Abstract

The scope of this essay, dealing with the relationship between the celebrated Canadian theologian B. Lonergan and his debt to the theological and cultural inheritance from Thomas Aquinas, is to underline three important facts. Firstly, to focus on the vital, but not exclusive, influence of Lonergan's Thomist studies , placing them in the setting of his entire work. Secondly, to explore the continuing role of the theological paradigm, worked on for decades, emerging from his doctoral thesis on operative grace in St. Thomas . The current appearance of unpublished Latin texts from Lonergan's first period of academic teaching will be of special help in this regard. Thirdly, there is the desire to bring theology back to its genuine role as advancement in wisdom of Christian faith and as a service of mediation between revealed meanings and those stemming from human cultures. What St. Thomas did for the Christian world of the 13th century remained for Lonergan an example to follow in the new context of a world largely distant from faith and from Christian thought in the 20th and 21st centuries. Lonergan's key contribution is the forging of a basic and general methodology, where the anthropological and philosophical foundation is an updated expansion of the authentic contribution of the medieval Doctor