Mysticism, Ecclesiology and the Body of Christ – Certeau’s (Mis-) Reading of Corpus Mysticum and the Legacy of Henri de Lubac

This essay focuses on two key figures of the paradigm shift of contemporary Anglophone theology, namely on the founder of modern Ressourcement theology, Henri de Lubac SJ, and his disciple Michel de Certeau SJ, who (as a later disciple of Jacques Lacan) developed one of the first theologically profound responses to the challenges of post-modernity and the accompanying philosophical debates of post-structuralism (Derrida, Foucault, Lacan etc.). To begin with the essay outlines the similarities and differences between Lubac and Certeau and argues that Certeau’s post-Vatican II attempts to mediate between the Catholic tradition and the secular space of postmoderne culture was inevitably accompanied by a deconstruction of the modern institutionalisation and confessionalisation of Christianity. The last point sheds light on Certeau’s conflict with his teacher Lubac, who was to a certain extent still attached to the modern dualism between a ‘sacred’ and a ‘secular’ space. However, Certeau’s justified deconstruction of modern Christianity fails to do justice to the pre-modern roots of Lubac’s concept of the Church as ‘body of Christ’, as it is the case with many of his readers who tend to read Lubac’s landmark book Corpus mysticum through the lenses of Certeau (including John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock). This essay provides a significant contribution to the genealogy of the contemporary paradigm shift both in terms of its philosophical, cultural and ecclesial context and in terms of the pre-modern legacy it has started to recover subsequent to the groundbreaking work of Henri de Lubac