A Brief Catechesis On Nature And Grace

The great twentieth-century theologian Henri de Lubac sought in this work to clarify the relationship between nature and grace, a relationship he thought had been greatly misunderstood by certain theologians. De Lubac's insights revolutionized the modern discussion of nature and grace, and they influenced thinkers such as John Paul II and Benedict XVI, as well as Hans Urs von Balthasar. This book, written after the Second Vatican Council and toward the end of de Lubac's long life, summarizes and extends key ideas he sought to recover from the classical sources of early and medieval Christianity. Confronted with distortions of Christian teaching, de Lubac repudiates on the one hand the extreme of radically opposing nature and grace, as if grace were entirely alien to nature, and on the other hand, the extreme of radically confusing them. A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace also contains appendices, including de Lubac's famous The Council and the Parachurch, in which he examines widespread misinterpretations of the Second Vatican Council. PREFACE I.Natural and the Supernatural 1.Two Correlative Terms 2.The True Supernatural 3.Adjective or Noun? 4.Admirabile Commercium 5.A Distinction Which Remains II.Consequences 1.Humility 2.Mystery 3.Ascesis, Transformation, Synthesis 4.Transcendence 5.The Role of the Church III.Nature and Grace 1.Conversion 2.Allergy to Sin 3.Evil and History 4.Realism 5.Liberation and Salvation CONCLUSION APPENDICES A.The Supernatural at Vatican II B.The Sacrament of the World? C.The Council and the Para-Council D.The Cult of Man: In Reparation to Paul VI

The passing years, which bury so many once-famous names under deep layers of forgetfulness, are raising Matthias Joseph Scheeben to an eminence reached by very few scholars. Time is the judge of all achievements, and has pronounced its verdict that Scheeben is the greatest theologian who has written in the German language. The reason for his importance is not hard to find. Scheeben is the chief theologian of the supernatural economy of the world. The intellectual blight known as rationalism had spread widely in the nineteenth century and had made disastrous inroads even in Christian circles. Although preliminary battles waged by Catholics who were turning back the unholy invasion, Scheeben was the champion who finally and decisively drove the enemy out of theology. From the very outset of his theological career, Scheeben had cherished the ambition of making the drab naturalistic world glow again in the light and beauty of grace, of bringing back to the awareness of men the glorious truth that they are God's children. In the first of his major books, Nature and Grace, he describes the supernatural as a sharing in the nature of God. This same theme, the splendor of our supernatural life, is the leading idea of all his works. He thought that a deep appreciation of the mysteries revealed by God was so important that he consecrated the tireless powers of his genius to the task of bringing out their beauty and force, and of emphasizing their meaning for the daily life of man. He insisted that these mysteries are the richest treasure of our spiritual inheritance and that theology is the inspiration of the fullest lie open to use-supernatural life with Christ and in Christ. Scheeben's masterly theological synthesis is best proposed in The Mysteries of Christianity, his most original work, but was clearly formulated from the beginning of his literary activity in Nature and Grace, the book of his energetic youth.

Over 3 million copies sold! Essential reading for Catholics of all walks of life. Here it is - the first new Catechism of the Catholic Church in more than 400 years, a complete summary of what Catholics around the world commonly believe. The Catechism draws on the Bible, the Mass, the Sacraments, Church tradition and teaching, and the lives of saints. It comes with a complete index, footnotes and cross-references for a fuller understanding of every subject. The word catechism means "instruction" - this book will serve as the standard for all future catechisms. Using the tradition of explaining what the Church believes (the Creed), what she celebrates (the Sacraments), what she lives (the Commandments), and what she prays (the Lord's Prayer), the Catechism of the Catholic Church offers challenges for believers and answers for all those interested in learning about the mystery of the Catholic faith. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is a positive, coherent and contemporary map for our spiritual journey toward transformation.

This book includes essays, notes, and reviews reflecting the fundamental ideas and key writings of Henri de Lubac, one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century. In these pages Cardinal de Lubac explains the origin, meaning, and fate of his works, in the context of his life, studies, personal relationships, as well as his legendary exiles, and his later vindication. At the Service of the Church provides crucial insights into the work of a man who profoundly shaped the Church, including the teaching of the Second Vatican Council. No student of contemporary theology can afford to neglect de Lubac's work and this book gives readers a unique perspective on that work. This volume is also an important source for understanding the renewed theological debates regarding nature and grace, the natural desire for God, and the authentic interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Henri De Lubac's work on medieval exegesis and his ecclesiological works are too often studied in isolation from each other. In countering this tendency, Susan Wood argues that de Lubac's work on spiritual exegesis is ultimately not about biblical exegesis and the four different meanings of the text but instead is intimately related to issues within the life of the church. Standing as the only study of de Lubac that interprets his theology through the categories of medieval exegesis, this volume provides the intellectual tools for thinking about a theology of history, a theology of symbol and sacrament, and a theology of the church's relationship to Christ and the Eucharist. Including an extensive bibliography of the primary and most important secondary sources of the theology of de Lubac, this study attributes the organic unity found in de Lubac's work to his immersion in the principles of spiritual exegesis and interprets his ecclesiology in the light of these principles.

The discourse between nature and grace finds its linguistic and existential podium in the political condition of human beings. As Caitlin Smith Gilson shows, it is in this arena that the perennial territorial struggle of faith and reason, God and man, man and state, take place; and it is here that the understanding of the personal-as-political, as well as the political-as-personal, finds its meaning. And it is here, too, that the divine finds or is refused a home. Any discussion of “post-secular society” has its origins in this political dialogue between nature and grace, the resolution of which might determine not only a future post-secular society but one in which awe is re-united to affection, solidarity and fraternity. Smith Gilson questions whether the idea of pure nature antecedently disregards the fact that grace enters existence and that this accomplishes a conversion in the metaphysical/existential region of man's action and being. This conversion alters how man acts as an affective, moral, intellectual, social, political and spiritual being. State of nature theories, transformed yet retained in the broader metaphysical and existential implications of the Hegelian Weltgeist, are shown to be indebted to the ideological restrictedness of pure nature (natura pura) as providing the foremost adversary to any meaningful type of divine presence within the polis, as well as inhibiting the phenomenological facticity of man as an open nature.

This book focuses on a historical analysis of hte genesis of the idea of pure nature, which arose in reaction to the distorted Augustinianism of nominalist theologians at the end ot the Middle Ages.