How does one describe this "experience of faith"? Von Balthasar raises this question in a prolonged section of The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1. He finds the language of experience difficult, but legitimate. He writes, "Regardless how problematic the concept of experience has become in the history of theology, . . . . it nevertheless remains indispensable when faith is understood as the encounter of teh whole person with God. . .. God wants ma no only with his intellectu (which would, in any case, have to be sacrificed to a truth which is not self-evident), but, from the outset, also with his will; he wants man not only with his soul, but also equally with his body" (p. 219). The language of experience cannot be abandoned, but must be rightly ordered, even subordinated as the outcome of gift of faith.

The experience of faith is not a Jungian archetype that can be "unearthed from the depths of man, not even by the most penetrating analysis, niether as a 'lost image which must be restored' . . . nor as a 'hidden archetype which must be made conscious'" (p. 221). "The experience of human totality and human depths is not, therefore, the way which opens up to the Christian experience of faith, even though this human depth and totality is subsequently put at the service of the Christian experience and, what is more, has already been incorporated by God himself into the image of the man Christ. If experience . . . even in a worldly sense is not a state but an event .. . . it follows that it is not man's entry (Einfahren) into himself, into his best and highest possibilities, which can become an experience (Erfahrung), but, rather, it is his act of entering into the Son of God, Christ JEsus, who is naturally inaccessible to him, which becomes the experience that alone can claim for itself his undivded obedience' (p. 222).

We should not miss the significance of von Balthasar's ordering the experience of faith. Where we usually see experience as moving from the outside in, via our empiricist commitments, von Balthasar gives us a different empiricism: one that experience moves us from the insight out; experience that has its end in what is experienced, not merely experience per se. The experience of faith takes one's subjectivity into the free gift of Jesus Christ, the revelation of God; it does not collapse Jesus within. As von Balthasar says, "Seen from this perspective, Christian experience can mean only the progressive growth of noe's own existence into Christ's existence, on the basis of Christ's contiuing action in taking shape in the believer: 'until Christ has taken shape in you' (Gal 4.19) (p. 224). Christian experience is another name for sanctification: "an initiation (and, therefore, an experience) within the realm of God's own reality, and hence it finally becomes the process by which this reality takes shape in the believer. However, the rightness of the form of reveation initially 'seen' in faith -- the form to which the believer surrenders and entrusts himself -- is confirmed within this existence of self-surrender as being true and correct, and this gives the believer a new form of Christian certitude which can be called 'Christian experience'" (p. 225).

A member left the service tonight saying that the Maundy Thursday service is one of her favorite of the year. I understand completely. It was a time, through Christ in the Spirit, within the realm of God's own reality, and hence it finally becomes the process by which this reality takes shape in the believer. Von Balthasar helps us render what we experienced intelligible, both to ourselves and to others.