In The Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 13 (2015) Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts contributed an article in which they sought to situate N.T. Wright’s critical realism in its philosophical context. Although they correctly identify the philosophical context for this critical realism as the work of Bernard Lonergan, particularly as mediated for New Testament studies by Ben F. Meyer, this response will argue that they fail to adequately address the Lonerganian context. Reasons will be identified for this failure. An effort to better, albeit succinctly, present the rudiments of Lonergan’s critical realism will round out the article.
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Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts, ‘Critical Realism in Context: N.T. Wright’s Historical Method and Analytic Epistemology,’ Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 13 (2015), pp. 276–306.
Cf. Lonergan, Method, pp. 203–208; Ben F. Meyer, The Aims of Jesus (repr. ed.; Eugene, or: Pickwick Publications, 2002), 84–94; Ben F. Meyer, Critical Realism and the New Testament (Allison Park, pa: Pickwick Publications, 1989), pp. 157–172. For a recent overview of Collingwood, with specific concern with historical Jesus studies, cf. Jordan Ryan, “Jesus at the Crossroads of Inference and Imagination,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 13 (2015), pp. 66–89.
R.G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (rev. ed.; ed. Jan van der Dussen; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 1.
Porter and Pitts, ‘Critical Realism,’ p. 288. One is somewhat surprised to see no attention given to McPartland’s work on Lonergan’s philosophy of history. Cf. Thomas A. Partland, Lonergan and Historiography: The Epistemological Philosophy of History (Columbia, mo: University of Missouri Press, 2010); Thomas A. Partland, Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical Existence (Columbia, mo: University of Missouri Press, 2001).
Cf. Meyer, Critical Realism and the New Testament, pp. 17–56; Ben F. Meyer, Reality and Illusion in New Testament Scholarship: A Primer in Critical Realist Hermeneutics (Collegeville, mn: Michael Glazier, 1994), pp. 90–101. And before the reader cries foul at the spectre of the intentional fallacy, please read Meyer’s explanation of why his understanding of the intended sense of the text is not an example of said fallacy, in Critical Realism and the New Testament, p. 20, and Reality and Illusion, pp. 94–99.
Cf. Lonergan, Method, pp. 81–85. Also, with specific reference to the development of Christian dogma, a matter not without relevance for the study of the historical Jesus, the discussion in Bernard J.F. Lonergan, The Triune God: Doctrines (ed. Robert M. Doran and H. Daniel Monsour; trans. Michael G. Shields; Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan 11; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 31–55.
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In The Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 13 (2015) Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts contributed an article in which they sought to situate N.T. Wright’s critical realism in its philosophical context. Although they correctly identify the philosophical context for this critical realism as the work of Bernard Lonergan, particularly as mediated for New Testament studies by Ben F. Meyer, this response will argue that they fail to adequately address the Lonerganian context. Reasons will be identified for this failure. An effort to better, albeit succinctly, present the rudiments of Lonergan’s critical realism will round out the article.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 375 | 34 | 5 |
Full Text Views | 270 | 6 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 99 | 14 | 3 |