Lubac is by all accounts one of the great Catholic theologians of the past century, and one of the most influential. He never worked on a dissertation, and because of the disruptions of war never went through a great deal of the formal training expected of Jesuits. He was eventually given a doctorate from the Gregorian University, necessary for him to teach, but he never had visited the Gregorian and he never submitted a thesis.
His theological work was as marginal as his training. He thought of the 12th century as the golden century of medieval theology, not the 13th century of Thomas. And he focused a great deal of attention on theologians that had been marginalized because of church politics or what Balthasar called “the machinations of smaller minds.”
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