To seek sincerity above all things is perhaps, at bottom, not to want to be transformed; it is to cling to yourself, to have a morbid love of yoursel… - Henri de Lubac

The human intelligence is made in such a way that, if it has the power to criticize its own representations [of divine matters], it does not have an equal power to replace them. It succeeds in detecting everything inadequate in them: it is precisely in this that its greatness shines. But it will never possess the adequate formula that would put an end to its search. That is why it can seem to the intelligence that through this work of criticism it is carrying out a negative work. At the very least, it seems, through a series of overly subtle steps, to be compromising the truth of which it had at first an assured, total perception, although the expression that was given of it was, as it well knew, only roughly approximate. With its s, in its imaginative conceptions, it at least enclosed a certain truth. It held it in tuto [securely]. Now is this very truth not going to be called into question? Such is the objection—or rather such is the instinctive fear—that any attempt at real reflection always awakens. The life of the spirit, like that of the body, is inevitably the source of "unease". The dead alone are in complete repose. The intelligence is thus in dread of itself. It fears generating its own bewilderment.

The supernatural dignity of one who has been baptized rests, we know, on the natural dignity of man, though it surpasses it in an infinite degree.[…] Thus the unity of the Mystical Body of Christ, a supernatural unity, supposes a previous natural unity, the unity of the human race.[…] Was it not shown […] in Genesis where it was taught that God made man in his own image? For the divine image does not differ from one individual to another: in all it is the same image.[…] Whence comes the notion, so beloved of Augustinianism, of one spiritual family intended to form the one city of God.

[F]rom the very first, faith had been translated into certain "declarations"—some of which had been gathered from the very mouth of Jesus and others called forth by him. The twofold reflection of Saint Paul and Saint John had soon contributed to enrich and define them. Subsequently, though it was no longer henceforth a matter of revelation, the declarations continued to multiply, following the very laws of human intelligence and under the impulse of all kinds of historical necessities. A divinely instituted authority rules their meaning and use.[…] It follows from all this that dogmatic progress, whose rectitude is guaranteed by the assistance of the Spirit which Christ promised to his Church, […] is not a progressive revelation. […] With Christ, in fact, in Christ, all has been given to us. In him we have all revelation as well as all redemption. […] Henceforth, nothing more that is in fact new is to be expected. The deposit is living, certainly it is fruitful, but it is indeed a deposit. […] No theory of "development" should ever forget this essential principle. […] In the face of a recent mentality that tends to confuse dogmatic progress with a kind of natural progress in human things, it is no less important to recall it today.<p>Besides, to consider, for an instant, only the human intellectual mechanism by which the later work of dogmatic clarification is carried out […] one should recognize that it does not differ essentially from that which gave birth to the first declarations on the lips of Peter and his companions. The structure and the natural laws of the human mind are always the same; supernatural revelation has not suppressed them. A simple "assistance", carried out by the , in order to avoid any error in definitive choices, has succeeded to the positive inspiration of the early times, whose fruits are preserved in the writings of the "New Testament". But it is indeed always a matter of "elaboration".