"The immanent source of transcendence in man is his detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know" (292).
This desire wants to "understand correctly" (293). This desire is before understanding. Attainment and desire are not the same things. You can have the unrestricted desire without obtaining the unrestricted object. Lonergan thinks that man "wants to know completely" (294). This unrestricted desire resists limits on its questioning: "The unrestricted desire excludes the unintelligent and uncritical rejection of any question, and positively the unrestricted desire demands the intelligent and critical handling of every question" (294).
The object of this unrestricted desire to know is being. Lonergan writes, "for that desire grounds inquiry and reflection; inquiry leads to understanding, reflection leads to affirmation; and being is whatever can be grasped intelligently and affirmed reasonably. But being is unrestricted, for apart from it there is nothing. Therefore the objective of the detached and disinterested desire is unrestricted. But the desire with an unrestricted objective is an unrestricted desire, and so the desire to know is unrestricted" (295).
To ask what being is, is to ask what God is. God is being. Lonergan asserts, "For the real is being, and apart from being there is nothing. Being is not known without reasonable affirmation, and existence is the respect in which being is known precisely inasmuch as it is affirmed reasonably. Hence it is one and the same thing to say that God is real, that he is an object of reasonable affirmation, and that he exists" (295).
Lonergan thesis: "If the real is completely intelligible, God exists. But the real is completely intelligible. Therefore, God exists" (298).
First, being is completely intelligible and being is the real, therefore the real is completely intelligible.
Lonergan states that being is completely intelligible. "For being is the objective of the detached, disinterested, unrestricted desire to know; this desire consists in intelligent inquiry and critical reflection; it results in partial knowledge inasmuch as intelligent inquiry yields understanding and critical reflection grasps understanding to be correct; but it reaches its objective, which is being, only when every intelligent question has been given an intelligent answer and that answer has been found to be correct. Being, then is intelligible, for it is what is to be known by correct understanding; and it is completely intelligible, for being is known completely only when all intelligent questions are answered correctly" (299).
Second, the "real is being" (299). All that is represents is an object of thought and an object of "affirmation". Being is all that is "to be known by intelligent grasp and reasonable affirmation" (299).
The last part is the major premise, "If the real is completely intelligible, God exists" (299).
If the real is completely intelligible, "then complete intelligibility exists" (299). If complete intelligibility exists, "the idea of being exists. If the idea of being exists, then God exists. Therefore, if the real is completely intelligible, God exists" (299).
Lonergan looks at the premises in turn. First, if the real is completely intelligible, then complete intelligibility exists. Lonergan asserts, "For just as the real could not be intelligible if intelligibility were nonexistent, so the real could not be completely intelligible if complete intelligibility were non existent" (300). Lonergan states that to "affirm the complete intelligibility of the real is to affirm the complete intelligibility of all that is to be affirmed" (300). We could not affirm the complete intelligibility of all that is affirmed if complete intelligibility did not exist.
SEcondly, if complete intelligibility exists, "the idea of being exists" (300). Lonergan states that intelligibilty is either "material or spiritual or abstract" (300). It could not be material because material intelligibility is contingent and not complete in itself. Abstract intelligibility is just "self-expression of spiritual intelligibility" (300). So complete intelligibility has to be a "spiritual intelligibility that cannot inquire because it understands everything about everything. And such unrestricted understanding is the idea of being" (300). So, if the idea of being exists, God exists.
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