Book Review: Henri de Lubac, Vatican Council Notebooks: Volume 1 and Volume 2

“What will this Council be?” This is a question that Henri de Lubac (1896–1991) asked in anticipation of the opening of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). It is a question that remains apropos today nearly 60 years after the Council as historians and theologians consider the legacy of Vatican II and what it means for the Roman Catholic Church today. With the publication of the two volumes of de Lubac’s Vatican Council Notebooks, Ignatius Press offers anglophone scholars a new window for looking backward to the Council’s unfolding, development, and contested conclusions, as a way of looking forward to the ongoing work of renewing, revising, extending, and translating the Council’s accomplishments into our own day. The Notebooks cover a period of 5 years, from de Lubac’s initial—and surprising—appointment to the Preparatory Theological Commission in the summer of 1960 to the closing Mass of the Council in December of 1965. These two volumes include versions of de Lubac’s six council notebooks that de Lubac himself redacted for publication. Despite these redactions, the Notebooks depict the Council in unprecedented detail through de Lubac’s near-daily chronicle of conciliar happenings. The Notebooks are aimed at a narrow scholarly audience and the intellectual cost of admission is high. These are not aimed at a general readership, even a general scholarly readership. But scholars of Vatican II, 20th-century Catholicism, and de Lubac’s theology will find in these volumes a treasure 969885 PRE0010.1177/1063851220969885Pro Ecclesia: A Journal of Catholic and Evangelical TheologyBook Review book-review2020