1. Don Gelpi expanded Lonergan's conversions to include the intellectual, affective, moral, socio-political and
religious. While these conversions bring to mind the developmental paradigms of Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg,
Fowler and their ilk and even the transpersonal psychology of Maslow et al, in my view, the conversions have
much more to do with the dynamics fleshed out in Gerald May's Will and Spirit, where our human wills
surrender their willfulness in exchange for willingness.
Lonergan's conversions, then, have much more to do with Mary's fiat, with the Little Way of the Little Flower,
with Ignatius' Take, Lord, Receive ... my entire will.
And few have spoken of the will with the subtlety of Duns Scotus, who so well navigated the extremes of
nominalism and realism, intellectualism and voluntarism, in persuasively establishing the clear primacy of the
will.
As Gerald May explains, the human will is conceptually complex and does not lend itself to facile mappings of
our faculties. It is a subtle and formal distinction that Scotus draws between the intellect and will, which
operate in harmony in the integral human mind, the will enjoying an evaluative primacy as it properly
considers ends, the intellect, means.
And so much of formative spirituality precisely deals with ends, both the eschatological and teleological, in the
divine causal joints wherein our temporal order panentheistically joins the eternal, where spirit most often
gently coaxes but occasionally more harshly cajoles, whereby the inordinate and disordered are transformed,
the prime exemplar being not my will but yours be done.There is, therefore, more to be learned about
conversion in the little classics regarding abandonment and surrender to providence, in the Litany of
Humility, and in Thomas Merton's prayer, Lord, I have no idea where I am going, than can otherwise be found
in the literature of developmental or transpersonal psychology.
We must not lose sight of what properly distinguishes ascetical theology and formative spirituality from the
human social sciences, even as we recognize and affirm that the philosophic horizon of human
concern is indeed the spiritual horizon. In essence, I would propose that what sets them apart is the difference
between mere socialization, whereby we become moral in the sense of enlightened self-interest or the erotic
quest of what's in it for me? , as entailed in the purgative or katharsis, and that further transformation, which is
entailed in kenosis and agape, as we surrender our wills to love.
Lonergan's imperatives to be attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible do socialize us, gifting us
with authenticity. Love, true self-transcendence, Lonergan explained, gifts one with sustained
authenticity. Beyond, even, this sustained authenticity, which, with its synergia, realizes an essentially unitive,
theotic value, joining human and divine wills and energies, lies an invitation to a more robustly theotic
dynamic, taking us beyond our essential knowledge of God, Whom we have indeed known in loving our
neighbors, especially the marginalised, to a gratuitous knowledge about God, where we learn His Holy Name.
So, while in both authenticity and sustained authenticity, there clearly are axiological trajectories with
soteriological, sophiological, ecclesiological and eschatological implications, those value-realizations will be
variously inchoate compared to that more robustly theotic dynamic that can only be realized gnosiologically,
which is to say, through theurgy (practices & rituals, e.g. hesychastic prayer of the
heart), theoria (contemplation) and mystagogy (initiation into communal life of sacraments, liturgy, divine
mysteries), taking us beyond the ascetical, which is essential for human salvation and value-realizations in
abundance, to the mystical, which is gratuitous and gifts us with superabundance, really Good News.