First and foremost, then, it is suggested that Christians should take cognizance of the spiritual situation of the world in which they are involved. It is recognized that positivism is an immense edifice of scientific philosophy and practical politics; that Marxism, which has received its Summa if not its Bible in Das Kapital, is a vast and powerful system of political and social economy; and that Nietzsche’s ideas offer and extraordinary profusion of pedagogic resources (in the profoundest sense of the term). There are many elements to be found in all three on which a Christian, as such, is not required to take a stand; there are many others, often mutually contradictory, that he would have the right to claim as his own, after rescuing them from the synthesis that has warped them. They contain many audacities that do not frighten him. And, even at their most blasphemous, they advance criticisms whose justice he is bound to admit.
These three systems, of course, are not three cast-iron constructions. In the real life of the human mind many dissociations take place, so that not all those who call themselves positivists, Marxists, or Nietzscheans are necessarily atheists. Some, for instance, leaving the metaphysical problem open, join the Marxists only for the sake of their social program or, without even examining the details of that program, because of their own aspirations for society; they are, in some cases, more Christian than those who oppose them; and often they have a clearer insight into history. Certain maxims of Comtist origin have served for the expression of what is soundest in conservative circles. Many ideas of a more or less Marxist, Nietzschean or positivist stamp may even find a place in some blueprint for a new synthesis, and neither its orthodoxy nor its value will be called in question on that account. In the Church the work of assimilation never ceases, and it is never too soon to undertake it! Nevertheless, all systems, as shaped and held together by their underlying inspiration, have their own internal logic; and not to see this quite clearly from the outset is to run the risk of going dangerously astray. In the threefold case engaging our attention, this inspiration and this logic are very forcibly thrusting mankind away from God and at the same time urging it alone the lines of a double bondage, social and spiritual.
— Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism. trans. Edith M. Riely, Anne Englund Nash, and Marc Sebanc (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 12-13.
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