Outside Christianity humanity can doubtless be raised in an exceptional manner to certain spiritual heights, and it is our duty—one that is perhaps t… - Henri de Lubac

" "

Outside Christianity humanity can doubtless be raised in an exceptional manner to certain spiritual heights, and it is our duty—one that is perhaps too often neglected—to explore these heights that we may give praise to the God of mercies for them: Christian pity for unbelievers, which is never the fruit of scorn, can sometimes be born of admiration. But the topmost summit is never reached, and there is risk of being the further off from it by mistaking for it some other outlying peak. This is a fact noticed by many missionaries. It is often more difficult—though in the last resort more worthwhile—to bring to the fullness of truth souls whom a relatively more developed religion has stamped with its mark. A critical judgement, not of individual souls—for their precise situation in relation to the Kingdom is never known save to God alone—but of objective systems as found in a society and as offering material for rational examination, shows that there is some essential factor missing from every religious "invention" that is not a following of Christ.[…] Outside Christianity all is not necessarily corrupt; far from it,[…] but what does not remain puerile is always in danger of going astray, or, however high it climbs, of ultimate collapse. Outside Christianity nothing attains its end, that only end, towards which, unknowingly, all human desires, all human endeavours, are in movement: the embrace of God in Christ.