Prior to World War II there began to emerge ideas about grace and nature that would broadly become known as the nouvelle theologie, or the new theology. The discussion returned to the Reformation debate on the nature of supernatural grace. Christianity, as a result, came to be seen not as the sacramental incorporation into the Body of Christ through baptism and the Eucharist but as an explicit reflection of what man really is by nature. Some of these theologians nevertheless went on to become leading figures in the post-conciliar Church. Thus all dualism between nature and grace is eliminated.
Human nature is already graced existence.
As Christ is already present in the community, the sacramental presence of Our Lord in the tabernacle is now superfluous and can therefore be removed from the sanctuary precinct. The rebellion against tradition and the glorification of subjective creativity were the central tenets of both new theology and modern art. Like the new liturgists, the promoters of much modern art and architecture are iconoclastic and wary of tradition. Walter Gropius, director and leading light of the Bauhaus, the influential school of architecture established in Weimar Germany in the 1920s, is generally remembered for his dictates on form and function in the modern machine age. Contemporaneous examples help us to understand more fully this fusion of modern art and liturgy.