The John Paul II Institute cordially invites you to join us for a conference on “Nature, Grace, and Culture: Henri de Lubac and the Drama of Contemporary Atheism” on February 27-28, 2026.

Theme

The central mystery of Christianity is the Incarnation of the Son as a revelation of the triune God. And “the Incarnation of God the Son signifies the taking up into unity with God not only of human nature, but in this human nature, in a sense, of everything that is ‘flesh’: the whole of humanity, the entire visible and material world” (Dominum et Vivificantem, 50). By assuming human nature and going to the end of love (cf. Jn 13:1), the Logos, in the words of Maximus the Confessor, “established himself as the innermost depth of the Father’s goodness while also displaying in himself the very goal for which his creatures manifestly received the beginning of their existence.” The ground and pattern for the original integrity and ultimate destiny of human nature (and creation as a whole) is the hypostatic union of God and man in Christ. The Second Vatican Council placed this ancient teaching regarding Christ as revealing the truth of God and man as the centerpiece of the Church’s dialogue with the modern world: “Christ the Lord, Christ the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his high calling” (Gaudium et spes, 22). In particular, the mystery of the Incarnation undergirds the Council’s teaching on the universal call to holiness and the specific vocation of the laity within the life and mission of the Church: “For God has willed to gather all that is natural and all that is supernatural into a single whole in Christ ‘so that in everything he would have the primacy’ (Col. 1:18)” (Apostolicam Actuositatem, 7).

Both before and after the Second Vatican Council, the debate concerning nature and grace has been a flashpoint for Catholic theology. What was the basic thesis of Henri de Lubac’s Surnaturel (1946) and why did the book ignite such an intense controversy in the context of neo-scholastic theology? What is the current state of the question regarding Thomas Aquinas and Henri de Lubac on the natural desire to see God? How does the figure of Christ disclose both the unity and the difference between nature and grace? Finally, how does the sense of nature and grace inform the Church’s missionary task in response to the contemporary eclipse of God and the challenge of “practical atheism” (Pope Leo XIV)? The aim of the conference is to explore these questions in the context of (i.) renewed interest in (and criticism of) Henri de Lubac’s theology of nature and grace; and (ii.) the fundamental teaching of Gaudium et spes that Jesus Christ is “the key, the center, and the purpose (finem) of the whole of history.”

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