The Freedom of Christ in the Early Lonergan

Abstract

The central problem posed in this article concerns the coexistence in Christ of both divine freedom and human freedom. Drawing on the thought of Bernard Lonergan the article first considers the problem against the background of the difference between intellectualist and voluntarist tendencies. Human freedom arises in considering means to an end, but only in so far as the will is necessitated with regard to the end. This fits in well with the notion of the unshakeable commitment of Christ's human will to that of his Father. When this is treated in terms of Lonergan's account of how God stands outside the order of past, present and future, and in a sense outside the order of the necessary and the contingent, we have some basis for resolving the antinomies which arise from the coexistence of two freedoms in the one person.