John Millbank

The Suspended Middle : Henri De Lubac and the Debate Concerning the Supernatural John Millbank

The Suspended Middle shows how such a claim entails a 'non-ontology' suspended between rational philosophy and revealed theology, interweaving the two while denying them any pure autonomy from each other. As de Lubac's writings on the supernatural implicitly dismantled the reigning Catholic (and perhaps Protestant) assumptions about Christian intellectual reflection, he met with opposition and even papal censure. Milbank's sophisticated account of de Lubac delineates the French theologian's relations with other proponents of the nouvelle theologie, such as Hans Urs von Balthasar, and clarifies the subtle but crucial divisions within recent Roman Catholic theology.

The most substantial treatment in English of de Lubac's as yet untranslated Surnaturel and the subsequent debate, Milbank's "Suspended Middle" lays down an energetic challenge that every serious student of theology and Christian philosophy will want to engage