The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural – John Milbank

Book reviewed:
The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural , John Milbank, SCM/Eerdmans 2005 (0-334-04045-0), x + 117 pp., pb £16.99/$20.00     

The Motherhood of the Church in Henri de Lubac and John Calvin

Both Henri de Lubac and John Calvin described the Church as ‘mother’. From the patristic tradition, the motherhood of the Church had two dimensions: (i) the Mother Church as an institution delimited by the episcopacy of which inclusion was a necessity for salvation; and (ii) the Church as the mother of believers through whose ‘motherly’ care of bringing to life, nourishing and teaching through the sacraments God makes provision for his children. Both de Lubac and Calvin stress the maternal functions of the Church, but differ over how the Church’s motherhood relates to its visible identity and why inclusion in the Church is necessary for salvation. This article argues that this connection represents a rich theme for ecumenical ecclesiology. Despite divergent ecclesiological grammars and themes, Catholic and Reformed traditions are drawing from a shared patristic inheritance which gives good ground for dialogue for respective ecclesial self-understandings.     

Eucharist, Matter and the Supernatural: Why de Lubac Needs Teilhard

Abstract:  Henri de Lubac intended to found his theology on a revaluation of nature achieved by reasserting nature's dependence on divine supernatural action. He usually identifies nature with human nature however, and therefore fails to demonstrate that the wider natural order also depends on God for its creation, preservation and redemption. In his extensive engagement with the oeuvre of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, de Lubac nevertheless begins to revise this reduction of nature to human nature, although does not fully incorporate the insights gained into his theology. Teilhard's fundamentally eucharistic understanding of materiality provides suggestive possibilities for the successful completion of de Lubac's abolition of the philosophy of pure nature.     

The Integrative Role of Sacrifice in the Theology of Henri de Lubac

At key junctures in his theologies of spiritual exegesis, the Eucharist and the church, Henri de Lubac appeals to the notion of Christ's sacrifice as providing the pivotal content for the topic at hand. Despite this, de Lubac scholarship has devoted scant attention to the role of sacrifice in his thought. Using the fourfold sense of Scripture and the scholastic categories of res and sacramentum to establish a formal structure for de Lubac's thought, I demonstrate that sacrifice provides an integrative motif for these disparate areas of de Lubac's thought, better accounting for the ‘organic unity’ of his theology.     

De Lubac,Grace, and the Pure Nature Debate

Henri de Lubac's doctrine of grace and nature emerged out of the pastoral and sacramental context of confession. Although recent critics have assumed a Thomist setting, a close reading shows that the doctrine is rooted in de Lubac's critical engagement with Augustinianism. In the form of Jansenism and drawing especially on Augustine's late, anti‐Pelagian writings, this sensibility pervaded modern French theology. Notwithstanding its distorted conceptions of grace's mode of operation and of human nature, Jansenism provoked de Lubac into developing new understandings of the relation between belief and knowledge, and of theological anthropology. In advocating for the continuity of Augustine's theology, de Lubac made an important contribution to Augustine scholarship. His resulting doctrine of grace and nature, in which the person of Adam is central, has wider, abiding theological salience.     

Radical sophiology: Fr. Sergej Bulgakov and John Milbank on Augustine

Looking at John Milbank??s recent turn to Fr. Sergej Bulgakov, this paper argues that the theological and philosophical commitments they share are overshadowed by a deeper difference concerning the role each assigns the church in secular culture. It turns to Milbank??s roots in Augustine??s philosophy of history, which he argues could have allowed the church to overtake the pagan (which founds the secular) were it not for his distinction between the ??visible?? church and its deferred (eschatological) perfection. Bulgakov also criticizes Augustine??s doctrine of the church, or so he thinks. He actually misreads Augustine, accusing the bishop of holding a doctrine of the church that Milbank would have liked him to have held. This suggests that Bulgakov would not agree with Milbank??s view that the church should ??enact?? God??s judgment in history by opposing itself to the secular.