Bernard Lonergan is one of the greatest Catholic philosophers and theologians of the 20th century. (He was a Canadian Jesuit priest) Bernard Lonergan is the author of the book ‘Method in Theology’ (1972), Lonergan stated that “conversion always involves shifting horizons” To Lonergan, horizon meant anything that set a limitation to the things people find interesting and their knowledge. Beyond horizons meant situations that we did not know about, as well as situations that we did not care about. To Lonergan, conversion only happens when ‘the horizons are broken through’
There are three main types of conversion: intellectual conversion, moral conversion, and religious conversion.
Intellectual conversion is where an intense change in a person’s attitude towards life/the world. The person is turning away from what the situation look likes/what seems to be happening, to what the situation actually is/what it actually looks like to a different perspective-they now see the situation with wisdom, they now have more intelligence to understand it.
Moral conversion is just changing from thinking to doing. When I say from thinking to doing, I mean from judging, understanding, to taking action or making decisions. It’s the acknowledgment of a person’s self that the person is able to make their own decisions (wisely). Their decision won’t be based on their personal contentment, but on things that are morally right. Lastly, there is religious conversion. This type of conversion is usually considered as the most important, the type that involves grace.(grace: God working though people) Religious conversion is defined as ‘when people fall in love with God.’ It can also mean when a person adopts a new religious belief, different form the person’s previous belief. (From doing some research, I found out that in some religions, conversion also signifies the joining of an ethnic group, as well as adopting that group’s belief.)
Lonergan says that there is no particular order to these types of conversion, but he says that religious conversion is usually known as the main one; it usually precedes the other two types of conversion. Lonergan also claims that conversion is an act as well as a process. Conversion can be a kind of religious experience, or the person could have had a religious experience in order to be converted, so it works two different ways.
However, there are challenges to conversion. One of them is ‘Is conversion permanent?’ When most people are converted, they may not know a lot about what they are converting to. The conversion could be more than the person expected and wanted, so they could decide to leave what they have converted to and go back to what they previously where. On the other hand, the individual could be satisfied with his/her conversion, and decide to commit his/herself to the conversion. Philosophical problems with religious conversions are also known about. The four I know of are ‘How does the person experiencing this know it is God they are experiencing? Why are they not a universal experience? Religious pluralism: Believers from different religions refer to Jesus speaking to them or Mohammed, etc, surely this invalidates these experiences? And lastly, The Believers speaks of the universal experience happening to them but isn’t this an infringement on free will? Theses are other challenges to conversion.
In conclusion, I think that conversion can be given many different meanings, by many different people pf religions, but from looking at all the different perspectives, we can see that overall conversion has the same meaning in one way or another.
