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Next month marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of one of the most influential theologians of the modern era, and a man whose life reads like an adventure story.
Born into an ancient noble family, he served with distinction in the First World War and with heroism in the French Resistance in the Second, and went on to become a friend and mentor of one of the greatest popes in history.
Henri-Marie Joseph de Lubac was born in Cambrai in 1896, one of six children.
He joined the Jesuits while still in his teens and in the normal way would have studied with them in France, but anti-Church laws passed in the 1900s meant that along with other young novices he began his training in the unlikely surroundings of St Leonards-on-Sea in Sussex.
In 1914 circumstances changed again – on the outbreak of the Great War he immediately volunteered for the French army and for the next three years saw front-line service.
A savage head wound in November 1917 would result in ill-health throughout the rest of his life.
But it affected neither his intellect nor his determination to complete his training as a Jesuit, and he was ordained in 1927.
In the inter-war years, de Lubac was professor of fundamental theology at the Catholic University in Lyon. His Second World War activities interrupted this – he had to go underground while working with the Resistance.
He ran an influential underground journal, Témoignage Chrétien, which denounced the Nazis and also the Vichy regime in France, emphasising the incompatibility of these with Christian teaching.
But he is chiefly known for his contribution to an inspirational renewal of theology based on a return to the sources, the Scriptures and the Fathers – work which was to have a powerful and lasting impact, especially through the Second Vatican Council. Continue reading
Sources
- Joanna Bogle, a British Catholic journalist, writer and broadcaster, writing in the Catholic Herald.
- Image: Qualitative Theology
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