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Henri de Lubac
53 quotes
“The effort of the intelligence can aim only at better understanding reflexively the given of faith.[…]All minds, however, do not experience equally the need for such an effort. It is nonetheless very often necessary for them, on the level where their natural speculation usually moves, for dogmas to be given a certain coherent view, more systematized than the teaching of the Church, which renders these dogmas more assimilable to them and which prevents ever-possible deviations. Whence the permanent usefulness of theories that are constructed, through the arrangement of concepts, within common sense, starting with uncriticized representations. Their intellectual value can be weak. To admit them is not, however, pure pragmatism, since they are useful, not for any end whatsoever, but for the maintenance of a truth.… [W]e call to mind one case of this kind by citing the theory of the scientia media: it remains a necessary support for those who need to conceive of the relations between grace and human freedom as an organized system and who could not otherwise preserve the idea of freedom.… [Footnote:] Let us observe, however, that such theories, while they serve to maintain a truth on which attention is fixed, generally thereby compromise a complementary truth, which it is sometimes no less important to hold. We know well enough the weak point in Molinism.”
Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Mystery of the Supernatural" (1949), pp 306-307
“[F]rom the very first, faith had been translated into certain "declarations"—some of which had been gathered from the very mouth of Jesus and others called forth by him. The twofold reflection of Saint Paul and Saint John had soon contributed to enrich and define them. Subsequently, though it was no longer henceforth a matter of revelation, the declarations continued to multiply, following the very laws of human intelligence and under the impulse of all kinds of historical necessities. A divinely instituted authority rules their meaning and use.[…]It follows from all this that dogmatic progress, whose rectitude is guaranteed by the assistance of the Spirit which Christ promised to his Church, […] is not a progressive revelation. […] With Christ, in fact, in Christ, all has been given to us. In him we have all revelation as well as all redemption. […] Henceforth, nothing more that is in fact new is to be expected. The deposit is living, certainly it is fruitful, but it is indeed a deposit. […] No theory of "development" should ever forget this essential principle. […] In the face of a recent mentality that tends to confuse dogmatic progress with a kind of natural progress in human things, it is no less important to recall it today.Besides, to consider, for an instant, only the human intellectual mechanism by which the later work of dogmatic clarification is carried out […] one should recognize that it does not differ essentially from that which gave birth to the first declarations on the lips of Peter and his companions. The structure and the natural laws of the human mind are always the same; supernatural revelation has not suppressed them. A simple "assistance", carried out by the , in order to avoid any error in definitive choices, has succeeded to the positive inspiration of the early times, whose fruits are preserved in the writings of the "New Testament". But it is indeed always a matter of "elaboration".”
Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Doctrine of Father Lebreton on Revelation and Dogma according to His Anti-Modernist Writings" (1951), pp. 334–336
“Modern philosophy acts particularly like a critic. In a manner that is more positivistic and scientistic in some, more rationalistic and idealistic in others, its overall action remains corrosive. […] This whole work of thought, whose greatness we must not fail to recognize, is paid for in practice by the loss of the living God. The world then becomes a world of abstractions, when it is not absurdly reduced to a world of phenomena. In losing its mysterious innermost depth, it has lost its soul. Man is isolated, uprooted, "disconcerted". […] The world itself appears "broken". There is, at the innermost part of consciousness, a metaphysical despair.[…]It is then that substitute faiths inevitably present themselves to fill this tragic void. Such is the fourth and final period of the process. Man is not satisfied by ideologies cut off from any source of real efficacy: the hour must come when he is disenchanted with them. He lives still less from criticism and negations. He does not live by and neutrality. Inevitably something like a great call for air is produced in his inner void, which opens him to the invasion of new positive forces, whatever they might be. The latter conquer him all the more quickly, the more coarse and virulent they are. Cut off from a higher life, he gives in to the brutal pressures that, at least, give him the feeling of a life. Having abused criticism to make truth itself vanish, he now dislikes using it[,] to protect his mirages. A troubled credulity succeeds his faith. Rationalism has expelled mystery: myth takes its place.”
Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) first seen 1941 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Christian Explanation of Our Times" (1941), pp. 443–444