The philosophical anthropology of the twentieth-century French Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel has had a significant impact on modern and contemporary theology. However, Blondel's less well-known idea of tradition in the text History and Dogma remains to be adequately assessed by the English-speaking world. In order to appreciate Blondel's contribution to the idea of tradition in modern Catholicism and to discover how his thought remains a rich resource for contemporary theology, this essay traces the shifts in late-medieval theological discourse that reveal a gradual move toward conceptualizing tradition as a bureaucratic reality mediated through institutional and juridical means which comes to full expression during the modernist crisis in the Roman Catholic Church. Having situated Blondel's thought within the historical and theological development of the modern idea of tradition in Catholicism, the essay argues that Blondel offers an alternative account of tradition as ‘liturgical action,’ which vivifies Christ's sacramental presence in tradition and resists reducing tradition to a bureaucratic reality or a natural phenomenon.

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.