In The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural, John Milbank lays out the context and content of the controversy surrounding Henri de Lubac’s discussion of nature and grace. His fundamental thesis is that all humans by nature are oriented towards the supernatural, that is God. All humans are designed to find fulfillment only in the beatific vision. This means, by nature, all people have a desire for transcendence. Indeed, transcending one’s own self (toward God) is the only way one’s own nature can be fulfilled. However, humans by nature do not have the means to reach the fulfillment they are oriented towards by nature. To actually transcend themselves in the vision of God, humans are in need of grace, divine aid. This grace, however, is not extrinsic nor is it a miracle. It is not something added to human nature, it completes human nature. Nevertheless, each person finds within itself the “natural movement towards an end” that, indeed, is not “capable of realization out of its own resources.” Milbank sees this understanding of the supernatural as ontologically revisionary. He refers to this as a “non-ontology” where the very “beingness of finite being” is oriented toward transcendence. Thus human being-ness is “suspended” in the middle between nature and grace, finitude and infinitude, depravity and deification. Milbank points to four components which flesh out this thesis: “spirit always oriented to grace, gift without contrast, the cosmos as lured by grace through humanity…and the link of grace with art.”

 

    Spirit as always Oriented toward Grace

 

    The first dimension of de Lubac’s understanding of the supernatural, briefly mentioned above, is that spirit is always oriented toward grace. In other words, spirit and grace are inseparable. Christianity introduced a new concept of the word spirit, which indicated “the deepest part of the human being that retains a profound ontological kinship with the divine origin.” This was associated with a unique Christian use of the term supernatural, not simply to refer to a realm above the natural, but to speak of a divine invasion into the cosmos as well as the raising of humanity. This raising or elevation was termed deification in the East and grace in the West. Both referred to an “ontological transformation into as close a likeness with God” that is possible without merging the division between creator and creation.

        Because all things have their origin in God, there is a universal “drawing back towards God.” Therefore, all things only have their being in longing for God, according to their own manner or mode of being. For humans, this means intellectually and volitionally. Thus de Lubac maintained (in accordance with his reading of Aquinas) that all human beings innately desire the beatific vision, by virtue of a “deep ontological thrust,” “an ineradicable mystical bias.” “Spiritual beings in their deepest identity are lured to unity with God – and even in some sense already possess this unity.” Their constitution as spirit is characterized by this thirst for self-transcendence. “Desire for the supernatural is spirit, and spirit is the desire for the supernatural.” This means that it is impossible to speak of human nature without referring to God. The entirety of the “diversity and restlessness of human culture” can and must be spoken of in terms of a longing for the supernatural.

        This is in contrast to a doctrine of ‘pure nature’ which maintained at least the possibility that God could create beings without a destiny in the beatific vision. This would supposedly preserve the gratuity of grace because it was a free extrinsic offering which God was in no way obligated to supply.

 

 

    Gift without Contrast

 

     De Lubac establishes that all humans have a natural longing for God. He also maintains that this desire is not already grace. If that were the case, it would not actually be a part of human nature. However, if the nature of humans demands the beatific vision in actuality, not merely in possibility, then there cannot be any gratuitousness to grace. He wants to maintain a “suspended middle” between the ideas that there can be a pure nature which does not have its fulfillment in the beatific vision and that God does not freely grant creatures grace. He does this with the concept of “gift without contrast.”

        He identifies three different forms of “gift.” The first gift is “independent existence,” that is creation. The second gift is “free and deified existence,” that is, grace. The third gift he identifies is the link that joins the two, the “natural desire of the supernatural.” This third gift cannot simply be identified as one of the first two, it must remain “suspended” in the middle. While de Lubac was charged with the accusation that the natural desire for the supernatural nullifies the gratuitousness of grace (for it is somehow obligated by virtue of nature), he insists that the concept of gift does not need to be contrasted to the concepts of obligation or inherence. This is because God and the creatures do not belong to the same “ontic realm.” Because the creature is a creature, it does not receive creation as a gift, “it is itself this gift.” Likewise, grace does not need to be contrasted to a pure nature without grace. The concept of pure nature “in fact ruins the articulation of the divine gratuity.” This is because, if grace is something entirely extrinsic, either the individual must contribute something to its reception (Pelagianism) or an external force must circumvent the will by compulsion (Lutheranism). Both seem to undermine the concept of gift. Rather, it is only when the gift of grace is considered without contrast to creation or nature that its gratuitousness is preserved. Grace is a gift to a gift, the free offering of deification that super-excedes the created being whose being itself is a gift.

 

    The Orientation of the Cosmos

 

        Milbank describes the third aspect of de Lubac’s view of the supernatural in slightly various ways: as “the orientation of the cosmos as such to the supernatural,” the entire cosmos as drawn through humanity to beatitude, or the Cosmos as lured by grace through humanity. De Lubac understands the latent mystical tendency, the suspended and frustrated non-ontological state of humans, to also relate to the entire cosmos. Just as all things find their origin in God, so also “the entire creation aspires to return to God and acknowledge God.” Not only spirit or spiritual existence as such has a desire for God, all created being does. Every corner of the protean creation, each incarnation of earth’s multifarious existence, yearns as well for the Divine.

        In that the whole creation has, in its own right a desire for God, it can only have its fulfillment microcosmically in humans. This demonstrates that grace does not exist because of creation. On the contrary, creation is brought into existence so that humanity, “as the apex and microcosmic summation of created glory,” can be gifted with deification.

 

    Grace and Art

 

    The final aspect of Milbank’s description of de Lubac’s understanding of the supernatural is the analogy between grace and art. One could consider grace “the art of spirit-governing.” If such is the case, we can draw an analogy illustrating the relationship between nature and grace. For example, a person can take wood and realize its potential by fashioning it into a table. However, that wood never could become a table by itself. In some sense, it is in the nature of the wood to fulfill its potential as a table but it is by no means in the nature of the wood to become a table in itself. Rather, the form of “tableness” must be gifted in a manner that is both surprising and fulfilling. In a similar manner, in grace “we are elevated (with the angels) by a divine art that does not abolish but fulfills our nature, though in a contingent, unexpected way.”

 

    The Suspended Middle and Radical Orthodoxy

 

    De Lubac’s “suspended middle” seeks to explain that all humanity, and even the entirety of the cosmos, is oriented towards God. Milbank denies that de Lubac ever truly assented to the concept of pure nature. Humans remain suspended between nature and grace, between the natural and supernatural, between “humanist autonomy” and “sheer external gratuity.” What this means, specifically for Radical Orthodoxy, is that all of reality can be described and explained in reference to God. It was the collapse of the “suspended middle” and the acceptance of “pure nature” that permitted for “the being of human nature…[to] be specified without reference to God.” De Lubac’s theology and, subsequently, Radical Orthodoxy has no room ontologically for the medieval invention of the realm of the secular. It resists the notion that there exists “an autonomous natural sphere comprising all of human activity outside the order of salvation.”

 

    Rather, the ideology that stems from Milbank’s interpretation of de Lubac’s suspended middle occupies a place suspended between a “pious” Christianity without humanism and secular humanism. “Christianity is a humanism, else it is misunderstood. On the other hand, secular humanism is the absolute antithesis of the Gospel.” Thus the task of the Christian is to properly interpret the inherent longing for God that “generates the diversity and restlessness of human culture.” They set themselves to the task of re-interpreting and re-reading the total sum of reality, every area and dimension of life, in light of the goal to which all humanity is oriented. Thus Christianity is the proper, and indeed only, realm to discuss the multifarious issues of life. De Lubac’s non-ontology is the ontological justification for such an approach.

The discourse produced by such an endeavor also occupies a suspended middle, this time between philosophy and theology. De Lubac’s non-ontology crosses the boundaries between these two disciplines, indeed “fracturing their respective autonomies.” “This for de Lubac is a sign not of a burgeoning humanist naturalism but rather of a return to the patristic understanding of philosophy as ‘Christian’ and an adoption of a more radical barrier against a ‘pure nature’ which is the actual – scholastic! – source of a debased autonomous humanism.”

 

    Towards the end of The Suspended Middle, Milbank is baffled as to why in light of de Lubac’s understanding of the supernatural, he subsequently held a dualistic understanding of the Church, that split between a passive laity and an active clergy. Milbank wants to overcome the notion that the spiritual purpose of the laity is to simply passively receive the ministry of the clergy. Rather than seeing an active-passive hierarchy of clergy-laity, the clergy should also be seen as passive in a “receptive giving birth again to Christ in the Eucharist,” which subsequently flows forth as the Body of Christ, the Church. Hence the church rises above mere passive status and is exalted as the Bride of Christ to have “an equal deified response” to Christ. “The elevated laity should therefore not become quasi-clerical, but exercise their own governing roles in the Church while remaining in their diverse lay character, grounded in the material, economic, political, military and artistic operations.” In doing so, the church is able to overcome its dualistic boundary that restricts it from giving voice and shape in all areas of culture, life and society.