Knowing God, Knowing Emptiness: An Epistemological Exploration of Bernard Lonergan, Karl Rahner and Nāgārjuna

Knowing God, Knowing Emptiness examines the viability of the epistemology proposed by Bernard Lonergan in his seminal work Insight, particularly with regard to its possible application in the field of interreligious dialogue. This book scrutinises Lonergan's claim to comprehensiveness in the light of an awareness of the epistemological questions raised by the various dialogues taking place between different religions.

Lonergan claims in Insight that because his epistemology is based on, and corresponds directly to, the structure of human cognition, it is therefore intrinsic to all instances of thought. Accordingly, it is ideally placed to mutually relate any combination of differing positions. This book tests his claim by applying Lonergan's epistemological categories to Karl Rahner's Foundations of Christian Faith, and Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Having critically reconstructed Lonergan's position, this book does the same for both of these texts and parses them on the basis of Lonergan's epistemological system. It examines whether the thought contained in these two works could be fruitfully related on the basis of Lonergan's epistemology, and what the implications are for the field of interreligious dialogue. These implications are considered in terms of the theology of religions and of the more recently developed comparative theology, typified by the approach taken by thinkers such as Francis X. Clooney. The book concludes by considering the developments that result from this dialectic.