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XI
PERSON AND SOCIETY

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

-177-

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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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