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Winter 2008: Henri de Lubac's Catholicism at 70 Years
INTRODUCTION | Table of Contents
The Winter, 2008 issue of Communio honors the 70th anniversary of
Henri de Lubac’s (1896–1991) book Catholicism. De Lubac’s aim in
Catholicism was to highlight “certain ideas . . . so simple that they do not always attract attention, but at the same time so fundamental that
there is some risk of our not finding time to ponder them.” Hans Urs von Balthasar described the book as “a work of genius that marked the breakthrough to new Catholic thought.” In a preface to the English translation of Catholicism, Joseph Ratzinger recalled the
significance of de Lubac’s account of communion and universality rooted in a trinitarian concept of God:
"in late autumn of 1949 a friend gave me de Lubac’s book Catholicism. For me, the encounter with this book became an essential milestone on my theological journey. For in it de Lubac does not treat merely isolated questions. He makes visible to us in a new way the fundamental intuition of Christian Faith so that from this inner core all the particular elements appear in a new
light. He shows how the idea of community and universality,
rooted in the trinitarian concept of God, permeates and shapes all the individual elements of Faith’s content. The idea of the Catholic, the all-embracing, the inner unity of I and Thou and We does not constitute one chapter of theology among others. It is the key that opens the door to the proper understanding of the whole."
Both in form and content de Lubac’s Catholicism signaled a rediscovery of an authentically universal or catholic theology. In her
innermost essence, the Church exists not for herself but for the
salvation of the world. In her dogma, her sacraments, her interpretation of Scripture, and her hope for eternal life, the Church expresses,
and participates in, God’s gift of universal communion. Beginning
with a summary account of the mystery of the Church, the present
issue addresses some of the key themes that Catholicism brought to
the center of the Church’s attention.
Georges Chantraine, S.J., opens the discussion with
“Catholicism: On ‘Certain Ideas,’” in which he locates and presents
de Lubac’s understanding of the unity of the Church: “The
Church,” Chantraine writes, “continues the work that Christ began.
She is poised between the human reality she assumes in the time of
history, and human reality as it is accomplished in Christ. But she
unites them. Sacrament of Christ, she unites them by means of the
sacraments, preeminently the Eucharist.”
In “Henri de Lubac on Nature and Grace: A Note on Some
Recent Contributions to the Debate,” Nicholas J. Healy presents
the current state of the question regarding de Lubac’s theology of
nature and grace. Healy suggests that the key difference between de
Lubac and his Neo-Thomist critics is that the latter presuppose the
modern idea that the final end of nature and the innate desire of
nature must be essentially proportionate to nature. For de Lubac, by
contrast, human nature desires a final end that it cannot attain by its
own power. It follows that “the form of nature’s desire is receptiv
ity—a receptive desire for the surprising and surpassing gift of
friendship and assistance from another.”
In “Church, Eucharist, and Predestination in Barth and de
Lubac: Convergence and Divergence in Communio,” Aaron Riches
argues that although Barth and de Lubac both set out to ground
ecclesiology in Christology and the Paschal Mystery, their respective
accounts of the Holy Spirit and the mystery of the Eucharist lead to
divergent understandings of communion: “Barth’s retreat from the
traditional understanding of the sacramental continuation of Christ’s
presence tends (inadvertently) toward an extrinsicism wherein the
mode of communion in Christ can be abstracted from the
incarnational possibility of a concrete historical continuation of
Christ in a recognizably structured community . . . . By contrast, de
Lubac’s theology of the Eucharist establishes a mode of incarnational
perpetuation wherein the continuation of Christ can be said — through the Eucharist — to subsistit in a concrete historical body.”
Next, we are very pleased to present two articles by Henri
de Lubac that were previously unavailable in English. In the first,
“Duplex hominis beatitudo,” de Lubac interprets the relevant texts
from Thomas Aquinas that refer to a “twofold beatitude” proper to
man. De Lubac shows that when Thomas speaks of “natural
beatitude” he is referring to the beatitude proper to “wayfarers.”
This beatitude “is essentially imperfect, because it is a happiness that
is in essence ‘on the way’ (felicitas viae), while true beatitude is in
essence eternal (felicitas aeterna) . . . the first is immanent, at once
worldly or temporal . . . the second is transcendent — at once
heavenly and received according to divine grace.”
The second article by de Lubac, “The Total Meaning of Man
and the World,” comes from a longer work entitled A Second Look
at Gaudium et spes. In this article, de Lubac reflects on the theological
vision of Gaudium et spes in light of the fundamental unity between
the “supernatural life which he received as a gift from Jesus Christ”
and the Christian responsibility for the world. Our faith in fact
“contains the only hope for a truly spiritual integration of man and
his world. For it also tells us that the ‘new creation’ that forms the
object of our hope presupposes a transfiguration that passes through
the Cross.”
Finally, Richard G. DeClue’s “Primacy and Collegiality in
the Works of Joseph Ratzinger” presents Ratzinger’s development
of the simultaneity of papal primacy and episcopal collegiality — both
require the other for what Ratzinger calls the “fullness of apostoli
city.” DeClue suggests that a renewed understanding of the intrinsic
relationship between primacy and collegiality open up fruitful
avenues for Catholic-Orthodox dialogue.
“Notes & Comments” closes the issue with a short text by
Thomas E. Dillon, president of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa
Paula, California, who died in an automobile accident in Ireland 15
April 2009. Dillon’s words on the place of wonder in the life his
students set out upon are a testimony to the vision of Thomas Aquinas College, to the role of Catholic education in the flourishing
and preservation of civilization, and to the particular relevance of
Pope Benedict XVI’s recent statements on the heart of intercultural
dialogue: the question of the meaning of life and the human desire
for the good.
—NJH
Go to Table of Contents.
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