In the second volume of his systematic theology, Robert Jenson summarizes and critiques de Lubac’s theology of nature and grace. He agrees with de Lubac’s conclusion that the supernatural is not owed to nature because “the reverse in the case.” Quoting de lubac: “Nature . . . owes itself to the supernatural if that supernatural is offered to it . . . . The supernatural . . . is (not) explained by nature; . . . nature . . . is explained . . . by the supernatural.”

Yet, he thinks “an ambiguity remains, of the very sort over which Western theology of grace has so often come to grief.””

De Lubac can do no better than to say that “the idea of the possible gift presupposes . . . the idea of a certain fundamental and interior aptitude for receiving that gift,” and in saying this de Lubac comes close to “the old hemi-demi-semi-Pelagian temptation” that both the older nature/supernatural and the nouvelle theologie were trying to avoid.

The underlying problem is de Lubac’s continuing presumption that a distinction between natural and supernatural must be maintained, a distinction such that God’s grace is “double,” the grace of bringing man into being and the grace that calls a man already brought into being. Jenson admits that “most theology Protestant or Catholic” shares this presumption: It “resumes that creation is itself effected not by a divine call but by a prior divine act of other sort. God’s personal call to us, when it happens, deals with an ontological situation otherwise originated.” When theology makes this assumption, “we will eventually be brought to one or another ‘semi-Pelagianism.” This is true whether we follow de Lubac and assume that “a human nature itself uncalled is antecedently apt for the call of grace” or follow de Lubac’s opponents and assume “a nature itself uncalled is antecedently neutral to the call of grace.”

The solution is to recognize that “our being as such” is “accomplished by God’s address.” For Jenson, “nature and grace are aspects of one conversation conducted by God with us.” More biblically framed, “‘Let there be . . . ’ and ‘Christ is risen’ are but two utterances of God within one dramatically coherent discourse. A creature who exists by hearing the first is indeed open to the second, in a straightforward way that requires no dithering about ‘aptitudes.’”

Jenson concludes “the openness of nature to grace is a dramatic openness, the openness of one utterance to another in the dialogue of a story that satisfis the criterion of successful narrative, that its events occur ‘unpredictably but on account of each other.’ We are indeed prepared in our very nature for the deifying address of God, because we have a nature only in that we have already been caught up by the dialogue in which this concluding address occurs.”