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 'sin 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: 'therefore, 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 Thomistic doctrine of original sin, but rather with two contemporaneous Augustinians, Michael Baius (1516–89) and Cornelius Jansenius (1585–1638).23 He did so to signal the importance of a methodological return to the biblical and patristic sources (a ressourcement), in order to clarify points of historical doctrine which had become occluded or contorted by the later classical synthesis. Of these, the most prominent and momentous was a rehabilitation of the notion of a natural desire for the beatific vision, which had signal implications for the regnant theological anthropology prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). Moreover, in a manner which is very frequently overlooked, de Lubac's Surnaturel thesis provides a direct challenge and corrective to the then settled 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 enabled a shift to a more optimistic view of human nature, a renewed focus on the goodness of creation, the acknowledgement of a human restlessness for God, and concentration on the importance of the human person created in the image and likeness of God. It is for good reason that de Lubac's close friend and confrere, Henri Rondet (who resided alongside de Lubac during the writing of Surnaturel), observes: 'the dogma of original sin is nothing more than the reverse side of the dogma of the redemption, a point which is often forgotten'.24 As such, 'one must never isolate the dogma of original sin from the context of redemption.'25 It is this precise reversal which de Lubac takes up in Surnaturel, in order to show that a Christological centre and the fact of incarnation and redemption must govern our parsing of original sin, and not the other way around. Although de Lubac's principal topic in Surnaturel is the relation between nature and the supernatural, and thus the classical 'pure nature' debate, his arguments have inescapable implications for theological anthropology, and specifically for our conception of the doctrine of original sin. De Lubac approaches the original sin question by way of the more technical nature–grace debate, and takes up, in the first place, the case of Baius, who was at the forefront of the anti-scholastic reaction at Leuven, Belgium, espousing instead a trenchant form of Augustinianism. Baius expounded a distorted version of Augustine's theology of grace which posited that one's human destiny must be fulfilled by such grace, yet that grace is owed of necessity by God; it is in no way gratuitous bur rather the payment of a debt in justice, as God created us with an exigency for that grace.26 For Baius, the end or destiny in question is natural rather than supernatural, and grace is required to restore our innocence in this life, prior to the fall.27 De Lubac argues that Baius is extremely unfaithful to Augustine by holding that the Old Testament sets out the nature of humanity in its primitive state, and argues that the light of Christ does not affect the destiny of man; Christ simply restores the innocence lost by Adam, and effects for us our human destiny.28 De Lubac clarifies Augustine's theology of original sin to say that Augustine's theology is not wholly 'infralapsarian': grace is required for something more than restoring the human destiny or end after the fall. Rather, Augustine knew that there was a separation beyond the creature and the creator, but also that the creature possessed a 'dream', inspired by God, to be raised up to be in union with the creator, otherwise known as a natural desire to see God. Even more significant than remedying the originally sinful state, Augustine knew that, 'in the revelation of Jesus Christ what he could see was principally the declaration that this mad dream could become a reality because it corresponded to the entirely gratuitous plan governing creation'.29 De Lubac thus corrects Baius by claiming that Augustine shows that Christ restores lost innocence in the present condition, but the fact of original sin is by no means the most significant object of the redemption. Rather, Christ is the very revelation of the divine plan from the moment of creation, which is that the creature is destined for eternal union with God in Christ. The whole of creation, despite labouring under original sin, is nevertheless re-created in Christ, now possessing a single, supernatural destiny. De Lubac's second interlocutor was Jansenius, who considered that in Augustine's doctrine there arose two qualitatively different kinds of grace, which were the grace of Adam and the grace of Christ. The first is known as 'sufficient grace', needed to persevere in life, and the second 'efficacious grace', which is the remedial grace of the redemption required by original sin.30 We have seen that Augustine was certain that the human person was created in order to receive the vision of God face to face: 'You have made us for yourself, O God, and restless is our heart until it rests in you.'31 Yet, in order to attain the beatific vision, he holds that natures need an external 'help', which is divine grace that is given gratuitously in order to complete our humanity. For Jansenius, and different to Baius, in the prelapsarian state for Augustine, Adam always requires grace to raise his nature: grace is not only indispensable for the human person to restore the true nature from after the fall, but it was always already required to sustain human nature prior to original sin—the requirement of grace was not a consequence of the fall. For Augustine, however, grace does provide a different function after the fall: prior to the introduction of sin, Adam required grace just as the sinful person requires grace, but it was required simply as an aid to assist his freedom to persevere. After the fall, however, a consequence of original sin is that grace is required to supply the strength to avoid evil, and the strength to use our freedom for the good. Before original sin, then, Adam was still dependent upon God, and did not have complete autonomy in paradise.32 De Lubac makes clear that Jansenius erred when he attempted to replace human free will with the need for divine grace: for Jansenius, original sin renders the human person so corrupt that grace is required to replace our free will, in order to continue. Grace is thus opposed to nature, and in fact replaces nature. De Lubac, on the other hand, is very clear that grace is not an opposition but an inclusion and infusion—the coming of grace to nature is an intimate 'unification' which works a transformation and a raising up of nature. This grace does not break in from the outside, but rises from within the soul.33 Thus the natural will is not annihilated, but in fact enabled and strengthened to act; indeed, the natural will is made 'invincible' by its strengthening and completion by divine grace.34 De Lubac makes clear that nature is in no way annihilated by original sin, nor by the operation of divine grace before or after the fall. Thus, we see that de Lubac needs to refute the claims of Jansenius to defend a position which understands nature and the supernatural to be porous to one other, in a synthetic manner.35 He flatly rejects a Jansenist understanding of a state of pure nature, according to which free will and morality were destroyed by original sin, and in which grace is considered to operate in a superadded, extrinsic, and interruptive manner. For de Lubac, the human person in the state of nature possesses a supernatural vocation which may only be attained through grace, and which is unaffected by the doctrine of original sin.36 If both, in their own way, fail to recognise the sublime newness of the Christian revelation, in the case of the former it is above all a lack of understanding of the mysterious end to which it invites us; in the case of the latter, is it not above all a forgetfulness of the path of love which it traces out for us?37 In this way, de Lubac insists on locating the doctrine of original sin and its effects not as the starting point of any enquiry, but within the context of the whole of Christian revelation, which reaches its apex in the new economy of the redemption. By focussing first on the question of original sin, and not on the more expansive context of redemption, both Baius and Jansenius misunderstand both nature and grace: Baius above all sought to recover paradise as it was prior to original sin, and demanded grace in this present order as a right in order to achieve this; Jansenius, on the other hand, took the doctrine of original sin to mean that postlapsarian humanity is left completely separated from God and without hope, and only extrinsic grace can save, and indeed replace, a fallen, muted nature. Finally, de Lubac's last crucial argument takes up a critique of the scholastic system of 'pure nature' in order to show 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 viewed from the total perspective of redemption in Christ. De Lubac consistently applies Augustine's theology of grace: grace is not simply necessary for the human person in consequence of original sin after the fall; it was always necessary to sustain nature prior to the fall, as a help for human freedom to 'persevere'. The difficulty came when this theological vision came into contact with Aristotle's metaphysical system in the thirteenth century. In this system, the world was no longer understood as a graced miracle dependent on the power of the divine, but as having its own natural laws and self-sustaining motion within the cosmos. Thus, a divide opens up between the discipline of philosophy and that of theology: there now exist two Christian anthropologies, one philosophical, the other theological, which necessarily correspond to two final ends—one available to philosophy in this realm via human speculation and the ethical life; the other available to theology, but only fulfilled in the heavenly life by operation of divine grace alone. De Lubac's principal task, especially in view of the prevailing Thomistic synthesis of the time, is to show that up until the Renaissance theology held a different, single final end for humanity, one which was not open to philosophy. While the two domains remain valid and essential in their own orders, and do not conflict, philosophy simply cannot supply humanity its true final end, in view of Christian revelation. Thus, de Lubac argues that Aquinas certainly saw that being may reach its final end or goal according to the order of its nature. But Aquinas also holds that humanity possesses a natural desire for the vision of God which belongs only to his essence: 'the end on account of which he is a rational creature surpasses the faculty of nature itself… Man was made in order to see God for God made the rational creature so that he might share his likeness, which consists in his vision'.38 And further: 'every intellect naturally desires the vision of the divine substance'.39 Accordingly, the final end of humanity is beyond the grasp of our nature even though nature desires it, and it is only divine grace which may raise nature in order to allow it the vision of God. Humanity thus has a paradoxical destiny which exceeds the powers of human nature, and requires grace to complete nature.40 De Lubac takes particular aim at the Dominican theologian, Cajetan (1469–1534), for bringing to theology the philosophical importation of the state of 'pure nature'. Under this theory, in the realm of nature, the only natural desire that humanity may have is one that is commensurate with our natures, and thus our final end in this life may be attained by natural fulfilment by means of philosophical speculation and the ethical life. And our second final supernatural end may only be attained by the interruption of divine grace, which breaks the consistency of nature. Cajetan, de Lubac says, does not simply hold the separation of the two orders of nature and grace, but also imports the separation into his interpretation of Aquinas.41 Specifically, the pure nature theory is applied in order to follow Aristotle's principle that nature cannot do anything in vain, and therefore it may not have a desire or aspiration which it cannot achieve by its own means. Accordingly, if indeed the human person has a desire for God, it is impossible for it to be natural: it must be superadded to nature by an external act of God's power and God's will. It follows that human nature is therefore completely self-sufficient, and any desire for God (and so for the beatific vision) must be worked by God in a way that displaces and replaced the order of nature. As such, for Cajetan, if there is to be any 'natural' desire for God it must comprise two stages: first, the natural fulfilment of human nature via pure nature theory; and secondly, by 'obediential potency', through which the divine breaks into and disrupts human nature.42 And under the theory of pure nature, the doctrine of original sin is forgotten, as it is possible to be completely at peace without grace.43 Accordingly, the human person is closed within his or her nature, and has no capacity for the infinite: there is no higher vocation nor an orientation to union with the divine. As such, there comes into being an 'order' of pure nature which takes the place of the explanation of the cosmos with reference to the transcendent, and ignores the historical reality of redemption history and the fact of Christ. Accordingly, theology becomes a superstructure built above and around a self-sufficient philosophy of pure nature. If there is in our nature a desire to see God, this can only be because God desires for us this final end, which consists in seeing him. It is because, willing it and not ceasing to will it, he places the desire in our nature, and never ceases to do so. This means that this desire is nothing other than his call… This desire is in us, yes, but is it not of us, since it is only satisfied in our mortification. Or rather, it is so much in us that it is ourselves, but it is we who do not belong to ourselves: non sumus nostri.44 As such, de Lubac recovers for the whole of theology a basic principle occluded since the Middle Ages: the doctrine of Christian incarnation and redemption entails that all things are made new in Christ, and if all humanity is called to salvation, divine grace is at work in each of them. The doctrine of creation holds that the cosmos was made in view of recapitulation of all things in Christ, and all humanity with it. The human person desires this beatific vision, and this natural orientation is a constituent part of our natures. As de Lubac concludes: 'this desire is nothing other than his call'.45 This recovered theological anthropology has profound implications for the doctrine of original sin, not least because the peccatum originale originatum element of the synthesis is now shown not to hold in the way that it once did: even though humanity labours under the suffering of original sin, our natures maintain a capacity for the divine, which is an ontological position. This is illustrated by the fate of the principle of limbo for theology, having recently been held not to constitute a definitive truth of the faith.46 The theory of limbo was understood historically to contemplate a state in which the souls of infants who die unbaptised, and thus in original sin, exist: they are denied the beatific vision, but do not merit punishment on account of their lack of reason and guilt at their deaths. Yet de Lubac's theological anthropology must entail that even infants who are unbaptised have the capacity for and are called to the beatific vision; the fact that each did not have the opportunity to desire and seek God in this life cannot require that they are eternally damned. It is very difficult to maintain that if each soul possesses a natural desire to see God, then the death of unbaptised infants would cause the eternal frustration of their desires first implanted by God. It is for this reason that that the Church recommends that we may hope that all unbaptised infants might be saved.47 In view of these concrete consequences, we are able to see the powerful theological change wrought by de Lubac's intervention: by calling into question the legitimacy of the regnant theological synthesis, including the extent of the import of Aristotelian reasoning, he also called into question the theological methodology. The starting point for consideration of the question of original sin was no longer an extended scholastic metaphysics of evil, but rather the economy of creation and redemption in Christ. The context of revelation, and not the doctrine of evil, sets the context in which theological reflection on original sin and its consequences takes place. It is this context of creation and redemption which allows us to recognise the significance of the tradition, which long held that the human person is naturally oriented to the beatific vision. If all people are oriented to see God, even after the fall, then the consequences of original sin are met face-to-face with restorative hope, the inherent goodness of creation, and the ever-transcending and attractive light of Christian revelation.