Pastor John Wright

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June 10, 2006

Wisdom from Henri De Lubac

I've spent much of my summer reading and teaching from Henri de Lubac. John Milbank calls his book, Surnaturel, one of the three most important texts in the twentieth century, along with Heidegger's Being and Time and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Yet unlike the high visibility of Heidegger and Wittgenstein, the significance of de Lubac's work remains largely subterranean, especially to those outside the Roman Catholicism in which he lived and flourished -- though at times painfully. Moreover, whereas Wittgenstein and Heidegger's publications are all highly abstract and inaccessible except to those initiated into the mysteries of their text, de Lubac, able to write obscure and learned prose, also exercised a pastoral task in his writing. His volumes on Paradoxes of Faith are little clips, vignettes, that provide profound insight into the Christian tradition and the concrete Christian life to which we are called. On this Saturday night, I'd like to post a couple of quotations from his work, Paradoxes of Faith, originally written in 1945, but translated and published (and inexpensive) from Ignatius Press in 1987.

"Faith is surrender. The believer does not have to encumber himself with theories. Should he make use of them, nothing better. If he wants to reflect on his faith, theories are indispensable to him. He wants them sound and true. But he should keep himself from remaining attached to them as to the own good of his intellect. Faith must share the privilege of charity; it does not seek to lay hold of its object, to monopolize; it pours forth in it" (p. 18).

"Just as 'bourgeoise morality' is not the true Christian morality, and the intellectuality of a lot of so-called good thinkers is not intelligence, so a conformist 'orthology' cannot suffice for a true believer" (p. 20).

"Having charity, we have God in us. So the life of charity, the life of union with God, is no different from eternal life. Charity is a value in itself; that is to say that it will last forever. It is not something relative and incomplete; neither is it, therefore, something provisional" (p. 24).

Posted by johnwright at June 10, 2006 8:06 PM

Comments

Having charity, we have God in us. So the life of charity, the life of union with God, is no different from eternal life. Charity is a value in itself; that is to say that it will last forever.

This should be obvious to us but more frequently, because of a natural or unreflected standpoint, we encounter the view that charity, rather than being synonymous with the presence of God is merely a condition or qualitative aspect of Christian life. Seen as such, there is the risk, which we see all to often played out, that charity or love will be held as conditional in our moral obligation toward all other human persons.

De Lubac rightly identifies charity as eternal, therefore it that toward which we aim, but also that which give intelligibility to life; it is the true foci of life, meaning that takes into account both humanity and the transcendent mystery that is the source of eternal meaning.

Posted by: Deacon DW at June 12, 2006 8:42 AM

My apologies John, I must be going blind! The second paragraph of my comment should have read:

...therefore it is that toward which we aim, but also that which gives intelligibility to life...

Now with that said, I shouldn't be getting any calls from my former English teachers. Also, I'd like to clarify that inasmuch as the pre-reflexive stance may view charity as a qualitative aspect of Christian life, it is a secondary aspect only. Whereas upon consideration charity transcends the role of a secondary descriptive feature and approximates the inexhaustible mystery of being.

Posted by: Deacon DW at June 13, 2006 7:36 AM

Thank you, Deacon Dan! Your comments, and eventually your grammar, seem right on the money.

Love is not something extrinsic to God, added on to God's nature; God is Love. In human beings finding our end in God, Love is not something secondary to our natural end, but IS our natural end, although we need the radical conversion to participate in the Love that really is God in Christ, rather than the cheap, addictive substitutes that tend to distract us.

Peace,
John

Posted by: John Wright at June 13, 2006 2:19 PM