Time and eternity in the Henri de Lubac's theology of history

The article is devoted to the theology of history of Henri de Lubac (1896-1991). Comparing Christian approach to history with the individualistic concepts of escape from the world inherent in late Hellenism and Eastern mysticism, the Catholic thinker notes what is the radical novelty of Christianity. As another antipode of Christian eschatology is the historical immanentism of ideological utopias that deny the transcendent dimension of history. Christianity presents history as a continuous chain of events from the Creation of the world to the end of time, the Incarnation of God is central, filling the earthly history with value, inner meaning and aspiration to final fulfillment. The article proposes to consider his doctrine of unity of four meanings of Scripture (historical, allegorical, tropological and anagogic) as the hermeneutic key to theology of history. In contrast to the Hellenistic allegory, which neglects the literal meaning of the text, where the external plot of the myth is used for escape to abstract speculation, in the patristic exegesis, allegory enables to identify the realities of sacred history contained in the “flesh” of the literal meaning and earthly history. Therefore, the transition from doctrinal to mystical anagogy allows to fill the hiatus between the already of the accomplished eschatology and the not yet of the future eschatology.