In the 1940s, Henri de Lubac was unusual, at least as far as Roman Catholic theologians go. He was a Thomist, but not by the criteria that the majority of Thomists would have judged other Thomists: he wasn’t educated in Rome under Reginald Garigou-Lagrange, the leading Thomas scholar of the first half of that century; like M.-D. Chenu and Yves Congar, he wrote a lot about the church before Thomas, which led Garigou-Lagrange to write an article called “The New Theology: Where Is It Headed”; he disagreed with the primary commentators on Thomas, such as Cajetan and Suarez; he accused the Thomists of adhering to a Wolffian rationalism and a model of pure nature (thanks to Cajetan and Suarez) that rather than preserving the integrity of human nature and the gratuity of grace resulted in an incoherent idea of human nature which either demanded grace from God out of a plea for justice, or made the natural and supernatural merely two species of the same genus - the supernatural and natural are different, but only on account of the supernatural being a “super” natural. Continue reading ‘Henri de Lubac and the origins of The Mystery of the Supernatural’
Archive for the 'Supernatural' Category
Here’s one to get the thomists out there involved - you know who you are.1 This week, I’ve had the fun task of analyzing Rahner’s and de Lubac’s positions on the beatific vision and Gaudium et Spes, 22. It’s been interesting to gain a deeper understanding the interpretations of how Christ “fully reveals man to man himself…”2
The whole thing goes back further than Aquinas, even to Augustine in passages like his Letters XCII and CXLVII (De Videndo Deo). The following is from Letter XCII.
And we shall become the more like unto Him, the more we advance in knowledge of Him and in love; because “though our outward man perish, our inward man is renewed day by day,”3 yet so as that, however far one may have become advanced in this life, he is far short of that perfection of likeness which is fitted for seeing God, as the apostle says, “face to face.”4
Continue reading ‘Rahner and de Lubac on the final knowledge of God, pt. 1′
- no, not you scott. You’re “scotian” or “scotusian”↩
- Gaudium et Spes 22↩
- II Cor. 4:6↩
- I Cor. 8:12↩
If the Enlightenment and subsequent periods of modernity have done anything to alter what it means to be human, they have set humanity at a distance from the world, positing a radical degree of separation between the created order and Aristotle’s rational animals. Where God factors into this rift, and how one structures the dialogue between Philosophy and Theology, depends largely on how one schematizes God in relation to Being. It was Hans Urs von Balthasar who adroitly drew out the ramification of the human mind’s prodigality when he said, “[T]he human person himself would stand as the synthetic element, not only between [Church and world/Faith and Reason], but secretly above both.”1
- HUVB, “On the Task of Catholic Philosophy in Our Time,” Communio 20 (1993): 148; although von Balthasar was not the first or last to issue this warning.↩
In this last post on Henri de Lubac’s article “On Christian Philosophy,” we will examine Lubac’s conclusion that for such a thing as Christian philosophy to exist, it must necessarily renounce its hitherto held dogma of closed rationalism, broaden the scope of reason by accepting desire, and open itself finally to the mystery of the incarnation as its ontological impetus and telos. First, let’s recap the argument thus far explored in the previous two posts (which can be found here and here).
The problem is how to conceive of the relationship between the Christian faith and philosophy. Lubac early on dismissed grounding the language of faith in Philosophy. He was also uncomfortable with the idea that philosophy can retain autonomy, yet all the while receiving contributions from the Faith. Rather, it is in the very essence of thought and reason to be open, not closed, constantly drawn forward and refreshed by faith. Philosophy can not help but be indelibly altered by its interaction with faith. Indeed, as Lubac affirms at the end of the article, within the deep structure of reason is the tectonic movement of the supernatural. But, Christian philosophy as it was then conceived was so constituted by an image of a reason hermetically sealed that there was no place for the mystery of the supernatural. The mystery could not be allowed to “fertilize” the soil of reason. Philosophers maintained the sphere of pure nature as the ground of philosophy.
Continue reading ‘Henri de Lubac “On Christian Philosophy”, part 3′
Lubac wants to reorder the structure between Christianity and philosophy, not only to protect Christianity, so to speak, but also to see philosophy as something more than the technological principle he thought it had become in its attempt to rationalize the unrationalizable. In other words, philosophy begins not (only) with the rational, and thereby proceeds in some mechanistic fashion to rationalize everything else, to bend all to its will. Not only should it not do this, but it does not in fact. Rather, all philosophy begins “by being more or less orphic, or Christian, or Buddhist, or the like…” and is then “open[ed] by its essence to Christianity”… “philosophy itself must by a necessity of law be finally Christian.” Continue reading ‘Henri de Lubac “On Christian Philosophy”, part 2′
August 13th is the day that Anglicans, especially Irish Anglicans, remember Jeremy Taylor (d. Aug 13, 1667) whose various clerical posts included serving as chaplain to Charles I and, later in life, as Bishop of Down and Connor in Ireland. I first learned of Taylor last year in an article by Edmund Newey titled “The Form of Reason: Participation in the Work of Richard Hooker, Benjamin Wichcote, Ralph Cudworth, and Jeremy Taylor”.1 Newey’s central thesis relates to the concept of theosis, also called deification, in four Anglicans and the Cambridge Platonists movement in Anglican theology (Wichcote and Cudworth often being considered the first of the Cambridge Platonists). Tonight, I’ll look at Newey’s introduction and exegesis of Hooker. Continue reading ‘Theosis among some Anglicans, part 1′
In his 1936 article “Sur la philosophie chrétienne,”1 Henri de Lubac claims that the question of the viability of “Christian philosophy” is not a question so much of Christian thought, or theology, adapting its own concepts to the “external” language of philosophy (e.g. Anglo-analytic religious epistemology and Classical Theism). Nor is it the converse, a philosophy that has “received a Christian contribution”, a kind-of Christian stamp of approval.2 Rather, Christian philosophy is that philosophy which recognizes its finitude (”its radical insufficiency”)3, admits to its short-comings (that is its inability to on-its-own be Christian), and give up any notion of rationalizing Revelation. Continue reading ‘Henri de Lubac “On Christian Philosophy”, part 1′
The Chicago Reader Film Blog has a cool post about the use of the supernatural and cosmic in the latest Pirates of the Caribbean. The post asserts that while some of the imagery is borrowed from the french director Eric Rohmer, especially the green flash symbolizing the transference of a person from this world to the other, the film ultimately fails to plumb the depths of the supernatural to which it sets out. I agree. On a purely symbolic level (we won’t even discuss the quality of the film), many images are introduced, but, like many of my high school students’ essay, the movie fails to seal the deal. The introduction is given, a lot of irrelevant details are used (presumably) as supporting evidence, and the conclusion predictably is a happy one although divorced from the deep, spiritual elements. One feels as though one has been shot by Dick Cheney’s shotgun, left with nothing else to do but apologize for being there in the first place.
Which brings me to the movie I really wanted to talk about today: The Fountain, directed by Darren Aronofsky (Pi, Requiem for a Dream). If you want to get really fucked up tonight, go out and rent this gem. Aronofsky, unlike Verbinski, seems to recognize that what matters more in the fantasy genre is drawing the audience in with the question of the supernatural, not the assumed, unexplored premise of the supernatural. “We’ve seen it all. It’s not really interesting to audiences anymore. The interesting things are the ideas; the search for God, the search for meaning.” This is where Pirates fails, not so much because it lacked the “ideas”, but because it seemed to be unaware (inasmuch as a movie can be unaware or aware) that it even had the ideas…. maybe that’s a little harsh.
The Fountain, on the other hand, is bursting with the ideas and the questions. The imagery is overflowing, yet understated. Rather than throwing many different images on the screen, they return to the same imagery throughout the film, exploring new aspects, letting the chaos settle as the story nears its conclusion. I really appreciated the way the question of the supernatural didn’t fight death, but embraced it, unlike Pirates where in the end the main character managed to evade death for the moment. Whereas Pirates of the Caribbean advocates an uneasy truce with death, the Fountain’s main character takes a 1000 year voyage to finally be at peace with his and his wife’s death, the end of the book.
I’m watching The Fountain with an 11th grade AP English class tomorrow morning. I’m afraid it may be a bit heavy for them, but they’ll at least get exposure to religious imagery in film. So, I’ll let you all know how it goes.
Thanks Dan for starting off our conversation of Francis Hall’s Theological Outlines. Lets have a go at question 2, on the supernatural. While I thought he opened clearly with his definition of theology, some confusion immediately comes in when he starts in on the supernatural , or at least some terms go by without being well explained. Of course, “the supernatural” is a huge topic, especially when we also look at philosophical concerns (which he apparently wants to do). I would like to quote this bit at the end though, and then make a brief comment: “Certain writers err in supposing that the distinction between lower and higher natures and between the forces resident in them (for this is what the distinction between natural and supernatural really means) has the effect of banishing God from nature and of reducing nature’s Divine significance. It is God that worketh whether He employs the forces resident in lower or higher natures, or dispenses with the use of means.” In other words, grace founds nature, as Balthasar and de Lubac stressed. And if we look at Hall’s definition of supernatural, which is anything the causation of which cannot be assigned to visible or human means, then obviously men and women are fundamentally graced, and all of the natural causes which they assign and effect come from grace. Balthasar makes the same point at the end of “Love Alone” and it really grounds his understanding of universal salvation. More on that later.
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