Research

Miller’s New Article Compares Ideas of Jesuit Theologian, Malcolm X

by Daniel Morgan

Mark T. Miller recently published an article titled “Lonergan’s Conversions and Malcolm X’s Autobiography” in the the Lonergan Workshop journal 28.

According to Miller, the article “puts the thought of Jesuit theologian Bernard Lonergan in dialogue with Malcolm X and attempts to demonstrate that Malcolm X's Autobiography illustrates what Lonergan calls intellectual, moral, and religious conversion.”

Also this year, Miller published an article, "Perseverance in the Good,” in the festschrift Grace and Friendship: Theological Essays in Honor of Fred Lawrence. According to Miller, the article considers the satisfaction theory in Anselm of Canterbury's influential work on redemption, Cur Deus Homo.

“It highlights the fact that God the Father is not satisfied primarily with Christ’s physical suffering and death but with Christ’s interior choices to maintain truth, justice, and holiness in the face of others' sinful violence,” Miller said. “His resultant suffering and death have positive value only as outward signs and remembrances of Christ's interior perseverance in the good.”

Grace and Friendship was published earlier this year by Marquette University Press.

Forthcoming in 2016, Miller will be publishing an article, "Three Stage Conversion in Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling," in the Lonergan Workshop journal 29.

“Three Stage Conversion in Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling” attempts, Miller said, “to show that Kierkegaard's work illustrates Lonergan's religious conversion in a way that also calls to mind Aristotle's idea that virtue is a mean between two extremes and that attaining virtue often requires passing through these two extremes.”

Miller is the Associate Director of the Saint Ignatius Institute, and a faculty member in Theology and Religious Studies, Catholic Studies & Social Thought, and Philippine Studies programs. He also coaches the USF Taekwondo Club and Team.