Already in St. Bonaventure's Collationes in Hexaemeron there is a rudimentary theory of doctrinal development that confronts the historical problematic encountered most forcefully in modernity. This is the result of Bonaventure's urgent need to respond to the difficulties of Joachimism wherein Francis of Assisi is believed to have ushered in the new age of the Holy Spirit disassociated from the Bible, sacraments, and the institutional Church. In response Bonaventure elucidates an understanding of divine revelation in which new historical epochs allow the Church through the wise and holy mystic-contemplative to read more deeply of the word of God so as to gain a deeper insight into what has already been given in Jesus Christ. In this way the newness of Francis is preserved by grounding his radical way of life in continuity with the once-for-all revelation of God and the Church. In so doing Bonaventure anticipates the particularly modern historical problematic and paves a way forward that preserves the integrity of revelation centuries before the likes of John Henry Newman, Yves M-J Congar, and others.

This paper considers two twentieth-century heresiological critiques of G. W. F. Hegel. That Henri de Lubac and Sergius Bulgakov should both worry at Hegel's ‘heresy’ is hardly surprising. More surprising, however, is how and that each charges Hegel with a different heresy. Though de Lubac's heresiological critique has proven more influential, I commend Bulgakov's. The paper concludes by querying the very strategy of assaying philosophers like Hegel heresiologically.

A sacramental ontology, informed by a ressourcement of the Church Fathers, informs the theology of the mid-twentieth-century Catholic movement of nouvelle théologie. Rejecting the neo-Thomist separation between nature and the supernatural, the nouvelle theologians focused on the sacramental presence of supernatural grace in natural realities. To be sure, differences among these ressourcement theologians cannot be denied: de Lubac and Bouillard emphasized the a-scending character of human participation in divine grace, while Balthasar and Chenu stressed the de-scent of the Incarnation into the created realities of time and space. Nonetheless, the four theologians shared a deep appreciation for the Greek Fathers, which enabled them to counter the neo-scholastic separation between nature and the supernatural with a sacramental ontology.

Cardinal Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) considered Buddhism to be, after Christianity, the greatest spiritual fact of history. His groundbreaking studies of it have nevertheless received little previous scholarly attention. De Lubac focuses on Amidism, also known as Pure Land Buddhism, because he regards this as the form of Buddhism possessing greatest affinity with Christian faith, particularly in its conceptions of charity and divine personality. Religion cannot be considered in isolation from culture, however. De Lubac argues that Christian-Buddhist encounter is, wherever it occurs, necessarily also an encounter between Western culture and Buddhism, in the course of which boundaries between religions and cultures are continually defined, dissolved and redefined, especially in the understanding of human personhood. He nevertheless defends the universality of faith in Christ, the Word made flesh, in whom the desire of nature for God characteristic of the whole of humanity is fully expressed and realized.

This essay argues that for Henri de Lubac, a sacramental ontology provides the link between a Eucharistically based ecclesiology and the issue of the relationship between nature and the supernatural. For de Lubac it is the sacramental order of reality that draws humanity to a deeper participation in the divine life. Maurice Blondel's substitution of Tradition for the dilemma between extrinsicism and historicism shapes de Lubac's sacramental ontology. The latter's concern for the social character of the Church and his opposition to an individualist ecclesiology are key to his understanding of the relationship between the supernatural and the Eucharistic character of the Church. Arguing that Eucharist and Church are mutually constituting, de Lubac wants to counter both extrinsicist and historicist approaches to the Church. For de Lubac, the Eucharist provides an avenue for the mutual interpenetration of nature and the supernatural, thereby overcoming the dualism between extrinsicism and historicism. It is through the sacramental means of Christ, the Church, and the Eucharist, that God is present in the world. This presence means for de Lubac neither an acceptance of the State on its own terms nor an exaggerated spiritualist critique of Constantinianism.