This book first appeared just over fifty years ago. It is the pilgrimatic work of one of the 20th century's greatest theologians. Deeply rooted in tradition, it breaks ground and sows seeds which will bear their fruit in the Second Vatican Council's central documents on the Church. Here, Henri de Lubac, one of the giants of 20th century theology, gathers from throughout the breadth and length of Catholic tradition elements which he synthesizes to show the essentially social and historical character of the Catholic Church and how this worldwide and agelong dimension of the Church is the only adequate matrix for the fulfillment of the person within society and the transcendence of the person towards God. This book is a classic that deserves to be read and reread by every educated Catholic.

"For me, the encounter with this book became an essential milestone on my theological journey. For in it de Lubac does not treat merely isolated questions. He makes visible to us in a new way the fundamental intuition of Christian Faith so that from this inner core all the paricular elements appear in a new light."

——Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI

"Few of our living authors have given us a work at once so profound, so apt and so persuasive as this of the great French Jesuit. Certainly, few could have written the book on the basis of such a rich knowledge of the Christian tradition.... De Lubac's thought has the originality which springs from the contact with a great tradition of a brilliant, deep and charitable mind. And it has a contemporaneity that bears witness to a profound, all-embracing, human concern."

——Dom Christopher Butler, Abbot of Downside

"We cannot leave it without referring to its almost incredible comprehensiveness of view. De Lubac writes of the Church in such a way as to allow fully for the truth there is in Protestant or Liberal views of the Christian society."

——Church Times

Henri-Marie Joseph Sonier de Lubac SJ (20 February 1896 – 4 September 1991), known as Henri de Lubac, was a French Jesuit priest who became a cardinal of the Catholic Church and is considered one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century. His writings and doctrinal research played a key role in shaping the Second Vatican Council.