The Critical Appropriation Of Our Intellectual Tradition: Toward A Dialogue Between Polanyi and Lonergan

It is especially appropriate to address in this publication questions concerning the complex relationship between religious traditions and intellectual life. Too often such traditions are still viewed as providing fixed and final answers to questions whose force and meaning do not depend on these traditions. This overvalues traditions in one respect and undervalues them in another. As a set of answers, religious traditions by themselves do not stand on their own; their deficiencies, lacunae, and errors call out for revision, development, and correction. As a set of definitive answers, religious traditions tend to be overvalued by their defenders. But as claims whose function is not to quell intellectual curiosity but to issue existential challenges, it would be difficult--if not impossible--to value too highly these claims. Even so, as the conditions for radical questioning, these traditions tend to be undervalued by their detractors and even by many of their defenders.