The Glory of the Lord/The Von Balthasar Reader:
Imbelli, Robert
Surpassing depth, in a one-dimensional day THE GLORY OF THE LORD A THEOLOGICAL AESTHETICS, VOL. I: SEEING THE FORM Hans Urs von Balthasar Translated by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis Ignatius/Crossroad,...
...Finally, though von Balthasar, writing in the early 1960s could not be expected to reflect some of the present-day feminist sensitivities, the otherwise competent translator of Seeing the Form might have employed more inclusive language (as, in fact, his equally competent fellow-translators of The von Balthasar Reader succeeded in doing...
...Moreover, and in complete harmony with this sensitivity, the only truly convincing verification of Christianity and its theological vision is, for von Balthasar, the saint...
...His systematic theology admits of further fertile unfolding because the center is both rich and secure...
...The spacious structure which von Balthasar erects upon these theological foundations is at once simple and soaring, most akin to those Johannine writings which are his predilection...
...Hans Urs von Balthasar would savor the irony of introducing his monumental volumes with such a bagatelle...
...Religion teacher, age unknown: "Don't worry about it...
...As such it presents a systematic approach to theology under the rubric of the beautiful: an approach whose genius is to lead the believer beyond mere hearing and adhesion to content-rich seeing and delight...
...I: SEEING THE FORM Hans Urs von Balthasar Translated by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis Ignatius/Crossroad, $35, 691 pp...
...for it articulates a comprehensive trinitarian vision in which both Word and Spirit receive equal due...
...My very positive assessment of von Balthasar's massive undertaking does not, of course, imply an absence of faults...
...Twenty years ago, Bernard Lonergan directed the attention of this reviewer, then a new student of theology, to the work of von Balthasar as representing a style of theologizing more "affective" and "personalist" than Lonergan's own...
...Hence, Seeing the Form culminates in a splendid depiction of "Christ the Centre of the Form of Revelation," in which the glory of God on the face of Christ is meditatively explored...
...Not only does von Balthasar deprecate the rift, developing over centuries, between theology and spirituality...
...But the anecdote also bears a deeper irony...
...Stripped of scholarly trappings, it sums up the wanton dissipation of the full Catholic inheritance which his work has attempted to forestall...
...At the same time it sounds a whole-hearted incarnational commitment which confutes the "primal lie" of theology and spirituality: the equation of the spiritual with the incorporeal rather than with a redeemed and transformed corporeality...
...Thus in the great debate between Barth and Bultmann concerning the primacy of Word or faith, object or subject-a debate characterized as signaling ' 'the divided mind of modern theology"-von Balthasar contributed a truly original aesthetic integration...
...they're going to drop it from the Creed, because no one knows what it means...
...Yet I contend that these faults fade before the monumental achievement...
...Though one wonders whether politics itself might be more humanized were it founded upon a truly aesthetic vision...
...Volume One, Seeing the Form, unfolds this aesthetic sensitivity both from the standpoint of subjective perception and appreciation and from that of objective form and content...
...Somewhat precocious eleven-year-old: "What does it mean when we say in the Apostles' Creed, 'He descended into hell...
...Holy Saturday, the descent into hell, stands, therefore, as the keystone of the paschal mystery: God descends to the disfigured depths of human need, there to consummate the wedding feast with humanity: "Come, my love, my fair one...
...In his admirable attempt to counteract the totalitarian pretensions of certain exercises of historical critical biblical scholarship, von Balthasar engages in a rather idiosyncratic reading of some texts which only succeeds in undermining his, to my mind, legitimate position...
...while Seeing the Form will offer the more specialized student profound theological and aesthetic pleasure...
...Nonetheless, the manifestation of the fullness of the form in Christ both recapitulates and determines all else and truly enraptures the beholder...
...There is a leisurely repetitiveness to Seeing the Form which makes an already considerable volume overly long...
...the winter is over and done...
...for it presents well-chosen, systematically arranged selections from the whole of the Balthasarian oeuvre, in passages of from two to seven pages brimming with theological and spiritual nourishment...
...The translation of six additional volumes of The Glory of the Lord, which develop and exemplify the theological vision set forth in volume one, is promised over the next two years...
...Such sensitivity to the "enrapturing" which form effects brings into relief a further characteristic of von Balthasar's theological project: its contemplative quality...
...Against this Platonizing deformation of Christianity's sacramental vision, von Balthasar counterpoises a remarkable rehabilitation of the patristic and medieval doctrine of the spiritual senses as a prelude to that eschatological consummation when all flesh shall see God...
...For what finally appears is a Christie and ecclesial vision of surpassing depth and fruitfulness...
...THE VON BALTHASAR READER Edited by Medard Mehl & Werner Loser, translated by Robert Daly & Fred Lawrence Crossroad, $27.50, 437 pp...
...In the light of this Christie fullness the intimations of revelation embodied in both creation and culture take on new clarity and substance, thus receiving from von Balthasar a more positive reading than ever Barth allowed...
...The generous treatment accorded the chosen perspective of theological aesthetics will appear to some to ignore the political concerns brought to the fore in contemporary theologies of liberation...
...Here The von Balthasar Reader performs signal service...
...Theology, he holds, is contemplation brought to conceptualization, issuing from prayer and leading to prayer...
...Today the invitation even takes on a note of urgency: "Come to the feast...
...Today, when the synoptic gospels are being rightly recovered, von Balthasar boldly and radically proclaims that the Johannine vision remains normative for Catholic Christianity...
...The Reader, prefaced by an excellent and helpful essay-portrait of the theologian and his work, will certainly introduce the Swiss theologian to a wider public in a format attractive and accessible...
...in light of which so much which passes for contemporary theology seems meager and one-dimensional...
...The ortho-praxis of sanctity prevents a theological aesthetics from degenerating into mere aestheticism...
...Von Balthasar's synthesis of Barthian theological objectivity with the anthropological approach associated with a Schleiermacher or a Rahner represents a considerable achievement...
...The very article of the creed which it dismisses as meaningless offers von Balthasar the deeper disclosure of the mystery of God's love and of human salvation: a God who pursues the sinner to the extremes of estrangement and there reconciles, not through act of power but through loving presence which takes pain and rage upon itself...
...Robert Imbelli THE FOLLOWING EXCHANGE was reported to me, as I was reading the two volumes under review...
...while the communion of saints ultimately justifies and tests all programs of institutional reform...
...his work marks the most sustained effort by a twentieth-century Catholic theologian to repair it, by the impassioned placement, at the heart of that work, of the living Object of prayer...
...However, the character of the Balthasarian synthesis clearly favors the objective form and structure of God's revelation, issuing in an "objectivism" which is not simply Barthian, but which is "proper to the Catholic principle" and which itself dictates a properly theological method...
...Von Balthasar's Catholic vision resolutely refuses the prevalent political and ecclesiastical reductionisms and gleans authentically contemporary insights from the rich harvest of Christian experience and reflection through the ages...
...It is a pleasure to extend to a wider audience that invitation to taste this delectable wisdom theology...
...For the most consummate aesthetic work realized in every generation is the saint transformed according to the cruciform image of Christ...
...Von Balthasar's great multi-volumed work, Herrlichkeit, The Glory of the Lord, whose first volume, dating from 1961, has finally appeared in English translation, bears the programmatic designation "a theological aesthetics...
Vol. 110 • November 1983 • No. 19
