Crossref Citations
This article has been cited by the following publications. This list is generated based on data provided by Crossref.
Lebner, Ashley
2021.
The Work of Impossibility in Brazil.
Current Anthropology,
Vol. 62,
Issue. 4,
p.
452.
Article contents
Henri de Lubac: Panorama and Proposal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
This overview of de Lubac's work considers his background in French Catholicism at the opening of the twentieth century; the intellectual currents a-swirl in his formative years; his own education in Jesuit institutions; the mosaic of his highly disparate writings, and the broad lines of his ‘career’ as priest and cardinal. This ‘panorama’ is complemented by a proposal, intended to illuminate the ‘mosaic’ referred to: the author's suggestion is that unity – in a variety of analogical senses of that word – constitutes the key to de Lubac's entire enterprise.’
- Type
- Original Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- © 2011 The Author. New Blackfriars © 2011 The Dominican Council
References
1 De Lubac favoured a biography of his books not his person. But owing to Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes Ecrits (Namur, 1989; 2nd edition, 1992), and the posthumous essay ‘Mémoire sur mes vingt premières années’, I, in Bulletin de l’Association Internationale Cardinal Henri de Lubac, 1 (1998), pp. 7–31, the rather meagre information about his life in Herbert Vorgrimler's ‘Henri de Lubac’, in R. van der Gucht and H. Vorgrimler (ed.), Bilan de la théologie au XXe siècle (Tournai, 1970), II., pp. 806–820, probably the first overview (to that date), had expanded somewhat by the time of Rudolf Voderholzer's concise but very serviceable study, Henri de Lubac begegnen (Augsburg, 1999Google Scholar; English translation, Meet Henri de Lubac. His Life and Work[San Francisco, 2008]Google Scholar).
2 Partin, M. O., Waldeck-Rousseau, Combes and the Church: the Politics of Anti-clericalism, 1899–1905 (Durham, NC, 1969)Google Scholar.
3 The Christian is socially useless, preoccupied with individual salvation, unlike ‘modern man’, who seeks to draw the good from the ‘world and its laws’: Catholicisme. Les aspects sociaux du Dogme (Paris, 1938), p. VIIIGoogle Scholar, where de Lubac is quoting from Séailles, G., Les affirmations de la Conscience moderne (Paris, 1906, 3rd edition, pp. 108–109Google Scholar. (N.b. in subsequent citation of de Lubac's works, the place of publication is Paris unless noted otherwise.)
4 Mayeur, J. M., La séparation de l’Eglise et de l’Etat (Paris, 1966)Google Scholar.
5 A disclosure by Georges Chantraine, S. J., one of de Lubac's closest collaborators in the younger generation: see R. Voderholzer, Meet Henri de Lubac, op. cit., p. 25.
6 Aubert, R., ‘The Local Churches of Continental Europe’, in idem., et al., The Christian Centuries, 5. The Church in a Secularised Society (London, 1978), p. 77Google Scholar.
7 Ibid., p. 78.
8 Fouilloux, E., Une Eglise en quête de liberté. La pensée catholique française entre Modernisme et Vatican II, 1914–1962 (Paris, 1998)Google Scholar.
9 Russo, A., Henri de Lubac: teologia e dogma nella storia. L’influsso di Blondel (Rome, 1990)Google Scholar.
10 For his work as an antidote to Modernism, not its continuation, see Larcher, G., Modernismus als theologischer Historismus. Ansätze zu seiner Überwindung im Frühwerk Maurice Blondels (Frankfurt, Berne, Las Vegas, 1985)Google Scholar.
11 Blondel, M., L’Action. Essai d’une Critique de la vie et d’une science de la pratique (Paris, 1893)Google Scholar.
12 For a fuller description of that analysis, see Nichols, A. O. P., From Hermes to Benedict XVI. Faith and Reason in Modern Catholic Thought (Leominster, 2009), pp. 157–163Google Scholar.
13 M. Blondel, ‘Lettre sur les exigencies de la pensée contemporaine en matière d’Apologétique’, reprinted in Les premiers écrits de Maurice Blondel, II (Paris, 1956), pp. 5–95Google Scholar.
14 See A. Nichols, O. P., From Hermes to Benedict XVI, op. cit., pp. 177–181.
15 A. Russo, Henri de Lubac: teologia e dogma nella storia, op. cit., p. 32.
16 R. Aubert, Le Problème de l’acte de foi. Données traditionelles et resultants des controverses récentes (Louvain, 1958), pp. 224–225. Such Blondelians would be pleased by much recent interpretation of Thomas Aquinas in what has been called, perhaps over-optimistically, the ‘Fourth Scholasticism’, for, as has been remarked, in its spiritual and affective emphases it often likes to read Thomas as if he were Bonaventure.
17 Tilliette, X. S. J., ‘Henri de Lubac. The Legacy of a Theologian’, Communio XIX. 3 (1992), pp. 334–335Google Scholar.
18 ‘F. Mallet’ (= M. Blondel), ‘L’oeuvre du cardinal Dechamps et la méthode de l’apologétique’, Annales de philosophie chrétienne 151 (1905), pp. 68–91; idem., ‘Les controverses sur la méthode apologétique du cardinal Dechamps’, ibid., 151 (1906), pp. 449–472; 625–646. Lightly re-written, these reappeared in Blondel, M., Le problème de la Philosophie catholique (Paris, 1932), pp. 59–123Google Scholar. There is a cameo description of Dechamps’‘providential method’ in Dulles, A., A History of Apologetics (London, 1971), pp. 191–192Google Scholar.
19 Valensin, A. (Auguste), ‘Immanence (méthode de)’, Dictionnaire apologétique de la Foi catholique, II (Paris, 1924, 2nd edition), cols. 580–584.Google Scholar
20 A. (Albert) Valensin, ‘’Immanence, méthode de – Examen’, ibid., II (Paris, 1911), col. 594.
21 For this important concept, see Gillon, L. B., ‘Aux Origines de la “puissance obédientielle”’, Revue thomiste 47 (1947), pp. 304–310Google Scholar.
22 A. Nichols, O. P., From Hermes to Benedict XVI, op. cit., pp. 56–58.
23 J. Lacouture, Jésuites. Une multibiographie. II. Les Revenants (Paris, 1991), p. 250. For a less impressionistic account, see Avon, D. – Rocher, P., Les Jésuites et la société française [XIX-XXe siècles] (Toulouse, 2001)Google Scholar.
24 J. Lacouture, Jésuites. Une multibiographie. II. Les Revenants, op. cit., p. 285.
25 R. Voderholzer, Meet Henri de Lubac, op. cit., p. 27.
26 G. Chantraine, ‘Esquisse biographique’, printed as a substantial introduction to the French translation of Hans Urs von Balthasar's study of de Lubac: Le Cardinal Henri de Lubac (Paris-Namur, 1983), pp. 11–12Google Scholar. Chantraine would greatly expand this material about the youthful de Lubac in Henri de Lubac. I: De la naissance à la demobilisation [1896–1919] (Paris, 2007)Google Scholar.
27 Claudel et Péguy (1974), co-written with Jean Bastaire, is more a chronicle of their relations (or lack of them) than a presentation of their substance.
28 Russo, A., Henri de Lubac (Cinisello Balsamo, 1994), p. 45Google Scholar. This excellent overview must not be confused with Russo's other, earlier, study, with the same title but a differentiating sub-title, which concerns exclusively the issue of the Blondel-de Lubac connexion. See note 9 above.
29 Auguste Valensin. Textes et documents inédits (1961).
30 Maurice Blondel et Auguste Valensin. Correspondence commentée (1957–1965), 3 vols.
31 See the (syntactically) oddly entitled Pambrun, J. R., The Presence of God: A Study into the Apologetics of Henri de Lubac (Toronto, 1978)Google Scholar; also Valadier, P., ‘Dieu présent. Une entrée dans la théologie du Cardinal de Lubac’, Recherches de Science Religieuse 3 (1992), pp. 345–358Google Scholar.
32 Maritain, J., Approches de Dieu (Paris, 1953)Google Scholar, where Maritain denied that the five ways give evidence of the divine existence itself or of the actus essendi which is in God and which God is. They give evidence only of the fact that the divine existence must be affirmed, or of the truth of attributing the predicate to the subject in the assertion, ‘God exists’.
33 In a letter of 5 March 1967 to the Rousselot scholar Father John McDermott, de Lubac named Rousselot the chief influence on his early philosophical outlook: see McDermott, J. M. S. J., ‘De Lubac and Rousselot’, Gregorianum 78. 4 (1997Google Scholar, =‘Colloque Henri de Lubac à l’occasion du centenaire de sa naissance [1896–1996]’), p. 735. McDermott does not challenge, though, the thesis of the ‘great influence’ of Blondel which he regards as ‘proven’ by Russo's study.
34 H. Vorgrimler, ‘Henri de Lubac’, art. cit., p. 808. (De Grandmaison was a figure who, like Blondel, sought a third way beside Modernism and Integrism and suffered as a consequence slings and arrows from all directions. See Lebreton, J., Le Père Léonce de Grandmaison (Paris, 1932)Google Scholar; idem., ‘Le Père Léonce de Grandmaison, son oeuvre scientifique’, Recherches de science religieuse 17 (1927), pp. 385–413Google Scholar.
35 A. Russo, Henri de Lubac, op. cit., pp. 54–55.
36 J. Lacouture, Jésuites. Une multibiographie. II. Les Revenants, op. cit., p. 291.
37 It appeared eventually as Le système idéaliste chez Kant et les post-kantiens (Bruges-Paris, 1947)Google Scholar; for Rousselotisme see Ledochowski, W. S. J., ‘Principal Theses of the Position of Pierre Rousselot’, in Rousselot, P. S. J., The Eyes of Faith, and Answer to Two Attacks (English translation, New York, 1990), pp. 114–115Google Scholar.
38 Maréchal's influence may be detected in the way that in the theology of God de Lubac sought to balance the role of negative theology by the insistence that ‘in every act of knowing something that is, God is also known as the ultimate ground of being; in every positive act of the will, God is also affirmed as the highest and ultimate good’: R. Voderholzer, Meet Henri de Lubac, op. cit., pp. 142–143. ‘Conation’– reaching out, proleptically in acts of the intellect, dynamically in acts of will – is key to Transcendental Thomism's version of demonstrating divine existence.
39 Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes Ecrits, op. cit., p. 16.
40 A. Russo, Henri de Lubac: teologia e dogma nella storia, op. cit., pp. 58–60.
41 Ibid., pp. 137–153.
42 The ironic sobriquet should not mask the excellence of its theological culture: see Grumett, D., ‘Teilhard at Ore Place, Hastings, 1908–1912’, New Blackfriars 90. 1030 (2009), pp. 687–700CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 For this figure, see Duclos, P. (ed.), Dictionnaire du monde religieux dans la France contemporaine. I. Les Jésuites (Paris, 1985), p. 151Google Scholar.
44 A. Russo, Henri de Lubac, op. cit., pp. 56–57.
45 ‘Apologétique et théologie’, Nouvelle revue théologique 57 (1930), pp. 361–378Google Scholar, reprinted in Théologies d’occasion (1984), pp. 47–111.
46 Cited A. Russo, Henri de Lubac: teologia e dogma nella storia, op. cit., p. 66.
47 ‘Remarques sur l’histoire du mot “surnaturel”’, Nouvelle revue théologique 61 (1934), pp. 225–249, 350–370Google Scholar.
48 X. Tilliette, ‘Henri de Lubac’, art. cit., p. 337.
49 ‘Remarques sur l’histoire du mot “surnaturel”’, art. cit., p. 357.
50 Though de Lubac tends to regard this term as characteristic of early modern Scholasticism, the verb superaddare is found in exactly the context he has in mind in Thomas's Summa contra Gentiles III. 150. To make possible the vision of God ‘some supernatural form and perfection’ must be ‘superadded’ to the nature of man.
51 ‘Remarques sur l’histoire du mot “surnaturel”’, art. cit., p. 364.
52 ‘Testis’ (= M. Blondel), Catholicisme social et monophorisme (Paris, 1919)Google Scholar.
53 Cf. Catholicisme. Les aspects sociaux du Dogme (Paris, 1938), p. 179. The Latin phrase was drawn from the preface of Gregory the Great's Moralia in Job.
54 Catholicisme, op. cit., p. IX.
55 Ibid., p. 51; cf. pp. 32–33.
56 ‘Remarques sur l’histoire du mot “surnaturel”’, art. cit., p. 239.
57 See further Bernardi, P. J., Maurice Blondel, Social Catholicism, and Action française. The Clash over the Church's Role in Society during the Modernist Era (Washington, 2009)Google Scholar.
58 Images de l’abbé Monchanin (1967).
59 Balthasar, H. U. von, Test Everything, Keep What is Good (English translation, San Francisco, 1986), pp. 11–12Google Scholar.
60 I have had access to this in its original Italian form, Scola, A. (ed.), Henri de Lubac, Viaggio nel Concilio–Hans Urs von Balthasar, Viaggio nel Postconcilio (Milan, 1985), here cited at p. 8Google Scholar.
61 See Mondésert, C., Lire les Pères de l’Eglise dans ‘Sources Chrétiennes’ (Paris, 1988)Google Scholar.
62 Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes Ecrits, op. cit., p. 95.
63 Catholicisme, op. cit., p. 119.
64 Ibid.,, p. 100.
65 Cited R. Voderholzer, Henri de Lubac, op. cit., p. 53.
66 A harbinger of the book, his essay ‘Le caractère social du dogma chrétien’, was, significantly, published in the journal of the Lyons ‘think-tank’ of social politics, Chronique social de France 45 (1936), pp. 167–192, 259–283.
67 Catholicisme, op. cit., p. 259. Here, as footnotes 4 and 5 indicate, de Lubac was juxtaposing – and combining – a statement of Jacques Maritain's in Humanisme integral (Paris, 1936), p. 17Google Scholar, with a synthesis of comments from Blondel, notably in L’Etre et les êtres (Paris, 1936)Google Scholar and the revised edition of L’Action (Paris, 1937)Google Scholar.
68 Catholicisme, p. 261.
69 H. Vorgrimler, ‘Henri de Lubac’, art. cit., p. 811.
70 Ibid.
71 Gerbet, O.-P., Considérations sur le dogme générateur de la piété catholique (Paris, 1829)Google Scholar; cf Mémoire sur l’occasion des mes Ecrits, p. 25.
72 Perrard, P., Juifs et Catholiques français, de Drumont à Jules Isaac [1886–1945] (Paris, 1970)Google Scholar. One ought also to recognise the tradition of anti-Semitism stemming from the Enlightenment in Labroue, France: H.,Voltaire anti-juif (Paris, 1942)Google Scholar.
73 With characteristic modesty, he regarded his posthumous editing of de Montcheuil's writings, like his similar work for Valensin, and his editions of the correspondence of Blondel and Teilhard, as among the ‘most useful tasks it has been given me to accomplish’, Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes Ecrits, op. cit., p. 101.
74 Thinking them together again, the hallmark of Eucharistic ecclesiology, would be understood in an ampler context in the successor movement of the ‘ecclesiology of communion’. See Pelchat, M., L’Eglise mystère de communion. L’ecclésiologie dans l’oeuvre de Henri de Lubac (Montreal and Paris, 1990)Google Scholar.
75 Corpus mysticum. L’Eucharistie et l’Eglise au Moyen Age. Etude historique (1949, 2nd edition), pp. 248–277.
76 Ibid., p. 264.
77 Ibid., p. 104.
78 Ibid., p. 291.
79 Ibid., p. 292.
80 Corpus mysticum is presented in this light in Nichols, A. O. P., Theology in the Russian Diaspora. Church, Fathers, Eucharist in Nikolai Afanas’ev, 1893–1966 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 166–168Google Scholar. The ampler setting of Eucharistic ecclesiology in the contemporary Greek theologian John Zizioulas, who was at once inspired by Afanas’ev and his critic, made possible a wider-ranging comparison in P. McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh, 1993). That the Eucharistic mystery as a whole, which further comprises Sacrifice, Presence and Foretaste of the Kingdom, is optimally reviewed from this particular standpoint seems doubtful. Relatedness to the Atonement, the context of the institution of the sacrament, can suffer. For the case that the primary perspective should be Sacrifice, see Nichols, A. O. P., ‘The Holy Oblation: on the Primacy of Eucharistic Sacrifice’, Downside Review 122. 479 (2004), pp. 259–272CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
81 Catholicisme, op. cit., p. 67, to which numerous illustrations are added on pp. 67–74.
82 This is the distinction drawn in the exhaustive work of Lawrence Feingold on this subject, The Natural Desire to See God according to St Thomas Aquinas and his Interpreters (Rome, 2001). This study provoked the publication of much useful material on this topic in the journal Nova et Vetera (the Anglophone, not Francophone, edition). So far as de Lubac is concerned, I single out especially R. Hütter, ‘Desiderium naturale visionis Dei – Est autem duplex hominis beatitudo sive felicitas: Some Observations about Lawrence Feingold's and John Milbank's Interventions in the Debate over the Natural Desire to See God’, ibid., 5. 1 (2007), pp. 81–132, and D. Braine, ‘The Debate between Henri de Lubac and his Critics’, ibid., 6. 3 (2008), pp. 543–590.
83 A. Russo, Henri de Lubac: teologia e dogma nella storia, op. cit., pp. 140–142.
84 See, for a characteristic hostile assessment, Bonifazi, D., Immutabilità e relatività del dogma secondo la teologia contemporanea (Rome, 1959)Google Scholar.
85 Nichols, A. O. P., ‘Thomism and the Nouvelle Théologie’, The Thomist 64 (2000), pp. 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
86 A. Russo, Henri de Lubac: teologia e dogma nella storia, op. cit., p. 193.
87 De Lubac records that the purge was restricted: see Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes Ecrits, op. cit., p. 75. It comprised Surnaturel, De la connaissance de Dieu, Corpus mysticum, and the Recherches de science religieuse for 1949 containing at pp. 80–121 the article, ‘Le Mystère du surnaturel’, which, in 1965, would be recreated in, and give its name to, the book of that title. (The article itself is reprinted in Théologie dans l’Histoire II [1990], pp. 71–107.)
88 Actually written between 1946 and 1949, Hans Urs von Balthasar remarked of this humble and loving reflection on the mysteric reality of the Church that it presented the spirituality which underlay the theology of Catholicisme: thus his The Theology of Henri de Lubac. An Overview (English translation, San Francisco, 1991), p. 107Google Scholar.
89 In a detailed studied of de Lubac's revisions, Martin Lenk reached the conclusion that the neo-patristic, paradoxical mode of expression in which de Lubac described the basic relation between the human being and God had been too difficult for those formed in a Neo-Scholastic theological mould to understand: thus his Von der Gotteserkenntnis: Natürliche Theologie im Werk Henri de Lubacs (Frankfurt, 1993). Lawrence Feingold speaks, rather, of ‘unresolved tensions’ touching, more especially, the question, Is the natural desire to see God something sheerly natural or also somehow divine? See his The Natural Desire to See God according to St Thomas Aquinas and his Interpreters, op. cit., p. 539.
90 See on this Voderholzer, R., Die Einheit der Schrift und ihr geistige Sinn. Der Beitrag Henri de Lubacs zur Erforschung von Geschichte und Systematik christlicher Bibelhermeneutik (Freiburg-Einsiedeln, 1998)Google Scholar.
91 Smalley, B., The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1983, 3rd edition), Introduction.Google Scholar
92 Teilhard, missionaire et apologiste (Toulouse, 1966)Google Scholar. One could also mention Teilhard posthume. Réflexions et souvenirs (1977), L’Eternel feminine, étude sur un texte de Teilhard de Chardin, et Teilhard et notre temps (1968), and his edition of the Blondel-Teilhard letters: Blondel et Teilhard de Chardin. Correspondence commentée (1965), as well as of Teilhard's letters to a variety of other correspondents.
93 Mémoire sur l’occasion des mes Ecrits, op. cit., p. 174.
94 One fruit of this was de Lubac's Athéisme et sens de l’homme. Une double requête de ‘Gaudium et Spes’ (1968).
95 Voderholzer, R., Meet Henri de Lubac, op. cit., p. 19.Google Scholar
96 See on this Walsh, C. J., ‘De Lubac's Critique of the Postconciliar Church’, Communio 19 (1992), pp. 404–432Google Scholar.
97 Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes Ecrits, op. cit., p. 149.
98 Ibid., p. 153.
99 Ibid., p. 364.
100 ‘Concile et Paraconcile’, in Petite Catéchèse sur nature et grâce (1980), pp. 165–180.
101 Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes Ecrits, op. cit., p. 367.
102 Cited ibid., p. 163; the French translation of the Pope's address de Lubac used was published in Documentation catholique 1659, for 4–18 August 1974.
103 Athéisme et le sens de l’homme, op. cit., pp. 102, 107.
104 De Lubac's most committed English champion responded with alacrity: Trethowan, I. O. S. B., ‘The Supernatural End: Père de Lubac's New Volumes’, Downside Review 84 (1966), pp. 397–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
105 Boyer, C. S. J., ‘Note sur Le Mystère du surnaturel du Père Henri de Lubac’, Gregorianum 48 (1967), pp. 130–132Google Scholar.
106 Catholicisme, op. cit., p. 254.
107 See for an exploration of the divergence in noetic manner N. Ciola, Paradosso e mistero in Henri de Lubac (Rome, 1980). Not all the disagreements, however, were a matter of misunderstanding based on intellectual style. There were and are divergences in historical judgments about texts. Both ‘Palaeo-Thomists’, i. e. those principally concerned with the exegesis of Thomas's texts, and ‘Neo-Thomists’, who were more concerned with how the texts were developed in the commentatorial tradition, have had reservations about de Lubac's historical judgment on the issue of natural desire for the vision of God. Apart from the work by Feingold cited earlier, see also A. Vanneste, Nature et grâce dans la Théologie occidentale: dialogue avec Henri de Lubac (Leuven, 1996).
108 Petite Catéchèse sur nature et grâce, op. cit., p. 33.
109 Ibid., pp. 61–62; for Gilson, see A. Nichols, O. P., From Hermes to Benedict XVI, op. cit., pp. 147, 237–239.
110 With Méditation sur l’Eglise, analysed in Schnackers, H., Kirche als Sakrament und Mutter. Zur Ekklesiologie von Henri de Lubac (Frankfurt, 1979)Google Scholar.
111 The emphasis in the Constitution on the mystery of Christ as revelation's essential nexus (the ‘mediator and sum-total of revelation’, Dei Verbum 2) may well be owed to de Lubac's influence. There is an especial consonance with his essay on the development of dogma, indebted to Rousselot's peculiar brand of Christocentrism, ‘Le problème du développement du Dogme’, Recherches de science religieuse 35 (1948), pp. 130–160, reprinted, with an addendum from 1955, in Théologie dans l’histoire II (Paris, 1990), pp. 39–70: cf Nichols, A. O. P., From Newman to Congar. The Idea of Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 195–213Google Scholar. A compendious study which gives the context is Wagner, J. P., La théologie fondamentale selon Henri de Lubac (Paris, 1997)Google Scholar, but see more particularly Moulins-Beaufort, E. de, ‘Henri de Lubac: Reader of Dei Verbum’, Communio XXVIII. 4 (2001), pp. 669–694Google Scholar.
112 Mistica e mistero cristiano (Milan, 1978). The text mentioned was later published as ‘Mystique et Mystère’ in Théologies d’occasion (1984), pp. 36–76.
113 Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes Ecrits, op. cit., p. 161.
114 Thus his Théologies d’occasion, op. cit., and Théologie dans l’histoire (1990), 2 vols.
115 Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes Ecrits, op. cit.
116 Maurice Blondel–Joannès Wehrlé, Correspondance (1969).
117 Gabriel Marcel–Gaston Fessard, Correspondance (1985).
118 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Lettres d’Egypte (1963); Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Lettres de Hastings et de Paris (1965).
119 Lettres de M. Etienne Gilson addresses au Père Henri de Lubac et commentées par celui-ci (1986).
120 Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes Ecrits, op. cit., pp. 146–147.
121 I owe the essential nucleus of this suggestion to my former student, Mr Robert Staines. It coheres with the view of a specialist: see R. Voderholzer, Meet Henri de Lubac, op. cit., p. 111.
122 De Lubac evokes with evident admiration Pico's attempt to sing a ‘song of peace’ by harmonizing the elements of truth in various philosophies and religions by treating Christ as both the criterion for intellectual discernment and their real synthesis: thus Pic de la Mirandole, op. cit., pp. 297–298.
123 Joachim's description of the age of the Holy Spirit ‘signifies that the time of the Word will have passed’, La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore I (Namur-Paris, 1979), p. 60. Joachim did not realise it, but ‘the Spirit was going to be set up against the Church of Christ and, with fatal consequences, against Christ himself. Thus the Spirit, whose reign [Joachim] celebrated in advance, would no longer be the Holy Spirit’, ibid., p. 18.
124 Catholicisme, op. cit., p. XIII.
125 Mémoire sur l’occasion des mes Ecrits, op. cit., p. 113.
126 M. Figura, Der Anruf der Gnade. Über die Beziehung der Menschen zu Gott nach Henri de Lubac (Einsiedeln, 1979), pp. 212–214.
127 ‘F. Léfevre’ (= M. Blondel), Itinéraire philosophique (Paris, 1928Google Scholar; republished under Blondel's own name in 1966), cited in Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes Ecrits, op. cit., p. 189. Compare also his explanation of his modus operandi in La Foi chrétienne, his most comprehensive dogmatic work: ‘I had sought, with each subject broached, to respect in uniting them [any] two aspects of the real, too often opposed as these aspects are, persuaded as I have always been that such an effort of synthesis is proper to the Catholic spirit’, ibid., p. 133.
128 De Lubac has no work with a specifically Christological focus and he later thought Surnaturel had suffered from its abstractness in that regard. Still, thanks to multiple influences – de Grandmaison, Rousselot, the Greek Fathers, Thomas – Christology can plausibly be presented as the ‘mid-point’ of his theological vision. See D. Hercsik, Jesus Christus als Mitte der Theologie von Henri de Lubac (Frankfurt, 2001), who emphasises the theme of novitas Christi de Lubac found at Adversus haereses IV. 34, 1: ‘this word of Irenaeus of Lyons forms a Leitmotiv running through Henri de Lubac's work’, ibid., pp. 72–73.
- 1
- Cited by