Lonergan Institute Director Gives Lecture in Halifax

On 7 p.m. Monday, February 10, 2025, Jonathan Heaps, director of Seton Hall University’s Bernard J. Lonergan Institute, gave a public lecture at St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Co-sponsored by St. Mary’s Studio for Teaching and Learning and department for the study of religion, the lecture—“The Ambiguity of God in Natural Science”—relied on Heaps’ recent book, The Ambiguity of Being: Lonergan and the Problems of the Supernatural, to explore how changes to the ideal of science from the medieval to the modern period have changed the implications of the Christian claim that God acts in our world. Despite a cold and snowy night, the lecture drew more than 60 people, a mix of students, faculty, administrators and members of the broader Halifax community.

"The talk was a splendid display of a public intellectual,” said Eli Diamond, a professor in classics at neighboring Dalhousie University, “sacrificing none of the analytical rigor and careful scholarship of academic work while making his presentation intelligible and engaging to a general audience without much previous experience of Lonergan's approach to this absolutely central question. He delighted a room full of students and faculty from various disciplines, departments and institutions throughout Halifax." Robert Summerby-Murray, president and vice-chancellor of St. Mary’s University, also attended the lecture and called it “very provocative and thoughtful.”

Heaps stayed in Halifax through 10 a.m. Tuesday, February 11, to offer a teaching workshop. Drawing on diverse sources, ranging from St. Thomas Aquinas’ trinitarian theology to C. S. Pierce’s pragmatist philosophy to the children’s songs of television’s Mister Rogers, the workshop discussed how to help students discover the joy of writing as a process of intra- and inter-personal communication. The morning workshop drew nearly 20 faculty, administrators and graduate students. One of the organizers, Luke Togni, reported that at least one attendee found it “inspiring.”

St. Mary’s University has a prior Lonergan connection: his brother Gregory was a Jesuit there and Bernard spent several summers there in the 1950s. In the summer of 1958, a year after the publication of Lonergan’s major philosophical work, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, St. Mary’s University hosted a multi-day seminar on the book. Transcripts of those lectures and discussions have since been published as Understanding and Being: The Halifax Lectures on Insight, edited by Mark Morelli and Elizabeth Murray. It is now volume five in The Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan from the University of Toronto Press. A copy can be found in the Lonergan Institute’s collection in Walsh Library.

The Bernard J. Lonergan Institute at Seton Hall University, launched in 2006 by the Center for Catholic Studies, is dedicated to studying and promoting the work of Bernard Lonergan, a Canadian Catholic philosopher of the 20th century whose Generalized Empirical Method seeks to understand the methods of empirical sciences, human studies and theology, and their application to contemporary culture. In addition to ongoing research, the institute focuses on faculty development and sponsors lectures and conferences, as well as the publication of The Lonergan Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal. Heaps was appointed the institute’s new director last year. He also teaches in the core department and for the University Honors Program.

Categories: Faith and Service