Scholars' Forum in CIT Welcomes Jonathan Heaps

Inside the Core, on Wednesday March 20, will hold the second Scholars’ Forum in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition of the spring semester of 2024, with Jonathan Heaps, Ph.D. who teaches in the University Core and serves as editor of The Lonergan Review. He will be presenting on his book, The Ambiguity of Being: Lonergan and the Problems of the Supernatural (Catholic University Press, 2024), which deals with the work and thought of Canadian Jesuit philosopher Bernard Lonergan, a crucial figure in modern philosophy and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, particularly at Seton Hall. Lonergan inspired Monsignor Richard Liddy, who started Catholic Studies (now the Program and Center, as two entities) and whose Catholic Studies seminars were a big part of the inspiration that started the Core. Lonergan was also the inspiration for the Praxis program, that still thrives today after many years of faculty participation. Francesca Zaccaron is our Toth-Lonergan Scholar. Professor Heaps’ important publication about Bernard Lonergan links with all these important Seton Hall initiatives.

His book, as he describes it, "is an effort to both retrieve, with Father Lonergan's help, St. Thomas Aquinas's theory of how God's action and human action cooperate and, at the same time, how the implications of that position, followed all the way through, suggest a breadth and depth to theology's task that calls out for deepening our cooperation with one another and with God." As noted on the website for the book, "This work is an exercise in original, basic theological research, meticulously and intricately argued, and visionary in its conclusion. Heaps proves to be a masterful expounder of Thomist metaphysics while subtly discerning within the metaphysical analyses implications that open onto the further horizons of meaning, history, and culture and, finally, God’s redemptive activity within them" (William Loewe, The Catholic University of America).

Jonathan Heaps holds a Ph.D. from Marquette University in philosophy and theology. He is also interested in contemplative pedagogy and brings that into his teaching, with a brief moment of meditative silence beginning his classes. He brings his interest in Lonergan into his classes as well. He says, "In the Core classroom, I strive to help students realize Father Lonergan's goal for his own students: that they come to both trust and take responsibility for their own minds. This is, I think, one of the deepest gifts that the Catholic intellectual traditions can 'hand on' to students from any background."

We in the Core are very happy to have Professor Heaps teaching in the Core and are very excited to hear more from him about this new and important publication. The Scholars’ Forum in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition is sponsored by the University Core, the Catholic Studies Program, the Catholic Studies Center, and Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology. Click here to join the Teams link for the presentation.

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