of the desired synthesis … this ever-elusive desired synthesis of Lonergan’s. Doran’s treatment[1] in my view is largely a derivative treatment of Marx and Marxism, whereas Schilleebckx’s treatment is much more substantive and engaging and, I believe, shows how Marx and Marxism does go some way to overcome liberalism’s limitations in this pursuit of collective-communal authenticity and can do so without forsaking a genuine relationship with Christianity. Such an adventure on my part, in this theoretical pursuit of a synthesis, can only provide a sketch but it does suggest the time has come for Christianity and Christians to abandon or at least to deeply and critically reevaluate their historically contingent pact with liberalism, and to consider a new pact with Marxism. This I believe is what liberation theology proposes. Schilleebckx, in fact, describes his two great works in Christology[2] as an effort to provide some synthesis on this very question and problem of ‘our’ redemption, emancipation, or self-liberation as human beings in history, and to do so with liberation theology in mind.   

Hugh

[1] Robert Doran, Theology and the Dialectics of History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990).

[2] Edward Schilleebckz, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Crossroads, 1981) and Christ: The Experience of Jesus as Lord ( New York: Crossroad, 1983).

[John Raymaker]

Hugh, you do have a knack to consolidate your reading into what could be a very helpful synthesis of how Catholic thinkers such as Schillebeecks, liberation theologians and Doran have addressesd some of the mindgoblling, complex issues of our time. Pope Francis and now Leo XVI have done their best to address the issues through meetings will world leaders of good faith--whereas the devils in the Kremlin in Jerusalem are bent on annihalation. You would have the materials for a timely book if you could e.g. develop more fullly each of the issues you addess below.   John

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[David Bibby]

Dear Hugh,

Thank you for sharing these insightful observations on the AIRR project.

I find the suggestion to consider a Marxist-Christianity provocative. Western Christianity often prioritises the individual change of heart, whereas Marxist traditions stress the structural and communal transformation. Isolated, they both fall short: liberalism risks privatizing faith into individual conscience, while Marxism risks reducing persons to the collective without adequately grounding personal dignity.

The higher synthesis you are suggesting seems to be exactly where the GEM-FS framework points: the dynamism of attentiveness–intelligence–reasonableness–responsibility is both personal and communal, and the functional specialties structure collaboration so that individual authenticity feeds into communal structures of meaning and praxis.

We can explain this in ψ_terminology. First, we require ψ_transformations on the personal and communal level, followed by a ψ_terminology to express what we have learned, and finally ψ_integrations to unify these into a coherent framework of institutions, practices, economic systems, etc. This follows Lonergan's military metaphor for the evidence of a metaphysics:

"For this reason [a grasp of that evidence lies, not within easy reach of every indolent mind, but only at the term of a long and difficult accumulation of direct and reflective insights] a statement of the evidence for a metaphysics has to be in dynamic terms. If a spatial image and a military metaphor may be helpful, the advance of metaphysical evidence is at once a breakthrough, an envelopment, and a confinement. The breakthrough is effected in one's affirmation of oneself as empirically, intelligently, and rationally conscious. The envelopment is effected through the protean notion of being as whatever one intelligently grasps and reasonably affirms. The confinement is effected through the dialectical opposition of twofold notions of the real, of knowing, and of objectivity, so that every attempt to escape is blocked by the awareness that one would be merely substituting some counterposition for a known position, merely deserting the being that can be intelligently grasped and reasonably affirmed, merely distorting the consciousness that is not only empirical but also intelligent and not only intelligent but also reasonable." (Insight 2008/508-9, Chapter 15 Elements of Metaphysics, Section 8 Summary)

Thus:

• ψ_transformation = breakthrough
  
• ψ_terminology = envelopment
  
• ψ_integration = confinement
  

In this light, your suggestion of a Marxist-Christian dialogue is not just provocative but timely: it helps us see how personal and communal ψ_transformations can be drawn into a higher synthesis. GEM-FS gives us the scaffolding, and ψ_terminology allows us to name the process dynamically, so that the pursuit of authenticity can move from individuals to cultures to institutions in a coherent and healing way.

Kind regards,

David

[Hugh Williams]

David,

thank you

give me time with this intriguing response and amplification ...

Hugh

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[Hugh Williams]

John,

Thank you for the encouragement ...

not likely to produce a book.

But there definitely is a paper or two to be written on these matters.

One possibly is in the works for this fall with Concordia's

'Critical Theology' journal which if all goes well 

will speak of your AIRR text. Not a review but on topics related ...

Hugh

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[Hugh Williams]

David,

In what follows below across time and space are ‘words’ only and yet there is this genuine straining towards the desired higher synthesis that is there in all honest thinkers/theoreticians … and in this context, Lonergan and Marx for sure.

Please tell me if in my short gloss I’m coming anywhere close to your good meaning in this extraordinary email below …

You say you find the proposal or these shared findings provocative and timely. You say this because you find in this dialectic between liberalism’s tendency to overemphasize individualism and privatization to the harm of the common good, and Marxism’s tendency to overemphasize the collective to the harm of personal dignity some prospect, with serious engagement, of there actually being some closer movement towards this higher synthesis desired in and by GEM-FS (thanks for the rich and highly relevant reference to Lonergan’s ‘Insight’ pp.508-509). This may be so by way of an operative breakthrough (conversion) effecting the conscious self, an operative envelopment (socialization) effecting a rational social ontology, and a confining (structured) dialectic where escape efforts from this truth and goodness now are to be recognized as both self-contradictory and self-betraying …..

Hugh

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[David Bibby]

Dear Hugh,

Thank you, this gloss comes very close to what I was hoping to convey. You have captured well the dialectic between liberalism and Marxism and how GEM-FS offers the scaffolding for a higher synthesis through breakthrough (conversion), envelopment, and confinement.

One small clarification: where you speak of “socialization” as envelopment, I would emphasise instead the role of ψ_terminology (parallel to Lonergan’s “protean notion of being”). It is not only that we are socialised into a rational ontology, but also that we find language to stabilise the new horizon of meaning. That naming, in turn, makes socialisation possible.

With that nuance, I think we are very much aligned.

Best wishes,

David 

On 1 Sep 2025, at 11:44, Hugh Williams <hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca> wrote:



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[Hugh Williams]

David et al,

As we explore this crucial move in Lonergan's thought and in the AIRR(2023) text from personal authenticity to collective-communal authenticity, I would like to add that ...

I believe the notion of praxis is key, at least from the Marxist side, for moving towards the higher viewpoint Lonergan hoped for, and that also would constitute the desired synthesis for the liberal-marxist dialectic. Praxis in the Marxist tradition, as I understand it, is the free activity through which we create and change our historical world and ourselves. It is an activity believed to be unique to us and it is given primacy over theory because theoretical contradictions are often considered only to be resolvable through practical activity and through revolutionary activity in particular (after which theory may come to give some account ...).

There is this coincidence of changing historical circumstances and human activity as personal change that in Marxism is conceived and understood as revolutionary practice. Even the mysteries of religion that might lead theory and theoreticians towards mysticism are said to find their rational resolution in this human praxis and in the comprehension of (and reflection upon) this praxis.

Liberal philosophers have tended to interpret the world; the crucial point now is to change it. Society cannot be changed by reformers who simply understand and elucidate its needs but only by the revolutionary praxis of the people whose interest coincides with that of society as a whole (i.e. the proletariat). This (or any of these acts) will be an act of society understanding itself, in which the subject changes the object (society) by the very act of understanding.

Hugh

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[David Bibby]

Dear Hugh,

I appreciate your way of naming the move “from personal authenticity to collective-communal authenticity.” In Lonergan’s terms, I’d nuance it slightly: the communal never displaces the personal but is always grounded in it. Authentic community arises only through the authenticity of its subjects; in ψ_language, ψ_subject grounds ψ_community.

On the Marxist side, your emphasis on praxis is indeed crucial, but here Lonergan’s cautions are worth recalling. In Insight, in the section on Culture and Reversal (2008, pp. 261–263), he notes that “the dramatic subject, as practical, originates and develops capital and technology, the economy and the state. By his intelligence he progresses, and by his bias he declines.” The root danger is not simply external structures but practicality itself:

“To justify its existence, it had to become more and more practical, more and more a factor within the technological, economic, political process, more and more a tool that served palpably useful ends.… Clearly, by becoming practical, culture renounces its one essential function, and by that renunciation condemns practicality to ruin.”

So while Marx looked forward to a classless society, the deeper challenge is that practical intelligence is not going away. To complement the “revolutionary praxis,” we must also counteract the “short-term practicality” of common sense. This is where the ψ_framework offers a mediation:

• ψ_transformation (breakthrough): the personal act of insight/conversion that grounds authentic praxis.
• ψ_terminology (envelopment): the mediation through common language that allows conversion to extend communally.
• ψ_integration (confinement): the safeguard that keeps both personal and communal praxis from falling back into bias or short-term practicality.

In this way, the ψ_framework helps us see how personal authenticity and communal praxis belong together, each dependent on the other for their full realization.

Best wishes,

David

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