Subhasis Chattopadhyay Ph.D.

The Jesuit Bifurcation and the Crisis of Modernity

The intellectual history of twentieth-century Roman Catholicism is, in many respects, a tale of two Jesuits. Henri de Lubac and Karl Rahner, both titans of the Society of Jesus, emerged from the smouldering ruins of the neo-scholastic consensus to reshape the theological landscape of the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar Church. Their convergence was, at first glance, total: both were men of the Ressourcement, seeking to liberate the dynamic power of the Christian mystery from the rigid, propositional conceptualism of the manualist tradition. Both faced ecclesiastical censure in the years preceding the Council, only to be rehabilitated as its primary architects. Both sought to answer the quintessential modern question: how does the transcendent God communicate Himself to a history that seems increasingly closed to the divine?

However, beneath this surface unity lies a profound divergence, a bifurcation rooted in their distinct philosophical appropriations of the modern turn to the subject; mediated through Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Edith Stein. This anxiety of influence was refracted through their unique internalizations of the Ignatian charism. Karl Rahner, responding to the Kantian critique and the existentialist challenge, undertook a “transcendental turn,” locating the condition for the possibility of revelation within the ontological structures of human subjectivity itself.His theology sought to make the “Hearer of the Word” intelligible to the modern secular mind by demonstrating that the human person is always already oriented toward the Holy Mystery. Henri de Lubac, conversely, deeply skeptical of the immanentist tendencies he detected in modern idealism and “atheistic humanism,” pursued a “hermeneutics of paradox”. He retrieved a Patristic social ontology that emphasized the historical, concrete, and strictly supernatural character of the encounter with God; an encounter that fulfills human dynamism precisely by disrupting it.

This divergence has had staggering, and largely asymmetrical, consequences for the reception of their thought in the Global South, particularly in the Indian subcontinent. In the post-colonial struggle for an authentic Indian Christian identity, Karl Rahner’s theology became the dominant grammar. His concept of the “Anonymous Christian” provided the theological scaffolding for a positive valuation of Hinduism and a foundation for interreligious dialogue that validated the “pre-thematic” grace operative in non-Christian traditions. In contrast, Henri de Lubac has been largely neglected in the Indian academy, his work frequently mischaracterized as Eurocentric, conservative, or preoccupied with intra-ecclesial dogmatics irrelevant to the massive reality of poverty that defined and continues to define the Indian context.

Yet, as we stand on the threshold of 2026, the theological landscape of India is shifting. The early optimism of the post-independence era has given way to the complex realities of a hyper-materialist, digitized, and socially fragmented India; a society marked by the rise of a vast precariat and the commodification of religious identity. In this new Zeitgeist, the limitations of the Rahnerian paradigm are becoming increasingly visible. The universalism of the “transcendental subject” risks dissolving the specific “thick” identities of the oppressed into a vague abstraction, while the “Anonymous Christian” thesis faces criticism for its colonial implications. These colonial overtones have been dealt with by this author repeatedly here and in other online and offline publications.

As will be seen, the neglect of Henri de Lubac has impoverished Indian Catholic theology, depriving it of a critical resource for addressing the “crisis of the concrete” that characterizes the twenty-first century. By mapping the convergence and divergence of these two thinkers—specifically their Ignatian formation, their engagement with phenomenology, and their response to the problem of evil—we can uncover the latent potential of de Lubac’s “social mysticism.” His emphasis on the Corpus Mysticum as a counter-politics to atomization, his rigorous method of “comparative theology” exemplified in his study of Pure Land Buddhism, and his resistance to the absorption of the “supernatural” into the “natural” offer a potent, untapped framework for rejuvenating Hindu-Catholic dialogue and responding to the spiritual hunger of a materialist age.

The Ignatian Matrix: Formation and the “Mysticism of Service”

To understand the mature theological edifices of Rahner and de Lubac, one must first excavate their spiritual foundations in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola. It is a truism that Jesuit theology is “kneeling theology,” born of prayer, but the specific posture of that prayer differed radically between the German and the French (Jesuit) provinces.

The Rahnerian Existential: Indifference as Transcendence

For Karl Rahner, the Ignatian charism was filtered through a philosophical lens that sought to bridge the chasm between scholastic metaphysics and the lived experience of the modern subject. Rahner interpreted the Ignatian “indifference”—the spiritual freedom from disordered attachments necessary to elect God’s will—as a phenomenological unveiling of the human person’s “transcendental” structure. In his early work, heavily influenced by his brother Hugo Rahner’s historical studies, Karl Rahner began to articulate a “mysticism of everyday life” that universalized the Ignatian experience.

The “Application of the Senses,” a key method in the Exercises where the retreatant uses sight, hearing, and smell to enter the Gospel scene, became for Rahner the prototype of the “spiritual senses.” However, he transposed this into an ontological key. The “motion” of the Spirit (consolation and desolation) was not just a pious emotion but the felt resonance of the Vorgriff—the pre-thematic, unthematic reach of the human spirit toward the infinite horizon of Being.For Rahner, Ignatius discovered experientially what Heidegger described philosophically: the human person is a being whose very nature is to be “open” to the Mystery.

This reading had profound theological consequences. It meant that the “supernatural existential”—the offer of grace—was not an extrinsic addition to human nature (as the neo-scholastic “pure nature” theory implied) but a constitutive element of human existence itself. One did not need to be explicitly Christian or perform the Exercises to experience this dynamic; one simply had to accept one’s own self-transcendence in freedom. The Jesuit vocation was thus to help others thematize this “anonymous” grace that was already present in the depths of their subjectivity. This interpretation laid the groundwork for Rahner’s later inclusivism: if the “Ignatian” experience of God is the experience of the structure of human consciousness, then every human being is potentially a “mystic” in the everyday.

The Lubacian Paradox: The Church as the Milieu of the Exercises

Henri de Lubac’s engagement with Ignatian spirituality was equally intense but moved in a different direction. If Rahner moved from the Exercises to the Subject, de Lubac moved from the Exercises to the Object: specifically, the Corpus Mysticum of the Church and the historical reality of Christ. De Lubac, formed in the French Jesuit tradition which was wrestling with the legacy of Modernism and the rise of Marxism, saw in Ignatius a corrective to the “disincarnate” spirituality of his time.

For de Lubac, Ignatian “indifference” was not primarily a transcendental openness to “Being” but a specific, kenotic imitation of the kenosis of Christ. It was the “folly of the Cross.” De Lubac emphasized the “social aspects of dogma,” reading the Exercises not as a flight of the alone to the Alone, but as an ecclesial discipline. The “Rules for Thinking with the Church” (Sentire cum Ecclesia) were not an appendix to the Exercises but their hermeneutical key. The Jesuit does not seek a private mystical experience; he seeks to align his will with the “mind of the Church,” which is the mind of Christ extended in history.

De Lubac’s reading was deeply informed by his ressourcement of the Fathers, particularly Origen and Augustine. He saw the “mysticism of service” in Ignatius as a retrieval of the Patristic unity between action and contemplation. Crucially, de Lubac used the Exercises to critique the notion of “pure nature.” Just as the retreatant in the “Foundation” realizes that they are created for God and are restless until they rest in Him, de Lubac argues that there is no “natural end” for humanity that satisfies the human spirit. The “natural desire for the supernatural” is the driving engine of the Exercises. Unlike Rahner, who inscribed this desire into the ontological structure of the subject, de Lubac maintained it as a “suspended middle”; a paradox where the human spirit has a desire it cannot fulfill, a void that only the free, historical gift of revelation can fill. The Exercises were the dramatic enactment of this paradox, preventing the “naturalization” of grace.

The Phenomenological Turn: Divergent Appropriations of the Modern

The theological divergence between Rahner and de Lubac is unintelligible without mapping their engagement with the “phenomenological movement”; the dominant philosophical revolution of the early twentieth century. Both men sought to move beyond the abstract conceptualism of neo-scholasticism by turning to “experience,” but they chose different philosophical guides and drew radically different conclusions.

Karl Rahner: Heidegger and the Transcendental Deduction

Rahner’s attendance at Martin Heidegger’s seminars in Freiburg (1934–1936) is the pivotal event in his intellectual biography. Rahner sought to synthesize the Thomistic epistemology of conversio ad phantasma (the intellect turning to sensory images) with Heidegger’s existential analytic of Dasein. He argued that Thomas Aquinas, properly understood, was already an existentialist.

Rahner appropriated the phenomenological method of “reduction” but inverted its trajectory. While Husserl bracketed existence to intuit the essence, Rahner performed a “transcendental reduction.” He traced specific, categorical acts of knowing (e.g., “I know this tree”) back to their a priori condition of possibility: the “pre-apprehension” (Vorgriff) of Infinite Being. This was his “Copernican Revolution.” It shifted the locus of theology from the object known (Dogma) to the knowing subject (Anthropology).

This appropriation of Heidegger allowed Rahner to articulate the “Hearer of the Word” (Hörer des Wortes). The human person is not a static substance but a dynamic “question” addressed to God. Revelation, therefore, is not an alien information download but the answer to the question that man is. This philosophical move was brilliant but risky. It tended to formalize the content of revelation. If the human subject is structurally constituted by the reception of God’s self-communication, then the specific, historical events of the Incarnation and the Cross risk becoming merely the “categorial” expressions of a “transcendental” reality that is always already present. The “scandal of particularity” central to the biblical narrative, is softened into a universal anthropology.

 

Henri de Lubac: The Critique of Atheistic Humanism and the “Concrete Universal”

 Henri de Lubac’s relationship with phenomenology was more adversarial, yet arguably more faithful to the “realist” impulse of the early movement. He was deeply critical of Heidegger, whom he viewed as fostering a “neo-gnosticism” that trapped humanity in a closed horizon of finitude, leading ultimately to “atheistic humanism”. De Lubac saw in the Heideggerian project a “forgetfulness of God” that was far more dangerous than simple atheism because it mimicked religious language while evacuating it of its transcendent referent.

Instead of Heidegger, de Lubac found resources in the earlier phenomenology of Edith Stein and the embodied realism of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, though he read them through a distinctively theological lens.

The Influence of Edith Stein: Empathy and the Eternal Feminine

While Rahner looked to the “existential,” de Lubac looked to the “personal.” The influence of Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross), Husserl’s assistant and a convert from Judaism, is a critical, often overlooked, thread in de Lubac’s thought. Stein’s major work, Finite and Eternal Being (Endliches und ewiges Sein), provided a philosophical grammar that paralleled de Lubac’s own retrieval of Aquinas.

Stein used the phenomenological method to analyze “empathy” (Einfühlung) or, the act of perceiving the other not as an object but as another subject. This shattered the solipsism of the Cartesian (and arguably, the Heideggerian) ego. De Lubac integrated this insight into his ecclesiology: the human person is not a monad but is constituted by relations. There is no “I” without a “Thou,” and ultimately, no “I” without the Divine “Thou.” One need not even mention Martin Buber here since Buber’s primacy is so obvious to anyone reading this.

Furthermore, de Lubac resonated with Stein’s exploration of the “Eternal Feminine” and the specific vocation of woman, a theme he also found in Gertrud von Le Fort. Unlike Rahner’s anthropology, which often centered on the active, masculine “grasping” (Begreifen) of the intellect, de Lubac emphasized the Marian, receptive capacity of the creature; the capax dei. For de Lubac, as for Stein, the highest mode of activity is receptivity (active surrender). This “feminine” disposition is the condition for genuine agency. This philosophical anthropology underpinned de Lubac’s resistance to the “virile” Prometheanism of Marxism and Nietzsche, which he dissected in The Drama of Atheistic Humanism.

Merleau-Ponty and the Ambiguity of History

De Lubac also engaged with Maurice Merleau-Ponty, particularly his Phenomenology of Perception. He appreciated Merleau-Ponty’s critique of “intellectualism”; the view of the mind as a disembodied spectator. De Lubac agreed that we are “condemned to meaning” and that we are embodied subjects rooted in history. However, he turned Merleau-Ponty’s atheism against itself.

Where Merleau-Ponty saw the ambiguity of history as proof of the absence of an Absolute, de Lubac saw it as the sign of the “suspended middle.” The very fact that human history is never satisfied, never “closed,” points to a destiny that transcends history. De Lubac used phenomenological description to show that the “closed circle” of immanence is an illusion. The “flesh” of the world is not a barrier to God but the very milieu of the Incarnation. However, unlike Rahner, de Lubac insisted that this meaning is not guaranteed by the structure of consciousness; it is a gift that breaks in from the outside (revelation) to illuminate the inside.

The Divergence on the Problem of Evil

The philosophical divergence between Rahner and de Lubac crystallized most sharply in their respective theodicies, that is their response to the problem of evil.

For Rahner, shaped by the evolutionary perspective of Teilhard de Chardin and the existential acceptance of finitude, the problem of evil was ultimately subsumed under the “incomprehensibility of God”. Evil and suffering were viewed as the “dark side” of creaturely freedom and the necessary friction of a material cosmos evolving toward spirit. Rahner’s response was a “mysticism of surrender”: the believer must entrust themselves to the Absolute Mystery which encompasses both light and darkness. While deeply pastoral, critics (including J.B. Metz) argued that this approach risked a “monism of grace,” where the specific, diabolical reality of evil is dissolved into a dialectical moment of God’s self-communication. If everything is “grace” (the supernatural existential), then the “No” of evil becomes difficult to distinguish ontologically from the “Yes” of creation.

 

On the other hand, De Lubac, informed by his experience of the “spiritual resistance” against Nazism and his reading of Dostoevsky, viewed evil not as a metaphysical necessity but as a historical rupture. Evil is the “dissociation” of the Corpus Mysticum; the fragmentation of the unity of mankind. Drawing on Augustine’s City of God, de Lubac argued that when humanity attempts to organize itself without God (the project of atheistic humanism), it does not become “free”; it creates a Babel that collapses into tyranny.

Evil, for de Lubac, is the refusal of the “paradox” of dependence. It is the attempt to be “like God” without God. His response was not merely an individual surrender to Mystery but a call to the “social reconstruction” of humanity through the Church. The Eucharist is the “antidote” to evil because it reconstitutes the scattered members of the human race into a single Body. De Lubac’s theodicy is thus ecclesiological and historical: evil is a tear in the fabric of the world that must be repaired by the “concrete universal” of Christ’s charity, not just accepted as a transcendental condition.

The Indian Reception: The Hegemony of the Anonymous Christian

The reception of these two theological giants in India offers a stark illustration of how “ideas have consequences” in specific geopolitical contexts. In the post-independence Indian Church, striving to shed its colonial skin, Karl Rahner became the omnipresent “Doctor,” while Henri de Lubac remained a marginal figure.

The “Anonymous” Liberator: Why India Chose Rahner

Following India’s independence in 1947, Indian Christian theology faced a dual imperative: to decolonize its structures from European ecclesiastical tutelage and to articulate a positive, inclusive relationship with the immense reality of Hinduism. The traditional missionary theology of “displacement” (Christianity must replace Hinduism) or “fulfillment” (Hinduism is merely a preparation for the Gospel) was seen as arrogant and colonial.

Into this vacuum stepped Karl Rahner with his concept of the ‘Anonymous Christian.’ This theory, derived from his transcendental anthropology, posited that non-Christians who live according to the dictates of their conscience are, in fact, responding to the grace of Christ, even if they do not know Him thematically. They are “Christians without the name.”

For Indian theologians like Michael Amaladoss, George Soares-Prabhu, and Felix Wilfred, this was a revolutionary tool. It allowed them to validate the Vedas, Upanishads, and the Bhakti tradition not as “paganism” but as authentic vehicles of salvation within the Christian economy. It provided a dogmatically sound way to say “Yes” to Indian culture.

Moreover, Rahner’s later “political theology” (mediated through J.B. Metz) resonated with the Indian context of poverty and caste oppression. Sebastian Kappen, a Jesuit theologian influenced by both Rahner and Marx, developed a “Counter-Cultural Christology”. Kappen utilized Rahner’s emphasis on the human subject’s freedom to argue that the “Jesuan” experience was one of radical freedom from religious structures—a critique applied to both the caste system and the institutional Catholic Church. In this synthesis, the “transcendental experience” was re-read as the experience of solidarity with the poor (Dalits and tribals). Rahner’s “turn to the subject” became the “turn to the subaltern”.

The Critique: The “Anonymous” Colony

However, the hegemony of Rahner in India has not gone unchallenged. A newer generation of theologians, utilizing post-colonial theory, has identified a subtle form of imperialism in the “Anonymous Christian” thesis.

Felix Wilfred has been a vocal critic, arguing that Rahner’s concept is ultimately “inclusivist” in a way that disrespects the “otherness” of the other. To call a Hindu, like this author, an ‘Anonymous Christian’ is to impose a Christian identity upon them without their consent. It is a form of theological annexation. It suggests that the Hindu experience is not valid in itself but only insofar as it can be translated into Christian categories. Wilfred argues that Rahner’s “transcendental subject” is a universalized abstraction of the modern European bourgeois male, which is then imposed on the Asian context, dissolving the specific, “thick” cultural identities of the Indian people.

The Neglect of De Lubac: A Missed Encounter

While Rahner reigned supreme, Henri de Lubac was largely ignored in Indian seminaries.²⁵ Several factors contributed to this “great neglect”:

1.     The “Conservative” Label: De Lubac was associated with the “Communio” school (along with Balthasar and Ratzinger), which was perceived in Indian liberationist circles as Eurocentric, restorative, and hostile to the social apostolate.

2.     The “Supernatural” Misunderstanding: De Lubac’s complex thesis in Surnaturel—that there is no “pure nature”—was often misread in India as a denial of the autonomy of the secular world. For theologians engaged in nation-building and secular development, a theology that seemed to “supernaturalize” everything appeared reactionary.

3.     The Patristic Barrier: De Lubac’s method of Ressourcement focused on the Greek and Latin Fathers. Indian theologians were busy trying to find “Indian Fathers” (like Sankara or Ramanuja) and felt that returning to Origen or Augustine was a step backward into colonial tutelage.

This neglect has been a strategic error. As the limitations of the Rahnerian paradigm become clear, it appears that de Lubac’s theology—with its emphasis on the social nature of the Church and the “concrete universal”—offers resources that are paradoxically more relevant to the contemporary Indian crisis.

 

What De Lubac Offers to Hindu-Catholic Dialogue: The Concrete Universal

While Rahner offers a theory for dialogue (inclusivism), de Lubac offers a method for encounter. Rahner dissolves the differences; de Lubac engages them.

The Concrete Universal vs. The Generic Transcendental

De Lubac was fiercely critical of the modern category of “religion” as a generic genus. He argued that “religion” does not exist; only specific, historical religious traditions exist. Rahner’s approach tends to look for the “common denominator” (the transcendental experience) behind the specific forms. De Lubac, by contrast, insisted on the “concrete universal.” This author in a Letter to the Editor elsewhere discusses de Lubac’s clear understanding between the differences of the Bhakti movement and Catholic Christianity. There is no unnecessary blurring of religious identities to force dialogue.

In his groundbreaking work on Pure Land Buddhism (Amidism), de Lubac demonstrated this method. He did not try to turn Amida Buddha into an “Anonymous Jesus.” Instead, he engaged in a rigorous historical and philological study of the texts (Honen, Shinran). He found structural parallels, such as the doctrine of tariki (other-power) vs. jiriki (self-power) that allowed for a profound comparison with the Christian doctrine of grace. He respected the difference of Buddhism, arguing that it was a coherent system that could not simply be absorbed into Christianity without remainder.

This Lubacian method is precisely what is needed for Hindu-Catholic dialogue. The Rahnerian approach often leads to a superficial syncretism where “Brahman” is simply equated with “God” and “Atman” with “Soul.” De Lubac’s method would demand a serious engagement with the specific texts of Advaita Vedanta or Vishishtadvaita, respecting their distinct ontological claims while placing them in tension with the Christian paradox of the Incarnation.

The Paradox and Advaita: The Suspended Middle

De Lubac’s theology of “Paradox”: holding together seemingly contradictory truths (God is absolutely distinct from the world, yet the world has no reality apart from Him), offers a unique bridge to the Hindu philosophy of Advaita (Non-Dualism).

Indian Christian monks like Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux) and Jules Monchanin (a close friend of de Lubac) struggled to reconcile the radical non-dualism of the Upanishads with the relational theism of Christianity. Rahner’s categories of “transcendence” often fail to capture the radicality of the Advaitic claim that the world is Maya (illusion/relative reality) and only Brahman is Real.

De Lubac’s rejection of “pure nature” resonates deeply here. For de Lubac, a “nature” that exists independently of God is a fiction; a theological Maya. The world is unintelligible without its supernatural ground. This mirrors the Vedantic insight. However, de Lubac protects the distinction (preventing pantheism) through the logic of the Incarnation. He offers a “Christian Non-Dualism” where the “Two” (God and Man) are not “One” in essence (monism) but are united in a “Unity of Distinction” that preserves the personal “Thou.” This offers a way to affirm the truth of Advaita (the nothingness of the finite apart from the Infinite) while saving the reality of the person and history.

Resistance to the Commodification of Religion

Finally, de Lubac’s critique of the “commodification” of the spiritual is vital for modern India. In the current “spiritual marketplace” of India, religion is often reduced to a consumer product (for wellness) or a political tool by warring religious zealots of all religions. Rahner’s focus on the individual’s private transcendental experience can unintentionally play into this privatization. De Lubac’s insistence on the objective, historical, and social nature of revelation serves as a bulwark against the co-optation of faith. He reminds the Indian Church that it is not just a collection of “anonymous” mystics, but a visible, public Body with a history that resists assimilation into the state or the market.

2026 and Beyond: Rejuvenating the Dialogue in a Materialist India

As we look toward the India of 2026, the context has shifted radically. The post-colonial struggle is over; the new struggle is against the dehumanizing forces of hyper-capitalism, digital surveillance, and the atomization of the “precariat.” In this materialist India, Rahner’s “turn to the subject” is insufficient because the subject is now being dissolved into data.

The Precariat and the Corpus Mysticum

The most powerful resource de Lubac offers for 2026 is his ecclesiology of the Corpus Mysticum. In his seminal work, de Lubac showed that in the early Church, the Eucharist was not an object to be looked at, but an action that made the Church: “The Eucharist makes the Church.”

In 2026 India, a vast class of the ‘precariat’  has emerged—gig workers, migrant laborers, the urban poor—who are stripped of traditional community supports and economic security.They are the victims of a “disincarnate” economy. A Rahnerian theology of “anonymous grace” offers them spiritual dignity but lacks a concrete social ontology.

De Lubac’s vision of the Church as a social body offers a radical counter-politics. It suggests that the resistance to global capitalism is not just individual conscience, but the creation of alternative communities of solidarity. The Corpus Mysticum is the anti-thesis of the “gig economy.” In the Eucharist, the “precariat” discovers a solidarity that is not based on contract or utility, but on substantial unity in Christ.This retrieves the “Social Catholicism” de Lubac championed—a socialism not of the State, but of the Sacrament. This in turn would force radical mystical Catholicism dialogue in silence with the mystical theophanies to be found in the various branches, not sects, of Hinduism. The telos of dialogue is nothing less than mysticism within Catholicism and ‘samadhi’ within Hinduism. Both, as de Lubac, would know, are not the same.

From Tolerance to Encounter: A New Ecumenism

Finally, de Lubac can rejuvenate interreligious dialogue by moving it from “tolerance” (which can be indifferent) to “encounter” (which implies risk). The “Anonymous Christian” model can lead to a passive tolerance: “You are fine where you are; you are already saved.” De Lubac’s model leads to a “drama”: “We are both involved in a history of salvation that makes demands on us.”

For the Hindu-Catholic dialogue in 2026, this means moving beyond the polite exchange of “values” to a shared confrontation with the materialist threats that face both religions. The “precariat” in India is multireligious. A Lubacian approach would seek to find how the “concrete universals” of Hindu Dharma (duty/cosmic order) and Catholic Communio can jointly resist the atomization of the market. It pushes for a dialogue of action rooted in deep theological particularity.

Conclusion

The dominance of Karl Rahner in Indian theology was a historical necessity; it provided the confidence for a local church to assert its identity. But the “transcendental” paradigm has reached a point of diminishing returns. It risks dissolving the distinctiveness of the Christian event and unintentionally colonizing the Hindu experience.

Henri de Lubac, the neglected partner, waits in the wings. His theology—steeped in the Fathers, obsessed with the paradox of the concrete, and fiercely protective of the social unity of mankind, offers the corrective needed for the next century. For an India grappling with the violence of abstraction, de Lubac’s insistence that “humanity is one” not by a vague concept, but by the concrete blood of the Corpus Mysticum, is a message of radical hope. The future of Indian theology may well depend on a “Return to the Center”: a return to the paradox of the Incarnate that de Lubac so faithfully guarded.

Note: The huge bibliography has been removed. The footnotes and the bibliography will be restored if this is ever published offline. If they were not removed, this essay would be unmanageable.

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The author dedicates this article to the late Fr. Horace Rosario SJ, a longtime editor of the Herald published from Kolkata and later, the Rector of St. Xavier’s College/Community, Park Street (in the 1990s). It was Fr. Horace’s great desire, that this author access the then huge private multi-floors’ library of the Jesuits  by actually living with the community there at that time. It was through nights sitting at that long gone library, all alone,  that I acquired a great love for Catholic theology. Thank you Frs. Horace, the two actual brothers; both the Cordeiro Fathers, and of course, Fr. Larry Abello.

Dr. Subhasis Chattopadhyay studied Patristics for his Ph. D. He is a Hindu who writes prolifically on Catholic theology, being in the Hindu ministry of dialogue with Catholicism. He is an ex-Judge of the Sahitya Akademi. He delivered the prestigious  de Nobili Endowment lecture in philosophy at the International Jesuit Centre for Philosophical Excellence, at Chennai in 2022.