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Personal Integrity and Lonergan's General Transcendent Knowledge
Draft Version

Summary: Although B. Lonergan realized that contemporary culture tends to render scholastic (or conceptualist) philosophy irrelevant, he states that systematic philosophic and scientific systems profoundly affect a culture. Development is through specialization and integration. Systematic disciplines has to be integrated into overall human understanding. Lonergan's philosophy of God has two stages. The first Lonergan emphasizes philosophical theology (the concept and the arguments for the existence of God) and the second philosophy of religion (religious experience, conversion, cultural traditions). Philosophical theology of Insight (1957) is unfinished. Several authors tried to elaborate Lonergan's conception deeper, in order to make a valid the argument. Its most important features are the importance of the pure desire to know in order to make the concept of God meaningful, search for a complete explanation and the refusal of obscurantism (inexplicable facts).


Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), more than 35 years ago, wrote that cultural change demands "the development of a new theological method and style, […] meeting all the genuine exigencies both of the Christian religion and of up-to-date philosophy, science, and scholarship […]." One of the major achievements of Lonergan's philosophy is the achievement of the fourfold human (or philosophical) differentiated consciousness, which he later integrated into his theological method. This certainly is significant, and it is one of the major achievements of Lonergan's Insight. However, if this were the only achievement, the particular philosophical positions of Insight (1957), Lonergan's major philosophical work, would not be interesting anymore (unless for historical reasons). Philosophical problems of the book, if out of date, could be updated, in order to mediate intentionality analysis better. Nevertheless, there seems to be several important philosophical positions worthy of consideration, although some of them may need further elaboration and sometimes a reformulation in a more up-to-date terminology. Lonergan shows intention to write about particular philosophical problems, but in a schematic fashion.

In the paper, we will explore Lonergan's "general transcendent knowledge", especially to his argument for the existence of God. What makes Lonergan's proof distinct from the others is the starting point (the self-affirmation), the core epistemic exigency of the search for a complete explanation, the affirmation of the complete intelligibility of reality, and his concept of God (the unrestricted act of understanding). Lonergan always maintained the validity of his argument, even though he later said that it ignores the horizon within which the argument can be effective.

We will start with a few preliminary ideas about the value of the argument in Lonergan's system and in philosophical theology in general. Next, a brief reconstruction of the argument from Insight will follow in the first part. Several different interpretations and objections against its validity will require a further elaboration of a few key statements and point to the limitations of the proof. Some familiarity with Lonergan's philosophy will be presupposed. Even though the argument may not be deductively valid, it will become apparent that personal cognitive integrity calls for the development of the systematic philosophical theology, and at the same time that Lonergan's recognition, affirmation, and acceptance of God requires an authentic, unbiased human knower.

The Importance of the Argument

A great number of scholars agree that the existence of God has to be reasonably well justified, before one accepts the creed of any religion. Good reasons for believing in the existence of God make an important part of personal, esp. intellectual, integrity of any theologian or Christian philosopher. In the absence of such a proof, they might still have good reasons (social and/or historical) for believing in God, but without a good purely rational justification something very important would be missing. Probably the most extreme expression of such a requirement (of Evidentialist challenge) we find in the writings of W.K. Clifford:

Religious beliefs must be founded in evidence; if they are not so founded, it is wrong to hold them. The rule of right conduct in this matter is exactly the opposite of that implied in the two most famous texts: "He that believeth not shall be damned" [Mark 16:16], and "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed" [John 20:29]. For a man who clearly felt and recognized the duty of intellectual honesty, of testing every belief before he receives it, and especially before he recommended it to others, it would be impossible to ascribe the profoundly immoral teaching of these texts to a true prophet or worthy leader of humanity. […] But whoever wrote either of them down […] has thereby written down himself as a man void of intellectual honesty, as a man whose word cannot be trusted, as a man who would accept and spread about any kind of baseless fiction for fear of believing too little.

Clifford does not give us a satisfactory explanation what would count as a sufficient evidence, but his statement illustrates well the importance of the rational arguments for the existence of God in our culture.

When Lonergan writes about "immanently generated knowledge" in Insight, he means generation of new concepts and/or theories, and reasonable judgments about their truthfulness. Such a knowledge includes the grasp of the "virtually unconditioned", which means, that one understands the conditions of something being true and concludes that the conditions happen to be fulfilled. From the overall content of Insight, we can deduce that the achievement of the immanently generated knowledge of the existence of God is, according to Lonergan, possible and necessary.

Later in Philosophy of God, and Theology (1974), Lonergan said that the origin of the philosophy of God is in religious experience (the root of which is in God's gift of his love), and that "it is only in the climate of religious experience that philosophy of God flourishes." At this point, let us distinguish Lonergan's later philosophy of God, which is better called philosophy of religion, from philosophical theology. The latter concerns systematic analysis of the concept and the existence of God. It is the conceptual thinking and systematics, which are decisive in the arguments of philosophical theology. It was the major concern of the first Lonergan in Insight, and it was developed by B. Tyrrell and H. Meynell at length. Philosophy of religion understood as philosophical thinking about religion covers a broader spectrum of questions regarding existing religions, among which the questions of religious experience, conversion, and culture are some of the most important. Jim Kanaris developed the conception of religious experience and philosophy of religions at length as intended by the second Lonergan.

According to later Lonergan, philosophical theology and the arguments, in which one tries to be precise in the use of terms and logic, belong rather to the context of classicism or scholasticism and conceptualism, than to contemporary pluralist culture. He realized that the cultural change made scholastic approach, and thus traditional philosophical theology, no longer relevant. Nonetheless, even though scholastic objectivism may already be old fashioned and not very interesting for Lonergan and some of his fellows, it is important for his philosophy. He says:

The development of philosophic and scientific systems profoundly affects a culture. But if it modifies the outlook of most of the members in the culture, still it does not do so by transforming them into systematic thinkers. Systematic thinkers are relatively rare. But their achievement is diffused by the commentators, the teachers, the popularizers that illuminate, complete, transpose, simplify.

Even in the recent times, we witness a rise of several "popularizers" who take up deep atheistic ideas of the past, and several systematic thinkers who argue for improbability or even impossibility of the existence of God.

In regard to the arguments, Lonergan says: "I do not think it difficult to establish God's existence. I do think it a life-long labor to analyze and refute all the objections that philosophers have thought up against the existence of God." Lonergan may be right about the life-long labor, but if it takes all life to refute the objections, it does not seem easy to show that God exists. For the arguments are not only for believers to strengthen their faith, but they also are supposed to show faults in the argumentation of atheists and agnostics. Responses to the most significant objections make integral part of philosophical theology and argumentation.

In regard to the acceptance of the existence of God, Lonergan is right that a fully human acceptance requires a triple (intellectual, moral, and religious) conversion, and the root of the religious conversion is experience of God's love. Its importance was another reason why Lonergan became more interested in the conversion/transformation of an authentic subject than in "objectivist," or systematic, philosophical reflections about the existence of God. This is also the reason why his argument in Insight is somehow unfinished and little bit sketchy (and "it may seem too rapid" ). It does not mean, however, that the argument somehow presupposes a conversion. Lonergan expects "authentic subjectivity" in the respect of "self-transcendence towards objectivity"; in other words, readiness for intellectual conversion when good reasons for a ("virtually unconditioned") judgment arise.

When Lonergan writes about personal integrity in Method in Theology, he means integration of different departments of knowing: "Development is through specialization but it must end in integration." Personal integrity also calls for "reconciliation of truth and value, and so of science as concerned for truth with religion as concerned for value." The basis of such integrity is human self-transcendence towards objective value and true good (not only apparent truth and good). Cognitive authenticity means self-transcendence in knowing: "it [self-transcendence] not merely goes beyond the subject but also seeks what is independent of the subject. For a judgment that this or that really is so reports, not what appears to me, not what I imagine, not what I think, not what I would be inclined to say, not what seems to be so, but what is so." This is why personal cognitive integrity requires an objective justification of the existence of God and development of the specialization in a systematic philosophical theology.

1. Lonergan's Argument for the Existence of God

Lonergan starts with the question of "What is being?" First, he defines and analyzes the notion of being, and he deduces the concept of an unrestricted act of understanding (God) from his analysis of human knowing, especially from the unrestricted desire to know. It is only in the next sections, where he asks "What is causality?" and says that with this question "we shall be lead to affirm that there is such an unrestricted act." Subsequently, he distinguishes external causes (efficient, final, and exemplary) and internal causes (central and conjugate potency, form, and act). External causes are somehow anthropomorphic, since they are conceived analogously with the purposive human actions within the realm of proportionate being. The question is whether they hold in general for the proportionate being as a whole. Lonergan explains that there are deeper metaphysical principles capable of bearing human knowledge from the realm of proportionate being to the realm of transcendent being. In his argument, Lonergan establishes that being is intelligible, and the universe of proportionate being is incompletely intelligible. He adds an epistemic exigency of the search for a complete explanation.

According to Lonergan, all the arguments for the existence of God are included in the following general form of affirmation: "If the real is completely intelligible, God exists. But the real is completely intelligible. Therefore, God exists." A longer formulation: "If the real is completely intelligible, then complete intelligibility exists. If complete intelligibility exists, the idea of being exists. If the idea of being exists, then God exists." The argument in a broader context of Insight can be outlined as follows:

(1) We know that at least one real thing (being) exists.
(2) Real (existing things) is known by intelligent grasp and reasonable / true affirmation.
(2a) What can be objectively affirmed as intelligible and existing is being (or a part of being).
(3) Therefore, existing reality (being) is intelligible.
(4) Complete intelligibility of being means that being is knowable completely.
(4a) Being is object of the pure desire to know
(4b) Being is known completely if all questions are answered correctly.
(4c) Questions are unrestricted (in extent and intent).
(4d) There cannot be a meaningful question, which has no answer or explanation.
(4e) There are no inexplicable brute facts.
(5) Therefore, being is completely intelligible.
(6) Complete intelligibility exists.
(7) The idea of being (content of understanding) exists.
(8) Unrestricted act of understanding (God) exists.


The Self-Affirmation

Lonergan delineates the two most important statements of his argument, when he asks where in the process of knowing God's existence makes its implicit entry:

[…] a distinction has to be drawn between (1) affirming a link between other existence and God's and (2) affirming the other existence that is linked to God's existence. The second element lies in the affirmation of some reality: it took place in the chapter on self-affirmation […]. The first element is the process that identifies the real with being, then identifies being with complete intelligibility, and finally identifies complete intelligibility with the unrestricted act of understanding that possesses the properties of God and accounts for everything else.

The "second element" is the first statement in the argument, and it refers to the person who investigates the intelligibility of reality. A human knower is able to reach true and objective judgment about his own existence. Therefore, reality is somehow knowable and intelligible for human (abstractive) intelligence.

It is important that this first stage of the argument (the self-affirmation) is not omitted. Even though one would get an interesting a priori argument starting from an analysis of human knowing (pointing to the desire to know and epistemological exigency of the search for a complete explanation), this is not what Lonergan wanted to do:
Unless we know some reality, there is no possibility of deducing the existence of God. It follows that first we must establish that as a matter of fact we know and that as a matter of fact there is some reality proportionate to our knowing. For only after the facts are known can we entertain any hope of reaching […] the real as it really is.

It is the self-affirmation along with the affirmation of the existence of other proportionate beings, which makes Lonergan's argument most fundamentally cosmological:

The most fundamental of all questions, then, asks about existence, yet neither empirical science nor methodically restricted philosophy can have an adequate answer. […] In particular cases, the scientist can deduce one existent from others, but not even in particular cases can he account for the existence of the others […].

Even though Lonergan's cosmological argument starts with the contingent existence, it is not thomistic:

Among Thomists, however, there is a dispute whether ipsum intelligere or ipsum esse subsistens is logically first among divine attributes. As has been seen in the section on the notion of God, all other divine attributes follow from the notion of an unrestricted act of understanding. Moreover, since we defined being by its relation to intelligence, necessarily our ultimate is not being but intelligence.

Thus the argument accounts for the existence of the contingences, above all contingency of existence, and concludes with the unrestricted act of understanding. The closest well known argument is Leibniz's cosmological argument of sufficient reason. According to Leibniz, search for a sufficient reason of things and truths cannot be satisfied with efficient or final causes. Only when a ground of intelligibility ("self-explained" being) is given, then also sufficient reason of things is given.

The following two questions need a deeper elaboration: (1) Is it true that reality is completely intelligible? (2) If reality is completely intelligible, does it necessarily follow that the unrestricted act of understanding exists?


The Affirmation of the Complete Intelligibility

Lonergan's reason for the affirmation of the complete intelligibility of reality is that there are no inexplicable facts. According to him, an affirmation of inexplicable fact would be meaningless, because "to talk about mere matters of fact that admit no explanation is to talk about nothing. If existence is mere matter of fact, it is nothing. If occurrence is mere matter of fact, it is nothing." This "rude and harsh" statement follows from Lonergan's identification of being/reality with reasonably and truly affirmed intelligibility. Lonergan explains: "Being […] is intelligible, for it is what is to be known by correct understanding; and it is completely intelligible for, being is known completely only when all intelligent questions are answered correctly." Once the meaning of "all questions about reality being answered" is grasped, the affirmation of the complete intelligibility should follow.

When Lonergan writes about "questions", he means first of all the metaphysical questions about complete and ultimate explanation of being as a whole (its existence and intelligibility). Such transcendental questions "go beyond" sensible experience to uncover the realm, which is conceived absolutely "as the ultimate in the whole process of going beyond." One needs to extrapolate here from being "intelligible" for human intelligence, to "intelligible" in general. Anything existing must be intrinsically intelligible. If everything is intelligible, all questions about the proportionate being have adequate answers, and therefore there must be a complete (transcendent) intelligibility which grounds intelligibility of all questions and answers.


From Complete Intelligibility of Reality to God

If all the questions about the multiple ("secondary") proportionate intelligibilities are to be answered and adequately explained, then all the intelligibilities must be graspable by an act of understanding, which is not restricted. The affirmation of the possibility of the complete explanation (answering all questions) requires an affirmation of a unique ultimate act of understanding, which explains and grounds this possibility. Since there can only be one such an ultimate unrestricted act, there is only one "idea" (content of its understanding) of all being. In addition, this idea in its ultimate meaning is identical with the intelligibility of the ultimate act. The unrestricted act understands itself (more profound, primary or transcendent intelligibility) and so it grounds "the explanation of everything about everything else." The unrestricted act is one, without any composition (non-material, non-spatial), unconditioned, necessary (in no way contingent), and self-explanatory. Lonergan identifies it with God.

In addition to cognitive unrestrictedness, the primary act of understanding has, according to Lonergan, an absolute perfection, because if there were any sort of imperfection in it, the unrestricted understanding would be restricted. Consequently, the primary intelligible (by analogy) "is identical not only with an unrestricted act of understanding but also with a completely perfect act of affirming the primary truth and a completely perfect act of loving the primary good." In its full implications, the primary act must be the first efficient, exemplary and final cause, and the creator of the universe. The universe of the proportionate being is neither completely random nor necessary, it is a reasonably realized possibility. It result from a free rational choice which cannot be necessitated, for this would introduce limitation into the unrestricted rational consciousness.

For each statement of this brief summary Lonergan tries to provide a justification. The method of investigation is his dialectical method: "there is the dialectical unfolding of positions inviting development and counterpositions inciting reversal." In metaphysics, it is "a pure form of the critical attitude". The main criterion of truthfulness is that true theories will call for further explanations, and the untrue theories will involve contradictions and/or inexplicable facts, and thus they will call for reversal. It is this general rule of avoiding obscurantism and contradictions, which is claimed to lead to the affirmation of the unrestricted act.

The critical method is driven by the pure desire to know. Since many theories will call for reversal, the desire to know must be strong enough to sustain the intellectual conversions (change of positions), if there are good reasons for doing so. It is also important to emphasize that the meaning of the complete intelligibility was derived from the subject's unrestricted desire to know. Nevertheless, the affirmation of God's existence is conditioned neither by its actual fulfillment nor by the real possibility of its fulfillment in future (we may not reach the state of all questions being answered). Human knowing is limited, conceptual and abstractive, and therefore, its fulfillment cannot be identified with the reach of the primary intelligibility. Yet, the goal of the pure desire to know is the primary intelligibility, knowing everything about everything.



2. The Validity of the Argument

Since we have only very briefly summarized the basic terminology, structure, and principles involved in Lonergan's argument for the existence of God, let us consider a few objections to its validity, which will help us to explicate better the principles involved.

Let us start with slightly different interpretations of his argument. Gary Schouborg (1968) outlined Lonergan's argument in a form of a deductively valid argument. He confesses, however, that it "can hardly be a sufficient exposition". He also wants to show that the argument is not a priori, but that it has its experiential ground.

Ruben Habito (1970), in his comparison of L. Dewart and B. Lonergan, elaborated the idea that Lonergan made a valid transcendental argument in the sense that is "is based on a scholastic appropriation of the transcendental method of Kant, but is an attempt to go beyond the latter." This kinds of arguments is called "performative self-contradiction" argument or defense. Habito distinguishes well "the heuristic structure for determining the attributes of God" , mediation of the concept of the unrestricted act, and a proof that such an act really exists. He explains the proof as follows:

Lonergan implies that the activity aimed at satisfying man's desire to know, […] presupposes that the desire which is unrestricted can be ultimately fulfilled, or else the individual act of knowing, the individual insight gained, have no real foundation. He therefore equates the acceptance of the minor premise with the acceptance of man's own intelligence and reasonableness as valid guides for the unrestricted desire to know: the unrestricted desire calls for an unrestricted fulfillment, otherwise it would be an absurd, aimless and untrustworthy desire. To deny that such a fulfillment can be had would seem to imply the denial of one's own intelligence and reasonableness, and since this implies a self-contradiction, the affirmation of the minor premise can follow.

A valid guide for the desire to know is provided by human intelligence, and all dynamism of knowing would be absurd without the possibility of fulfillment in complete intelligibility. Complete intelligibility provides real foundation for individual insights reached through the desire to know. The denial of complete intelligibility is a denial of something crucial in human knower. Habito also emphasizes the relation of the transcendent to personal integrity: "[…] to be truly a man means to keep on striving to transcend oneself, towards greater possession of truth and goodness. To reject transcendence is to reject striving for and the possibility of fulfillment, and is thus to be less a man."

To sum up, Habito proposes two reasons for the affirmation of the unrestricted act: First, the unrestricted desire would be absurd / unexplained without transcendent being. It calls for an explanation. Second, the denial of transcendent being means a performative self-contradiction with what we do in knowing. Performative self-contradiction defense (retortion) is supposed to guarantee the validity of the argument.

Patricia Wilson (1971) considers Lonergan's theory a version of "Maréchalian Thomism", in which, quoting Lotz, "the proof of God's existence is somehow precontained in the orientation of the human intellect towards bing." After her analysis of human desire to know, she concludes:

Although man is always seeking absolute knowledge of being, he can never affirm that he possesses it. The only possible explanation for such striving is that there is an absolute being which is the ground and the foundation of all this striving. (If there is no such being, then there is really not an explanation, since the intellectual dynamism of man is doomed to frustration, and reality is unintelligible.)

According to Wilson, without the complete intelligibility there would be no explanation for the dynamism of human mind towards absolute knowledge. The inner dynamics of intending which is the basis of the process of coming to know, demands the infinite horizon. Interestingly, she also adds that if there were no complete intelligibility, reality would not be intelligible at all. She wants to strengthen the argument not with a performative self-contradiction, but emphasizing the contradiction between the affirmation of the intelligibility of reality and the denial of the complete intelligibility:

If one asserts the intelligibility of being, one must assert its complete intelligibility. Something which is not really known by at least someone in fact is not really intelligible. But, if there is only finite knowing, then something always remains unknown, since the infinite horizon of possible questions can never be comprehended by a finite knower, and thus there must be an infinite and unrestricted knower who in fact knows and comprehends all proportionate being.

If reality is intelligible for human intelligence, all the intelligibilities must be known by an unrestricted knower.

Dorothy Emmet (1973) also emphasizes dynamic orientation towards the transcendent, which is operative in our thinking. She writes:

if being is intelligible, the 'an unrestricted act of understanding exists,' and this he [Lonergan] takes to be not only what Kant would have called a regulative ideal towards which our always limited thinking aspires, but something already existing in its own right which can be called God. The drive towards this is a principle constitutive for our thinking […].

If the drive towards the transcendent is constitutive for our thinking, then its denial would cause a performative self-contradiction with what we are doing in thinking. This interpretation is again a transcendental Thomist interpretation.

Ronald Hepburn (1973) gives his reasons against Kantian transcendental interpretation of Lonergan's argument, which are also against transcendental performative self-contradiction interpretation. He states that Lonergan's argument provides a valuable regulative ideal, but if taken as transcendental, then it is not valid: "The notion of complete intelligibility in explanation […] can be seen as a valuable ideal, a regulative notion that extends or extrapolates from our experience of limited intelligibility; it cannot claim, however, to be a condition for the possibility of any explanation." More precisely,

[…] the notion of the complete intelligibility of the world is an extension of, or extrapolation from, our successful attempts to understand aspects of the world. It is not a condition of our having any knowledge at all, nor a condition of our having the knowledge we do have. Only if it were a condition could a valid transcendental argument be mounted.

Hepburn is right that one can reach objective knowledge without believing or implying complete intelligibility of reality. Complete intelligibility is not constitutive for our knowledge. Nevertheless, it is constitutive to our desire to know and dynamics of searching always a better explanation. Any limited explanation is not satisfactory for human desire to know. Yet, the fact that complete intelligibility is somehow implied in our thinking does not prove that it really exists.

It is important to note that Lonergan did not use any of the above transcendental defenses, even though he might be open to all of them, if effective. Lonergan defended the fourfold human structure with the method of performative self-contradiction, but not the affirmation of the complete intelligibility. In a sense, he used the method of searching the best explanation (which he calls "position") and refusing the other ("counter-positions"). The counter positions involve contradictions and/or affirmation of brute facts. This is why they are not satisfactory.

Butler (1979) explains Lonergan's extrapolations, which constitute his argument in terms of converging probabilities: "The procedure is quite unlike a classical syllogism. It is more like what Newman has to tell us about converging probabilities. Newman was prepared to say that, in some circumstances, converging probabilities could lead to a conclusion that was certain." On this interpretation, the argument could be certain, even not deductively valid.

It seems that a proof of validity would require much more extensive work, which would go far beyond Lonergan's "general structure".

Critical Realist "Meta-Proof"

In addition to the discussions about the validity of Lonergan's argument, there have been debates about its deeper nature. Quentin Quesnell (1990) argues against Frederick Crowe, Hugo Meynell, and William Wainwright that the argument is neither ontological (he means "from definitions") nor cosmological (from experience of complete intelligibility), but a critical realist "meta-proof". He summarizes the entire proof based on the notion of being: "Lonergan writes in the conviction that all human beings already have knowledge of God, just as all have implicit knowledge of being and of self. His proof offers the tools to make their knowledge of God explicit." The subject has a notion of being at the beginning and then he explicates this notion into a fully developed concept of the complete intelligibility of being and reality of God. When Quesnell tries to be more specific, he says that Lonergan's argument moves from "'I, who am seriously trying to understand the world, cannot doubt that the world is understandable' to the realization: 'I already hold that God exists.'" In order to recognize these statements as true, objective, and certain, one has to assimilate Chapters 11, 12, and 13 of Insight (chapters on self-affirmation, notion of being and objectivity).

Bernard Tyrrell (1974), who according to J. Kanaris made "a definitive study" of Lonergan's argument, makes this interpretation even more straightforward: "it is only if one intelligently, critically an wholeheartedly commits oneself to the positions […] that it will ultimately be possible critically to validate for oneself the legitimacy of Lonergan's formal proof for the existence of God. Indeed, […] nothing less is required of the individual than an 'unrestricted commitment to complete intelligibility.'" This statement explicates apparent circularity of this thought: one is first committed to the complete intelligibility (of positions), and then he affirms it as really existing. One would naturally expect a good reason to believe that reality is completely intelligible, and then, if affirmative, he can make his commitment. It is quite unusual to ask for such a personal commitment of the reader as part of an argument. This may sound like an argument ad hominem, which ultimately is not an argument at all, and authentic (self-transcending) knower has to refute it, because it is not objective.

B. Tyrrell probably wanted to emphasize the initial commitment to (absolute) objectivity and self-transcendence (not to what appears, but "what is really so") and not the commitment to complete intelligibility. Furthermore, both Q. Quesnell and B. Tyrrell seem to miss the distinction of giving meaning to the concept of God and an argument that God really exists. They explicate how the meaning of the unrestricted act is generated based on Lonergan's intentionality analysis.

Tyrrell - Burrell Debate

David Burrell (1967) argues that Lonergan's basic attempt to extrapolate from the restricted to the unrestricted act of understanding is an impossible endeavor. His first objection is that "[…] we simply cannot affirm that being is completely intelligible because we cannot conceive what the judgment would be like which affirmed that all intelligent questions were in and all answered correctly." Lonergan answers that one must advert not to knowing but to intending: "a conscious intending of an unknown that is to be known." Tyrrell tries to elaborate this answer (even though not really answering): "It can be shown (1) that man intends complete intelligibility, (2) that the intention of complete intelligibility is 'at the root of all our attempts to mean anything at all,' (3) that to impugn the unrestricted character of our intending is to undermine at its core the source of all human knowing, and (4) that man can and does ask strategic questions about the meaning of being, etc., and does arrive at critically validated heuristic answers." Tyrrell emphasizes the intention and not fulfillment. Lonergan says that "since intending is just another name for meaning, it follows that complete intelligibility […] is in fact at the root of all our attempts to mean anything at all."

The difficulty is that even if we accept that we can conceive complete intelligibility coherently and complete intelligibility is implied in human thinking, based on Lonergan's conception of objectivity, we need an additional proof that such being is not only intended and presupposed in human knowing, but that it really exists. In regard to Burrell's objection, it seems that we can conceive what the judgment which affirmed that all intelligent questions were in and all answered correctly would be like. It is the same "judgment" as the grasp the intelligibility of a function, equation, or a law of nature. Even here we cannot reach all the instances of possible applications. We can have a conception of an unrestricted act, even without a grasp of the complete intelligibility.

The second Burrell's objection is as follows: "how then, when the unrestricted act lacks this very focal point, the judgment, can we pretend to extrapolate to it from the properties of a restricted act?" Tyrrell responds:

If, then, a perfect instance of knowing could be realized in which the knower and the known were identical not only intentionally but in being, then understanding alone would suffice for knowledge of the reality of the known and the addition of judgment would be simply superfluous. In other words, in this perfect instance of knowing, the act of understanding in the very act of its grasping itself would suffice to fulfill the functions of both understanding and judging as they occur in human knowing. […] All that judgment positively implies in human knowing is eminently realized in God as the unrestricted act of understanding.

In addition to Burrell's objection, this statement answers objections raised by many other philosophers that the concept of self-explanatory being is incoherent. Nevertheless, in order to avoid misunderstanding, it seems better to speak of the intelligible ground of all our explanations (answers and questions), than of a self-explanatory being.

In overall, Lonergan's structure of the arguments "critically validated" (Tyrrell) in the sense that it is meaningful and coherent. Counter-theories denying the existence of complete intelligibility affirm inexplicable facts, which is against a natural epistemic exigency of searching for a complete explanation. Consequently, there will always be better, more complete explanations, and the authenticity of the knower will require always a further elaboration with less and less unexplained facts.


Conclusion

The goal of this paper was to shortly present Lonergan's reasoning about the existence of God and its role in the context of his explanation of personal integrity. Even though the arguments are intended to convince people and make a change in human society, they can do it insofar as people are reasonable. If an argument is not accepted, this does not mean that the argument is not valid. However, if the existence of God could not be objectively justified, religion and theology becomes somehow superfluous, and human decision to believe in God would be objectively and critically groundless.

It has been concluded that Lonergan's argument is fundamentally a sort of Leibnizian cosmological argument from the contingency of proportionate being to the unrestricted understanding. The principle that each and every question has an answer (explanation) and the affirmation of the complete intelligibility implied in human knowing. Nonetheless, in a short paper, it is not possible to do justice to a critical evaluation of the validity of Lonergan's argument. Even though Lonergan's argument does not seem to be a valid deductive argument, it brings to light several crucial principles important for the question of God. He emphasizes the importance of the authentic human desire to know and openness in the search for a complete and objective explanation of all being. A non-dogmatic and unbiased knower does not dismiss the overall metaphysical questions about reality as meaningless without a good reason. Once the questions are accepted and the answers are critically examined, Lonergan believed,the affirmation of the unrestricted act of understanding and its identification with God are unavoidable.



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