Like seed that is scattered and sown, the theology of Henri de Lubac has long had a time-delay in effect. His programmatic Catholicism was first published in 1938, and his groundbreaking Corpus Mysticum was ready for publication in 1939. The Second World War, however, delayed the release of Corpus Mysticum until 1944, and Catholicism rose to prominence only through an expanded edition published in 1947. Both texts significantly influenced the Second Vatican Council in ways that are still being received today. So, too, in anglophone scholarship, de Lubac has only recently been given the level of attention paid earlier to figures such as Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar.
Yet good things come to those who wait, and Eugene Schlesinger’s Salvation in Henri de Lubac is a welcome contribution to the renewal of de Lubac’s theology already underway. Elegantly written and cogently argued, Salvation in Henri de Lubac unfolds the principal movements of de Lubac’s thought and conjoins them under the term “salvation.” Drawing widely on both anglo- and francophone scholarship, Schlesinger illustrates how de Lubac’s theological vision remains as fresh and compelling for the twenty-first century as it was for the twentieth.
The book is divided into four sections. The first, “Salvation Desired,” presents the de Lubacian paradox of the natural desire for God as the antidote to every ersatz humanism that would pose as a rival to this anthropology. Only the living God in Jesus Christ can save and fulfill us (18–19, 32–34). In the second section, “Salvation Disclosed,” Schlesinger elaborates how this mystery is revealed and then realized in us through spiritual exegesis. He aptly notes how “spirit,” for de Lubac, is the deep center of the human being and our desire for God; it is the site of mystical knowing (39). As in the passage from the Old to the New Testament, or from a historical to a spiritual exegesis, spirit is where God transforms history and draws us through the cross into new divine life in Christ (73–74).
The mystery by which we share in divine life, however, is also unsurpassable. Just as de Lubac considered the four senses of Scripture as reducible to “two, because tropology (the moral sense) and anagogy (the eschatological sense) are … interior to allegory” (xxv), so does he envision the eschatological church as interior to the church at present. In both cases it is Christ who cannot be eclipsed. In the third section, “Salvation Realized,” Schlesinger presents a paradox. The pilgrim church of the New Testament and the celebration of the Eucharist are “provisional and must be entirely passed through.” But the same Christ growing now, as head and body, will come to fruition in the life of the world to come. The pilgrim church is both “discontinuous” and “identical with its own eschatological completion” in the totus Christus (104).
Christ is therefore “not only a novum, but a novissimum” in the ultimate sense (67). In a final section, “Salvation Consummated,” Schlesinger shows how this same principle informed de Lubac’s objections to both the work of Joachim of Fiore and the “paracouncil” de Lubac believed would sever the church from its historical origins in Christ after Vatican II (116–24). Schlesinger also sets the stage for his conclusion through an analysis of de Lubac’s defense of Teilhard de Chardin, who saw all history as converging on one eucharistic and christological sacrifice of love. It is “as this sacrifice that we are saved,” Schlesinger concurs, “as the body of Christ is offered, in union with its head, to the Father as a supreme act of loving worship” (155).
In many respects Salvation in Henri de Lubac provides an excellent exposition of de Lubac. Its analysis often proves deeply illuminative, showing, for instance, the consistency of his core theological principles, from his address on apologetics in 1929 to the completion of his work on Joachim in 1981. The primary question I would raise concerns the terminology of its thesis. “Salvation” was not a word de Lubac himself chose to integrate his work. But even as a secondary interpretive framework, I am not convinced this heading is especially helpful. Salvation is most associated with the healing and redemptive aspects of grace. On account of sin and death, we need to be saved. This is not to say it should not be understood more holistically: in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, of course, the words for salvation also connote health and well-being. And de Lubac’s paradox is that the fulfillment of our human well-being depends on God’s gracious gift of himself. Even so, the term “salvation” does not so directly capture the deifying aspects of grace. Yet these are more central to de Lubac’s theology than even healing and redemption. This book beautifully highlights how mysticism, grace, the nexus mysteriorum, and the whole Christ constitute central motifs in de Lubac’s writing. I would suggest any of these could serve as a better terminological handle for how de Lubac conceives of the exchange that transpires between God and humanity in Christ.
