5/31/2014 joelgarver.com - rahner and de lubac on nature and grace https://web.archive.org/web/20121022235335/http://www.joelgarver.com/writ/theo/naturegrace.htm 1/20 RAHNER AND DE LUBAC ON NATURE AND GRACE S. Joel Garver Much of 19 th century and early 20 th century Roman Catholic theology was dominated by a carefully drawn distinction between nature and grace and between nature and supernature. This distinction was often drawn in such a way as to dichotomize the two realms as extrinsically and externally related to one another to the point that the “supernatural” could almost never been seen as bearing upon the “natural.” Overcoming this extrinsicism was a central element in the theology of Karl Rahner, rooted as it was both in Thomistic thought such as that of Maréchal and in the existentialism of thinkers like Heidegger. Thus Rahner was able to assert, maintain, and defend the essential integrity of nature and grace, nature and supernature. Nonetheless, Rahner’s version of integralism was not the only way in which theologians attempted to surmount the former extrinsicism 1 Another kind of integralism was developed by Henri de Lubac, rooted in the thought of Maurice Blondel and filled in by other participants in the nouvelle théologie (e.g., Hans Urs von Balthasar). 2 The difference between Rahner’s approach and that of de Lubac (and the nouvelle théologie) can be summarized, very roughly and schematically, in the following way: while Rahner’s thought tends to naturalize the supernatural, de Lubac tends to supernaturalize the natural. Thus, where Rahner begins with the subjectivity of the human person, the individual’s infinite spiritual horizon, and its continuity with God’s nonetheless gracious self-revelation, the nouvelle théologie begins with God and his self- revelation as Trinity in the event of Christ as both fulfilling every human aspiration and yet totally unexpected and incomparable. 3 In this essay, I will summarize these two versions of integralism, placing them in historical context and noting both points of comparison and the ways in which they contrast. I will also evaluate each version in terms of the way in which it has been criticized from outlook of the other version. Out of this evaluation I will attempt to show that Rahner’s version of integralism, though in many ways impressive, still contains significant problems that render it a less helpful theological construct, especially in a post-modern context. De Lubac’s version of integralism, on the other hand, despite some weaknesses and the ways in which it has sometimes been deployed by conservative theologians, has within it, I will argue, the resources for developing a
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5/31/2014 joelgarver.com - rahner and de lubac on nature and grace
Much of 19th century and early 20th century Roman Catholic theology was dominatedby a carefully drawn distinction between nature and grace and between nature andsupernature. This distinction was often drawn in such a way as to dichotomize the tworealms as extrinsically and externally related to one another to the point that the“supernatural” could almost never been seen as bearing upon the “natural.”
Overcoming this extrinsicism was a central element in the theology of Karl Rahner,rooted as it was both in Thomistic thought such as that of Maréchal and in theexistentialism of thinkers like Heidegger. Thus Rahner was able to assert, maintain,and defend the essential integrity of nature and grace, nature and supernature.
Nonetheless, Rahner’s version of integralism was not the only way in whichtheologians attempted to surmount the former extrinsicism1 Another kind ofintegralism was developed by Henri de Lubac, rooted in the thought of MauriceBlondel and filled in by other participants in the nouvelle théologie (e.g., Hans Urs vonBalthasar). 2 The difference between Rahner’s approach and that of de Lubac (and thenouvelle théologie) can be summarized, very roughly and schematically, in the followingway: while Rahner’s thought tends to naturalize the supernatural, de Lubac tends tosupernaturalize the natural. Thus, where Rahner begins with the subjectivity of thehuman person, the individual’s infinite spiritual horizon, and its continuity with God’snonetheless gracious self-revelation, the nouvelle théologie begins with God and his self-revelation as Trinity in the event of Christ as both fulfilling every human aspirationand yet totally unexpected and incomparable.3
In this essay, I will summarize these two versions of integralism, placing them inhistorical context and noting both points of comparison and the ways in which theycontrast. I will also evaluate each version in terms of the way in which it has beencriticized from outlook of the other version. Out of this evaluation I will attempt toshow that Rahner’s version of integralism, though in many ways impressive, stillcontains significant problems that render it a less helpful theological construct,especially in a post-modern context. De Lubac’s version of integralism, on the otherhand, despite some weaknesses and the ways in which it has sometimes been deployedby conservative theologians, has within it, I will argue, the resources for developing a
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is no longer properly speaking another order, something unprecedented,overwhelming and transfiguring... (1998:37)
While the diagnoses of Rahner and de Lubac are, for the most part, quite similar, wecan begin to see already where they will eventually diverge, especially in de Lubac’semphasis on the “unprecedented” character of grace. With that in mind, we can turnto their specific accounts of integralism.
II
Let’s begin with an overview of Rahner’s version of integralism. In his attempt toovercome the extrinsicism of neo-scholastic theology, Rahner utilizes the insights andtools provided by Joseph Maréchal’s post-Blondelian Kantianism and MartinHeidegger’s existentialist phenomenology. From Maréchal in particular Rahneracquires the epistemological insight that every act of human understanding containswithin it an orientation toward infinite Being as the a priori condition of thatunderstanding.4 This focus upon self-transcendence was no doubt further focused byRahner’s study of Heidegger, but always remained in conversation with Aquinas andthe traditions of Thomistic theology. In this construction, Rahner attempts to movebeyond older categories of thought—especially overcoming its extrincisism—in orderboth to give Aquinas a more authentic reading and to speak theologically to a modernworld.
Rahner builds up his integralist picture in several steps. First, he is concerned thatgrace remain grace, not something that human persons can “require” from God, butrather receive only ever as gift. In order to be able to receive it, however, they musthave a capacity for receiving it. This fundamental capacity for God, for receiving hisgrace and love, is what Rahner refers to as an “existential,” a basic aspect of what itmeans to be authentically human (1992:112).
Second, Rahner insists that this “existential” is, nonetheless, “supernatural” ratherthan “natural” for human beings. Only by maintaining its supernatural character canthe existential be seen as freely bestowed, rather than obligatory, and therefore thegrace that it receives be seen as truly grace (1992:112).
Third, Rahner still must retain the concept of a “pure nature” as a formal distinctionwith regard to human persons, in order to safeguard the true gratuity of grace assomething not required by that pure nature in itself. Nonetheless, for Rahner, no“pure nature” ever really exists in any actual human experience apart from the
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“supernatural existential.” Thus this “pure nature” is only a postulate—in Rahner’s
terms, a “remainder concept” (Restbegriff)—having a regulative function, and is never
able to be isolated and delimited in any real concrete situation. Nonetheless, the
postulate of a pure nature is a “necessary and objectively justified one, if one wishes to
achieve reflexive consciousness of that unexactedness of grace which goes other with
human beings’ inner, unconditional ordination to it” (1992:114). Thus the existential
must be experientially interpreted as supernatural in order for grace to remain received
as grace.
Fourth, the “supernatural existential” is not to be identified with any potentia
obedientialis that is proper to human nature, but the notion of a potentia obedientialis isnot for that reason to be rejected. This potentia is, for Rahner, a movement or
ordination within the postulated pure nature that constitutes an openness for the
supernatural existential (1992:114). As such, this potentia must be interpreted as more
than a mere “non-repugnance.” It must also be seen as an active longing for God that
is present in the human pre-apprehension (Vorgriff) of everything—an openness for
the whole realm of being—that is granted in every act of understanding and
constitutes the uniqueness and self-transcendence of the human subject (1978:18-20).
Fifth, although this natural self-transcendence and the supernatural existential are to
be held as formally distinct, in any actual concrete experience “the supernatural
existential may already be at work” rendering the ordinary lived experience of the
potentia obedientialis as one already laced with traces of actual grace (1992:115). In this
way we continue to preserve the gratuity of grace without thereby falling into
extrinsicism.
Thus far we have Rahner’s integralist vision—and an imposing one at that, deploying
the tools of transcendental philosophy in the service of theology. Before drawing out
further implications of Rahner’s views and leveling criticisms, however, let us outline
de Lubac’s alternative integralism.
III
Where Rahner is making use of Martin Heidegger and Joseph Maréchal, de Lubac is
building more directly upon Maurice Blondel, particularly his watershed work Action.5
In this book Blondel develops a phenomenology of human action that seeks to
demonstrate that human volition is “never equal to itself” and that its natural desires
and capacities require something more—transcendent and supernatural—which,
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nonetheless, cannot be demanded but only accepted as a free gift. While this maysound analogous to Rahner, the difference lies in the fact that whereas Rahner seesthis self-transcendence accompanying each and every particular action (or act ofunderstanding) as an a priori condition of possibility (and thus as general), Blondelplaces this self-transcendence precisely within the particular, historical human actionsthemselves where what we desire or will permanently escapes us in the doing of it(and thus not in an a priori structure).6 But this will become more clear as we proceed.
De Lubac builds upon Blondel’s basic outlook in his own version of integralism, firstin his 1946 work, Surnaturel, but then more decisively in his 1965 book, Le Mystère duSurnaturel.7 While de Lubac’s earlier book had been charged with undermining thegratuity of grace (and Rahner was among its critics), his later work attempts tovindicate his earlier thesis. His argument moves forward in the following manner.
First, he argues that in the Fathers and medieval theologians there is a fundamentalcontinuity between human action and supernatural grace so that the natural desire forthe beatific vision is a sign of grace that is always-already present and acting in us, notjust a bare possibility of grace being given (1998:24ff., 207ff.). Thus the character ofgrace must be conceived by way of paradox: that human nature, by nature, has asupernatural end and yet this end cannot be seen as in any way owed to human beingsas a debitum, but rather must always be received as pure gift.8
Second, in order to substantiate this claim, de Lubac examines the teaching of anumber of Fathers (Origen, Augustine, etc.) and medieval theologians (ThomasAquinas, Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, etc.). He demonstrates that the Aristoteliannotion of a “nature” is importantly revised by these figures since for Aristotle, itseems, the natural end of a creature must be in principle attainable by the creature’sown resources and cannot be impeded by anything external to the creature.9 But thisis precisely what Christian thinkers have denied, perhaps most fully in Aquinas’ realdistinction between existence and essence in the creature and his assertion that it canbe the “second act” of a creature that is most proper to it.10
Applying this to the question of nature and grace, this means that what is most uniqueand proper to a human being is the desire for God, despite the fact that this desirecannot demand its own fulfillment without destroying the very nature of that fulfillment,which lies in the freely given gift of God’s grace and love. Thus what is most intimateto us as human beings is, paradoxically, supernatural to us and only to be enjoyed as agift (1998:101-118). In support he draws upon many sources, for example, quoting
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Bonaventure, “Because [the human soul] was made to participate in beatitude...it wasmade with a capacity for God and thus in his image and likeness” and “Since allcreatures were made for God [propter Deum] according to the verse, ‘The Lord hasmade all things for himself [propter semetipsum]’ (Prov 16:4), the rational creature alonewas made to enjoy God, and to be beatified in him, for it alone is in the likeness”(1998:99).11 Likewise, de Lubac cites Thomas Aquinas, “Man was made in order tosee God: for this purpose God made him a rational creature, so that he mightparticipate in his likeness, which consists in seeing him” (1998:100).12
Third, this version of integralism gives a significant place to the particularity of thehistorical, which one would expect, building as it is upon Blondel. In particular, theevent of Christ is seen by de Lubac as the place in which the natural desire to see Godfinds its fulfillment since, in Christ, humanity is united to God by nature, although theevent of Christ itself is wholly gratuitous. All other events and actions in which humannature self-transcendently desires God are to be seen by analogy with the event ofChrist either as typological anticipations of Christ or the historical outworkings ofwhat Christ accomplished in his own life (1950:55-59).
In this way, then, de Lubac outlines a form of integralism that is in many respectsanalogous to that of Rahner, but which diverges at a number of points and appears tomake less use of the categories of existential phenomenology.
IV
With these points in mind we can now move on to critical interaction between theintegralisms of Rahner and de Lubac. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there was littledirect and explicit interaction between the writings of these two thinkers aside fromsome scattered remarks and a few early essays. Nonetheless, there is in both authorswhat seems to be a significant amount of posturing over against unnamedinterlocutors whom, we can gather, represent the alternative form of integralism. Thussome implications can be drawn out from these passages. Let’s start, however, with anevaluation of de Lubac from a Rahnerian perspective.
In 1950 Rahner did write a review of de Lubac’s earlier work, Surnaturel, and thatreview is a good place to start.13 While Rahner expressed much appreciation for deLubac’s effort and even agreement insofar as de Lubac was rejecting the olderextrinsicism, he was worried that de Lubac’s integralism too easily conflated thegratuity of creation with the gratuity of divine revelation. In doing so, Rahner
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In point of fact, de Lubac says very little that is directly negative about Rahner’sintegralism. Of the nine or so references to Rahner in his The Mystery of the Supernatural,they are all positive quotations of or at least neutral allusions to Rahner’s work.14
Even in as late a work as his A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace, de Lubac’s fewpassing references to Rahner seem innocuous.15 Nonetheless, there are some hints ofan underlying dissatisfaction with Rahner’s formulation of integralism, particularly deLubac’s passing mention—“in Rahner’s language...‘existential’...”—followed by afootnote that reads, in part, “Really, to the extent that this ‘existential’ is conceived as akind of ‘medium’ or ‘linking reality,’ one may object that this is a useless supposition,whereby the problem of the relationship between nature and the supernatural is notresolved, but only set aside” (1998:102). And this serves as key whereby we can detectthe places in which de Lubac’s other comments are likely directed against Rahner’stranscendental integralism.
The essence of de Lubac’s critique seems to be the following. Adding another grace-given level of desire for grace (the supernatural existential), in fact does nothing toovercome the paradox of the sheer gratuity of grace and the rejection of extrinsicism.What Rahner achieves is a new two-tier system to replace the old, except now it isexpressed in terms of transcendental philosophy rather than neo-scholasticmetaphysics. 16 In point of fact, the structure of the supernatural existential is scarcelydistinguishable from the purely natural self-transcendence present in the human pre-apprehension (Vorgriff) of limitless being. The concrete experience of both the Vorgriffand the supernatural existential turns out to be, more or less, a longing for somethingbeyond our finitude. The object of that longing, however, is still distinguished byRahner as a “formal object” whose content remains unspecified until made explicitthrough Christian revelation.17
On Rahner’s view, from de Lubac’s perspective, it seems that apart from thisrevelation of grace, universally available as the object of our longing, the historicallyparticular events of grace—the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—would remainextrinsic to us. How is the role of revelation, making explicit the content of ourlongings, supposed to preserve the absolute gratuity—the unexpected andincommensurable character—of grace? Does not the Rahnerian solution, instead,reduce grace to our merely natural expectations (paralleled in the supernaturalexistential without real differentiation) and thereby “naturalizes” it, precisely as Rahnerimplies de Lubac is guilty of?
This is where Blondel’s phenomenology of human action and historical events rises tothe surface of de Lubac’s integralism. For de Lubac, and his followers, it is precisely
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and only within and by reference to certain historical events, actions, and symbols, thatthe supernatural can be identified in all of its unexpected and incommensurablegratuity. De Lubac will not begin, as Rahner, with something universal for everyperson, inscribed into the a priori structure of knowledge, but with the uniquesupernatural revelation of God in Christ that, while it does satisfy our natural longings,does so by shattering them with the Good News of God in the flesh to which theproper reaction is to be “struck dumb with amazement” (1998:132-139). Only in lightof this supernatural revelation can the full gratuity of the end of human nature be trulyknown. This perspective is aptly summarized by Medard Kehl,
Even if the creature represents a presupposed reflection of the creator andhis love, the historical event of God redeeming us in Christ does not resultfrom this presupposition. The positive content of the analogouscorrespondence between the created order of nature and the historical orderof salvation lies precisely in the (gratuitously given) openness for the, onceagain, “totally other,” underivable completion of the self-revelation of God inChrist which could never be calculated from creation itself and which is thusto be received only as pure gift. (1982:22)18
This integralist perspective is why I initially referred to de Lubac’s position as“supernaturalizing the natural” and Rahner’s as the opposite, since the tendency of thelatter seems more to stress the continuity between grace and human expectation.Therein lies de Lubac’s difficulty with it.
Much of this kind of critique of Rahner’s integralism, however, is merely implicit in deLubac’s own writings. It does become quite clear and pointed, however, in the writingsof de Lubac’s colleague, Hans Urs von Balthasar. He writes, for instance, that
God’s saving acts in history are not “transcendentally” (hence “known” butnot “in consciousness”) etched into this [natural human] longing [for God]—even if it had always been under the guidance of grace (supernaturalexistential)—in such a way that a person, on witnessing God’s mighty deeds,for example, Jesus’ resurrection, would not be impelled to wonder and adore,but could say to himself, “After all, on the basis of my own constitution, Ihave actually been expecting this all along.” (1986:85)19
Of course, this is something of a caricature of Rahner’s own views, emphasizingcertain tendencies in abstraction from his wider body of writings. 20 Nonetheless, itdoes point to a serious question, one that de Lubac had begun to raise for some time
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While Rahner does give an extended reply to this objection (that he himself raises) and
the reply is, in terms of Rahner’s own system, the correct one, it is still the case that
we are left with the impression that history and society are only the out-working and
open manifestation of what was always-already the case. Thus, for Rahner, the Vorgriffof being in human experience and of the “supernatural existential” universally reveal
the general (albeit historical) fact of God’s absolute self-communication while
maintaining hidden the holy mystery. It is in history that human beings “actualize”
their already-present “transcendentality” (1978:345).
This, in turn, is something that is merely made “manifest” in salvation history in
God’s “power to enter into the time and the history which he as the Eternal One has
created” (1978:142). Even the Incarnation seems to be presented as something
generally continuous with the already-given pattern of human experience of the divine
as the place in which the historicity of God’s revelation is “experienced most clearly
and comes to light most clearly,” as if simply a more obvious instance of something
already present (1978:142).
It is when he speaks in this manner that one begins, like de Lubac, to suspect that
Rahner is uncomfortable with fully committing grace and the supernatural into the
hands of human action and the historical in all its particularity, incommensurability,
and, especially in the case of the Incarnation, unexpectedness and unpredictability. It is
not that Rahner would necessarily deny any of this, but that his mode of expression is
too often ambiguous at best and at odds with such a picture at worst. This uneasiness
on Rahner’s part plays itself out further in his notion of the social and his situating of
the individual in relation to larger communities.
Again, upon reading Rahner, one can be left with the impression that his account of
the social nature of religion is something that must be fit into an already essentially
complete account of the individual subject and the a priori structure of human
knowledge for any given person. Thus, while Rahner maintains that Christianity is
“necessarily ecclesial” in its understanding of religion, this ecclesiality is, in turn, rooted
in his incipiently individualist transcendentalism. Thus he writes that if a person
...could not attain [faith, love, the entrusting of oneself to God in Christ], if he
could not really realize them in the innermost depths of his existence, then
basically his ecclesiality and his feeling of belonging to the concrete church
would only be an empty illusion and deceptive facade. (1978:324)
After all, for Rahner, “God’s salvific work is offered in principle to all people” quite
apart from membership in the church or any religious organization (thus de Lubac’s
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critique of the idea of “anonymous Christianity”). This, of course, does not mean forhim that religious orgainizations are unimportant, much less the Christian church, butit does suggest that such organizations form as an addition (even if, in some sense, anecessary addition) to what is true of us most fundamentally apart from them.Therefore Rahner repeatedly speaks of the church as a social entity through whichsalvation is “mediated” or as an entity over against the individual that is necessary inorder to manifest the confrontation between God’s self-communication and theindividual.
These expressions, however, embody similar ambiguities to those we encounteredearlier with reference to the historicity of the Christian faith, now expressed in termsof the relationship between the pure general structures of the individual subject andthe historical particularities of a social organization. Part of the difficulty here is, Isuspect, the Kantian underpinnings of Rahner’s metaphysics (filtered throughMaréchal) which tends to isolate some one thing as an a priori category ofunderstanding, in Rahner’s case the whole machinery of the Vorgriff of being and thesupernatural existential as they function in the individual consciousness. When this isthe starting point, problems are naturally going to arise with respect to the historicaland social.
My ill-ease here may best be elucidated by outlining what I see as the alternativeoffered by de Lubac. Where, for Rahner, the tendency is to present the social aspectsof salvation as something in addition to the individual and to see the church themediating structure by which that salvation is confronted, for de Lubac salvation ispresented as inherently social and the church is seen not just as a mediator of salvation,but as the very goal of salvation. De Lubac picks up the Gospel theme thatreconciliation with God and reconciliation with one’s neighbor are united in a singlemovement so that the reconciled community of the church together in God is thevery content of salvation. Thus salvation requires a historical event of being enfoldedinto the narrative of the historical people of God in relation to the unique events ofthe Incarnation and redemption wrought by Christ (1950:50ff.).
In terms of the manifestation of salvation in history, rather than positing some kind of“anonymous” free response to grace on the part of certain individuals, de Lubacsituates salvation historically in relation to human events. Recall that de Lubac’sconception of the relation between nature and grace is built upon Blondel’s account ofhuman action as the event of desiring God and accepting grace, not as something thatis universally present alongside each action, but as the very particularity of action itself.As such human persons experience the reality of salvation in that particularity insofar
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frequently with very mixed results. In particular, it has been argued that Rahnerianthemes have regularly led liberation theologians to think of salvation in tooindividualistic and ambiguously non-social terms, tied too closely to the experience oftranscendence as captured in the Vorgriff and supernatural existential. As a result, thesocial realm comes to be introduced as a supplement to the individual and thereligious, allowing theology to baptize the human aspirations already present inMarxist discourse as the will of God and having salvific import.23 Rahner, perhaps,would distance himself from these implications, though they do accurately represent, Ithink, certain tendencies in his own thought, even if they remain undeveloped there.De Lubac’s integralism would obviously move in a somewhat different direction.24
From the perspective of de Lubac’s integralism, then, the Rahnerian epistemologicaland transcendentalist apparatus can be jettisoned as implicitly marginalizing thehistorical and the social, even if ambiguously so. Against Rahner, the supernatural forde Lubac is not present within a particular formally distinguished “space” withinhuman existence (and thus we leave behind the empty category of a “pure nature”)since human existence is not a matter of “metaphysics” (traditionally conceived), butof historical action. Thus, certain events of salvation history may be privileged asdefining what is basic to being human and to human history, functioning to transformall of that history, and constituting of salvation as a fully social phenomenon. Rahner’swork does form a monumental corpus that is as insightful and challenging as it isbreathtaking. Nonetheless, I am convinced that it is de Lubac’s integralism whichprovides resources for an account of the Christian faith that is more helpful inconstructing an authentic post-modern orthodoxy, in contrast to Rahner’s versionwhich still seems too often caught in the matrices of certain modernist tendencies.25
Notes
1. "Integralism" should by no means be confused with "integrism," the pre-conciliartendency sometimes to collapse the ecclesiastical sphere into the social and politicalone, or vice versa.
2. The term "nouvelle théologie" or "new theology" was actually coined by thetraditionalist critic of de Lubac, the Dominican thomist, Garrigou-Lagrange. The termwas, however, quickly adopted by the movement itself, which also included figuressuch as de Montcheuil, Daniélou, and Bouyer.
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3. Unfortunately, I have found there to be very little written directly to address the
relationship between these two forms of integralism, beyond some scattered remarks
made by various authors in the process of explaining the views of one or the other of
these thinkers. A notable exception to this generalization is Stephen J. Duffy’s helpful
book, The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought 1992.
4. See Maréchal’s comparison of the a priori in Aquinas and Kant, 1970:117ff.
5. This 1893 work is available in a wonderful translation by Oliva Blanchette (1984).
6. From this point Blondel proceeds to argue that in every action there is contained a
"faith" that our actions, though they surpass our intentions and become other to
themselves, will nonetheless form a satisfying synthesis. And this requires that an
always present divine grace be granted to bring everything to its final end, not just as a
transcendental condition for action, but in the particularity of action itself. But now
I’m going beyond the limitations of my present topic. See Bouillard 1969.
7. My references will be to Rosemary Sheed’s 1967 translation, The Mystery of theSupernatural, recently re-issued with new introductory material (1998).
8. De Lubac argues in a similar way that the knowledge of God is paradoxical, a
matter of both reason and faith, nature and grace, natural theology and revelation, and
so on; see his The Discovery of God 1996.
9. A point made repeatedly by Aristotle, but probably most easily seen in the
conclusion to his argument that there is one highest end for humans in NicomacheanEthics I.2 (1024a20).
10. The point regarding Aquinas is my own rather than de Lubac’s per se, though he
anticipates it somewhat. It can be found exposited more fully in te Velde (1995:201-
33) and Milbank and Pickstock (2000:24-39).
11. The former quote is from Bonaventure, In 2 Sent., 18.1.1 and latter from In 2 Sent.19.1.2.
12. The quote is from De Veritate 18.1.
13. Rahner’s reply was entitled "Eine Antwort" and was published in Orienterung14:141-45. My synopsis is largely drawn from David Schindler’s synopsis in the new
introduction to the 1998 edition of The Mystery of the Supernatural.
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has too often been coopted by conservative schemes. Nonetheless, it is arguable thatagainst the backdrop of Blondel and with the fine-tuning of von Balthasar, de Lubac’si ntegralism provides the resources for an alternative ecclesiology that sees the churchas the polis that displaces and re-narrates every human polis, paving the way for a post-modern social theology that is genuinely "socialist" (in the vein of Proudhon andBuchez). See Milbank 1993:206-255, 380-438; 1997:268-292; and Cavanaugh 1999.
25. Again, consult the arguments of John Milbank, particularly "An Essay AgainstSecular Order" 1987 and his Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason 1993 (esp.chapter 8).
Works Cited
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Bouillard, Henri. 1969. Blondel and Christianity, trans. by James Somerville. Washington,DC: Corpus Books.
Cavanaugh, William T. 1999. “The City: Beyond Secular Parodies” in Radical Orthodoxy:a New Theology, ed. by John Milbank, C. Pickstock, and G. Ward. New York:Routledge,182-200.
de Lubac, Henri. 1950. Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. byLancelot Sheppard. London: Barns and Oates.
------. 1984. A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace. San Francisco, Ignatius.
------. 1996. The Discovery of God, trans. by Alexander Dru. Grand Rapids, MI:Eerdmans.
------. 1998. Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. by Rosemary Sheed. New York: CrossroadHerder.
Duffy, Stephen J. 1992. The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought.Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press.
Dupuis, Jacques. 1991. Jesus Christ at the Encounter with World Religions. Maryknoll, NY:Orbis.
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Fuchs, Joseph. 1980. “Is There a Specifically Christian Morality?” in The Distinctiveness ofChristian Ethics (Readings in Moral Theology 2) ed. by C. Curran and R. McCormick. NewYork: Paulist Press, 3-20.
Gillespie, Michael Allen. 1995. Nihilism Before Nietzsche. Durham, NC: Duke.
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5/31/2014 joelgarver.com - rahner and de lubac on nature and grace