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According to de Lubac, the integral connection between nature and grace is our natural desire for a supernatural end. This tips de Lubac toward intrinsicism. But de Lubac resists collapsing grace wholly into nature by describing how our natural desire for God is a longing born of lack. Human nature cannot, all on its own, actualize its supernatural finality. Our desire for God is born out of an ontological insufficiency. Our longing for God exists as a capacity for receptivity rather than potency.
But there is more to de Lubac's case against a totalizing intrinsicism. The issue isn't just about capacity and incapacity. There is also the question of our conscious posture toward God. Specifically, as the human person makes their way toward God, toward their supernatural end, there comes a moment in this journey where the person must confront their sin and God's call upon their life. There comes a moment of faith, conversion, confession, trust, and repentance. Otherwise, we stall, and sin keeps us from moving forward. For de Lubac, this is our confrontation with and passage through the cross. He writes, "it is the same for Humanity, taken as a whole, as for each individual...[We] cannot reach completion without...a turning around of the whole being, a mysterious passage through death, a revival and a recasting that are nothing other than the evangelical metanoia."
When grace meets nature, writes de Lubac, there is a clash of realities: "Between sinful human nature and divine grace we have not only a dissimilarity, a heterogeneity between two orders of being, an infinite distance that man alone cannot bridge. There is an antagonism, violent conflict." He continues, "the call of grace is no longer an invitation to a simple 'elevation,'...in a more radical fashion it is a summons to a 'total upheaval,' to a 'conversion' (of the 'heart,' i.e., of all one's being)." We're reminded here of the evangelical message from Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship: "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."
The point here is that intrinsicism is resisted in two different ways, ontologically and evangelically. Ontologically, human nature cannot actualize, all on its own, its supernatural end. And evangelically, to reach its supernatural end, human nature must face and undergo a conversion. Reaching God requires metanoia, a decisive turning toward God.
