The French Jesuit Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) fought in the First World War yet lived to see the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. As a Jesuit novice, he was a political exile, completing most of his formation overseas due to the restrictions imposed by the Third Republic. During World War II, he worked undercover to motivate spiritual resistance to Nazism, placing himself in grave danger. In the 1950s, de Lubac experienced internal exile within the Church, being forbidden to publish any theology. However, the Second Vatican Council brought his rehabilitation and he was later made a Cardinal. De Lubac's theological writings are voluminous, published across the twentieth century in a range of sometimes obscure locations. This is the first time his most important texts on the many different topics on which he wrote have been combined into a single volume. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including some only recently available, a major introduction sheds new light on de Lubac's work, on its intellectual, social, and political contexts, and on his life, especially his later years. Arranged by theme, in the order that de Lubac himself approved, the texts then follow, each with its own introduction and annotations. With the aim of encouraging further study, a compendium provides brief bibliographical details of the many patristic and medieval theologians whom de Lubac discusses. Includes an extended postscript that appraises the most important scholarship on de Lubac on the different themes covered by the texts. An index enables con- cepts used and authors cited in disparate parts of his oeuvre to be compared. The selected texts address the nature of faith, God, the Church, grace and nature, the Eucharist, and Scripture, as well as religion and Buddhism. A leader of the ressourcement movement, de Lubac brought patristic and medieval texts and theology to bear on pressing issues in theological anthropology, doctrine, ecclesiology, scriptural interpretation, and relations with the non-Christian religions. Being well- acquainted with political theory and philosophy, he diagnosed the pathologies of secular modernity and presented a Christian alternative.

Hans Urs von Balthasar prepared this overview of the theology and spirituality of Henri de Lubac, whom he calls friend and master, on the occasion of the latters's eightieth birthday. Beginning with personal reflections drawn from the then unpublished pages of "memoirs" which de Lubac placed in his hands, von Balthasar offers a review of all the major works of de Lubac. Von Balthasar illustrates here the wonderful synthetic power for which he is justly known: bringing the range as well as the organic unity of de Lubac's work clearly into view. The main themes of that work remain as important now as when de Lubac first took them up--perhaps even more important. And there is no one better able to discuss these themes than von Balthasar, a master of theology in his own right and de Lubac's great friend for over fifty years. Co-published with Communio Books.

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.

De Lubac traces the origin of 19th century attempts to construct a humanism apart from God, the sources of contemporary atheism which purports to have 'moved beyond God.' The three persons he focuses on are Feuerbach, who greatly influenced Marx; Nietzsche, who represents nihilism; and Comte, who is the father of all forms of positivism. He then shows that the only one who really responded to this ideology was Dostoevsky, a kind of prophet who criticizes in his novels this attempt to have a society without God. Despite their historical and scholarly appearance, de Lubac's work clearly refers to the present. As he investigates the sources of modern atheism, particularly in its claim to have definitely moved beyond the idea of God, he is thinking of an ideology prevalent today in East and West which regards the Christian faith as a completely outdated.

Part of the Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought Series, The Discovery of God contains the guiding thread of all of Henri de Lubac's work: the idea of God and the life of the spirit.

This introduction to De Lubac, a dominating figure in the renewal of theology in the twentieth century, provides an overview of the whole of twentieth century French Catholic theology.

Surveying the barriers that contemporary thinking has erected between the natural and the supernatural, between earth and heaven, Hans Boersma issues a wake-up call for Western Christianity. Both Catholics and evangelicals, he says, have moved too far away from a sacramental mindset, focusing more on the "here-and-now" than on the "then-and-there." Yet, as Boersma points out, the teaching of Jesus, Paul, and St. Augustine -- indeed, of most of Scripture and the church fathers -- is profoundly otherworldly, much more concerned with heavenly participation than with earthly enjoyment. In Heavenly Participation Boersma draws on the wisdom of great Christian minds ancient and modern -- Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, C. S. Lewis, Henri de Lubac, John Milbank, and many others. He urges Catholics and evangelicals alike to retrieve a sacramental worldview, to cultivate a greater awareness of eternal mysteries, to partake eagerly of the divine life that transcends and transforms all earthly realities.