9 - Historically Minded Systematics

Summary

Instead of an abstract principle of transforming evil into good, we have a mutual self-mediation.

Bernard J. F. Lonergan¹

Lonergan once remarked that “systematic theology is not put together piecemeal.”² This crowns Lonergan’s explanation that, while considered materially, Christ’s satisfaction is the simple fact of the vicarious passion and death of Christ because of sins, and for sinners, formally, it concerns satisfaction as understood according to some interpretation, some intelligible context. Lonergan proceeds to point out that “an interpretation or intelligible context is nothing other than an instance of systematic theology.”³ As systematic, then, a theology of the cross aims at making explicit the imperfect and analogical intelligibility of the mystery of our redemption, conceived in relation to the other mysteries of faith and in relation to the created order.