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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Henri de Lubac's Corpus Mysticum, published during and immediately after the conditions of wartime France, had a profound influence on the theology and actual practice of not only Catholic, but also much Protestant liturgy in the course of the unfolding liturgical movement. The interpretative keys of the text were established primarily by Michel de Certeau and Hans Urs von Balthasar, and have emphasised a historical shift from understanding in the connections between a threefold hermeneutic of Christ's ‘mystical body’. The ‘mystical body’ is variously understood as the Eucharist itself, the extant body of the Church, and the actual body of Christ. The conventional reading of this text is to claim that de Lubac traces a shift, occurring in the High Middle Ages that points away from the body of the Church to an objectification of the eucharistic species, resulting in the highly individualistic piety that manifested itself in the Catholicism of the nineteenth century. This paper challenges that hermeneutic key as an oversimplification of a much more subtle reading suggested by de Lubac himself and intrinsic to the text of Corpus Mysticum, and suggests that de Lubac understood the real shift to be the triumph of a certain kind of rationalism, exemplified by Berengar's thought, emerging to assert itself as the basis and ground of theological thinking, eclipsing the grounding character of the liturgy as the source of meaning in theology. It examines de Lubac's late claim that Corpus Mysticum was ‘a naïve text’ and asks what kinds of naïvety are indicated in this statement.
This paper was first given at a colloquium organised by the Society of St. Catherine of Siena at Heythrop College, University of London in January 2007, held to celebrate the publication in English translation of Corpus Mysticum, (trans. Simmonds CJ, G. and Price, R., eds. Hemming, L. P. and Parsons, S. F., SCM Press and Notre Dame University Press, London and Notre Dame, 2006). The paper is a substantially modified and revised version of the Editors’ Preface to the text H. Card. de Lubac. I have taken the opportunity to say here many things that I did not believe it appropriate to say or draw out in what was essentially a broad introduction to the fact of the publication of the translation.
2 SeeLubac, H. Card. de, Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits (Namur, Belgium: Culture et Vérité, 1989), p. 28Google Scholar. ‘Ce livre est un livre naïf.’ (E. T. At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circumstances That Occasioned His Writings[San Francisco: Ignatius Press, Communio Books, 1993].Google Scholar)
3 Lubac, H. Card. De, Catholicisme; les aspects sociaux du dogme (Paris, Éditions du Cerf 1947 [1938])Google Scholar (E. T. By Sheppard, L. C., Englund, E., Christ and the Common Destiny of Man (San Francisco, Ignatius, 1988 [1950])Google Scholar.
4 H. Card. de Lubac, Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits, p. 28. ‘Je n’étais encombré d’aucune des catégories et des dichotomies classiques dans lesquelles il m’aurait bien fallu tomber, si j’avais lu les historiens, à peu près tous allemands.’
5 Gadamer, H. G., Wahrheit und Methode in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1990 [1960]), p. 312Google Scholar. ‘Das zentrale Problem der Hermeneutik überhaupt. Es ist das Problem der Anwendung, die in allem Verstehen gelegen ist’ (author's emphasis).
6 H. G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 380. ‘Ein Umweg, auf den man steckenbleibt.’
7 H. G. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, p. 381. ‘Das ist der Grund, warum alles Verstehen immer mehr ist als bloßes Nachvollziehen einer fremden Meinung.’
8 H. U. Card. von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac: Sein organisches Lebenswerk (Einsiedeln, Johannes, 1976), p. 32. ‘Hier zweigt die Fragestellung’…‘Der Akzent vom sozialen Aspekt auf den Realpräsenz verlagert wurde, gewann die individualistische Eucharistiefrömmigkeit eine Handhabe’. (E.T. by Fessio, J. SJ, Waldstein, M. W., The Theology of Henri de Lubac[San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 1991]Google Scholar.)
9 Lubac, H. Card. de, Corpus Mysticum: l’eucharistie et l’église au moyen age –étude historique, Paris, Aubier, 1949, p. 259Google Scholar. Page references throughout are to the French edition, since the English translation indicates the French pagination. ‘D’une part, en effet, les développements toujours accrus de la piété eucharistique s’orientèrent plus aisément dans le sens d’une dévotion trop individualiste.’
10 C., Pickstock, After Writing: The Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy, Oxford, Blackwell, 1998, p. 158Google Scholar.
11 C., Pickstock, After Writing, citing M., de Certeau SJ, trans. B., Smith, M., The Mystic Fable, Chicago, Chicago University Press, p. 158Google Scholar.
12 Pickstock, C., After Writing, citing de Certeau SJ, M., trans. Smith, M. B., The Mystic Fable, Chicago, Chicago University Press, p. 158Google Scholar.
13 H. Card. de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, p. 258. ‘Une conception quelque peu nouvelle du mystère s’élabore … C’est ce qu’il nous faut voir plus en détail.’
14 Just for one example, the allotment of Rhodes to the god Helios (cf. Pindar, Seventh Olympian Ode), let alone Athena's possession of Athens herself.
15 H. Card. de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, p. 201. ‘Est lui-même le corps dont ceux qui le mangent deviennent l’aliment’.
16 See H. Card. de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, p. 365. ‘Philosophers compared Descartes with St. Thomas, without taking into account the interval of time that separates them, or all the undistinguished successors and all the bastard descendants who occupied that interval and defined Descartes's historical context.’[‘Bref, des philosophes comparaient Descartes à saint Thomas, sans tenir compte de l’intervalle qui les sépare dans le temps, ni de tous les épigones et de tous les bâtards qui occupent cet intervalle et qui définissent la situation historique de Descartes.’]
17 Althusser, L., Idéologie et appareils idéologiques d’état in La pensée: revue du rationalisme moderne (Paris, Livres de Poche, 1970), p. 31Google Scholar. ‘Cette opération très précise que nous appelons l’interpellation[…]“hé, vous, là bas”.’ Emphasis in original.
18 It should be noted that – for just one example – St. Thomas Aquinas is acutely sensitive to the question of whether those assembled in a church for a particular Mass are synonymous with those constituted as the assembly – the ecclesia Dei– by the action of the Mass itself. Aquinas is clear that those who number the ecclesia are known only to God: there are those present unable or unfit to make their communion (and even if they do, who do not do so ‘spiritually’, i.e. perfectly, but only sacramentally; but there are also those absent or who do not actually communicate (or who cannot) but who by grace and desire nevertheless effectively (and so really) are joined to the body of Christ. cf. Aquinas, Summa Theologiæ, IIIa; Q. 73, a. 3, resp.; Q. 80, a. 2, resp.
19 Balthasar, H. U. Card. von, Henri de Lubac: Sein organisches Lebenswerk (Einsiedeln, Johannes, 1976), p. 32Google Scholar. ‘Der origenistische Gedanke, der so starken Widerhall durch die Geschichte fand … daß Christus und die Seligen ihre letzte Seligkeit erst finden, wenn der ganze “Leib Christi”, die erlöste Schöpfung in der Verklärung beisammen wird, wird in seiner bleibenden geistigen Bedeutung gewürdigt’…‘himmlisches Jerusalem’. De Lubac explains this eschatological perspective in Exégèse médiévales quartes sens de l’écriture (Paris, Aubier, 1959)Google Scholar, part 1, vol. 2, pp. 621–643. E. T. by Macierowski, E. M. as Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture, vol. 2 (London, T&T Clark [Continuum] 2006), pp. 179–197Google Scholar.
20 Corpus Mysticum, p. 104. ‘A la lettre, donc, l’eucharistie fait l’Eglise. Elle en fait une réalité intérieure’ English p. 88. Cf. McPartlan, P., The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue, Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1993Google Scholar.
21 Corpus Mysticum, p. 251. ‘Au mystice, non vere répond, non moins exclusif, un vere, non mystice.’
22 Cf. P., Hemming, L.: After Heidegger – Transubstantiation in Heythrop Journal, vol. 42, No. 2 (October 2000)Google Scholar; Transubstantiating Ourselves: A Phenomenological Basis for the Theology of Transubstantiation in Heythrop Journal, vol. 45, No. 2, (October 2003).
23 Pickstock, C., After Writing, p. 260.
24 Corpus Mysticum, p. 251. ‘L’orthodoxie est peut-être sauve, mais la doctrine, en revanche, est sûrement appauvrie.’
25 The formula lex orandi, lex credendi is an abbreviation, a tag of the School-room. It originates from Prosper of Aquitaine, where its proper order is unambiguously stated: ut lex supplicandi legem statuat credendi: let the law of prayer determine the law of belief (Prosper of Aquitaine, Capitula Cœlestini, 8 in Patrologia Latina, vol. 51, 209–210).
26 Corpus Mysticum, p. 253. ‘Comme un rationalisme et comme une dialectique.’
27 Corpus Mysticum, p. 254. ‘Toutes les inclusions symbolique se muent, dans son intelligence, en antithèses dialectiques. Constamment il sépare ainsi ce que la tradition unissait.’
28 Ratzinger, “Ecclesiology,” p.148, note 18. Karim Schelkens, “Lumen Gentium's ‘Subsistit In’ Revisited: The Catholic Church and Christian Unity after Vatican II,”Theological Studies 69(2008): 875–893, thinks to find yet another interpretive key in the October 2, 1963 intervention of Bishop Jan van Dodewaard. He wants it to be said that the Church, understood as the universal medium of salvation, “is found” (inveniri) in the Catholic Church. Schelkens says van Dodewaard establishes a distinction between the Church as the universal means of salvation from the Catholic Church as but the “concrete form” of this universal means. This distinction is continued, he claims, after inveniri has become adest, and adest has become subsistit in. The universal means, moreover, extends beyond the concrete form. However, the only thing van Dodewaard recognizes here as existing beyond the universale medium or totalem compaginem of the Church are elements of truth and sanctification. He rather implies the identity of the Catholic Church and the Church as the universal means of salvation. Van Dodewaard's text can be found in Hellín, 1048–1049.
29 Balthasar, H. U. Card. von, Henri de Lubac: Sein organisches Lebenswerk (Einsiedeln, Johannes, 1976), p. 12Google Scholar. ‘In der er keine Philosophie ohne deren Übersteig in Theologie, aber auch keine Theologie ohne deren wesentliche, innere Substruktur von Philosophie treiben konnte.’
30 Anselm, Proslogion, II. ‘Ergo, domine, qui das fidei intellectum, da mihi, ut quantum scis expedire intelligam, quia es sicut credimus, et hoc es quod credimus.’ (‘therefore, O Lord [– unmistakably vocative, addressed to God!], who give intellection to faith, give to me that I may know as much as you know to set free (in my knowing), that you are as we believe [you are], and are what we believe [you are].’)
31 Cf. Milbank, J., The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate Concerning the Supernatural, London, SCM Press, 2005. See esp. p. 39 f. Milbank cannot resist accusing de Lubac of being to a certain extent incoherent on this issue (which begs the question whether Milbank has really done justice to, or understood, him) and shows the extent to which his (Milbank's) view is an interpretative synthesis by his noting of the relationship between grace and nature: ‘De Lubac never stated quite this extremity of paradox all at once; yet at various times he made diverse statements which justify this complex entanglement’ (p. 40).
32 Which is consistent with a view de Lubac himself expressed. De Lubac, in attempting to describe the relationship between theology and philosophy, concluded (in an article from 1936) ‘Every philosopher of today, provided he be perspicacious enough to pass beyond positivism and enter truly into philosophy, is, whether he wishes it or not, and perhaps in just proportion to his perspicacity, a Christian philosopher’ (H. Card. de Lubac, Sur la philosophie chrétienne in Nouvelle Revue Théologique, vol 63 (1936), pp. 225–253 [251]).
33 Cf. Migne, Patrologia Latina, 101, 119; 101, 231–300.
34 Cf. F., Rivera, J., trans. OSB, Reyes J. M., Mozarabic Liturgy in J., Vellian (ed.) The Romanization Tendency (The Syrian Churches Series), vol. 8, Kottayam, 1975Google Scholar.
35 One of the most dramatic – if at times uneven – attempts to analyse this is Hull's, Geoffrey The Banished Heart: Origins of Heteropraxis in the Catholic Church, Sydney, Spes Nova League, 1995Google Scholar.
