Milbank asks the intriguing question of whether de Lubac’s surnaturel thesis “rather deconstructs the terms of the Schleiermacher/Barth divide.” He appears to mean that the polarization of Schleiermacher’s “intrinicism” and Barth’s “extrinicisim” is dissolved by de Lubac’s Thomist understand of nature and grace. To adopt, for the moment, an idiom I shy away from: The supernatural is there in the natural (as Schleiermacher would insist), but the natural is only what it is by extending beyond itself to the supernatural, and so we cannot simply take the natural “as it is.” The supernatural is sheer grace (as Barth would insist), but it fulfills rather than contradicts our humanism.
Again, this whole set of questions needs to be disturbed by a clear understanding of sin.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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