The first difficulty that occurs is too obvious to pass un- noticed and too serious to be evaded. By bringing out as clearly as we have done the social character of dogma and what might be called the unitary element of Catholicism do we not diminish or dangerously obscure that other no less essential truth that salvation is a personal matter for every individual, that at the Judgement "no one will find help in another" and that individuals are distinct for eternity? The assertions of so many mystics about the "unity" of the soul with God breed a certain obstinate mistrust, and if their utter- ances are not to be dismissed as pious exaggerations or loose poetical expressions they are condemned as pantheist. And is not the danger of pantheism immeasurably increased if we take too seriously that Augustinian formula unus Christus amans seipsum which condenses, as we have seen, the whole doctrine which we have so far set forth? Should it not at least be recognized that in the Christian tradition there are two teach- ings not easily reconcilable with one another about man's salvation? Not only are the three great scriptural figures—the heavenly Kingdom of the synoptic Gospels, St Paul's social Body, St John's mystical vine—irreducible and impatient of systematization, but the idea that each in its own way conveys seems at the outset incompatible—especially in the cases of St John and St Paul—with that strict personalism which we owe to the Christian revelation alone and which is of supreme practical importance.
Such an antinomy should not surprise us. This is not the only case in which revelation presents us with two assertions which seem at first unconnected or even contradictory: God
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Publication Information: Book Title: Catholicism: A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind. Contributors: Henri de Lubac - author. Publisher: Sheed and Ward. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1958. Page Number: 177.
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