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« Eucharist and Peace | Main | Struck Blind: Acts 9:1-9 » November 1, 2005
David Schindler on Balthasar
David Jones at ressourcement.blogspot.com posted an article from Communio and Liberation's journal, Traces. There is a summary of Hans Ur van Balthasar's work, given on the 100th anniversary of his death. I have just begun to read some of Balthasar. I hope to read him in conjunction with Barth -- years probably to complete! There is a Christian vitality that I find in Balthasar that is somehow different from the beauty of Barth's work. To use a crass analogy, Barth is beauty of a geometric proof; Balthasar that of a Picasso painting (or a "In Reverent Fear" song!!!). Here is a quote. You can read the whole in the extended entry. It is not that long, but a bit more technical. "Christians, he said, are 'guardians of a metaphysics of the whole person in an age that has forgotten both Being and God.' They bear responsibility for keeping alive the wonder-filled love that is the point of origin for authentic human existence and includes the entire cosmos in its breadth. This wonder lies unacknowledged but alive in the child’s first opening of its eyes to its mother’s smile. Through that smile, the child learns that “it is contained, affirmed, and loved in a relationship that is incomprehensibly encompassing, sheltering, and nourishing.†The relationship, in other words, calls forth a wonder at being permitted to be. “This condition of being permitted cannot be surpassed by any additional insight into the laws and necessities of the world.†H. U. von Balthasar Love Alone by David L. Schindler* “Love Alone is Credibleâ€: these words, which appear as the title of one his books, sum up the lifework of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, the centenary of whose birth we celebrate this year. To some, the words may seem too simple to help in our present cultural situation, with its global power blocks, consumerist economies, and “compassionate†biotechnologies. Balthasar, however, was fully aware of the complexity of today’s problems. He nevertheless understood these words to contain that truth alone which was capable of addressing the problems at their roots and not merely in their symptoms. Christians, he said, are “guardians of a metaphysics of the whole person in an age that has forgotten both Being and God.†They bear responsibility for keeping alive the wonder-filled love that is the point of origin for authentic human existence and includes the entire cosmos in its breadth. This wonder lies unacknowledged but alive in the child’s first opening of its eyes to its mother’s smile. Through that smile, the child learns that “it is contained, affirmed, and loved in a relationship that is incomprehensibly encompassing, sheltering, and nourishing.†The relationship, in other words, calls forth a wonder at being permitted to be. “This condition of being permitted cannot be surpassed by any additional insight into the laws and necessities of the world.†Balthasar’s theology of gift-evoking-wonder and wonder-evoking-gift finds its theological form in the grateful obedience of the Christic-Marian-ecclesial fiat. The phrase he coined for the basic “method†of theology is “kniende theologieâ€â€“kneeling or praying theology. Such a theology does not exclude other (e.g., historical-critical) methods, but it nonetheless includes these only as it integrates them. It is the saints, insisted Balthasar–those in whom the word of God has truly taken flesh–who alone have warrant, finally, to speak about God. Gather the treasures of Egypt It was Balthasar’s profound sense of gift, taking its beginnings from the divine communio revealed in Jesus Christ, that inspired his reading of Western culture. Indeed, Henri de Lubac, who once declared Balthasar “perhaps the most cultivated man of our time,†wrote that Balthasar’s “spiritual diagnosis of our civilization is the most penetrating to be found.†We understand the depth of this assertion only insofar as we see that the wonder lying at the origin of human existence also indicates the “logic†of that existence. That is what a creature is: a gift from God whose being unfolds most properly in grateful movement toward God, a movement meant to gather up in gratitude all that is thought, done, and produced. The characteristic problems of our culture are thus seen just here, in the absence of gratitude or grateful obedience to God. Our politics, economies, and (bio-)technologies, in their characteristic liberal expression, lack the form of creatureliness. The truth, goodness, and beauty recognized in pre-modernity as first given (by God) are now seen as first made by man (Vico: verum quia factum). Contemplation and action Balthasar was a contemplative, but not after the manner of one who was disengaged from the world. He understood that activity is empty and lacking in fruitfulness if it does not originate in contemplation, and he was thus a man of action in the Marian–and, indeed, Johannine and Ignatian–sense. Balthasar’s engagement with the world expressed itself primarily in three foundations. In 1945, together with von Speyr, he founded the Community of St. John, a “secular institute†(or “world communityâ€: Weltgemeinschaft), a community made up of priests and lay men and women living a consecrated love that remains in the world. In 1947, he established the Johannes Verlag, a publishing house devoted to making available theological, philosophical, spiritual, and literary works that draw out the Catholic and catholic meaning of Gospel love. Lastly, in 1972, with theologians Henri de Lubac and Joseph Ratzinger and others (Karol Wojtyla was instrumental later in bringing the journal to Poland), Balthasar founded the international theological-cultural review Communio, which now has fourteen different language editions. Balthasar and the Council * Dean and Gagnon Professor of Fundamental Theology John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and FamilY Washington, D.C. Posted by johnwright at November 1, 2005 9:27 AM |
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