[Review of the book Before Truth: Lonergan, Aquinas, and the Problem of Wisdom, Jeremy D. Wilkins, 2018]

Against the criticism that the work of Bernard Lonergan opens the door to a dangerous form of Cartesian subjectivism Jeremy Wilkins seeks to present Lonergan’s theology within the tradition of Christian self-knowledge. He argues that Lonergan, very much like Aquinas in his time, worked on an architectonic overhaul of ‘how we do theology’. The key question in this process is how we can provide a foundation for normative theological claims. What comes before the axioms and doctrines? “Before the truth expressed in propositions, there is the existential truthfulness by which we measure up to questions, develop understanding, reach balanced judgment” (3).