¹ De Lubac's theological writings broadly cover four overall areas: (1) nature – supernatural relationship; (2) spiritual interpretation of scripture; (3) ecclesiology; and (4) non-Christian worldviews.

² As a result of his involvement with Vatican II, for example, de Lubac interacted with Lumen Gentium in Paradoxe et mystère de l'Église (Paris: Editions Montaigne, 1967)Google Scholar; with Gaudium et Spes in Athéisme et sens de l'homme: Une double requite de “Gaudium et Spes” (Paris: Cerf, 1968)Google Scholar; and with Dei Verbum in La révélation divine: Commentaire du préambule et du chapître I de la Constitution “Dei Verbum” du Concile Vatican II (Paris: Cerf, 1968)Google Scholar.

³ Balthasar, Hans Urs von, The Theology of Henri de Lubac: An Overview, trans. Fessio, Joseph, Waldstein, Michael M., and Clements, Susan (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1991), 105Google Scholar.

⁴ Milbank clarifies: “By ‘non-ontology’ (my term) I must stress that I do not mean that de Lubac refused ontology: rather I mean that he articulated an ontology between the field of pure immanent being proper to philosophy on the one hand, and the field of the revelatory event proper to theology on the other” (The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural[Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005], 5)Google Scholar. The term “suspended middle” originates with Von Balthasar, Theology of Henri de Lubac, 16-17.

⁵ While it lies beyond the scope of this essay, it seems clear to me that de Lubac's sacramental ontology also shapes his approach to the interpretation of scripture and his evaluation of non-Christian belief systems.

⁶ Dennis M. Doyle uses the term “sacramental ontology” to describe Henri de Lubac's approach (“Henri de Lubac and the Roots of Communion Ecclesiology,”Theological Studies 60 [1990]: 226-27)Google Scholar.

⁷ Frey, Christofer, Mysterium der Kirche, Öffnung zur Welt: Zwei Aspekte der Erneuerung französischer katholischer Theologie (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gotcher, Robert Franklin, “Henri de Lubac and Communio: The Significance of His Theology of the Supernatural for an Interpretation of Gaudium et Spes” (Ph.D. Diss. Marquette University, 2002)Google Scholar; Doyle, “Henri de Lubac,” 209-27; Lindsay, Austin J., “De Lubac's Images of the Church: A Study of Christianity in Dialogue” (Ph.D. Diss. Catholic University of America, 1974)Google Scholar; McPartlan, Paul, “Eucharistic Ecclesiology,”One in Christ 22 (1986): 314-31Google Scholar; idem, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993)Google Scholar; idem, “‘You will be changed into me’: Unity and Limits in du Lubac's Thought,”One in Christ 30 (1994): 50-60Google Scholar; idem, “The Eucharist, the Church and Evangelization: The influence of Henri de Lubac,”Communio 23 (1996): 776-85Google Scholar; Pelchat, Mark, L'Eglise mystère de communion: L'ecclésiologie dans l'oeuvre de Henri de Lubac (Paris: Mediaspaul; Montreal: Editions Paulines, 1988)Google Scholar; Schnackers, Hubert, Kirche als Sakrament und Mutter: Zur Ekklesiologie von Henri de Lubac (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1979)Google Scholar; Stern, Jean, “Henri de Lubac et le mystère de l'Eglise,”Gregorianum 78 (1997): 647-59Google Scholar; Walsh, Christopher J., “De Lubac's Critique of the Postconciliar Church,”Communio 19 (1992): 404-32Google Scholar; idem, “Henri de Lubac and the Ecclesiology of the Postconciliar Church” (Ph.D. Diss. Catholic University of America, 1993)Google Scholar; Wang, Lisa, “Sacramentum Unitatis Ecclesiasticae: The Eucharistic Ecclesiology of Henri de Lubac,”Anglican Theological Review 85 (2003): 143-58Google Scholar; Wood, Susan Karaus, “The Church as the Social Embodiment of Grace in the Ecclesiology of Henri de Lubac” (Ph.D. Diss. Marquette University, 1986)Google Scholar; idem, “The Church as Communion,” in The Gift of the Church: A Textbook on Ecclesiology in Honor of Patrick Granfield, O.S.B., ed. Phan, Peter C. (Collegeville, Minn.: Michael Glazier – Liturgical, 2000), 159-76Google Scholar.

⁸ See Komonchak, Joseph A., “Theology and Culture at Mid-Century: The Example of Henri de Lubac,”Theological Studies 51 (1990): 579-602CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rowland, Tracey, Culture and the Thomist Tradition after Vatican II (London: Routledge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Milbank, Suspended Middle; Boersma, Hans, “Accommodation to What? Univocity of Being, Pure Nature, and the Anthropology of St Irenaeus,”International Journal of Systematic Theology 8 (2006): 266-93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ Lubac, Henri de, Catholicisme: Les aspects sociaux du dogme (Paris: Cerf, 1938)Google Scholar; idem, Corpus mysticum: L'eucharistie et l'église au moyen âge (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1944)Google Scholar; idem, Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1946)Google Scholar.

¹⁰ The course of events makes clear that, particularly in the late 1930s, questions both concerning the Church and concerning the supernatural occupied de Lubac's mind. De Lubac completed Catholicisme and Corpus mysticum at around the same time, before the end of 1938. The intervention of the war meant a delay in the publication of Corpus mysticum till 1944. Already in 1939 and 1940, however, he published several articles on the topic: “Corpus mysticum: Etude sur l'origine et les premiers sens de l'expression,”Recherches de science religieuse 29 (1939): 257-302, 429-80; 30 (1940): 40-80, 191-226. De Lubac wrote his first sketch for Surnaturel in the late 1920s while still a theology student. He published the first three chapters, on Baius and Jansenius, in a 1931 essay: “Deux Augustiniens fourvoyés: Baius et Jansénius,”Recherches de science religieuse 21 (1931): 422-43, 513-40. He also wrote an article on the history of the word “supernatural” in 1934: “Remarques sur l'histoire du mot ‘surnaturel,’”Nouvelle revue théologique 61 (1934): 225-49, 350-70. In 1939, he published an initial sketch of the second part of Surnaturel: “Esprit et Liberté dans la tradition théologique,”Bulletin de literature ecclésiastique 40 (1939): 121-50, 189-207Google Scholar. Due to circumstances of the war, de Lubac was unable to continue working on his manuscript until 1943. See Lubac, Henri de, At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circumstances that Occasioned His Writings, trans. Englund, Anne Elizabeth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993), 28-29, 34-36Google Scholar. For exhaustive bibliographies of de Lubac's writings, see Neufeld, Karl H. and Sales, Michael, Bibliographie Henri de Lubac 1925-1974, 2^nd ed. (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1974)Google Scholar; Lubac, Henri de, Questions disputées et résistance au nazisme, vol. 2 of Théologie dans l'histoire (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1990), 408-16Google Scholar.

¹¹ De Lubac's sacramental ontology also underlies his re-appropriation of the patristic and medieval fourfold method of spiritual interpretation. Susan K. Wood rightly highlights the connection between de Lubac's ecclesiology and his hermeneutic. See Wood, Susan K., Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998)Google Scholar; idem, “Henri de Lubac, SJ (1896-1991): Theologian of the Church,”Theology Today 62 (2005): 318-29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹² De Lubac, At the Service, 19.

¹³ McPartlan, Eucharist Makes the Church, 13.

¹⁴ Already when he studied philosophy (1920-23), de Lubac had read, “with enthusiasm,” Blondel's L'Action (1893) and his Lettre sur les exigences de la pensée contemporaine en matière d'apologétique (1896). During this time, in 1922, de Lubac also paid Blondel a visit. See de Lubac, At the Service, 18-19. For a detailed account of Blondel's influence on de Lubac, see Russo, Antonio, Henri de Lubac: Teologia e dogma nella storia: L'influsso di Blondel (Rome: Edizioni Studium, 1990)Google Scholar.

¹⁵ The doubly indented paragraph gives de Lubac's quotation of Blondel, Maurice, Histoire et dogme (La Chapelle-Montligeon: Libraire de Montligeon, 1904), 67Google Scholar. The quotation can be found in English translation in Blondel, Maurice, “History and Dogma,” in The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, trans. and ed. Dru, Alexander and Trethowan, Illtyd (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 283Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Lubac, Henri de, A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace, trans. Arnandez, Richard (San Fancisco: Ignatius, 1984), 37-38Google Scholar.

¹⁷ For a discussion of Blondel's views and the distinction between historical and dogmatic tradition, see Congar, Yves M.-J., Tradition and Traditions: The Biblical, Historical, and Theological Evidence for Catholic Teaching on Tradition, trans. Naseby, Michael and Rainborough, Thomas (San Diego, CA: Basilica; Needham Heights, MA: Simon & Schuster, 1966), 215-21, 361–68Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Blondel, “History and Dogma,” 224.

¹⁹ Ibid., 225.

²⁰ Ibid., 228.

²¹ Ibid., 229.

²² Ibid., 234.

²³ Ibid., 237.

²⁴ Ibid., 236.

²⁵ Ibid., 267.

²⁶ Ibid., 275.

²⁷ Ibid., 278.

²⁸ Ibid., 283.

²⁹ Ibid., 279.

³⁰ Much of the material of Surnaturel is reproduced in modified form in two later books: Lubac, Henri de, Augustinianism and Modern Theology, trans. Sheppard, Lancelot, introd. Dupré, Louis (New York: Herder & Herder – Crossroad, 2000)Google Scholar; idem, The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. Sheed, Rosemary, introd. Schindler, David L. (New York: Herder & Herder – Crossroad, 1998)Google Scholar.

³¹ De Lubac, Augustinianism, 105-83.

³² Throughout his ecclesiological writings, de Lubac opposes “extrinsicism” and “separated theology.” See, for example, Lubac, Henri de, Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Sheppard, Lancelot C. and Englund, Elizabeth (1950, rpt.; San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 313Google Scholar; idem, Brief Catechesis, 37-38, 48.

³³ I have elaborated on the connection between de Lubac's understanding of the supernatural and his opposition to the fascist Vichy regime in “Accommodation to What?” In the present essay, I will make several observations on de Lubac's apprehension of authority as extrinsically conceived, but the main emphasis will be his sacramental theology itself.

³⁴ Remarkably, considering today's focus on nominalism, both in Radical Orthodoxy and in Louis Dupré's work (Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture[New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1993]Google Scholar), de Lubac rarely discusses the nominalist turn in the late Middle Ages as lying at the root of the separation between nature and the supernatural. To be sure, he shows his awareness of the serious impact that nominalism did have on ecclesiology. See Lubac, Henri de, The Splendor of the Church, trans. Mason, Michael (1956, rpt; San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999), 129 n. 9Google Scholar. And, of course, de Lubac connects both his attempted recovery of spiritual interpretation of scripture and his critique of the developments of Eucharistic theology in the high Middle Ages to a move from symbolic to dialectical theology (idem, Scripture in the Tradition, trans. O'Neill, Luke [1968, rpt.; New York: Herder & Herder – Crossroad, 2000], 55-72Google Scholar; Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages, trans. Simmonds, Gemma, with Price, Richard, ed. Hemming, Laurence Paul and Parsons, Susan Frank (London: SCM, 2006), 221-47Google Scholar). For my critique of the late medieval abandonment of the Platonic-Christian synthesis in favour of a nominalist approach, see Boersma, Hans, “Theology as Queen of Hospitality,”Evangelical Quarterly 79 (June 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar: forthcoming

³⁵ Lubac, Henri de, The Church: Paradox and Mystery, trans. Dunne, James R. (New York: Ecclesia, 1969), 46Google Scholar.

³⁶ Ibid., 55.

³⁷ Ibid., 51; cf. p. 48.

³⁸ See de Lubac's repeated post-Vatican II warnings against immanentism and accommodation to culture (Splendor, 224-26, 291-301; Brief Catechesis, 22, 94-96, 110-12, 170-71), as well as his denunciations of the misappropriations of Vatican II (idem, The Motherhood of the Church Followed by Particular Churches in the Universal Church and an Interview Conducted by Gwendoline Jarczyk, trans. Sergia Englund [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1982], 165, 221-22; Brief Catechesis, 191-260).

³⁹ See, for example, the following characteristic passage in Brief Catechesis: “Christian faith does not exist piecemeal; and any effort to ‘adapt’ this or that element in it to nonbelieving interlocutors in order to justify it to them runs the risk not only of remaining barren, but of producing the opposite effect” (130).

⁴⁰ De Lubac, Motherhood, 149.

⁴¹ Walsh, “De Lubac's Critique,” 407.

⁴² De Lubac, Splendor, 243. Cf. Motherhood, 91: “Tradition, according to the Fathers of the Church, is in fact just the opposite of a burden of the past: it is a vital energy, a propulsive as much as a protective force, acting within an entire community as at the heart of each of the faithful because it is none other than the very Word of God both perpetuating and renewing itself under the action of the Spirit of God; not a biblical letter in the individual hands of critics or thinkers, but the living Word entrusted to the Church and to those to whom the Church never ceases to give birth; not, moreover, a mere objective doctrine, but the whole mystery of Christ.”

⁴³ De Lubac, Catholicism, 25.

⁴⁴ The subtitle of the English edition—Christ and the Common Destiny of Man—seems particularly well chosen, since for de Lubac “Christianity alone continues to assert the transcendent destiny of man and the common destiny of mankind” (Catholicism, 140-41). De Lubac links this common destiny with our created nature: “The human race is one. By our fundamental nature and still more in virtue of our common destiny we are members of the same body” (ibid., 222). For similar expressions of a “common” or “transcendent” destiny, see ibid., 232, 299, 353.

⁴⁵ Ibid., 15. De Lubac's emphasis on the unity of humanity, as well as his sacramental ontology, fits well with the Platonist-Christian synthesis that dominated the theological landscape until the Middle Ages. Indeed, Wood comments that de Lubac's understanding of the relationship between Eucharist and Church—the latter being the real (verum) body—is highly Platonic (“Church as the Social Embodiment,” 146). De Lubac realizes that his sacramental ontology has certain affinities with the Platonic tradition (Catholicism, 307), and he laments the “fashionable anti-Platonism” (Splendor, 69). Nonetheless, he does not make too much of this affinity (Catholicism, 40) and remains careful to point out that Christianity rejects the Platonist “individualist doctrine of escape” (Catholicism, 137; cf. 141) and its depreciation of the created order (Splendor, 180). He also has serious reservations about the neo-Platonic “hierarchy of being” (Catholicism, 334). Milbank is clearly too eager to draw de Lubac into his own neo-Platonic ontology (Suspended Middle, 18).

⁴⁶ De Lubac, Catholicism, 37.

⁴⁷ Ibid., 53.

⁴⁸ De Lubac, Splendor, 184.

⁴⁹ De Lubac, Catholicism, 274.

⁵⁰ De Lubac, Splendor, 177 n. 47. Cf. de Lubac's critique of an individualism that rejects the institutional framework of the Church (Motherhood, 9, 12–13).

⁵¹ De Lubac, Splendor, 358.

⁵² Ibid., 359. Paul McPartlan, while roundly acknowledging de Lubac's “sustained attack upon individualism” (Eucharist Makes the Church, 14), argues that nonetheless in the end he falls prey to an individualist mysticism (ibid., 19, 48, 67, 302–03). The reason for de Lubac's return to individualism, McPartlan believes, is twofold: (1) for de Lubac, the Incarnation does not establish a corporate personality, since Christ's achievement is universalized only after the Ascension (ibid., 64–65); and (2) for de Lubac, the one (Christ) unites the many (believers), while the many (believers) do not constitute the one (Christ) (ibid., 19, 67). With regard to the first point, it seems to me that de Lubac does insist on the universal embrace of the Incarnation itself (Catholicism, 37–40; cf. the quotation above, n. 47). This more or less Platonic move seems to me to underlie his entire argument that the Incarnation has for its aim the redemption of the new humanity, not just of separate individuals. With regard to the second point, the reason for de Lubac's ressourcement of the medieval tradition lies in his attempt to recover the unity of the Eucharistic and ecclesial “body of Christ” as one. This “mystical body” is “not only the ‘real body’, once born of the Virgin, but the ‘true body’, the total and definitive body, the one for whose redemption the Saviour sacrificed his body of flesh…” (Corpus Mysticum, 68). The sacramental connection between the signum of the Eucharist and the res of the Church's unity implies, for de Lubac, that that the many (believers) constitute the one (Christ). I am grateful to Fr. McPartlan for the stimulating e-mail conversation on this point.

⁵³ De Lubac, Catholicism, 326.

⁵⁴ Ibid., 349.

⁵⁵ Ibid., 353.

⁵⁶ Ibid., 335.

⁵⁷ For analyses of this text, see Wood, “Church as the Social Embodiment,” 102–18; Walsh, “De Lubac's Critique,” 52–61; Wang, “Sacramentum Unitatis Ecclesiasticae,” 150–54.

⁵⁸ Cf. the account of de Lubac in Pickstock, Catherine, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), 158–66Google Scholar.

⁵⁹ De Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 13.

⁶⁰ “Thus the bread of the sacrament[sacramentum panis] led them directly to the unity of the body[unitas corporis]. In their eyes the Eucharist was essentially, as it was already for St. Paul and for the Fathers, the mystery of unity[mysterium unitatis], it was the sacrament of conjunction, alliance, and unification[sacramentum conjunctionis, federationis, adunationis]” (ibid., 17). Here, as well as elsewhere, I have added to the English translation de Lubac's Latin terminology as he provides it in the original French edition.

⁶¹ Ibid., 21.

⁶² Ibid., 23–28. De Lubac explains that the term corpus triforme originates in Amalarius of Metz (d. ca. 850). See ibid., 24–25. De Lubac presents an extensive discussion of Amalarius's “threefold body” and its development in ibid., 263–301.

⁶³ Ibid., 28–36.

⁶⁴ Ibid., 41–45.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 49.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 52.

⁶⁷ De Lubac distinguishes three essential aspects in the Eucharistic mystery: (1) by way of presence, the body of Christ lies hidden in the element of the bread, in mysterio panis; (2) by way of memorial, the body of Christ is a mystery of commemoration, which renders Christ's sacrifice present in mysterio passionis; and (3) by way of anticipation, the body of Christ is the reality of the hope of edification and unity of the Church, and so in mysterio nostro: “[The Eucharist] signifies us to ourselves—our own mystery, a figure of ourselves[mysterium nostrum, figura nostra]—in which we have already begun to be through baptism (one baptism[unum baptisma]), but above all in what we ought to become: in this sacrament of unity, is prefigured what we will become in the future[praefiguratur quiddam quod futuri sumus]” (ibid., 66–67).

⁶⁸ Ibid., 73.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 75.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 102.

⁷¹ Ibid., 104.

⁷² Ibid., 114–16.

⁷³ De Lubac reiterates his displeasure with this understanding of the Church as simply a body among many in Splendor, 128–30. “We no longer understand the Church at all if we see in her only her human merits, or if we see her as merely a means—however noble—to a temporal end; or if, while remaining believers in some vague sense, we do not primarily find in her a mystery of faith” (ibid., 215). Similarly, he comments elsewhere: “People generally speak of ‘Christianity’ as they do of ‘Catholicism’. There is obviously nothing to condemn in this usage, which is as justified as it is old. It is nevertheless regrettable that it too often suggests the idea of one doctrine among others, or of one society among others, even if perfect adherence is accorded this doctrine or this society. In and of themselves, these two words do not lead us much beyond this. Such an idea would not be false, but it would be entirely incomplete and superficial. It is a question of a life, of the divine life to which we are called. Into this life, the Church, the Catholica mater, gives us birth” (Motherhood, 120). Cf. also de Lubac's objections to “man-made models” of collegiality in the Church (Church: Paradox and Mystery, 19).

⁷⁴ De Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 114–17.

⁷⁵ Ibid., 138.

⁷⁶ Ibid., 143–44.

⁷⁷ Ibid., 146–54.

⁷⁸ Ibid., 155.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 161–62.

⁸⁰ Ibid., 162.

⁸¹ Ibid., 189. De Lubac does acknowledge that corpus verum also had a long history of association with the sacramental body (ibid., 187–88). Wood is correct, therefore, to observe that for de Lubac “the realism of the eucharistic presence is never called into question” (“Church as the Social Embodiment,” 103).

⁸² De Lubac, Catholicism, 100 n. 68. Cf. William T. Cavanaugh's comment on this development: “What concerned de Lubac about the inversion of verum and mysticum was its tendency to reduce the Eucharist to a mere spectacle for the laity. The growth of the cult of the host itself in the later medieval period (the feast of Corpus Christi began in the thirteenth century) was not necessarily an advance for Eucharistic practice” (Torture and Eucharist: Theology, Politics, and the Body of Christ[Oxford: Blackwell, 1998], 213)Google Scholar.

⁸³ De Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 223.

⁸⁴ Ibid., 226.

⁸⁵ Ibid., 228.

⁸⁶ Ibid., 236–38.

⁸⁷ This book, published in English in 1956 as The Splendor of the Church, is the outcome of a number of workshops between 1946 and 1949. De Lubac's silencing in 1950 delayed their publication in the form of a monograph for some time, which gave him the opportunity to supplement the quotations and add a few pages. In 1952, the book miraculously passed censorship, so that it was published the next year under the tile Méditation sur l'Eglise. De Lubac relates how the book escaped the watchful eye of Father Janssens, the General of the Jesuit Order in France. De Lubac then comments, with some glee: “When I saw him in Rome, in the spring of 1953, and thanked him for granting his authorization (the book was then at the printer), he paled and, very frankly, told me that there was no reason to thank him, that it was quite by chance” (De Lubac, At the Service, 75).

⁸⁸ De Lubac, Splendor, 132.

⁸⁹ Ibid., 141.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 147.

⁹¹ Ibid., 149

⁹² Ibid. To be sure, de Lubac does emphasize that the bishops together form one episcopate and that the bishops are in communion with the Bishop of Rome. Priests have consecrating power by sharing in that of the bishop (ibid., 150). Although de Lubac looks to the Eucharist as constituting the Church, he does not draw the conclusion that various local churches are merely “federating” together to form the Catholic Church. Instead, there is—and here de Lubac quotes Yves Congar—a “mutual interiority” between the particular and the universal Church (Motherhood, 201). Accordingly, he insists that there is only one episcopacy and one Church. De Lubac refuses, therefore, to describe his ecclesiology as a “eucharistic ecclesiology”: “The weakness of an ecclesiology too narrowly (or rather we should say too incompletely) ‘eucharistic’ would be in privileging the ‘dimension’ of the particular church by seeming to forget this radical correlation” (Motherhood, 204; cf. Church: Paradox and Mystery, 36). In personal conversation with Paul McPartlan, de Lubac reiterated that the term “Eucharistic ecclesiology” would be “too short” (McPartlan, Eucharist Makes the Church, 98).

⁹³ Splendor, 157. Cf. ibid., 209–11.

⁹⁴ Ibid., 158.

⁹⁵ Ibid., 160. The emphasis on the Eucharist as providing the unity of Church explains de Lubac's opposition to a more horizontally oriented liturgy. For de Lubac, such a focus would be a lapse into immanentism, which ignores the way in which Christ becomes sacramentally present in and through the Eucharist: “In the present welcome efforts to bring about a celebration of the liturgy that is more ‘communal’ and more alive, nothing would be more regrettable than a preoccupation with the success achieved by some secular festivals by the combined resources of technical skill and the appeal to man at his lower level. To reflect for a moment on the way in which Christ makes real the unity between us is to see at once that it is not by way of anything resembling mass hysteria or any sort of occult magic” (ibid., 155).

⁹⁶ Wood, “Church as the Social Embodiment,” 144. Cf. ibid., 104: “[T]he unity of the eucharistic body and the ecclesial body is never an extrinsic unity because the ecclesial body is not another body than the body of Christ, but the totus Christus, the fullness of Christ.”

⁹⁷ Lumen Gentium, n. 1. Quoted from The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents, vol. 1 of Vatican Council II, ed. Flannery, Austin, rev. ed. (Northport, NY: Costello; Dublin, Ireland: Dominican, 1975), 350Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ McPartlan, “Eucharistic Ecclesiology,” 317. Cf. de Lubac's admiration for Möhler in Splendor, 92–93, 266 n. 114; Motherhood, 278–79, 310.

⁹⁹ Cf. Doyle, “Henri de Lubac,” 220–21.

¹⁰⁰ De Lubac, Splendor, 202.

¹⁰¹ De Lubac, Catholicism, 76.

¹⁰² This sacramental identity between the Church and Christ lies behind de Lubac's repeated allusions to St. Augustine's dictum, “Nec tu me in te mutabis, sicut cibum carnis tuae, sed tu mutaberis in me.” See McPartlan, Eucharist Makes the Church, 67–74; idem, “‘You will be changed into me’: Unity and Limits in de Lubac's Thought,”One in Christ 30 (1994): 50–60Google Scholar.

¹⁰³ For Blondel, the latter would mean “to immure [Christ] in the past, sealing him in his tomb beneath the sediments of history and to consider only the natural aspect of his work as real and effective; it would be to deprive him of the influence which every master communicates to his immediate disciples…” (“History and Dogma,” 247).

¹⁰⁴ De Lubac, Splendor, 202. De Lubac takes the distinction between “mediation” and “intermediaries” from Louis Bouyer (Motherhood, 93–94).

¹⁰⁵ Cf. Kerr, Fergus, “French Theology: Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac,” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. Ford, David F., 2^nd ed. (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997), 115Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁶ De Lubac, Splendor, 209. Cf. de Lubac's discussion of papal infallibility as “an infallibility that is not something separate from that of the whole Church…” (ibid., 271; emphasis added). Cf. also ibid., 266.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., 264. Christopher Walsh points out that after 1950, de Lubac likely added passages to his completed manuscript of The Splendor of the Church, in which he autobiographically reflects on his difficult circumstances in relationship to the Church (“Henri de Lubac,” 35–38).

¹⁰⁸ At the same time, also after Vatican II, de Lubac continues to express his objections to extrinsic accounts of authority, warning against ecclesiologies that “assume a positivist conception of the Church or that systematically confine themselves to her exterior aspects, without linking her structure to her underlying nature” (Motherhood, 21).

¹⁰⁹ Motherhood, 99. De Lubac regards the various methods of selecting bishops as “contingent particulars” (ibid.).

¹¹⁰ Henri de Lubac, Brief Catechesis, 236. Cf. his scathing critique of “small pressure groups” engaging in “an insidious campaign against the papacy—under the pretext of a fight against that eccentricity which is dogmatism, a rejection of dogmatics, which is to say a rejection of the Christian faith in its original twofold character comprising an objective content received from authority …” (Motherhood, 26).

¹¹¹ By resorting to a view of ministry as “an external, completely ‘sociological’ function, a mere profession,” we would turn it into “an arbitrary law.”“But besides the fact that all authority recognized in [priestly] ministry would in this case have lost its foundation, this would not only deny Catholic tradition but in actual fact repudiate the very reality of the Church by emptying the Christian mystery” (Motherhood, 139; cf. ibid., 353).

¹¹² De Lubac, Catholicism, 70.

¹¹³ De Lubac, Church: Paradox and Mystery, 53.

¹¹⁴ De Lubac, Splendor, 73.

¹¹⁵ Ibid., 74.

¹¹⁶ Ibid., 68. This last comment is again an indication that we should not misidentify de Lubac's cautioning against a conservative authoritarianism as a progressive rejection of authority. He is merely concerned to point out the hierarchy's proper sacramental role vis-à-vis a conservative extrinsicist conception of authority. This explains why de Lubac balked at what he saw as a secularist and historicist democratization after Vatican II, which he believed was not true to the Council's intent.

¹¹⁷ De Lubac, Spendor, 104.

¹¹⁸ Ibid., 106, 108. Cf. the beautiful collection of patristic passages on the motherhood of the Church in de Lubac, Motherhood, 47–58.

¹¹⁹ De Lubac, Splendor, 124.

¹²⁰ Ibid., 110, 106.

¹²¹ Ibid., 133.

¹²² Ibid., 321, 337–38.

¹²³ Ibid., 104.

¹²⁴ Ibid., 106, 108.

¹²⁵ Ibid., 124.

¹²⁶ Ibid., 110, 106.

¹²⁷ Ibid., 133.

¹²⁸ Ibid., 321, 337–38.

¹²⁹ Ibid., 108. For de Lubac, “paradox” is a key notion, intimately connected to the notion of “mystery.” See de Lubac, Church: Paradox and Mystery, 1–29. The paradox of the Church goes back to the paradox of the Incarnation, but in a sense the mystery of the Church is even more paradoxical than that of Christ: “If a purification and transformation of vision is necessary to look on Christ without being scandalized, how much more is it necessary when we are looking at the Church!” (Splendor, 50)

¹³⁰ Ibid., 88. For de Lubac, it is important we understand that the word “mystical is not synonymous with ‘invisible’, but that it refers rather to the sensible sign of a reality that is divine and hidden …” so that it would be a serious misrepresentation “to separate the mystical body from the visible Church” (ibid., 131–32). “The Body of Christ is not an invisible Church or an invertebrate people” (Motherhood, 85).

¹³¹ Cf. de Lubac's comment: “Of the two intimately connected characteristics of the Church, institutional and mystical, hierarchical and communal, if the second is assuredly the principal in value, the more pleasant to contemplate and the one which alone will continue to exist, the first is its necessary condition…. Communion is the objective—an objective which, from the first instant, does not cease to be realized in the invisible; the institution is the means for it—a means which even now does not cease to ensure a visible communion” (Motherhood, 34–35).

¹³² De Lubac, Splendor, 161.

¹³³ Ibid., 198.

¹³⁴ Ibid., 196.

¹³⁵ Ibid., 188.

¹³⁶ Ibid., 201.

¹³⁷ Ibid., 166.

¹³⁸ Ibid., 191.

¹³⁹ Ibid., 175. Cf. de Lubac's insistence that the papacy maintained the independence and orthodoxy of the Church against semi-pagan emperors “in the first few centuries of what is so often called in an appalling oversimplification the ‘Constantinian era’” (Motherhood, 301).

¹⁴⁰ De Lubac, Splendor, 175.

¹⁴¹ De Lubac, Catholicism, 365.

¹⁴² De Lubac, Brief Catechesis, 110.

¹⁴³ Ibid., 122, 168.

¹⁴⁴ Ibid., 119.

¹⁴⁵ Ibid., 191–234. For analyses of de Lubac's attack on Schillebeeckx, see Wood, “Church as the Social Embodiment,” 179–89; Walsh, “Henri de Lubac,” 245–61.

¹⁴⁶ Lumen Gentium, n. 1.

¹⁴⁷ As quoted in de Lubac, Brief Catechesis, 191.

¹⁴⁸ Ibid., 211.

¹⁴⁹ Ibid., 213.

¹⁵⁰ Ibid., 215–16.

¹⁵¹ Walsh, “Henri de Lubac,” 261.

¹⁵² Ibid., 224–25. The various quotations within this quote are statements made by Schillebeeckx.

¹⁵³ Ibid., 228. I am not assessing here whether or not de Lubac interprets Schillebeeckx correctly on this point. Walsh argues that this part of de Lubac's critique does not do justice to Schillebeeckx' position (“Henri de Lubac,” 257–59).

¹⁵⁴ Wood captures the difference between the two theologians well when she comments that with Schillebeeckx it seems that the Church is merely the visible embodiment of a unity that already exists prior to the Church as the unity of the human race, while for de Lubac the unity of the human race only exists through the Church (“Church as the Social Embodiment,” 187–88).

¹⁵⁵ Joseph Ratzinger, “Foreword,” in de Lubac, Catholicism, 12.

¹⁵⁶ Cf. Tracey Rowland's appeal to de Lubac in order to counter modern and late modern tendencies toward immanentism (Culture and the Thomist Tradition).

¹⁵⁷ Indeed, McPartlan's comparative analysis between de Lubac and Zizioulas is a hopeful sign in this regard (Eucharist and the Church).

¹⁵⁸ The original context for this essay was a seminar on ‘Liturgy and Politics: Is the Church a Polis?’ held at Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan in July 2006 under the capable leadership of Dr William T. Cavanaugh and funded by the Calvin Institute for Christian Worship and the Lilly Endowment, Inc. I am grateful for the hospitality extended by the staff of Calvin College's Seminars in Christian Scholarship program, and also for the encouragement offered by its Director, Dr James K. A. Smith.