In Insight, Bernard Lonergan noted that there is a kind of coincidence between the methods and results of metaphysics, insofar as the method adopted not only anticipates but also in some sense determines the results achieved (CWL 3:426–27). And while it may seem cliché to speak of a Festschrift as a “labor of love,” Grace and Friendship is perhaps an exemplar of just why this cliché is true and why theology too is a scientia whose adopted method affects its results. This work is a thoughtful and sophisticated set of essays dedicated to Fred Lawrence by his students, bearing unique and diverse witness to their encounter with “an authentic teacher” (15), who passed not only knowledge on to them but love—and not just any kind of love, but the love that when reciprocated mutually constitutes friendship, which is to say that he passed on to them a way of life.
The theme of conversatio, whether interpreted as “way of life” or simply as “conversation,” is without a doubt the central motif of this book, animating, even pulsing through every part, but it is the connection of such cognates to “conversion” that is the true crux of the work as a whole (319). The essays collected explore the life of Christ, both in its ontological foundation (67–99) and in the work of our salvation (151–66, 301–18). They examine the life of grace, considered in its essence (23–47, 237–69) or in the life of prayer (167–89) and community (271–300, 355–74) or as situated and operating sociologically (123–50), politically (49–66), globally (213–35), historically (319–53), or interreligiously (101–21); and they contemplate the life of glory (191–212).
The essays are on the whole well crafted and showcase the contributors’ individual expertise in their respective fields, even as they also highlight the influence of their teacher. The contributors exemplify familiarity with the thought and work not only of Lawrence, their teacher, but also of their teacher's teacher, namely, Bernard Lonergan. Their thorough grounding in his philosophical and theological principles illustrates not only expertise but genuine appropriation, and consequently it is no surprise that the contributors are able to demonstrate insights into various contemporary and relevant fields of application.
Those working in education will want to look especially to Tamura's “Interiority Analysis as an Integrated ‘Meta-Cognition’” for thoughtful guidance in encouraging self-appropriation in students and to Rosenberg's “Texts-Based Friendships and the Quest for Transcendence in a Global-Consumerist Age,” which offers a refreshing transvaluation with respect to those texts we call “classics” or “great books.” Those alarmed at the rapidly unraveling social fabric not just in North America but in cultures across the globe will find hope in Copeland's “All Flesh Shall See It Together,” LaChance's “Authenticity and Grace,” and Williams’ “Graced Friendship and Being Oneself.”
Those working in theology will find more than their fair share of provocative inquiries, with new proposals and perspectives in the areas of foundations (Mudd's “Conversation as Communion”), nature/grace (Cone's “Aquinas’ Sanctifying Grace and Lonergan's Religious Conversion” and Stebbins’ “Rahner and Lonergan on the Natural-Supernatural Distinction”), Christology (Hefling's “What a Friend We Have”), soteriology (Miller's “Persevering in the Good” and Vander Schel's “Redemption and the Outer Word”), and eschatology (Petillo's “Grace, Glory, and the Gaze of Love”).
Lawrence's expertise in Gadamer and hermeneutics is well known. So it is a little odd that there is no essay dedicated specifically to Gadamer, and with the exception of the contributions of Rosenberg and Wilkins, there seems to be little to no discussion of textual interpretation particularly or of postmodernism and hermeneutics more generally (NB: Wilkins’ essay, “Our Conversation Is in Heaven,” is really an exception to this trend, and it should be examined carefully by those interested in the so-called linguistic turn). Yet perhaps this “omission” is not so odd after all; rather, it is perhaps a statement that not just texts are interpreted, but more fundamentally it is lives that are interpreted, and only those lives that attain unto friendship, attain true interpretation, because only such lives attain authentic interpreters.
Yet, because God alone is the one who is more interior to us than we are to ourselves (Confessions 3.6.11), such a position about the “hermeneutics of life” underscores poignantly Lawrence's firmly held conviction that “the question of God and the question of the right way to live are coeval” (235). So even in this seeming “omission,” Lawrence's students have underscored the thoroughly Augustinian foundation in his life and career, which as a converted way of life has continually found not contradiction but rather creative and constructive dialectical tension in conversation with figures such as Heidegger and Gadamer and their many heirs and successors today.
