Christopher Smith: "Anglophone theologians engage De Lubac for the twenty first century"

Christopher Smith, graduate of the University of Navarra has made available online the sixth chapter of his doctoral thesis, "Surnaturel Revisited Henri De Lubac’s Theology of the Supernatural in Contemporary Theology" -- together with the introduction, contents and bibliography. The scope is impressive, covering everything from the original controversy over the publication of De Lubac's Surnaturel to revisitations of the subject from 1980-2010, including the groundbreaking publication of Feingold's The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas and His Interpreters , the critical reaction of John Milbank, and the contributions of Reinhard Hutter and Stephen Long.

As the 2000 Colloquium at the Institut Catholique in Toulouse on de Lubac and the supernatural came to a successful conclusion, little did its participants know that the fraternal dialogue that characterized their conference would soon be followed by a debate the proportions of which can compare to what happened after the initial publication of Surnaturel. As the interventions were prepared for a double issue of Revue thomiste to appear the next year, an American student was preparing a doctoral defense that would spark this renewed debate. While many theologians had long cast the supernatural question and De Lubac into the dustbin, contemporary Thomists of the Toulousian School, and the heirs apparent of the nouvelle théologie in the so-called Communio school of theologians, had come to a modus vivendi which integrated much of De Lubac’s thought into mainstream Catholic theology. Lawrence Feingold, who prepared his thesis under Alfonso Chacón (b. 1952) and Stephen Brock (b. 1957), at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, was about to challenge the delicate status quo in a way which for many entered the stage of theological drama as a character foreign to the developing plot line, a ghost of theologies past, and irresistible to watch. … Read more

Read Chapter 6, Anglophone theologians engage De Lubac for the twenty first century.