Henri de Lubac SJ (1896-1991) was a major influence on the Second Vatican Council and on theologians such as Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger, with whom he founded the journal Communio. In 1942, he and some fellow Jesuits founded Sources chrétiennes, a series that publishes the original text of patristic and medieval Christian writings alongside a French translation. He thereby stimulated within Catholic theology a return to its sources. Putting this ressourcement into practice in his own works, he argued that the Church should retrieve the patristic understanding of the Eucharist, the Church, creation, grace, and Scripture. In 1983, Pope John Paul II created him a cardinal.
In part one of this interview, Dr. David Grumett explained his pick of the five best books for those interested in reading de Lubac. In this second part of the interview, he discusses some further recommended readings and aspects of de Lubac's theology.
David Grumett is senior lecturer in theology and ethics in the University of Edinburgh. He has recently published Henri de Lubac and the Shaping of Modern Theology: A Reader with Ignatius Press.
- The Discovery of God
by Henri de Lubac - The Motherhood of the Church
by Henri de Lubac
You have proposed a couple of books for an extended list. Before getting into them, I have a couple of questions. Earlier you mentioned how de Lubac is often seen as spearheading ressourcement, a movement within Catholic theology that sought to move beyond neo-Scholasticism and draw on the Church’s whole theological tradition, particularly the Fathers. Has this project had its day or is it still pertinent?
That's an interesting one. My answer would be very much that it is still pertinent. For de Lubac, retrieving the treasures from the Church’s past history and their interpretation is an ongoing activity because our contexts are evolving. We need to be open to receiving these historic figures and their reflection anew in each generation. At the same time, there has been an important shift and development in the way that ancient Christian texts are approached. I would see some of my own work as being a contribution to this in some small way. There has been a lot more interest now than there was in de Lubac’s day on the material contexts of early Christianity and its outworking in a whole range of practical situations: the food people ate; the way they dressed; family relationships; gender; all kinds of other things. We are less likely now than in de Lubac's day to accept that ressourcement can kind of deliver a single coherent body of teaching that we can easily interpret and unify. Now we are more likely to recognise the diversity of voices—women's voices as well as men's voices—and how the wide range of contexts of Christian history issue in different emphases and inflexions in theology. So yes, in short, the task remains hugely important although the way quite a few academics are going about it now is different.
For de Lubac, retrieving the treasures from the Church’s past history and their interpretation is an ongoing activity because our contexts are evolving.
Missing from your list are what are arguably de Lubac’s most renowned contributions to twentieth-century theology: Surnaturel, Corpus mysticum, Medieval Exegesis, three works that focus on debates within medieval theology. Did you leave these books out because they are too technical for the general reader?
Yes, I left them out because they are demanding. Surnaturel has not been translated into English, although, the first part of it is available as Augustinianism and Modern Theology, and the text is very similar. A lot of de Lubac’s interpreters and critics have tried to measure him against the standards of Thomas Aquinas because he, for good reasons, has a distinctive place in Catholic theology and teaching. But it is important to remember that in de Lubac’s context, Augustine was massively important, and had been in France for several centuries, particularly due to the rigorous interpretation of Augustine, associated especially with Cornelius Jansenius. This reading of Augustine overstated the absolute power that sin has wrought over humans: that humans can do nothing from their own power. Most people were even excluded from the Church, according to Jansenius, and only a small elect of people was saved. In Surnaturel, de Lubac was battling against this current of theology, which had become dominant in the French Church and gave a very negative, pessimistic reading of anthropology. It was contributing to the decline of the Church through people being refused absolution at confession multiple times and being taught to view themselves unworthy to receive the Eucharist. This had some big outworkings in pastoral practice.
In Surnaturel, de Lubac wanted to call into question these readings of Augustine that had developed in the earlier modern period (sixteenth to eighteenth centuries), and say, “No! There is a different Augustine: the Augustine of the Confessions, who is a much more pastorally sensitive, accommodating figure. As part of this, de Lubac wanted to interpret the supernatural not as the doctrine that God is isolated in a distant heaven and or that we can have no contact with God, but rather as the doctrine that the supernatural and the natural are closely related. Ultimately, the natural is not able to continue without being preserved by the supernatural.
De Lubac pushed against a lot of Neo-Thomists, for whom there was this realm of pure nature, as they called it. This came from the universe of Aristotle: the idea that there is a whole area of life where we can just get on with things, without any divine assistance. De Lubac critically interpreted the doctrine of pure nature. Rather, the whole of nature is permeated by the supernatural because ultimately it is a creation of God. So, everything we do in our ordinary acts is, in some way, dependent on grace and connected with it.
The key argument de Lubac makes in Corpus mysticum is that, anciently, the Eucharistic body was associated with the Church and that it is only in later mediaeval theology that it came to be disconnected from the Church and connected mainly with Christ’s historical body.
Corpus mysticum is also a very historical work. I touched upon its key teaching: the belief that the Eucharist makes the Church, so that the Church is the product of worship.
There is a discussion about Christ's different bodies: Christ's historical body, that of his time on earth; the body of Christ on the altar, present in the host; Christ's body, eternally in heaven; Christ's whole body, the Church. The key argument de Lubac makes in Corpus mysticum is that, anciently, the Eucharistic body was associated with the Church and that it is only in later mediaeval theology that it came to be disconnected from the Church and connected mainly with Christ’s historical body. When we receive the Eucharist or see the host exposed during Benediction, what are we connecting with? Are we thinking the host is primarily a manifestation of Christ's body when Christ was on earth, or do we think that it is primarily a manifestation of Christ present in the Church? De Lubac does not want to say that, ultimately, the two are opposed, but his message is that there is a danger they become opposed if the Eucharist ceases to be the centre of the Church’s life. It becomes something that is safeguarded and locked away, that people cannot easily receive. The pandemic has been an interesting instance of this. Under obligation from secular authorities, many Churches and clergy had great difficulties continuing to make the Eucharist available to people, to their Church members. During the pandemic, if we think about this in de Lubac's terms and in the terms of Corpus mysticum, there probably was a re-clericaliation or a re-mediaevalisation of the Eucharist because of these legal restrictions that the Church was under. We are now coming out of that, thank God, back to a balanced relationship between Church and the sacrament, and easier access to the Eucharist, which is important, because it is the Eucharist that makes the Church.
1.
The first book on your extended list is The Discovery of God. It opens with the following question. “Was Moses right, or Xenephon? Did God make man in his image, or is it not rather man who has made God in his?” Is this book a follow-up to de Lubac’s celebrated critical survey of nineteenth-century philosophical atheism: The Drama of Atheistic Humanism?
Yes, I am delighted you made that connection because I am writing a chapter about this at the moment. The Discovery of God, de Lubac says, emerged out of conversations with individuals, some in the aftermath of the Second World War, who had doubts about their faith. Despite of all I have said about de Lubac having this collective focus in the Church for belief, this book has a more individualistic starting point. Fundamentally, de Lubac wants to argue that there is a sense of the transcendent. The sense that there is something more than what we see, and hear, and smell in the world around us, is hardwired into humanity.
He thinks that most atheists, despite themselves, are engaged in what essentially remains a system of religious belief. If someone is focused on denying God's existence, they are still stuck within theological terms.
This is something that staunch atheists would not accept. They would argue with him on this for a very long time. He thinks that if we do engage in introspection and internal reflection, there is something speaking to us, calling to us, that is simply not of us. He thinks this is how the so-called proofs for God's existence are impelled. They are not so much rational deductive proofs, but outworkings of the way that we look at the world and which say that there must be something beyond what we can currently see. Think, for instance, of the argument for God's existence from causes. We see one thing causing another thing. Then, we say, “Well, there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. There must be some uncaused cause, who is God.” That is the theoretical expression of the kind of thing de Lubac wants to do. He wants to say that when I look inside me, when I look in the world around me, there is something more than what I can straightforwardly see. There is no closed-off materiality that interprets itself or has a full meaning that satisfies us. We are always yearning for something more. He thinks this even applies to avowed atheists.
He thinks that most atheists, despite themselves, are engaged in what essentially remains a system of religious belief. If someone is focused on denying God's existence, they are still stuck within theological terms. In the case of Marx, this is the intellectual impetus to communism.
Marx relied on a linear view of history, which is a fundamentally Christian view, and on a view of collective salvation by human efforts rather than by the grace of God. He also had a remarkably optimistic view of history, which was a mirror image of Christian eschatology. De Lubac thinks that people who claim to be atheists often continue to depend on Christian ideas at a deep level.
2.
Finally, just as the Dogmatic Constitution of the Church, Lumen gentium, is in some regards the central document of the Second Vatican Council, so too is the mystery of the Church a central and recurring theme in de Lubac’s writings, most notably in The Splendour of the Church and Corpus Mysticum. However, you have chosen another book, The Motherhood of the Church. What makes this work representative?
I chose this because it gives a slightly different perspective. You mentioned The Splendour of the Church. That was the translated English title that de Lubac did not like (editor’s note, the French original is entitled Meditations on the Church) because he thought it presented the Church as if it were perfect, almost a sort of heavenly entity. De Lubac recognises the humanness of the Church too. At one point, he uses the wonderful imagery of the Church being like a vulnerable boat, steered along with people on it, many of them not quite knowing what they are doing. So, he doesn't really like these glorified images of the Church, unless they are balanced by more human images.
de Lubac uses the image of motherhood to complicate and correct some understandings of how the Church’s identification with women plays out.
The motherhood of the Church is interesting because, historically, gendered images have been used to present the Church rather passively. To put it crudely, the Church has been represented as feminine insofar as it is passive, in contrast with an active male principle embodied in God and in Jesus. However, this motherhood of the Church approach gives a more active view of womanhood. Let us say womanhood rather than femininity, because, to many ears, even the term ‘feminine’ would suggest a notion of female gender that is passive and neutral. However, motherhood, de Lubac says, is active. It is passionate. It is responsible. Giving birth is very often painful. So, de Lubac uses the image of motherhood to complicate and correct some understandings of how the Church’s identification with women plays out. The image of motherhood gives a more appropriate understanding for the present day and a more exciting understanding of how people who want to understand the Church as in some sense female, can do that in a way that is more inclusive and theologically richer.
