ABSTRACT
The military camaraderie brought about intellectually challenging conversations with communists and atheists, and de Lubac discovered just how the Catholic theology of those days was completely insulated from modern questions of life and death. De Lubac is particularly stung by the accusation of individualism, and he sets out to prove, against Giono, that true Catholicism in fact has an inherently social meaning. De Lubac began his work by quoting the critic of religion Giono, who accused Christianity of offering only individual consolation. De Lubac has assured the reader that his purpose is to recover theology from bad external influences. The idea that all human beings belong equally to one single humanity might seem a commonplace today, embraced as it is by all, at least across the Western political spectrum. The Church Fathers offered de Lubac a perspective that had long been forgotten in the church.
