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8 - The Law of the Cross

Transformation of Evil into Good

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2023

Ligita Ryliškytė
Ligita Ryliškytė
Affiliation:
Boston College, Massachusetts
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Summary

Unless human psychological and social laws are suspended … people cannot be turned from evil to good except according to the meaning of the cross.

Bernard J. F. Lonergan1
The heart of Lonergan’s transposition as regards his answer to the question Cur Deus cruciatus (to parphrase St. Anselm) is the Law of the Cross. According to this law, God’s infallible wisdom has conceived and God’s infinite goodness has ordained that the reign of sin is fittingly eradicated, not by coercive power but by Christ making our cross his own, so that the possibility of justice among sinners would be realized through the transformation of evil into good by charity. As an intrinsic intelligibility of redemption, this law presupposes what Augustine so eloquently expressed by saying that God “judged it better to bring good out of evil than to allow nothing evil to exist.”2

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Why the Cross?
Divine Friendship and the Power of Justice
 , pp. 291 - 344
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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