Why then did Aquinas matter for de Lubac?… The answer is, in part, that for de Lubac Aquinas represented the possibility of an East-West synthesis (Augustine plus the Dionysius/Damascene legacy) and even more crucially that the attempt to incorporate Aristotle was positive in so far as it meant a deeper reckoning with reflection upon the operations of nature and of this-worldly human behaviour. Here again, de Lubac’s ‘paradoxical’ doctrine of the supernatural cuts both ways. The older sense that everything must be viewed in an elevated light loses all cogency and depth if this light cannot ceaselessly shine within dark corners of finite existence newly explored. Without this continued deepening, the elevation would itself lapse back into the extrinsic. John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural, 23.