perhaps a change in venues for this important economic discussion

[Hugh Williams]

Pierre, John, et al,

Because no one has taken up the modest suggestion below

from the email of January 24 re. a turtle-paced winter discussion of the Appendices

of the AIRR text, I think what I'll do is try and introduce some of the 'ideas

and puzzles' surrounding the text to an Academia 'discussion group' where I've found there 

has at times been much more responsiveness and attention among a broader audience to certain issues

raised over the past few years. It is not perfect but at times there does seem to be more signs of life ... 

As I said below to Pierre specifically ... the AIRR text, in my view, goes a long way towards getting

crucial issues into the 'light'. 

What is missing is a frank or more thorough discussion of the political context needed

for 'realization or implementation'. This in part is why I find the Chinese situation so relevant and important,

because as John Bellamy Foster (Monthly Review, July-August 2021) points out - 

China as a post-revolutionary society is neither entirely capitalist nor entirely socialist.

Strictly speaking it would be naive to speak of it as 'anti-capitalist"; it is, however, seriously intent to have the interests of capital

subordinated to labor by means of a socialist political context. Here then, I should think, would be a society where there would be a keen interest in the two circuit

theory of economy .... 

It seems to me that the Chinese have had to and very much are taking very seriously what your good text has characterized

as Peter Corbishley's summation (again, in the AIRR text's appendices) of the economic meta-problem expressed in Lonerganian terms 

as this real social tension between "greed or ignorance" ....

Hugh

Subject:	Re: [lonergan_l] Christian-Marxist Dialogue: On Continuing to Read Phil McShane
Date:	Tue, 27 Jan 2026 12:25:05 -0400
From:	Hugh Williams <hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca>
Reply-To:	loner...@googlegroups.com
To:	loner...@googlegroups.com

Pierre,

let me add that as I laid my head down to rest

... I had a flash of insight because of your good and succinct response below.

as essential or sound as Lonergan's analytical framework is for understanding

the "two circuit economic law" to which we must adapt if we are to have a functioning economy,

Lonergan's theory of economy does not provide an adequate account of the political context for its realization,

so we have in effect an incomplete social theory. (Your AIRR text helped me to see this ...)

Thus perhaps the need for dialogue with marxism to help provide for that

in a way that ideologically holds up the priority of labor and not of capital (as we now have in much of the West),

i.e., capital is to serve labor.

This as I understand it would in the most general terms be in the best of the tradition of Popes Francis and Leo xiv

referenced earlier by John ....

Hugh  

Subject:	Re: [lonergan_l] as to some of the issues Hugh raises in discussing the eight appendices
Date:	Sat, 24 Jan 2026 16:33:37 -0400
From:	Hugh Williams <hwil...@nbnet.nb.ca>
Reply-To:	loner...@googlegroups.com
To:	loner...@googlegroups.com

John,

Could we agree that a core group would have to have your text in hand,

say at least three beside the authors ....

while others could be looking in on the discussion and exchanges

and contributing on occasion when inspired.

So is it fair to ask for 'a show of hands' on this ...?

beginning with those who have the text at hand ....

thanks

Hugh

[PIERRE WHALON]

No I like the idea, Hugh.

Others?

Pierre

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[Hugh Williams]

This below then finally is my first note for an Academia discussion I'm trying to get underway.

see link at - https://www.academia.edu/community/activity/5J1dDW

I've used a recently published "Critical Theology" paper, that no doubt has been shared here previously

as a sort of 'discussion starter' (see attached for those interested ...)

and yet I'm hoping the discussion will provide an occasion for exploring

certain key issues not yet fully discussed here or anywhere else as near as I can find ...

thanks

Hugh

--------

Note #1

This paper. largely within the Canadian and Catholic-Christian context and guided by the important work of the sociologist-theologian Gregory Baum, attempts to begin, or better yet, to renew a Christian-Marxist dialogue-dialectic. My own sense of the Christian-Marxist ‘dialogue-dialectic’ creative tension has only deepened in these past few years. This then is my first note on the topic. Others will follow, I'm hoping ...

Perhaps this area of concern will be my final serious area of inquiry and study. It is a very deep intellectual matter going all the way back to the tension between Plato and Aristotle. In certain respects, I see the Christian being closer to Plato, while the Marxist is closer to Aristotle.

I should also say, first off, that I remain very suspicious of the Christian’s almost natural presumption of 'superiority' in any such a dialogue-dialectic. However, as the paper indicates in an early footnote especially, that the recent developments and findings around the Israeli – Palestinian/Gaza “War and Genocide”, along with the ongoing struggles for, and ruling class resistance to, effective Global action against Climate Change have brought this presumption into serious check for many people, just as it has for myself.

I believe I can say with some confidence that genuine Christian-Marxist dialogue-dialectic will change both parties. Christianity and the Christian will change Marxism and the Marxist, but also Marxism and the Marxist will change Christianity and the Christian.

As for those who have from the Christian side engaged in this dialogue-dialectic over the past half century or more, I remain unsure if the Canadian Jesuit scholar, Bernard Lonergan, or his student, Robert Doran, the good American Lonerganian Jesuit, fully appreciate the changes to Christianity and Christians that such serious dialogue-dialectic can and does bring about. I am convinced, however, that other Christian scholars such as his fellow Jesuit, Karl Rahner, and the good Dominican, Edward Schillebeeckx, are fully aware of the deep reciprocating changes that actually can be affected by such a serious and prolonged encounter.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/lonergan_l/6F2665B4-BE62-47FC-8431-9C654A78353B%40aol.com.

[Hugh Williams]

It is perhaps important to remind ourselves of what Lonergan said

of the importance of dialogue-dialectic, despite the painful difficulties,

during periods of intellectual and cultural decline and even decadence -

(this was also posted on academia ...)

This is an attempt to get a virtual dialogue-dialectic going on Christianity and Marxism. There is an earlier paper published as well in Critical Theology (Fall 2022 see link at - Synod and Dialectic: A Philosophical Reflection with) where at one point I briefly discuss the importance the great Canadian theologian-economist Bernard Lonergan attributed to dialogue-dialectic. One of the key things he wanted his readers to grasp, whether they be Christian religionists or secular socialists, is that once a process of cultural dissolution is underway, even at the intellectual level, it can be screened by self-deception and perpetuated by a sort of logical consistency. And as dissolution mounts, it is accompanied by increasing division, incomprehension, suspicion, distrust, hostility, hatred, and even violence. The social body can be torn apart and its cultural soul can be incapable of reasonable convictions and responsible commitments based upon judgments of fact and value resting upon solid beliefs.

Ardent recourse to belief(s), which in Lonergan is very different from real knowledge, is efficacious only when believers can present a solid front and when intellectual, moral, and religious skeptics and detractors are a small minority. But when their influence mounts and comes to dominate the discourse then believing can work against intellectual, moral, and religious self-transcendence, and what had been an arduous but honored and respected tradition of struggle and advance becomes only the concern of an irrelevant minority.

The question here becomes - how is it dialogue-dialectic can assist us in avoiding such situations of decline, or assist us in remedying them in some way? In answering this question, Lonergan has to slow down and consider very carefully just what dialectical dimension of human intersubjective encounter is about, just what is its nature. It means considering how in serious human inquiry - in our research, in our interpretation of that research, and in providing some historical context for our interpretation, we are actually concerned with both causality and values. We are concerned with movement, especially historical movement, in the sense of what is going forward and what can be understood as such because of both causal connections and the influence of values. When we interpret, we understand the thing or object before us, the words, the author, and even oneself to some degree. We pass judgment on the accuracy of our understanding and we determine some manner of expressing this understanding. There is clearly what Lonergan calls a sophisticated hermeneutic at work, the apprehension of values and disvalues as an intentional response to that with which one is engaged and involved. Thus, dialectic adds to the interpretation in our understanding an appreciative dimension. And then added to this historical view that apprehends what was or is going forward there is an historical perspective that is evaluative of achievements in terms of good and evil. We discover gross differences in historical analysis because in our historical perspectives, we don’t just have different horizons, we have opposed horizons in our efforts to consider and analyze similar events. And so, it is this situation (especially in our intellectual culture) that is the concern and work of dialectic and, according to Lonergan, its remedy is nothing less than type of conversion.

In our respective hermeneutical work, we can easily find what fits with our own horizon, but we have much less ability to attend to what one has never understood nor conceived. Thus, our theology is at best incomplete if restricted only to research, interpretation, and history for there is no real encounter as yet with the past, nor with others in their own encounter with the past. For this must involve the actual meeting of persons, and gradually overtime the experiencing and appreciating of the values they hold, the criticizing of defects in their horizon, while allowing for challenges by both word and deed to one’s own horizon. Such encounter is essential for Lonergan, it is fundamental and necessary for the authentic development of one’s own self-understanding and for the testing of one’s own horizon.

Lonergan clearly is putting considerable stress on dialectic because he believes up until the serious and gradual engagement of persons in dialectic over time, there is likely to be a twofold deficiency in our method resulting in our research, interpretation, and historical analyses’ tending to be seriously inadequate or incomplete in their treatment of both value and causality.

I discussed this more fully in relation to the Catholic Church's Synodal Process undertaken by Pope Francis 2021-2023; my paper available at - Synod and Dialectic: A Philosophical Reflection with

Hugh Williams

[Hugh Williams]

Pierre, Doug et al,

So, to continue with this perhaps quixotic effort to get some discussion going both through 'academia's' platform and this list-serve ...

 … in seeking out a few dialogue -dialectic partners, for a time limited exchange around this issue of Christian-Marxist encounter, I’ve asked Pierre Whalon about his view on Robert Doran’s contributions in this regard, especially the extent to which he has helped to fill out Lonergan’s social theory? This question could give a few of us some textual focus for a time limited exchange, assuming ‘we’ have access to Doran’s key chapter on Marxism in his “Theology and the Dialectics of History” Ch.12 Infrastructure and Superstructure.

Doran I still feel may be a bit presumptuous in his tackling of this vast Marxist tradition with such a keen eye for its fundamental error(s) while yet perhaps failing to see ‘the log’ in his own ‘Christian eye’ … thus I repeat what I wrote previously that – ‘I believe I can say with some confidence that genuine Christian-Marxist dialogue-dialectic will change both parties. Christianity and the Christian will change Marxism and the Marxist, but also Marxism and the Marxist will change Christianity and the Christian.’

To give some sense of the profound changes that might very well be effected on Christian thought from an honest and serious encounter with the Marxist tradition, I’d like to return briefly to Rahner’s “Spirit in the World” text that Doug, Pierre, and perhaps a few others spent some time reading ‘turtle paced’ last winter and spring.

In my own difficult efforts to articulate the changes underway in my own ‘outlook’, in my ‘world-view’, in my ‘philosophical-theology’, because of this renewed appreciation for social-ontology and thus inescapably for the Marxist-Hegelian philosophical perspective, I recently found myself noticing for the first time the fundamental importance and relevance of Johannes Metz’s essay on Rahner that serves as the forward for my copy of “Spirit in the World, (Continuum, 1994)”. This forward is found at pp.xiii-xviii …

Here Metz really lays out for me what I take to be my recent problematic. I say ‘my problematic’ but I believe it to be the problematic for a living Thomism (or what remains of it) and so for Christianity itself and/or for this stage of its history.

Metz explains how Rahner has developed an anthropologically informed and oriented theology that does depart significantly from what Metz calls a scholastic objectivism which had become closed in on itself causing unfortunate consequences for dogmatic theology. This opening up to the life of the world and its people was in itself a tremendous achievement …

But questions remain and the inquiry continues on and does so in as deeply a penetrating manner as Rahner’s project itself … and one such central and probing question for Metz (without doubt in my mind arising out of some form of dialogue with the Marxist-Hegelian tradition) is whether this transcendental-existential approach that centers upon the human subject and that defines the human a priori as being characterized by absolute transcendence towards “God”, focuses the necessarily historically realized salvation of humanity (far) too much on whether the individual freely accepts or rejects this constitution of his being? Metz further asks – does not such a focus bring with it the real danger that the issue and question of salvation become excessively privatized?

Metz writes and asks:

“… (if then) salvation history will be conceived too worldlessly, breaking too quickly (with) the point of the universal historical battle (struggle) for man? Anthropocentrically oriented theology places the faith quite correctly in a fundamental and irreducible relationship with the free subjectivity of man. However, is the relationship of this faith to the world and history sufficiently preserved?

This relationship to the world certainly cannot be renewed in the classical sense of a cosmology, since faith is not (no longer), in a cosmological sense, worldly. But the faith is and remains (in the light of its biblical origins and its content of promise) in a social and political sense worldly. Therefore, should not the transcendental theology of person and existence be translated into a type of “political theology”? And finally does not a radical transcendental-existential approach of theology undervalue the importance of eschatology? Can the eschatological really be extrapolated out of the (subjective) existential approach of theology? Or does not every anthropocentrically oriented theology which does not want to leave the world and its history out of sight of operative and responsible faith, flow into an eschatologically oriented theology? Is the eschatological horizon broad enough to mediate unabridged the faith and the historically emerging world.

Such questions coming out of Rahner’s program (project) need not be solved against him, but rather can be tested and further developed in dialogue with him. For in the end Rahner’s theology in all the truly great and enduring things he has given us, is properly characterized by one overriding “tendency”: the ever new initiation into the mystery of God’s love and the service of the hope of all men (human beings and humanity).”

So here, it seems to me, these serious and probing questions put to Christian thought do not need to be resolved against Christianity necessarily but can be both tested and further developed in dialogue with it ….

So, again, it seems to me

In this time of the ‘dead of winter’

Hugh

[Doug Mounce]

Thanks Hugh, I hope the conversation develops.

I believe that a modern anthropological interpretation of the theological orientation that Metz refers to is our individual psychology since Freud that Otto Rank explains in his work.  The general anthropology has not changed - everyone is, and always has been, afraid of death - but today we pursue immortality through either of the two main ideologies; individual or collective.

In that regard, I recall Lonergan's definition for dialectic:

"For the sake of greater precision, let us say that a dialectic is a
concrete unfolding of linked but opposed principles of change. Thus there
will be a dialectic if (1) there is an aggregate of events of a
determinate character, (2) the events may be traced to either or both of
two principles, (3) the principles are opposed yet bound together, and (4)
they are modified by the changes that successively result from them."

~/

https://staff.washington.edu/mounce/

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