‘Materializing’ Self-Transcendence

Religious experience and religious self-transcendence are central to Bernard Lonergan's philosophical theology, but recent postcolonial critiques have challenged both the empirical sources of his universalist view and the category of religion itself. This essay responds by creatively reinterpreting Lonergan's heuristic of religious experience through Judith Butler's critical theory. The resulting account frames religious experience as a form of embodied performance, highlights the paradoxical, elusive, and relational nature of religious subjectivity, and recognizes the limits imposed by relational bonds as necessary for self-transcendence. The thought experiment both troubles Lonergan's account and offers an alternative interpretation that reaffirms it on a revised basis.

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Abstract

“Religious experience” and “religious self-transcendence” are key concepts in the philosophical theology of Bernard Lonergan, SJ (1904–1984). In the last 30 years, however, both the empirical sources of Lonergan’s universalist view of religion and the category of “religion” itself have been subjected to searching postcolonial critiques. As a partial response to such critiques, I offer in this essay a creative redescription of Lonergan’s heuristic of religious experience in dialogue with the critical theory of Judith Butler. The resulting account emphasizes the reality of religious experience as a form of embodied performance, draws attention to the paradoxical, elusive and relational character of religious subjectivity, and recognizes the limits imposed by such relational bonds as a necessary condition of self-transcendence. By this thought experiment, the essay thus attempts both to trouble Lonergan’s account of religious self-transcendence and to offer an alternative interpretation that reaffirms it on a revised basis.