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Lonergan's method is his own, but he clearly owes a debt to the phenomenologists, particularly to German Philosopher Edmund Husserl. For the phenomenologist, the material evidence of a perceived object is screened by the dynamic (and very personal) phenomenon of the act of knowing. Husserl developed this into the idea of "horizon" — the vastness or narrowness of the world a man perceives. For Husserl, a man's horizon is limited by his per spective: his environment, his loves and fears, his interests and prejudices.
Adapting this idea of horizon, Lonergan makes it part of his theory of knowledge. A man can alter his horizon by recognizing it as a limitation on his ability to know — indeed, as a limitation on the very questions that he must ask in order to know. He can open himself to information from out side his horizon, use that information to formulate new questions, and continue to grow. By thus transcending his limitations, a man undergoes "conversion," which may be moral, intellectual, social or religious. In Lonergan's approach to theology, which he will spell out in detail in a forthcoming major work to be called Method in Theology, the ultimate horizon "is an openness to an experience of God.
Rational Authority. The issue of Lonergan's approach to God became a principal focus of criticism at the Florida meeting, where Lonergan specialists were more than matched by "critical respondents." The participants heatedly debated whether any such system as Lonergan's could any longer hope to embrace all knowledge, and especially whether it could provide a proof of the existence of God. "He comes up with an argument for God out of the blue sky," objected Georgetown University's Louis Dupre. "He develops a concept of being into a concept of God."
Chicago Divinity School's Langdon Gilkey conceded that Lonergan's theological method has an "uneasy relationship" to his scientific method, but he applauded Lonergan's overall thought. "He has imbibed the empirical, the hypothetical the tentative," said Gilkey. "Yet within it he has a structure that breaks the back of relativism." Gilkey agrees with Boston College Philosopher David Rasmussen that, for Catholicism, Lonergan may be the liberating force that Friedrich Schleiermacher was for 19th century Protestantism. But for liberal Protestants, Gilkey notes, Lonergan could provide something of a brake to excessive subjectivism. "He has a way of freeing one from authority, yet setting up a rational authority."
Lonergan, who attended the congress sessions in a seldom-varying uniform of plaid sports shirt, slacks and windbreaker, listened attentively to both praise and criticism. At 65, with only one lung, he was remarkably energetic throughout the grueling week-long conference, dutifully setting aside spare moments to read many of the 700,000 words that participants had written about him. "I don't care whether they agree with me or dis agree with me," he said. "What matters is that they are here, talking with each other." Seminarian Joseph Collins, a well-to-do young activist who personally paid travel expenses for the participants, marveled at the quality of the debate: "I really didn't think they could interact."