A. From propositions to persons I would like, briefly, to highlight three points of particular note, relating respectively to chapters 1, 2 and 3 of DV. In chapter 1, Jesus is described as “both the mediator and the sum total of revelation,” the attractive idea of the dialogue of salvation is presented, and it is stressed that the economy of revelation is one of “deeds and words ... intrinsically bound up with each other” (DV 2). The major step is taken in this chapter from the First Vatican Council’s idea of revelation as propositions, requiring an assent of the “intellect and will,”41 to the idea of revelation as the person of Christ, God’s supreme gift to humanity, the appropriate response being the gift of one’s entire self, which of course includes the assent of intellect and will, but is not confined to the latter. That is how faith is described in the new, personal context of Vatican II (cf. DV 5). Vatican I’s dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith, Dei Filius, lies in the background here. In spite of its title, the document, promulgated in 1870, is theocentric rather than Christocentric. Christ is presented as the teacher of divine truths, “saving doctrine,” rather than being in himself that truth and that doctrine. Supernatural revelation was received by the apostles “from the mouth of Christ,” says Dei Filius, and it was accompanied by “exterior proofs,” namely miracles and prophecies. “Moses and the prophets” performed many miracles and uttered prophecies, it says, but this was “especially” done by Christ our Lord.42 Dei Filius explains that there is, in fact, “a two-fold order of knowledge, distinct not only in its principle but also in its object”: one is the order of “natural reason,” and the other, the order of “divine faith.”43 The danger here is of a stratification of the orders of nature and grace, or of nature and the supernatural, with little organic connection between them, such that the two orders are simply glued together, as it were, rather extrinsically, by such wonders as miracles and prophecies. De Lubac’s theological career was spent dismantling that stratified picture, and putting something better in its place. Already in his inaugural lecture at the Catholic University of Lyon in 1929 he criticized the kind of apologetics that went with it, which envisaged human reason as enticed by such miracles and prophecies to recognize that something supernatural must be at work which ought to be accepted, rather like fancy wrapping might entice someone to buy a package trusting that something nice must be inside, though they do not quite know what. De Lubac wanted to dispel any such idea. Present the gospel itself to the people of today, and trust in its own intrinsic power to entice. Let it speak for itself! Human minds and hearts were made for that very truth. 44 A certain kind of apologetics, he said, spends all of its time proving that the truth must be true, by external arguments, instead of simply explaining what the truth actually is!45 And a certain kind of theology, he said, seems to forget that God is “the author of both nature and grace, and of nature in view of grace.”46 Three years later, he wrote to Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), praising a phrase of Blondel himself, which he said went to the very heart of the problem: “There’s a fear of confusing things, when what ought to be feared is not uniting enough.... It is, in fact, when people don’t know how to unite things properly that they most fear confusing them.”47 So, how can the stratification be overcome? How can we respect the distinction between nature and grace, the human and the divine, while holding them together, in an intimate unity? The key is Christ himself, who has two natures in one incarnate person. That is why DV’s focus on the person of Christ was such a breakthrough, and why de Lubac regarded the document so highly. It was the vital anchor for the council’s core text, LG: “If the constitution Lumen Gentium is the center around which most of the documents elaborated by the Council are organized,” he said, “the constitution Dei Verbum is
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