Henri de Lubac and The Question of Original Sin for Catholic Theology

The Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) is most often associated with the infamous nature–grace debates of the twentieth century, the inauguration of the ressourcement method for theological reflection, the ecclesiology and catholicity of the Church, and right relations between the sacred and the secular in contemporary society. It is frequently overlooked, however, that de Lubac's critique of ‘pure nature’ theory, along with his recovery of the tradition of the natural orientation to the beatific vision, carry monumental consequences for the traditional doctrine of original sin as it has been understood in Catholic theology. The natural desire for the beatific vision holds essential significance for the whole of modern theological anthropology, as well as for a recovered doctrine of creation, and a clarified understanding of the place and power of the doctrine of original sin in the contemporary era. This paper begins with a consideration of the doctrine of original sin in the light of the context of creation, before turning to the case of Henri de Lubac and the implications of his theological vision, in order to see the hopeful prospects for a renewed doctrine of original sin which is more properly framed in the wider context of the creation and redemption of all things in Christ. The basic position of Catholic theology, that all of creation, especially human beings, is possessed of a basic inner goodness, reaches back to the creation account in the book of Genesis. It is in the context of creation theology that the doctrinal question of original sin arises, both in the Scriptures and in more systematic reflections upon them. The Genesis testimony indicates that the originary state of the human person was very good, and that male and female were created in the image and likeness of God the creator (Gen. 1:26–27). But following the exclusion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, worked on the basis of their exercise of freedom and consequent unfaithfulness, an essential alienation from God came into the world, manifesting in sinfulness, human suffering, and death.1 Later exegetical traditions of the Old Testament begin to interpret the Adam and Eve story as a literal event which brought forth a changed state for humanity: ‘for God created us for incorruption, and made us in the image of his own eternity, but through the devil's envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his company experience it’ (Wis. 2:23–34) and ‘[s]in began with a woman, and we must all die because of her’ (Sir. 25:24). And Philo of Alexandria also refers to an actual historical alienation of humanity in history.2 In the New Testament, the four gospels underscore mainly the inherent dignity, and hence goodness, of the human person. But it is the (earlier) Pauline tradition which complexifies the anthropological position: Adam was a created, living being who was the prototype of the human sustained by the ‘breath of God’, yet this depiction is insufficient without Christ. Christ is the second, true, and ultimate Adam who gives ‘spiritual life’ to humanity, and those created on earth who share in the existence of the first Adam may one day share in the eschatological, spiritual existence of the second Adam, latterly known as the beatific vision (1 Cor. 15:42–50). Crucially, the first Adam was made by God as a ‘figure [or type] of the one who was to come’ (Rom. 5:14), and in this way God's creation of man in his image is now further specified and mapped on to Christ, who is the visible image and likeness of God himself (2 Cor. 4:4).3 But later we see how the Pauline version of the doctrine of original sin becomes relevant, for although the human person was made in the image and likeness of God, we have all lost that likeness through the fault of one historical man in the past, which we have somehow inherited, and herein lies the problematic: ‘[t]herefore, as sin entered the world through one man and through sin, death, and so death passed to all on this basis, namely [ἐφ’ ᾧ], that all sinned—’ (Rom. 5:12), although here Paul does not explain exactly how such a legacy of sin was transmitted from Adam to his descendants.4 By the time of the fourth century, it had become axiomatic for the church fathers to recognise the literal, historical truth of the Genesis account, the causal link between Adam's sin and loss of grace, and the resulting condition for the human race. But there was no widespread agreement on the nature and effect of the fall: Irenaeus (c.130–202) explains Adam and Eve's sin as not being a malicious act, but one of youthful disobedience, and one which was in any event a part of God's broader plan of salvation in Christ.5 Differently, Origen (c.185–254) in his later period ventures two non-exclusive reasons for the postlapsarian human condition, namely that all humanity was collectively excluded from paradise along with Adam the archetype, or else each individual person in history was proleptically expelled by God for some unspecified reason, yet does understand the present human condition to be the consequence of sin committed prior in time.6 Later theologians (differently to Irenaeus) explained postlapsarian sinfulness as a result of weakness and ignorance given our mortal condition, rather than an actual participation in the sin of Adam itself: Gregory of Nazianzus (c.328–390) taught that a person who had not been baptised, yet had done no wrong, did not deserve glory or punishment,7 while John Chrysostom (c.347–407) indicated that the verses of Paul in Romans chapter five indicated that humanity is condemned to suffering and death because of the human condition, rather than because they are sinful per se. In the Eastern tradition in particular, the description of Adam's sin by Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa (c.335–394) appears primarily in metaphysical rather than historical terms: it signifies a state of non-being which brings corruption in the human person (body and soul).8 That tradition, however, does not hold that infants who die unbaptised will be necessarily confined to hell. The most fully worked out theological synthesis is that of Augustine: by 397, his newly named doctrine of ‘original sin’ (peccatum originale) is fully developed for the Western theological tradition, and differs markedly from Eastern developments.9 On Augustine's formulation, all human beings are stained by original sin on account of Adam's transgression: humanity shares in Adam's sin. Original sin is the true sin, and we share in Adam's guilt and punishment. The punishment constitutes both eternal punishment, which is separation from God (the loss of immortality), and punishment in this world, which is death and desire. This desire in particular is sexual desire, which is an excessive desire that is sinful. And it is in the sexual act, characterised by this excessive desire, that original sin is passed on to children by the same act which generates them.10 Accordingly, Augustine is able to conclude that guilt is inherited, and that newborn infants suffer on account of original sin: ‘they are proved guilty by their misery’, and if unbaptised upon death suffer necessary damnation.11 Although Augustine's theory incorporates the main lines of the Christian tradition, such as the relation of humanity's sin to that of Adam and that original sin is transmitted to children, it is in many respects highly novel. He brings to the fore human reliance on divine grace, the impaired nature of human freedom, and the tragedy of human life. In particular, he supplies a very cogent argument to posit that original sin is transmitted to children by the sexual act which is inherently sinful in itself, regardless of the fact that the parents are baptised and therefore cleansed of that sin. Moreover, he sets in stone the strong case that because every newborn child by reason of conception suffers the inherited sin, corruption, and guilt of Adam, if unbaptised they remain guilty in the eyes of God, and will suffer final damnation after death. And although Augustine's quite original synthesis was not mainly taken up in the Eastern tradition, it has shaped the entire Western conception of original sin: the Council of Carthage (418) affirmed the conclusion that Adam became mortal on account of his sin,12 and that infants possess original sin which is true sin.13 Similarly, the Council of Orange (529) taught that Adam passed to his offspring true, original sin, which resulted in a spiritual enslavement for humankind.14 The precise mechanisms for the transmission of sin remained, however, undefined.15 The principal task of the scholastic reflection on original sin was one of reception, and specifically how to nuance, deepen, and soften Augustine's original and trenchant synthesis. Anselm developed Augustine's position to explain that original sin was in fact a loss of original (human) righteousness or justice: by losing the inherent principles of God's justice, we are capable of sinning. If Adam had indeed retained God's justice, this capacity would have been transmitted to his descendants, but it was in fact lost. Alexander of Hales further defined original sin as the loss of original justice or righteousness, which must be recognised as true sin, but in its material aspect it presents as concupiscence or covetousness: this is not sin per se, but the punishment that we experience for sin.16 And Aquinas received the Augustinian doctrine in order to submit it to the system of Aristotelian philosophy, and to displace Augustine's rhetorical argumentation with a more optimistic notion of original sin as privation. Original sin is formally the privation of original justice; materially, it is the internal disorder which is caused by this privation.17 This is, of course, a less pessimistic account of the theology of original sin.18 Aquinas's framework sets the classical position for subsequent later scholastic theology in order to supply a systematic analysis of the doctrine of original sin; it provided the argumentation which supplied the conclusions promulgated by the Council of Trent (1545–63) in its Decree on Original Sin.19 The first element of the synthesis, known as the peccatum originale originans, takes up the original sin of Adam and Even in the garden, explains their state of justice, holiness, communion, and grace, before describing their fall as sin under the form of pride and envy.20 The second element is the peccatum originale originatum, which articulates the sinful human condition inherited from Adam and Eve, including consequences such as suffering, the deprivation of God's grace, disordered desires (‘concupiscence’), and death.21 From the time of the sixteenth century until the inter-war period in the twentieth century, this classical framework supplied the standard interpretation of the doctrine of original sin. But the systematisation that was worked to doctrinal theology by the introduction of Aristotelian philosophy, along with the structural separation of the theology and philosophy faculties in the preceding period, resulted in a reversal of theological method.22 Under this synthesis, an expanded metaphysics of evil is given structural priority: while the patristic theologians began with the incarnation and redemption worked by Christ, and reasoned from Christology and spiritual experience to suppose conclusions about (subsequent) original sin, the later scholastic synthesis inverted the methodological order. Instead, it begins with the principal problem of original sin, and only after comes to the necessity of the redemption by process of a certain kind of metaphysical reasoning, one which was less attentive to experience and event than to an abstractive synthesis. It is for this reason that Henri de Lubac began his pivotal historical study of the relation between nature and grace, Surnaturel: Études historiques (1946), not with the classical synthesis of metaphysical evil and the later doctrine of original sin, but rather with two and He did so to the of a methodological to the and patristic in order to of historical doctrine which had become or by the later classical synthesis. the most and was a of the notion of a natural desire for the beatific vision, which had implications for the theological prior to the Council Moreover, in a which is very frequently overlooked, de Lubac's a and to the doctrine of original sin, as well as to the very synthesis itself, especially the aspect of peccatum originale originatum, or the consequences of original sin in the present order. It a to a more optimistic of human a renewed on the of creation, the of a human for God, and on the of the human person created in the image and likeness of It is for reason that de Lubac's and Henri de Lubac the of of original sin is more than the of the of the a which is often must the of original sin from the context of It is this precise reversal which de Lubac takes up in in order to that a and the fact of incarnation and redemption must our of original sin, and not the way Although de Lubac's principal in is the relation between nature and the and the classical ‘pure nature’ his have implications for theological anthropology, and specifically for our conception of the doctrine of original sin. Lubac the original sin question by way of the more nature–grace and takes in the first the case of who was the of the a trenchant form of a version of Augustine's theology of which that human must be by such grace, yet that is of necessity by it is in no way rather the of a in justice, as God created us with an for that the or in question is natural rather than and is to our in this prior to the Lubac that is to Augustine by that the Old Testament sets out the nature of humanity in its and that the light of Christ does not the of Christ the lost by Adam, and for us our human Lubac Augustine's theology of original sin to that Augustine's theology is not is for more than the human or after the Augustine that there was a separation the and the but also that the possessed a by God, to be up to be in with the known as a natural desire to see Even more than the sinful Augustine the of Christ he see was the that this become a because it to the plan Lubac by that Augustine that Christ lost in the present condition, but the fact of original sin is by no the most of the Christ is the very of the divine plan from the of creation, which is that the is for eternal with God in Christ. The whole of creation, under original sin, is in Christ, now a Lubac's second was who that in Augustine's doctrine there two of grace, which were the of Adam and the of Christ. The first is known as to in and the second which is the of the redemption by original have that Augustine was certain that the human person was created in order to the vision of God to have made us for God, and is our until it in in order to the beatific vision, he holds that an which is divine that is given in order to our and to in the state for Adam to his is not only for the human person to the true nature from after the but it was to human nature prior to original of was not a consequence of the however, does a after the fall: prior to the introduction of sin, Adam as the sinful person grace, but it was as an to his freedom to the however, a consequence of original sin is that is to supply the to and the to our freedom for the original sin, Adam was upon God, and did not have in Lubac that he to human will with the for divine for original sin the human person so that is to our in order to is to and in fact on the is very that is not an but an and of to nature is an which a and a up of This does not in from the but from the the natural will is not but in fact and to the natural will is made by its and by divine Lubac that nature is in no way by original sin, by the of divine before or after the we see that de Lubac to the of to a position which nature and the to be to one in a He a understanding of a state of to which will and were by original sin, and in which is to in a and de the human person in the state of nature a which may only be through grace, and which is by the doctrine of original If in their own to recognise the of the Christian in the case of the it is all a of understanding of the to which it in the case of the is it not all a of the of which it out for In this de Lubac on the doctrine of original sin and its not as the of any but the context of the whole of Christian which reaches its in the of the By first on the question of original sin, and not on the more context of both and both nature and all to paradise as it was prior to original sin, and in this present order as a right in order to on the the doctrine of original sin to that postlapsarian humanity is from God and without and only and indeed a de Lubac's argument takes up a critique of the scholastic system of ‘pure nature’ in order to that there is in the human person a natural desire for the beatific vision both before and after original sin, and that the theological interpretation must be from the of redemption in Christ. Lubac Augustine's theology of is not necessary for the human person in consequence of original sin after the it was necessary to nature prior to the as a for human freedom to The came this theological vision came into with metaphysical system in the In this the world was no understood as a on the power of the but as its own natural and the a up between the of philosophy and that of there now two Christian one the which necessarily to two final to philosophy in this human and the the to theology, but only in the by of divine Lubac's principal especially in of the synthesis of the is to that up until the theology a final for humanity, one which was not to the two remain and essential in their own and not philosophy supply humanity its true final in of Christian de Lubac that Aquinas that being may its final or to the order of its But Aquinas also holds that humanity a natural desire for the vision of God which only to his on account of which he is a the of nature was made in order to see God for God made the so that he share his which in his And desires the vision of the divine Accordingly, the final of humanity is the of our nature nature desires and it is only divine which may nature in order to it the vision of has a which the of human and to Lubac takes particular the for to theology the of the state of ‘pure Under this theory, in the of the only natural desire that humanity may have is one that is with our and our final in this may be by natural by of and the life. And our second final may only be by the of divine grace, which the of de Lubac does not hold the separation of the two of nature and grace, but also the separation into his interpretation of the nature theory is in order to that nature in and therefore it may not have a desire or which it by its own Accordingly, if indeed the human person has a desire for God, it is for it to be it must be to nature by an act of God's power and God's It that human nature is therefore and any desire for God so for the beatific must be worked by God in a way that and the order of for if there is to be any desire for God it must two the natural of human nature nature and by through which the divine into and human And under the theory of the doctrine of original sin is as it is to be without Accordingly, the human person is his or and has no capacity for the there is no an orientation to with the there comes into being an of nature which takes the place of the of the with to the and the historical of redemption history and the fact of Christ. Accordingly, theology becomes a and a philosophy of If there is in our nature a desire to see God, this only be because God desires for us this final which in It is it and not to will he the desire in our and to This that this desire is than his This desire is in but is it not of it is only in our it is so in us that it is but it is we who not belong to de Lubac for the whole of theology a basic the the doctrine of Christian incarnation and redemption that all things are made in Christ, and if all humanity is to divine is in each of them. The doctrine of creation holds that the was made in of of all things in Christ, and all humanity with The human person desires this beatific vision, and this natural orientation is a part of our de Lubac desire is than his This recovered theological has implications for the doctrine of original sin, not because the peccatum originale element of the synthesis is now not to hold in the way that it humanity under the suffering of original sin, our a capacity for the which is an This is by the of the of for theology, been not to a truth of the The theory of was understood to a state in which the of infants who die and in original sin, they are the beatific vision, but not punishment on account of their of reason and guilt their de Lubac's theological must that infants who are unbaptised have the capacity for and are to the beatific the fact that each did not have the to desire and God in this that they are It is very to that if each a natural desire to see God, the death of unbaptised infants would the eternal of their desires first by It is for this reason that that the that we may that all unbaptised infants be In of we are able to see the theological by de Lubac's by into question the of the theological synthesis, including the of the of Aristotelian reasoning, he also into question the theological The for consideration of the question of original sin was no an scholastic metaphysics of but rather the of creation and redemption in Christ. The context of and not the doctrine of sets the context in which theological reflection on original sin and its consequences takes It is this context of creation and redemption which us to recognise the significance of the tradition, which that the human person is to the beatific If all are to see God, after the the consequences of original sin are with the inherent of creation, and the and light of Christian