Nouvelle Theologie

“Thomas Aquinas on the Bible and Morality: The Sacred Scriptures, the Natural Law, and the Hermeneutic of Continuity,” in TOWARDS A BIBLICAL THOMISM: THOMAS AQUINAS AND THE RENEWAL OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY, edited by Jörgen Vijgen and Piotr Roszak (Pamplona/Navarra: EUNSA, 2018): 173–97.

Hans Urs von Balthasar and others have maintained that Henri de Lubac's articulation of the relationship between the letter and spirit of Scripture and his articulation of the relationship between nature and grace are in fact analogous. That is to say, the dialectics of letter-spirit and nature-grace are, in de Lubac's corpus, structurally parallel. Such a position, however, is problematic. If one affirms the analogy, and then attempts to interpret one dialectical pair in light of the other, unacceptable positions follow, on Lubacian grounds. Either the literal meaning of scripture is evacuated of meaning—and, consequently, the whole edifice of Christian spiritual exegesis collapses—or the relationship between nature and grace becomes extrinsic. Both conclusions, not surprisingly, are problematic for de Lubac. The present essay seeks to unpack the reasons why such a position follows from de Lubac's theology, and therefore, why the position of Balthasar, et al., is problematic. Furthermore, having shown how the suggested analogy is lacking, I will argue that--rather ironically--it is the account of nature-grace offered by the ressourcement Thomism of recent years (e.g. Reinhard Hütter, Thomas Joseph White, et al.) that provides the more promising analogue to de Lubac's articulation of the relationship between the letter and spirit of Scripture.