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Gunnar Innerdal
Spirit and Truth
A Systematic Reconstruction of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Doctrine of
the Spirit of Truth and Its Connections to the Philosophy and Theology
of Truth by the Theoretical Framework of Lorenz B. Puntel
Dissertation submitted for the degree PhD (Philosophiae Doctor)
MF Norwegian School of Theology
2014
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© Gunnar Innerdal
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Outline of contents
INTRODUCTION
Part I:
TRUTH IN PHILOSOPHY
Part II:
TRUTH IN SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
Part III:
THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH
CONCLUSION
EPILOGUE
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Detailed table of contents
Outline of contents .................................................................................................................... iii
Detailed table of contents ........................................................................................................... v
Preface ....................................................................................................................................... xi
Thanks ..................................................................................................................................... xiii
Abbreviations etc. ..................................................................................................................... xv
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1
§ 1. Prelude: Truth, Spirit, Philosophy and Dogmatics .................................................. 1
§ 2. Research Question: A Systematic Theology of the Spirit of Truth ......................... 6
§ 3. Sources of Enquiry: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theo-Logic and Related Texts ...... 9
3.1 The Sources of Enquiry Situated within Balthasar’s Bibliography and Biography
……………………………………………………………………………………10
3.2 The Dissertation in Relation to Previous Research on Balthasar .......................... 13
§ 4. Method and Theoretical Framework: Systematic Reconstruction by Lorenz B.
Puntel’s Structural-Systematic Philosophy (SSP) ................................................................ 16
4.1 A Work in Systematic Theology and Dogmatics .................................................. 18
4.2 Presentation of the Theoretical Framework: The Structural-Systematic Philosophy
……………………………………………………………………………………22
4.3 The Practical Application of the Theoretical Framework: Systematic
Reconstruction and Criteria for Theoretical Evaluation ................................................... 28
4.4 The Appropriateness of This Framework for Discussing Balthasar’s Works ....... 31
Do Balthasar and Puntel Hold Incompatible Attitudes to “System” and “Systematics?”
....................................................................................................................................... 32
Theory, Aestheticity, Practice, Spirituality ................................................................... 36
A Positive Assessment of Potential Fruitfulness ........................................................... 38
PART I: TRUTH IN PHILOSOPHY ................................................................................ 41
§ 5. The Interrelationship of Philosophy and Theology ............................................... 42
5.1 Balthasar: “Ohne Philosophie, keine Theologie” .................................................. 42
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5.2 Puntel: Theology and Philosophy as the Universal Theoretical Science ............... 47
5.3 Discussion and Assessment of the Relevance of Philosophical Discussions in this
Dissertation ....................................................................................................................... 50
§ 6. Balthasar’s Ontology and Epistemology of the “Truth of the World” .................. 53
6.1 Basic Definitions and Etymologies of Truth: Transcendental, alētheia, emeth,
adaequatio ......................................................................................................................... 54
6.2 The Drama of the Subject and the Object in Epistemology ................................... 59
6.3 The Real Partiality of Known Truth ...................................................................... 65
6.4 Truth, Life and Love .............................................................................................. 72
§ 7. Critical Assessment of Balthasar’s Philosophical Thinking on Truth in Dialogue
with Puntel’s Philosophy and Theoretical Framework ......................................................... 73
7.1 Heidegger and alētheia .......................................................................................... 73
7.2 The Compatibility of Puntel and Balthasar’s Thinking on Truth .......................... 76
7.3 Gap-closing, or: The Always Already Bridged Gap .............................................. 82
§ 8. Summary of Part I .................................................................................................. 84
PART II: TRUTH IN SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY ........................................................ 87
§ 9. Truth and Christology ............................................................................................ 88
9.1 Christ the Concrete Analogia Entis as “the Truth” According to Balthasar .......... 88
“I am the truth” .............................................................................................................. 91
Analogia entis ................................................................................................................ 95
Christological Analogy ............................................................................................... 100
Kata-logy ..................................................................................................................... 106
Analogy of the Transcendentals of Being ................................................................... 109
9.2 Balthasar’s Interpretation of Negative Theology ................................................. 112
9.3 Critical Assessment by Means of Puntel’s Theoretical Framework .................... 120
On the Question of Transcendence and Immanence: Critique of the Traditional
Metaphysical Doctrine of Analogy and Negative/Apophatic Theologies .................. 120
Analogia entis Reinterpreted as Katalogical Analogy ................................................ 127
The Epistemological and Ontological Consequences of Sin ...................................... 138
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Christ as Truth “In Person” and the Philosophical Determination of Truth as a
Maximally Determined Proposition ............................................................................ 142
Concluding Remarks on Christ and the Universal Philosophical-Theological
Perspective on Truth .................................................................................................... 146
§ 10. Truth and Trinity .................................................................................................. 148
10.1 The Truth of God as Loving Trinitarian Difference in Symphonic Unity According
to Balthasar ..................................................................................................................... 149
Symphonic Truth ......................................................................................................... 150
The Positivity of Difference ........................................................................................ 151
The Truth is Love ........................................................................................................ 154
Trinitarian Difference/Distance and the Love of the Cross ........................................ 158
10.2 Critical Assessment by Means of Puntel’s Theoretical Framework .................... 161
Symphonic-Improvisational Integration and Coherence ............................................. 161
Trinitarian Difference, One Truth and Plural Frameworks ......................................... 167
Truth, Being and Love ................................................................................................ 169
The Cross, Difference and Abandonment ................................................................... 171
§ 11. Summary of Part II ............................................................................................... 173
PART III: THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH ................................................................................. 177
§ 12. Introductory Remarks on Balthasar’s Pneumatology .......................................... 178
12.1 The Johannine Entryway: Scriptural Background and Emphasis ........................ 179
12.2 On Speaking of “the Unknown Lying beyond the Word” ................................... 185
The Possibility of Pneumatology ................................................................................ 185
The Complexities of the Personhood of the Holy Spirit ............................................. 188
§ 13. “He Will Guide You into All the Truth.”: The Spirit as Interpreter of the
Christological-Trinitarian Truth ......................................................................................... 193
13.1 Balthasar’s Whole-Biblical Exegesis of a Key Johannine Saying ....................... 193
13.2 Some Remarks Pointing Towards a Critical Assessment .................................... 201
§ 14. The Father’s Two Hands: On the Unity and Inseparability of Christology and
Pneumatology ..................................................................................................................... 201
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14.1 The Spirit of Christ’s Incarnation, Life, Death and Resurrection ........................ 202
14.2 The Trinitarian Inversion ..................................................................................... 206
14.3 The Affection (Erfahrung) of the Spirit in and through the Incarnation, Death and
Resurrection of Christ ..................................................................................................... 211
14.4 Critical Assessment by Means of Puntel’s Theoretical Framework .................... 212
The Roles of Son and Spirit in the Conception of Jesus ............................................. 213
Trinitarian Taxonomy and Inversion ........................................................................... 214
Impassibility and the Experience of the Spirit ............................................................ 217
§ 15. The Pneumatic Body of Christ: The Spirit of Truth in the Church ..................... 219
15.1 The Objective and Subjective Work of the Spirit of Truth in the Church ........... 220
The Objective Spirit .................................................................................................... 224
The Subjective Spirit ................................................................................................... 229
15.2 Critical Assessment by Means of Puntel’s Theoretical Framework .................... 232
A Balanced Trinitarian Pneumatology of the Church ................................................. 233
Truth and Magisterium ................................................................................................ 234
§ 16. Pneuma Spermatikon: The Spirit of Truth in the World ...................................... 238
16.1 Balthasar on the Spirit in the World .................................................................... 239
Pneumata spermatika .................................................................................................. 240
Is the Spirit the Soul of the World? ............................................................................. 242
16.2 Very Critical Assessment by Means of Puntel’s Theoretical Framework ........... 244
Ecumenical Opening of the Discussion ...................................................................... 245
Pneuma spermatikon: The Spirit of All and Every Truth ........................................... 247
The Spirit and Breath of Life in OT and NT, Creation and Redemption .................... 252
Towards a Pneumatological Interpretation of Scientific Cosmology ......................... 259
Summary ..................................................................................................................... 265
16.3 Pointers to Implications for the Theology of Religions ....................................... 266
§ 17. Outlook: Reflections on the Spirit’s Role in Theologizing ................................. 267
17.1 Kneeling Theology? ............................................................................................. 267
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17.2 The Spirit of the Scriptures .................................................................................. 273
17.3 The Surprising Continuity of Spirit-filled Theology ........................................... 275
§ 18. Summary of Part III ............................................................................................. 277
CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 281
EPILOGUE: VENI, SPIRITUS VERITATIS ................................................................... 287
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................ 289
Cited Works by Hans Urs von Balthasar ............................................................................ 289
Cited Works by Other Authors ........................................................................................... 292
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Preface
“Wir bahnen uns den Weg durchs Gestrüpp, so gut wir es können; es ist wichtiger, um jeden
Preis Ausblick auf die Hauptsache zu gewinnen, als geordnete Straßen daraufhin
anzulegen.”1
This dissertation is the result of a four-year PhD candidacy in Dogmatics at NLA University
College, Bergen. I have followed the Doctoral Program in Theology at MF Norwegian School
of Theology, Oslo. The announcement of the scholarship called for PhD projects relating to
pneumatology in contemporary/recent theology [“pneumatologi i nyere teologi”], and that
constituted an important background for the design of this project, both as regards its thematic
focus and the sources of enquiry.
My travel into the Balthasarian land of truth, philosophical, theological and pneumatic, has
been a very pleasant journey, with many new insights and experiences (Er-fahrungen), but not
free from frustrations and dead ends. Balthasar’s theology is, in my judgment, well-informed
(as regards both the Christian tradition and the whole world of philosophy and arts), creative,
biblical, spiritual, beautiful. At the same time, it is complex, partly unsystematic in
presentation, sometimes tending towards the megalomanic and not very easily accessible. On
the positive side, I could affirm as a fitting description of my experience through working on
Balthasar what Rodney Howsare says about how Balthasar changed his mind: “the little
Luther in me sat down with the little Aquinas in me, and they became friends.”2 Although I
guess that my little Aquinas is not as mature as Howsare’s, at least not yet – if he will ever
be... It has been said that Balthasar is too Catholic for Protestants and too Protestant for
Catholics. I can understand why. He knows the heart of Lutheran theology of the Cross better
than many contemporary Protestants. At the same time he is almost more Catholic than the
pope in his ecclesiology and Mariology. I hope that this in-between-ness will bear fruits in the
ecumenical dialogue in the years to come. If this dissertation can contribute to that, it has not
been written in vain.
1 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theologie: Neuer Bund, vol. III/2.2, Herrlichkeit: Eine theologische Ästhetik
(Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1969), 9. English translation: “We clear the path for ourselves through the
undergrowth, as well as we can; for us, it is more important to get at all costs a point from which we can see the
essential matter, than to lay down orderly roads that lead to that point.” ———, Theology: The New Covenant,
vol. 7, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1989), 9. 2 Rodney A. Howsare, “Not Peace, but a Sword: How Balthasar Changed My Mind” in How Balthasar Changed
My Mind: 15 Scholars Reflect on the Meaning of Balthasar for Their Own Work, ed. Rodney A. Howsare and
Larry S. Chapp (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2008), 122.
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Some might ask why I, a Norwegian scholar, have written a dissertation on a German-
speaking theologian in English. The reason is first and foremost availability. I wish to address
readers in the Norwegian and international context interested in the theology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar and contemporary theological topics discussed in relation to his work. In this
perspective, English is the obvious choice, for as simple and pragmatic a reason as numbers of
potential readers. By choosing English, however, I also place myself consciously within the
bigger picture of reception of Balthasar’s theology, where many works in German are of the
more official intra-Catholic sort, while scholars from other confessions or perspectives more
often write in English or other languages. I must also add, as an important restriction to my
own handling of the secondary literature, that I’m not trained in Spanish or Italian, and that I
know French only through the help of friends and colleagues. Due to the writing of the
dissertation in English, I have also read Balthasar’s works primarily in English where
translations are available, but always with a side view to the German originals, particularly as
regards the Theo-Logic and some of the other most important texts that figure in the
dissertation. Where relevant I have also commented on the authorized translation.3
I am fully aware that this dissertation has not wiped out all philosophical and theological
Gestrüpp that complicates our life’s journeys. But I hope that I have been able to have some
real glimpses of the Sache, and that the reader will also get some along the way.
Bergen, June 2014
3 For the sake of space, time and convenience, page numbers in references to Balthasar’s works in this
dissertation are normally given to the English edition only. Where it is necessary because of comments on the
authorized translation or where not fully translatable or particularly significant German terms are spelled out, the
page number in the German edition is marked by G: preceding the page number, given in addition to the English
page number.
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Thanks
No man is an island. And no man’s work is one man’s work. I want to give special thanks to
the following colleagues, institutions, fellow researchers, friends and family: NLA University
College, Egil Morland, Gunnar Johnstad, Arve Brunvoll, the research group “Theology and
spirituality,” inc. Ståle J. C. Kristiansen, Inge Andersland, Knut-Willy Sæther, Knut
Tveitereid, Peder K. Solberg; MF Norwegian School of Theology, Peder Gravem, Asle
Eikrem, Atle O. Søvik, Terje Hegertun, Aidan Nichols, Norman Tanner, Alan White, Lorenz
B. Puntel, Matthew Paulson, Brendan McInerny, Martin Bieler, Jonathan Bieler and Katrina
van Eyck, Claudia Müller and Cornelia Capol at the Balthasar archive (Basel), Adrian
Walker, supervisors Svein Rise and Harald Hegstad, Fjell folkeboksamling and staff, Bjarte
Hove, my dear wife Lene and our kids Gabriel, Andreas and Hanna Irene, and the little guy
bumping in the belly.
Soli Deo Gloria.
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Abbreviations etc.
B&G Puntel: Being and God
E Balthasar: Epilogue
f In page numbers in footnotes: and following page
ff In page numbers in footnotes: and following pages
G: In page numbers in footnotes: refers to page number in the German original of
one of Balthasar’s works cited in the English version
GL 1-7 Balthasar: The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Volume number in
the English edition referred to by Latin numerals
n In page numbers in footnotes: the reference is to notes on the page(s) referred
to
NC Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381)
NT The New Testament
OT The Old Testament
S&B Puntel: Structure and Being
SSP The structural-systematic philosophy (developed by Lorenz B. Puntel and Alan
White)
TAPTOE White: Toward a Philosophical Theory of Everything
TD 1-5 Balthasar: Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory. Volume number in the
English edition referred to by Latin numerals
TL 1-3 Balthasar: Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory. Volume number in the
English edition referred to by Latin numerals
Hebrew and Greek words are transliterated except in citations, where the original is kept.
In consecutive page numbers in references, only changing numbers are given. Thus, e.g., 67-
69 is written 67-9; 243-246 is written 243-6; 457-468 is written 457-68.
Unless otherwise noted, citations from ancient Greek texts are my translations based on the
Greek text available in Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (available online at
http://www.tlg.uci.edu/)
xvi
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The Spirit of truth
will guide you into all the truth (John 16:13).
The love of God has been poured out in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit who was given to us (Rom 5:5).
Love delights in the truth (1 Cor 13:6).
Being truthful in love (alētheuontes en agapē),
we shall grow up in every way
to him who is the head, Christ (Eph 4:15).
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INTRODUCTION
§ 1. Prelude: Truth, Spirit, Philosophy and Dogmatics
In the Johannine farewell discourse (John 14-17), Jesus promises to his disciples and their
followers the Spirit of truth. This Paraclete (advocate, helper, comforter or spokesman) will
guide the disciples into the whole of Jesus’ person, words and work, thus revealing his
sending from the Father and the divine purpose in the whole truth of creation and salvation.
Now one may wonder: Who is this Spirit? And what is the truth that he4 leads into? And
further: What is the exact relation of this Spirit to the truth and the function of the Spirit in
making it known? This dissertation springs out of this wonder, aiming to give a contribution
to a contemporary interpretation of the Spirit of truth in a systematic theological perspective.5
The questions concerning what truth is and how we attend to it have stimulated and bothered
thinking human beings from the very beginnings of philosophy. They have, consequently,
also been central to theological reflection. One of the peak points, at least in the Christian
tradition, is Pilate’s famous question recorded in John 18:38: “Quid est veritas?” – “What is
truth?”6 Whether Pilate rolled his eyes scornfully, threw up his hands in resignation or held
his hand at his cheek honestly ruminating the question, his eyes gazing through the air when
he expressed these words, is unknown. His body language would be an important indicator of
his attitude towards this strange, Jewish revolutionary wonder-maker and demagogue standing
in front of him: Jesus of Nazareth, having claimed, according to the same Gospel of John, to
be not only a witness to the truth, but the truth itself (John 14:6). Such alternatives also
describe commonly adhered attitudes among everyday people as well as scholars when put
4 Formally, the noun “spirit” would be referred to by “it” (in Greek as well as English). However, in Christian
Trinitarian theology, the Spirit is a divine person, and since neuter-gendered persons are rare, this dissertation
often refers to the Spirit by “he” and correlates, as is also done several times in the Greek New Testament and in
most Bible translations. I hasten to add that the use of masculine pronouns referring to the Spirit or God in this
dissertation does not imply that they are in any this-worldly sense male, masculine or gendered. In Hebrew,
ruach (s/Spirit, wind) is a feminine word, in Greek pneuma (which even God – ho theos – is said to be in John
4:24) is neuter! Cf. the similar arguments in Anthony C. Thiselton, The Holy Spirit: In Biblical Teaching,
through the Centuries, and Today (London: SPCK, 2013), 121f, 136, 144. 5 For an account of wonder as not only the beginning, but the constant element and end of thought or reflection,
see David C. Schindler, “The Last Lecture: Wonder is the Final Word,” Villanova University,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRgkRcHHQ7c; ———, The Catholicity of Reason (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2013), 163-228; Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age, vol. 5, The
Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (San Fransico: Ignatius Press, 1991), 614f. 6 The original record of those words in the Gospel of John is in Greek (ti estin alētheia), but if we assume that
they have a historical origin (a case that would be hard to prove or disprove), they were likely spoken in Latin, as
Pilate was a Roman official.
2
against the wall in questions regarding truth both in a philosophical perspective,
epistemological as well as ethical, and theological perspective, praying in church as well as
reflecting in the academy.
Pilate probably never finished pondering the question, and neither did some of the great
figures of the history of theology, including Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Maximus the
Confessor (c. 580-662) and Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). Augustine, in keeping with his
Platonic sensibilities, underscored the divinity of truth. In On the Trinity, he says that God the
Trinity is “true, truthful, truth” (De trinitate 8,2).7 As such truth is for him as recognizable or
unrecognizable as the one God of whom he said that “if you can grasp it, it isn’t God” (Sermo
117,3,5).8 Maximus, in his Four Centuries on Charity, gives voice to the fragmentary
character of truth, and for that reason points further toward life and love, characteristic of his
ascetic style: “in this world truth exists in shadows and conjectures; that is why there is need
for the blessed passion of holy love” (3,67).9 Thomas, for his part, though not unfamiliar
either with the divine character of truth or the necessity of love, is most known for his more
common-sense Aristotelian definition of truth as adequacy of mind and thing (adaequatio
intellectus et rei). In more recent times, Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) emphasized that truth
relates intimately to subjectivity, as in his not easily interpretable phrase “subjectivity is
truth.” Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), as a part of his philosophy of being, attacked the
traditional metaphysical concept of truth and turned to the early Greek philosophers, and
came out thinking of truth as the unveiling or disclosure (a-lētheia) of being. Another
tendency in theological debates after the enlightenment and the rise of critical biblical
scholarship is the focus on the question of the sense of Scripture as truth (cf. John 17:17).
Glimpses such as these from the history of thought and theology point to some of the
important problems facing a systematic theologian who strives to interpret truth in an
explicitly theological perspective, an undertaking that was my motivation to engage in the
work resulting in this dissertation.
The present situation in theology is marked by the tensions connected to the shift from
modernity to postmodernity (or, if you will, late modernity) and beyond,10
often coinciding
7 Saint Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill. (New York: New City Press, 1991), 243.
8 ———, Essential Sermons, trans. Edmund Hill. (New York: New City Press, 2007), 197. Some English
translations render “comprehend” instead of “grasp”. 9 Translation by Andrew Louth, Maximus the Confessor (London: Routledge, 1996), 41.
10 The terminology relating to those cultural shifts is diverse. My point here is not to privilege a specific
interpretation of those terms and the relations between them, only to say that regardless of how they are
3
with tensions between metaphysical and so-called post-metaphysical theologies.11
The tension
between perspectives on truth from analytic philosophy and the continental philosophical
tradition making itself felt in discussions relating to the question of truth is another one.
Theologians as well as philosophers are confronted with important questions regarding
relativism and contextuality, the existence and unity of truth and so forth. In such a situation,
renewed engagement with such questions in light of biblical motifs and the resources of the
Christian tradition is an obvious task for systematic theology. The questions connected to
truth are, however, often dealth with either as an isolated philosophical-methodological
question concerning the truth value of sentences, or as an isolated theological question
concerning God’s revelation in the world and the status of the Bible, not sharing points of
contact worth mentioning with ordinary people’s real lives in this actual world. And we often
hear the echo of many constructed battles between the Hebrew Old Testament or “biblical”
concept of truth and the Greek one. An important motivation for writing this dissertation is
the desire to contribute to a systematic theological interpretation that lets as many aspects
concerning truth as possible within the framework of my own accumulative resources be
integrated into a comprehensive understanding of truth. Such an understanding of truth would
be informed by reflection on life from everyday reality to philosophical stringency, and from
religious practices and (theoretical) theological questions into the core of the doctrine of God.
The underlying proposal is that the universalistic aspirations of Christian faith in God as the
one creator and redeemer of the world imply that every theological truth claim must meet
competing claims at face value.12
As will be shown in the analysis and discussion, a
promising way to do this is to articulate a coherent theology where truth as an aspect of the
doctrine of God in dogmatics is up to date with philosophy of religion and philosophy. To
constructed (whether on normative or descriptive terms) they name certain tensions that are important parts of
the context in which contemporary scholars operate. 11
An example of a theology “after metaphysics” heavily inspired by Balthasar can be found in John P.
Manoussakis, God after Metaphysics: A Theological Aesthetic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007).
Another attempt, which also surveys the whole debate on the term “metaphysics” in this context more
thoroughly, is Kevin Hector, Theology without Metaphysics: God, Language, and the Spirit of Recognition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 12
I have argued for an understanding of systematic theology as the primary “apologetics” of Christian faith in
Gunnar Innerdal, “Troens troverdighet: En drøfting av apologetikkens oppgave og plass i systematisk teologi ”
Teologisk Tidsskrift, no. 4 (2012) (“The Credibility of Faith: A Discussion of the Task and Position of
Apologetics within Systematic Theology”). The term “apologetics” might have negative connotations to many
readers, and for good reasons. My own use of the word is more determined by the etymology, biblical and
historical (and Balthasar’s) use of the term rather than, say, certain kinds of contemporary evangelical
apologetics, or apologetics from fundamentalist-tending traditionalist Catholics. My use of the word can be
compared to Paul J. Griffiths, An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue
(Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991).
4
speak metaphorically, I seek to establish strong interconnections between the inner
sanctuaries and the philosophical forecourts of Christian faith as formulated in dogmatics.
The Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) is a promising voice to
listen to and discuss with concerning the questions of truth and the Spirit of truth. In his
thought, theology relates to and integrates very closely with philosophy and the questions and
insights springing from common human existence. At the same time, his theology is firmly
anchored in the Christian tradition of thinking, praying and art, and in Christian life and
spirituality. He is well known for his theological aesthetics, where he challenges a certain
overemphasis on the cognitive aspects of theology, and emphasizes that being, including the
revelation of the glory of God in the worldly form [Gestalt] of Christ, is epiphanous beauty,
continuously giving itself away to the delight of the subject.
Fewer books are written, however, on his outworking of the standard philosophical and
theological questions concerning truth as he completes his magnum opus, the trilogy
concerning the beautiful, the good and the true, in a three-volume Theo-Logic where the Spirit
of truth plays a most important role.13
As a thoroughly Trinitarian theologian, Balthasar
answers the question of the connection between a philosophical thinking on truth and a
theological determination of it in no other way than by reflecting on the mysterious loving
Father and his two hands at work in the world: the Son and the Spirit. His work also relates
actively to the tension between Catholic theology and modernity that came to expression
before, during and in the reception of the second Vatican council (1962-65). His engagement
with the Church Fathers as an associate of the ressourcement movement in Catholic theology
led to a critical appropriation of modernity. Thus he is often read as an author working in the
tension between modernity and postmodernity, as indicated by book titles such as Balthasar
at the End of Modernity14
and the classification of him as a transmodernist.15
In my metaphor,
Balthasar’s works in this dissertation are the voice from the inner sanctuary that steadily
opens up to and reaches out to interact with and integrate everything outside of it into the
vision of the world confessed before the presence of God at the altar.
13 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Truth of the World, vol. 1, Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2000); ———, Truth of God, vol. 2, Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2004); ———, The Spirit of Truth, vol. 3, Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005) (henceforth TL 1-3). 14
Lucy Gardner et al., Balthasar at the End of Modernity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000). 15
Michael Patrick Murphy, A Theology of Criticism: Balthasar, Postmodernism, and the Catholic Imagination
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); D. Kearney, “Review Essay: Von Balthasar as Transmodernist: Recent
Works on Theological Aesthetics,” Religion and the Arts 14 (2010).
5
As a conversation partner from the philosophical forecourts that answers the call from the
sanctuary both critically and constructively, I have chosen the German philosopher Lorenz
Bruno Puntel.16
His works provide a stringent theoretical framework that serves as an analytic
tool when approaching Balthasar’s style, which is much more aesthetic, associative,
repetitive, suggestive, and sometimes tending towards the difficult and blurry. Puntel is one of
the contemporary philosophers that have engaged most comprehensively with the
philosophical question of truth, seeking to unite the best from the continental philosophical
tradition and current analytic philosophy. Through his engagement with the concepts of Being
(German: Sein) and God he also provides an initiative from the philosophical side for the
integration of theology and philosophy that opens up a possibility and is a call for a renewed
theological engagement with truth, in light of the doctrine of God, including pneumatology.
As a coda to this little prelude, some additional themes sound from the Gospel according to
John. That Gospel contains a theological engagement with truth that not only includes the
encounter with the Word incarnate, but also with the Holy Spirit [pneuma], who, like the wind
[pneuma], blows where he wills (3:8). The Spirit is the Spirit of truth, who takes the “whole”
truth of Jesus (what is “his” or belongs to him, 16:13-14) and declares it to the world and the
church. This scriptural connection between Spirit and truth has made an imprint on a broad
stream of the Christian tradition. Coupled with Jesus’ words “your word is truth” (17:17), this
connection at times has led to a somewhat reductionist pneumatology where the Spirit’s
(almost) only role is to guarantee that our perception of the content of Scripture is also the
objective and universal one. This aspect of the Spirit’s work has been emphasized more in the
Western tradition, reaching into various strands of Protestantism. Although this is not a notion
that should be left out, it should be discussed in a fresh perspective, trying to avoid a one-
sidedness that excludes other important aspects of pneumatology, such as the Spirit as the
Spirit of the earthly life and resurrection of Christ, or the Spirit as “Lord and giver of life”
(NC) even in the divine act of creation.
Further questions arise from these considerations, for instance: What would be the role of the
Holy Spirit in the two kinds of illumination related to knowledge of the world and knowledge
of God, if we could answer the question of whether there is in fact one philosophical and
16 A recommendation of Puntel’s works from a significant theologian is found in the “Bibliographical Postscript”
to David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2013), 344. His works are described as “contemporary attempts at creative philosophical retrievals and
reinterpretations of the Christian metaphysical tradition.”
6
theological truth in the affirmative? And, following this, in what way would it be appropriate
to speak not only of a logos spermatikos17
but also of pneuma spermatikon18
or spermata
pneumatika?19
These are the themes that will resound throughout this dissertation, and this
variation on the wonder and apories they have given rise to has been its prelude.
§ 2. Research Question: A Systematic Theology of the Spirit of Truth
Starting from the wonder attested in the prelude,20
in this dissertation I will analyze and
discuss relevant parts of the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar with the aim of contributing to
the articulation of a philosophically informed treatment of the Holy Spirit in dogmatics,
focusing on the character and work of the Spirit as described by a central Johannine and
Balthasarian characteristic of the Spirit: the Spirit of truth.21
The analysis and discussion will
proceed through interaction with the theoretical framework of Lorenz Bruno Puntel. The main
research question of the dissertation is as follows:
What is the most coherent22
systematic theological interpretation of the ontological and
epistemological aspects of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth, based on an analysis of
selected works of Hans Urs von Balthasar, discussed through the theoretical framework of
Lorenz Bruno Puntel?
According to the view of systematic theology and dogmatics and their interrelationship with
philosophy, which is applied and argued more thoroughly later in this dissertation, the
answering of this question must include an engagement with the concept of truth in both
philosophical and theological perspectives. This is undertaken in Part I and II. The explicitly
17 A Greek term that means the “Logos that is sown or sows.” The expression is originally Stoic, and its
Christian use dates back to Justin Martyr (about AD 150). For an introduction to the idea, see Gerald Bray,
“Explaining Christianity to Pagans: The Second-Century Apologists,” in The Trinity in a Pluralistic Age:
Theological Essays on Culture and Religion, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 17-22. A
more substantial account is found in Ragnar Holte, “Logos Spermatikos: Christianity and Ancient Philosophy
according to St. Justin’s Apologies,” Studia Theologica – Nordic Journal of Theology 12, no. 1 (1958). 18
That is, the “Spirit that is sown or sows.” 19
That is, “Spirit-ual seeds” sown (in creation). The expressions are from Balthasar, TL 3, 20, 201. 20
Note that within this dissertation’s theoretical framework (see § 4), “we can start wherever we want” when
discussing philosophical (or theoretical) questions. See Benjamin Andrae, “The Puntel-Whitehead Method for
Philosophy,” in Metaphysics or Modernity: Contributions to the Bamberg Summer School 2012, ed. Simon
Baumgartner, Thimo Heisenberg, and Sebastian Krebs (University of Bamberg Press, 2013), 55. Thus, neither
the start nor the end, nor the choice of theoretical framework nor the sources of inquiry of this dissertation,
follows by necessity from any given assumptions. “The only thing one must keep in mind is the universal
aspiration of philosophy, which is to eventually include and integrate (in a sense to be detailed below) all the
data.” Ibid. 21
John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13; cf. 1 John 5:6. 22
As will become clear through the presentation of the dissertation’s method and theoretical framework, “most
coherent” here can be paraphrased as “best (currently) available.” See esp. 4.2, incl. note 99.
7
theological treatment of truth asks for what has been called authentic23
Christian theology,
rooted in Scripture and the Christian tradition. Johannine expressions such as that the Word
incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth is “the truth” (John 14:6), that the Father is “the only true God”
(John 17:1.3) or that the Spirit is “the truth” (1 John 5:6) are central ideas or claims to be
considered within a framework containing philosophical insights into truth. These chapters
prepare the ground for the explicitly pneumatological Part III, where the work of the Spirit of
truth inside and outside the church is discussed. The outline of the dissertation is thus shaped
by the internal logic of the main research question. The distinction between ontological and
epistemological aspects concerns the philosophical and theological engagement with truth as
well as the discussion of the character and work of the Spirit. By ontological aspects, I mean
what the Spirit of truth contributes to the existence or constitution of truth as it is, while
epistemological aspects concern how he makes human beings access this truth. Throughout
the philosophical and theological discussion of truth it is thus asked both what truth is, viz.
how truth is to be understood as existing in the world, and how truth is known, viz. its
accessibility and expressibility. Part III concentrates on pneumatology, discussing questions
concerning both how the Spirit creates and sustains truth and the role of the Spirit in the act of
knowing philosophical and theological truths.
The content and meaning of the last two qualifications of the research question, regarding the
use of the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the theoretical framework of Lorenz Bruno
Puntel, is unfolded in the following chapters § 3 and § 4. These qualifications are not to be
understood as absolute restrictions of the research question to the use of those two thinkers.
The analysis of Balthasar’s theology has to happen with a view to the context that shapes his
questions and the answers he gives to them, although it is not possible within the limits of a
four-year work on a single dissertation to accumulate either the whole of Balthasar’s
extensive work, its complete context or its vast scholarly reception. But I have tried to be
attentive to some other significant and relevant voices that can help move the analysis of
Balthasar and the discussion rooted in his theology forward. The choice of Balthasar’s
writings as the primary sources of enquiry implies a thesis present from the beginning of the
23 Atle Søvik, inspired by Niels-Henrik Gregersen, uses “authenticity” as an additional criterion besides
“coherence” in his dissertation on Christian theodicies – see Atle Ottesen Søvik, “The Problem of Evil and the
Power of God: On the Coherence and Authenticity of Some Christian Theodicies with Different Understandings
of God’s Power” (MF Norwegian School of Theology, 2009), 94-108. In this dissertation it is not as important as
in Søvik’s to qualify some theory as Christian (as an alternative to something else), the focus rather lies on more
or less coherent answers inside the limits of what is “authentic” in light of the Christian tradition; cf. the research
question that asks for coherent systematic theology. Thus, “authenticity” is here implicit in “coherent.”
8
work on this dissertation that Balthasar has important things to say on the subjects concerned,
which deserves a hearing in the articulation of contemporary theology. It does not necessarily
imply, however, that Balthasar is the one thinker one must go to in order to work fruitfully on
these questions.
Much of the same can be said of the use of Puntel’s framework, which I will try to situate in
its proper context, but without attempting to accumulate his whole authorship or all the
scholarly discussions it refers to. Neither must the use of this framework be understood as an
absolutization of his thinking – a notion the framework itself opposes strongly – but as a
means to make the discussion situated in a context informed by specific analytic tools and
hence make the project operational. Discussion of this dissertation’s research question is fully
possible and desirable within other frameworks and contexts, but my choice of this one
implies the judgment that it is the most coherent for discussion of the question in the way it is
undertaken here.
The restrictions found in the research question thus restrict the admittedly universalistic-
sounding question from addressing every possible and impossible substantial hypothesis or
procedural attempt to address the question of truth in philosophy and theology, and from a full
account of pneumatology. As such, they are primarily markers of the context this dissertation
unfolds within and seeks to address. And, most importantly, they make it clear that I do not
aspire to solve the question once and for all with a universally applicable answer. The
proposals and conclusions arrived at in this dissertation are not final and all-comprehensive
ones, but those that resulted from the discussion that actually was undertaken. But with Puntel
I would prefer theoretical activity that raises universalistic questions and offers hypotheses for
universal answers as the most meaningful and fruitful. A coherentist framework implies a
methodological procedure where one works systematically in a comprehensive perspective,
but this does not imply that the result should be regarded as a or the complete, final, all-
encompassing perspective. In what follows, § 3 unfolds the implications of the choice of the
works of Hans Urs von Balthasar as the main source of enquiry, and gives some initial
answers to why this choice was made and points to its potential fruitfulness. § 4 describes
how the theoretical framework of Lorenz Bruno Puntel shapes the procedure or method
applied in the dissertation.
9
§ 3. Sources of Enquiry: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theo-Logic and
Related Texts
Balthasar’s literary output spans a wide range in time, genres, topics and pages.24
In order to
make the analysis and discussion of his works operational within the limits of this dissertation
it is therefore necessary to select some works as the primary sources of enquiry. The three
volumes in his Theo-Logic25
are selected as most fitting for this purpose, because they are
central to his oeuvre in a general perspective, contain his most thorough and explicit
discussion of the questions here examined, and represent a part of his literary output that is
not as fully explored by other scholars as other parts. Some remarks on the choice of these
volumes and their importance in Balthasar’s bibliography and biography will be offered in
3.1. There are many general introductions to Balthasar’s person, life and work on the market,
so I find it superfluous to make another here, and instead restrict this presentation to some
remarks that serve as arguments for the selection of Theo-Logic as the primary source of
enquiry.26
An eclectic account of relevant previous research on Balthasar related to the theme
of this dissertation is offered in 3.2 in order to situate it within the current investigations of his
work in scholarly circles.
24 A full bibliography, including details on translations of his works into a wide range of languages, is found in
Cornelia Capol and Claudia Müller, Hans Urs von Balthasar: Bibliographie 1925-2005 (Einsiedeln: Johannes
Verlag, 2005). The book counts 174 pages! 25
Balthasar, Truth of the World (TL 1); ———, Truth of God (TL 2); ———, The Spirit of Truth (TL 3). 26
For accounts of his life, see esp. Heinrici’s contribution and other relevant parts of David L. Schindler, ed.
Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press – Communio Books, 1991). The first
monograph (with pictures) on Balthasar was written (originally in Italian) by one of his friends: Elio Guerrerio,
Hans Urs von Balthasar: Eine Monographie (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1993). Balthasar’s own retrospects,
written at the end of each decade of his life, where he explains the plan (or maybe better: the lack of a strict one)
and circumstances behind his work are valuable reading in order to understand his bibliography. They are
gathered in Hans Urs von Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect (San Francisco: Ignatius Press – Communio Books,
1993). The final essay of this volume is currently available in several places on the Internet, and was first
published (in English) as ———, “A Résumé of My Thought,” Communio: International Catholic Review 15,
no. Winter (1988). I will refer to page numbers of the book version throughout.
One of the better guides on how to “find one’s way in Balthasar” is Mark A. McIntosh, Christology from Within:
Spirituality and the Incarnation in Hans Urs von Balthasar (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1996), 1-12. For readers of Norwegian I can refer to Ståle Johannes Kristiansen, “Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in
Moderne teologi, ed. Ståle Johannes Kristiansen and Svein Rise (Kristiansand: Høyskoleforlaget, 2008). Cf. also
———, “Sannhetens symfoniske form. Om Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Lære og liv: Et tidsskrift for Kirkelig
fornyelse, no. 2 (2006). These texts and their author were an important source of inspiration for the present
project from its very beginning. Now also available in English: Staale Johannes Kristiansen, “Hans Urs von
Balthasar,” in Key Theological Thinkers: From Modern to Postmodern, ed. Staale Johannes Kristiansen and
Svein Rise (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013).
10
3.1 The Sources of Enquiry Situated within Balthasar’s Bibliography and
Biography
The three volumes of Theo-Logic were published as the last main part of Balthasar’s
voluminous theological trilogy27
focusing on beauty,28
goodness29
and truth (in that quite
unusual order), culminating in a small retrospective Epilogue.30
The trilogy has initiated a
host of theological research in different contexts and exercises an important influence on the
current teaching of the Catholic Church as well as milieus in other churches. In the three
volumes of the Theo-Logic – Truth of the World, Truth of God and The Spirit of Truth –
Balthasar outlines his thinking on truth in philosophical and theological perspectives, and
connects this closely to his pneumatology. As such, they are the center of Balthasar’s
engagement with the questions treated in this dissertation. The discussion in Theo-Logic is
deeply informed by the theological aesthetics and dramatics in the earlier parts of the trilogy,
and in one sense functions as both a crown and an endpoint to the whole trilogy.31
But Theo-
Logic 1: The Truth of the World was actually written before the whole trilogy, and later
27 According to Johnson, the trilogy (as it is called by Johannes Verlag and Ignatius Press publishing it) is better
viewed as a triptych; see Junius C. Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar”
(Yale University, 2010), 5ff. The same idea is present in Balthasar’s later commentary on his foreword to GL 1
in Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect, 96. A triptych is a work of art in three sections in one panel, while a
trilogy is often a series of separate books etc. Johnson says “[triptych] rather than a trilogy, for trilogy implies a
separation among the three parts that would deny the type of unity von Balthasar wishes to champion,” Johnson,
“Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar”, 34. Although Johnson’s point is a good one,
for the sake of ease of reference, and because of the widespread use of the designation, I will use “trilogy”
throughout. For all its artful thematic unity, the trilogy is still not a work of art, and consists of a numbered
sequence of books. 28
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Seeing the Form, vol. 1, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982); ———, Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles, vol. 2, The Glory of the
Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984); ———, Studies in Theological Style: Lay Styles,
vol. 3, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986); ———, The Realm of
Metaphysics in Antiquity, vol. 4, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press,
1989); ———, The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age; ———, Theology: The Old Covenant, vol. 6, The
Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991); ———, Theology: The New
Covenant (henceforth GL 1-7). The German original (Herrlichkeit) has a different order of volumes (I; II.1; II.2;
III/1.1; III/1.2; III/2.1; III/2.2). 29
———, Prolegomena, vol. 1, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1988); ———, The Dramatis Personae: Man in God, vol. 2, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990); ———, The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ, vol. 3, Theo-Drama:
Theological Dramatic Theory (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992); ———, The Action, vol. 4, Theo-Drama:
Theological Dramatic Theory (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994); ———, The Last Act, vol. 5, Theo-Drama:
Theological Dramatic Theory (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998) (henceforth TD 1-5). The German original
(Theodramatik) has a different order of volumes (I; II.1; II.2; III; IV). 30
———, Epilogue (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004) (henceforth E). 31
Cf. Gerwing’s observations in the Vorblick to Thomas Schumacher, Perichorein: Zur Konvergenz von
Pneumatologik und Christologik in Hans Urs von Balthasars theodramatischem Entwurf einer Theologik
(München: Institut zur Förderung der Glaubenslehre, 2007), xii-xiii.
11
republished at that place in the trilogy.32
This fact first illustrates some important points in
Balthasar’s view and practice of the relation between philosophy and theology: Philosophy is
both at the start and the end of theology, and closely integrated with theology.33
And second,
it shows how this volume is also a kind of presupposition for the whole trilogy. Parts of the
phenomenological framework and the view of the transcendentals behind the theological
aesthetics are present already in The Truth of the World. Theo-Logic is thus central to the
philosophical and theological framework of the trilogy, constituting in one sense both its
beginning and its end.34
However, the volumes of Theo-Logic, or the other volumes of the trilogy, do not constitute an
isolated part of Balthasar’s literary output, but constantly refer explicitly and implicitly to his
other works in collections of theological essays, monographs on important theologians and so
on. Therefore, references to Theo-Logic are supplemented, throughout this dissertation, by
references to the rest of the trilogy and other works by Balthasar, which sometimes represents
deeper engagements with or important stages in the development of the positions present in
Theo-Logic. The criterion of selection of supplementary texts is primarily how relevant they
are to the questions discussed, with an eye to the importance of works within Balthasar’s
bibliography and biography and their reception by scholars. Such works will be introduced as
they are taken into the discussion at various places, and the following mention of the most
important works referred to beyond Theo-Logic and the trilogy is not exhaustive.
Within the trilogy, some of the earlier volumes stand forth as more important for the questions
discussed in this dissertation than others. Seeing the Form (GL 1) is important because of its
development of aspects of fundamental theology, and because of its central position in the
presentation of Balthasar’s overarching project in the trilogy. The volumes on The Realm of
Metaphysics (GL 4 and 5) are important to some philosophical discussions, and the study of
Bonaventure in the first Studies in Theological Style (GL 2) is an important resource for my
analysis of Balthasar’s version of the doctrine of analogy. Different parts of the Christology
and theology of the Trinity expressed in the middle volumes of Theo-Drama (TD 2-4) are
important for my analysis and discussion of questions of truth in the context of these
32 It was astonishing to see how Balthasar had by hand literally changed the title in the exemplar of the original
edition of Wahrheit (1947) kept in his own library, which is now part of the Balthasar archive in Basel,
Switzerland. 33
See further § 5. 34
Cf. Manfred Lochbrunner, Analogia Caritatis: Darstellung und Deutung der Theologie Hans Urs von
Balthasars, Freiburger Theologischer Studien (Freiburg: Herder, 1978), 80.
12
doctrines. From Balthasar’s smaller and more popular works, the two most important texts for
this dissertation are Truth is Symphonic, where he addresses some aspects of the concept of
truth and the legitimate sense of pluralism in Christian faith, and Love Alone is Credible,
where Balthasar makes a dense presentation of the implication of his theological aesthetics for
fundamental theology.35
Many essays gathered in the series Explorations in Theology,
especially selected ones from Creator Spirit (vol. III) and Spirit and Institution (vol. IV), are
important sources, most of them in Part III.36
From the monographs, the most important ones,
because of their thematic correspondence to this dissertation, are the works on Maximus the
Confessor37
and Karl Barth.38
A careful analysis and discussion of Balthasar’s Theo-Logic is promising for the engagement
with the concerns of this dissertation for several reasons. The first is his intention and ability
to discuss central theological questions in light of the whole of human existence. As such, his
theology is always in close interaction with philosophy, and his dogmatics are not isolated
from philosophy of religion or fundamental theology. For a comprehensive interpretation of
the questions surrounding truth, these links are inevitable. A second reason is the breadth of
his engagement with the whole of Western culture. Henri de Lubac, one of Balthasar’s
teachers and friends, and an important figure in the revival of Trinitarian theology in the
twentieth century, once called him “the most cultured man of our time.”39
Throughout the
trilogy and other works, Balthasar shows acquaintance with a host of works in philosophy,
theology and literature. Third, Balthasar is a genuinely original thinker. He is, like all great
Catholic theologians, heavily influenced by the tradition he continuously refers to, but his
solutions often carry his own unmistakable stamp. Balthasar’s genuine originality is the best
solution to the riddle of why scholars propose such a wide range of possible interpretations of
35 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1987); ———, Love Alone Is Credible, trans. David C. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004). 36
———, The Word Made Flesh, vol. I, Explorations in Theology (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1989); ———
, Spouse of the Word, vol. II, Explorations in Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991); ———, Creator
Spirit, vol. III, Explorations in Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993); ———, Spirit and Institution,
vol. IV, Explorations in Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995). Articles from the Explorations in
Theology series are throughout referred to by the title of the article. 37
Maximus’ importance for the reasoning in TL 2 is evident from many references: e.g. ———, TL 2, 69f, 188-
94, 213, 266f. By his monograph on Maximus, Balthasar was an early and important contributor to the renewed
interest in his writings in the twentieth century. ———, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus
the Confessor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003). 38
———, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Fransisco:
Ignatius Press, 1992). 39
Henry Cardinal de Lubac, “A Witness of Christ in the Church: Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in Balthasar: His
Life and Work, ed. David L. Schindler (1991), 272f.
13
“the most important influence on Balthasar” or the like. Suggestions include such different
persons as his close friend and mystic-theologian Adrienne von Speyr, Irenaeus from
antiquity, Bonaventure from the Middle Ages and Karl Barth from modernity.40
But the most
significant influence on his theology is, I suggest, to an unusual degree himself.
3.2 The Dissertation in Relation to Previous Research on Balthasar
Balthasar’s work is highly influential on several different arenas today, as is apparent from the
growth of secondary literature on his work.41
The greater part of works are produced in
Catholic universities, but Balthasar is also read and commented on by different strands of
Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox theologians, philosophers and philosophers of religion,
and art theorists. At the moment, the most rapid growth of dissertations on Balthasar happens
in the U.S. The most heated debate currently concerns his theology of Christ’s descent into
hell and related topics, including his stance regarding universalism.42
The following is not at
all an attempt to do full justice to all research on Balthasar’s life and work. I will briefly point
to some important milestones within this research and make some comments on the works
having the closest affinities with the present dissertation.
The one who has worked and written most extensively on the whole Balthasarian corpus is
probably the English Dominican Aidan Nichols. He has written five Guides, three covering
each part of the trilogy, one on Balthasar’s early writings on philosophy and the arts and one
on his theology beyond the trilogy.43
Nichols’ analyses are sober and full of insight. However,
40 Balthasar himself is the one that most emphatically declares his dependence on von Speyr. See Hans Urs von
Balthasar, First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981), 13; ———, My Work: In
Retrospect, 105ff. For Irenaeus: Kevin Mongrain, The Systematic Thought of Hans Urs Von Balthasar: An
Irenaean Retrieval (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002). For the relationship to Karl Barth:
Rodney Howsare, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Protestantism: The Ecumenical Implications of his Theological
Style (London: T&T Clark International, 2005); ———, Balthasar: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: T&T
Clark International, 2009); Stephen Wigley, Balthasar’s Trilogy: A Reader’s Guide (London: Continuum, 2010);
Stephen D. Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Critical Engagement (London: T&T Clark,
2007). For Bonaventure: Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 14f.
Other important suggestions of significant influences on specific works or the whole of his thought from
different scholars in different contexts are Thomas Aquinas, Erich Przywara, Henri de Lubac and Ferdinand
Ulrich. My interpretation of these diverse judgments is that Balthasar has an exceptional ability to integrate other
ways of thinking into his own creative synthetic whole; his conception is not primarily the integration of a wide
range of sources into a previously available systematic way of thinking, but into his own creative,
comprehensive synthesis. And a part of this synthesis is his way of integrating the mystical dimensions of
Adrienne into his thinking and writing. 41
The web page Sekundärliteratur H. U. von Balthasar (http://homepage.bluewin.ch/huvbslit/) contains updated
lists (each year) on secondary literature on Balthasar worldwide, in a variety of languages. The full list is more
than 200 pages long. 42
This debate will be touched on in § 10. References are given there. 43
Aidan Nichols, The Word Has Been Abroad: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Aesthetics (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1998); ———, No Bloodless Myth: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Dramatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
14
he is more a referent than a critic, and thus attempts primarily to present the thought of
Balthasar to the English-speaking audience, as the Guides often appeared before the titles
summarized within were published in English translations. Thus Nichols has little if no
synthetic or systematic ambition in these works beyond a favorable presentation of
Balthasar’s thinking to an English-speaking audience. Nichols’ treatment of Theo-Logic in
Say it is Pentecost has provided a dialogue partner in my work and references to it figure
across the sections of this dissertation. Nichols has also written a little Key to the whole
trilogy, which is probably the best book available as an introduction to Balthasar in proportion
to its number of pages.44
There are also several titles on Balthasar’s person and work on the market. A very good one is
the one edited by Karl Lehmann/Walter Kasper (German edition) and David L. Schindler
(American editon),45
published shortly after his death and written by people who knew him
and his thinking very well. Some important insights into the reception of Balthasar, especially
in the English-speaking world, are found in the collection of essays called How Balthasar
Changed my Mind.46
For Part I of the study, the closest works are Peter Blättler’s phenomenological analysis of TL
1 and David C. Schindler’s dissertation on Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic
Structure of Truth.47
Blättler presents an analysis of TL 1 that is closer to the text (at page
level) than this dissertation, but does not discuss the work in a noteworthy wider context.
Although the title concerns pneumatology, a surprisingly great deal of the dissertation consists
of philosophical discussion. Schindler’s work is often referred to throughout Part I because it
2000); ———, Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Logic (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2001); ———,
Scattering the Seed: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Early Writings on Philosophy and the Arts (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 2006); ———, Divine Fruitfulness: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Theology beyond the Trilogy
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2007). 44
———, A Key to Balthasar: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty, Goodness and Truth (London: Darton,
Longman and Todd, 2011). Similar works are Howsare, Balthasar: A Guide for the Perplexed; Wigley,
Balthasar’s Trilogy: A Reader’s Guide; Karen Kilby, Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2012). 45
Karl Lehmann and Walter Kasper, ed. Hans Urs von Balthasar: Gestalt und Werk (Köln: Communio,1989);
Schindler, ed. Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work. Other early works focusing as much on the person
and his style as on details of his theological output (both first published in Italian) are Guerrerio, Hans Urs von
Balthasar: Eine Monographie; Angelo Scola, Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Theological Style (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1995). 46
Rodney A. Howsare and Larry S. Chapp, How Balthasar Changed My Mind: Fifteen Scholars Reflect on the
Meaning of Balthasar for Their Own Work (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2008). 47
Peter Blättler, Pneumatologia crucis: das Kreuz in der Logik von Wahrheit und Freiheit; ein
phänomenologischer Zugang zur Theologik Hans Urs von Balthasars (Würzburg: Echter, 2004); David C.
Schindler, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation, vol. 34,
Perspectives in Continental Philosophy (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004).
15
manages to place Balthasar’s thinking on truth in Theo-Logic in an informed discussion with
other branches of Balthasar’s work and the continental philosophical tradition in a
comprehensive way. Ilkamarina Kuhr’s Gabe and Gestalt provides an analysis of Balthasar’s
philosophical and theological phenomenology, focused on the influence of Goethe, that is
important throughout Parts I and II.48
Part II visits many of the works concerning Balthasar’s version of the doctrine of analogy,
which is a very important key to the reasoning behind the whole trilogy. Further works are
given there. To be mentioned here are Manfred Lochbrunner’s Analogia caritatis, an early
and influential German dissertation on this subject, and the more recent work on Christ and
analogy by Junius Johnson, which comes quite close to my own interpretation of Balthasar.49
Mention can also be made of the recent and very informative collection of essays edited by
Thomas J. White on analogia entis.50
Ulrich J. Plaga’s dissertation Ich bin die Wahrheit gives
perspectives on Christology throughout Part II and offers the most thorough previous
discussion of Balthasar’s use of the Johannine entryway, which this dissertation discusses in
12.1.51
Thomas Schumacher’s Perichorein is a dialogue partner throughout Part II and III as
concerning analogy, Christology, pneumatology and Trinitarian theology in general.52
Studies of Balthasar’s pneumatology do not abound in the same way as studies of some other
topics on his thought. In 2007, Jeffrey A. Vogel wrote that “in the extensive secondary
literature on the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, comparatively little attention has been
given to his understanding of the activity of the Holy Spirit.”53
There are, however, notable
exceptions. The first study of Balthasar’s pneumatology was written by Kossi K. Joseph
Tossou in 1984: Streben nach Vollendung.54
It was concluded before Balthasar wrote his
Theo-Logic. It is thus today interesting primarily as a look into the development of Balthasar’s
48 Ilkamarina Kuhr, Gabe und Gestalt: Theologische Phänomenologie bei Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. Klaus
Müller and Thomas Pröpper, Ratio Fidei (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2012). 49
Lochbrunner, Analogia Caritatis: Darstellung und Deutung der Theologie Hans Urs von Balthasars; Johnson,
“Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar”; Junius Johnson, Christ and Analogy: The
Christocentric Metaphysics of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Emerging Scholars (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013). 50
Thomas Joseph White, ed. The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Antichrist or the Wisdom of God? (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). 51
Ulrich Johannes Plaga, “‘Ich bin die Wahrheit.’ Die theologische Dimension der Christologie Hans Urs von
Balthasars” (Rühr-Universität Bochum, 1997). 52
Schumacher, Perichorein. 53
Jeffrey A. Vogel, “The Unselfing Activity of the Holy Spirit in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,”
Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 10, no. 4 (2007). 54
Kossi K. Joseph Tossou, Streben nach Vollendung: Zur Pneumatologie im Werk Hans Urs von Balthasars,
vol. 125, Freiburger theologische Studien (Freiburg: Herder, 1983).
16
pneumatology, and not as a full analysis of his position. Tossou’s dissertation also discusses a
very wide range of fundamental theological questions not strictly bound to pneumatology.
The most thematically open dissertation concerning Balthasar’s pneumatology in recent times
is written by the Hungarian Horváth Endre, Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs
von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen.55
Endre basically sets out to defend the
pneumatology of Balthasar as receivable [Rezipierbar] within a Catholic theological context,
responding to various criticisms of this theology. Endre’s dissertation is not in the same
manner as this one focused on the question of truth, and is therefore used as a dialogue partner
mostly in Part III. Much of what Endre argues for and concludes regarding Balthasar’s
theology will be strengthened through a deeper engagement with truth such as the one
undertaken here, because Balthasar’s pneumatology is so closely connected to truth and
Christology. Elisabeth Müller’s dissertation on the witnessing work of the Spirit in the Church
is an important account of Balthasar’s view of a more limited aspect of pneumatology, which
is discussed in this dissertation primarily in § 15.56
The new contribution of this dissertation when seen in light of previous research on Balthasar
consists primarily in the explicit dogmatic discussion of the issue of truth in relation to the
Holy Spirit. The attempt to read the whole of the Theo-Logic together, as Schumacher also
does, is also important, albeit with a different aspect in mind. In addition, I offer my own
systematic contribution starting from a theological perspective that is comparatively rare in
the literature on Balthasar, and by using a theoretical framework that has not been applied to
his thinking before. Finally, this dissertation presents one of few studies of Theo-Logic in
English, a fact probably related to the relatively recent completion of translations of these
works (2000, 2004, 2005), and it is the first to appear on Balthasar’s theology in Scandinavia.
§ 4. Method and Theoretical Framework: Systematic Reconstruction by
Lorenz B. Puntel’s Structural-Systematic Philosophy (SSP)
In order to make Hans Urs von Balthasar’s works an as fruitful resource as possible for the
articulation of a coherent answer to this dissertation’s research question, a robust and
comprehensive theoretical framework is needed. Such a framework should provide tools for a
55 Horváth Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen
Nachfragen” (Pázmány Péter Katholische Universität, 2011). 56
Elisabeth Müller, “Der Geist als wirkmächtiger Zeuge Jesu Christi in der Kirche nach Hans Urs von
Balthasar” (Universität Salzburg, 2006).
17
precise analysis of Balthasar’s works, be able to optimize the coherence of his thinking by
internal adjustments, and make it possible to compare Balthasar’s position to other available
alternatives in order to make an assessment of it. The structural-systematic philosophy (SSP)
developed by the German philosopher Lorenz Bruno Puntel is an alternative that affords
resources for all these three processes. Puntel has developed it particularly in his relatively
recent books Structure and Being (2008, German original: Struktur und Sein, 2006) and Being
and God (2011, org. Sein und Gott, 2010), where the strictly theoretically posed question of
God is treated inside this framework.57
Recently, Alan White, translator (and co-author) of
these works into English, has contributed to a further development of SSP in his Towards a
Philosophical Theory of Everything (2014).58
On the basis of this framework, the dissertation
will proceed methodologically as a systematic reconstruction of Balthasar’s work.59
This
chapter presents this framework and method more closely. Section 4.1 discusses the
placement of this dissertation among the theological disciplines and the use of a philosophical
framework. Section 4.2 gives a presentation of the theoretical framework with respect to its
central ideas and inner structure, while 4.3 expands on systematic reconstruction as a method
and the criteria for assessing coherent answers. The chapter concludes in 4.4 with some
arguments for why this is a good or fruitful theoretical framework to apply to the research
question and sources of enquiry of this dissertation; the section focuses on Puntel and
Balthasar’s different attitudes to the words “system” and “systematic.”
First, however, a few words must be said about the connection between method and topic in a
dissertation where the phenomenon of truth stands at the center of the discussion. The
57 Lorenz B. Puntel and Alan White (trans.), Structure and Being: A Theoretical Framework for a Systematic
Philosophy (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008) (henceforth S&B); ———, Being and
God: A Systematic Approach in Confrontation with Martin Heidegger, Émmanuel Lévinas, and Jean-Luc
Marion (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2011) (henceforth B&G). White is not only the translator of
these works, he has worked closely with Puntel in preparing them; the English editions are thus “translated and
in collaboration with” (cf. the Prefaces to Structure and Being). The German originals are: Lorenz B. Puntel,
Struktur und Sein: Ein Theorierahmen für eine systematische Philosophie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006); —
——, Sein und Gott: ein systematischer Ansatz in Auseinandersetzung mit M. Heidegger, É. Lévinas und J.-L.
Marion (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). References will be given to the page numbers of the English
translations of these works. 58
Alan White, Toward a Philosophical Theory of Everything: Contributions to the Structural-Systematic
Philosophy (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014) (henceforth TAPTOE). In addition to speaking more explicitly about
this framework under the heading structural-systematic philosophy (SSP), White also calls the process leading
up to S&B and B&G and his own contribution in TAPTOE the structural-systematic research program in
philosophy (SSRPP). The most important earlier work is Lorenz B. Puntel, Grundlagen einer Theorie der
Wahrheit (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990). 59
A presentation of systematic reconstruction as a method similar to what follows can be found in Asle Eikrem,
Being in Religion: A Journey in Ontology from Pragmatics through Hermeneutics to Metaphysics, ed. Ingolf U.
Dalferth, Religion in Philosophy and Theology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013), 9-12.
18
research question raised in this dissertation relates closely to the question of what truth is and
how we attend to it, in both philosophical and theological perspectives. Thus a tension arises
between the method used, which should according to normal research-practice at least in
principle be accounted for beforehand in an introduction, while the answers to the research
question by means of this method are given through the main parts of the thesis. But when
truth is the subject matter in the theoretician’s quest for truth, the ideal but impossible practice
would be to make the result of the investigation a presupposition and explication of its method
(what a sad theological dissertation – consisting only of a long chapter on method!). Therefore
the introductory chapter on method of this dissertation has to presuppose and anticipate some
of the more substantial discussions of the main parts, and can thus in some respects be only
initial and preliminary. However, in light of the common-sense wisdom that the proof of the
pudding is in the eating, this may turn out to be an advantage rather than a weakness: The
purpose of a clear articulation of method is to give the best answers to research questions, not
the longest presentation of method.
Furthermore, while the research question focuses even on the ontological aspects of truth, this
methodological presentation can be restricted to lay emphasis on the epistemological criterion
(or criteria) for accessing truth in the context of theoretical activity. But, as Lorenz B. Puntel
has argued convincingly in confrontation with philosopher colleague and coherence
methodologist Nicholas Rescher, the criteria for evaluating the truth value of theoretical
propositions ultimately have to be linked to a determined ontology if they are going to make
any sense.60
Thus the ontological questions cannot be laid fully aside in the introduction, and
the coherence of the material presented here is heavily dependent on the ontology advocated
throughout the dissertation.
4.1 A Work in Systematic Theology and Dogmatics
The aim, method and material of this dissertation place it firmly within the discipline of
Christian systematic theology, as it asks primarily for an aspect of an articulated
pneumatology, which is a part of the Christian doctrine of the triune God.
60 For references to this discussion, see Søvik, “The Problem of Evil and the Power of God: On the Coherence
and Authenticity of Some Christian Theodicies with Different Understandings of God’s Power,” 84f. The case is
quite straightforwardly expressed by Puntel: “Any truth theory that includes an ontological import remains
vague and ultimately incomplete until the ontology on which it relies, or which it presupposes, is made explicit.”
Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 178. See also White, TAPTOE, 44.
19
A possible objection to this is that it uses as its method a theoretical framework that is
explicitly philosophical, not theological. There are, however, many good reasons to conceive
systematic theology exactly as the systematic philosophy or theoretization of the Christian
faith, especially if philosophy is understood as a universal systematic theoretical discipline
along the lines of Puntel.61
A closer look reveals that this framework is indeed open to and
useful in theology; it even presupposes theology as a part of itself when the full determination
of absolute Being is sought. For at that point, the history of absolute Being in its relation to
contingent being must be thematized. The structural-systematic philosophy points to the
philosophy of religion, and ultimately to a hermeneutically oriented Christian theology, as the
means for doing that.62
Systematic theology is an analytic-theoretical reflection on Christian
faith and practice,63
and as such it shares with philosophy both the universal outlook and the
demand for intelligibility and coherence.64
Thus their methodological affinities are obvious,
and this objection is met. This argument will gain further strength from the discussion of the
relation between theology and philosophy in § 5.
Because of the key-word truth, much of the discussion in this dissertation is located in the
overlapping field(s) between philosophy and theology, and there is a substantial amount of
discourse close to philosophy of religion or philosophical theology within it.65
However, the
aim and the research question, asking for a contemporary exposition of the Spirit of truth,
make the dissertation primarily, although with interrelations to philosophical subjects and
61 Puntel’s view of the difference and relation between theology and philosophy will be further discussed in § 5.
62 Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 265f. A fuller explication of the relation of SSP to Christianity is found in
White, TAPTOE, 178f. 63
Cf. also Balthasar, TL 3, 367. 64
A model for systematic theology that involves Puntel’s work on truth theories and coherence can be found in
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), 48-61. 65
There are several different ways to understand these disciplines. Usually, the term “philosophy of religion” is
used when the inquiry starts in (often some kind of secular/-ized) philosophy, as for example in Guttorm
Fløistad, ed. Philosophy of Religion, vol. 10, Contemporary Philosophy: A New Survey (Dordrecht: Springer,
2010). The term “philosophical theology” is most often used when religious philosophical problems are treated
with reference to the Christian tradition or from another religious, theological outset. However, one can also
meet the term “philosophy of religion” as a subdiscipline of systematic theology along with ethics and
dogmatics. In The Cambridge Companion to Christian Philosophical Theology, philosophical theology is
understood as the branch of the overall field of philosophy of religion that considers questions with a view to the
Christian tradition, but explicitly not as apologetics or having a Christian normative aim. Charles Taliaferro and
Chad Meister, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Christian Philosophical Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2010), xiii. An account of this complex, influenced by Puntel, which comes close to the
practice of this dissertation, can be found in Asle Eikrem, “Religionsfilosofi som filosofisk og teologisk
disiplin,” Teologisk Tidsskrift 2, no. 2 (2013). The discussion of the relationship between philosophy and
theology in § 5 unfolds what I mean when I say that there are substantial amounts of philosophy of religion or
philosophical theology in this dissertation, but in short it means that here philosophy and theology are conceived
as closely interrelated, such that sound dogmatics cannot be isolated from either philosophical theology,
philosophy of religion or philosophy, in several senses of those words.
20
philosophical theology along the way, a work in the discipline of dogmatic theology or
dogmatics, more precisely in pneumatology.66
Niels Henrik Gregersen has given fruitful perspectives on the self-understanding of dogmatics
through his conception of dogmatics as “samtidsteologi”67
or contemporary theology
[theology of the present (time)68
]. According to Gregersen, dogmatics investigate, analyze and
evaluate present-day Christian expressions or communication practices69
with the aim of
formulating systematic and meaningful proposals for Christian faith and practice today and
tomorrow.70
Dogmatics understood in this sense shares with philosophy the aim of
articulating universal answers to the “big questions” pertinent to human existence.
As a work in systematic theology, the dissertation must also relate to the problem of different
Christian confessions. The author of this dissertation is a protestant theologian, of Evangelical
Lutheran confession. The sources of enquiry, however, are primarily the works of a Catholic
theologian – although a Catholic theologian engaged heavily in ecumenical matters through
his engagement with the Protestant Karl Barth71
and Eastern Church Fathers – and the
theoretical framework is deeply rooted in a metaphysical philosophical tradition that has deep
affinities to Catholic and Orthodox theology, as is also the case with Balthasar’s thinking.
Thus the dissertation has an ecumenical outlook from the beginning, and this is acknowledged
more and more to be an important aspect of every enterprise in dogmatics or contemporary
theology. The aspiration to universality, which above gave an impetus to a close cooperation
with philosophy in order to answer theological questions, in this context takes the form of the
66 The traditional distinction made here, with dogmatics seen as a subdiscipline of systematic theology
(alongside ethics and philosophy of religion), is not to be taken absolutely, but primarily as a thematic
distinction. As Pannenberg argues in his comprehensive view of systematic theology, the presentation of
Christian dogmatics must involve their truth claim. See chapter 1 in Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 1-61, esp.
19. Therefore dogmatics and the philosophy of religion/philosophical theology cannot be separated from each
other, but must be closely interrelated. Balthasar would agree to all this, and also explicitly says that he has an
apologetic concern and motivation in this regard. According to him, “You do good apologetics if you do good,
central theology; if you expound theology effectively, you have done the best kind of apologetics,” Balthasar,
My Work: In Retrospect, 100. 67
Niels Henrik Gregersen, “Dogmatik som samtidsteologi,” Dansk Teologisk Tidsskrift 71 (2008). 68
Note that the genitive is both subjective and objective in Gregersen’s conception, as dogmatics is both
descriptive and potentially normative with respect to what is, or ought to be, present-day theology.
“Samtidsteologi” is rendered “contemporary theology” in the English abstract to the article cited above, 290, but
the term might give some other connotations than the ones emphasized here, and it makes the subjective and
objective genitive point less intelligible. I have therefore added my own translation of the term. 69
Of course, in the terminology of Puntel that is employed in this dissertation (see the next sections), the apt
description here would be the Christian universe of discourse. 70
Gregersen, “Dogmatik som samtidsteologi,” 290, 302. 71
The most important titles on Balthasar’s work on Barth are Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition
and Interpretation; Howsare, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Protestantism: The Ecumenical Implications of his
Theological Style; Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Critical Engagement.
21
need for contributing to ecumenical or inter-confessional theology. No theologian should
abandon his or her own tradition in order to contribute to the articulation of an ecumenically
valid systematic theology, but neither can any theologian restrict his or her horizon to the
strictly internal matters of one particular confession. Therefore this dissertation unfolds from
the starting point of an Evangelical Lutheran theological framework, but with a view to and
aspiration for ecumenically valid answers.72
As is well known, both the question of truth and pneumatology is of great ecumenical
controversy. Protestants, Orthodox and Catholics debate the role of the Spirit related to
Scripture and tradition and the role of the papacy in the process of establishing doctrine. The
whole realm of Pentecostalism and the Renewal Movements confronts the traditional
churches on questions of pneumatology, ecclesiology, office and liturgy vs. spontaneity and
charismatic phenomena. Regarding these matters, this dissertation tries to avoid the repetition
of traditional polemics as much as possible, instead offering proposals for future closer
agreement. A practical consequence of this attitude is that the dissertation only scarcely goes
into the details of Balthasar’s Catholic ecclesiology and Mariology, but at some stages it is
necessary to point out how a systematic reconstruction of his position has strengthened
coherence when those questions are treated in another way than he does.73
There is, in other
words, no point in using this dissertation primarily to show that I am a Lutheran and that
Balthasar is a Catholic, and that there exist significant differences between these two ecclesial
and theological frameworks. The aim, however, is to contribute to a dialogue that can lead all
confessional positions closer to each other in the quest for the truth that none of us has
grasped in its entirety yet.74
72 The ecumenical aspiration of the Lutheran confession is very clear in The Augsburg Confession: The purpose
of the confession is that all may “be able to live in one Christian Church in unity and concord” (Preface), and in
this “teaching […] there is nothing […] that departs […] from the Scriptures or the catholic church” (art. XXI).
Cf. also the reference to the Council of Nicea and “the Fathers” in art. I. Translations from Robert Kolb and
Timothy J. Wengert, The Book of Concord: the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2000), 31, 36, 59. 73
This happens especially in 15.2 and 16.2. 74
Cf. the apt rhetorical question put by Bruce L. McCormack: “[R]ather than seeking a premature ecumenical
agreement that would likely entail the assimilation of the teachings of one’s own church to those found in
another, should we not enter dialogue with the expectation that the theology that will enable us to confess a
common faith does not exist yet – and can only come into existence where representatives of both great
communions [e.g. Catholic and Protestant – here I would have added an openness beyond that!] seek to further
develop their own theologies with the questions and concerns of the conversation-partners firmly in mind?”
Bruce L. McCormack, “Epilogue: Musings on the Role Played by Philosophy in Ecumenical Dialogue,” in
Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: An Unofficial Catholic-Protestant Dialogue, ed. Bruce L. McCormack and
Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 283.
22
4.2 Presentation of the Theoretical Framework: The Structural-
Systematic Philosophy
In his books Structure and Being and Being and God, the German philosopher Lorenz Bruno
Puntel developed a theoretical framework for a structural-systematic philosophy (SSP) with
the aim of making it possible to theorize about and grasp everything in a very wide sense of
that word.75
This systematic philosophy is intended to function as the universal science76
that
can answer the basic questions of being,77
and can work with respect to every domain of the
world: the scientific and the lifeworldy; the natural/material and mental; history and religion;
the theoretical, practical (ethical) and aesthetic.78
Puntel argues that the basic distinction or dichotomy of philosophy and theorization, chosen
in interaction with and among more classic alternatives, is the distinction made in the title of
the first book, that between structure and being.79
These terms expresses some important
junctures in his structural-systematic philosophy: Being as such and as a whole80
is always
already structured, and as such, being has a fundamental expressibility.81
The most
fundamental structures are the formal, the semantic and the ontological.82
Puntel’s theory of being as structured leads to a refutation of what he calls “substance
ontology.” In the philosophical tradition, at least since Aristotle, it has been common to
75 “This book seeks to develop a coherent and comprehensive grasp of the entire universe.” Puntel and White
(trans.), S&B, 240. The meaning of “everything” in this context is unfolded in White, TAPTOE, 3ff. 76
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 10. 77
The terminology of being is a bit complicated in English (as well as in other languages, including Norwegian).
Puntel uses “a being” or “beings” to denote existing things in the world (cf. German Seienede, Latin ens, Greek
on), or to denote in general what is the subject of ontology, while he uses “Being” (more precisely, (capital-
)Being) to refer to the same as the German Sein, Latin esse and Greek einai, which means the primordial
dimension that every being participates in, and is the main subject of metaphysics. See Lorenz B. Puntel,
“Metaphysics: A Traditional Mainstay in Philosophy in Need of Radical Rethinking” (paper presented at the
62nd Annual Meeting of the Metaphysical Society of America, 2011). White uses “be-er”/“be-ers” for Seiende
and “being” for Sein; see White, TAPTOE, 136f. The English translations of Balthasar’s works are not consistent
on this point. In this dissertation different conventions will be used when referring to different works and
thinkers, but in my own discussions I will primarily use the terminology of White, which is in my judgment the
version that gives rise to the fewest misunderstandings, although it is perhaps the most uncommon and may feel
a bit awkward to new readers. 78
These different domains of the world are treated in chapter 4, Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 246-356. Ethics
(the problem of human freedom) and aesthetics (the theory of beauty) are treated more fully in ch. 6 and 7 of
White, TAPTOE. 79
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 37f. 80
“Being as such and as a whole” is used in Puntel’s terminology when “Being” is to be further determined. It is
used throughout chapter 5 of Structure and Being; the fuller determination of it is provided at ibid., 413-421.
Note that the German expression “Sein im Ganzen” is not in the same danger of receiving an extensional
interpretation as the English translation “Being as a whole.” The translator remarks: “‘Im Ganzen’ could also be
rendered ‘taking all aspects into consideration’.” See footnote d, ibid., 420. 81
Ibid., 97f, 369, 387, 390, 431. 82
Presented at ibid., 172-222.
23
conceive a being83
as a substance with properties and relations to other substances. Puntel
argues that this implies a phantom-like ontology, because the primary ontological concept of
substance in this scheme by closer investigation is revealed to be only a kind of metaphysical-
ontological X that is empty of content and has an unclear ontological status, and therefore is
unintelligible.84
In most Thomistic frameworks, the substance or essence is what “has” or
“receives” esse. But according to the SSP, substances cannot act before they are, and there is
no way of being or acting without or before being if being is understood as the absolutely
universal dimension. Thus philosophical language should not use subject-predicate sentences
uncritically, because they implicitly presuppose this deficient substance ontology.85
The claim
of unintelligibility even has some support in contemporary physics.86
Instead of substances,
Puntel’s ontology has as its basic component what he calls primary or prime87
structures or
facts. These are not some elements among other entities in the world, but what the world as a
whole consists of.88
Every entity is a configuration or structure of such prime facts.89
By stating the idea that the semantic dimension is one of the fundamental structures of being,
Puntel gives it ontological status. In his theory, both language and theorization (both the
theoretician and his eventually true propositions) are “ontologized.”90
His central metaphor
for this is that semantics and ontology are two sides of the same coin.91
The consequence is
83 “Thing” or “entity” is a more imprecise term that though can serve to make the concept “a being” clearer or
more familiar. A more literal rendering of the German Seiende and Latin ens, which could avoid some
misunderstandings, is “be-er”; see footnote above regarding the terminology. 84
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 190-5. 85
Ibid., 89-94, 147, 190-199, 206. Thus all subject-predicate sentences in this dissertation too (like Puntel’s) are
ultimately to be understood as shorthand for a greater number of “it is the case that it’s F-ing” sentences (see also
note 105 on the theoretical operator). White develops the SSP’s way of speaking on this issue further by making
a distinction between “factings” (for example, IT’S CATTING; that is: the fact that a cat is), “propositionings” (It’s
catting; that is, the semantic content of a sentencing, the proposition that a cat is) and [true] “sentencings” ([It is
the case that] it’s catting; that is, the semantic content of the propositioning is true because it is identical to the
facting). White, TAPTOE, 32-5. Thus he speaks of “the facting that is the comprehensive configuration
encompassing all other factings” (34); that is, being, in this way: The absolutely comprehensive facting IT’S
BEING (or IT BE BEING) is identical to the true propositioning It’s being (or It be being), which is expressible by
the true sentencing “It’s being” (or “It be being”) (146). 86
White argues that this is the case because contemporary physics goes beyond objects/substances by rather
speaking of fields or wave functions. ———, TAPTOE, 35-7. 87
There is a terminological shift from S&B, 15, where Puntel (hesitantly!) uses primary, to B&G, 110, 164,
where he uses prime. But this terminological shift appears to have few, if any, consequences with respect to
content. 88
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 233. 89
Ibid., 208, 215. 90
Ibid., 402. 91
Ibid., 6, 15, 171. “Or: between the two there is a perfect conformity. Initial grounding for this thesis is
provided by the observation that if there were no conformity between semantically structured language and the
ontological level there could be no explanation of how language could articulate the ontological level at all. The
articulation in question is indeed such that sentences literally express or articulate reality (what is, Being); but if
24
the strange but illuminating thought that a true prime proposition is identical to a prime fact.92
This is an important step in Puntel’s way of overcoming what he calls the “putative gap” in
philosophy, which has perhaps its clearest expression in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant
and his successors: the gap between mind and reality, the thing in itself and its appearance to
the experiencing subject. This conception has two basic flaws. First, the mind that does not
experience the things themselves gets an unclear ontological status. What kind of existence
could the subject conceivably have, outside of being, in the distinction presupposed? What is
the other side or pole belonging to the subject in the distinction subject/world? Second, the
objects in a sense disappear from contact with the subject. How can theoreticity be possible at
all if nothing is expressible, such that we human beings cannot actually grasp anything in the
world? What, then, does Kant actually speak of in his Critiques if we in fact know nothing
about the world as it is an Sich? And how is it that we on a daily basis “engage with being in
ways that exhibit high degrees of success?”93
Puntel’s solution to these basic philosophical problems is to conceive of this gap as never-
having-existed or as always already bridged.94
If ontology is to be appropriate for theoretical
purposes, it must say something about both poles of the putative gap, or theorization will
make no sense.95
Puntel does that by his idea of the basic expressibility of being, the
ontologization of theorization, the de-subjectivizing of theoretical propositions and his theory
of truth that follows from this, which will be discussed shortly. In the conclusion to his
discussion of the gap, Puntel writes:
As a comprehensive result of the various critical considerations developed in this book on the relation of
language/theory and world (universe, being as a whole), the following thesis emerges: every transparent and
comprehensive theoretical language grasps or articulates the world or reality itself; there is no separation or
gap, no matter how conceived, between these two domains.96
no version of this thesis is accepted, then the relation of language to reality is made into some kind of
unintelligible miracle.” ———, B&G, 161. 92
———, S&B, 232, 235. Puntel calls this the “identity thesis.” ———, B&G, 177. 93
White, TAPTOE, 58. For the two-poled-ness of the flaw of the “gap” cf. Ibid., 57f, 44f. 94
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 17f. The gap-closing is more fully developed in ch. 5.1. 95
Ibid., 369. 96
Ibid., 401. (Emphasis original) This passage from B&G clarifies Puntel’s position further: “...it is not only
plausible but—as the structural-systematic philosophy shows—necessary to introduce a distinction between—in
Kant’s terminology—reason/thinking and nature. In order however not to misunderstand the distinction, one
must learn a highly important lesson from the passage from Kant quoted above [from Critique of Pure Reason]:
in order to maintain this distinction coherently, one must see that (again in Kant’s terms) thinking/reason and
nature are two dimensions that can be put into relation to each other only because they presuppose a more
comprehensive dimension containing them both. If one attempts to clarify this state of affairs adequately, it
quickly becomes clear that the distinction can be articulated more adequately and appropriately in terms different
25
In relation to these basic junctures from his semantics and ontology, Puntel explicates what he
calls the explicative-definitional theory of truth97
or later simply the semantic-ontological
truth theory.98
It should be noted, however, that Puntel’s view of truth is not as absolutist as
the quotation above may seem to indicate at first glance. Although he emphasizes that every
theoretical grasp of the world is a real (not some kind of imposed or constructed) grasp, no
finite human being will be able to grasp the entire whole.99
Truth functions, in his framework,
primarily as a regulative idea, as the goal and measure of theory. As aptly put by Benjamin
Andrae, “truth is not the starting point of philosophical thought [or any systematic thinking,
my addition], but its final stage.”100
In Structure and Being, Puntel starts101
his approach to a theory of truth as a presupposition
for a fully determined theoreticity with Alfred Tarski’s definition of truth:
A true sentence is one which says that the state of affairs is so and so, and the state of affairs indeed is so and
so.102
One should note carefully that this definition, this truth theory, is explicitly not related to
speakers, hearers or subjective experience, but rather to the most fundamental “truth-
bearer”103
according to Puntel: the proposition,104
which rests on the self-determination of
from Kant’s. In the structural-systematic philosophy it is articulated as the distinction between the structural (or
theoretical) dimension and the universe of discourse (ultimately: the dimension of Being). ———, B&G,
224n79. (Emphasis original) 97
Puntel’s theory of truth (before the publication of S&B) is treated in a clear, systematic way in: Peder Gravem,
“Kva er sanning? Til omgrepet sanning med tanke på religions- og livssynsteori,” Tidsskrift for Teologi og Kirke
76, no. 3 (2005). [“What is truth? Concerning the concept truth in theory of religion and philosophies of life.”]
Later Puntel integrated those earlier works into the systematic philosophy presented in S&B (esp. ch. 2.5; 3.3)
and B&G (ch. 3.1.3 – with introductory comments and note 14). 98
Cf. the title of section 3.1.3 in B&G. 99
See ch. 3.3.4.3, “A Moderate Relativism with Respect to Truth” in Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 241-5.
Here it is said that absolute truth is a limiting concept and a regulative idea. Illuminating in this respect is also —
——, B&G, 215f. White clarifies this idea thus: “No human theoretician could ever establish that the framework
they relied on was the best possible framework for any sufficiently complex subject matter, definitively including
the subject matter of systematic philosophy.” Emphasis original (because it is one of seven theses concerning
theoretical frameworks within SSP). Thus the SSP “claims, ambitiously, to provide the best theoretical
framework currently available for systematic philosophy, but it also anticipates, modestly, the future
development of frameworks that will be better.” White, TAPTOE, 27f. 100
Andrae, “The Puntel-Whitehead Method for Philosophy,” 52. 101
That is, after a quite harsh criticism of Heidegger and some theologians for confusing the truth concept. This
will be discussed in 7.1, as Balthasar at first glance may seem to be one of the theologians under fire. 102
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 143. (Emphasis original) 103
The word is used only carefully by Puntel, because for him, there is no “bearer” (that is, a subject or anything
external to the sentence like it) to bear the proposition; the proposition is its own bearer. Ibid., 226f. 104
“The crux of the matter (..) is the truth of the proposition.” Ibid., 227.
26
language: the sentence [!] says that this or that is the case.105
Thus it is strictly theoretically or
philosophically irrelevant who says something.106
The notion of “state of affairs” highlights a
very important common-sense observation regarding truth: It involves some kind of realism, a
correspondence with facts.
Puntel adds three further moments to this first ontological dimension: “(2) a distinction
between two domains or dimensions (i.e. language [thought, mind…] and world) [i.e. his
version of the subject matter of the Kantian “gap”]; (3) a discursively redeemable claim of
validity; and (4) maximal determinacy.”107
The second moment has affinities with Thomas
Aquinas’ often cited definition of truth: veritas est adequatio rei et intellectus.108
But in
Puntel’s framework it must not be understood as an expression of the putative gap he refutes,
rather it should be read as the identity of a fully determined semantic expression and
ontological reality: A true prime proposition is a prime fact.109
The distinction between
mind/language and world serves not to remove the subject from the world ontologically, but
to radically situate the subject and its undertakings as ontological realities. The third moment
points to the importance of the idea of theoretical frameworks and the unrestricted universe of
discourse. A sentence can be true only in a world; that is, in a language-mediated world or
within a universe of discourse, i.e. inside a determined theoretical framework. Its truth
claim(s) must have a determined address.
The most important and original moment is probably the fourth. It relates to Puntel’s theory of
language, especially his theory of philosophical or theoretical language. Puntel distinguishes
between three levels of semantic determination.110
The first is the lifeworldly-contextual level.
This is the pure practical everyday function of language, a use that has only a communicative
purpose and as such raises no meta-questions with respect to language, its determination,
105 Ibid., 152. The proposition prefix “It is the case that” is, in accordance with this theory of truth and language,
formalized by Puntel as the theoretical operator to govern any universalistic, intelligible theoretical sentence.
The idea is central to his conception; for further determination see ibid., 89-94; ———, B&G, 154f. 106
From this insight White concludes that theoretical works ought not to refer to the scholars behind scholarly
works, but to the actual texts. See White, TAPTOE, 14-16. However, with recourse to the relative awkwardness
and unfamiliarity of this practice and its tendency to imply that the author of a text has no relevance for
hermeneutics, this dissertation follows the standard practice of referring at times to thinkers, not only to books.
Sometimes it is also sensible to refer to a scholar by name as an interpretation of what is the greater whole of his
thinking that can be gathered as an interpretation of several actual books. 107
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 144. 108
There are lots of possible ways to translate this into English; an attempt in concordant style may be: “Truth is
(the) correspondence of the intellect with the thing [known].” The original is from De Veritate, 1,2. 109
Note that is is here to be read as an is-in-the-sense-of-identity, not with its substantionalist connotations.
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 232f. 110
Ibid., 150-2.
27
content or ontological status. The second is the linguistically pragmatic. This is the level
where everyday language “breaks”111
into discourse about language and everyday action,
instead of just practicing it. It is still a mixed or underdetermined level. The third is the
fundamental, semantic level where the theoretical discussion of true and truth is located. Here
it becomes evident that language determines or interprets itself. This thesis is closely
connected to Puntel’s theory, based on his notion of the fundamental expressibility of being,
that philosophical languages are semantic systems with an uncountable amount of
expressions.112
Thus philosophical-theoretical language has as its limits not the impreciseness
of ordinary language, but the ever greater expressibility of being. The task of the theoretician
is always to bring any truth-claiming propositions into the third level, so that the proposition
is as fully determined as possible with respect to ontology, linguistics and semantics. By the
regulative idea of truth the theoretician is always sent out to seek prime propositions in a fully
determined language.113
To summarize, one could adjust Tarski’s definition of truth in the following way to conform
to Puntel’s more comprehensive and coherent theory of truth:
A true sentence is one which says that the state of affairs is so and so, and the state of affairs is fully
determined so and so.114
This truth concept is given here as an initial and preliminary truth concept that fulfills the
theoretical and methodological needs for this dissertation. Many issues connected to truth,
both ontological and epistemological, will be treated and/or more fully determined later, in the
main parts of the thesis. This holds also for the more explicitly theological dimensions of truth
that must be discussed as the works of Hans Urs von Balthasar are approached.
111 Puntel borrows the term used in this sense to describe a shift from a particular level of use of language to
another from Habermas; see ibid., 150n41. 112
Ibid., 77f. This issue is treated more thoroughly in ch. 5 of the book. 113
Ibid., 153. The idea of fully determined language is further determined later: “At this point, it can be said
programmatically that the full determination of a language is the complete articulation of its ontological
dimension. (…) [T]his thought can be made more precise as follows: the fully determined status of language
involves, in the final analysis, the fully explicated interconnecting of the three fundamental dimensions of
structure.” Ibid., 224, cf. ch. 3.2: The Three Levels of Fundamental Structures, 172-222. 114
The reformulation of Tarski is borrowed from Søvik, “The Problem of Evil and the Power of God: On the
Coherence and Authenticity of Some Christian Theodicies with Different Understandings of God’s Power,” 93.
It is presented as a summary of Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 225f.
28
4.3 The Practical Application of the Theoretical Framework: Systematic
Reconstruction and Criteria for Theoretical Evaluation
This dissertation proceeds by a systematic reconstruction of the position articulated on the
themes inherent to the research question in the most relevant works of Hans Urs von Balthasar
within the theoretical framework sketched above. The process always starts with an analysis
of Balthasar’s thinking, largely within his own language and mode of expression; that is,
within his own universe of discourse and with reference to the discussions he involves himself
in. As the analysis proceeds, his position is reconstructed more from the outside, in a more
distanced analytic language. Typically this means that the sections analyzing Balthasar’s
theology (and philosophy) start out as presentations close to his own language and argument,
while they often end with more comprehensive analytic remarks serving to express what the
important insights and trains of thought behind Balthasar’s thinking are in my interpretation
and with special reference to the questions discussed at each point. Those sections aim
primarily to present Balthasar’s position, although it must be made clear that the analysis is
always my interpretation of his position, guided by the questions addressed in this
dissertation.115
These “Balthasar sections” correspond to step one through three in Puntel’s proposed
(idealized)116
philosophical-theoretical method appropriate for his structural-systematic
theoretical framework as described in Structure and Being: (1) the identification of structures
and constitution of minimal or informal theories (collection of data and their elemental
structure); (2) the constitution of genuine theories (ordering of data into theories); (3) the
systematization of the component theories (the systematization of multiple theories).117
In
short: in this phase, data from Balthasar’s works are collected, and an attempt is made to
115 It can be added that the analysis of Balthasar serves two purposes: On the one hand, and primarily, it serves as
the most important resource for the systematic position defended in this dissertation, but on the other hand, it
also has considerable intrinsic value in that it is a source of presentation and interpretation of Balthasar’s
thinking. The latter aspect has some relevancy because this dissertation is the first ever submitted in Norway
(and as far as I know in Scandinavia) about Balthasar’s theology. It is not going to remain the only one, because
the ongoing PhD research projects of Johannes Hvaal Solberg, MF Norwegian School of Theology, and Antoine
Arab, University of Lund, also have Balthasar’s works as a component. The relative absence of Scandinavian
research on a theologian of such international importance as Balthasar is a good reason to write this dissertation. 116
Puntel emphasizes that the method outlined is “an idealized method,” “[t]he reason is that it is generally
impossible, for pragmatic reasons, for what is required by each stage to be fully accomplished.” Puntel and
White (trans.), B&G, 151. He even notes that his own approach in Structure and Being does not do full justice to
each of the four stages. ———, S&B, 42. 117
These formulations are from the initial presentation of the method in ———, S&B, 6. The method is more
fully outlined in ibid., 41-51.
29
detect their immanent structuration on various levels and make propositions regarding their
interrelation as a whole and to the whole.
After this presentation and systematization I interpret and discuss Balthasar’s ideas by means
of Puntel’s theoretical framework; that is, the final step of Puntel’s method is accomplished:
(4) the evaluation of theories with respect to theoretical adequacy and truth status.118
This
happens in “assessment sections.” The point is to test whether the (often not explicated)
theoretical presuppositions (the theoretical framework) of Balthasar’s thought is adequate, and
whether the content of Balthasar’s often nontheoretical language can be expressed or
reconstructed in the proposed universal theoretical framework of Puntel. Sometimes these
sections also have to present some alternative theories in order to make the assessment
determined, especially in Part III where Puntel’s theoretical framework does not supply the
theological content needed to facilitate an informed discussion of Balthasar’s position. The
other way around, this procedure may also detect areas of theological (or philosophical)
insight into Balthasar that it is not possible to express through an analytical-theoretical
framework of Puntel’s kind, and thus can give contributions to a further refinement of it or
point to its limitations of use.
This procedure is repeated in each thematic chapter throughout the three main parts of the
dissertation.119
The advantages of doing it this way should be clear. First, my assessment of
the different parts of Balthasar’s thinking is diverse, both when it comes to questions located
differently in relation to discipline boundaries and different concerns within a specific
discipline.120
The nuances of my differing assessments come more to the fore through this
way of organizing the dissertation. Second, a formal distinction between analysis and
discussion formally makes it easier to be clear on when Balthasar is worth following and
118 Ibid., 6, cf. 51f.
119 That is, excluding the summaries in § 8, § 11 and § 18. In Part I, the Balthasar section and the assessment are,
for the sake of presentation, kept in separate chapters (§ 6 and § 7). The most important exceptions to the general
procedure are § 5 and § 12 (and partly § 13). § 5 presents a discussion of the interrelationship of philosophy and
theology that serves as a justification for the inclusion of an explicitly philosophical treatment of truth at the
beginning of the articulation of a systematic theology of the Spirit of truth. Here Puntel is presented in a separate
section because of the relevance of his own thinking on this issue and due to the methodological importance of
this discussion for the configuration of the whole dissertation. § 12 presents some introductory remarks to
Balthasar’s pneumatology that are not very important for the question of the Spirit as Spirit of truth, but help to
clarify the general outline of his pneumatology. Therefore they are not discussed and assessed at the same length
as in other chapters. The assessment section of § 13 is in a similar way kept at a level that only points toward,
because a closer assessment of Balthasar’s exegesis here would presuppose an engagement with the whole
question of hermeneutics, New Testament exegesis and the use of biblical texts and interpretation in systematic
theology that would exceed the limits of this dissertation. 120
For example, my assessment of Balthasar’s philosophy in Part I is more positive than some aspects of his
pneumatology in Part III.
30
when he ought to be criticized, without having to write too much of my criticisms directly into
the analysis of his thinking. Third, the procedure prevents the dissertation from resorting to a
purely descriptive analysis of Balthasar with a short appendix-like evaluation of the whole at
the end.121
This strengthens the dissertation because coherence methodology implies detailed
discussion at all levels, and thus affirms the wisdom of the old saying that the devil is in the
details – no coherent network of theories is stronger than its weakest links. In sum, this
procedure is chosen to make sure that while this dissertation is a study of Balthasar through
the framework of Puntel, it is also an exercise in constructive systematic theology insofar as it
is a systematic reconstruction of Balthasar’s position aiming at coherence and intelligibility.
Puntel gives the criterion for evaluating theories and theoretical frameworks initially as
“relatively maximal coherence and intelligibility,” before he determines it further.122
Coherence is the central concept for theoretical evaluating. Puntel’s use of the concept is
indebted to Nicholas Rescher’s work on it; the main work is The Coherence Theory of
Truth.123
According to Rescher, as embraced by Puntel, it has three major components:
consistency, material comprehensiveness and relational or interconnectual cohesiveness.
Consistency is the negative side of the concept of coherence: It means lack of inconsistency or
contradiction.124
There are no degrees of consistency, so this is an either-or issue. The positive
side of coherence is described in two aspects. The first concerns content or material, and asks
to what degree the theoretical formulation succeeds in taking into account all the relevant
data. The theoretical relevance of a datum is determined by its level of interconnectedness
with the theory and the data it claims to treat.125
The second aspect concerns the
interconnectedness or interrelation between the data in the theory. The higher the number of
121 Several of the German dissertations on Balthasar in the bibliography follow such a pattern.
122 Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 463-6, cf. 69. See also White, TAPTOE, 26. Here it is emphasized that “the
relativity is both internal (the superior account is more coherent and intelligible than is any other available
concretization of its own framework) and external (the superior account is more coherent and intelligible than
are concretizations of competing theoretical frameworks that are available).” Emphasis mine. 123
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 410. Puntel refers here to Nicholas Rescher, The Coherence Theory of Truth
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973). 124
A short and precise definition of contradiction is given by Søvik: “A contradiction is to state both p and not-p
with respect to the same and at the same time.” Søvik, “The Problem of Evil and the Power of God: On the
Coherence and Authenticity of Some Christian Theodicies with Different Understandings of God’s Power,” 83.
Again, contradiction also involves an internal and external aspect: A coherent theory must not contradict its own
sentences or any relevant data external to the theory. 125
Eikrem explicates this significant determination of relevance implicit in the structural-systematic philosophy:
“The notion of a maximal configuration functions as an idea that helps us decide which pragmatic clarification is
the more theoretically sufficient one. […] [T]his idea does not imply that everything is always equally
theoretically relevant. The relevancy of a piece of information is decided by the number of substantive
connections it has with the information one wants to clarify.” Eikrem, Being in Religion: A Journey in Ontology
from Pragmatics through Hermeneutics to Metaphysics, 143f, cf. 128, 138.
31
interrelations in the system, and the tighter their character, the more coherent is the theory.
Thus, on the positive side the coherence of theories is evaluated in degrees as stronger or
weaker, a case illustrating Puntel’s point that every theory and theoretical framework is in
principle surpassable and in this respect relative.
Intelligibility is a concept presupposed by and a consequence of coherence. It is presupposed
by the fact that theorization is an intellectual effort and therefore has to make sense. It is a
consequence because the more coherent a solution to a problem is, the more intelligible it is.
By maximal, Puntel points to the total determination of elements and interrelations: A
maximally coherent set of propositions must be able to define its borders. By the concept
relatively, Puntel describes both an external and immanent relativity of coherence and
intelligibility to the, or a, theoretical framework. The external relativity with respect to the
theoretical framework is due to the fact that there is no way to express theoretical propositions
outside of any theoretical framework. Such propositions would in any case be empty concepts
hovering in the air without determination. The strength of this criterion is that it is relatively
obviously concrete, and the theoretical framework it relies on is at the same time intentionally
universal, as every sound theoretical proposition should be.126
4.4 The Appropriateness of This Framework for Discussing Balthasar’s
Works
This section treats two possible objections to the use of Puntel’s systematic philosophy as a
method for interpreting and evaluating Balthasar’s theology (and philosophy). The first and
strongest is that Balthasar’s work is not a system, and is even opposed to systems, according
to his own use of these words. The second is the objection that a pure theoretical framework
of Puntel’s kind cannot integrate the spiritual, aesthetic and practice dimensions in Balthasar’s
work. After answering those objections, this section gives a further justification of the use of
this method and framework, showing that it is reasonable to expect that a reading of Balthasar
through Puntel will turn out to be fruitful rather than awkward.
126 Puntel formulates this point rather straightforwardly: “The sentences of every theoretican who can be taken
seriously are presented as being objectively and thus unrestrictedly–rather than in any way particularistically–
true.” Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 115.
32
Do Balthasar and Puntel Hold Incompatible Attitudes to “System” and
“Systematics?”
Is it not inappropriate to treat the work of a theologian who is explicitly skeptical of building a
system in the framework of a systematic philosophy? It seems unavoidable to answer the
question in the affirmative, and that an affirmative answer would prove the connection of
method and material in this dissertation to be untenable. However, the question is too vague
and needs further determination to be answerable. First, one must detect in what sense and for
what reasons Balthasar is skeptical of systems. Then, the concepts of system and systematic in
Puntel’s conception must be treated with corresponding clarity. The result of this investigation
will show that Puntel and Balthasar are both against a system (in one sense of the word, in
slightly different ways), but not anti-systematic.
From Balthasar’s work one could pick many passages that express skepticism toward system
and systematics.127
A typical example is from the Introduction to Spirit and Institution:
There is a central Light that illuminates everything, but we can glimpse it only from its different rays.
Perhaps some eager soul thirsty for systematics would like to make something out of these fragments, putting
the stones in order and assembling them into a mosaic. The author [i.e. Balthasar], however, mistrusts such
undertakings. Such constructions merely try to yank the mystery from its seclusion and cast it into the glare
of our light. But God dwells in inaccessible light.128
However, the context shows that these words (referring to “these fragments”) are not to be
read as a general characteristic of his work, but of a volume consisting of different essays
“that should not be understood as one that intends to indicate a systematic treatment of its
topic,” “merely a sketchbook.”129
This does not mean that Balthasar understands his whole
literary production as fragments without deliberate systematic interconnections.
The aversion against system is also clearly outspoken in one of his Aphorisms: “system (…)
already in my youth was as irksome to me as too tight-fitting a sport shirt.”130
In another
aphorism we read more thoroughly:
Nothing is so much the stigma of a mediocre spirit as the drive and the enthusiasm for the systematization of
ultimate things. We want to have done with things, and in just this way we betray the fact that we cannot
127 An account of the Systemlosigkeit of Balthasar’s works as challenging to the reception of them similar to the
argument presented here is found in Müller, “Der Geist als wirkmächtiger Zeuge Jesu Christi in der Kirche nach
Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 24-28. 128
Balthasar, Spirit and Institution. 129
Ibid. 130
———, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 24.
33
have done with things. None of the great thinkers was a systematician. (…) Thomas was a traveling
researcher who blazed roads in the virgin forest of Being, without believing that he had thereby taken its
measures (a “summa” is not a “system”). Hegel was a Dionysian enthusiast (when he becomes systematic he
turns into a professor and falls prey to Kierkegaard’s mockery).131
Here the rejection of system is closely linked to the rejection of absoluteness and final
solutions, especially on the “big questions.”
A similar idea is expressed in TL 1, where Balthasar speaks of “the divine truth (..) [whose]
eternally vital word and surrender (..) escape definitive systematization.”132
A note made by
Balthasar on Hegel and the scientific character of theology in an interview illuminates his
position further:
The mystery does not allow itself to be won by logic and concepts. And this is finally the danger of all
theology. […] God is certainly not an object of science, because he is no object at all … [...] [O]ne
nonetheless must speak plainly and clearly and responsibly and intelligibly [of God]. And the rules of such
speaking and thinking absolutely can be characterized as science.133
Some basic insights from the interpretation of these quotations can now be made. First, the
word system for Balthasar clearly signifies a closed-off totality where everything is in
proportion, there is no need for further inquiry and no mystery left. It does not signify every
ordered attempt at dealing intelligibly with philosophical or theological problems (“a
“summa” is not a “system”; so we ought to have summas!). Second, Balthasar does not totally
disregard the word systematization; even if the aphorism speaks negatively of systematicians
and systematization, it refers to the systematization “of ultimate things,” which presumably
means approximately the same as a “definitive systematization of the divine truth” as
mentioned in TL 1. Definitive systematization is thus equivalent to “system” in the sense
described above, while a systematization that is aware that it cannot be ultimately completed
and finished is exactly what intelligible theology and philosophy are about.134
Balthasar’s
primary means to overcome this definitivity or closedness of system is fruitfulness, a notion
that requires reciprocal involvement.135
Thus Balthasar’s position can be summarized
131 Ibid., 21f.
132 ———, TL 1, 179.
133 Michael Albus, “Spirit and Fire: An Interview with Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Communio: International
Catholic Review 32, no. Fall (2005): 578f. 134
“Problems do not exist in order to be solved; we can never get “behind” Being. We always look with mild
contempt on everything we have solved. Problems should always become more luminous in the light of the great
mystery in which we live, move, and have our being. A sense of mystery is a Catholic sense.” Balthasar, The
Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms, 21. 135
Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 254.
34
metaphorically: The one having reached a perfect system alone has in the end produced
nothing other than a wrong-headed dead account of himself being god, while the one always
being open to the always greater fullness of truth really lives and grasps being.
A summary of several important aspects of the present analysis is found in the noteworthy and
illuminating remark on Balthasar’s relationship to the words and concepts system [System]
and systematic(s) [Systematik] made by Kossi K. Joseph Tossou in the concluding part to his
dissertation treating Balthasar’s pneumatology:
H. U. von Balthasar is, as is well known, against a “System.” This disinclination is often misunderstood and
frequently interpreted as a lack of being systematic/systematics [Systematik]. The opposite is true. Von
Balthasar does not want to establish a system in the sense that it could be possible to neatly separate the
different theological fields from each other. The circular structure of the thinking that results from this
rejection is for sure to be counted among the great difficulties pertaining to the reworking of Balthasar’s
works, as one again and again is surprised and unexpectedly overwhelmed by deliberations in a context
where they apparently do not belong to the subject matter. Only a deep-minded consideration leads to the
grounding logic that the basic articulation of the thinking is oriented towards.136
The quote confirms the proposed interpretation of Balthasar’s relationship to system and
systematization, and points to an important methodological challenge that follows from it, the
practical-aesthetical holistic style of Balthasar, which will be further discussed below. Tossou
points out what is the most important point in Balthasar’s reservations on system building
besides the claim to absoluteness: the idea that subject matters can be torn apart and isolated
from each other in order to be finished. This corresponds perfectly to Balthasar’s metaphor of
the central light and its rays: They cannot be isolated and treated one at a time; rather, they
point to the light together, through nondefinitive systematization. Thus it will always remain a
136 “H. U. von Balthasar ist bekanntlich Gegner eines ‘Systems.’ Diese Abneigung wird oft missverstanden und
vielfach als Mangel an Systematik interpretiert. Das Gegenteil ist wahr. Von Balthasar will kein System in dem
Sinne aufbauen, dass die verschiedenen theologischen Gebiete säuberlich getrennt werden können. Die aus
dieser Ablehnung resultierende Zirkelstruktur des Denkens zählt sicherlich zu den grossen Schwierigkeiten bei
der Aufarbeitung des Balthasar-schen Werkes, weil man ständig überrascht und unerwartet mit Ausführungen in
einem Zusammenhang überschüttet wird, die scheinbar zu der Sache nicht gehören. Erst eine tiefsinnige
Betrachtung führt zu der zugrundeliegenden Logik, an der sich die Grundartikulationen des Gedankens
orientieren.” Tossou, Streben nach Vollendung: Zur Pneumatologie im Werk Hans Urs von Balthasars, 534. Cf.
also the notion expressed by Blättler that both Hegel and Balthasar are concerned with a logic that does not end
in rigid systematics [erstarrten Systematik], but in the life of the Spirit [Lebendigkeit des Geistes]. The only
(though not unimportant!) difference is their different view of who the Spirit is and how he/it gets into logic.
Blättler, Pneumatologia crucis: das Kreuz in der Logik von Wahrheit und Freiheit; ein phänomenologischer
Zugang zur Theologik Hans Urs von Balthasars, 22. Cf. the discussion of Hegel in Balthasar, TL 3, 17-60.
35
methodological Schwebe [hovering, balancing, oscillation] around this center throughout
Balthasar’s works that must also be taken into account by anyone writing about them.137
Puntel, on the other hand, has the following to say about the terms “system” and “systematic”
in relation to his structural-systematic philosophy:
To designate the comprehensive character of philosophy, modernity introduces the term “system,” which
then develops a significant history. (…) this term is used in this book, if at all, only marginally, and certainly
not as the proper designation of the philosophy here presented.138
His choice of terminology is grounded in a rejection of the idea that it is possible to get
philosophical questions finished, which is very similar to Balthasar’s reservations:
The dream that it would be possible or even sensible to develop the one true systematic philosophy and to
exhibit or even establish it as such is one that must, finally, be abandoned. That this dream is not only
unrealizable but nonsensical is demonstrated in the system [!] developed here.139
To state it paradoxically in line with Puntel’s own words: His structural-systematic
philosophy is a “philosophical system” that is not a system. But what is then meant by
systematic? It cannot mean that one proposes to have the absolute or ultimate access to
everything implied in system, even if it includes a notion of “completeness of scope, in terms
of subject matter” and a “concern with articulating the interconnections among all its various
thematic components.” Rather,
what is meant is instead that what this book calls the unrestricted universe of discourse is understood and
articulated at least in its global structuration.140
In other words, systematic thinking means material comprehensiveness and universality, and
seeing everything in light of as many other things as possible. That is, systematic ultimately
means approximately the same as coherent.
The presentation and preliminary comparison of their respective positions have shown that
Puntel and Balthasar are basically in line with each other with respect to the concepts of
system and systematization, but that Balthasar sometimes uses wording that may seem
137 Cf. Gerwing’s apt treatment of this in Schumacher, Perichorein, xiv-xv.
138 Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 1. A further reason given for this is that the excessiveness of the claims and
the poverty of the results of the great “philosophical systems” presented during the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries have brought the term into presumably irremediable discredit; see ibid., 20. A similar criticism of
Heidegger is made in ———, B&G, 107f. 139
———, S&B, 69. This insight is important when Puntel formulates the structural-systematic philosophy’s
moderate relativism with respect to truth in ch. 3.3.4.3. 140
Ibid., 1.
36
incompatible with Puntel’s. However, this is for the most part related to mode of expression
and communicative purposes. The question posed at the start of this section can therefore be
answered in the negative. It should rather be reformulated as a question of how the content of
the concepts of system and systematization functions in Balthasar’s work and Puntel’s
framework.
A last observation, which serves to make Puntel and Balthasar even more compatible at this
point, is what Puntel says about coherentist or network model grounding.141
In traditional
Euclidean axiomatic, a theory will never grow stronger than its weakest axiom. In a network
model, however, there can be even tighter interconnections between the elements of the
theory; because grounding is done in many directions at a time, the need for absolute or
definitive system-corner-stones disappears. This is an indispensable basis for taking the
position of Puntel with respect to system and systematization, and it also illuminates a
positive element of the circular reasoning of Balthasar that refuses to tear different subjects
apart and ground them along different, separated lines (cf. the quote from Tossou).
Theory, Aestheticity, Practice, Spirituality
Another possible objection, arising from the quality of Balthasar’s works, is that Puntel’s
explicitly theoretical framework cannot come to grips with their aesthetic and spiritual
dimension, or with Balthasar’s integration of theory and practice. To be sure, his writings
have important aesthetic and practical dimensions and content that make them difficult to
access methodologically. Assessment of his work therefore presupposes a method that can
open up the spiritual and aesthetic dimension, not only the cognitive and theoretical, and yet it
has to retain theoretical clarity.
Balthasar is principally a theologian of the church more than a theoretician of the academy.
Thus one clearly misses the mark if one tries to isolate Balthasar’s texts and their
interpretation from lived Christian life. He says, for example, in Theo-Logic 3, that “theology
cannot be anything else but a meditative clarification of [the ecclesial community’s]
confession of faith in order to understand it and make it intelligible to others.”142
However,
the meditative clarification he speaks of is clearly a theoretical enterprise, even though it
141 Ibid., 47f, 66, 469; ———, B&G, 151-3. Puntel here refers to Nicholas Rescher, Cognitive Systematization: A
Systems-Theoretic Approach to a Coherentist Theory of Knowledge (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979). For a shorter
account see also ———, Philosophical Reasoning: A Study in the Methodology of Philosophizing (Malden:
Blackwell, 2001), 170-96. See also White, TAPTOE, 11-14. 142
Balthasar, TL 3, 367.
37
starts from an ecclesial context. This is shown, for example, by the works that constitute the
primary sources of enquiry for this dissertation. They are not at all prayers or liturgical
readings (although Balthasar has published both prayers and sermons), but academic works of
a sort containing footnotes.
As a dissertation in academic theology, this dissertation needs to retain theoretical clarity,
even if the dimension of lived faith and spirituality is taken into account as a relevant
perspective for the examination and articulation of Christian theology. Here Puntel’s view of
the theoretical, practical and aesthetic as different dimensions of being and different ways of
relating to being is a promising means to access the material.143
His framework purports to
integrate everything, to make it possible to theorize about everything, including the explicitly
nontheoretical domains of life, but without reducing these to theory. Puntel’s framework is
promising because it makes it possible to engage with the whole breadth of Balthasar’s work
and still retain clarity of the theory’s status.
In Being and God, Puntel makes some statements on Balthasar’s works that clearly show how
the framework can relate critically and constructively to texts of Balthasar’s kind. While
Puntel shows himself as a rather harsh critic of Jean-Luc Marion, Balthasar is judged, in this
book, quite differently, although sparsely. Puntel praises Balthasar in this way:
Von Balthasar himself develops a significant “theological aesthetics,” although he never rejects theoretical or
speculative theology. The fourth and fifth volumes of his aesthetics have titles beginning with the revealing
phrase “the realm of metaphysics.” The last part of the fifth volume contains some deep and beautiful
comments on the topic Being and God, although they are not explicitly theoretical.144
Von Balthasar’s are among the most beautiful and profound texts about Being, about “the wonder at Being
[die Verwunderung über das Sein],” which he describes in highly elegant and expressive terms, although not
ones that are theoretically refined.145
By these statements Puntel points to significant sides of Balthasar’s works: They are deep,
beautiful and profound texts about Being and God, although they are not explicitly
theoretical.146
Balthasar would probably feel that the judgment was sound, but he would not
in the same way view the lack of explicit theoreticity as a weakness. For him, the true, the
good and the beautiful always go together, by principal necessity as well as in practice. This
143 See esp. ch. 4 in Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 246-356.
144 ———, B&G, 47.
145 Ibid., 317.
146 This judgment is quite different from the one given on Marion by Puntel: Marion is also recognized as writing
beautiful texts, but they are “not quite accurate”; see ibid., 348.
38
is, of course, a methodological challenge of considerable proportions. In his own words: “My
books are not the kind of theology that belongs to the academic guild and therefore they are
not particularly suited for dissertations.”147
As noted by Karen Kilby, the fact that Balthasar
never was in an academic position where he would receive critical feedback from opposing
frameworks, and the way he himself did most of the editing of his works, further contributes
to the vagueness and complexity of his style of argument.148
The theoretician facing
Balthasar’s works must handle texts where theoretical, practical and aesthetic elements
interpenetrate each other, and where dogmatic theology, practical theology and philosophy
intermingle.149
But Puntel’s statements show clearly that although his framework is a purely
theoretical one, it is capable of handling data that is not explicitly theoretical, and even judge
them positively. He can make positive statements about texts that are not explicitly
theoretical, and he can theorize about them, even without making his purely theoretical
perspective the final or absolute perspective on these texts.
A Positive Assessment of Potential Fruitfulness
After these counters against possible objections to the use of Puntel’s framework for the study
of Balthasar, it is time for a positive assessment of the potential fruitfulness of this
undertaking. The cue can be taken from the fact that both Puntel and Balthasar are engaged in
the field where philosophy and theology meet and sometimes overlap. They both stand in the
grand Catholic metaphysical tradition that has its roots in the classics of Greek philosophy,
the Church Fathers of antiquity and Thomas Aquinas. This gives their thought a great degree
of commensurability, as is also shown by Puntel’s positive evaluation of Balthasar in the
citations above.
Another aspect of fruitfulness from the use of Puntel’s framework on Balthasar is that it
results in a meeting between his world of thinking and the analytic philosophical tradition.
Barbara Sain has argued that Balthasar’s Theo-Logic, and particularly his thinking on truth in
relation to language, can profit from engagement with the analytic tradition.150
Puntel has
already profited from contact with this tradition, and that in a way that is comprehensive and
147 From the interview by Albus, “Spirit and Fire: An Interview with Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 574.
148 Kilby, Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction 36, 148.
149 Endre speaks of Balthasar’s “dichterische Schriftweise,” Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans
Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 270. 150
Barbara Sain, “Truth, Trinity and Creation: Placing Bruce Marshall’s Trinity and Truth in Conversation with
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theo-Logic,” Pro Ecclesia 18, no. 3 (2009): esp. 293.
39
coherent with the kind of continental thought that Balthasar represents.151
This aspect is
closely related to the discussions above regarding theoricity, practicity and aestheticity, as
engagement with the analytic philosophical tradition can contribute to making Balthasar’s
thinking theoretically clear and explicit.
The potential fruitfulness of dialogue between Puntel and Balthasar is also implied in their
shared intentional outlook of integrating everything in philosophy and theology. In a review
of Puntel’s Being and God, the German philosopher and theologian Herbert Frohnhofen ends
up by putting this question to Puntel’s philosophical-theoretical framework for thinking God:
“The most interesting question this account opens is that of whether and how the thought of
an incarnation of God as man could be added to it.”152
The philosophical affinities of Puntel
and Balthasar make it all the more interesting to see whether Balthasar’s theology of the
incarnation could be added to Puntel’s framework, as an answer to Frohnhofen’s question and
a further determination of the structural-systematic philosophy understood as the universal
science including theology. This dissertation cannot simply answer this question with yes or
no because it has a restricted thematic focus on truth and the Spirit. But because it is a
theological dissertation using Puntel’s framework, the result may turn out to be a partial
affirmative answer to this question.
151 See Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 1ff.
152 Herbert Fronhofen, “Lorenz Bruno Puntel, Sein und Gott. Ein systematischer Ansatz in Auseinandersetzung
mit M. Heidegger, E. Levinas und J.-L. Marion (Philosophische Untersuchungen 26) Tübingen 2010,”
http://www.structureandbeing.com/Frohnhofen_2010_Review_of_SEIN_UND_GOTT.pdf (trans. A. White;
orig. http://www.theologie-systematisch.de/gotteslehre/1/puntel.htm).
40
41
PART I: TRUTH IN PHILOSOPHY
The first main part of this study will discuss some important questions regarding truth in
philosophy. The qualifier “some” needs to be taken seriously, as this study neither claims to
solve or work through all philosophical questions, nor even all those regarding truth. The
sources of enquiry and theoretical framework of this dissertation lay down important premises
for and restrictions to which questions receive attention. As this part is situated in philosophy,
references to Christian beliefs and use of theological arguments are kept to a minimum. But
this does not mean that the questions discussed are not relevant to the articulation of theology
generally and pneumatology specifically, as will become apparent in retrospect throughout
Parts II and III. God’s revelation in nature is as real as God’s revelation through the
incarnation, and the latter is dependent on and fits within the former, as will be argued by
theological arguments later.
The opening § 5, as noted in the introduction, assesses a theory of the relationship between
philosophy and theology based on the thought of Balthasar and Puntel. Here it is shown that a
systematic theology of the Spirit of truth is given increased coherence if it also involves a
philosophical engagement with truth. Keywords in the analysis and assessment are integration
and mutual dependency and enrichment of theology and philosophy.
§ 6 goes into Balthasar’s substantial philosophical thinking on truth, concerning both the
ontology and epistemology of truth. The chapter proceeds primarily through an analysis of
Theo-Logic 1: Truth of the World, although with a view to other relevant texts from the pen of
Balthasar. This work has close affinities to the tradition of philosophical phenomenology and
the Gestalt-phenomenology of Goethe, as shown thoroughly by Ilkamarina Kuhr. At the same
time, it is also deeply rooted in the metaphysical tradition, as is apparent from the
classification of truth as a transcendental of being and the apparent affinities to Thomas
Aquinas. The analysis of Balthasar’s ideas here is also much influenced by David C.
Schindler’s work on the dramatic aspects of truth.
The critical assessment in § 7 centers on a comparison of Balthasar’s philosophical thinking
on truth with the one contained in the theoretical framework presented in § 4. The chapter
thus does not raise all relevant philosophical questions concerning truth in their full breadth,
but situates them within the context of particular thinkers in particular traditions. They have,
however, been deeply engaged with and informed by important strands of the whole of
philosophical discourse, historical and contemporary. Thus one can expect this discussion to
42
be relevant even in a general perspective. Important questions in § 7 concern different aspects
of the definition of truth, the compatibility and tensions between Puntel and Balthasar and
their common critical attitude to central aspects in the Kantian tradition.
§ 5. The Interrelationship of Philosophy and Theology
This chapter investigates the relationship between philosophy and theology. The aim is
twofold: first, to show how Balthasar understands this relationship and give some examples of
how he practices it, and second, to discuss how such an understanding can be evaluated or
assessed within Puntel’s structural-systematic philosophy. Both authors have reflected and
written quite extensively on the subject, and they seem to think mainly in the same direction,
although with different accents and in different modes of expression. Thus Puntel is here as
much a dialogue partner on the subject matter as (only) a theoretical framework. Therefore his
thinking is treated in a separate section. Section 5.3 will show that the relationship between
theology and philosophy, coherently understood, makes it necessary to include – and
convenient to start with – a discussion of truth in philosophical perspective in order to
articulate a coherent answer to the main research question of this dissertation.
5.1 Balthasar: “Ohne Philosophie, keine Theologie”
What is most expressive about Balthasar’s view of the relation between philosophy and
theology is probably the two introductions to TL 1: The Truth of the World – one
(Introduction) being written for the first edition of the book (Wahrheit der Welt, 1947), the
other (General Introduction – to the whole Theo-Logic) at the republication of the work as the
first volume of the Theologik (1985).153
Here he early on puns in an almost proverbial-
sounding slogan: “Ohne Philosophie, keine Theologie”: “without philosophy, no theology”
(or: “without philosophy there can be no theology”).154
In the following, the more precise
signification of this dictum will be investigated.
The dictum is presented by Balthasar as necessary to answer the main question for the whole
Theo-Logic, asking what role “truth” plays in the event of revelation (the Son’s revelation of
the Father, through the Spirit), and thus examining the relationship between the structure of
creaturely truth and divine truth.155
The first point inherent in the dictum is that theology
153 In some subject matters, the General introduction is obviously a rewriting of the Introduction. E.g. compare
Balthasar, TL 1, 11ff and 30ff. 154
Ibid., 7, G:VII (G: refers to page number in the German edition). 155
Ibid., 7.
43
needs a philosophical ontology to function, because revelation is revelation in this particular
created world. Philosophy is thinking arising from and situated in reality, and when the Word
became flesh (gr. sarx, John 1:14), Balthasar interprets flesh as meaning that the Word
became subject to every dimension of created reality. The core of Balthasar’s philosophical
ontology is wonder at Being (Sein/esse). The philosopher is above all a person being struck by
the richness, fullness and depth of Being, one that so intensively undergoes this thaumazein
that he falls in love with being and thus becomes exactly a philo-sopher, a lover of wisdom
(sophia), of knowledge of being.156
Truth of the World is thus primarily a phenomenological
approach to truth,157
in the metaphorical-poetic words of Balthasar, a “voyage of discovery
(…) into the kingdom of truth, where the sun never sets.”158
By the return to the basic wonder
at Being, Balthasar seeks to retain the vitality of both philosophy and theology. If theology
accepts that philosophy is reduced to pure positivistic or rationalistic accounts of intra-
worldly things and cases, he says, theology itself loses its depth and becomes dry accounts of
abstract notions and concepts.159
In The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age (GL 5)
Balthasar describes what this wonder is about and its place in philosophy:
Wonder at Being is not only the beginning of thought, but (..) also the permanent element (arche) in which it
moves. [T]his means that it is not only astonishing that an existent being can wonder at Being in its own
distinction from Being, but also that Being as such by itself to the very end ‘causes wonder’, behaving as
something to be wondered at, something striking and worthy of wonder. Reflection, while holding fast to this
primal wonder, must be the fundamental aim of metaphysics.160
It is in this personal and wonder-based sense of metaphysics that Balthasar calls the Christian
“the guardian of metaphysics in our time.”161
He or she must be the “existent being”
wondering at Being. As such, Balthasar’s metaphysics is placed in a sort of personalistic
framework. For this reason, Balthasar on two occasions remarked that his view of
metaphysics could justify a reformulation of metaphysics as meta-anthropology. In his
important “Résumé” of his thought he calls this a philosophy “presupposing not only the
cosmological sciences, but also the anthropological sciences, and surpassing them toward the
156 Cf. Ibid., 208. See also Adrian J. Walker, “Love Alone: Hans Urs von Balthasar as a Master of Theological
Renewal,” Communio: International Catholic Review 32, no. Fall (2005): 23. 157
Balthasar, TL 1, 31f. Cf. the title of the French translation: Phénoménologie de la Vérité. La Vérité du Monde. 158
Ibid., 27. 159
Ibid., 32. 160
———, GL 5, 614f. 161
Ibid., 655f.
44
question of the being and essence of man.”162
Thus he reconceives metaphysics as something
that is primarily concerned with the situation of man, “a metaphysics of the whole person”:163
where he comes from, who and why he is, his relation to the world, the other, and ultimately,
the relation to God.164
However, Balthasar’s philosophy is not only an aesthetic, unmediated gaze at being. The
philosophical method used in Truth of the World aims to inquire into being, to understand it,
to express it, “to uncover the structures that characterize the truth of finite being.”165
And thus
in looking especially for truth it is also a theoretical enterprise. Balthasar himself summarizes
this first wonder aspect of Ohne Philosophie, keine Theologie neatly:
In order to be a serious theologian, one must also, indeed, first, be a philosopher; one must—precisely also in
the light of revelation—have immersed oneself in the mysterious structures of creaturely being.166
The quote, speaking about being a philosopher also in the light of revelation, points further to
another important aspect of the relation between philosophy and theology as conceived by
Balthasar. He points out that philosophy from the outset is intrinsically theological; already
the philosophical tradition of the Greeks included the question of God from the very
beginning.167
How is this to be tackled? Here again, Balthasar wants to avoid positivistic-
rationalistic solutions that simply reject the theological content of philosophy. Instead he
wants the theological questions standing at the heart of philosophical thinking to be
illuminated and criticized by revelation from the outset.168
For Balthasar, the theological
discourse in philosophy is a sign of the fact that there is no natura pura [pure nature] in the
strict sense, because the natural is always already permeated by the supernatural; like creation
it is always already in relation to the Creator.169
This means that after the light of revelation
has dawned in philosophy, one can no longer with certainty say what is philosophical and
162 ———, My Work: In Retrospect, 114. The idea of metaphysics as meta-anthropology is also mentioned in an
interview by Angelo Scola, Test Everything Hold Fast to What Is Good: An Interview with Hans Urs von
Balthasar (Ignatius Press: San Francisco, 1989). For broader discussions of the term, see Schindler, HUvB and
Dramatic Structure of Truth, 257-61; Martin Bieler, “Meta-anthropology and Christology: On the Philosophy of
Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Communio: International Catholic Review 20, no. Spring (1993). Cf. also Howsare,
Balthasar: A Guide for the Perplexed, 50-3. 163
Balthasar, GL 5, 655. 164
These are the aspects of Balthasar’s “fourfold distinction of being,” laid out in ibid., 615-27. See also
Schindler’s treatment of it, Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 31-58. We will return to these
texts later. 165
Balthasar, TL 1, 10. 166
Ibid., 8. 167
Cf. ———, GL 4, 317-24. See also ———, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, 347f. 168
———, TL 1, 12. 169
Ibid., 12, 31. The criticism of the concept natura pura in the twentieth century is articulated especially by
Henri de Lubac and, following him, Karl Rahner. See, with references, Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 266-9.
45
what is theological insight in the strict sense.170
Balthasar can even, with Romano Guardini,
speak of a third domain of truths, a philosophical domain that comes to light only when
revelation appears, but may also eventually be known fragmentarily by natural reason.171
So,
the philosophical domain is deepened, perfected or illuminated by theology, not made
obsolete.172
In the same breath, Balthasar underscores that there is no neutral cognitive access
to the world; man always approaches it under the positive or negative signs of faith or
unbelief.173
Based on such considerations, he expresses his program for the relationship
between philosophy and theology in the word integration: a practice of two disciplines in
“rigorous collaboration,” those disciplines being “intrinsically open to each other.”174
For
Balthasar, this integration is required by human existence [Dasein] itself.
A part of this integration of theology and philosophy is accomplished by Balthasar’s focus on
the wonderment of being as the central point of philosophical practice. Again and again in
Truth of the World he emphasizes that what we grasp when we perceive beings, even if it is
the thing in itself (in opposition to Kant), it is not the full or total control of the thing. Being is
always richer, always has a mysterious fullness that we cannot seize or master.175
Balthasar
often expresses the point through the word pairs unveiling and veiling or unconcealment and
concealment, such that when a thing is unveiled and thus grasped, it simultaneously
withdraws in its mystery.176
The result for the relation of philosophy and theology is this:
Knowledge of the world as little as of God makes the mysteriousness of the object of
knowledge disappear.177
Instead, both philosophy and theology are a repeated confrontation
with the same questions raised by the mysterious depths of Being; no one of the really “big
questions” can be simply solved and left behind.178
Philosophy is as such not some kind of
preliminary for theology that is completed in the first-level course and finished as real
170 See also the treatment of the topic in Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Movement toward God,” in Explorations in
Theology III: Creator Spirit (1993), 48. 171
———, TL 1, 13; ———, Truth of God, 96. Cf. the discussion in Howsare, Balthasar: A Guide for the
Perplexed, 55f. 172
Towards the end of TL 3, Balthasar says the following: “..the concluding statements of the first volume of this
Theo-Logic, which were formulated purely philosophically, are heightened and confirmed in a trinitarian context
in the assertions of the second and third volumes. This vindicates the old maxim that grace perfects what is given
in nature…” (cf. Aquinas, ST I 1.8ad2) Balthasar, TL 3, 445. 173
———, TL 1, 11. 174
Ibid., 15. 175
Cf. Ibid., 85, 104, 131, 206-225; esp. 213. 176
Cf. Ibid., 104, 206-15. 177
Ibid., 22. 178
Ibid., 8, 23. And cf. again the aphorism cited in footnote 134, ———, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms, 21.
46
theology starts, but a continuous call to deepen theology by turning to the first things, the
reflective, overwhelmed gaze at being.
Balthasar’s motivation for this integration of philosophy and theology is basically apologetic:
By this he wants his theology to be relevant to modern man, albeit in a somewhat special
sense. The whole structure of the trilogy points to the same. The thesis is that “today’s
positivistic, atheistic man” has become blind to every depth regarding Being and God, and has
the need for the radiant light of the revelation the glory of God in Christ to be able to “see”
again – that is why Balthasar starts the trilogy with his theological aesthetics.179
His
apologetic theology is not a reduction of theology to what modern man asks for, but a full
reappraisal of the breadth of questions that are philosophically and theologically basic.180
Philosophizing is an important part of the duty of the Christian as the guardian of metaphysics
in our time (cf. above). Balthasar says,
[a] Christian has to conduct philosophical enquiry on account of his faith. Believing in the absolute love of
God for the world, he is obliged to understand Being in its ontological difference as pointing to love, and to
live in accordance with this indication.181
Balthasar practices the program of integration inherent in his ohne Philosophie, keine
Theologie in several ways. The arrangement, argument and content of the three volumes of
the Theo-logic are an obvious example. When Balthasar sets out to treat the question of how
God can express himself through the narrow vessel of human logic, he starts by describing
this logic through the philosophical-phenomenological volume Truth of the World. The
insights acquired there are later assessed and deepened in the theological volumes that follow.
Truth of the World is also autobiographically illuminating. The book was published in 1947,
prior to The Glory of the Lord and Theo-Drama. This shows that even if this explicitly
philosophical volume is placed quite late in the final edition of the trilogy, its philosophical
content is in a way presupposed from the beginning and underlies all the volumes of the
trilogy.182
Perhaps the best way to interpret the history of construction of the trilogy is that the
179 ———, TL 1, 20.
180 Ibid., 28. This is also particularly apparent in the first half of the trilogy’s Epilogue. ———, My Work: In
Retrospect, 100. 181
———, GL 5, 646. 182
This is noted, for example, by Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Logic, 9. Kuhr
writes that this volume: “die Bahnen vorzeichnen, in denen später auch die theologische Ästhetik entwickelt
wird.” Kuhr, Gabe und Gestalt, 141.
47
whole of GL 1-7 and TD 1-5 is in fact the process that resulted from Balthasar’s announced
attempt in 1947 to write the theological sequel to Truth of the World.
5.2 Puntel: Theology and Philosophy as the Universal Theoretical Science
Puntel was an employed professor of philosophy throughout most of his active career, but he
also studied theology and has written quite extensively on matters pertaining to Christian
philosophical theology, most recently and thoroughly in Being and God. In a section of this
book (see esp. 3.7.4.2),183
he has stated a precise position on the view of the relation of
philosophy and theology in the framework of the SSP. The section closely resembles Puntel’s
earlier articles “Das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie: Versuch einer
grundsätzlichen Klärung”184
[“The Relation of Philosophy and Theology: Attempt at a Basic
Clarification”] and “Der Wahrheitsbegriff in Philosophie und Theologie”185
[“The Concept of
Truth in Philosophy and Theology”]. Since his conception at this point in this dissertation is
as much an articulated position on the subject matter of discussion as a (only) theoretical
framework, this section presents his view of the subject matter, before the discussion and
comparison to Balthasar are undertaken in the next.
According to Puntel, the traditional distinction of philosophy and theology into different
academic disciplines186
is based on three aspects: (1) differentiation of material object
[Gegenstand], viz. the common structures of reality [Wirklichkeit] and thinking in philosophy
on the one hand, and the revealed God of the Bible in theology on the other; (2)
differentiation of “types” of truth [Wahrheitstypus], viz. different means of grounding and
authority of truth; and (3) differentiation in claim [Anspruch] to truth, viz. the disciplines’
common but different universal claim to truth.187
In the two German articles cited above he
discusses the attainability of those aspects, and argues that only the first of the aspects makes
some sense as a real theoretical distinction between the disciplines.188
This is the case, Puntel
183 Section 3.7.4.2, Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 266-82. See also 114-21, 253-4.
184 Lorenz B. Puntel, “Das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie: Versuch einer grundsätzlichen Klärung,”
in Vernunft des Glaubens: Wissenschaftliche Theologie und kirchliche Lehre. Festschrift zum 60. Geburtstag von
Wolfhart Pannenberg, ed. Jan Rohls and Gunther Wenz (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988). 185
———, “Der Wahrheitsbegriff in Philosophie und Theologie,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, no. 9
(1995). 186
Puntel, unlike parts of the English tradition, uses the term science [Wissenschaft] for both philosophy and
theology, and speaks of their theory of method/philosophy of science as Wissenschaftstheorie. 187
Puntel, “Das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie: Versuch einer grundsätzlichen Klärung,” 15f. 188
Here it could, of course, also have been appropriate to discuss Puntel’s concept of truth in those articles (since
it underlies his conclusions referred to here), but for the sake of the argumentative clarity of this dissertation this
task is undertaken later in Part I.
48
argues, because the disciplines mutually presuppose each other.189
First he describes theology
as presupposing philosophy, through the need for logic, semantics and epistemology as
theoretical instruments, a basal ontology and a preliminary framework for the concept of God.
The last element is perhaps the most controversial from a theological perspective: Puntel
contends that the God of revelation cannot be expressed without the already existing
philosophical or religious ideas of God (which are, of course, subject to criticism from
revelation). To use a famous dictum from Karl Barth, the God of revelation does not come
into the world “senkrecht von oben” [directly, straightforwardly from above].190
Rather, even
the incarnation takes place within the religious and philosophical milieu of Judaism and the
Greek tradition, and is not intelligible without this framework. Philosophy also presupposes
theology, says Puntel, although this happens in a more subtle way than vice versa. It happens
because philosophy, as the theoretical discipline that questions everything, remains
underdetermined until the religious dimension of reality and the historical relationship of
absolute and contingent being are integrated in the philosophical position. He thus views
different religions or theologies as potential means to contribute to a fully determined
philosophy. For his own part, he judges Christian theology as the only genuine theo-logy in
the strict sense, viz. as the best available religion having been able to respond to a thorough
rational philosophical investigation and criticism.191
In Being and God Puntel shows how the three just mentioned aspects that differentiate
between philosophy and theology are based on a certain view of the natural and supernatural
inside the Christian tradition. This conception holds that philosophy cannot go further with
respect to theology than to conceive of God (or more precisely: a god192
) as the creator of the
world. However, even if philosophy is suspended at this point, thought is not, and theology is
conceived as a reasonable articulation of the content of revealed truth, the supernatural
order.193
This view obviously opposes one of the central theses underlying Puntel’s systematic
philosophy, which is conceived of as a theoretization of everything in the widest sense. As
189 The following refers to sections 2.1 and 2.2, Puntel, “Das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie: Versuch
einer grundsätzlichen Klärung,” 17-23. 190
Cf. the use of this phrase in the citation from Pannenberg in ibid., 20n5. 191
“It is scarcely contestable that within the philosophical perspective developed here [i.e. Puntel’s structural-
systematic philosophy], Christianity is the incomparably superior religion,” Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 332. 192
A central element of Puntel’s critique of Aquinas in Being and God is to point out the central methodological
error of Aquinas’ five ways to prove the existence of (the Christian) God, where he takes each time a
methodological leap from the being he has just shown to be a philosophical necessity, to “what everyone calls
God” or the like. ———, B&G, 34-39, esp. 37. 193
Ibid., 266f.
49
such, according to Puntel, it must be open to the philosophical question of God, and must thus
include as its subject matter the eventual history of the absolute, primordial dimension of
Being, viz. including the philosophy of religion and the history of religion(s). But those
questions are only accessible to philosophy through “a methodological watershed,” a “break”
into a historical and hermeneutical method, interpreting historical phenomena (in the case of
Christianity the interpretation of the Old and New testaments must play a decisive role).194
The methodological break consists in data traditionally considered to be religious or
theological becoming the object of philosophical inquiry. In other words, Puntel’s all-
encompassing structural-systematic philosophy must programmatically include a theory or
theoretization of (a) God or gods, also by asking how this God or gods behaves in freedom in
relation to history.195
A further challenge to the traditional view of natural and supernatural, philosophy and
theology, says Puntel, comes from within the Christian tradition itself, especially as
articulated by the Catholic twentieth-century theologians Henri de Lubac and Karl Rahner.
They both reject that there is something like a natura pura in the strict sense, and especially
Rahner contends that a human being is always already ontologically determined by God’s
universal will to self-communication.196
The consequence of this, Puntel points out, must be
that the so-called pure natural reason in philosophy from a Christian perspective must be
ultimately evaluated as a fiction.197
The only conclusion from those observations acceptable to Puntel is to radically rethink the
relationship between philosophy and theology. He does not conceive them as two completely
separated disciplines, but rather sees them as disciplines that “together constitute a single
universal science.”198
They relate to each other as the whole (philosophy) to one of its
indispensable parts (theology).199
How this unified, yet distinct Grunddisziplin is to be
practiced is expressed during a discussion of some passages from Heidegger earlier in Being
and God:
194 Ibid., 264f, 270. See also ibid., 459.
195 Ibid., 353.
196 Ibid., 371f.
197 Ibid., 374. Cf. Exkurs 1: “Die wirkliche Vernunft in theologischer Sicht” [the real reason from a theological
viewpoint] in Puntel, “Das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie: Versuch einer grundsätzlichen Klärung,”
23-25. 198
Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 271. This is also the proposed thesis of Puntel, “Das Verhältnis von
Philosophie und Theologie: Versuch einer grundsätzlichen Klärung,” 14. 199
———, “Das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie: Versuch einer grundsätzlichen Klärung,” 36.
50
The philosopher (..) considers the primordial dimension [of Being] only generally, as largely undetermined,
as one that still awaits its self-determination and the corresponding articulation; in opposition, (Christian)
theology begins with the fully developed, fully determined form of the primordial dimension. (..) Theology
(..) articulates the primordial dimension at the outset as God, and indeed as the God that has revealed and
communicated himself, who has initiated a history of self-communication and of salvation.200
In Puntel’s structural-systematic theoretical framework, philosophy thus presupposes theology
to be fully determined or complete, and theology presupposes philosophical elements
(conscious or unconscious) to be done at all, and a developed philosophy to be rationally
sound, that is, theo-logy (logos as intelligibility). Seen together this way, the disciplines
answer humanity’s universal questioning of being as such and as a whole.
5.3 Discussion and Assessment of the Relevance of Philosophical
Discussions in this Dissertation
The attentive reader has probably already noted the similarities and basic commensurability of
Balthasar’s and Puntel’s view of the relationship between philosophy and theology. They both
share a view of philosophy as a comprehensive science approaching the question of Being in
its fullness, firmly situated within the grand metaphysical tradition of Western philosophy
(with Aquinas as an important peak point), although each in their own way modifies it:
Balthasar by his emphasis on metaphysics as meta-anthropology, Puntel by his emphasis that
metaphysics must be a theory of being as such and as a whole, and thus explicitly of (capital-
)Being (Sein). They share the view that theology as part of an intelligible view of the totality
of reality has to be situated within a broader philosophical framework – Balthasar primarily
for apologetic purposes, Puntel through his emphasis on his structural-systematic philosophy
as a universal science in the widest sense, requiring theoretization of and intelligibility on
every thinkable subject.
For the same reasons they also both conceive of philosophy and theology as, in principle,
strongly interconnected – Puntel by unifying them in a distinct “single universal science,”
Balthasar by his program of integration. Each in their way argues convincingly that theology
has to be deeply engaged with philosophy, both thematically, through shared universal
questions, and instrumentally, because of the need for theoretical instruments to articulate
theology in a universal language. This follows, on the one hand, from the basal theological
insight that God as perceived through revelation in nature is to be understood ontologically as
200 Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 117.
51
the same God as the God of revelation. And on the other hand, it is a basic theoretical demand
in philosophy that what is presented as scientific and reasonable truth has to be grounded and
inter-subjectively assessable. If the Christian God is to make sense as the God of the whole of
reality, theology must relate to the world as it exists at hand. For this dissertation, this makes
clear that when one wants to claim the truth of God as a truth valid in the world or to relate it
to the world, this truth must be related to a general account of truth in the same world. Only
then can the Spirit be really accounted for as the Spirit of truth.
The notion, held by both Puntel and Balthasar, that there is no natura pura in the strict sense
raises a methodological challenge. Granted this fact, how is it possible to do what Balthasar
calls TL 1: “a philosophical inquiry that considers only the revelation of God given in
creation?”201
In Puntel’s terms: How complete or coherent may philosophy become without
making it fully determined by theology? The answer must be that strictly speaking it is not
possible to isolate philosophical from theological considerations, but this admission leads one
to adopt a somewhat pragmatic approach. Even if Balthasar is right that it is hardly possible in
retrospect to see what was in the concrete cases illuminated by the natural or supernatural
light, the theologian philosophizing must use philosophical arguments.202
And as Puntel
argues, the supernatural light cannot in principle be inaccessible to a theoretical discipline that
asks questions about everything. Whether the theologian succeeds is determined by the degree
of acceptance of the philosophical argument as such on behalf of the addressee(s). To the
objection that this is “philosophy” that in reality is supernaturally revealed theology in
disguise, the answer is that it is worldly structures at hand being illuminated (cf. the idea of a
third domain of truths).203
Nevertheless, a philosophizing theologian must take pains to escape
the objection. But it would be rather strange to expect some revelation from the Creator of the
world that has nothing to do with the structures of the world that resulted from the Creator’s
creation.
201 Balthasar, TL 1, 271.
202 Ibid., 13.
203 Kuhr writes similarly on this problem, commenting on the philosophy of Ferdinand Ulrich (as influential for
the philosophy and theology of Balthasar): “Ein solches Ineinanderdenken von Philosophie und Theologie
erscheint dem kritischen Auβenblick gewiss bedenklich oder unerlaubt. Ist Ulrich gar heimlich Theologe?
Begegnet uns hier nicht ein christlich-spekulativer Typus der Philosophie, welchem sich die Logik des Seins
nirgends anders denn im Logos am Kreuz, in der Botschaft vom demütigen Gott enthüllt? Muss aber nicht die
mit der Annahme eines absoluten Gebers zugelassene Personalisierung der Seinsereignisses Argwohn geradezu
auf sich zeihen? […] eine Philosophie, die kein bloβes intellektuelles Spiel sein, sondern den ganzen Menschen
ins Gespräch bringen will, kann zumindest die existentielle Möglichkeit, das Sein als gegeben zu deuten, nicht
ausschlieβen.” Kuhr, Gabe und Gestalt, 183, cf. 185.
52
In this context it is also appropriate to say a few words to secure the theoretical freedom of the
philosopher from doctrinal or ecclesial authorities. Even though Puntel understands
philosophy and theology together as the single universal science, he emphasizes that
“philosophy’s sole commitment is to truth.”204
He will not accept theological-institutional
constraints to either questions or conclusions in philosophy, but allows theology to share its
light on the discussion. On this point Puntel retains a theoretical clarity that is perhaps not that
strong in Balthasar, whose commitment to the tradition and ecclesial authorities is more
explicit.205
But the difference between them may be nothing more and nothing less than the
difference of expressing the freedom of philosophy from respectively an ultimately
philosophically or theologically determined theoretical framework: For Balthasar, the end that
Puntel also speaks of, where the levels of free philosophy and existentially committed
theology must be able to correlate, has in principle come for Balthasar as a theologian, but not
for Puntel as a philosopher.206
If there are any really important differences between Balthasar’s and Puntel’s conceptions at
this point, they lie in their different approach to philosophy and theology as system or
systematic (cf. the discussion in 4.4) or their different ways of expressing their views. Puntel
states his view with analytical rigor and theoretical precision, while Balthasar’s language is
more communicative and poetic-aesthetic and aims in a more homiletic and common
direction than Puntel’s academic and theoretical language. Both of those potential differences
are most coherently understood as different modes of expression, but they express a tension
that shows up repeatedly in the discussions of this dissertation.207
For the purposes of this dissertation, however, the more theoretical perspective of Puntel on
this matter is very clarifying. His conception of the distinction and unifying of philosophy and
theology as parts of a single universal science provides a firm basis for the chosen
argumentative path of this dissertation, where philosophical reflection is a significant part of
the articulation of a coherent theology of the Spirit of truth.
204 Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 272f.
205 Cf. the notion that Thomas Aquinas “stands as guarantor that we have not departed from the great tradition”
in Balthasar, TL 1, 11. 206
Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 281f. 207
E.g. § 7 and beyond.
53
§ 6. Balthasar’s Ontology and Epistemology of the “Truth of the World”
“Truth implies total transparency and apprehensibility, on the one hand, yet eludes any
attempt to nail it down in a definition, on the other.”208
This and similar statements are
examples of the fluidity, complexity and paradoxicality of Balthasar’s phenomenological
approach to truth. According to him, truth is both graspable and escapes any definite grasp,
both in general and as the truth of some specific thing. Truth is as obvious as it is
incomprehensible. Thus this chapter cannot produce any strict definition of what Balthasar
“really” means by truth. His discussion of truth is not purely theoretical, aiming at
terminological clarity or philosophical certitude. Rather, he approaches truth as a philosopher
living in the world, struck by wonder at the mystery of being. His treatment of the word
“truth” and its philosophical meaning is influenced by the tradition of philosophical
phenomenology;209
he describes ever new aspects of truth without always fully building them
into a strict system, even if they are related to each other systematically. Truth is often
described in a circular pattern, partly repeating earlier ideas in relation to new ones. The
following is therefore not a full page-by-page analytical walk through his most explicit
philosophical treatment of truth in TL 1: The Truth of the World210
– although this volume is
the natural main source for this section – or of any other works. Instead, I try to summarize
the important points of Balthasar’s philosophy of worldly truth as material for the
comparative discussion of truth in philosophy inside Puntel’s framework that follows, and as
a potential resource for the discussion of truth in systematic theology in the next chapter.
208 Balthasar, TL 1, 39.
209 TL 1 is described in its introduction as “a sort of phenomenology of truth.” Ibid., 31f. Cf. Anton Štrukelj,
Kniende Theologie, 2. und erweiterte Auflage ed. (St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 2004), 39. Kuhr stresses that Goethe
is a central influence on Balthasar’s phenomenology, both philosophical and theological, through the emphasis
on Gestalt as wholeness and the givenness and richness of being. See esp. ch. 4 in Kuhr, Gabe und Gestalt, 69-
106. 210
This task has already been undertaken by Blättler, and would in any case be too excessive for the purposes of
this dissertation; see Blättler, Pneumatologia crucis: das Kreuz in der Logik von Wahrheit und Freiheit; ein
phänomenologischer Zugang zur Theologik Hans Urs von Balthasars, 42-230. A comparison of the footnotes in
that section of Blättler’s work and this section in this work bears witness to the difference in approach: Blättler
follows the page numbers of TL 1 linearly, while I try to a greater degree to follow Balthasar’s circular reasoning
from an even higher point of view in my summarizing, thus the page references to TL 1 are totally mixed up and
also more mixed with references to other works. On Balthasar’s conscious use of this kind of circular reasoning
see 6.3.
54
6.1 Basic Definitions and Etymologies of Truth: Transcendental, alētheia,
emeth, adaequatio
The first and primary determination of truth for Balthasar is given at the start of the
Introduction to Truth of the World: Truth is a transcendental determination211
or quality212
[Bestimmung] of being as such, not just a property of knowledge.213
He expands it some pages
later by using standard Thomistic terms as contextualized in philosophical German:
[t]ruth is a transcendental property [Eigenschaft] of being [Sein], a fundamental quality and constituent
structure [Verfassung] of every being [Seiendes], which therefore shares most intimately in all the breadth
and depth of being [Sein] and in all degrees and forms of existent entities [seiender Wesen].214
An obvious question following such a quote, and also an important question facing
Balthasar’s monumental trilogy, structured around the so-called “transcendentals” – the
beautiful, the good and the true [and the one]215
– is: What is a transcendental? This is
important to understand his thought, both his philosophy and theology. A very clarifying note
that helps to save the transcendentals in Balthasar from fearful associations with excessive
and complicated philosophical problems is made by Aidan Nichols in his A Key to Balthasar:
‘Transcendental’, as used by Balthasar, is not a word that need frighten us. It means, simply, universal, in the
sense of that which is not confined by but goes beyond (transcends) all particular categories.216
The transcendentals are universals: They are properties, determinations or qualities that
cannot be reduced to the concrete existence of a particular thing.217
As such, they show
themselves to be qualities also of being as such, because they are ultimately qualities of
absolute Being (theologically determined as divine and triune). In Balthasar’s philosophical
perspective, which Nichols terms epistemologically optimist and ontologically realist, our
211 Aidan Nichols’ translation, in Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Logic, 9.
212 Adrian Walker’s translation, in the English version of TL 1.
213 Balthasar, TL 1, 23, G:11.
214 Ibid., 26, G:14.
215 The numbering and selection of transcendendals are not univocal in the philosophical and theological
tradition – and neither in Balthasar’s works generally or the trilogy especially. In the Epilogue, Balthasar writes
much more explicitly of “the one” than in the earlier volumes. For a discussion, see ch. 5 in Schindler, HUvB
and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 350-421. 216
Nichols, A Key to Balthasar: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty, Goodness and Truth, 1. A similar
nonfrightening approach is contained in Schindler’s words: “As fundamental characteristics of being, the
transcendentals are the most basic way the world is perceived.” Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of
Truth, 352. 217
Cf. here Puntel’s talk of the five “most universal immanent characteristics of the dimension of being,” Puntel
and White (trans.), S&B, 436-40. Emphasis mine.
55
sense-experience of the transcendentals through our grasping of finite beings is what opens up
the deep and rich horizon of being as a whole to our cognition.
An important feature of Balthasar’s philosophy is that he conceives of self-consciousness, the
constitution of the human individual subject, as something happening only as the subject
exists in relation to other beings.218
Thus, in contrast to Kant and transcendental Thomism, he
does not constitute an “I” that is conceived of as more separate and primary with respect to
the world it perceives.219
So the concept of transcendental in Balthasar does not point to a
specific kind of subject-oriented philosophy, but rather to a metaphysical philosophy of
being.220
The most original point in Balthasar’s conception of the transcendentals is his emphasis on
their perichōrēsis (circumincession), that is, their mutual interrelation and interpenetration,
and his idea of making beauty the primary transcendental.221
The transcendentals never show
up one at a time, but permeate all being, such that what is beautiful is good and true [and one],
and the other way around. A section on “Truth, Goodness and Beauty” in TL 1222
concludes
this way:
Truth, goodness and beauty are so fully transcendental properties of being that they can be grasped only in
and through one another. In their communion, they furnish proof of the inexhaustible depth and overflowing
richness of being. Finally, they show that in the end everything is comprehensible and unveiled only because
it is grounded in an ultimate mystery, whose mysteriousness rests, not upon lack of clarity, but rather upon a
superabundance of light. For what is more incomprehensible than the fact that the core of being consists in
love and that its emergence as essence and existence has no ground other than groundless grace?223
The circumincession of the transcendentals is here understood as part of their character as
transcendentals – they transcend themselves in the direction of the others, which implies that
218 See 6.2 and beyond for further unfolding of this idea.
219 Cf. Nichols, A Key to Balthasar: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty, Goodness and Truth, 2. The constitution
of the subject and its relation to objects is discussed more thoroughly in the next section, 6.2. 220
Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 352. 221
The primacy of beauty will not be discussed further here. Cf. Balthasar, TL 1, 19-21, 223-5; ——, GL 1, 18-
23. An explicitly philosophical argument for the primacy of beauty that starts in Balthasar’s more theological
argument for the same is made in Schindler, The Catholicity of Reason, 58-84. The chapter was originally an
article published in American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly (2011). Cf. also my paper, Gunnar Innerdal,
“Beautiful Logic: Some Aspects of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Thought on the Circumincession (perichōrēsis) of
the Transcendentals” (paper presented at the Theology of Beauty, Monastery of Bose, Italy, 19-22 October
2011). Available in Russian translation as Прекрасная логика. Некоторые аспекты мыслей Ганса Урса фон
Бальтазара о взаимопроникновении трансценденталий. in Богословие красоты, ed. Mikhail Tolstoluzhenko
(2013). 222
Balthasar, TL 1, 216-25. 223
Ibid., 225.
56
they can ultimately be grasped only together and through one another. This pointing beyond,
this overflow of richness, makes the transcendentals in their reciprocity witnesses of the
mysterious meaning of being that according to Balthasar is love, the groundless givenness of a
gift.224
In the general introduction he says that love is “the hidden ground underlying the
transcendentals and their circumincessive relation.”225
The key notions in Balthasar’s thought
of being as love and the idea of incomprehensibility of excess, here touched on in a
philosophical perspective, will be unfolded further in Parts II and III.
By the determination of truth as a transcendental quality of being, Balthasar makes a link
between truth and the terminology of being that makes ontology the primary place of
discussion of truth in Balthasar’s conception. His basic question regarding truth is therefore:
Does truth exist? That question is the starting point of the discussion in TL 1.226
Balthasar
does not answer it with a simple yes without further reflection or argument. Rather, he points
out that truth, like being itself in its breadth, cannot be proven or defined in the strict sense (as
it “eludes any attempt to nail it down in a definition,” quoted above). Truth is not grounded in
any evidence outside itself, but grounds itself through the experience of it through lived life:
“truth begins to unfurl its inexhaustible plenitude–which only goes on becoming more and
more inexhaustible–in the course of long familiarity with it.”227
It can be doubted by clever
arguments and youthful arrogance, but is as undoubtful as living love; the question of whether
it is there never suspends (even the long-time happily married man or wife asks: “Does s/he
really love me?”), but the fullness of its positive answer is always like an excessive stream
where the only relevant question is where it comes from, not whether it is actually there and
whether the one standing in its way is wet by it. And with respect to both love and truth, its
existence is presupposed even as it is questioned.228
Another metaphor of relating to truth that
Balthasar uses is the one of swimming: The one seeking to be assured of truth is like the one
learning to swim. He cannot learn it by questioning the existence of the water, but must throw
himself into it, and when having started to swim, he can never stop presupposing either the
water or the basal rules of swimming, for example the need to stay in motion.229
And he will
224 Thus, as Kuhr points out, love can never, in Balthasar’s thought, be deduced or explained from something
else. Kuhr, Gabe und Gestalt, 91. 225
Balthasar, TL 1, 9. 226
Ibid., 23, 35. 227
Ibid., 26. 228
Ibid., 24. To expand the metaphor: The one standing in the stream can of course ask whether he stands in a
stream. 229
Ibid., 25.
57
probably not learn too much more about swimming by getting out of the water. In the same
way, we must always relate to the existence of truth by the initial risk of getting involved and
by the same basic questions.
Truth, like being itself, cannot be defined by something outside of itself (for being is not just
the naked opposite of nothingness); there is no “objective” standpoint outside truth and being
where they can be totally grasped and mastered. Rather, it must be sought, as it were, from the
inside, in the relation of a subject to truth: “The more of the truth the subject manages to
master, the more the truth overmasters it.”230
Through the involvement with truth there
happens a real participation in truth, but as “an unbounded quality of being”231
truth proves
itself only as “always greater, always more sublime than whatever we have grasped of it so
far.”232
Initially, then, it is shown that for Balthasar truth is as given, both positively and negatively,
as being – the former as a quality of the latter. And these two concepts are closely interrelated.
In fact, he often goes quite far in identifying truth and being: “Truth is the measure of being
and, therefore, the expression of what is.”233
“Truth … expresses … what the object in fact is
at any given moment [the object’s Faktizität].”234
Therefore Balthasar can say later on,
although in a slightly different context, that “what goes for being equally goes for truth,”235
a
statement that could almost be called the rule of Balthasar’s logic: As Nichols points out,
“Balthasar’s logic is his ontology.”236
The fact that Balthasar’s concept of truth is informed by
his concept of being is shown clearly by his attribution of the modalities also to truth. Being
consists of absolute, infinite Being (in theological terms: God) and contingent, finite beings
(creation). The same holds for truth: There is an infinite, absolute truth of God and a
contingent, finite truth of the world.237
A second important point in Balthasar’s conception of truth is not unrelated to the primary
definition of it as a transcendental of being. He often emphasizes the notion of truth as
unconcealment of being, as suggested by the etymology of the Greek a-lētheia, which literally
means – by use of privative alpha – that which is not hidden, unveiled, unconcealed or not
230 Ibid., 50.
231 Ibid., 26.
232 Ibid., 27.
233 Ibid., 75, G:73. The German reads: “Wahrheit als Mass des Seins ist der Ausdruck dessen, was ist.”
234 Ibid., 58, G:53.
235 Ibid., 199.
236 Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Logic, ix.
237 Cf., e.g., Balthasar, TL 1, 127, 227, 251f.
58
having escaped notice.238
Although Balthasar does not state this explicitly, he is most likely
influenced by Martin Heidegger on this point.239
And as this opening up, unveiling or
showing is an unveiling for someone (or more precisely: for a self-consciousness), the
character of knowledge and the social aspect of subject and object also play a central role in
Balthasar’s discussion of truth; these aspects will be discussed in the following sections. As
alētheia, truth is being unveiled as itself, and known or grasped in its unveiling; therefore
truth is the measure of being.240
As a theologian, it is not surprising that Balthasar also has something to say on the Hebrew
emeth, but perhaps more surprising that he does so even in his philosophical discussion of
truth. Some theologians see a radical distinction or difference between a Greek and a Hebrew
truth concept,241
while Balthasar views emeth and alētheia more as distinct words describing
their respective different aspects of the same, one truth. According to him, it is just as alētheia
that truth is emeth: fidelity, constancy, reliability – because the unconcealment of being is a
genuine revelation of being that can be trusted. So, both words point to truth as an opening up
of being beyond itself, and as such, an opening up to further truth. Truth is an opening that
“dis-covers being and thus the rich coherence [Zusammenhänge] of being.”242
Thomas Aquinas’ notion that truth is adaequatio intellectus et rei also receives Balthasar’s
attention, but it cannot be called his primary approach to truth. He sees the notion primarily as
a description of true knowledge. Simultaneously, it shows that both an object and a subject
must be involved in the event of articulated or grasped truth. The notion expresses the
238 Ibid., 37, 43, 149, 196, 206, 217, 269.
239 This is a common insight among commentators on Theo-Logic 1, a more thorough example being Schindler,
HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 176f. Here Schindler refers to an article by Paul Gilbert. Gilbert’s point
is that Balthasar’s language and some of his ideas and themes in TL 1 are obviously influenced by Heidegger
(especially his “On the essence of truth” and the commentary on alētheia in Heraclitus, which both appeared just
a few years in advance of the first edition of TL 1), but that there are important differences between the two
thinkers, especially related to their understanding of the ontological difference (between Being/beings and
being/God). Schindler further adds that Balthasar’s notion of truth as alētheia is deeply indebted also to
Bonaventure, Hegel, Schelling and von Schiller, Goethe and, ultimately, Dionysius the Areopagite, not just
Heidegger. He holds that there is also a great difference between the two thinkers in their understanding of
mystery as an aspect of truth, and that “we can see the difference between [Heidegger and Balthasar] already in
their respective interpretations of alētheia itself,” and that “in spite of the similarities between Heidegger’s and
Balthasar’s use of the notion of alētheia, it would be shortsighted to suggest that Balthasar had simply
mechanically taken the notion over from the older philosopher.” Similar remarks, which support the same
conclusion, are made in Tossou, Streben nach Vollendung: Zur Pneumatologie im Werk Hans Urs von
Balthasars, 100ff. 240
Balthasar, TL 1, 43. 241
Cf. references in Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 142; Puntel, “Der Wahrheitsbegriff in Philosophie und
Theologie,” 24ff. 242
Balthasar, TL 1, 39.
59
subject’s duty to let itself be determined or measured by the unconcealed being in acquiring
knowledge.243
6.2 The Drama of the Subject and the Object in Epistemology
Truth as alētheia (unveiling, unconcealment of being) implies that truth, in addition to being
(ontology), presupposes that there is something inside being that is unveiled and something
(or better: someone) that the unveiled is unveiled to and brought in correspondence by
(epistemology). This is an important point in Balthasar’s conception of truth, and a sign of his
conception’s basic realistic orientation: In the world, truth is known only among beings in
relation to each other, and the truth of things is not realized (in the sense of made real) if they
are not known or “measured” by a subject (ultimately, by God).244
Truth is never completely
abstract; it has, as it were, flesh and bone. One can then, like David C. Schindler, speak of a
“dramatic structure of truth” in Balthasar’s works.245
In other words: Epistemology,
understood as the subjects acquiring or grasping of the unveiled truth of being(s), is always a
drama involving a subject and an object.
The someone that grasps the object in truth as dramatic alētheia is the subject, who Balthasar
characterizes as a self-conscious being, or perhaps better a “conscious being,” as the German
Bewusst-sein implies.246
The subject’s self-consciousness is thus seen by Balthasar in light of
being and as a participation in being, as a “coincidence of being and consciousness” – the “I”
becoming its own object247
– like in Descartes’ maxim Cogito, ergo sum, which is embraced
by Balthasar as an important part of the philosophy of truth related to the subject, although not
as sufficient for the full constitution of the subject.248
For Balthasar, the certain constitution of
the subject does not happen when an adult sits by his desk trying to doubt everything. Rather,
he takes the realistic and historic path towards where consciousness in fact came about.
243 Ibid., 41.
244 Ibid., 56, 228, 262, 269. And cf. “In reality, the objects of this world need the subject’s space in order to be
themselves,” ibid., 63. Emphasis mine. 245
Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth. Schindler’s analysis in this work is a good one, and is
frequently used to illuminate the reading of Balthasar in this section. 246
Ibid., 122. Balthasar, TL 1, 37, 43f. 247
———, TL 1, 44, 93, 173. 248
Because of the reciprocity involved in the constitution of the subject, Balthasar says that Cogitor, ergo sum (I
am thought, therefore I am) is primary to Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am), ibid., 54. Cf. also ———,
GL 1, 451. In light of the emphasis on Bewusst-sein, one could perhaps also say Cogito, ergo cogitans sum: I
think, therefore I am thinking/a thinker; I’m conscious – thinking is so to speak my mode of being as a spiritual
being.
60
Through the influence of the philosopher Gustav Siewerth,249
and perhaps inspired also by
Paul Claudel’s notion of knowledge as a “being-born-together” (as the French connaissance
[co-naissance] suggests),250
Balthasar points to the beginning of consciousness in being born,
and the awakening to oneself, to being a conscious “I,” by the call of the parental “you,”
through the “mother’s smile.”251
The notion is expressed as in a nutshell by Balthasar in his
“Résumé” of his thought:
…man exists only in dialogue with his neighbor. The infant is brought to consciousness of himself only by
love, by the smile of his mother. In that encounter the horizon of all unlimited being opens itself for him.252
This triad of dialogue - love - being is of utmost importance to Balthasar’s philosophy and his
integration of it with theology.253
Fuller articulations of the content of this dense saying occur
at many places along the way of the development of the Balthasarian corpus. In TL (originally
published in 1947), Balthasar expresses much of the same idea without his later emphasis on
the encounter between mother and child (as in GL 5, orig. 1965, and the essay “Movement
toward God,” orig. 1967). But the points concerning the dialogical character of consciousness
are already present in TL 1: “the human being who awakens to himself awakens just as
immediately to the Thou,”254
“the contact between the I and the Thou is always already
given.”255
The awakening of the self through the encounter with “the mother’s smile” is the
first and basic element of the fourfold distinction or difference within being presented by
Balthasar in GL 5. A selection from that text can be helpful to grasp the important points and
implications of this quite original idea in Balthasar’s thought:
[The child’s] ‘I’ awakens in the experience of a ‘Thou’: in its mother’s smile through which it learns that it is
contained, affirmed and loved in a relationship which is incomprehensively encompassing, already actual,
sheltering and nourishing. The body which it snuggles into, a soft, warm and nourishing kiss, is a kiss of love
in which it can take shelter because it has been sheltered there a priori. The awakening of its consciousness is
a late occurrence, in comparison with this basic mystery of unfathomable depth. It finally sees only what
249 Esp. Gustav Siewerth, Metaphysik der Kindheit, Horizonte (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1957). “Siewerth
argues here that Heidegger’s discovery of the temporality of Being necessarily points to the philosophical
significance of childhood,” Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 38n27. 250
See ———, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 243. He refers to Claudel’s L’art poétique, not
consulted here. Cf. Balthasar, TL 2, 231. 251
Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 38. 252
Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect, 114. Other important expressions of this idea in Balthasar’s bibliography
are ———, “Movement toward God; ———, GL 5, 613-56; ———, Unless You Become Like This Child (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991). 253
See Kuhr, Gabe und Gestalt, 116, 145ff, 178ff. Kuhr emphasizes that the triad relates closely to Balthasar’s
notion of person. 254
Balthasar, TL 1, 169. 255
Ibid., 170.
61
always has been, and can therefore only confirm it. (..) It awakens at the love of the Thou, as it has always
slept in the womb and on the bosom of the Thou. (..) It gives itself to play because the experience of being
admitted is the very first thing which it knows in the realm of Being. It is, in so far as it is allowed to take
part as an object of love. Existence is both glorious and a matter of course. Everything, without exception,
which is to follow later and will inevitably be added to this experience must remain an unfolding of it. There
is no ‘gravity of life’ which would fundamentally surpass this beginning. There is no ‘taking over control’ of
existence which might go further than this first experience of miracle and play. There is no encounter–with a
friend or an enemy or with a myriad passers-by–which could add anything to the encounter with the first-
comprehended smile of the mother.256
The first point to be grasped from this text relates closely to what has already been said,
namely that consciousness is dialogical. It results from the child encountering her mother. The
fundamentality of this fact in Balthasar’s epistemology can hardly be overstated, as he says
that everything must remain an unfolding of this experience. Every grasp of the world and the
distinction of self and world flows from it. For Balthasar, this everything even includes the
experience of the absolute/God and the call to love one’s neighbor – it is all an unfolding of
this first meeting.257
Even if this encounter is historical and finite, and thus in some sense
relative, it is in another sense absolute, as it is the point of no return of consciousness. No
person is allowed to get behind his own awakening; the “I” can in no way be totally deduced
from his parents.
A second point to be noted from the text is how Balthasar relates consciousness to love.
Bewusst-sein is at once the result of and results in love, and even in some sense is love, as
Balthasar also holds that “Being and love are coextensive.”258
In “Movement towards God”
Balthasar expresses the connection of love and consciousness this way:
[T]he little child does not “consider” whether it will reply with love or nonlove to its mother’s inviting smile,
for just as the sun entices forth green growth, so does love awaken love; it is in the movement toward the
“Thou” that the “I” becomes aware of self. By giving itself, it experiences: I give myself.259
Thus it might be proposed that Balthasar contrasts and fulfills Descartes’ maxim Cogito, ergo
sum with Amo et amor, ergo sum or, maybe rather: Amor ut amem, ergo sum. For, according
256 ———, GL 5, 616f.
257 Ibid., 616; ———, “Movement toward God,” 15-17.
258 ———, “Movement toward God,” 17. Cf. Werner Löser, “Being Interpreted As Love: Reflections on the
Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Communio: International Catholic Review 16, no. Fall (1989). 259
Balthasar, “Movement toward God,” 16.
62
to Balthasar, the child “is, in so far as it is allowed to take part as an object of love”!260
This
idea will of course be of great importance in Balthasar’s more explicitly theological treatment
of love and God as love, and when he relates truth and love (see Part II).
A third point to be underscored from the mother’s smile text from GL 5 is the close linking of
consciousness and body. The call of the mother is at first a bodily call: smiling, nourishing,
kissing and (physical) sheltering, in most normal cases having its most intense expression
through the child being fed at the mother’s breast, a situation standing in close continuity with
the feeding through the umbilical cord. The child “awakens at the love of the Thou, as it has
always slept in the womb and on the bosom of the Thou.” The point is made by Balthasar also
in TL 1: “The child who awakens to consciousness does not enter into the world as a pure
spirit in order to tackle the problem of expression from scratch. Rather, the child awakens
from subspiritual life,”261
and thus “finally sees only what always has been.” The body is thus
not a secondary thing occurring by chance to me as a thinking mind, but a presupposition of
being me, the medium of awakening to consciousness. Again, contrasting Decartes, Balthasar
would probably be saying: Corpus sum, ergo cogito.262
From the notion of the sensual encounter with the mother’s smile it is but a short step to
Balthasar’s close linking of consciousness to the senses.263
In TL 1 he writes:
[T]he spiritual center of consciousness develops out of the sensory [!] center of imagination. (..) Its essential
activity remains that of ordering, describing, interpreting, and understanding sensible objects, and it is
capable of elevating itself beyond the sensible only insofar as the sensible itself guides it to this height. (..)
Only by turning in this way to the senses does it know and experience itself. In the mirror of matter it knows
the spirit; in the mirror of the exterior, it catches sight of the interior.264
That the intellect is linked to the senses is of course not an especially original idea. In fact, the
whole history of philosophical epistemology (at least in modern times) can be seen as the
strife to relate those two to each other. The stress on “outer” experience of “inner” meaning is
260 “I love and am loved, therefore I am,” or: “I am loved in order to love, therefore I am.” Personally I owe the
idea of the expression Amo, ergo sum to Nina Karin Monsen, who again refers to the personalist philosopher
Emmanuel Mounier; see her article (in Norwegian) Nina Karin Monsen, “Humanismens arroganse,” in “Som en
ild går Åndens ord.” Festskrift til Børre Knudsen, ed. Boe Johannes Hermansen (Oslo: Luther, 2007). 261
Balthasar, TL 1, 162. Emphasis mine. 262
“I am (!) a body, therefore I think.” My mode of being is thus both thinking and bodying, cf. footnote 248. 263
Balthasar discusses the senses with reference to Karl Barth, Romano Guardini, Gustav Siewerth and Paul
Claudel in Balthasar, GL 1, 380-407. That text is the material for the also clarifying discussion, relied upon here,
in Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 279-85. 264
Balthasar, TL 1, 170.
63
made through influence from Goethe.265
Balthasar insists that senses and intellect are always
already interrelated, and as such are not separated by a gulf that must be bridged by
philosophy.266
In the quote Balthasar also underscores that the conscious subject’s interiority
is owing to the senses, a point he borrows from Aquinas. Another important point for
Balthasar is that we perceive everything through the senses: “all the senses perceive the non-
sensual sensually.”267
In contrast to Kant, then, Balthasar does not see the subject as attaining
supra-sensible impressions prior to or only derivative from the sensed; rather, the supra-
sensual is given through the sensible: the way “beyond the sensible” is only accessible
“insofar as the sensible itself guides it to this height.”
Those insights, emphasized as much in the theological aesthetics as in TL 1, have
consequences also for his epistemology of truth: The striking experience of beauty is a sign
that it is really the object, that is, Being in its depth and splendor, which appears as itself [an
sich], in its transcendental fullness. As Schindler says, with reference to Siewerth, “what the
senses primarily perceive is Being itself, as it manifests itself in sensible objects.”268
It is in
this light that Balthasar implicitly says that it would be nonsense to say that the sensible
appearance [Erscheinung] of the mother to the child in love was not a disclosing of herself.269
By this the discussion is already opened to the object, that is, the world, or being, which
unveils to the subject as alētheia. As already noted, Balthasar takes an optimistic stance
towards the possibility of really grasping the object, or better: that the object really appears to
the subject. In the same sense as it is apparent that truth exists (cf. above), it is according to
him apparent that when a being discloses itself, it “really gives itself as it is.”270
But this does
not mean that the object is laid bare in the hands of the subject; the subject does not know “the
whole truth of the object,” because “the subject can come to know this truth only by
participating, as far as it is allowed to do so, in the truth of things as given and disposed by
God.”271
265 Kuhr, Gabe und Gestalt, 30-2.
266 Cf. Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 230.
267 Balthasar, GL 1, 406. Also quoted in Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 282.
268 ———, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 284.
269 Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect, 114f.
270 ———, TL 1, 39.
271 Ibid., 60, cf. 261. Cf. also the idea of God’s ultimate “measuring” of being; see the start of this section with
footnote 244. Balthasar writes quite a long passage, presumably inspired by Thomas Aquinas, discussing
different kinds of objects, sorted by their degree of interiority: inorganic nature, plants, animals, humans, angels,
and ultimately, the Creator, in ibid., 84-102.
64
Between the subject and the object, in their dramatic encounter, there is a close reciprocity –
so much so that the subject is subject only in relation to an object and v.v., as we have already
touched upon in the discussion. In the Epilogue to the trilogy Balthasar writes, with regard to
the subject:
man is open for the world in its entirety; his self-consciousness is indissolubly linked with his world-
consciousness–so much so that he attains to self-consciousness only as he is addressed by and from the
world.272
This means, as Schindler points out, that for Balthasar the soul’s “self-consciousness develops
in tandem with its knowledge of the world.”273
The development of self-consciousness is for
Balthasar a joint event of subject and object, and “necessarily a social consciousness” because
it arises from the encounter with other conscious subjects.274
Balthasar relates this sociality to
the ancient idea that the soul is quodammodo omnia [in a certain mode [or way] all things].275
Because the soul is aware of itself only through the awareness of others, it has a universal
openness to everything: It is itself insofar as it makes a distinction between itself and
everything outside of it.
The result of this dramatic conception of subject and object in epistemology for Balthasar is
that truth is seen as dialogical and relational. The dialogical character of truth points to a
double “criterion of truth” that “lodges partly in the I and partly in the Thou” – first the
criterion of the I, the evidence of the self-consciousness (Cogito, ergo sum), and secondly, the
criterion of the Thou or the object. The epiphany of truth occurs when the subject opens up to
the object’s appearance and goes beyond itself in approaching the appearing object. “The
truth of the world remains suspended between these two poles.”276
In this light it is
appropriate to call truth adequatio intellectus et rei, explicitly not understood as if truth is
something purely mentally existing in the mind of an isolated transcendental ego having to
bridge his way into the world, but as something always already dramatically including the
thought and the thing: “knowing the truth happens [!] (..) when knowledge lets itself be
272 ———, E, 48. Kuhr points out that Balthasar is probably inspired by Goethe on this point. See Kuhr, Gabe
und Gestalt, 17, 234. 273
David C. Schindler, “Surprised by Truth: The Drama of Reason in Fundamental Theology,” Communio:
International Catholic Review 31, no. Winter (2004): 599. This article is now available in a slightly revised
version in ———, The Catholicity of Reason, 35-57. 274
Balthasar, TL 1, 168. Cf. Ibid., 40, 163. 275
The saying is originally from Aristotle (in Greek – hē pschychē ta onta pōs estin ta panta, from De Anima 3,
8, 431b), but is embraced by Aquinas and therefore also widely known in Latin. 276
Balthasar, TL 1, 173f. The second criterion can of course be seen as a corollary of the proposed emendations
of Cogito, ergo sum presented earlier in this section (Cogito, ergo cogitans sum; Amo et amor, ergo sum; Corpus
sum, ergo cogito). Cf. also: “Truth (..) is at once subjective and objective, personal and social,” ibid., 261.
65
determined and measured by the thing.”277
Thus, to summarize in the words of Schindler, in
the concrete dramatic union of subject and object
truth becomes an event in which both the subject and object await the other for their meaning, even as they
both in asymmetrical ways give rise to that meaning.278
6.3 The Real Partiality of Known Truth
The analysis so far has already pointed to what can be described as the real partiality of
known truth in Balthasar’s conception. Truth is apparent, yet mysterious; the subject grasps
the object, but not in its totality. Being, he says, is “always more than what we have grasped
of it,”279
and “by its very essence, being is always richer than what we see and apprehend of
it.”280
The phrase real partiality underscores that truth for Balthasar is really known (“we
have grasped it”; “we see and apprehend it”), and that it is really partially, that is, not fully,
totally and absolutely known (being is “always more/richer than” our grasp). In this section I
will expand further on what this notion means, and point to some of its grounds and
consequences. Along the way, important keywords are partiality, mystery, situatedness and
perspective, and the road ends in a discussion of the (philosophical) methodology of acquiring
knowledge of increasing parts of truth that results.
In every occurrence of alētheia, says Balthasar, the being unveiled offers only parts or bits of
its own totality, “only an infinitesimal fraction of truth as a whole.” Every grasp of the truth is
thus best conceived as a participation in something infinitely great.281
In this context Balthasar
stresses that there is not something irrational pertaining to the insight that the “I” cannot grasp
the whole as the whole. Rather, the subject must grasp the wholeness of something through its
unveiled parts. The will to accept this fact as rational is a test against bad hybris, as “every
abuse of truth consists in making the fragment self-sufficient to the detriment of the
totality.”282
Human knowledge of finite, contingent earthly truth, then, always has a fragrance
of relativity or incompleteness pertaining to it:
277 Ibid., 41.
278 Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 410f. Emphasis mine. Cf. “Their [the subject and the
object’s] encounter will reveal them to each other, even as the revelation of the other will contain, for each, the
revelation of itself, which can come about only in the other,” Balthasar, TL 1, 62. 279
———, TL 1, 107. 280
Ibid., 131. 281
Ibid., 40. 282
Ibid., 128.
66
Truth, as we know it in the world, always consists of single revelations, propositions, and judgments that
unveil a definite perspective. But each one of these perspectives remains finite and must be completed by
others. No worldly truth is absolute, even when it is genuine, actual truth.283
In another context, Balthasar speaks, with reference to Aquinas, more unmediated or directly
of all knowledge of truth in the world as “a kind of error” when it is compared to the infinite,
absolute, divine knowing.284
In sum: Man is not God, and when he tries to be, the only victor
is the lie (cf. Gen 3). What man should do is to always receive humbly his share of truth from
the hand of the Creator.285
The reason that the whole of truth is ungraspable is above all that truth is mystery. For
Balthasar, truth is as mysterious, wonder-provoking and wonder-inspiring as is Being itself. In
accordance with his rule of thumb that “what goes for being equally goes for truth,” Balthasar
says “That there is being and, in consequence, truth, that reality is real and that truth is true:
Who could ever exhaust this mystery?”286
Mystery, according to him, is an immanent quality
of both being and truth, not something “beyond” them.287
Thus mystery is not what is left
when we have grasped something of the truth, but a quality inherent in truth itself. Because of
this inherent mysterious “always more” in all being truth is surprise.288
That is, it gives the
subject really new knowledge. Knowledge is always an unexpected and surprising event, both
positively and negatively.289
Paradoxically, the more a subject discovers of the truth, the more
it sees of the depths that it does not know, and the more surprised it might turn out to be when
the next truth dis-covers to it.290
But on the purely positive side, the mysterious character of
truth is what keeps us from being extremely bored in our everyday lives.291
Balthasar says
here that this mysterious beauty of truth that escapes every total grasp and conceptual
delimitation is what makes life bearable:
283 Ibid., 127. Emphasis mine.
284 Ibid., 251, cf. 74.
285 Ibid., 262.
286 Ibid., 208.
287 Ibid., 131f.
288 A fine treatment of truth as surprise with reference primarily to fundamental theology is done by Schindler,
“Surprised by Truth: The Drama of Reason in Fundamental Theology.” For the philosophical part of the
argument see esp. 592ff. 289
Cf. Balthasar, TL 1, 62. “Every encounter with truth is a new event,” ibid., 142. 290
Cf. also the beautiful passage in ibid., 201f. 291
Ibid., 141f.
67
Now, the fact that the same things can surround us day after day, appear before us every morning with the
same existence and essence, but not become unendurable is due to the mysteriousness of truth, which is
always richer than what we have been able to apprehend so far.292
Thus, the “ineliminable mystery” that is always demonstrated when a being is revealed is a
matter of grace, of gift.293
The stones at the doorstep, the cat of the neighbor, the grass, the
sun, the rain and the birds singing are all, because they are not fully unveiled to me yet, when
deeply considered, not boring, but shares in being’s richness of beauty.294
In fact, says
Balthasar, it is mystery that makes love and knowledge possible at all.295
Mystery means that
when being is unconcealed (alētheia), it is always an “interplay of veiling and unveiling,” it is
a paradoxical “unveiled veiling” of the mystery of being, namely Being itself.296
For
Balthasar, the understanding of truth as mystery finally leads over to the understanding of
truth as participation. At last, it becomes clear that the groundless mystery of created being
and its truth is due to the groundless mystery of God; the finite always rests and is sheltered
in, is even a share or participation in, the infinite.297
Balthasar finds that a clear expression of the mystery of truth is in the so-called “real
distinction” between esse/being and essentia/essence in Thomistic philosophy.298
This
distinction plays an important role in Balthasar’s thought, as witnessed by his assertion in the
“Résumé” written at the end of his life that “the ‘real distinction’ of St. Thomas is the source
of all the religious and philosophical thought of humanity.”299
On this occasion he gives the
distinction a personalist twist – cf. his notion of metaphysics as meta-anthropology.300
The
292 Ibid., 142.
293 Ibid., 158, cf. 142.
294 Perhaps, Balthasar might say, it is only in hell that I eventually would (think I could!) know everything (about
everything), because in fact I thus knew nothing, while in heaven there is an eternal knowing of the mysterious
always yet unknown depths of God. 295
Balthasar, TL 1, 209. 296
Ibid., 206-8. 297
Ibid., 229-31. 298
Balthasar states what is his understanding of the real distinction in TD 5: “Every limited being (essentia)
participates in real being (in the actus essendi), but none of them is identical with it, nor can the totality of
limited beings exhaust it. From Thomas onward this mystery is called the ‘real distinction’.” ———, TD 5, 68.
This is “the most mysterious distinction with which philosophy has to deal,” ibid., 67. The distinction is treated
at greater length with reference to Aquinas in the closing chapter of ———, GL 4, esp. 393-5, 400-9. For
Balthasar’s interpretation of the philosophy of Thomas generally and with respect to the real distinction
especially, see Angelo Campodonico, “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Interpretation of the Philosophy of Thomas
Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera 8, no. 1 (2010): esp. 40. 299
Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect, 112. Similarly: “Thomas’s major creative achievement [is] his definition
of esse and its relation to essences.” ———, GL 4, 393. 300
The starting point here is not the Being-beings of metaphysics, but “the situation of man.” “He exists as a
limited being in a limited world, but his reason is open to the unlimited, to all of Being. The proof consists in the
68
“thatness” and “whatness” of things described by this real distinction is, according to
Balthasar, a remaining polarity in truth where both poles always point toward the mystery of
the other when grasped.301
From this distinction arises the Thomistic concept of esse, in
Balthasar’s use dependent on his philosopher friends Gustav Siewerth and Ferdinand
Ulrich,302
which is so important to his metaphysics and his theology of creation. This concept
of esse, Balthasar says,
demands, as the irreplaceable foundation of every metaphysics, a constant, active humility which neither
gives up all claim to the truth nor in any sense whatever makes itself master of ultimate, quasi-divine truth.303
Balthasar’s use of the real distinction in the theological sphere will be further analyzed and
discussed in § 9 and § 10.
Closely related to the notion of the partiality of known truth that results from its mysterious
depths and polarities is the perspectival character and what can be called the “situatedness” of
truth. There are many subjects and many objects, says Balthasar, but the truth of them can
only be seen from one subject at a time. Thus he reflects on what is often called “perspective”
or “standpoint,” an idea expressing that there is, in Balthasar’s metaphor, no “bird’s-eye
view” of the whole land of truth.304
The discussion of this notion will be important to the
discussion in § 7, as here and in the following we will touch upon what makes Balthasar able
to systematize without building a system (cf. 4.4); the distinction presupposes an appropriate
take on the role of perspective for truth.
Having a perspective is intrinsic to being a subject. But this is not a bad thing, says Balthasar,
because if there were no perspectives, truth would lose its intimacy and being its personality.
In other words, if I did not have (only) my own perspective, I would not be me (cf. Bewusst-
sein). Moreover, the subject is also blessed with plenty of means to expand his perspective. In
meeting others and trying to step into their perspective lies a fruitful contribution to myself.305
Perspective leads into situation; as there are many (indispensable) standpoints, there are also
many “standtimes.” There is, according to Balthasar, “no truth except in the concrete form of
recognition of his finitude, of his contingence: I am, but I could also, however, not be. Many things that do not
exist could exist. Essences are limited, but Being is not.” ———, My Work: In Retrospect, 112. 301
———, TL 1, 105-7, 193ff, 206. Cf. also ———, TL 2, 183f. 302
See, with further references, Kuhr, Gabe und Gestalt, 171-83. 303
Balthasar, GL 4, 404f. 304
———, TL 1, 186. 305
In Balthasar’s metaphor: In the exchange of personal truths, “spirits feed one another, as it were, with their
own substance,” ibid., 190.
69
the individual situation.”306
Again, the indispensability of situation for truth is not a bad thing,
argues Balthasar, because it is a necessary corollary of human being as living presence, not
dead past (and again, and this is the original context of the saying: “What goes for being
equally goes for truth”). Balthasar makes a play on German words and says that time is
always the Zukunft (future) of being that Zu-kommt (comes towards); existence is like an
eternal future that “spreads before every being an extravagant abundance and unceasingly
lavishes it with this cornucopia from moment to moment.”307
The situation, then, is a
manifestation of being, and being can only be known in its temporal truth.
In the contexts discussing the partial participation, mystery, perspective and situation of truth,
Balthasar also points out some consequences of those notions for philosophical method. The
result is that
[p]recisely insofar as all individual standpoints participate in a single truth is it possible to compare them, to
coordinate them, and to order them in relation to a unity, albeit a unity that is never fully attainable. The
decisive method for comparing standpoints remains (..) integration into an ever greater totality. There is only
one fruitful way to contrast world views: the positive method of incorporating the particular into a more
encompassing totality. Only rarely will we have to say that some perspective contains no truth (..). Systems
of thought that do nothing but polemically contrast their differences are dispiriting tokens of narrow-
mindedness, whereas those that overcome the narrowness of limited standpoints by positive opening to more
encompassing standpoints liberate and edify.308
Before some points from this text are to be unpacked, it should be mentioned that this idea
follows Balthasar to the end and also plays an important role when he writes the Epilogue,
where he expresses the idea in proverbial German that “Wer mehr Wahrheit sieth, hat mehr
recht” (“Whoever sees more of the truth is more profoundly right”).309
The text quoted fleshes
out the methodological consequences of several of the important aspects of truth treated so
far. It is possible to know a real partiality of truth, but that is possible only by participation in
the single, always greater truth. The fact that the participation is in the same truth, or in other
words that world views are in one sense views of the same world, makes it possible to
306 Ibid., 200.
307 Ibid., 196-9.
308 Ibid., 186f. It is in this light that Balthasar says that “Love is the opposite of sectarian insistence of being
right. Love’s inclination is to acknowledge the validity of another’s truth sooner than its own,” ibid., 129. 309 ———, E, 15f, 43f. Kuhr notes that the proverb is probably consciously or unconsciously inspired by
Edmund Husserl’s “Wer mehr Wahrheit sieth, hat tiefer recht,” Kuhr, Gabe und Gestalt, 190. Cf. also the
statement, close to the one from E, that “the more truth a partial perspective can integrate into itself, the greater
is its claim to be true,” Balthasar, TL 1, 128f.
70
compare them, and to expand the perspective.310
Expanding here always means enlarging and
integration, never reduction. This method of synthesis nevertheless has its limits, as the “unity
is never fully attainable.” It means that perspectivity can never be left behind (as Balthasar
accuses Hegel of attempting). Rather, the thinker has a duty to stress and deepen both his own
perspective and that of others:
there is only one way in which the thinker in the world can progressively lay hold of the truth: by taking
seriously the personal situation in which he finds himself, on the one hand, and the inconclusible dialogue
with all the perspectives surrounding him, on the other.311
The inconclusible dialogue spoken of here is the practical consequence of Balthasar’s
rejection of an absolute, complete grasp of truth.
I will try to illuminate Balthasar’s approach to the real partiality of truth to a more absolutist,
Hegelian way of thinking by way of some metaphors. The metaphors may help point out the
distinction between Balthasar’s notions of integration and inconclusible dialogue and
“system” in the negative sense he ascribes to it (cf. 4.4). Balthasar’s way of thinking is like
the view of a statue from different angles. The spectator always really looks at the statue, but
he always sees it from a particular perspective. A quick walk around the statue might give a
reasonable overview of it, but slow contemplation from ever new standpoints may uncover
countless new details. A similar metaphor would be to think of the perception of truth as a
series of partly overlapping circles and ellipses. The circles and ellipses are not necessarily
concentric but remain clues or pointers to the same center.312
New perspectives on the center
can give rise to potentially countless new figures. The point is that the view is expanded by
looking at the center in different ways. A metaphor of Balthasar’s that makes the same point
is the one of the spiral: An increase in knowledge of truth is like “a higher winding of the
spiral,” which often results in “the same conclusions, albeit with a more thorough
310 Balthasar thus says that the great thinkers, mentioning Plato, Aristotle, Thomas, Kant and Hegel, can be
compared in all their difference because the truth that presented itself to them, which they grasped from a
particular perspective, at a particular time, was in some sense always the same. ———, TL 1, 206. 311
Ibid., 187, G:210. The citation in fact has a kind of conditional clause added to it, namely, it is preceded by
“apart from Christian revelation” (in the German it is placed in parentheses in the middle of the sentence). This
is something of a foretaste of Balthasar’s account of the incarnation’s significance for truth in TL 2, and is,
strictly speaking, misplaced here. It should be taken as evidence that although Balthasar in TL 1 proposes to do a
“philosophical inquiry that considers only the revelation of God given in creation,” ibid., 271., he does not
manage to leave his identity as a theologian totally behind. He would possibly respond to this criticism by saying
that this is just “a theological light that can illuminate the genuinely philosophical sphere,” ———, E, 45. 312
Some scholars speak of Balthasar’s reasoning as occurring in concentric circles. This may not be clarifying,
as the notion of concentric circles includes a sense of proportionality and system that is too strong for Balthasar,
and it implies that the subject has acquired the position to know exactly where the center is. An example is
Murphy, A Theology of Criticism: Balthasar, Postmodernism, and the Catholic Imagination, 14.
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understanding of them.”313
Integration of new insights and perspectives gives a new and
deeper understanding of the truth, which still is not grasped in its entirety. The spiral goes on.
These metaphors may be contrasted to a typical cake diagram where a circle is neatly
separated into identically sized and systematically placed parts. This image expresses a more
Hegelian view of system building. The system, and thus the truth, is enclosed, as all
perspectives are totally integrated. What philosophy aspires to is getting a more detailed view
of the content of the circle as it has been drawn. The sectors of the whole can be neatly
separated,314
topics can be treated in a linear fashion, and the conclusions reached at each step
in the systematization (only!) lead to the next topic. The notion of a wholeness that is not yet
grasped is superfluous, because the sum is nothing more than the parts that are arranged
together.
The contrasting of such metaphors may illuminate what Balthasar wants to say in passages
like this one from TL 1:
Above all, finite understanding must not arrogantly presume that its judgment attains total clarity about the
essence of things, about the inner, intimate core where they are turned to the face of God. True, human
understanding can attain objective truth, and what it apprehends can in truth be apprehended. But is there
ever a moment when it has attained absolute certainty about a being, when, in other words, its judgment has
become irreversible? “Judge not, lest ye be judged”: This warning places us back in the sphere of
contingence, in which our judging belongs and of which it must remain aware.315
For Balthasar, subjects can know the truth, but never the whole of it.316
And that is not an
irrational insight, neither is it a bad thing. As finite, contingent beings created by God,
subjects can hope for no more, but this is no small hope, for it is as great as having a real
glimpse into the mystery of truth.
313 Balthasar, TL 1, 132. This is an important background for my choice of argumentative path in this chapter;
see footnote 210. The metaphor of the spiral may be borrowed from Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. 314
Cf. the quote from Tossou in 4.4. 315
Balthasar, TL 1, 271. 316
Schindler writes: “It is not uncommon to find the claim in commentators on Balthasar that the ultimate
mystery of the meaning of the whole of being dwarfs all attempts at grasping it, and that the greatest truth we can
grasp is the humble knowledge that we do not know. This is not altogether false, but the situation in Balthasar
seems more paradoxical, and therefore more dramatic. The real humility is not only this willingness to open
oneself to the greater mystery of being, beyond all one’s grasping, but simultaneously the receptivity to the task
of affirming that meaning in a responsible way in history.” Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth,
419.
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6.4 Truth, Life and Love
To Balthasar, truth is always related to practice: “Truth without life, without dialogue, would
immediately cease to have any meaning.”317
He always thinks in terms of integration and
totality, thus he also aspires to think theory and practice in relation to each other. In TL 1, he
uses several pages to describe how truth ought to be “administered” in love.318
Thus, it is not
surprising that he emphasizes that truth cannot be understood only or purely theoretically. For
him, in his circumincessive vision of the transcendentals, truth always has ethical
consequences and aesthetic splendor.319
This is an insight that grows and gets even more
explicit when it is lifted into revealed theology, but Balthasar ascribes it also to the
philosophical sphere.320
The opening quote of this section relates this to the dramatic character of truth, with truth
constituted in dialogue. Because alētheia is unveiling (for someone!), its logos is a never-to-
be-ended dialogos.321
In this intersubjective space of movement it becomes clear to Balthasar
that truth has its sense as a whole in love: “love appears as the definitive interpretation of the
entire movement.”322
This fundamental love grounds two insights for Balthasar: the unity of
faith and knowledge and thus truth as a deed. Where there is love, there is also trust. When a
subject is to know something, it must open itself to the object in love by trusting its unveiling.
This means, Balthasar says, that faith is immanent to every knowing, such that increasing
knowledge implies increasing faith. “Only through the ever new risk of faith in the truth
revealed by others can the spirit gradually assure itself of the objective, intersubjective world
of truth.”323
The faith or trust immanent in knowing has its corollary in responsibility. When
truth is unconcealed to the subject, the subject has a responsibility to commit itself to the truth
known. In the other case, the subject would not be trustworthy or truthful. This commitment
can be expressed only in a deed, in the lived response to truth: “The subject’s life becomes the
317 Balthasar, TL 1, 175.
318 Ibid., 120ff.
319 Cf. ibid., 28-30.
320 Cf. the analysis of Franks, who concludes, commenting on Theo-Logic, that “[u]ltimately, truth, even at the
natural level, cannot be separated from loving service,” adding that “the analogy of truth [is] more than a formal
structure. It is a call. It is a summons to loving, creative service in the image of God the creator. The objective
truth given to us by the Holy Spirit is not simply meant to be contemplated but also to be subjectively integrated
in discipleship.” Angela Franks, “The Epiphany of Being: Trinitarian Analogia Entis and the Transcendentals in
Hans Urs von Balthasar” (Boston College, 2006), 323f. Thus Franks like Balthasar moves on very quickly to the
theological sphere in order to explicate this notion. 321
Balthasar, TL 1, 175. 322
Ibid. 323
Ibid., 176.
73
proof of its assertion. Life shows what weight its truth actually had.” The love surrounding the
whole movement, then, “shows itself more in works than in words.”324
Balthasar concludes that in this light “truth, as a free deed, has become entirely an ethical
matter.”325
Love is as inherent and tightly connected to truth as the concept of will is to
knowledge.326
The double criterion of truth that was discussed above, with its emphasis on the
dramatic encounter of subject and object, is what gives rise to this interpretation of the unity
of ethical and theoretical. For Balthasar, the fact that truth and life are indispensable to each
other points ultimately to the character of being and its source as love.327
Being has come into
being not theoretically, but in practice, as a free act of God. For Balthasar, life has as its goal
the participation or communion in this absolute love and thus truth cannot be isolated
theoretically as a mere fact.
§ 7. Critical Assessment of Balthasar’s Philosophical Thinking on Truth
in Dialogue with Puntel’s Philosophy and Theoretical Framework
The aim of this chapter is to assess important insights of Balthasar’s philosophy of truth
through the theoretical framework of SSP. The section thus contains critical questions
regarding the coherence of some of Balthasar’s propositions, and, because Puntel too has
developed a philosophically refined concept of truth within a comprehensive theory of being
(initially presented as a part of this dissertation’s theoretical framework in 4.2), it contains a
discussion of whether Balthasar’s and Puntel’s conceptions are compatible and whether they
eventually may be brought into agreement or a fruitful relation.
7.1 Heidegger and alētheia
The discussion of truth or theories of truth is, according to Puntel, haunted by impreciseness
and confusion of word and concept.328
In both philosophical and theological works pseudo-
treatments of pseudo-problems flourish.329
A main target of his critique is theologians
operating with two different truth concepts based on a supposed Hebrew and another Greek
concept of truth based on their respective cultural thinking and etymologies. Another is
324 Ibid., 177.
325 Ibid., 178.
326 Ibid., 111f.
327 Ibid., 225, 254.
328 For the discussion of Heidegger and Puntel in 7.1 and 7.2, I found fresh perspectives in Asle Eikrem,
“Perspektiver på sannhet,” in Livstolkning i skole, kultur og kirke: festskrift til Peder Gravem, ed. Jan-Olav
Henriksen and Atle Ottesen Søvik (Trondheim: Tapir akademisk forlag, 2010). 329
See the many criticisms offered in Puntel, “Der Wahrheitsbegriff in Philosophie und Theologie.”
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Martin Heidegger’s contribution to the confusion through his discovery of the so-called
original sense of truth (alētheia) in archaic Greek texts and thinking as unconcealment or
disclosure.330
As we have seen, Balthasar is both a theologian reflecting on those words and
concepts, and inspired by Heidegger’s notion of alētheia. A closer look to see in what sense
Balthasar can be judged as a rightful addressee of Puntel’s criticism is therefore in place.
The debate concerning Heidegger’s ideas on truth and his play on the supposed original sense
of alētheia has grown to considerable proportions, both in philosophical, theological and
philological studies. It is further complicated by the development of Heidegger’s thought on
the subject in different phases of his life and his retraction of his earlier view approaching the
end of his life when he wrote, among other things, that:
To raise the question of ἀλήθεια, of unconcealment as such, is not [the] same as raising the question of truth.
For this reason, it was inadequate and misleading to call ἀλήθεια, in the sense of opening, truth.331
This dissertation cannot offer a close interpretation of the whole of Heidegger’s works and the
developments within them, but through reliance on some of his interpreters, this much can be
said. First, Balthasar does not refer explicitly to Heidegger in Truth of the World, although he
is obviously speaking the same language as Heidegger with respect to truth. That he made no
changes to the 1985 edition of the book probably means that he did not feel himself indebted
to the distorted, criticized and later retracted elements of Heidegger’s thought.332
Second,
Balthasar’s idea of alētheia as an important aspect of truth in TL 1 is based on a correct
etymology (although it may be argued that it is sold for slightly more than it is worth),333
and
330 Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 142-4.
331 Quoted in ibid., 143. While Puntel and Kreiner seem to interpret Heidegger’s retractions as something like a
full capitulation, de Sousa in his dissertation contends that there is an abiding ambiguity as Heidegger continued
to lecture on important elements of his earlier ideas after the retractions. See Armin Kreiner, Ende der Wahrheit?
Zum Wahrheitsverständnis in Philosophie und Theologie (Freiburg: Herder, 1992), 223f; Puntel, “Der
Wahrheitsbegriff in Philosophie und Theologie,” 21-24; Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 143; Rui de Sousa,
“Martin Heidegger’s Interpretation of Ancient Greek aletheia and the Philological Response to It” (McGill
University, 2000). 332
Of course, it can also mean that Balthasar was unaware of Heidegger’s retractions, like multiple theologians
are according to the criticisms of Puntel and Armin Kreiner; references in note 331. A possible example of a
target of this criticism – although the lack of mention may be due only to the depth of detail in the presentation
given in an introductory book – is Howsare, Balthasar: A Guide for the Perplexed, 55. But the unawareness
theory seems unlikely insofar as Balthasar’s works are generally marked by his careful overview of relevant
literature to the subjects treated. Cf. the footnote appended to the beginning of the treatment of Heidegger in
Balthasar, GL 5, 429-450. It should be added that Balthasar in the 1985 General Introduction confirms the
influence from Bonaventure (cf. note 239) on TL 1; see ———, TL 1, 10. He could also have said something on
Heidegger, but did not. 333
Cf. de Sousa, “Martin Heidegger’s Interpretation of Ancient Greek aletheia and the Philological Response to
It,” 185f. de Sousa is among the scholars who hold that there lies a hermeneutic-interpretative question latent in
every etymology; words are not just words, but also signs of patterns of thinking. But this should not be taken
75
a comprehensive view of being within the metaphysical tradition. He never confuses the word
alētheia (truth) and the concept of truth in a Heideggerian way, but rather views the meaning
implied by alētheia as an important aspect among others of a philosophical view of truth,
hence his remarks also on the Hebrew emet and Thomistic adaequatio. He calls neither of
these the original concept of truth or anything like that, but uses them as different
phenomenological perspectives on truth as one of the transcendentals. Balthasar is thus not
only concerned with the strictly stated philosophical question of truth (the so-called
Aussagewahrheit) as formulated by Puntel (that is, as the issue of correspondence vs.
coherence etc.), but also heavily concerned with the ontological presuppositions that underlie
such a concept of truth. To be sure, Puntel himself emphasizes the importance of ontological
clearness for a developed concept of truth, but he does not discuss the issue at length under
the heading “truth.” In light of this, Balthasar’s contribution can be seen as a fruitful
phenomenological reflection on the ontological presuppositions of Puntel’s truth concept as
much as a participation in the Heideggerian confusion of word and concept.334
Obviously,
there are also elements in Balthasar’s phenomenology of truth in TL 1 that stand forth as
imprecise and vague when measured by the theoretical framework of Puntel. But that insight
does not necessarily mean that Balthasar has nothing to offer to a systematic philosophy of
truth.
too far. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s comment on etymologies in Truth and Method is illuminating here: “The same
[it has a methodological priority, like metaphorical usage of a word] is also true of etymologies. They are
admittedly far less reliable [than metaphorical usage] because they are abstractions achieved not by language but
by linguistic science, and can never be wholly verified by language itself: that is, by actual usage. Hence even
when etymologies are right, they are not proofs but achievements preparatory to conceptual analysis, and only
in such analysis do they obtain a firm foundation [footnote 195:]. This obvious point must be made against those
who seek to criticize the truth of Heidegger’s statements because of his etymological manner of proceeding.”
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 1989), 103. Emphasis mine. 334
Rather, one could view Balthasar as doing something Ernst Tugendhat has both asked for and partly
undertaken, namely the opposite of Heidegger who “instead of broadening the concept of truth itself, has given
the word truth another meaning.” Tugendhat says: “On the one hand, were it only adequately supplemented,
Heidegger’s new conception of assertion as an uncovering and unconcealing appears thoroughly suited to deepen
the idea of truth as assertion. The functional-apophantic theory of assertion is superior to the static intentional
theory. Specifically, this dynamic conception makes comprehensible not only the completed true assertion, but
also the character of “Being-underway” that truth as unconcealing of the object possesses—and thus its character
as a “truth-relation” (not as truth!).”... “If one now reflects on the specific meaning of truth, then one could no
longer call disclosedness itself, or the clearing, truth. However, one could say that disclosedness is, according to
its essence, directed toward truth; although it can also (according to Heidegger’s concept of “insistence”
[“Insistenz”]) obstruct the question of truth.” Ernst Tugendhat, “Heidegger’s Idea of Truth,” in The Heidegger
Controversy: A Critical Reader, ed. Richard Wolin (London: MIT Press, 1993), 258, 257, 262. This is not at all
far from Balthasar’s dramatic notion of truth.
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7.2 The Compatibility of Puntel and Balthasar’s Thinking on Truth
This section aims to show the basic compatibility of Puntel’s theory of truth and Balthasar’s
thinking on truth, and to discuss some of the differences between them. Note the terminology:
When we reach a certain level of precision and theoretical clarity, it is better not to denote
Balthasar’s phenomenological truth talk as a truth concept or a truth theory in the strong
sense.
Puntel’s theory of truth is based on four moments that characterize an intuitive understanding
of truth (see presentation and references in 4.2). All of these four moments are also present in
Balthasar’s phenomenological description of truth in TL 1. The first is that truth or what is
true is related to what is real, the world or the ontological dimension. This is apparent in
Balthasar’s close linking, closely resembling an identification, of being and truth. The second
is the distinction between the domains or dimensions of world and language/thinking/mind.
Balthasar attests to this idea by his references to Aquinas (truth as adequatio intellectus et rei)
and the use of the categories of subject and object. The third is the discursively redeemable
claim to validity. Balthasar presupposes this moment of the intuitive understanding of truth
when he speaks of truth as dialogical. The fourth is maximal determinacy. This thought is
present in Balthasar’s emphasis on integration into a greater totality as philosophical method:
more truth, more right. This shows that many of the differences between Puntel and Balthasar
are matters of detail compared to some larger lines where they are basically in agreement.
A further reflection on the first moment mentioned above is in place, because Balthasar and
Puntel have differences in their ways of expressing the close relation between truth and being.
Balthasar speaks of truth as a transcendental quality of being, while Puntel points to the same
by saying that universal intelligibility, coherence or structuration and expressibility are
immanent structural characteristics of Being.335
The close association of being and truth
affirmed by Balthasar has its counterpart in Puntel’s metaphor of semantics and ontology as
two sides of the same coin. Puntel, however, more precisely calls it an ontological
presupposition of the genuine definition of truth.336
The intuition is further determined
through Puntel’s identity theory of truth and the “identity thesis: a true proposition ‘is nothing
other, nothing less and nothing more, than a constituent of the actual world’.”337
The point in
both ways of thinking is to underscore that the correspondence element of truth is not in any
335 Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 212-8. Cf. ———, S&B, 438-40.
336 See ———, B&G, 212-4. Cf. ———, S&B, 438f.
337 ———, S&B, 232.
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way superficial or seeming: When truth is proposed338
(Puntel) and known (Balthasar) it is the
thing in itself that comes to expression, not some kind of imposed construction resulting from
the subject’s activity.
Puntel criticizes Aquinas because his concept of the transcendentals that comes to expression
in the idea of ontological truth is related only to every being (ens) and as such is subject to
Heidegger’s deliberations against Seinsvergessenheit [forgetfulness of (capital-)Being].
Balthasar, on the contrary, is not subject to this criticism, because the transcendentals in his
conception are very explicitly ascribed to Being339
as well. Their expression in created beings
is thought of in categories of participation, where Being is the primary seat of the
transcendentals. In other words, for Balthasar, being is true because Being is true: “The finite
truth apprehended in cognition [that is, of beings] is a gift given by God out of his treasury of
infinite truth.”340
Furthermore, it should be noted that insights resembling the ones contained
in Puntel’s terminological step beyond truth as transcendental to some immanent structural
characteristics of Being are also present in Balthasar’s thought. Puntel’s notions of a)
universal intelligibility, b) coherence (or structuration) and c) expressibility have counterparts
in Balthasar’s speaking of (a) a meaning or rationality that grounds everything (for him, this is
God’s love),341
b) use formulations like “the rich coherence [Zusammenhänge] of being”342
and c) that he conceives of the object as always already expressed in its very existence as a
being.343
It can be concluded, then, that the differences in understanding truth ontologically
are mainly minor terminological differences, but Puntel’s version is more fine-grained with
respect to theoretical clarity. The step beyond truth as a transcendental makes him able to
express some distinctions precisely that often remain vaguer intuitions in more
phenomenological Thomistic approaches as Balthasar’s. Some of those are even crucial to be
clear about the polysemy of the word “truth” in philosophical and theological literature.
The location of truth, as it were, is an important point of difference between Puntel and
Balthasar. Puntel ascribes truth or the predicate true only to the proposition and then
338 “Proposed,” of course, is here used in the more unusual sense of making a proposition in Puntel’s
understanding of that word. 339
That is, of course, ultimately, the triune God. 340
Balthasar, TL 1, 230. 341
He can even say, paradoxically, that “mystery is not unintelligible,” ibid., 158. 342
Ibid., 39. Cf. also 17: “Every possible object of knowledge is creaturely, (..) its ultimate truth lies hidden in
the mind of the Creator.” 343
The following comment on Balthasar puts it plainly: “[I]t is not the case that a being exists in itself and then
communicates itself, but there is a sense in which a being comes into existence only in communicating itself.”
Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 185.
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derivatively to the semantic-syntactical sentence that expresses it and the utterance of the
sentence.344
Those are the only truth-bearers (Wahrheitsträgern). His truth theory is therefore
basically an Aussagewahrheit, and he contends that this is what the genuine philosophical
question of truth is really about. Balthasar’s phenomenological understanding of truth as
unconcealment is, as we have seen, more focused on ontology, closely relating being and
truth. But he can also speak of truth in manifold other ways: as true knowledge (understood as
the intellect’s ability to be determined or measured by the object345
), as a cognitive act of the
spirit,346
as true words or expressions,347
as mystery and even as deed.348
In other words,
Balthasar uses the word “truth” in its ordinary-language sense, and not as a refined
philosophical concept in a philosophical language. This ambiguity is a weakness in his
approach when evaluated by a strictly theoretical-systematic philosophical framework of
Puntel’s kind. It could, however, receive a more positive judgment when discussed inside a
more pragmatic-practical, lifeworldly framework, and that would probably be where
Balthasar would place his writings. But it is also too simple to say that Puntel holds that truth
only is in the proposition. Inside his theoretical framework, truth is located in the proposition
that is identical with a primary fact. As such, truth has an ontological import, and is explicitly
related to a theory of being as a whole. Therefore, in the course of this dissertation, although
Puntel’s truth definition cannot and will not be left behind and passed over as we move into
the theological field, it can and will be made more fully determined with respect to its
ontological presuppositions through theological investigations of creation, Christology and
pneumatology.
Balthasar’s way of speaking of perspective and truth in situation closely resembles central
insights inherent to the SSP’s concept of “theoretical frameworks,”349
but also differs on one
important point where the SSP is more coherent. Balthasar’s emphasis on the subjective
location in place and time leads to an important reminder that truth as expressed or known by
a finite, contingent subject is never absolute. Here he expresses much of the same concern as
Puntel does when he uses the term “moderate relativism.” It can never be finally concluded
344 Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 226f.
345 Balthasar, TL 1, 41.
346 Ibid., 79.
347 Ibid., 158-174.
348 Ibid., 178.
349 The concept of theoretical framework is introduced by Puntel in S&B, but explicated more fully in an entire
chapter in White, TAPTOE, 17-39.
79
that a true proposition is the absolutely best possible expression of what is the case.350
Rather,
every proposition made by human theoreticians is at best the best available expression. The
SSP is more coherent than Balthasar’s remarks on those questions, however, in that it reflects
more thoroughly and adequately on the status of subjectivity and theory and the common
notion of a level of intellectual integration that goes beyond mere individual subjectivity. The
SSP explicates this as the theoretical framework, while Balthasar speaks of an integration in
inconclusible dialogue with other perspectives. It is not clear, however, how this process of
integration can happen as something other than assimilation of information into the finite
subjective standpoint of the speaker.
A note on the use of the word “perspective” clarifies the case. Balthasar uses the word quite
unhesitantly. Puntel, on the other hand, is hesitant. The SSP understands theoretical
propositions as universalistic in such a way that a subject, when expressing something
genuinely theoretically, “makes itself superfluous” such that its perspective is “redundant.”351
He adds:
It must also be noted, however, that the problematic of the concept “perspective” must be reconsidered in
conjunction with the concept of the theoretical framework. Theoretical frameworks, as this book understands
them, are not determined by any subject-operator, but they are related to the dimension of the subject.352
Thus, if one takes perspective to mean that a proposition expresses nothing more than the
particularistic standpoint or viewpoint of a subject or some kind of randomness, the term is
incompatible with the SSP.353
This, it can be argued, is the sense often assumed when the
word is used, if not purely subjectively particularistic, at least particularistic to some degree.
However, if perspective is taken to refer the theoretical “optic” something is seen through,354
350 See 4.2 incl. footnote 99 and the remarks on this dissertation’s research question in footnote 22.
351 Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 114. Balthasar sometimes thinks in the same direction, but without making
the case theoretically explicit: “conscious and free ad-version to the object of knowledge has the character of a
true, radical disponibility. The subject lays aside, as it were, its entire subjectivity, so that henceforth it may be
nothing but pure openness to understand the object,” an act described as “renunciation of the subject’s personal
viewpoint.” Balthasar, TL 1, 113. 352
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 114f. 353
Thus it is surprising and perhaps slightly inconsistent to find the words “theoretical framework” and
“perspective” used interchangeably in later passages of the book. A significant example is ibid., 408. The
context, however, favors the interpretation that perspective here is used for de-precision of the concept of
theoretical framework in order to express an idea. Similarly ibid., 470, 242. However, perspective is also used in
other places where the context cannot justify it in the same way. See e.g. Ibid., 196, 271, 330, 332. A similar
criticism could be made of Søvik, “The Problem of Evil and the Power of God: On the Coherence and
Authenticity of Some Christian Theodicies with Different Understandings of God’s Power,”, 93 And perhaps
even more legitimately of ———, “Hvordan kan man kritisere påstandsinnholdet i religioner på en velbegrunnet
måte?,” Tidsskrift for Teologi og Kirke 82, no. 2 (2011): 61f. 354
Perspective, etymologically, comes from per, through and specere, see.
80
the term refers to approximately the same as “theoretical framework” and the term can have
coherent meaning in relation to the SSP.
Puntel and Balthasar’s intuitive stances regarding the relation of theory and practice are a
further area of tension between their respective thoughts. Questions concerning being, truth
and love will be returned to more thoroughly in § 10, where the discussion is also explicitly
theological.355
On some occasions, Puntel makes intense attacks on philosophical positions
confusing theory and practice, in the Marxist tradition and in the Frankfurt School including
the thought of Jürgen Habermas.356
Instead he emphasizes that philosophy, as a quest for
truth, is theoretical, and that
[i]ts “practical” function [!]–if one wants to speak this way–consists in understanding and presenting itself as
theory: it can decisively aid human beings and human societies in attaining clarity with respect to their
involvements, great and small.357
The point is that theory is not practice, but also that theory is not everything. The theoretical
activity of the philosopher (and theologian) happens in a greater whole of life in the world
also including the practical and aesthetic domains. Thus, as White puts it, according to the
SSP, “human beings, when awake, are constantly engaged theoretically, practically, and
affectively”, and “theoreticity, practicity, and affectivity are mutually irreducible” modes of
engagements in the world.358
Whether Balthasar would endorse such theoretically explicit
statements remains an open question. His remarks on the close association of truth and love in
TL 1 can be interpreted as much as phenomenological observations regarding truth as a
transcendental of being affecting the whole of life as an attempt to confuse theory and
practice. Also, what he says on the responsibility inherent in knowing the truth is perhaps
better understood as in the Puntelian sense theoretical statements on the good (in a moral
355 This is necessary because the notion of love must be qualified by revelation if it is to be genuinely theological
or Christian. Cf., e.g., notions in Scripture such as the one in 1 John 4:9: “In this the love of God was made
manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him” (RSV). As
such, that discussion is a part of the universal science of philosophy where historical-hermeneutical inquiry into
religion is needed for determined positions. One could also, however, have pursued the points of correlation
between Puntel’s notion of absolute Being as creating the dimension of contingent being out of freedom and
Balthasar’s notion of creation as a gift further even on a philosophical level. The reason that this is not done here
is that I have doubts whether such a discussion at the end of the day comes satisfactorily to grips with the
problem of evil without reinterpreting the genuinely Christian understanding of the love of God as undeserved
and absolute. Cf. the argument of Martin Bieler, “Karl Barths Auseinandersetzung mit der Analogia Entis und
der Anfang der Theologie,” Catholica 40 (1986): 238. 356
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 27, 481. 357
Ibid., 481. Thus also, even if philosophy and theology involve questions of utmost existential importance,
when pursued strictly theoretically they are independent of any subjective descision and do not preclude a
genuinely free questioning of everything, ———, B&G, 278f.. 358
White, TAPTOE, 73, 75.
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sense) practice of philosophy than as attempts to cancel out theory as valuable because it is
not practice.
This section closes with some remarks on Balthasar’s notion of the “real distinction,” which
will be returned to more thoroughly in the discussion of analogia entis in Part II, where the
turning point is the notion of esse creatum (created being) and its relation to God. The
theoretical framework of the SSP is more coherent and clearly superior to Thomistic
frameworks of Balthasar’s kind with respect to the determination of being in relation to
beings or essences. It is more coherent because the SSP avoids unintelligible notions of an
unknown metaphysical “other,” an X or a “substance” resembling nothing at closer
inspection, which is the bearer of the properties of an entity.359
SSP also avoids inconsistent
talk of essences that “have” esse or “receive” esse before they are and so on. Balthasar seldom
presses the inconsistencies of such language to their end, but the pattern of thinking is clearly
present.360
Thus Balthasar’s insistence on the real distinction as a seat of the mystery inherent
in truth must be refined to be intelligible in the framework applied here. Truth is mystery
insofar as true propositions, as identical to primary facts, always share in the wonder-
provoking excess of being.361
Balthasar thought can supplement to Puntel’s an emphasis that
this excess relates closely to the givenness or gift-character of being. It can also be added that
the SSP does not annul whatness or essence as a category, but redetermines it as secondary to
the being of be-ers but also as intrinsic to the being of be-ers.362
As intrinsic to being,
whatness also shares in the excess of being, elegantly pictured by Balthasar as the mysterious
depth of things that saves daily life from being or becoming unbearingly boring.
359 See references in 4.2 and Lorenz B. Puntel, Auf der Suche nach dem Gegenstand und Theoriestatus der
Philosophie (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 53-64. 360
An example of a way of thinking that is aware of such problems but still holds to the inconsistencies that
result from the deficient Thomistic terminology can be seen in the following quote: “Die Dinge werden ins Sein
gerufen, und sie sind schon. D.h.: Dem Schon-Sein geht kein Prozess der Verwirklichung voraus, sie sind
augenblicklich, wobei dieses ‘Augenblicklich’ zeitlich gleich Null ist.[…],” Fernando Inciarte, Forma
formarum: Strukturmomente das thomistischen Seinslehre im Rückgriff auf Aristoteles (Freiburg: Karl Alber,
1979), 116. Cited from Martin Bieler, “The Theological Importance of a Philosophy of Being,” in Reason and
the Reasons of Faith, ed. Paul J. Griffiths and Reinhard Hütter (New York: T&T Clark International, 2005), 313.
Many questions arise in response to this text: What is a Ding before it has Sein? How can something be called
into something it already is? The notion “ins Sein gerufen” (called into being) resembles of course the expression
in Rom 4:17, often associated with the doctrine of creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo), where God is said
to be the one who “[calls] things not existing (being) as existing (being)” ([kalei] ta mē onta hōs onta; NIV:
“calls into being things that were not”). One should be careful, however, in the framework of the SSP, to
construct from this expression some movement from nonexistence to existence where the thing or be-er is
subject; a be-er is or does nothing before the be-er is. The calling spoken of here must be understood as an act of
God (that is, absolute being), that is, his positing be-ers into being. It cannot be understood as a movement from
nonbeing to being on behalf of the be-er (who in a mysterious sense thus exists prior to being). 361
Cf. the notion of Balthasar writing beautiful texts of die Verwunderung über das Sein; see citation in 4.4. 362
White, TAPTOE, 151.
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7.3 Gap-closing, or: The Always Already Bridged Gap
As we have seen (cf. 4.2 and 6.2), Puntel and Balthasar share a similar and deep reservation
against the putative gap between the subject and the world in traditional correspondence-
theories of truth, especially as developed in the Kantian tradition. For both thinkers it is an
important insight that the subject is always already involved in the world (being) that it knows
or speaks of, and that this is a very basic ontological and epistemological fact.363
In the clear
words of Puntel:
In opposition to the Kantian tradition and to all similar philosophical positions, this book establishes the
thesis that the putative gap [between observer/theoretician and world/reality/being] is one that is not only
bridgeable, but indeed must be presupposed already to have been bridged by every serious and sensible
science and philosophy.364
Balthasar’s phenomenological observations on “the mother’s smile” can be brought in
conversation with Puntel’s conception on this point, and that may increase its coherence and
plausibility. What Puntel does when he shows that the gap may be overcome is done at a
theoretical level in three steps, summarized as four ways.365
He could, however, also have
pointed to historical-contextual realities that prove his thesis that this gap is always already
bridged. It can in fact be shown not only that theoretical activity needs to presuppose it to be
already bridged, but that it is always bridged every time a conscious subject chooses to do
theoretical activity. Balthasar’s idea of the mother’s smile underscores exactly that the
subjective self has in fact never existed alone or in isolation from other beings. It is in the
relation to the world that thinking or consciousness arises in the first place – there has never
363 Readers familiar and sympathetic with the Kantian tradition might find the critique of it made by SSP and
Balthasar presented in this dissertation too light and not convincing. It should be noted, however, that both
Puntel and Balthasar quote Kant several times as a dialogue partner from whom they receive insights. So their
relation to Kant is not one of total ignorance and opposition. This dissertation is clearly not intended as a study
or critique of Kant specifically; he figures in my text primarily as a contrasting perspective to Puntel and
Balthasar, primarily because Kant is also often used that way by them. Furthermore, the arguments relied on
when this dissertation follows the main trust of the critique of Kant are of a general and phenomenological
nature. From the theoretical framework of the SSP they count as relatively obvious. I make no attempt, however,
at making a thorough philosophical discussion of all questions related to this discussion; that would require
another dissertation. 364
Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 17. 365
Ibid., 401-413. The steps are: 1) The ontologization of the theoretical sphere, 2) The change of focus from
theoretician to being/world, and 3) The clarification of the ontological consequences of the first two by three
pairs of concepts for judging the strength or weaknesses of the ontological adequacy of theoretical frameworks.
The four ways are: To show that the gap thesis is untenable by 1) Its removal of the subject from being, 2) Its
incoherence and self-contradiction in speaking of the world that one holds to be inaccessible, and 3) Its basic
contradiction of language that generally speaks of what is the case. And 4) Puntel clarifies the presuppositions of
this overcoming: the universal expressibility of the world, concretized in the idea of universal language as a
semiotic system consisting of uncountably many expressions.
83
been an example of someone thinking without a relation to the world, or from outside the
world. Perhaps an etymological note may complete the picture here. Con-sciousness, from
Latin con, together and scire, to know, points to the same fact: Knowing is always done
together, it is always grounded in relations.366
To know, or the act of knowledge, happens in
relations – to the world, to the community.367
Thinking and the choice to think theoretically
has its most basic presupposition in the thinker having come to himself through his encounter
with other subjects and objects, first and foremost his parents. Schindler puts it bluntly: “the
‘first act’ in epistemology is not something that the subject does, but it is already a joint event
between subject and object.”368
Hence the shortcomings of cogito ergo sum if made absolute
and not complemented by other perspectives.
Balthasar’s idea of the mother’s smile, however, is not without its potential for development.
The first and most obvious objection to his expression of the idea lies in the question: Where
are the father and other persons surrounding the child?369
There are, of course, important
physical realities that make it natural to focus on the mother, such as pregnancy and
breastfeeding. But at the level of relation and communication, the father and eventual other
closely related persons will also play an important role in the development of the child’s
consciousness. In Balthasar’s vision, the father is mainly present as one who loves the child’s
mother, having given himself to her in order to procreate, not as one standing in a close love
relation to the child.370
Whether this underdevelopment of the father’s role is to be ascribed to
Balthasar’s biography or is an expression of the cultural notion of fatherhood having changed
quite radically from Balthasar’s childhood about a hundred years ago is an interesting
question, which can be explored further at another occasion. Furthermore, the idea of the
mother’s smile and its importance for many fields is a call to examine the mother-child or
366 The ideas of consciousness behind this etymological note are elaborated at greater length in Schindler, HUvB
and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 96-162. Schindler, however, does not note the etymology. 367
“Knowledge always presupposes community,” Balthasar, E, 79. 368
Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 176. In ch. 3 (163-254) of the same work, Schindler
develops Balthasar’s favored (in the later parts of his bibliography, following Herrlichkeit) German word Gestalt
into a concept that is able to hold subject and object together. Schindler says of Gestalt: “The Gestalt is a ‘third’
that stands between the subject and object, as a single reality that accounts for both their unity and their
difference. It thus establishes a distance between them. But, far from obstructing their union, it is just what
makes union possible” (215). The notion is deeply rooted in Balthasar’s aesthetics and has much to commend to
it. 369
It should be noted that Balthasar hints at the father in some places, but the emphasis is in sum placed almost
fully on the mother. See, for example, Balthasar, TL 2, 177. 370
Cf., e.g., ———, Unless You Become Like This Child, 18.
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parents-child relation more fully also in other sciences.371
As the idea presents itself as a
concrete, historical-realistic notion with universal applicability, it would be grounded even
more strongly if it could be proven or enriched also through empirical research in relevant
fields.
§ 8. Summary of Part I
Part I of the dissertation started out with an assessment of the inclusion of a philosophical
discussion in order to increase the coherence of answers to this dissertation’s research
question, based on the thinking of Balthasar and Puntel (§ 5). The universal aspirations of
Christian dogma, confessing God to be the creator and redeemer of all reality, require an
engagement with reality in its fullness, being as such and as a whole. The truth claim of
theology, based on God revealing himself through nature and history, implies that there are no
shortcuts for theology past all the difficult questions of philosophy, including epistemology,
ontology, hermeneutics and metaphysics. The integration, interdependency and mutual
enrichment of philosophy and theology within a universal theoretical discipline is based on
the related dismissal of pure nature (natura pura), positively by claiming that nature is always
already in revelatory relation to God, negatively by denying that theology has access to a
sphere of super-nature that is inaccessible to theoretical reason. Philosophy, as critical and
systematic thinking, must ask about everything. As such, every assessment of something that
is true in philosophy is always in some sense inherently theological, and all that is true in
theology always includes determinable philosophical positions.
The following analysis of Balthasar’s philosophical-phenomenological thinking on truth (§ 6)
first surveyed his take on some definitions of the word “truth” (6.1). His most basic definition
is truth as a transcendental of being, which was with Aidan Nichols interpreted as a universal
– something not reducible to particular beings, transcending all particular categories. To
question the existence of truth is, in this light, rejected by Balthasar as nonsensical through the
use of metaphors. Balthasar is inspired by Heidegger’s notion of truth, based on Greek
etymology, as unveiling/unconcealment of being (a-lētheia), and finds that complementary to
371 Some beginning attempts at bringing the notion further in interdisciplinary studies focusing on psychology
(the primary discipline for research into human mind and relations) are found in Martin Bieler, “Attachment
Theory and Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Creation,” Analecta Hermeneutica, no. 3 (2011); John Cihak, “What Lies
Beneath: Two Perspectives on the Human Person in Psychiatric Healing,” Metanexus Institute,
http://www.metanexus.net/essay/what-lies-beneath-two-perspectives-human-person-psychiatric-healing; Thomas
G. Dalzell, “Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics and Lacanian Psychoanalysis,” Irish Theological Quarterly 69,
no. 1 (2004).
85
the Hebrew emeth: truth as faithfulness or what is reliable. The Thomistic definition of truth
as correspondence of mind and thing is primarily understood by Balthasar as an aspect of
knowledge. The dialogical-dramatic character of truth was examined next (6.2). Balthasar
emphasizes that the knowing subject grows out of the love of the other (“the mother’s smile”);
that consciousness and knowledge concretely result from a loving encounter. Every grasp of
truth is a dramatic event between subject and object that unfolds this primal encounter. When
knowing the truth happens, the subject has a real but partial grasp of the truth of the object
(6.3). Balthasar points out the perspectivity, contextuality and finiteness of all human grasp of
truth, which, on the other hand, is a sign of its concreteness and reality. The analysis of
Balthasar’s philosophical thinking on truth was closed by a section on his integrating of truth,
life and love (6.4). Truth, he argues, is intrinsically related to love, and is fulfilled in deed.
The critical assessment of Balthasar’s philosophy of truth in § 7 argued that Puntel’s well-
developed truth theory is a coherent one and the most fruitful for theoretical purposes, through
elaborations on Balthasar’s attitude to Heidegger and the word/concept distinction, a large
section on the compatibility of Puntel and Balthasar’s thinking on truth, and a discussion of
their shared concern about closing the putative Kantian “gap.”
The philosophical concept of truth most suitable for theoretical activity is one that defines
truth primarily as true propositions that are discursively redeemable as valid, maximally
determined (coherent) and thus identical to a prime fact. In this sense, the concept of truth is a
regulative idea for every sound theoretical activity. But this does not need to be the last or
only word on truth. Although the ambiguity of Balthasar’s ordinary-language use of the word
“truth” is, on the one hand, a theoretical weakness, it can also be seen as having
communicative advantages. In terms of Puntel’s distinction between fine-grained and coarse-
grained truths, Balthasar’s phenomenology of truth is often coarse-grained with respect to
theoretical and terminological clarity, but sometimes perhaps better with respect to the ability
to grasp and communicate human experience.
Many of Balthasar’s phenomenological insights into the transcendental qualities of truth can
be seen as ways of expressing similar ideas in another kind of language, sometimes containing
aspects that contribute to a fuller determination of Puntel’s truth theory. Balthasar’s
phenomenology offers further grounding for its ontological presuppositions and implications,
and gives voice to its basis in daily experience. An important element from Balthasar’s
thought that has been appreciated in the discussion is his emphasis on the dramatic-dialogical
nature of consciousness and truth, expressed through the idea of the mother’s smile, which
86
must be used carefully to avoid absolutizing the mother while excluding the father or other
“Yous” of small children. Here he affords a further argument for Puntel’s “ontologization” of
theoretization: Consciousness always happens inside being, and arises in response to the
expressibility of being, by being addressed. Thus it is also a contribution to an argument for
the shared concern of Puntel and Balthasar in addressing and overcoming the putative gap
between the subject and the external world.
The analysis and discussion of Part I has shown that Balthasar’s philosophy of truth is in
many respects open-ended and sometimes not brought into full theoretical clarity in the way
Puntel does in his philosophy. Both sides, however, can be brought into Part II as resources
for the explicitly theological reflection on truth, because there must be a mutual critical
dialogue between philosophy and theology. Elements of philosophical openness may serve as
door-openers for creative theological reflection, while determined philosophical clarity can
contribute by forcing theological discourse to increase determination and coherence. At the
end of Part I, the tentative conclusion is that truth, philosophically speaking, is being
expressing itself through semantic determinations (propositions), within being, of what is.
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PART II: TRUTH IN SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
Part I addressed some important ontological and epistemological aspects of the question of
truth as a philosophical question, in accordance with the position on the relation between
theology and philosophy that was argued in the opening of that chapter. Now the discussion
proceeds into systematic theology. The insights gathered through philosophical deliberations
are to be further determined and deepened by explicit theological reflection. In Puntel’s
terminology, in this part of the study, I seek to further determine and explicate the relation of
absolute Being and contingent being, as a way to understand truth, which is related to being,
in a deeper way. This is done by opening the discussion methodologically to the historical-
hermeneutical enquiry into religion, in this case Christianity (the “watershed” in Puntel’s
terminology).372
Expressed in a theological framework, the first part treated philosophical
questions needed to speak of the truth of God in an intelligible human way.
That the discussion of truth is done in two steps does not mean that two different truth
concepts are made, a failure that is emphatically rejected both by Puntel and Armin Kreiner in
his Ende der Wahrheit?373
Such a move would ruin theology of relevance and applicability.
The two steps of the discussion are rather the practical consequence of the view of the relation
between philosophy and theology concluded in Part I. A discussion of truth explicitly
informed by theology is also required in this dissertation as a basis for the pneumatological
discussion of the work and character of the Spirit of truth in Part III.
Central questions both to the analysis of Balthasar and the critical engagement with his
positions in this chapter are the question of continuity and discontinuity between the
philosophical notion of truth and revelation as revelation of God’s truth, and the question of
what the Christian doctrine of God can add or contribute to the understanding of truth. The
first is addressed by a Christological discussion of the philosophical-theological principle of
analogy, the second by a Trinitarian discussion focusing on love. The analysis of Balthasar’s
work has its center in Theo-Logic 2: Truth of God, but this work is supplemented by other
372 See 5.2. My choice to do Christian theology in this dissertation does not exclude the possibility that other
religious traditions may give better, complementary and illuminating answers to certain questions. It is a partly
pragmatic choice based on my own starting position and the choice of Balthasar’s writings as the primary
sources of enquiry. Thus my discussion freely takes more or less for granted the main trust of some important
Christian dogmas, such as creation, incarnation and the Trinity. However, the theoretical framework of SSP
considers Christianity to be the best available option for theological determination, so the choice is far from
arbitrary, although the case for that cannot be argued at length here. 373
See Kreiner, Ende der Wahrheit? Zum Wahrheitsverständnis in Philosophie und Theologie, esp. 465. Cf.
Puntel, “Der Wahrheitsbegriff in Philosophie und Theologie.” Balthasar goes far in the same direction in Hans
Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 18f.
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texts of thematic and historical proximity, and by identifying some lines of development in his
thought that serves to bring the position in some questions articulated in TL 2 into a clearer
light.
§ 9. Truth and Christology
The theological determination of truth in Balthasar’s conception is from beginning to end
Christological – Christ as “the truth” expressed in the world – and Trinitarian – the tri-
personal374
Trinitarian love as the Unvordenkliche Grund [“unprethinkable ground”] of
everything. For Balthasar, those two doctrines, of the incarnation and the Trinity, are what
makes Christianity Christian, what every other Christian doctrine comes down to or derives
from, and the doctrines that make it possible to express the relation of God and the world in a
philosophically intelligible way, both with respect to creation and redemption.375
The
theological discussion in this part of the dissertation therefore starts in Christology, since it is
Christology, or, in Balthasar’s own words, a certain Christocentrism, that opens the path to
Trinitarian theology.376
9.1 Christ the Concrete Analogia Entis as “the Truth” According to
Balthasar
[Christ] is the measure for all things,
and he makes every other measure
– thank God! –
inconsistent and unreliable.
[… T]he unity in Christ […] of heavenly and earthly truth was produced,
not through the identity of one nature,
374 In concordance with a great number of contemporary theologians, Balthasar uses the concept of “person”
only hesitantly when applying it to the “hypostases” of God. This follows from his understanding of the maior
dissimilitudo of analogy. See, e.g., the discussion of the concept of person in the Middle Ages in ———, TL 3,
131ff. 375
“The Christian response [to the question of why God created a world of which he did not have need in order
to be God] is contained in these two fundamental dogmas: that of the Trinity and that of the Incarnation. (..) All
true solutions offered by the Christian Faith hold, therefore, to these two mysteries, categorically refused by a
human reason that makes itself that absolute. (..) [P]hilosophy finds its final response only in the revelation of
Christ.”———, My Work: In Retrospect, 118. Cf. also ———, TL 2, 180f. 376
“It is thus that the trilogy, in spite of, or precisely because of, its Christocentrism, proves, at a deeper level, to
have a Trinitarian structure in each of its three parts.” ———, TL 2, 17. This is because “every single word of
Jesus and every segment of his existence in the flesh points inevitably, not only to his own unity, but
simultaneously to the unity of the Trinity becoming visible in him.” Ibid., 301. Similarly, in his Barth book,
while discussing his Christocentrism as a positive achievement, showing it to be central also to Catholic
theology, Balthasar says: “Theology is truly theocentric only when it is christocentric” (citing Emile Mersch), —
—, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, 334.
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but in the identity of one Person.377
--
Christ as the Son of the Father calls himself “the truth,”
because he has revealed the deepest essence of the God who created the world.378
Clear-cut aphoristic sayings such as these may serve as an entry into the radicalism of
Balthasar’s theological claims about truth. To every truth-seeking philosopher or theologian
struck by wonder at Being, including the one having read this dissertation so far, it will come
as quite a shock to hear the historical human person Jesus of Nazareth step forward and
proclaim that he is not only “the way” to the Father and “the life,” but “the truth” (John 14:6).
From our previous philosophical reflection on truth to this there can be, according to
Balthasar, no “continuous transition,” only a “leap,”379
initiated by the deepest essence,
wonder and scandal of the Christian faith: Verbum caro factum est (the Word was made
flesh).380
But even though there is a leap, there is still a transition that is, as it were,
continuous within discontinuity,381
corresponding to the similitude or likeness/identity
(similitudo) in the greater dissimilitude or unlikeness/difference (maior dissimilitudo) of the
analogy of being (analogia entis) – the analogical relationship between Creator and
creation.382
Balthasar’s version of the doctrine of analogy is Christological and, consequently,
Trinitarian, in a pattern where the difference in unity of Father, Son and Spirit in the Trinity is
the archetype of the relation of Creator and creation, united in Christ as the God-man.
Balthasar inherited the idea of analogia entis from his Jesuit teacher and friend Erich
Przywara and reshaped or rebuilt the doctrine into his own version through the encounter with
377 ———, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms, 56.
378 ———, “The meaning of Christ’s saying, ‘I am the truth’,” Communio: International Catholic Review 14,
no. Summer (1987): 159. This sentence is also set as the epigraph of the English translation, which, for reasons
unkown to me, stops halfway without notice. References in the following to the second half of the article are
therefore to the German original, ———, “Was bedeutet das Wort Christi: ‘Ich bin die Wahrheit’,”
Internationale katholische Zeitschrift Communio 16 (1987). 379
———, TL 2, 13. 380
Ibid., 281-316; ———, E, 99-108. 381
In Balthasar’s words, it is a continuity given from above (“eine von oben hergestellte Kontinuität”) ———,
“Christliche Kunst und Verkündigung,” in Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, ed.
Johannes Feiner and Magnus Löhrer (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1965), 714. A fine discussion of continuity and
discontinuity between (philosophical) reason and revelation in fundamental theology based on Balthasar is found
in Schindler, “Surprised by Truth: The Drama of Reason in Fundamental Theology.” 382
Balthasar says that in the trilogy (and the second section of the Epilogue), the transcendentals (“each basic
property of Being”) point “beyond [their] philosophical to [their] theological aspect. But this was always done in
such a way that in the similitudo the major dissimilitudo would be clear—just as the ‘foolishness of God brings
to naught’ all the wisdom of man. But this major dissimilitudo would have to be continually revealed within the
similitudo in such a way that man, endowed with the Holy Spirit, really could see that ‘the foolishness of God is
wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men’ (1 Cor 1:25), which, to be sure, rests entirely on
the ‘folly’ of ‘Christ crucified’ (1:23).” Balthasar, E, 89.
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Karl Barth. 383
Because Balthasar’s attempt to unite truth in philosophy and theology in TL 2
rests on his version of the doctrine of analogy, it must play a significant role in the
following.384
For reasons of space and presentation I will not go into the Przywara/Barth
debate and Balthasar’s role in it in any detail. I will restrict myself to what must be said to
situate Balthasar’s thinking in its context between Przywara’s and Barth’s positions.
Balthasar’s Christology in Theo-Logic has been treated in its breadth in Ulrich Johannes
Plaga’s dissertation “Ich bin die Wahrheit”: Die theo-logische Dimension der Christologie
Hans Urs von Balthasar.385
Plaga’s dissertation, however, does not discuss “truth” explicitly
as much as the title suggests, but is more of a theological study in Balthasar’s Christology
383 The phrase and concept analogia entis was central to the ecumenical debate over fundamental theology and
confessional identity for decades in the twentieth century, where in addition to Przywara and Barth, Gottlieb
Söhngen played an important role. Barth forever wrote his name into the center of the debate by claiming that
Przywara’s version of analogia entis was “the invention of the Antichrist.” It was into this debate that Balthasar
wrote his epoch-making study of Barth’s theology: ———, Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung seiner
Theologie, Second ed. (Köln: Verlag Jakob Hegner, 1962). An abridged English version was published in 1971,
———, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. John Drury (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston). A new
translation of the full text, translated by Edward T. Oakes, was published in 1992, ———, The Theology of Karl
Barth: Exposition and Interpretation. In this work, Balthasar is “self-consciously the inheritor of both Barth and
Przywara and attempts to resituate the concerns of each within a yet greater whole,” Thomas Joseph White,
“Introduction: The Analogia Entis Controversy and Its Contemporary Significance” in The Analogy of Being, ed.
Thomas Joseph White (2011), 28. Balthasar’s Barth book was prepared through two articles: Hans Urs von
Balthasar, “Analogie und Dialektik. Zur Klärung der theologischen Prinzipienlehre Karl Barths,” Divus Thomas
22(1944); and ———, “Analogie und Natur. Zur Klärung der theologischen Prinzipienlehre Karl Barths,” Divus
Thomas 23(1945). A recent and fresh contribution that treats this discussion both historically (essays on
Przywara, Barth and Balthasar by John R. Betz, Bruce D. McCormack and Peter Casarella, respectively) and
from a contemporary systematic perspective (essays by David B. Hart and others) is found in White, ed. The
Analogy of Being: Invention of the Antichrist or the Wisdom of God? 384
Joseph Palakeel, in the chapter on Balthasar in his study of analogy in theological discourse, observes rightly
that “[t]he problem of analogy is so central in Balthasar that almost all the studies of Balthasar’s theology deal
with it.” Joseph Palakeel, The Use of Analogy in Theological Discourse: an Investigation in Ecumenical
Perspective (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1995), 119. This importance is also seen by Junius C. Johnson,
who points out that Balthasar’s Christological version of analogy is in fact the answer to the questions guiding
each part of the Trilogy: the question of God’s glory and its revelation in creation and incarnation in The Glory
of the Lord, the question of finite and infinite freedom in the drama of salvation within history in Theo-Drama
and the question of how created finite logic can understand God’s logic in Theo-Logic, Johnson, “Christ and
Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 144f. Cf. Balthasar, TL 1, 7. This dissertation cannot be
an exception to the rule of Balthasar scholarship treating analogy, because the centrality is acute with respect to
the questions of truth and Spirit discussed here. Other important studies of analogy in Balthasar include:
Lochbrunner, Analogia Caritatis: Darstellung und Deutung der Theologie Hans Urs von Balthasars; Georges de
Schrijver, Le Merveilleux Accord de l’homme et de Dieu: Étude de l’analogie de l’être chez Hans Urs von
Balthasar (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1983); Nicholas J. Healy, The Eschatology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar: Eschatology as Communion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), esp. ch. 2; Franks, “The
Epiphany of Being: Trinitarian Analogia Entis and the Transcendentals in Hans Urs von Balthasar”; Peter
Casarella, “Hans Urs von Balthasar, Erich Przywara’s Analogia Entis and the Problem of a Catholic Denkform,”
in The Analogy of Being, ed. Thomas Joseph White (2011). The works of Lochbrunner and de Schrijver were
completed before Balthasar wrote Theo-Logic, and thus function in this dissertation mostly as guides to the
whole of Balthasar’s thinking. 385
Plaga, “‘Ich bin die Wahrheit.’ Die theologische Dimension der Christologie Hans Urs von Balthasars.” A
positive achievement in this work is the extended discussion of the legitimacy and exegetical soundness of
Balthasar’s “Johannine Entryway” into theo-logic. See 316-347, cf. Balthasar, TL 2, 13-24; ———, TL 3, 69-84.
It will be dealt with in 12.1. Plaga also discusses analogy, most explicitly on pages 207-18; 224-7; and 253-258.
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overall. The treatment here must be tighter – focusing on the Christological aspects central to
Balthasar’s uniting of philosophical and theological truth, in other words, how it is possible
for Jesus Christ to be “the truth” without overthrowing all that was said in the philosophical
discussion of truth.
“I am the truth”
Balthasar discusses the saying of Joh 14:6 in several places.386
The analysis here will be
guided by the text where he most explicitly connects it to his version of analogy, from the
Epilogue to the trilogy:
How can Jesus say of himself “I am the Truth”? This is possible only because all that is true in the world
“hold[s] together” in him (Col 1:17), which in turn presupposes that the analogia entis is personified in him,
that he is the adequate sign, surrender, and expression of God within finite being.387
The following sections will unpack the precise content of this dense quote. I will begin,
however, by noting some remarks Balthasar made to the context of the Johannine saying in an
article devoted to it.
First,388
Balthasar says that the statement “I am the truth” is made “in the context of God’s
covenant with biblical mankind.” Christ is “the truth” as the one that fulfills all the promises
made by the merciful God in his covenant with Israel and all mankind. By this Christ reveals
that the deepest essence of the God who created the world and in the Old Testament showed
himself to be behaviorally righteous and reliable in his fullness of fidelity and truth (emeth) to
his covenant people is Trinitarian love.389
On account of this, Balthasar in another text speaks
of a fulfillment of the Old Testament concept of truth in the New Testament witness to the
incarnation, especially as depicted in John. That is, in Jesus Christ, not only are God’s works
and promises revealed (as in the OT), but who God is in his essence is unexpectedly disclosed
(cf. alētheia as unveiling of being):390
“God is love” (1 John 4:7-16), a love shown in the life
386 The most important are throughout TL 2 (but note esp. 13-16), in the article from 1987 cited in note 378 and
in E, esp. 89ff. 387
Balthasar, E, 89. 388
For what follows: ———, “The meaning of Christ’s saying, ‘I am the truth’,” 158f. 389
Cf. “if Jesus characterizes himself as Truth, he does so because he reveals [the] triune love in his whole
existence and mediates it in the Holy Spirit, and he reaches this culmination of his work when he has allowed
every form of sinful non-love to vent itself on him.” ———, E, 94. 390
———, “Truth and Life,” 269f.
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form of Jesus Christ, a love that reaches unto the end (John 13:1), strong as death, its passion
reaches even to the depths of hell.391
Second,392
John 14:6 is spoken into the context of the covenant that fulfills God’s eternal true
goodness in creating the world. Balthasar points to New Testament texts that state plainly that
the “slaying of the Lamb” was planned by God from eternity (1 Pet 1:19-20, Heb 1:3, Eph
1:4-7, Rev 13:8), that is, God did not risk what he risked by grating creaturely freedom
without taking full responsibility for the world created. The promise and coming to be of the
incarnation thus ensure the victory of God’s truth over every falsehood. Therefore the center
of Christ being the truth is the cross, which is the deepest meaning and purpose of the
incarnation: Stat crux, dum volvitur orbis (“the cross remains standing while the world
spins”).393
In other words: The world’s truth spins around the cross of the incarnate savior
Christ the truth. Balthasar’s interpretation of Christ as the truth is thus part of a theologia
crucis. Some further implications of this will be discussed in § 10.
Another important side of Christ’s saying he is “the truth” is, for Balthasar, its implications in
the direction of a notion of truth that goes beyond the limits of language, in terms of systems
of spoken words. In Truth Is Symphonic he writes:
God’s language is first and foremost his own: the event of his incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. God speaks in
his flesh; he speaks in what Jesus Christ is and does and suffers. He speaks in the works of Jesus, and also,
certainly, in the words of Jesus, but the latter’s words are only a limited part of the Word that he is. […] “I
am the life, the Resurrection, the door, the truth, the way”: these are not actually sayings, but rather pointers
to the uniqueness of his being.394
Balthasar fleshes out the contents of this language of God in Jesus’ flesh more thoroughly in
TL 2,395
under the headings “expression,” “image” and “word,” which are all Christological
terms from Scripture.396
The fullness of divinity, and thus of truth, dwells bodily in Christ,
391 Cf. Song of Songs 8:6, cited in this regard in ———, TL 2, 141. The later treatment of Holy Saturday (see
10.1; 14.3) will unveil more of the depths in using those words regarding Balthasar’s theology. 392
For what follows: ———, “The meaning of Christ’s saying, ‘I am the truth’,” 159f. 393
The sentence is the motto of the Catholic Carthusian order, originated by St. Bruno of Cologne in France,
1084, though Balthasar does not give its source, probably expecting his readers to know. 394
Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism, 59. Cf. the remarks on the bodilyness of the
truth that Jesus Christ is and represents, ibid., 34f. In John, says Balthasar, Jesus “is continually witnessing to the
fact that he is the truth or that ‘it is he.’ He attests this by his whole existence, for the latter is identical with his
witness that he is the truth, the exposition of the Father.” ———, TL 3, 407. Emphasis mine. See also ———,
“Theology and Holiness,” Communio: International Catholic Review 14, no. Winter (1987): 342f. 395
See the section “The Language of the Flesh,” ———, TL 2, 248-281. Cf. also: “The Son, as man, is the
language of the Father” (with note and references), ibid., 297. 396
Cf. the references (Hebr 1:3; Col 1:15; 2 Cor 4:4; John 1:1, 14; Rev 19:13) given at ibid., 248f, 271.
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therefore not only do his words witness to God’s truth, but his whole existence, in body
language, works and the silent suffering as he faces the cross. The Logos as the Word of the
Father is not merely words, but he is also, as the Hebrew term has it, dābār: In addition to
“word,” the term can mean “thing,” “occurrence” and “event.”397
The discussion even treats
the idea of Christianity as the myth become fact (C. S. Lewis) and the phenomenon of icons
and iconoclasm, as well as the concepts of symbol and metaphor. These “fleshly” aspects of
the truth that appeared in Jesus, where the deed is conceived as more ultimate than words, will
refigure in the treatment of Balthasar’s interpretation of negative theology (9.2).
Balthasar stated in our guiding quote from the Epilogue that Christ can call himself the truth
“because all that is true in the world ‘hold[s] together’398
in him (Col 1:17).” The notion
comes close to what Balthasar elsewhere unfolds as his interpretation of the Church Fathers’
concept of the seminal logoi (logoi spermatikoi).399
The idea is that all creaturely truth is
contained in and reflects the mediator of creation, the Logos. Balthasar grounds this notion in
the “high” Christological hymns of the New Testament (cf. the reference to Col 1). According
to those texts, Christ contains and sustains every possible and actual creature in himself:
“everything has come to be through [the Logos], and without him not one thing has come to
be” (John 1:3). The Son is “the radiance of [God’s] glory, the image [charaktēr: exact
representation] of his essence [hypostasis], upholding everything by his powerful word” (Heb
1:2-3). As the creative image of God, the Word is thus “the perfect expression of God.” This
way of speaking resembles Bonaventure, whose theology of Christ as expressio of the Father
is central to Balthasar’s presentation of his theology in GL 2.400
There he says that the Son as
the complete expression of the whole God is the unsurpassable truth of everything possible,
397 Ibid., 276. His argument would be supported by Psalm 33: “By the word (dābār) of the Lord the heavens
were made” (v. 6); “He spoke, and it came into being” (v. 9, CSB). 398
The Greek expression is synestēken, in Balthasar’s German translation “sein Bestand hat”, which has stronger
connotations in direction of “have being, exist, endure” than the English “hold[s] together” captures. 399
This is also the third “circle” of the article cited repeatedly above; for what follows cf. Balthasar, “The
meaning of Christ’s saying, ‘I am the truth’,” 160. 400
As Plaga observes, Bonaventure plays a central role in Balthasar’s doctrine of analogy: “An diesem Punkt
bekommt Bonaventura für Balthasar große Bedeutung,” Plaga, “‘Ich bin die Wahrheit.’ Die theologische
Dimension der Christologie Hans Urs von Balthasars,” 207. Johnson also underscores the importance of
Bonaventure for Balthasar’s doctrine of analogy, to the extent of interpreting Balthasar’s references to
Bonaventure generally as a “sign of a major movement in the system”; see Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The
Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,”,14f. However, while it is legitimate to stress Balthasar’s use of
Bonaventure, any attempt to identify “the most significant and most often overlooked” (p. 14) influence on
Balthasar should be met with suspicion, cf. 3.1.
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not only the archetype of what is realized in creation. The Son is, so to speak, the expressive
side of God, both inward and outward.401
In the second part of the article on “Christ the truth” Balthasar returns to the notion of Christ’s
and all creation’s wordness in order to answer the question of whether there is only one
truth.402
After visiting some reservations against a positivistic absolute grasp of truth in
scientific terms in light of Aquinas, Balthasar returns to the language dependence of all
created things that is implicit in “adaequatio intellectus et rei” and Thomas’ verbum mentis
[mental (/inner) word]:
All things, those who is and (even more) those who experiences, is as beings worthaft,403
and insofar as they
stem from the only Logos of God, they also in the end speak one language and participate in the one single
truth.404
The idea in play here, that all created beings participate by their inner rationality and self-
expression (logoi) in the divine Word (Logos), is also in play in and dependent on Balthasar’s
work on Maximus the Confessor.405
In what follows the quote Balthasar says that the Son is
the truth in expressing the Father in the Holy Spirit and by his becoming man fulfills “all the
401 Balthasar, GL 2, 284-93. In the Son, “the whole God is expressed, or (put in other words) […] he is God as he
is in being expressed, and thereby is the unsurpassable ‘resemblance,’ ‘assimilation,’ ‘correspondence’ and so
‘truth’” (289). “The Son is therefore not only the archetype, of which images are made in the world: he is God as
expression, that is, as truth, and therefore he is the principle of the fact that they express themselves as created
essences” (290). “[T]he Son would not be God, if he were not the realisation of the entire capacity of the Father
and therefore a realisation that surpasses everything that is realised in the world of creatures” (292). Balthasar
says similar things to those quotations on Bonaventure on his own account in the Epilogue: “In God himself the
total epiphany, self-surrender, and self-expression of God the Father is the Son, identical with him as God, in
whom everything―even everything that is possible for God―is expressed,” ———, E, 89. 402
“Genügt es, in bezug auf die Wesen der Welt bloß ‘Fragmenten’ der Wahrheit zu sprechen, was den Verdacht
erweckt, daß diese Fragmente verschiedene Seinsformen oder Strukturen haben könnten – oder ziemt es sich
nicht, schon in bezug auf die weltliche (philosophische) Wahrheit von einer gemeinsamen Verfaßtheit alles
dessen, was auf Wahrheit Anspruch erhebt, zu sprechen? Kurz: gibt es für unser Alltagsverständnis verschiedene
Wahrheiten oder nur eine?” ———, “Was bedeutet das Wort Christi: ‘Ich bin die Wahrheit’,” 353. 403
Worthaft may be translated as wordy (without the negative connotations of using too many words), as
meaning relating to or having to do with words, word characterized, verbally constituted. 404
“Alle Dinge, seiende und (außerdem) erkennende, sind als seiende worthaft, und sofern sie vom einzigen
Logos Gottes stammen, sprechen sie im letzten auch nur eine Sprache oder nehmen an einer einzigen Wahrheit
teil.” Balthasar, “Was bedeutet das Wort Christi: ‘Ich bin die Wahrheit’,” 355. In the Epilogue, Balthasar uses
this notion to explain the unity of the transcendentals with truth (“self-saying”) both at the end and at the
beginning: “[W]e can now see in what sense ‘truth’ forms the conclusion to ‘beauty’ and ‘goodness,’ in what
sense the end must at the same time be the beginning. […] [S]elf-showing and self-giving must also already be
inchoate forms of self-saying, even before man shows up on the scene. But this is only conceivable when the
things themselves (as Joseph Pieper constantly stressed) are ‘words,’ enunciated by an infinite, free intellect.
Theologically speaking, these ‘words’ are beings that have been created in the eternal Word,” ———, E, 77. 405
See, e.g., ———, TL 2, 188-94. Also the treatment of this aspect in ———, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe
According to Maximus the Confessor, 66-73. For an excellent more updated study of this aspect in Maximus see
Torstein Tollefsen, The Christocentric Cosmology of St. Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2008), esp. 64-137.
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inchoate, but image-characterized [abbildliche] created truths.”406
In other words, the
intelligible structure, or truth, of creation (the creatures’ logoi) rests on the Logos through
whom it was created. And, more important, the words given as worldly truth through creation
have their origin in the same Word that reveals the Father in the incarnation. When he appears
inside creation, he fulfills those “seeds,” and makes them bloom. Christ as “the truth” is not a
replacement of worldly truth, but an integration of all worldly truths in their original all-
encompassing archetype. When seen in relation to Christ the truth of all created things are
heightened to their ultimate context.
By the notion of Logos and logoi in creation, we have in fact already entered Balthasar’s
notion of the analogy of being. For, according to the quote from the Epilogue guiding the
presentation, this idea in Balthasar’s conception presupposes that Christ “personifies” the
analogia entis. And as we have seen, the idea of logoi spermatikoi can only function if there
is some kind of resemblance, likeness, participation or analogy between the archetypal Word
and its outward impressions.
Analogia entis
Edward T. Oakes places Przywara and his analogia entis together with Barth at the start of his
important study of Balthasar’s theology, under the heading “Tributaries of Influence.”407
Oakes there gives a readable introduction to what this concept is all about. Oakes’ text will
here serve as the background for an attempt to give readers unfamiliar with the concept a
406 “Das menschgewordene Wort kann sich ‘die Wahrheit’ nennen, weil es beides gleichseitig tut: den
trinitarischen Vater im Heiligen Geist darstellen und alle inchoative, weil abbildliche geschöpfliche Wahrheit in
sich vollenden.” Balthasar, “Was bedeutet das Wort Christi: ‘Ich bin die Wahrheit’,” 356. 407
Edward T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Continuum,
1994), 13-71. The importance Oakes ascribes to Przywara is perhaps somewhat overemphasized, probably due to
the fact that Oakes during the period of writing this book worked very closely with Balthasar’s Barth book
(Oakes translated the 1992 English version) and one of his early essays on the Church Fathers, which plays a
significant role in Oakes’ Pattern of Redemption: Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Fathers, the Scholastics and
Ourselves,” Communio: International Catholic Review 24, no. Summer (1997); ———, “Patristik, Scholastik
und wir,” Theologie der Zeit 3(1939).
For a general discussion of Przywara’s and Balthasar’s versions of analogy see James V. Zeitz, “Przywara and
von Balthasar on Analogy,” The Thomist, no. 52 (1988). Zeitz points to the great similarity between the two
authors in their early years, and also notes the general dissimilarity resulting from Balthasar’s distancing from
Przywara at some points in later years (487). But the article, although published in 1988, does not refer to
concrete texts from Balthasar that criticize Przywara, either from TD 3 or TL 2 (dealt with below). Zeitz (493-5)
also criticizes Przywara’s analogy for not making sense of history in a Balthasar-like way by means of Lorenz B.
Puntel, Analogie und Geschichtlichkeit: Philosophiegeschichtlich-kritischer Versuch über das Grundproblem
der Metaphysik, vol. 1 (Freiburg: Herder, 1969). Cf. Balthasar’s use of Puntel in criticism of certain versions of
negative theology in Balthasar, TL 2, 94fn16.
Stephen Wigley is the scholar who has worked most extensively with Barth’s influence on Balthasar, both on the
doctrine of analogy explicitly and throughout the trilogy in general. Wigley, Balthasar’s Trilogy: A Reader’s
Guide; Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Critical Engagement.
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preliminary grasp that can serve to set the scene for the related problems that Balthasar works
on.408
The concept of analogy, Oakes explains, tries to answer the critical question of how it is
possible to use the human language of God, who is conceived as transcendent and thus in
some way always different from every created being that we know. Language can be used
equivocally (when the exact same word has different meanings) or univocally (when the same
word is used in exactly the same way), but it can also be used analogously, by describing
things that are related, having some kind of proportionality of reference. Analogy in this sense
is a central element of both language and the learning of language, the relation between
different things existing in the world, and how memory functions. The world is, in other
words, filled with analogy. Analogous use of language is, according to Oakes, what
theologians must resort to if pure anthropomorphism or the total incomprehensibility of God
and the complete human disability to speak of God are to be avoided. In normal analogous use
of language we use words analogously because we know that the secondary referent has
properties that grant the use of the word’s meaning with respect to the primary referent. But
how is this procedure conceivable in theology, when God, the “secondary referent” of
theological language, is in some way behind our vision and grasp? This is a crucial question,
posed by Oakes, which will be returned to.
Oakes frames analogia entis within the metaphysical tradition of thinking being, especially
through the Greek tradition of the Great Chain of Being,409
which at its peak point in Plotinus
thinks that the graded hierarchy of beings emanates necessarily from the eternal One, Perfect
Being. Plotinus stands in an intermediary position between Heraclitus, where everything is
unstable change and becoming, and Parmenides, where being is changeless, monolithic
identity. The Christian belief in creation out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) made significant
adjustments to this tradition. Creation does not emanate from God by necessity, but is called
into existence by him in his creative freedom and love.410
The world has its beginning in
nothing, contrary to the Greek tradition, which holds matter to be eternal. In Christian thought
the world is therefore not a substantially degraded form of God, but is different from God as
not-being-God, and therefore dissimilar to God, while still similar to God as its source. This
408 Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, 15-33.
409 Cf. the classical study on this subject, Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of
an Idea (New York: Harper & Row, 1960). 410
Balthasar finds this point argued clearly by Maximus the Confessor. Cf. Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The
Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, 45.
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idea is expressed in the formula from the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) that both Przywara
and Balthasar often appeal to: “[...] quia inter Creatorem et creaturam non potest [tanta]
similitudo notari, quin inter eos maior dissimilitudo notanda”: “For between Creator and
creature there can be noted no similarity so great that a greater dissimilarity cannot also be
noted.”411
The formula has two important points from the perspective of Przywara and
Balthasar: that there is a relation of likeness between Creator and creation that makes them
comparable, and that in this likeness the difference is always so great that the likeness can
never collapse into identity. It is this comparable likeness-unlikeness pattern that is the main
thrust of how they conceive the content of the term “analogy.”
Thomas Aquinas laid the foundation of the classical metaphysical doctrine of analogy by
fusing the Christian view on creation with Aristotle’s thinking. Through the “real distinction”
between essence (essentia) and being (esse) Thomas opened an access to an analogical
understanding of the being of God and beings. Essence describes beings with respect to what
they are, while existence describes that they are. In created beings (ens) essences can have
existence only through an act of being, the “to be” (or Being, esse) that ultimately flows from
God as the “I am” of Exodus 3. In God, essence and existence are the same, God subsists in
himself, while created essences subsist in having esse. Thus, in the Latin catchphrase of
Thomas Aquinas, God is ipsum esse per se subsistens (Being itself subsisting by itself). Oakes
now cites a text from Przywara that can serve to illustrate and sum up the basics of his more
traditional version of analogia entis:
In this form the creaturely realm is the “analogy” of God. It is similar to God through its commonality of
unity between its “being-what-it-is” [Sosein: that is, its essence] and its “being-there-at-all” [Dasein: that is,
its existence]. But even in this similarity, it is essentially dissimilar to God because God’s form of unity of
essence and existence is in an “essential unity” while that of the creature is a “unity in tension.” Now since
the relation of essence and existence is the essence of “being,” so God and creature are therefore similar-
dissimilar in “being”―that is, they are “analogous” to one another: and this is what we mean by analogia
entis, analogy of being.412
411 Usually referred to by DS 806/Dz 432. The text is taken from chapter 2 of the council, which is a
condemnation of a book Joachim of Fiore wrote against Peter Lombard. See Antonio García y García, ed.
Constitutiones Concilii quarti Lateranensis una cum Commentariis Glossatorum, Monumenta Iuris Canonici
(Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana,1981), 46; Norman P. Tanner, ed. Nicaea I to Lateran V, vol.
1, Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London: Sheed & Ward,1990), 232; Heinrich Denzinger, Peter
Hünermann, and Helmut Hoping, Kompendium der Glaubensbekenntnisse und kirchlichen Lehrentscheidungen
(Enchiridion symbolorum) (Freiburg: Herder, 2005), 361. 412
Erich Przywara, Religionsphilosophie katholischer Theologie (1926), reprinted in Religionsphilosophische
Schriften (Einsiedeln, Johannes Verlag, 1962), 403, translated and cited in Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The
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What has been said thus far about the analogia entis is for the most part taken for granted by
Balthasar, but, as we shall see, he gives it a new Christological framework. Both Aquinas’
real distinction between essence (essentia) and existence (esse) and the formula of Lateran IV
function as axiomatic cornerstones that Balthasar seldom challenges, although he often
discusses their precise content and significance, even in confrontation with Przywara. This is,
of course, not arbitrary, but due to the value Balthasar sees in those ideas because of what
they achieve: “[T]he ‘real distinction’ of St. Thomas,” he says when he sums up his work, “is
the source of all the religious and philosophical thought of humanity.”413
In TL 2: Truth of
God Balthasar uses his own developed Christological version of the analogy of being as the
solution to the question this work always turns around: “How can God’s [infinite] Logos
express himself [adequately] [with]in the finitude of the creature?”414
His answer is basically
that this is possible because there is a similitude between God and creation, although always
within a greater dissimilitude.415
Balthasar’s account of what precisely “being” means in the phrase analogia entis seems to be
a bit flexible. Without being able to go into a full-length analysis of his metaphysics here,
some pointers can be made.416
Most often Balthasar speaks of analogy in a two-part scheme.
This is the case when it is related to the Chalcedonian definition referring to divine and
human natures, that is, parallel to word pairs such as created and uncreated, finite and infinite,
and contingent and absolute being.417
At other times, however, the scheme is threefold:
absolute divine Being, mediated through created esse to created beings. This is the case when
Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, 32f. Brackets and emphases are Oakes’. Przywara’s most extensive
treatment of analogia entis is the book Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis. Metaphysik; Ur-Struktur und All-
Rythmus, Revised ed. (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1962) (orig. 1932). A shorter summary of his way of
thinking can be found in his entry “Analogia entis (Analogie)” in LThK 2nd
ed. 413
Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect, 112. See also the comments on this text in 6.3. 414
———, TL 2, 12, cf. 81, 165, 170, 279. Cf. the description of this volume in the General introduction to TL 1
(written at the publication of TL 2), where Balthasar ponders this question in a variety of ways, and points to the
incarnation and analogia entis as the keys to solving it. ———, TL 1, 17f. 415
The Lateran formula is quoted or alluded to in many places throughout Theo-Logic, some examples being —
—, TL 1, 18; ———, TL 2, 82, 146, 179, 184, 273, 280. See also ———, E, 50, 89. 416
More thorough analyses of Balthasar’s metaphysics can be found in Campodonico, “Hans Urs von
Balthasar’s Interpretation of the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas; Johnson, Christ and Analogy: The
Christocentric Metaphysics of Hans Urs Von Balthasar; Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth. 417
See the citation from TheolHist and texts connected to it in the next section. Also, cited below, Balthasar, TL
2, 81. A similar pattern is also found at the end of ———, TL 1, e.g. 244f. The modalities absolute and
contingent are applied many times in TL 1, but scarcely mentioned in TL 2 and 3. The idea of the ontological
dependency of created being upon God is, however, always at hand. Often it is expressed by the notion that God
has his being ex or a se (from himself), while creation has its being ex or ab alio (from another). E.g. ———, TL
2, 175. Cf. also the notion of the groundless divine love that grounds everything else, e.g. ———, TL 3, 442. In
light of this, Johnson stresses the importance of divine aseity in Balthasar’s metaphysics; see Johnson, Christ
and Analogy: The Christocentric Metaphysics of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, 62f, 140, 147f.
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he speaks of Thomistic esse, the nonsubsistent act of being that created essences have as
subsisting beings, as what is the “likeness of (the) divine goodness.”418
Here he is influenced
by the philosophers Gustav Siewerth and, primarily, Ferdinand Ulrich.419
Thus analogia entis
can be taken to mean two things. First, that there is an analogy between uncreated divine esse
(ipsum esse per se subsistens) and created nonsubsistent esse in accordance with the latter
threefold scheme. Second, in accordance with the former two-part scheme, that created
being(s) is analogous to divine being, either most generally in their way of being or, also, in
multiple other aspects. That is, creature(s) resembles the Creator in a likeness-unlikeness
pattern (as the Lateran IV formula has it). It is primarily in this second meaning that
Balthasar’s notion of Christ as the concrete or personified analogy of being becomes relevant.
The flexibility of Balthasar’s language and conceptual framework here is what gives rise to
the criticisms from Angela Franks and others that Balthasar has not given a developed
account of the way in which Christ as divine human has created esse.420
The analogy of being is, for Balthasar, what can hold the creaturely truth of the world and the
divine truth of God together. His attempt to relate philosophical to theological truth rests on
analogy because it is the condition of possibility of true revelation in Christ. In order to
express that satisfactorily, however, Balthasar felt that he had to adjust the version he found in
Przywara. Or perhaps more precisely, he had to remodel it Christologically. Only then could it
answer the still urgent question from Oakes’ presentation of analogia entis: How can
analogous speech apply to God if he is unknown? Even if the Lateran IV formula is
“irrevocable,” as Balthasar contends in his discussion of the form of revelation in GL 1, he
says that “it can vary from being a philosophical ‘negative theology’ […] all the way to being
a ‘negative theology’ within the theology of revelation.”421
It will be shown as the analysis
proceeds that Balthasar places himself in the second of those alternatives, while over the years
he tends more and more to place Przywara in the first.
418 Balthasar, GL 4, 38, 374. “[T]he analogy between absolute, self-subsisting being and the being [Sein] freely
created by it, that attains subsistence only in finite essences.” ———, TL 2, 179. 419
See Bieler, “The Theological Importance of a Philosophy of Being; ———, “Analogia Entis as an Expression
of Love according to Ferdinand Ulrich,” in The Analogy of Being, ed. Thomas Joseph White (2011); Kuhr, Gabe
und Gestalt, 171-183. 420
Franks, “The Epiphany of Being: Trinitarian Analogia Entis and the Transcendentals in Hans Urs von
Balthasar,” 195ff, 248f, 354-8. An attempt to work further on the questions raised by Franks by comparing
Balthasar and Lonergan is found in Randall Stephen Rosenberg, “Theory and Drama in Balthasar’s and
Lonergan’s Theology of Christ’s Consciousness and Knowledge: An Essay in Dialectics” (Boston College,
2008). 421
Balthasar, GL 1, 461.
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Christological Analogy
What troubled Balthasar with Przywara’s version of analogia entis was an objection
performed with clarity and strength by Barth: Does the doctrine establish a relationship
between God and creation outside of Christ? Is it really the concept of being that is our access
to the Father, and not his revelation in the Son?422
This led Balthasar to develop a strictly
Christological or Christocentric version of the doctrine that is, according to him, distinct from
Przywara’s. In The Theology of Karl Barth (orig. 1951) Balthasar tries to respond to Barth’s
concerns by way of a Catholic Christocentric approach.423
Throughout the book Balthasar
defends Przywara against the attacks of Barth, although he expresses initial reservations
against making Przywara’s view the one Catholic view. He also defends Przywara as a
Christocentric thinker: “Przywara adopts a thoroughly Christocentric approach,” he says, and
cites his Summula (1946):
The path to God and the image of God are but shadowy intimations whose corresponding visible form is
revealed only in the one who is God’s only “interpretation.” Indeed, he is God’s pro-ceeding (ex-egesis), the
one who makes God visible to us: Jesus Christ. According to his own eternal decree (Eph 1ff), God is
revealed nowhere else but in Christ.424
That “God is revealed nowhere else but in Christ” can be taken to be the core of Balthasar’s
version of analogy, but in later years he doubted that Przywara’s version could in fact come to
grips with Christ. Balthasar’s notion of Christ as the “analogia entis in concrete form”425
or
the “concrete analogia entis” was prepared through his encounter with Barth and his works on
his theology.426
The most central text containing the phrase appeared in A Theology of History
(orig. 1950, rev. ed. 1959). This work centers round the idea of Christ as the concrete
universal and thus the fulfillment of the philosophical tension between particulars and
universals.427
Balthasar views Christ’s concrete unique existence as the norm of everything,
and sees his historical life as the God-man as what gives history its meaning. He is the
422 ———, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, 161-67.
423 Ibid., 326-80.
424 Ibid., 328. Emphasis mine.
425 “Ultimately there is only one synthesis in which God has stabled his relationship to the world, namely Christ,
the incarnate Word of the Father. He is the measure of nearness and distance from God, he is the analogia entis
in concrete form, he is the event that took place once and for all, and at the same time the norm for all that is in
the world.” ———, “Characteristics of Christianity,” in Explorations in Theology I: The Word Made Flesh
(1989), 177. This essay was first published as “Drei Merkmale des Christlichen” in 1949. 426
For further comments on the origin and centrality of this way of speaking in Balthasar’s works see Healy, The
Eschatology of Hans Urs von Balthasar: Eschatology as Communion, 100ff; Nichols, A Key to Balthasar: Hans
Urs von Balthasar on Beauty, Goodness and Truth, 63n91. 427
Balthasar, A Theology of History, esp. 9, 92. Cf. ———, TL 3, 196-205.
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absolute appearing in the finite, eternity present in time and elevating it into itself. To a
passage that discusses the measure of nearness and distance between God and man seen as
analogous to the distance between Father and Son in the Spirit in cross and resurrection,
Balthasar appends this footnote:
Christ can be called the “concrete analogy of being,” analogia entis, since he constitutes in himself, in the
unity of his divine and human natures, the proportion of every interval [Maßverhältnis] between God and
man. And this unity is his person in both natures. The philosophical formulation of the analogy of being is
related to Christ precisely as is world history to his history–as promise to fulfillment. He is so very much
what is most concrete and most central that in the last analysis we can only think by starting with him; every
question as to what might be if he did not exist, or if he had not become man, or if the world had to be
considered without him, is now superfluous and unnecessary.[…]”428
The centrality of Christ’s person to Balthasar’s version of analogy429
in this passage shows
that it is not a return to a Scholastic kind of natural knowledge of God based on pure nature
and pure reason, or some kind of purely philosophical metaphysics with God getting in
unseen through the back door. His version of analogy is rather an attempt to determine the
significance of the revelation given in Christ in a philosophically informed world view that
takes creation into account. Therefore he puts into play the idea of philosophy being fulfilled
or transcended, or maybe, rather, transcending itself into theology (because revelation
happens through a concrete event inside the created human world).430
The result is, as Junius
Johnson has pointed out,431
that Balthasar in some sense operates with two metaphysical
systems that are not reducible to each other.
The first is related to Christ the Logos as mediator of creation, and can be called idealistic.
The second is related to the union of natures in the event of the incarnation, and as such is
428 ———, A Theology of History, 69fn5. The 1950 edition included the word “einzige” (the only concrete
analogia entis), which was removed because it could be misunderstood, Schumacher, Perichorein, 242n109. The
original also used the word “Maßeinheit” [measure of unity] instead of “Maßverhältnis.” 429
Cf. “The ‘I’ of Jesus Christ is the measure of God’s distance from and nearness to man, even more
unimaginably sublime above everything in the world (in similitudine major dissimilitudo)–and both things are
equally true. We shall never be in a position to encapsulate the mystery of this ‘I,’ with its nearness and its
distance, in a concept or a formula, for at its heart lies the mystery of the relationship between God, the
Absolute, and man, the relative.” Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism, 28. 430
The footnote from TheolHist continues: “Philosophy has its negations and warning signs, which are needed
on the level of philosophical thinking and may not be toned down. But it is a part of the notion of God that he be
free to create a world or not to create it, and likewise that when he creates man, he is not thereby obliged to let
him share his own inner life. But when God reveals his inner intention—that he willed creation from all eternity;
that now, bound up with the world in the indissoluble bond of the hypostatic union, he will never again be
without the world; that he designed and predestined man as the brother of his eternal Son become man—then it
becomes clear how, without losing its validity, the plane of philosophy is transcended.” Emphasis mine. The
passage is influenced by Barth’s reworking of the doctrine of election as the election of all mankind in Christ. 431
Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 86-97.
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historical. Even if the second transcends or fulfills the first, which as such has only a relative
autonomy, the first is not annulled or swallowed up by the second. The irreducibility results
from Balthasar’s well-grounded agnosticism regarding the so-called supra-lapsarian question:
Would the Logos have become man if man had not sinned? Quite simply, we do not know,
because no other history than this concrete and actual one is accessible to human beings. But
what we know is that the acts of the triune God in creation and redemption are totally free,
motivated and necessary only in light of love.432
Creation thus has a relative autonomy in
relation to redemption. In any case, through both metaphysical systems, Balthasar’s
theological version of analogy is from its logical beginning tied to Christ; it is part of a
metaphysics based on Christology.433
Its basis lies in the Christological doctrine of
Chalcedon. For Balthasar, Chalcedon is the unavoidable next step from the doctrine of the
Lord Jesus Christ as consubstantial with the Father and the mediator of creation of the Nicene
Creed, by affirming the unity without confusion of his two natures as truly God (uncreated)
and truly man (created). The metaphysical insight that creation is different from God is both
the presupposition for the incarnation and what it fulfills.434
Balthasar builds further on the idea of Christ as the concrete analogia entis when, in 1978, he
outlines his Christology under the aspect of mission (missio, Sendung) in Theo-Drama 3.435
Here the reservations against Przywara become more explicit. Balthasar begins by affirming
an “essential abyss” between the divine and created natures (corresponding to the real
distinction of Aquinas). The mystery of the incarnation is that Christ can bridge this abyss
“without harm to his unity.” According to Balthasar, Przywara tirelessly urged on the law of
this abyss, even to the point of exaggeration. In a footnote, Balthasar points out that the tanta
of the Lateran IV formula, always stressed by Przywara, was removed in subsequent editions
of the text. Now there was no more “however great the similarity, the dissimilarity is even
432 Cf. Balthasar, TL 2, 234. Here Balthasar says that the ultimate reason for the incarnation transcends the
question of whether human wickedness was its reason, because it follows in any case from God’s decree of
making the Son the center and fulfillment of the universe. 433
As emphasized by Johnson, Christ is the “midpoint” of Balthasar’s metaphysical system, fulfilling the
important notion in his philosophical system described by the metaphor of a “center” that gives meaning and
coherence to every system, Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 9-13.
Later he writes: “what is at stake for von Balthasar in the choice of analogy over identity is Christology. The
claims about the person of Christ serve as both the motivation and the measuring stick for metaphysical claims
about the relation of God in the world,” (66). “The person of Christ stands at the center of metaphysics,” (77). 434
As Johnson notes, “In the unity of his person, [Christ] demonstrates the greatest possible nearness of God and
creatures while at the same time, in the distinction of the natures, he demonstrates the inviolable and irreducible
difference between them,” ibid., 85. 435
For what follows, see Balthasar, TD 3, 220-3. See also the fine analysis of this text in Casarella, “Hans Urs
von Balthasar, Erich Przywara’s Analogia Entis and the Problem of a Catholic Denkform,” 202-5.
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greater,” but “in similarity the dissimilarity is greater.” Balthasar’s conclusion is that “it is no
accident that Przywara never produced a Christology.”436
Although Balthasar clearly
exaggerates the importance of the text-critical issue of the tanta, the point he wants to make
should be clear.437
Christ’s union of natures must not be conceived as a theological
outworking of the already finished and complete philosophical-metaphysical analogia entis,
or as some kind of higher (“third”) unity between God and man. Neither does Christ unite two
natures of equal ontological status that are infinitely separated by some not overcome gulf.
Rather, Christ as the “concrete analogia entis” is the final, and in the end, only and original
proportion [Maß] between created and divine being. Therefore Giovanni Marchesi hits a
nerve when he calls Balthasar’s understanding of analogy an “analogia christologica”:438
A
theologically informed analogy is, for Balthasar, from beginning to end tied to Christ,
approachable only through his earthly figure. In Jesus Christ, God and man are united without
confusion.
This unity is conceivable on grounds of the mission the Son receives from the Father, and his
free choice in obedience to realize it by becoming man pro nobis, for the salvation of the
world created “in him.” To be a person is to have a mission, and in Christ the unity and
identity of mission and person are fully realized in a way that can never happen in sinners.439
He is free to be himself only by his vocation to this mission, like an artist or author that
simply must pursue his task to uphold his own integrity.440
His whole life is lived and united
by this consciousness of the mission to “reveal God’s nature and his disposition toward man.”
Only in doing this does he “bring to light the full truth of man, and – since he primarily
436 Balthasar, TD 3, 220fn51. The content of this critique becomes even clearer when Balthasar discusses
negative theology in TL 2, stating: “It is hard to see how [Przywara’s understanding of analogy] can sustain a
Christology.” ———, TL 2, 95. The text will be discussed in its context below. The passage from TD 3 is also
discussed and linked to the tanta discussion in TL 2 by Franks, “The Epiphany of Being: Trinitarian Analogia
Entis and the Transcendentals in Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 195. 437
First, Balthasar is most probably wrong regarding the nonoriginality of tanta. I have not been able to unveil
the considerations lying behind the different editions of Denzinger. Scholars debate whether there actually was a
single original text from the council, thus the question of whether this detail is original can probably never be
settled finally. But the critical edition does not consider this concrete textual variant worth noting; see García y
García, ed. Constitutiones Concilii quarti Lateranensis una cum Commentariis Glossatorum, 46. Second, the
Latin text with or without the tanta means approximately the same. The only difference is that the addition of the
word reinforces the proportionality of similitudo and dissimilitudo, but this proportionality is implicit even
without the word. Perhaps Balthasar was led to emphasize this philological straw out of respect for his old friend
and teacher, instead of putting the bell openly on the kitten. 438
Quoted in Plaga, “‘Ich bin die Wahrheit.’ Die theologische Dimension der Christologie Hans Urs von
Balthasars,” 206. 439
Balthasar, TD 3, 202-8. 440
Ibid., 225.
104
reveals the truth of God – the truth of man as God sees him.”441
Christ reveals the deepest
essence of what both truly man and truly God mean. Casarella concludes regarding this text
that Balthasar’s treatment of Przywara does not give his thinking a fatal blow, but aims to
remove a vagueness in how his thinking is related to Christ, which is to walk Przywara’s own
way of thinking to the end.442
This notion of Christ as the concrete analogia entis from TD 3, now expressed as a further
necessary determination of Przywara’s version, is brought into Balthasar’s mature version of
how to relate divine and worldly truth in TL 2:
[D]ivine logic can and will express itself in human logic on the basis of an analogia linguae [analogy of
language] and, ultimately—in spite of all objections—an analogia entis, fulfilled in Christ, who is God and
man in one person.443
Again we see that the attention is directed to the person of Christ, who here is said to “fulfill”
the analogia entis, which presumably means that the philosophical idea is confirmed and
heightened by the concrete event of the incarnation. The close linking of analogia linguae and
analogia entis here is prepared by Balthasar by a section on Jesus’ use of parables.444
All the
parables, taking their points and image world from ordinary, created life, show in an
exemplary way how God makes use of the similitude of creation to express his truth,
presupposing an ethical-religious “(pre-)understanding on the part of his hearers”; the rational
and ethical insights based on human experience are not just a “mere alphabet,” but a
“developed language.”445
Jesus’ proclamation is a profound collection of analogies, images
and metaphors, mostly by way of language, but in some cases even through concrete acts,
441 Ibid., 224f.
442 “[Balthasar] clearly does not intend to deliver a fatal blow either to Przywara’s systematizing of analogy or to
that of other Catholic thinkers. But a new accent has now been placed upon the work of Przywara. Przywara’s
metaphysics can be a great aid to a theologian to see the order of being in creation with Christ as its ground. His
theory of analogy is grounded in the concreteness of revelation, but the living form of Christ and the
Christological determinations of the analogy of being are still too vague. In other words, Balthasar’s final
verdict seems to be that Przywara can take the theologian to this mountain, but he himself did not make the
ascent.” Casarella, “Hans Urs von Balthasar, Erich Przywara’s Analogia Entis and the Problem of a Catholic
Denkform,” 204f. Emphasis mine. Franks is thus perhaps somewhat too careful when she describes Balthasar’s
differences from Przywara: “Balthasar disagrees with Przywara in the details of the latter’s elaboration” [...] “an
undue emphasis on the dissimiliarity of the analogy prevents a full understanding of this [that is, Christ’s]
unifying action.” Franks, “The Epiphany of Being: Trinitarian Analogia Entis and the Transcendentals in Hans
Urs von Balthasar,” 195n153. 443
Balthasar, TL 2, 81. 444
Ibid., 73-81. Balthasar’s treatment of the parables and the close interconnection of analogia linguae and
analogia entis is inspired by Gottlieb Söhngen, although Balthasar refers to him only in a later footnote
discussing E. Jüngel’s take on analogy, ibid., 273n109. See Gottlieb Söhngen, Analogie und Metapher: Kleine
Philosophie und Theologie der Sprache (München: Alber, 1962), esp. 64f, 76, 87. 445
Balthasar, TL 2, 77.
105
such as when he “called a little child and had him stand among them” (Matt 18:2) or in all his
miracles and healings that according to John are signs (sēmeia) of his glory. The parables,
says Balthasar, are the strongest examples of how
the incarnate Word comes into “his own property” (Jn 1:11). Hence, he does not travel merely into a foreign
land (as Karl Barth says) but into a country whose language he knows; not only the Galilean variety of
Aramaic that he learns as a child in Nazareth, but, more profoundly, the ontological language of
creatureliness as such.446
As “perhaps the most poetic statement of the analogia entis in the entire Tryptich”447
this
saying is perhaps also one of the most pointed ones. An important aspect in Balthasar’s
reference to the prologue to John is that the Word comes to “his own property” (ta idia, what
genuinely belongs to someone, what they are completely familiar with, even home). It is his
own property because these things were made in and through him (1:10, cf. 1:3). In other
words, the Word’s learning of “the ontological language of creatureliness as such” happened
not only through a child in Nazareth, but through his mediation in God’s act of creation. In
Balthasar’s metaphysics the ontological language of creation is nothing more than a kind of
dialect of the archetypal language of being generated by the Father.448
The ability of Christ to
express the full truth of God inside finite being is thus dependent both on his position as the
perfect expression of the whole Godhead and the fact of his incarnation. In what follows,
Balthasar focuses on two things as the content of this creaturely “language”: The first is the
fundamental shared existence with one’s fellow men,449
which Jesus brought to the fore by his
proclamation of the double commandment of love, which turns out in the end, because of
analogy, to be two sides of the same coin.450
The second is fruitfulness, which from its
familiarity with everyday life (mother-father-child, growth in agriculture and nature) provides
an excellent way to express the infinite mysterious growth, creativity and newness of God.451
Thus the content of the analogy of created being presupposed by Jesus’ exposition of the
Father centers on some of the most common aspects of daily human life.
446 Ibid., 84.
447 Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 139f.
448 Cf. Ibid., 49-52.
449 Behind the expression stands the beautiful, though untranslatable into English, German word
Mitmenschlichkeit, “fellow-humanly-being,” humanity. 450
Cf. 1 John 4:20: “For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he
has not seen.” 451
Balthasar, TL 2, 85.
106
Kata-logy
The uniqueness of Christ as the concrete analogia entis has important consequences for the
methodological status of analogy in theology. That is, the direction, as it were, of the analogy
in Balthasar’s thinking is turned upside down. Later in TL 2, when reflecting on analogy
explicitly in light of the incarnation, Balthasar says that because Chalcedonian Christology
“gives an account of an event that cannot be made subject to universal law but that subjects all
other laws to its own uniqueness,” it must follow that “every attempt to devise philosophical
laws beforehand and then apply them as prescriptions to Christology” is ruled out.452
In other
words, it is, for Balthasar, Christology that determines what analogy is at the end of the day.
This also means that Christology initiates a new reflection on the “concepts of likeness,
expression, image, symbol and so forth.” On this basis he points to the shortcomings of the
Pythagorean or Platonian concepts of analogy,453
and he criticizes Przywara for adhering to an
Aristotelian concept of analogy that is not applicable to Christology.454
An analogy built
purely from below always results in “the failure of the images” when the Image himself
appears.455
In this context, Balthasar returns to the notion from Bonaventure of Christ as the
expressio of the “entire trinitarian Godhead.”456
Balthasar’s treatment of Bonaventure in GL 2 can again shed light on the reasoning here.
“Bonaventure,” Balthasar says, “subordinates his whole teaching on the analogy of being
(which is very different from that of Thomas) to this central proposition,” namely what is said
in Hex, I d35 qI ad 3: “the likeness which is the truth itself in its expressive power … better
expresses a thing than the thing expresses itself, for the thing itself receives the power of
452 Ibid., 311. This same fact is expressed through an analogy in GL 1, where Balthasar at first sight comes close
to rejecting analogy. He says that there exists no “natural bridge” or “system of expressions of an organic-
spiritual kind” between “the Artist” God and his “art-work” creation, “nor can the general ‘concept’ of Being
(analogia entis) be regarded as such a grammar.” ———, GL 1, 443. The point, however, is not that an artwork
does not point to its author, but that the artwork in itself cannot exhaust the personality and freedom of its artist,
even less in the case of God, who remains infinitely free before, while and after he creates. Cf. the discussion of
God as artist known through his work in Bonaventure, ———, GL 2, 306f. 453
———, TL 2, 312. 454
Ibid., 95. 455
Our situation is that “faith, looking upward (ana) from the fleshly exposition of God in Christ (anō), and
recognizing its adequacy, understands that this exposition cannot be grasped as what it claims to be unless it is
read from above downward (kata). God exposits himself from above; it is not the man Jesus who explains God
from below.” Ibid., 313. Cf. Ibid., 65. See also the commentaries made on this text by Elisabeth Müller, who
contrasts Balthasar’s approach to a more anthropocentric approach exemplified by Karl Rahner, Müller, “Der
Geist als wirkmächtiger Zeuge Jesu Christi in der Kirche nach Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 11-19, esp. 18. 456
Balthasar, TL 2, 314.
107
expression from it [i.e. the likeness].”457
In other words, we have here what Balthasar quite
idiosyncratically calls “a very strong downwards-tending analogy.”458
By this teaching,
Balthasar adds in a footnote, “the concern of Karl Barth is taken seriously and answered
satisfactorily. The relation of the expression to what is expressed is fixed by the original.”459
It
is only in this way that “revelation can raise all things to images.” Returning to TL 2, we find
this “downwards-tending analogy” expressed in a less idiosyncratic way.460
The volume starts
from below (ana-logically), but later the direction changes. At the turn from the way upwards
to the way downwards Balthasar introduces the term “kata-logical” [kata-logisch]461
to
describe the movement downwards, crediting Alexander Gerken’s dissertation on the
relationship of creation and incarnation in Bonaventure for this neologism.462
Throughout the
volume Balthasar is clear that the ana-logic parts presuppose an already present knowledge of
God acquired through the kata-logical exposition of God in the Son.463
Later in TL 2
Balthasar describes important aspects of his version of analogy along another etymological
line of thought:
[T]he “analogy” that occurs as event in Verbum-Caro becomes the measure of every other analogy, whether
philosophical or theological. This analogy is the way in which the Logos himself reads things together in
himself (ana-legein [note 78: “Heidegger”]) and inserts them into the likeness of his “similitude” (ähnlich
457 ———, GL 2, 293. English text cited from note 154. The Latin text, which is in the main text, runs:
“similitudo quae est ipsa veritas expressive … melius exprimit rem quam ipsa res seipsam, quia res ipsa accipit
rationem expressionis ab illa.” Emphasis mine. 458
Ibid., 294. Idiosyncratically because the Greek preposition ana means upwards, while Balthasar’s point in the
context is the movement downwards. In TL 2, Balthasar uses some kata language. 459
Ibid., 294n157. This is one among many examples of how Balthasar’s reading of the Church Fathers, and
other teachers of the Church, is very synthetic, aiming at solutions to contemporary problems. Of course,
Bonaventure could not literally answer concerns of Barth stated 700 years later. This way of relating texts from
different historical epochs is justified for Balthasar because the questions discussed in each age in the end are the
same fundamental questions, although addressed in different ways. Cf. ———, TL 1, 185-8, cf. 128f. 460
The structure of the volume is presented explicitly about halfway, at the turn of directions. Parts I and II think
from below upwards, part III also by trying to contemplate the mystery above in itself. Parts IV and V follow a
descending path. ———, TL 2, 169. 461
The use of c or k in this and related terms is not consistent in English usage. I prefer (with Adrian J. Walker,
translator of TL 2) kata-log- because it makes the reference to the Greek preposition kata most clear, and
perhaps avoids a little bit of the unpleasant allusion to catalogues. However, I will also cite different authors (in
translations from both German and original English texts) who use cata-log-. 462
Alexander Gerken, Theologie des Wortes. Das Verhältnis von Schöpfung und Inkarnation bei Bonaventura
(Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1963), 320-27. Balthasar refers to p. 323. 463
Balthasar, TL 2, 35, 65, 169, 187. Schumacher therefore says that for Balthasar, “[e]s gibt keine Analogik
ohne die je schon vorausergangene Katalogik.” Schumacher, Perichorein, 83. Note that in German, Analogik
points to an analogical methodological procedure, while Analogie describes the ontological aspect. One can
therefore say that, at least theologically speaking, there is, for Balthasar, no comprehensive or complete Analogik
without Katalogik (epistemologically), while it is not appropriate to say that there is no analogy without katalogy
(ontologically), because philosophical “ana-logic” is dependent on God’s revelation through creation.
108
[similar] from an-gleich [like to], from Gothic analeiko = angeglichen [likened to]), upward toward himself,
since he is both the ground and the end of all created things.464
Far-fetched etymologies aside, Balthasar’s Christological analogy is expressed clearly here:
First, the incarnation is the measure of every other analogy, the concrete event of it, the only
Maß of analogy. Second, the likeness of created things exists insofar as it is a likeness
resulting from their creation “in” the Logos; he is the archetype and original Image of what is
similar to him. Third, this likeness rests on the Logos being “the ground and end of all created
things.” The analogical “reading” of the world in the revelation of the Logos is as such part of
his mission to “recapitulate [ana-kefalaiōsasthai] all things,” predestined by God before the
ages (Eph 1:10). Balthasar’s Christological version of analogy is thereby related both to
creation and redemption, which are seen as closely interconnected.465
The result is that some
kind of analogia entis in creation is seen as necessary, because revelation could not happen if
creation was not ready made to receive the divine revelation. Analogia entis is thus conceived,
with a term borrowed from Walter Kasper, as the Ansprechbarkeit of creation and especially
human beings for God.466
In a discussion of the need for objective revelation in GL 1,
Balthasar says that “considered from the standpoint of God’s ultimate plan, the revelation in
the creation is seen to have occurred for the sake of the revelation in Christ, serving as the
preparation that made it possible.”467
But from the perspective of redemption, the incarnation
fulfills “what creation had begun.”468
Therefore, “the revelation of the Word […] does not
have its place alongside the revelation in the creation, as if it competed with it, but within
it.”469
This way of thinking a relation of continuity, even if there is also discontinuity,
between creation and redemption is the basis of all that Balthasar says of Christ the concrete
464 Balthasar, TL 2, 314. Emphasis mine on last sentence.
465 “The Son’s roles as expression of divine truth and exemplar of creation are developed [by Balthasar] in
relation to each other, providing the keys to an overall vision in which created and divine truth exist in analogous
relation.” Sain, “Truth, Trinity and Creation: Placing Bruce Marshall’s Trinity and Truth in Conversation with
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theo-Logic,” 298. 466
Kasper says strikingly that an analogia fidei (this concept is central to Barth’s alternative) must always
presuppose an analogia entis “als Ansprechbarkeit des Menschen für Gott” [man’s possibility to be spoken to by
God].” Quoted in Plaga, “‘Ich bin die Wahrheit.’ Die theologische Dimension der Christologie Hans Urs von
Balthasars,” 209. 467
Balthasar, GL 1, 431. Emphasis mine. “For, to be sure, what is fulfilled superabundantly in the Incarnation is
what creation had begun: God’s expressing and representing himself, the infinite and free Spirit’s creating for
himself an expressive body in which he can, first of all, manifest himself but, even better, in which he can
conceal himself as ‘the one who is ineffably exalted above everything which is outside him and which can be
conceived’,” ibid., 457. 468
Ibid. 469
Ibid., 458. Cf. the metaphor applied in TL 2: “God, after all, made the creature according to his own image
and likeness, so that, by his grace, it might become inwardly capable of serving him as a loudspeaker through
which to express himself and make himself understood.” ———, TL 2, 81. Emphasis mine.
109
analogia entis as the fulfillment of philosophical analogy. The incarnation, in this perspective,
must philosophically come as a totally unpredicted surprise, while in theological retrospect it
looks like the most natural thing.470
It simply shows that God acts in ways that are proper to
his own being.
Analogy of the Transcendentals of Being
The end of the quote from the Epilogue that has been guiding us for some pages states that
Jesus can call himself the truth because “he is the adequate sign, surrender, and expression of
God within finite being.” As Angela Franks has pointed out, the terms “sign,” “surrender” and
“expression” here probably refer to the pattern of thought lying behind the structure of the
Trilogy.471
The citation may serve as an entry to the question of the choice of terminology
when speaking of analogy in Balthasar’s thinking. The term analogia entis may be felt to be a
little misleading when it comes to Balthasar’s position, although he uses it himself,
presumably motivated to a large degree by concession to tradition, current philosophical
language and the influence from Przywara. It is slightly inappropriate because Balthasar does
not share all the philosophical and Scholastic connotations the term usually carries, and
because of his radical Christocentrism. Balthasar’s version of analogy is, as we have seen, in
fact a kind of analogia christologica [Christological analogy].
However, the analogy of being unfolds through all the three transcendentals of being. As
such, Balthasar’s version of analogy is, as suggested in the literature, both an analogy of
beauty (cf. GL),472
an analogy of freedom (cf. TD) and an analogy of truth (cf. TL).473
The
most promising attempt at going behind analogia entis as the central term when interpreting
Balthasar is Manfred Luchbrunner’s suggestion that Balthasar’s analogy is an analogia
470 Cf. “The Incarnation must come as a great shock because of the maior dissimilitudo; yet because of the
similitudo, we may look back on the accomplished fact and marvel at the fittingness of the path chosen,”
Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 140. The highest expression of this
continuity/discontinuity pattern is the resurrection, which Johnson pointedly calls “the inevitable surprise of
Easter morning” (143). 471
Franks says that “sign [aesthetics], surrender [drama] and expression [logic]” are probably used here in order
to refer to the three transcendentals as they are used as an outline for the trilogy. Franks, “The Epiphany of
Being: Trinitarian Analogia Entis and the Transcendentals in Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 327. 472
Cf. one of the first volumes in English on Balthasar’s theology, John Riches, ed. The Analogy of Beauty
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986). This term, however, is more appropriate as part of an introduction to Balthasar’s
project of theological aesthetics (which is what the volume focuses on, as it was published before the English
translations of Theo-Drama and Theo-Logic) than as an attempt to grasp his thinking as a whole. 473
Cf. Hans Boersma, “Analogy of Truth: The Sacramental Epistemology of Nouvelle Théologie,” in
Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, ed. Gabriel Flynn and Paul
D. Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
110
caritatis [analogy of love (charity)].474
It fits well with the central notion of the co-
extensiveness of Being and love in Balthasar. But this term, according to Aidan Nichols,
should be seen in light of a movement in Balthasar’s thought from the analogy of being,
through the analogy of freedom to the analogy of love. Analogia entis is enacted in Christ’s
life, not as an abstract principle but as the living relation of divine and human freedom. Thus
it is an analogia libertatis [analogy of freedom]. And it is this historical-dramatic
concretization of the analogy of being that makes it possible to speak of an analogy of love,
central to Christian living.475
Analogia caritatis is therefore a good way to describe the final
product of Balthasar’s analogical reasoning, but it is not more comprehensive as a
representation of the whole of his thought than is analogia entis.476
All the variations in terminology that interpreters suggest to grasp Balthasar’s version of
analogy more precisely than analogia entis remain further qualifications that always also
function as delimitations. Every formulation of analogy rests in the analogy of being, because
Balthasar’s thinking as a whole relates to being as a whole. In light of the pattern of the three
transcendentals of being dealt with in the trilogy, one could say that Balthasar thinks that
there is an analogia entis, which is concretized through the form of Christ as an analogia
pulchri [analogy of beauty], an analogia liberatis [analogy of freedom] and an analogia
veritatis [analogy of truth]. The incarnation as the concrete event of all those three analogies
reveals that analogia entis is interchangeable with analogia caritatis, because here Christ
reveals that God is love. One cannot, however, advance behind entis to some other concept
that is more basic or more appropriate to describe the fullness of Balthasar’s thought.
The word “adequate” in the Epilogue quote also points in the direction of a very central
notion in TL 2, where Balthasar presents Jesus in Johannine terms as the expositor (Ausleger,
cf. John 1:18: exēgēsato) of the invisible God, his life, words and deeds as the exposition
474 Cf. Lochbrunner, Analogia Caritatis: Darstellung und Deutung der Theologie Hans Urs von Balthasars.
475 Nichols, A Key to Balthasar: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty, Goodness and Truth, 60-70. The
significance of Balthasar’s version of analogy for Christian living is discussed thoroughly in Franks, “The
Epiphany of Being: Trinitarian Analogia Entis and the Transcendentals in Hans Urs von Balthasar,” esp. ch. 5,
326-353. 476
Palakeel argues that the term analogia caritatis is an appropriate way to address Balthasar’s unification of
analogia entis (Przywara) and analogia fidei (Barth), and to point to the theological thrust of his thinking. Still
Palakeel contends (like Nichols) that analogia entis is the basis for analogia caritatis, thus the difference in
terminology mostly serves to avoid misunderstandings. Palakeel, The Use of Analogy in Theological Discourse:
an Investigation in Ecumenical Perspective, 67-111. However, Palakeel’s way of speaking is open to another
misunderstanding, because Balthasar’s thinking does not start with love and explicate it as being; he rather starts
with being and explicates it as love.
111
(Auslegung) of the true glorious Father.477
Thus, paradoxically, “the invisible is seen in his
expositor” (cf. John 1:18; 12:45; 14:9),478
Christ “unveils in his own visibility the invisible
God.”479
During polemics against Palamite theology, Balthasar says that Christ “presents
himself as the expositor of God as he is in himself.”480
And similarly in another place: “Jesus
is not a distorted image but the pure truth, because he gives the adequate exposition of the
Father in worldly figure [Gestalt].”481
This adequate or even “super-adequate”482
exposition is
adequate, as we have seen, on account of the concretization of analogia entis through the two
natures of the Son become man. In his worldly figure he is the divine Son as man, ex-posing
(also in the sense of surrendering, laying bare) the Father through the Holy Spirit in all his
life, work and speech. The glory seen in his life points to the glory of the Father (John 1:14),
he does the deeds of his Father (John 5:19) and speaks the words of Spirit and eternal life
(John 6:63; 6:68). Still, the invisibility of the Father is withheld even in the surrender of all he
is, according to Balthasar in perfect coincidence with the mysteriousness at the center of truth
described in TL 1.483
Thus the archetype of the ungraspable element of every worldly truth is
the mysteriousness of God; the maxim Deus simper major holds even after the Son’s full
exposition of him. Both a God who “could be expressed to the end in finite words” and a God
who “did not wish to give himself away […], but withheld a piece of himself from us and for
himself” must be an idol. The answer to this problem is, according to Balthasar, to “stick to
the proposition that in the objective order the transposition is perfect, whereas the subjective
apprehension and appropriation of this objective reality cannot be.”484
And it is the “never to
be ended hermeneutic of the Holy Spirit within the history of the Church” that forever keeps
the Son’s adequate transposition of the Father open to God’s maior dissimilitudo. We will
return to the importance of this excessiveness in the work of the Spirit and the Spirit’s
universalizing of the Son in Part III.
477 Balthasar, TL 2, 13-17, 66-8. Cf. ———, TL 1, 18. In an insightful translator’s note A. J. Walker points also
to the connotation of ex-posing, “laying bare,” for Auslegung, which means not only “exegeting” in a narrow
sense, ———, TL 2, 11n1. “Interpreter” and “interpreting” are words that could also have served to bring out
important aspects of the German. 478
———, TL 2, 66. Emphasis mine. 479
Ibid., 67. 480
Ibid. 481
Ibid., 84. 482
In the words of Adrienne von Speyr, ibid., 312. 483
Ibid., 68. The text refers to ———, TL 1, 131. Cf. the treatment of mystery as an aspect of truth in 6.3. 484
———, TL 2, 279f.
112
9.2 Balthasar’s Interpretation of Negative Theology
Both the analysis of Balthasar’s version of the doctrine of analogy and his notion of Christ as
an “adequate” exposition of the whole Godhead in its essence raise fundamental questions
regarding what is traditionally called “apophaticism,” or “negative theology.” What does the
notion of God’s transcendence, in Lateran IV termed maior dissimilitudo, mean from the
standpoint of revealed theology? How is the adequacy or even “super-adequacy” of the Son’s
exposition of the Father to be understood? Is God graspable, unmediated and in total, through
the Son, mediated by the Spirit? Is it speech or silence that is the foremost virtue of a
theologian? Is it true that (as the Cappadocians and Thomas Aquinas say, following Plato)
“the only thing we can say in the end is what God is not”?485
Because of the urgency of those
questions Balthasar devotes a long section in TL 2 to the question of negative theology.486
A
closer look at his argument here will unveil the deeper structure underlying much of what was
said of his thought concerning analogy throughout 9.1.
In this section, Balthasar obviously feels more at odds with the tradition than he usually does,
as he most often feels very much at home in the Platonic spirit of the Eastern tradition, also
with respect to the central category of theological aesthetics.487
This is so because Balthasar,
as Johnson observes, asserts “a similitudo of a more robust nature than orthodox theology
might have dared to believe possible.”488
Therefore Balthasar takes pains to find biblical texts
to “blame” when he says things that seemingly reject “abundant examples” of expressions of
the infinite distance between God and man found in the Christian tradition, especially in its
Eastern form. The blame lies mainly with the Johannine texts of the kind referred to above,
where Christ exposits the Father in his fullness and says that “he who sees me sees the
[invisible] Father” (John 14:9; cf. 1:18).489
A key insight in Balthasar’s interpretation of
negative theology is that the incarnation event spoken of in those texts occasions that “the
negative incomprehensibility [of God] turns into a positive one.”490
According to Balthasar, a biblical reading of negative theology starts with God’s word that
rings out to man, speaking of his uniqueness: There are no other gods beside him. There is
485 Ibid., 87.
486 Ibid., 87-122, cf. 276-80. This section will also be informed by an earlier essay on the subject Balthasar which
refers to in 111n70: ———, “The Word and Silence.” 487
For this theme cf. Raymond Gawronski, Word and Silence: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Spiritual
Encounter between East and West (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995). 488
Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 145. 489
Balthasar, TL 2, 87. 490
———, TD 2, 260.
113
nothing that God could be fully compared to, as voiced, for example, by the prophet: “‘To
whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal?’ says the Holy One” (Isa 40:25). This
word always results in a clash with the “negative theology of biblical man,” who always
wants to keep God away and serve his idols, or make himself a master of a limited version of
God’s truth.491
Sinful humanity wants to remain in the first half of John 1:18 (“no man has
ever seen God”), even when the exposition has taken place (“the Son, who is in the bosom of
the Father, has exposited him”). No one has ever seen God: This statement must, for
Balthasar, be seen in the light of the “dialectic between nonvision and vision of God” in the
Old Testament that also continues into the New. In the OT, God was “seen” in many and
various ways, although always preliminary and incomplete ways, because a full vision of God
would be fatal to fallen man: “You cannot see my face, for man cannot see my face and live”
(Ex 33:20). And even after the exposition of the Son, the face-to-face vision of God remains
reserved for heaven.492
The limit of the vision of God lies thus not with God’s unknowability,
even in some sense not with his invisibility, but with man’s (lacking) capacity to receive this
vision.
Now, according to Paul at the Areopagus (Acts 17:27f), man is essentially a God-seeker. For
this fact Paul calls the Stoic poet Aratus to witness: “We are of his lineage.” But however
unknown, God is, according to Paul, not remote, but near: “not far from every one of us.” The
search is thus not purely utopian. But the original tradition of negative theology is logically
prior to God’s self-revelation. In its search for the unknown One, says Balthasar, original
negative theology is in fact a kind of negative philosophy: “The quest’s point of departure,
then, is the insight that none of the things that surround us in this world can be what we seek,
because all of them are finite and transitory and, therefore, must be negated as such.”493
In
what follows, Balthasar shows how a conglomerate of philosophical traditions, Western as
Eastern, follows a path that ends in some ineffable absolute.494
The Jew Philo stands in this
tradition when he applies the “(Platonic) super-existent that eludes thought” to the living God
of Israel, who refuses his name to Moses, and thus for the first time states that the God of
Israel is “incomprehensible.” Balthasar continues:
491 ———, TL 2, 87f.
492 Ibid., 89. Cf. 1 John 3:2.
493 Ibid., 90.
494 Ibid., 90-4.
114
What Philo thereby surrenders is God’s closeness to man, indeed, the affinity between man and God, of
which Paul speaks in the Areopagus in order to make sense of the search. There are Christian thinkers who
have repeated Philo’s insistence that the dissimilarity between God and the creature reveals itself ever more
profoundly with each step of the search, but they cannot appeal to biblical revelation to support their
claims.495
In this text Balthasar basically states that the problem of negative theology is that it surrenders
God’s closeness to man, that is, the similitudo of analogy, and that it is only this closeness and
likeness that might make sense of a natural search for God, which the Areopagus speech and
other Biblical texts acknowledge. For Balthasar, the kind of reasoning that seeks to underline
God’s transcendence by removing his immanence violates a central element in theology. As
already noted, in uniting them, the God-man confirms the difference of creation and
Creator.496
At the same time, the positivity of this difference becomes emphasized, as this
difference is grounded in the intra-Trinitarian difference between Father and Son. The result
is that, as Johnson aptly puts it, “that which grounds the dissimilitudo is identical to that
which grounds the similitudo” in the thought of Balthasar.497
Creatures can only be like and
unlike God at the same time, and it is the same act of creation that results in both aspects.498
The most fundamental difference between them is the real distinction: God is his essence
(esse per se subsistens), while every created essence subsists by virtue of the mediation of
created esse as the gift of God.
In a footnote to the passage on Philo, Balthasar discusses texts from Clement of Alexandria,
Gregor of Nyssa, Dionysius [the (Pseudo-)Areopagite] and [Søren] Kierkegaard that are
495 Ibid., 94.
496 Thus, as it is strikingly put by Tinnefeldt: “Das Transzendenteste vollzieht sich im Menschlichsten.”
Wolfgang Tinnefeldt, “Ekstasis der Liebe und Einfaltung des Glaubens: eine Untersuchung zur Frage nach der
Mitte und Einheit der christlichen Wahrheit bei Hans Urs von Balthasar” (Universität Mainz, 1975), 272. 497
Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 107. Johnson refers to several
important Balthasar interpreters that underscore the same point: Fergus Kerr, Rowan Williams, Nicholas Healy
and David C. Schindler. 498 Johnson cites a passage where Balthasar states this plainly: “even distance from God and the coolness of
reverence are an image and a likeness of God and of divine life. What is most incomprehensible is, in fact, the
truest reality: precisely by not being God do you resemble God. And precisely by being outside of God are you
in God. For to be over against God is itself a divine thing. As a person who is incomparable you reflect the
uniqueness of your God. For in God’s unity, too, there are found distance and reflection and eternal mission:
Father and Son over against one another and yet one in the Spirit and in the nature that seals the Three of them
together.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Heart of the World (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1979), 35. Johnson also
refers to ———, TL 2, 315f. The whole section “Transcending Immanence and Immanencing Transcendence”
could also be referred to as pinning this point down: Creation always transcends itself towards the Creator, while
the transcendent is always “immanencing” the finite, ibid., 81-85. The “rule” behind the reasoning is stated
plainly thus: “the more [God] is immanent, the more he is transcendent.” ———, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects
of Christian Pluralism, 122.
115
problematic in this respect. But “Erich Przywara is probably the one author who goes farthest
in this direction.” His version of analogy, according to Balthasar, is based on the maior
dissimilitudo and framed within an Aristotelian allo pros allo, where “the pros is ultimately
understood as an ‘against.’ It is hard to see how such an understanding of analogy can sustain
a Christology.” In other words, the accusation is that Creator and creation start out as
unrelated in Przywara’s thought, and as such they can neither be united in Christ. In its
implications, in light of the Trinitarian analogy of difference, Balthasar would also say that
this way of thinking challenges the unity of Father and Son. For critique of Przywara,
Balthasar refers to Puntel (a sign that Balthasar’s version of analogy has affinities with
Puntel’s way of thinking) and G. de Schrijver.499
What Balthasar says here is in tension with some of his own statements on the subject in his
earlier, more Przywaraian period, before the encounter with Barth. In the essay “The Fathers,
the Scholastics and Ourselves” (1938), for example, Balthasar cites the maxim “the more we
know God, the less we know him” with approval, in a context also colored by Przywara’s
ever (cf. tanta).500
So there is a development in Balthasar’s own position over the years.501
The main text in TL 2 continues:
499 ———, TL 2, 94fn16. Balthasar here also repeats the point of the now lacking tanta of Lateran IV, cf. 9.1.
The references are to Puntel, Analogie und Geschichtlichkeit: Philosophiegeschichtlich-kritischer Versuch über
das Grundproblem der Metaphysik; de Schrijver, Le Merveilleux Accord de l’homme et de Dieu: Étude de
l’analogie de l’être chez Hans Urs von Balthasar. I will return to Puntel’s more developed critique of negative
theology and certain versions of analogy from his later works below. 500
“God is the One ever beyond all similarity, the ever more improbable, the ever ungraspable One. […] All true
approaches to God […] can be constructed only on the foundation of an ever more towering distance.” Balthasar,
“The Fathers, the Scholastics and Ourselves,” 355. Emphasis mine. Oakes cites this text and comments that
“Przywara’s influence on Balthasar was perhaps never more apparent than in this passage.” Oakes, Pattern of
Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, 114. The statement is perhaps true, but only in a different
interpretation than Oakes would give. Przywara’s influence was never greater than in this essay, because it was
written before the encounter with Barth and Balthasar’s later reservations against Przywara’s thought. In
Balthasar’s mature thought, as it is expressed in the last part of the trilogy (cf. the passages discussed from TD 3
and TL 2), Przywara is criticized in quite harsh terms, not only praised. This means that Oakes’ use of “Fathers,
Scholastics and Ourselves” throughout a whole chapter in Pattern of Redemption (104-126) as an introduction to
the influences on the Trilogy remains at best questionable. Oakes further says (39) that in Balthasar’s work there
are especially two places where one can ascertain what he drew from Przywara and where he distanced himself
from him. According to Oakes, those are found in the Barth book and the introductory essay to a complete
bibliography of Przywara’s works: Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Erich Przywara,” in Eric Przywara: sein Schriftum
1912-1962, ed. Leo Zimny (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1963). This statement is inaccurate. In those works
Balthasar expresses reservations against making Przywara’s thinking the Catholic view, and makes some initial
remarks on the potential a-historicity and exaggerated elements of negative theology in his works (see esp. the
introduction to Zimny, 9, 11). The places where Balthasar did distance himself most from Przywara are not those
works, but in the discussion of analogy related to Christ in TD 3 and (in a similar argument) in the discussion of
negative theology in TL 2. On the same page (39), Oakes says that it is best to “postpone a full-scale treatment of
Balthasar’s position on analogy” until he has treated the influence of Barth on Balthasar. In the next chapter
(“The Dialogue with Karl Barth,” 45-71), however, he remains in a pattern of thought where Balthasar mostly
116
The primary locus of negative (philosophical) theology remains man’s extrabiblical search for God, the
search of man who, weary of a seeking that never arrives at its goal, takes refuge either in a system […] or in
a resigned agnosticism, which goes on negating even after it has already given up the quest. This primary
negative theology is the strongest bastion against Christianity.502
Balthasar’s position is clear from this: An unqualified apophaticism, where God is only
unknown, the only thing we can know is what he is not, and the search for him only leads to
unknowing, is incompatible with Christian revelation, because it denies the common
“grammar” of God and creation, the creature’s constitution as being addressable by God, and
thus in the last analysis denies the incarnation. But all of this, he contends, is confirmed by the
fact that in Christ, God has made himself known, kata-phatically, in a way that confirms
analogy. He therefore claims that Przywara’s version of the maior dissimilitudo ends up in a
negative philosophical theology that cannot handle the person of Christ.503
But still the
question remains: What is Balthasar’s own understanding of the maior dissimilitudo?
In the Bible, negative theology changes in two ways, says Balthasar: First, by the fact that
God seeks and finds man. God is the one “who has from the very start already found man the
seeker.”504
This is a notion that recalls biblical texts like: “I revealed myself to those who did
not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my
name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.’” (Isa 65:1, NIV).505
Second, by being found, man does
not become a contented God-finder, but remains a God-seeker, but now in a more profound
sense. “Seek the Lord” is like a refrain throughout the Bible, grounded in God’s promise to be
found. Sinful man, however, mostly seeks in the wrong places, or engages a search on wrong
premises, as when searching after Jesus in order to arrest him.506
The important point here is
that when God promises that this search will be successful, he does so exclusively on the basis
of his own revelation; that is, the man seeking is always found by God before he finds God:
argues with Przywara against Barth, and only seldom turns against Przywara or is granted his own voice in
distinction from him, if at all. Thus Oakes throughout Pattern of Redemption does not manage to highlight the
distinct contribution Balthasar gave to the analogia entis debate by constructing his genuinely own version of the
doctrine. For an account of Balthasar’s thinking on these issues that works through the influence from Barth in a
thorough and more accurate way, see Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Critical Engagement. 501
Cf. also the citation, without this kind of critical remark, of the same text from Clement of Alexandria in the
originally from 1960 essay: Balthasar, “The Word and Silence,” 132f. 502
———, TL 2, 95. Emphasis mine. Cf. ———, GL 1, 447-9. 503
Cf. ———, GL 1, 461. 504
———, TL 2, 95. 505
Emphasis mine. For the soteriological dimension corresponding to this epistemological claim, cf. Rom 5:8:
“Christ died for us while we were still sinners.” 506
Balthasar, TL 2, 96-8.
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man finds in being found.507
Here we sense Balthasar’s deepest answer to the critical question
of Oakes that in fact still hangs in the air: How can we ascribe analogical language to God if
he is unknown? Balthasar’s answer is that we can do so because God himself has provided us
with language to describe him by revealing himself in the Son who is his Word, expressio and
expositor: “it is the incarnate Word that frees us from our limited conceptions and introduces
us to that in God which surpasses our understanding.”508
The person of the incarnate Christ is
to Balthasar the concrete analogia entis that opens the possibility to use the worldly
analogical language of God. God is therefore not unqualified unknown to anyone that has
heard the Gospel of Christ.
The positive content of negative theology within the theology of revelation is, for Balthasar,
“the ever-greater quality of God’s gracious revelation,” which gives knowledge of the “love
of Christ that transcends all knowledge” (Eph 3:19; note the paradoxical wording: gnōnai
agapēn hyperballousan gnōseōs).509
Thus we can have “a (real) knowledge of a truth by
which one can only be overwhelmed.”510
The proper interpretation of negative theology is
thus not that we cannot know God at all, but that we (as finite beings) cannot know him
totally, for what has been revealed in Christ is “unsearchable riches” [anexichniaston ploutos:
a richness/abundance impossible to track out/untraceable] (Eph 3:8).511
In a striking
expression of Balthasar, which is also the title of one of his books, we know the whole in
fragment.512
Our knowledge is of “the God who always remains ungraspable in spite of the
fact that he is grasped.”513
Through the incarnation the Son makes God known and graspable, without reducing God to
an object of pure grasp-ability. Balthasar thus sticks to the maxim of Augustine: Si
507 Ibid., 103f.
508 ———, “The Word and Silence,” 132.
509 ———, TL 2, 106. The quote from Ephesians is a favorite of Balthasar and seems to be very important to his
thinking on truth, knowledge and love. It is a central part of the conclusion to ———, “The Word and Silence.”
Cf. ———, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism, 74. 510
———, TL 2, 22. “[Dogmatic knowledge] is subject to the paradox which applies to all Christian truth, that
the content of what is given always overflows to an infinite degree the vessel into which it is poured,” ———, A
Theology of History, 107f. 511
Cited in ———, “The Word and Silence,” 145. The text is, however, wrongly attributed to “Eph 5:9-9.” Cf.
“the theologian is both confronted with a truth that is always greater than what he thought he had understood and
simultaneously forbidden to adopt a merely apophatic stance vis-à-vis the God who is revealing himself to him
in a new way.” ———, TL 3, 358. 512
———, Das Ganze im Fragment: Aspekte der Geschichtsteologie (Einsiedeln: Benzinger, 1963). The English
translation does not have anything resembling this phrase in its title, published in the USA as A Theological
Anthropology and in Britain as Man in History: A Theological Study. 513
———, GL 1, 462.
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comprehendis non est Deus [if you can comprehend/grasp it, it isn’t God].514
But, according
to Balthasar’s interpretation of Bonaventure in GL 2, who advances “beyond the apophasis of
Denys [=Dionysius the Areopagite],” “when God is called inconceivable, however, it is not
because some part of him is kept concealed, but because of the immeasurability of his
simplicity (quoting De sc. Chr. V 35-36b).” Infinite progress in the wonderful vision of
knowledge of God is therefore possible on earth as it is in heaven, and even more there:
In heaven, the whole incomprehensible fullness of the Godhead offers itself to the one who contemplates, “in
the same kind of way as the whole Seine offers itself to someone who brings a jug, but is not grasped in its
entirety, but only as much as the capacity of the jug” (quoting De sc. Chr. q7 c, V 40a).515
The notion of transcendence or maior dissimilitudo is this way interpreted by Balthasar as
excess, infinity surpassing every act of complete human comprehension.
Philosophical and Christian negative theology, therefore, according to Balthasar, ends with
very different types of silence:
Whereas negative philosophical theology ends in silence, because concepts and words, like darts, fall to the
ground before finding their mark, a different silence stands at the end of Christian theology: that of adoration,
which is likewise struck dumb by the exceeding measure of the gift given.516
The attitude corresponding to Christian revealed negative theology is therefore not to convert
oneself into some kind of a skeptic, but to convert to God. The Christian silence is a kata-
phatic super-word more than an apophatic un-word, because it is silence applied as part of the
unity of God’s speech.517
The Christian thus acts as a hearer of the word518
both in reverent
silence before God and when he breaks out into praise of the ever-greater in words
transcending words. The silent reverence “presupposes the divine super-word, the self-
communication of God, who, in handing over his Son, withheld nothing of himself (Rom
514 Among other examples, cited in ibid., 450. The quote is also the title of the last section of ———, TD 5, 489-
521. In both places the quote is given without reference to the original, which is found in Augustine, Sermo 117,
3, 5. The same idea is also present in Sermo 52, 6, 16. For the Latin text, see for example J.-P. Migne: Patrologia
Latina (PL), vol. 38, pages 663 and 360, respectively. 515
———, GL 2, 268f. Emphasis mine. 516
———, TL 2, 106. Adoration is also, according to Balthasar, “the ultimate goal” of Dionysius the
Areopagite’s form of theology: “liturgy and hymnody: pure adoration.” Ibid., 102. An informed overview of
“negative philosophy” that also concludes that it ends in silence is found in Knut Alfsvåg, What No Mind Has
Conceived: On the Significance of Christological Apophaticism (Leuven: Peeters, 2010), 9-32, esp. 28, 30. 517
Cf. the title of the section “Un-word and Super-word” [Unwort und Überwort], Balthasar, TL 2, 107-22. Note
those striking formulations: “in God speech and silence are one” (115), “the dimension of silence [belongs to]
the word itself,” (111) and “silence indwells the word” (113). Max Picard’s Die Welt des Schweigens (Zurich:
Rentsch, 1948) is an important acknowledged influence throughout the section. 518
Cf. the title of “probably Karl Rahner’s best book” (Hörer des Wortes), ibid., 116.
119
8:32-36).”519
In other words, the Christian type of silence is a result of being bespoken by
God’s “word-silence [Schweigewort],”520
not a resignation because God is unknown.
And this silence, ultimately, leads into action: If the “higher truth [of Jesus’ words] is indeed
the highest, divine truth, the human mind must simply hand itself over to it. […] [M]an is
bidden by Christ to do in discipleship the truth whose logic his gaze does not penetrate.” This
handing over is, accordingly, a super-word because “beyond [speech] is the proof of the
deed.”521
The same conclusion is drawn in “The Word and Silence,” where Balthasar says that
“knowledge of how greatly love surpasses knowledge” (cf. Eph 3:19) is what truly makes us
go “beyond thought into act, not our own act but God’s act in us; it means giving up our own
knowledge in order to be possessed by God’s knowledge.”522
So, the attitude corresponding to
a sound reading of negative theology (apophasis) becomes, for Balthasar, the “creation of
space for God through the total surrender of all that is one’s own,” which
is ultimately the supreme affirmation of God’s self-giving love in the super-word of his Son, which man
attempts to answer with a super-word he receives as a gift. Here “negative theology” finally becomes the
locus of perfect encounter, not in a dialogical equality of dignity, but in the transformation of the whole
creature into an ecce ancilla [behold the handmaid] for the all-filling mystery of the ungraspable love of the
self-emptying God.523
Balthasar’s unifying of worldly and heavenly truth through Christological analogy has thus
moved beyond the purely theoretical. And while we could say that a version of analogy
including a strong apophaticism retains a kind of instability at the theoretical level, the
instability in Balthasar’s version is grounded in the encounter with Christ. At the end of TL 2
Balthasar says the work will surely be reproached for lack of method, because it is
fundamentally eclectic. However, Balthasar counters, methodos originally means the pursuit
of a way.524
The One that is “the truth,” who wears “the seamless robe,” is also “the way and
the life.” To grasp his truth one will also have to listen to his words: “Follow me.” And this
519 Ibid., 117f.
520 Ibid., 118.
521 Ibid., 120. Balthasar here in a note cites Ferdinand Ulrich: “If one were to ask if the actual unity of life and
death can be ‘spoken,’ for example, in the guise of a basic formula, the answer must be: No! Only love lived in
flesh and blood, the word of love, says everything.” From Ferdinand Ulrich, Leben in der Einheit von Leben und
Tot (Frankfurt: Knecht, 1973), 108. 522
Balthasar, “The Word and Silence,” 146. At the end of the quote Balthasar refers to 1 Cor 8:3; 13:12; 2 Cor
5:11; Gal 4:9 (corrected from 5:9); Eph 2:10; Phil 3:12; Jn 6:28-9. 523
———, TL 2, 122. 524
Ibid., 363.
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sequela Christi can only happen in the Spirit, a theme that will be further developed and
discussed in Part III.
9.3 Critical Assessment by Means of Puntel’s Theoretical Framework
This section engages in a critical discussion of the questions opened up by the analysis of
Balthasar in the foregoing by using the theoretical framework of Puntel. The guiding question
is what role Christology plays in a coherent theory of the relation of theological and
philosophical truth. The premise that Christology is important is shared with Balthasar, broad
strands of the Christian tradition and key sayings in the NT. In what sense the truth of God is
available and communicated to human beings must be thought in relation to the God-man
who “has made him [the Father] known” (John 1:18).
The section follows a chiastic pattern in relation to what preceded it; it starts with a discussion
of negative theology as a way into the concept of analogy, which is also discussed more
broadly than Balthasar does in relation to finitude and sin. The section ends in a systematic-
theological interpretation of how to understand Christ as the truth.
On the Question of Transcendence and Immanence: Critique of the
Traditional Metaphysical Doctrine of Analogy and Negative/Apophatic
Theologies
In Being and God, Puntel argues that the traditional metaphysical version of analogy is deeply
problematic.525
The problem with this approach is, he says, that it starts from worldly
phenomena and works from bottom up to reach a meta-physical X that in the end differs from
contingent, finite beings only in being located at a higher level of perfection.526
The supreme
being [Seiende] or “god” that such a procedure leads to remains nothing more than a super-
function of other entities, and this view ultimately turns out to deserve Heidegger’s label of
onto-theology. It is also guilty of what Heidegger termed “forgetfulness or oblivion of Being
[Sein],” because Being remains unthought of, as analogy is consequently not conceived as an
analogy of beings in relation to Being. In Thomas Aquinas’ so-called proofs of God’s
existence the ens supremum this bottom-up procedure leads to is by a methodological error
525 Puntel’s argument in Being and God is heavily dependent on his dissertation Puntel, Analogie und
Geschichtlichkeit: Philosophiegeschichtlich-kritischer Versuch über das Grundproblem der Metaphysik. The
most important part, “Das Denken des Thomas von Aquin als summarisch-unreflektiertes Seins- und
Analogiedenken,” is republished as part II of his ———, Auf der Suche nach dem Gegenstand und Theoriestatus
der Philosophie, 35-143. 526
Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 231f, 257. Cf. ———, S&B, 447f.
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said to be what “all call ‘God’.”527
It is an error, Puntel argues, because the term “god” enters
the philosophical debate instantly, not as a determined philosophical concept, but suddenly
and silently filled by its content as taken from the domain of religion. It is also highly
contestable whether what everyone calls “God,” in Aquinas’ days as in ours, is in any
meaningful way identical to the necessary absolute that is established through his five
philosophical ways.528
Furthermore, the argument ultimately reduces God to a being (ens,
Seiende) among beings.
Balthasar shares Puntel’s intuition in this respect in that he wants to avoid forgetfulness of
Being in the Heideggerian sense and an analogical procedure that deduces the nature of God
from his creation, making of him an ens supremum or a super-be-er. Both thinkers rightly
oppose a way of thinking that ultimately makes of the scholastic similitudo a god that is
nothing more than a prolonged necessary function or explanation of created beings. Balthasar,
however, does not explicitly interpret Thomas’ five ways as category mistakes in the same
sense as Puntel. A precise judgment on Thomas’ proofs would require another study, because
that must involve an interpretation of how they fit into his thought at large. However, if they
are, as Puntel argues, to be taken strictly as proofs of the existence of the Christian God, and
not as something like a formal philosophical opening for the same, they are mistaken because
they conclude more than the argument allows. Taken in this sense they are not clear on the
relation between theology and philosophy.
The rejection of a simplistic version of similitudo, the similitude between God and creation,
may be taken to entail that what exists between them is only an absolute dissimilitudo, that
God is totally different from everything created and thus utterly unknown and unknowable.
Hence we have the problem of negative theology on our hands. A determined universal
philosophical-theological doctrine of truth, as that includes a notion of what the truth of God
is and how it can be known, must include a position concerning the legitimacy and
significance of negative theology, or perhaps better, negative philosophy. Realizing that,
Puntel’s critique of the traditional metaphysical version of analogy is not only a rejection of
different kinds of onto-theology (vs. overemphasizing similitudo), but also a rethinking of the
527 ———, B&G, 34-9.
528 Thus, Puntel remarks, these arguments are erroneously seen as philosophical arguments, but they may have a
stronger internal coherence if seen as a part of Thomas’ comprehensive theological works. A classical example
that possibly questions whether all call this “God” is Blaise Pascal’s (1623-62) distinction in his Mémorial
between the god of “the philosophers and the scholars,” the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. For citation and
comments see ibid., 38.
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concept of transcendence and the tradition of negative or apophatic theology (vs.
overemphasizing dissimilitudo).529
Puntel’s critique of extreme versions of negative theology in Being and God is chiefly
motivated by two arguments. The first is the insight, also acknowledged by Thomas Aquinas,
that every negation is grounded in an affirmation. It is logically senseless to start denying
something about an X that is totally unknown. There is also, I would add, a significant
semantic difference between saying “A” and “not A” about God, and saying nothing, because
saying A always entails the not saying of a potentially endless number of other things. Hence,
it is not insignificant that philosophical and theological studies of God tend to focus more on
genuinely important theoretical concepts such as being, love, freedom, wisdom,
consciousness and so forth than on cake recipes, sports tactics, car mechanics or changes of
diapers. The choice of thematic arenas for negation is hardly arbitrary, as would be the
implication of a consistent denial of any- and everything about God as fully and totally other.
Words applied to describe God have positive semantic content regardless of whether they are
put as negations.
Puntel’s second argument, put in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. against Karl Barth, is
that when theologians name God the wholly and totally unknown other, how can they know
him and use absolute designations such as Almighty, Creator and so on to describe him? The
objection, in other words, is that it is impossible to affirm something about something or
someone utterly unknown and unknowable.
The tradition of the three ways (via affirmationis, via negationis and via excellentiae vel
eminentiae) is vulnerable to a similar critique even if it is far more developed than the
extreme version of negative theology. Both the analogical approach of the three ways and a
strong apophatic theology remain in the problematic starting point in finite beings, the former
by affirming them into the perfection of perfections, the latter by negating everything into
absurdity. The result is either a god that is a being among beings or a, in the end, nonexistent
or completely distant nothing-god. Puntel’s alternative approach starts with the universal
dimension of Being as a whole (and thus not in finite beings) and by way of analysis of its
self-explication in configurations or structures determines it as two-dimensional, consisting of
529 Ibid., 255-60.
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absolutely necessary Being and contingent being.530
Thus he avoids the problematic
argumentative pattern from be-ers to being.
As an alternative to the problematic assertions of negative theology, Puntel rethinks the
concept of transcendence. His thesis is that there is no absolute transcendence of absolute
necessary Being in relation to the contingent dimension of Being.531
Rather, God’s
transcendence is a total “auto-immanence,”532
because the contingent dimension of being is
posited-into-being “inside” the absolutely necessary dimension of Being. In other words,
transcendence occurs in a special sense within God and solely on account of his own freedom
and will, because there can be no outer dimension or “outside” to God if God totally embraces
the contingent dimension of being as its ontological condition.533
Transcendence is, as such,
always a “relative” transcendence. On account of this, Puntel speaks of panentheism in his
own sense, based on the etymology of the word: Everything in the contingent dimension of
being exists “in” God. To strengthen his argument in this context, Puntel (with apologies for
doing this in a philosophical work) cites the words of Paul in the speech at the Areopagus:
“They [human beings] should seek God, if they could touch him and find him; for He is not
distant from any of us. For within him we live, we move and we are, as even some of your
poets have said: we are of His kind” (Acts 17:27f).534
The appeal to this text shows that his
concept of the two-dimensional universal dimension of Being and God’s transcendence as
“auto-immanence” is not foreign to the biblical tradition. In theological terms, it is
strengthened because it receives exegetical support from an important biblical text.535
From this conception of contingent being as existing within absolute Being, Puntel argues that
it follows that the relation between God’s transcendence and immanence cannot be thought of
in the way it often is as inversely proportional (the greater the transcendence, the less the
immanence and v. v.). Instead, says Puntel, this relation is directly proportional: the greater or
more radical God’s transcendence is thought of, the greater and more radical God’s
530 Ibid., 219-30.
531 Ibid., 260-63.
532 A parallel expression to “self-immanence” that seeks to make some of the same points on the basis of
Balthasar is the German Transimmanenz Gottes [transimmanence of God], used in Tinnefeldt, “Ekstasis der
Liebe und Einfaltung des Glaubens: eine Untersuchung zur Frage nach der Mitte und Einheit der christlichen
Wahrheit bei Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 69-72. 533
Cf. “there is nothing outside the divinity not created by and in reference to the divinity.” Johnson, “Christ and
Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 99. 534
Cited from Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 262. Emphasis there. 535
The Areopagus speech is one of few texts in the NT where the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ interacts
explicitly with (pagan) philosophical notions of God (or gods).
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immanence must also be.536
Balthasar has similar expressions in his writings, often flowing
from his interpretation of the similitude-dissimilitude of analogy. A clear one is from Truth Is
Symphonic: “the more [God] is immanent, the more he is transcendent.”537
This is the case because God, as Creator (Puntel: absolutely necessary Being as absolute
creating), by the very act of creating, ontologically constitutes both God’s transcendence and
immanence vis-à-vis the world. This way of thinking is close to the way Balthasar thinks of
the simultaneity of difference and likeness between Creator and creation. The term “directly
proportional,” however, might lead one to think in the direction of some kind of deducibility
of transcendence from immanence and immanence from transcendence in purely
philosophical terms. The Christological emphasis of Balthasar is important in this respect,
because it is the concrete expression of transcendence present in immanence. When thought
holistic in both creative and redemptive terms, Christology is also an important reminder that
the transcendence of God is better conceived as an infinite qualitative distance between
Creator and creation as already related, than in general terms as an abyss or gulf between two
dimensions that are originally unrelated.538
As pointedly put in Johnson’s summary of
Balthasar (cited above): “that which grounds the dissimilitudo is identical to that which
grounds the similitudo,” namely the creation of the world in the Son. Thus created being, with
respect to its space, time, existence, finiteness or any other aspect, is always surrounded by,
has its source in and is contained “within” God: created space as God’s withdrawing to make
room for creation, created time as eternity opening itself to duration and pouring itself out into
536 Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 263.
537 Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism, 122. Cf. “God’s ever-greater immanence in
ever-greater transcendence.” Ibid., 134. 538
Schindler makes this point in criticism of Przywara, following Balthasar, in Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic
Structure of Truth, 48-50. The notion of “infinite qualitative distance” used in connection with analogous
theological discourse is inspired by David B. Hart; see as important examples David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of
the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 232, 301, 357; David Bentley
Hart, “The Destiny of Christian Metaphysics: Reflections on the Analogia Entis,” in The Analogy of Being, ed.
Thomas Joseph White (2011), 401. Hart’s version of analogia entis as a whole is, however, vulnerable to the
criticisms put forward here (both from my discussion and Schindler’s against Przywara), because it is marked by
a kind of absolute difference or transcendence (which is for the most part conceived as quantitative) that
ultimately cannot carry the weight of immanence. “The form of Christ” also enters his thinking of theological
analogy only at the end, Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, 317. Cf. Hart, “The
Destiny of Christian Metaphysics: Reflections on the Analogia Entis,” 409f. Although this is to some extent a
matter of presentation, it may be a sign that Hart’s theological metaphysics has not been subjected fully to
Balthasar’s notion that the person of Christ is so concrete and central that we must start with him when speaking
of analogy in theological terms (cf. the important citation from TeolHist above).
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it, existence as God’s gift in making created be-ers, the finite as finite by always being
delimited by the infinite.539
The Norwegian scholar Asle Eikrem has given further proposals to determinate how the
relation between transcendence/immanence and similitudo/dissimilitudo may be understood
coherently. Eikrem’s dissertation Ontology and Religious Discourses is a thorough discussion
of the ontological conditions of religious discourse from the perspective of the philosophy of
religion. The subject is discussed in the theoretical framework of Puntel (though also
informed by Ingolf Dalferth), and starts with an analysis of the thoughts of Erica Appelros,
Dewey Z. Phillips and Paul Ricoeur. Eikrem’s main conclusion is that religious discourse is
“the self-expression of being in its religious orientation,”540
a conclusion expressing central
lines of thought in Puntel’s conception. Although Eikrem does not go into philosophical
theology at any length,541
he has some points scattered around in his dissertation and an
outlook near the end that give a very promising direction for an explicitly theological
treatment of the phenomenon of negative theology. For our purposes it is worth noting the
way in which Eikrem spells out in a refined theoretical language some of the consequences of
Balthasar’s biblical-dogmatic deliberations on negative theology that are not fully
theoretically explicated by him. Balthasar’s interpretation of negative theology is marked by
an attempt to take seriously the paradoxical statements of biblical texts regarding the
coincidence of knowing and unknowing of God.542
Eikrem formulates this concern in
language typical of Puntel, relating it explicitly to the notion of creation-based relative
transcendence already spoken of:
539 Cf. these remarks on Balthasar by Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von
Balthasar.” “In Christ a common space is made in which creation and Creator can meet; but it is a commonality
secured not by being a point higher than both or outside of both in which they can meet as equals, but rather it is
the space of the divine interiority making room within itself for the reality of created being” (126). “To employ a
simplistic spatial analogy, if the being of God is everywhere, and all other beings, if they are to exist, must be
somewhere, then other beings can only exist if the divine being withdraws from some places in such a way as to
make room for them” (148). In creating, “God is now no longer expressly filling all reality, but is now latent in
all reality” (151). 540
Asle Eikrem, “Ontology and Religious Discourses: The Ontological Conditions of Religious Discourses
Reconstructed in Connection With Philosophical Perspectives Provided by Dewey Z. Phillips, Erica Appelros
and Paul Ricoeur” (MF Norwegian School of Theology, 2011), 190, cf. 347, 349. 541
Although perhaps more than expected from an early footnote: “in this dissertation I will not be engaging in
any kind of philosophical theology.” Ibid., 11. 542
See 9.2. Most central to Balthasar is Eph 3:19 (on knowing the love of Christ that transcends knowing). We
could also refer to the two halves of John 1:18, and Paul’s self-description in Col 3:12-16. There he
paradoxically says that those who are “perfectly mature” (teleioi, v. 15) must have in mind what he has in mind
(v. 12-13): that he has not yet grasped (elabon) the fullness (but, more importantly, is grasped by Christ), nor is
he yet perfect (teteleiōmai).
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In religious discourse transcendence is not beyond determinability, expressibility and explicability, but rather
beyond what we actually have determined, expressed and explicated at any given moment. Transcendence is
always excessive in relation to actualized religious discourses. Theologically this excessiveness might come
to expression in determining God as an absolute (-necessary) free Being to which all contingent being as a
whole is related, i.e., as Creator.543
When God creates God transcends contingent existence as its ontological
condition. Because the transcendence of God means that God embraces all immanent existence, the more
transcendent God is, the more immanent God is. Thus if God is cut off from immanent being, […] God
becomes less transcendent, not more so. No god is more transcendent than a God on which all finite existence
is ontologically dependent.544
As in Balthasar’s interpretation of the maior dissimilitudo, Eikrem emphasizes that the kind of
unknowability resulting from God’s infinite excessiveness in every respect does not annul the
possibility of epistemological access to God, which is made possible through God’s self-
expression in creation and incarnation. What it annuls is the epistemological hybris of having
grasped God fully, totally and once and for all.
The observant reader will note that the reservations and concessions regarding the
epistemological access to truth presented in the philosophical discussion in the previous main
chapter in this way are elevated and perfected by the theological way of speaking. Both
worldly and divine truth is known partially, but really known.545
Truth is, in all its aspects,
connected to this excessive giving of God in creating and relating to creation, whose
Trinitarian dimensions will be further elaborated below. Christ can unite worldly and divine
truth in his person by uniting worldly and divine being, and this happens as the opening of
finite partiality to the excess of God by means of this self-expression.
Another important insight in Eikrem’s dissertation is that silence is a part of the self-
expression of the religious dimension of being.546
Like Balthasar, Eikrem does not follow the
543 Eikrem in a footnote here refers to Puntel in several places in Being and God and Lorenz B. Puntel, “Kann es
Gelingen, innerhalb eines Systems aus Raum und Zeit zu einer Gesamtschau der Dinge zu Gelangen?” in Kann
es Gelingen, innerhalb eines Systems aus Raum und Zeit zu einer Gesamtschau der Dinge zu Gelangen?, ed.
Thomas Busse (Neubrandenburg: Rethra-verlag, 2005). 544
Eikrem, “Ontology and Religious Discourses: The Ontological Conditions of Religious Discourses
Reconstructed in Connection With Philosophical Perspectives Provided by Dewey Z. Phillips, Erica Appelros
and Paul Ricoeur,” 342. Emphasis mine. 545
Cf. 6.3 et al. David Bentley Hart says similarly that analogy is “a discourse of truth that has disabused itself of
the notion that truth is a thing only to be grasped; truth is a dynamic donation, a splendor shared by the God who
is always declaring his love in the gift of his ousia, within which splendor infinite progress is possible:
knowledge that knows also the ever greater unknowing that calls it forth and onward.” Hart, The Beauty of the
Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, 317. 546
“In order to be meaningful silence must be expressible as silence,” Eikrem, “Ontology and Religious
Discourses: The Ontological Conditions of Religious Discourses Reconstructed in Connection With
Philosophical Perspectives Provided by Dewey Z. Phillips, Erica Appelros and Paul Ricoeur,” 278.
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tendency in certain ways of conceiving negative theology to think of silence as some kind of
absence, as something beyond language that annuls or sublates language. Rather, they both
view silence as an element within the dimension of language (in the SSP conceived as a part
of the expressibility of being) that perfects it in its religious use. Silence acts in a universe of
discourse, that is, where language is used, not as an absence of meaning or conceptualizing or
anything of that sort, but as a very expressive way of expressing. Paradoxically, silence is a
function of language, comparable to the function of a caesura in a musical work.547
Theologically speaking, silence expresses the conviction that words, as limited by the use of
finite speakers, fail to express everything in the widest sense in a final and absolute way: God
cannot be exhausted, but is always excessive to his being grasped, since God is infinite.
Silence does not result from lack of knowledge of what to speak of, but from the exceeding
measure of the gift given. It is contemplation and adoration, not skepticism.
Analogia entis Reinterpreted as Katalogical Analogy
Puntel’s convincing critique of the traditional metaphysical doctrine of analogy and certain
forms of negative theology makes it necessary to discuss an abandonment or reinterpretation
of analogy. This section aims to discuss the eventual abandonment, or if retained, the precise
meaning of the terms analogy and analogia entis. The tension in using analogy language is
especially strong from a philosophical perspective, since analogy, unrelated to history, cannot
lead to a fully determined concept of absolute Being according to the SSP. But Puntel has
philosophical room for the methodological watershed into theology, the examination of the
historical enacting of the relationship of absolute free creating Being and contingent being (in
Christian terms: the revelation of God).548
The possibility is thus left open that some
theological version of analogy that is not subject to the criticism of the finite starting point or
extreme negative theology may be coherent. The discussion proceeds by first discussing the
legitimacy of using being language of both God and creatures. Second, the adequacy of the
term “analogy” is discussed, before it is reinterpreted or further determined as “katalogical
analogy.” I will argue that analogia entis can be upheld as a term if it is coherently
theologically related to Christ. The likeness-unlikeness between God and the world and their
relation of asymmetrical ontological dependency is the condition that makes revelation-based
547 Like a caesura in music, “a negation or silencing is always anaphoric, i.e., it is constituted by what
semantically and pragmatically precedes it.” Ibid., 338. Emphasis mine. Eikrem here refers to Ingolf Dalferth.
Cf. Jeremy S. Begbie, Theology, Music and Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 49. 548
Cf. 5.2.
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Christology possible and at the same time what revelation in Christ is the explication of as the
truth.
The term “analogy of being (entis),” the analysis above showed, provides a coherent
interpretation of Balthasar primarily when it is nuanced and seen in light of other formulations
of analogy (despite Balthasar’s frequent use of the term). But alternative terminology often
functions as restrictions on his thought more than clarifications. The same can be said
generally of some philosophical attempts to avoid the word “being.” Instead of making the
case clearer, it gets confused. In philosophical terminology “being” is the most basal category
available to describe ontological facts (onto- is from the participle of the Greek einai, to be).
One may try to escape this fact by resorting to speaking of existence or some other concept as
a more fundamental category, but that only makes at least as many problems as it solves.549
If
there is a relation between God and creatures, absolute and contingent being, this relation is
philosophically expressible in terms of being (not excluding the possibility that all concrete
expressions of it may be in need of further determination).
Naturally, the Scriptures apply this terminology as well. I have already (with Puntel) cited
Acts 17:28, where it is said that “we [human beings] are” (esmen; “have our being”) “in
God,” thus the is, the being or existence of created beings is related to God, which can also be
termed the one “who is (ho ōn) and who was (ho ēn) and is to come” (Rev 1:4.8; cf. in the
LXX Ex 3:14; Is 41:4; Wis 13:1) in biblical terminology.550
There is thus nothing
theologically suspect about applying being language to both God and creatures biblically
speaking, although there are, of course, ways to misuse as well as properly use this
terminology as every other terminology.
549 Cf. Puntel’s criticism of J.-L. Marion, who says that God is without B/being, but still exists, Puntel and White
(trans.), B&G, 314-9. 550
Another, perhaps even more suggestive text is John 1:1-5. The more and more widespread acknowledgement
of the textual reading chosen in NA27 in the transition between v. 3-4 (reading ho gegonen in v. 3 with what
follows, as NA27 and several recent translations do, e.g. NRSV) points to an analogy of being: The Word was
(ēn) in the beginning with God, and “that which had come to be (gegonen; “what was posited into being”) in him
was (ēn) life.” It is clear in this text, regardless of the textual problems and this variant reading that makes the
case even clearer, that created things are ontologically derived from the Logos of God, a fact that establishes a
relation between the Logos and created things: They are “his own” (ta idia, 1:11). The univocal evidence from
the early Fathers and the first punctuated manuscripts is the decisive text critical argument. It raises many further
questions on the exegesis of the resulting text, but those do not affect my argument here, which only points to the
use of “being” (ēn) and “life” (cf. the notion in John 5:26 that both the Son and the Father have life “in
themselves”) to describe a positive determination of both the Logos and created beings. See, with further
references, Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second ed. (Stuttgart:
Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 166f. A commentary that argues the same textual view and discusses more of
the related problems can be found in Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII: A New
Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible (London: Chapman, 1966), 6f, 25-27.
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Balthasar’s Thomistic concept of created esse has little if anything to commend to it from
Scripture. That, of course, has limited implications as long as it is presented as a strictly
philosophical notion. But according to the SSP, it is also philosophically problematic because
of its dependence on substance language and ontology. Puntel’s critique of the notions of esse
and essentia, the so-called real distinction in Thomistic thought, was touched on briefly in 7.2
in order to assess some and reject other aspects of truth as mystery arising from Balthasar’s
thinking. The main point was the unintelligibility of substance/essence, which turns out to be
some metaphysical X or “other” that remains at a low level of determination. This critique
holds even more in a theological perspective. Creation cannot be considered as God giving
being to some kind of something that in a mysterious sense already is, exists or is capable of
receiving being, before it has been given being, and hence is not, does not exist.551
The
implication of such a pattern of thinking is that God is not the creator of everything (for the
essence is already present when God creates) and that he thus does not create ex nihilo.
At this point, however, it is also necessary to touch upon the intelligibility of the Thomistic
notion of God as ipsum esse per se subsistens (Being itself subsisting by itself), presupposed
and often relied upon by Balthasar. Puntel harshly criticizes this notion in Thomas’ thought as
the corollary opposite of the unintelligibility of the metaphysical otherness of essentia552
and
as empty words, because of the underdevelopment of the notions of “being,” “is” and “have
being.”553
As read literally within the original Thomistic framework, Puntel seems to have
given this notion a fatal blow. However, he also shows how Thomas’ different approaches to
being and God in his writings imply that the phrase carries intuitions that can be built into a
coherent theory.554
The central one is the notion that contingent being is absolutely
ontologically dependent upon absolutely necessary minded (personal) Being, while absolute
Being does not depend on nor is ontologically conditioned by anything. The analysis of
Balthasar’s thinking has shown that he thinks similarly about this ontological dependency,
although within a less developed conceptual framework than Puntel, and without questioning
551 Cf. Puntel’s remark on Aquinas: “Das ‘esse’ wird einem Etwas, einem Subjekt zugeschrieben, es kommt ihm
zu. Diese Subjekt ist das, was wir oben das metaphysische Andere gennant haben.” Puntel, Auf der Suche nach
dem Gegenstand und Theoriestatus der Philosophie, 77. 552
“Im ersten Fall [that is, in created beings as the real distinction] ist nach Thomas das ‘esse’ gegenüber der
‘essentia’ und dem ‘suppositum’ ein Anderes, im zweiten [that is, in God as ipsum esse per se subsistens] wird
eine Identität behauptet. Aber was heiβt das?” Ibid., 125. 553
“Wenn Thomas also die Differenz von Gott und Geschöpf hingegen sein Sein nicht ist, sondern hat, so ist
eine solche Erklärung sowohl wegen der Zweideutigkeit des esse […] als aug wegen der Undurchdachtheit des
ist in der Aussage selbst eine leere Formel.” Ibid., 126. 554
Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 237.
130
the intelligibility of Thomas’ phrase, instead giving it a very positive evaluation. This
intuition can claim scriptural support from the notion of all beings as created “in” the
Son/Logos (John 1:3f.10; Col 1:16f) and God’s continual support of his creatures (Ps.
104:29f),555
as well as the notion of God as the source of life or the one who has life in
himself and not as a gift from another (Ps. 36:10; John 5:26). In this sense it is the case that it
is an analogy of being – that is, a pattern of unlikeness and likeness in the mode of being –
between the contingent and the absolute, necessary dimensions of being. Both dimensions
are, but not in the same way. God is in virtue of his own being and is thus totally independent
of anything regarding his being, while created beings are in ontological dependency to God’s
gift of life.
From the criticism of Thomistic thinking above, it also follows that much of what Balthasar
says of nonsubsistent created esse as analogous to God is problematic. There may be (and
probably is) much insight to be gathered from Balthasar, Siewerth and Ulrich regarding being
and love, the coincidence of richness and poverty, and the notion of God’s kenosis in creation,
but these insights would need to be inserted into a more coherent framework than that in
which it presently stands. But Balthasar does not reduce everything he has to say about the
analogia entis to this problematic concept, as the analysis pointed out. His thought can
therefore still be an important resource for the articulation of an analogous relation between
contingent and absolute being in a Christological framework in what follows.
The conclusion regarding being language is that it remains, if consciously and coherently
applied, defensible to express the ontological relation of God and creation, both
philosophically and theologically. When speaking of different kinds of analogy, which may
be helpful to express important further qualifications and aspects that are central to
methodological or other considerations, analogia entis is always consciously or unconsciously
presupposed. If someone insists that the use of being in this way by definition subsumes God
under a concept that encompasses God and the world and thus is more transcendent or
original than God, the answer to that objection is that we have no other words to speak of God
than the ones current in human language. Other words or concepts would be equally in danger
of making this subsuming, be it love, life or other words of great contemporary currency.
Even God has no other means to express himself inside creation than by means of created
things and created language (hence the incarnation). Eventual misinterpretations of the
555 The explicitly pneumatological aspect in this text will be further unfolded in Part III.
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concept of being that make it inapplicable to God should therefore not be met by abandoning
the term, but by refining it. In this regard one should carefully note that the SSP does not
apply being to the absolute and contingent dimension of being in the same sense, since the
very use of the term “being” differentiates between the being of God and the being of the
world.556
When seen as a whole, being is constituted by the world as ontologically dependent
upon and “within” God, and thus “being as a whole” or the primordial dimension of Being is
not a concept that encompasses God and creature in any sense that is more problematic than
the notion that God encompasses the world, or than using the words “creator” and “creation.”
According to the logic opposed here, these terms might subsume God and the world under the
concept of creation.
Returning to the concept of analogy (analogia), it has been offered criticism by Puntel
because of its traditional connotations, and because the prefix ana- points to an approach from
below upwards that starts (and thus, consequently, remains) in finite beings. On the other
hand, Puntel acknowledges the influence on his thinking of Aquinas’ ontological proof,
granting that even his own version in a certain sense starts from below. Puntel speaks of the
(self-)explication of the configurations or structures of the universal dimension of Being,
expressible by the modalities as constituted by necessary and contingent Being. There exists a
positive and philosophically explicable relation between those differentiated, but also similar
modes of Being (as both are modes of Being) in his thought. A clear example of an analogous
move from below in his thinking is the considerations concerning human and divine freedom.
In Being and God he says: “The importance of the freedom of absolute creating becomes clear
through considerations of human freedom,”557
that is, we can learn how a human is free only
by inquiring into the practicing of freedom of his or her history, and that must also be the case
with absolute Being. It is no accident that in Structure and Being he calls this a “wholly
analogous situation”558
between human and divine freedom. In such formulations he clearly
operates (at least philosophically considered) in a pattern from below. So, even if Puntel uses
the term “analogy” only rarely, and rejects the Scholastic procedure termed “analogy”
556 “The two dimensions do not have the same status; instead, because one of the dimensions is necessary, the
other–the contingent–is subordinate to it.” Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 230, cf. 231ff. 557
Ibid., 264f. 558
———, S&B, 459. The German text reads (p. 611): “Ganz analog verhält es sich.” The same idea is phrased
differently, thus indicating the meaning of “analogous” here, in Being and God: “The importance of the freedom
of absolute creating becomes clear through consideration of human freedom. There is only one way further to
determine, as free, the free human being: one must investigate the history of the human being’s free decisions
and acts. The situation with absolute creating is no different: its further determinations can be discovered only
through investigation of the history of its freedom.” ———, B&G.
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explicitly, his reasoning at some points can be termed “analogical” in the sense that is
developed here. Puntel also emphasizes that God’s “acting” in history is not imposed and
enforced on created being, but proper to the created world as a structured whole; this “acting”
is the actualization of potentialities native to the structure of the human being.559
This notion
comes very close to analogia entis as the condition of possibility of divine revelation in
Balthasar’s thought, which above was with Kasper’s apt analysis described as the
Ansprechbarkeit of the world and human beings for God.
The term “analogy” has its origins in Greek philosophy, and receives a fuller determination as
a philosophical concept through the Scholastics. It is not necessary to recount this whole
history here.560
The theological use by (Przywara and, following him) Balthasar clearly
belongs to what is commonly named analogia proportionalitatis [analogy of proportionality],
which refers to a comparison of two relata that implicitly are conceived as similar-dissimilar,
because they are not identical, nor totally different, nor unrelated.561
Thus a difficulty in using
the term, presumably also important to Puntel, is that it suggests two relata that are, as it were,
located at the same level. Important to Puntel is that the modalities are dimensions of a
comprehensive universal dimension of Being, which through the act of creation explicates
itself as two-dimensional. His notion of relative transcendence and panentheism serves to
make this point. However, when this explication has taken place, and made explicit in
thought, it is not a decisive argument against the use of the term “analogy.” For when the
absolute and contingent dimensions of Being are brought into philosophical consideration, the
(self-)explication of their configurations shows that they relate to each other as similar-
dissimilar. Thus it is possible to speak of an ontological analogy (in the sense of a similar-
dissimilar pattern) between those dimensions, without resorting to a misconstrued procedure
from below in order to predicate attributes to the Absolute by means of the contingent. We
can think analogically, as Puntel emphasizes, only if the whole universal dimension of Being
is thought from the beginning, and not derived by patterns of thought from below.
The term “analogy” even has some biblical currency. According to the Book of Wisdom (or
The Wisdom of Solomon), the Creator (genesiourgos) can be “seen analogously” (analogōs
559 ———, S&B, 459.
560 For a useful summary of the history of the term and concept see John R. Betz, “After Barth: A New
Introduction to Erich Przywara’s Analogia Entis,” in The Analogy of Being, ed. Thomas Joseph White (2011),
45-50. 561
Cf. Balthasar, TL 2, 316.
133
theōreitai562
) from the greatness and beauty of created things (Wis 13:5).563
This text is an
important part of the background for the texts in the NT that speak most clearly of a revelation
of God through his works as creator (Rom 1:18-23; Acts 14:15-17; 17:24-28).564
This is not a
decisive argument of any sort, but it provides an opening for positive evaluation of this
terminology when expressing the theological points central to such biblical texts.
Even Balthasar’s often somewhat cryptic ways of speaking show consciousness of some
tension regarding “analogy” as an appropriate term, as when he speaks of a “very strong
downwards-tending analogy” contrasting the “upwards-tending analogia entis” in
Bonaventure’s thought in GL 2,565
or when he activates the term “kata-logic” in TL 2.
Although Balthasar does not use the terms “katalogy” or “katalogical” very often, it is quite
appropriate to describe the train of his thought.566
Wolfgang Treitler has made a promising
attempt to refine Balthasar’s use of words related to analogy. Treitler’s phrase “katalogische
Analogik” [“catalogical analogy”]567
catches important points in Balthasar’s version of
562 NRSV translates “comes a corresponding perception.” LSJ Greek-English Lexicon: seen or apprehended
“proportionately.” 563
The question of the status of the deuterocanonical books (the Apocrypha) cannot be discussed at length here.
My argument does not require that the Book of Wisdom has full canonical status. The point is that the word
employed and the way of reasoning implied by it is not foreign to the biblical tradition. And even if these books
do not have full canonical status, the texts they contain that are rather explicitly referred to in the NT must count
as part of the Old Covenant tradition that is the context of the revelation given through Christ. 564
Cf. Balthasar, “Movement toward God,” 47-55. 565
———, GL 2, 294. 566
Cf. The remarks in Wolfgang Klaghofer-Treitler, Gotteswort im Menshenwort: Inhalt und Form von
Theologie nach Hans Urs von Balthasar (Innsbruck: Tyrolia Verlag, 1992), 21f. 567
Wolfgang Treitler, “True Foundations of Authentic Theology,” in Balthasar: Life and Work, ed. David L.
Schindler (1991), 170-8, 181f. In another article in the same volume Peter Heinrici says similarly, with reference
to the last half of TL 2, that Balthasar’s version of analogia entis overcomes Przywara’s position and turns
“more and more into a ‘cata-logy’.” Peter Heinrici, “The Philosophy of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in Balthasar:
Life and Work, ed. David L. Schindler (1991), 165f. Klaghofer-Treitler expands and develops his notion of
“katalogische Analogik” in his following works: Klaghofer-Treitler, Gotteswort im Menshenwort: Inhalt und
Form von Theologie nach Hans Urs von Balthasar, esp. 385-477; ———, Karfreitag: Auseinandersetzung mit
Hans Urs von Balthasars Theologik, Salzburger Theologische Studien (Innsbruck: Tyrolia Verlag, 1997),
esp.171-193. Palakeel is another scholar who reflects extensively on analogy and katalogy in Balthasar. His
approach is informed by the articles of Treitler and Heinrici. In his ecumenical study of analogical discourse in
theology he writes: “Balthasar’s analogy is not merely ana-logical, but cata-logical. It is not man seeking God
but God seeking and finding man. Hence, the descending agape of God (revelation) has primacy over the
ascending eros (natural theology, mysticism) of man. For this reason the objective evidence has priority over the
subjective evidence and hence analogy is no more a merely logical (in the sense of philosophical) principle but a
theological one. In speaking about God, human logic on its own is powerless, but it is empowered by God to
speak about him. However, in this process the human element is not destroyed but elevated and perfected. The
best example of this is Jesus Christ, who is the universal concrete and concrete universal. In this sense all God
talk is assumed in the Word become flesh, who in turn is the concrete analogia entis. The catalogical
understanding does not destroy the ana-logical perspective. What is begun in creation is fulfilled in the
incarnation, God assuming flesh into his life. Hence the ana-logical and cata-logical perspectives are integrated
into christo-logical understanding of man’s relationship with God.” Palakeel, The Use of Analogy in Theological
Discourse: an Investigation in Ecumenical Perspective, 123f. Cf. the whole section 112-124. There are
problematic aspects in this text. In particular, the notion of Christ as an “example” might be subjected to
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analogy regarding, as it were, its direction, and can serve as a line of demarcation for the
positive use of the term “analogy.” It describes a Christological analogy that builds on a
movement from above downwards that fulfills the imperfect movement from below upwards.
The same concern is clearly present in Bonaventure’s notion of theological reflection as a
condescensio [going down (cf. kata) together] with Christ to the world, from God’s
perspective. Treitler’s whole conception, however, has tendencies in the direction of a pure
dialectic between analogy and catalogy that makes the former nothing more than a part of the
latter.568
The use of his phrase is thus not a yes to his work as a whole, and it should be read
primarily in the sense it is given through the presentation and further interpretation here.
Treitler roots his “catalogical analogy” ontologically in the three kenoses (loving and humble
self-gifts) of God: the intra-Trinitarian kenosis in the generation of the Son by the Father and
the procession of the Spirit, God’s kenosis in creation and God’s kenosis in salvation.569
Treitler writes:
Catalogical analogy […] negates the formation of any analogy that sustains itself, as it were, by means of an
abstract substrate of a concept of creation that has been degraded to pure nature and that fails to reflect for its
specificity on creation as the kenosis of God or within God and on its necessary determination by the event of
the covenant in salvation history and the peak of that event in the salvific event, Jesus Christ. Rather, the
positive formation of analogy, as the opening up of the world’s truth and thus of its character as analogy to
God, can only be gained in the vision of this world’s being which is reached in the condescensio of God
himself. […] [B]eing proves to be analogous by way of catalogy[. …] [I]n this catalogical analogy there
occurs at the same time the disclosure of what lies in being as a creation from God (and thus again
catalogically), namely, that it must have been able to be prepared for the new reality which could no longer
be deduced from it and which can therefore be determined in its truth only by way of catalogy.570
Analogy viewed this way is clearly not a procedure that starts from below, from pure nature
as isolated from God in order to prove his existence. Created beings are here seen from
criticism, because Christ for Balthasar is not an example of how analogy is understood as a theological principle
and how the human element is not destroyed but elevated and perfected, but the (only) case of it that draws
everything else into himself, the Maß of analogy. What is worth noting from the cited passage, however, is the
thought that ana and kata meet and fulfill each other in Christ, and that this is linked to the fact that analogia
entis is a not a pure philosophical-logical concept, but a theological-ontological doctrine. That what is begun in
creation is fulfilled in the incarnation is also a fitting description of the relation between nature and grace in
Balthasar’s thought, as argued above. 568
See the criticism in Schumacher, Perichorein, 53,112. 569
Balthasar’s use of the concept of kenosis is indebted to Sergei Bulgakov. The most important passage for the
development of this notion is perhaps Balthasar, TD 4, 313ff. See esp. 313f, 323, 338. It is important to many
aspects of his Trinitarian theology but cannot be pursued at length in this dissertation because of space
considerations. For a thorough discussion see Katy Leamy, “A Comparison of the Kenotic Trinitarian Theology
of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Sergei Bulgakov” (2012). 570
Treitler, “True Foundations of Authentic Theology,” 174. Emphasis mine.
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beginning as related to God. And by the emphasis that analogy is proven or opened by
katalogy, analogy is here freed from the suspicion of illegitimate natural theology.571
Katalogical analogy understood as “the opening up of the world’s truth” to God’s kata-
logically expressed truth describes Balthasar’s notion of the one truth revealed in Christ in a
comprehensive way that can be brought into dialogue with the philosophical perspective of
Puntel, who looks to history as the place where absolute creating Being can manifest its
freedom.572
The emphasis on the kata movement implies that what Christ expresses in being the expositor
of God within the history of finite being is more than created beings could be seen to express
by themselves. The fundamental theological insight is that this expression is possible only
because the Logos comes to “his own” and finds those beings as available means of
expression being ready made for it through their creation “through him,” thus bearing the
stamp of the Logos. We therefore have to speak of the (kata-logical) primacy of the archetype
in speaking of analogy.573
It is the Logos as image and archetype who is expressed both in
creation and through the creaturely images applied as means of expression in the incarnation.
The point of analogia entis, understood kata-logically, is not that God is identical to anything
we know (to conceive it this way would be to make the error of the finite starting point and
thus transgress the maior dissimilitudo), but that creation is God’s likeness.574
The primacy of
the archetype further implies that every worldly sign or metaphor remains an unstable and
provisional side of analogy, while God is constant and surpasses every sign.575
It is the
revelation of Christ that defines analogy, not analogy that defines Christ. Even the concept of
571 Cf. the remarks in Klaghofer-Treitler, Gotteswort im Menshenwort: Inhalt und Form von Theologie nach
Hans Urs von Balthasar, 20. 572
Klaghofer-Treitler’s notion of catalogical analogy is implicitly related to history, as he underscores that
salvation history is the locus of catalogy. He even at some points explicitly connects it to history (Geschichte,
Geschichtlichkeit), as the involvement of God with the world (referring to Balthasar’s Theo-Drama) or as the
concrete reality (Wirklichkeit) where catalogy finds its place. See ibid., 370; ———, Karfreitag:
Auseinandersetzung mit Hans Urs von Balthasars Theologik, 187. Historicity is, however, not worked through in
a way that satisfies the critical concerns of Puntel. 573
Balthasar says: “analogia entis […] makes of the finite a shadow, trace, simile and image of the infinite.”
Balthasar, GL 5, 627. One must ask whether statements like this fit his idea presented earlier that analogia entis
tends “upwards.” Shadows, traces, similes and images must always start with the archetype. The notion of
archetypality as the basis of analogy is also pointed out by Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of
Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 29f. 574
The same point made in striking German: “Die Welt ist Geschöpf Gottes (ontisch katalogisch), nicht aber
Gott Abbild der Welt (kognitiv analogisch).” Schumacher, Perichorein, 43. 575
Cf. Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, 310-12.
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being is ultimately applicable only to God as absolute Being, and only analogously to beings
in their contingency.576
This primacy of the archetype can be supported by many biblical texts. A central one is Eph.
3:14f, where Paul577
says that he bows his knees in prayer “to the Father (patēr), from whom
all fatherhood (patria) in heaven and on earth is named.”578
The point of the text is not
primarily that God is like an earthly father, but that all fatherhood, all “family-ness,” on earth
is only a reflection, a likeness, of God the Father.579
Similarly, all mother care on earth
remains an analogous reflection of God’s absolute motherly love: Even though a mother may
forget her baby at the breast (as unthinkable as it is!), “I will not forget you!” (Is 49:15). The
same pattern can be seen with respect to the central notion of love in Johannine texts: “We
love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). And even more kata-logically: “By this we
know love: that he [Christ] laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16).580
The texts discussed
above that use onto-language of God and creation also fit well here. Further could be added
the thought of man as imago Dei and a host of texts applying metaphors to God that are
stretched and expanded as they approach the archetype. What is significant in theological
perspective concerning this primacy of the archetype is that it can be understood only in
Trinitarian fashion. As such, this version of analogy is something very different from a
Scholastic philosophical treatment of the Deus unus that later surprisingly turns out to be
Trinitarian. Rather we have arrived at what Junius Johnson calls a turning of a corner in the
history of analogia entis, which is now conceived as Trinitarian and Christocentric.581
The
576 Cf. Balthasar’s argument in Balthasar, TL 2, 312.
577 The Pauline authorship of Ephesians is debated in modern scholarship and is not strictly important to the
argument made here. For a comprehensive and updated discussion concluding that Pauline authorship is the most
likely, see Harold W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002),
2-61. 578
David Bentley Hart alludes to this text to make the same point in Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The
Aesthetics of Christian Truth, 310, 312. 579
My exegesis here would be disputed by some because the lexical support of patria as meaning “fatherhood”
is rather scarce. It is often translated as “family” in Eph. 3:15. What this interpretation fails to note is the
wordplay between patēr and patria in the Greek text. The “naming” referred to here is obviously kata-logical. 580
Cf. Balthasar’s assertion: “The vitality and freedom of eternal love in the realm of Divine Being constitutes
the prototype for what love can be, at its best, in the realm of creaturely existence and development.” Balthasar,
TD 5, 79f. Emphasis mine. 581
“This turns a corner in the history of the analogia entis, for it places the Trinity centrally in view as that to
which man’s being is analogous in a way that is philosophically specific and robust. Further, the Trinity has been
brought into the story of analogy by a greater emphasis on the person and centrality of Christ, for not only is it
only in Christ that the analogia entis appears, but Christ himself is concretely this measure of the likeness and
ever greater unlikeness, and becomes in himself the living analogy. As such, he is the measure of Trinitarian
being itself, which both expresses and grounds likeness and unlikeness.” Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The
Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 108. The importance of the Trinitarian perspective for Balthasar’s
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creature’s imaging of God is possible because the Logos is the supreme Image of God and the
archetype of creation (Col 1:15.17; Hebr 1:2-3). This character of the Logos as inner and
outer expression (cf. Bonaventure) of the Godhead is what makes the Logos suitable for
incarnation (cf. John 1). When the Logos expresses God adequately in the incarnation, the
divine truth finds a home (ta idia, John 1:11) in worldly truth, which opens itself to this
surprising, yet well-known guest.582
On several occasions Balthasar uses the metaphor of a watermark to express the image and
likeness-character of created being.583
The image and likeness-character of created being is
like a “watermark of divine love […] imprinted on nature” that is brought to light when the
sign of absolute love appears, the light of the cross that illuminates all being and makes it
intelligible.584
This metaphor captures the central points of katalogical analogy as developed
here in a striking way. The watermark is there in nature, but it is not always seen in the
relative darkness of our world. When light appears, however, it has a clarity and splendor that
were not discernible beforehand.585
The quotation from Treitler above also linked katalogical analogy to the notion of pure nature
(natura pura). This link is not worked out thoroughly by Treitler. The concept was discussed
initially in § 5, assessing with de Lubac, Rahner, Puntel and Balthasar that this is at best a
limiting concept, because human beings are always already ontologically determined by
God’s will to self-communication through creation and God’s redemptive acts in history.
Philosophically, as emphasized by Puntel, the concept is unacceptable because it uses a
distinction acquired in a domain not accessible to philosophy (the theological distinction of
nature and grace) to delimitate the subject matter of philosophy. The notion of katalogical
analogy sheds further theological light on the rejection of this idea. Because the deepest
structures of the likeness of created being to God can be grasped only through the kata-logical
version of analogy is emphasized throughout Franks, “The Epiphany of Being: Trinitarian Analogia Entis and
the Transcendentals in Hans Urs von Balthasar.” 582
See for further explication Schindler, “Surprised by Truth: The Drama of Reason in Fundamental Theology.” 583
For further remarks on and references to Balthasar’s use of this metaphor see Lochbrunner, Analogia
Caritatis: Darstellung und Deutung der Theologie Hans Urs von Balthasars, 110; Michael Greiner, Drama der
Freiheiten: Eine Denkformanalyse zu Hans Urs von Balthasars trinitarischer Soteriologie (Münster: LIT Verlag,
2000), 70f, 77. 584
Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible, 142. The same idea is expressed in more technical, still metaphorical
language in TL 2 (in criticism of E. Jüngel): “when the light of revelation of grace shines (kata-logically) upon
created nature, it thereby confirms that the latter’s ascending ontological-epistemological analogy is essentially
true (the creature as imago),” (translation slightly altered). ———, TL 2, 273n109, G:248n3. 585
Cf. also Balthasar’s use of the metaphor of reflector lights that light up only when a light shines on them,——
, “Spirit and Institution,” in Explorations in Theology IV: Spirit and Institution (1995), 209.
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move, the attempt to define and unveil what pure nature is apart from it cannot acquire any
final results. There is no need, either philosophically or theologically, to suspend revelation in
order to access pure nature. The result of an investigation of pure nature (whatever that might
be) cannot exhaust the meaning of nature, in the same way as the watermark cannot be seen
clearly without light. Katalogical analogy implies that the world and its truth are always
already related to God and God’s truth and ready to receive it. But there is no doctrine, be it of
creation,586
sin or redemption, that can be constructed in its Christian fullness apart from the
form of Christ revealing the Trinity.
The Epistemological and Ontological Consequences of Sin
The rejection of pure nature implied in katalogical analogy further opens up to the question of
the current state of created nature, which can function as a part of an answer to why analogy is
not sufficient without kata-logy. The maxim that grace perfects and elevates nature implies
that nature is somehow defected or damaged, and not only preliminary, in relation to grace.587
To arrive at a determined way of speaking of analogy one must inquire into the question of sin
and evil and their consequences for the understanding of analogy. This question can only be
raised in a context of ecumenical controversy. Thus it must be remarked here that
methodologically, much of the following argument does arise more from my own evangelical-
lutheran tradition, based on interpretation of Scripture, than from Puntel’s and Balthasar’s
writings.
In the formula from Lateran IV, it is the distinction between God and creation that represents
the maior dissimilitudo that always keeps the knowledge of God in a relatively suspended
state of not being complete. According to this way of thinking, infinite progress in knowledge
of God would be possible and delightful not only in Paradise, but even in heaven, because
God is infinite, always-new love. In this perspective, Puntel’s warning against procedures that
work only ana-logically upwards from inner-worldly phenomena is a necessary one. It places
a general warning sign that the Creator cannot be fully exhausted through contemplation of
beings, no matter how pure their state may be. The Creator’s fullness can be disclosed only
kata-logically, as I have emphasized by the notion of the primacy of the archetype. In
586 Michael Hanby says strikingly with respect to this: “The only doctrine of creation that can uphold its own
internal demands must be thoroughly trinitarian and hence Christological.” Michael Hanby, “Creation as
Aesthetic Analogy,” in The Analogy of Being, ed. Thomas Joseph White (2011), 373. 587
Gratia non destruit sed elevat et perficit naturam [Grace does not destroy but elevates and perfects nature], as
Balthasar says, also implies: sanans naturam aegrotam [healing a diseased nature]. Balthasar, E, 17.
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Balthasar’s metaphor one can say that the artwork can give knowledge of the personality of
the artist, but never disclose the full truth about him.
However, the accessibility of the similitudo that the same formula speaks of must be qualified
by and methodologically aware of the current state of nature, including human reason. The
guiding question in the following will therefore be: What can man as sinner achieve of
knowledge of God by way of analogy from nature in its present state?
To answer this question a kata-logical method is unavoidable. Idealistic metaphysics or pure
philosophy (without the historical-hermeneutical examination of world history and history of
religions) cannot, by definition, make any significant contributions to this question, because
this starting point can only disclose that nature is what nature is in the present state.588
I will
therefore start with a glance at some scriptural texts. The Book of Wisdom says that the
Creator can be seen analogously from the greatness and beauty of created things (ktismata,
Wis 13:5), presumably as great and beautiful. This possible relative success of analogical
perception is reminiscent (and part of the background) of Paul’s words that God’s eternal
power and divinity, his invisible attributes (ta aorata), from the creation of the world are
understood when his works (poiēmata) are seen (vooumena kathoratai: perceived in an
intellectual sense that includes physical vision) (Rom 1:20).589
From those and similar texts, it
is clear that the Bible holds the possibility open for a natural knowledge of God through his
works as the Creator of the world: His greatness, beauty, glory, goodness and giving of life
are seen from what he has made and his preservation of it. It is this revelation of God given in
nature that underlies the conclusion in Scripture that it is the foolish who says in his heart:
“There is no God” (Ps 14:1; cf. Wis 13:1).
However, almost all texts on natural knowledge of God contain in their context a reproach,
because what could happen in fact has not: The gentiles and idol-makers have not taken the
consequences of this revelation and “honored and thanked him as God” (Rom 1:21). In the
Bible, the main problem with natural knowledge of God is thus not epistemological in the
strict sense, but has a very strong moral and existential dimension. The problem is not
primarily that God is unknowable, but sin as influencing the human attitude to the knowledge
588 As an important provisional remark, this insight needs to be taken very seriously in dialogue between
theology and science, perhaps more than is usually done. 589
Cf. the whole sections Wis 13:1-10 and Rom 1:18-32; see also Ps 19:2-7; 50:6; 97:6; Acts 14:15-17; 17:22-
31, and cf. Rom 2:14f on the ethical dimension of knowledge of God and his law. Many of those texts are dealt
with in Balthasar, “Movement toward God,” 47-55.
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of him.590
So Paul contends that the pagans “suppress the truth in unrighteousness, since what
can be known of God is plain” (Rom 1:18f) and even more generally accuses every human of
being “a liar” (Rom 3:4) in opposition to God being true, in the same strokes as he accuses
everyone of being unrighteous in the face of the Righteous One (Rom 3:5.9). According to
those texts, human beings can have some knowledge of God through the witnessing of his
goodness given through what he has created, but they do not want this knowledge, or rather:
do not want to take the consequences from those insights.
Furthermore, NT texts on knowledge of God from nature do not claim that the fullness of
knowledge of God comes by nature, but through the event of Christ, and in Old Testament
texts the Law and the prophetic word play an important role. In the speeches in Acts (14 and
17), Paul does not say that knowledge of Christ should have been deduced from those facts,
but uses this natural knowledge of God as a means of recognition, saying that the God he
proclaims is the already known Creator, who is now saying something new through his Son
Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection. The revelation always present through nature
functions as the Ansprechbarkeit591
of the hearers for the proclaimed Gospel, but is not the
content of that Gospel. So those texts come very close to Puntel’s view that the strictly
philosophical-natural, or if you will, idealistic knowledge of God, however important in the
process of establishing a coherent Christian view of reality as a whole, is indeterminate and
preliminary, awaiting fulfillment by God’s involvement in history.592
The biblical texts thus give rise to two distinctions: The first is a distinction between the
knowledge of God accessible through nature and the misery of human success in attaining it.
This distinction means that analogical arguments from below can have a role to play both
philosophically and theologically, but they must always be confirmed kata-logically. Their
590 In the words of Ingolf Dalferth: “What stands between God and us is not epistemology, but sin.” Ingolf U.
Dalferth, Becoming Present: An Inquiry into the Christian Sense of the Presence of God (Leuven: Peeters, 2006),
213. Cited in Alfsvåg, What No Mind Has Conceived: On the Significance of Christological Apophaticism,
329n2. 591
Cf. note 466. 592
The incompleteness and indeterminacy of natural knowledge of God is emphasized by Eberhard Jüngel, who
says that the God of natural analogy is known only as unknown, or as “the unknownness of our origin.” This
observation fits well with Paul’s speech at the Areopagus in Acts 17, where he says exactly that he proclaims to
the Athenians who the unknown they know, who made heaven and earth, in fact is. For Jüngel, however, this
fact becomes a part of his motivation to reject analogia entis with its similarity-greater dissimilarity pattern,
turning it on its head. Eberhard Jüngel, God As the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of
the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1983), 276-9. See the
whole section on analogy, 261-298. The reference was pointed out to me by Palakeel, The Use of Analogy in
Theological Discourse: an Investigation in Ecumenical Perspective, 312. Cf. also Balthasar’s remarks on Jüngel
in Balthasar, TL 2, 273n109.
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success is dependent on the receptivity of their addressees, because of the nonpurity of sinful
reason with respect to nature. Christian thinkers therefore must adopt a pragmatic stance in
forming their universal-philosophical arguments. The second distinction is between what can
be known of God from nature and what is revealed only through God’s historical acts. The
interpretation of this distinction must also be done in light of the problem of sin.
The limits imposed on the knowledge of God through nature make it worth asking whether
there is also some kind of ontological flaw to the revelation of God through nature in the
present state relevant to this second distinction. The presence of evil in the world is,
admittedly, not a fact that in itself points to a Christian faith in an omnipotent and all-good
God. In Romans chapter 8, Paul says that the whole of creation has been made subject to
futility (mataiotēs) and is in bondage of decay or corruption (phthora) (Rom 8:20-1) because
of sin. In the context this view of world history results in a Christian hope of salvation that is
something not seen but hoped for (Rom 8:24). The ideas current in Rom 8 could initiate a host
of questions regarding the nature of the fall and the curse, including their historicity. Those
questions must be pursued on another occasion. What is important to the argument here is that
Paul has an idea of some kind of Paradise lost, a more original and perfect state of nature that
is grounded in Old Testament texts, providing an important background for his soteriology.
That the present state of nature is not the pure or intended one is a fact that cannot be
perceived fully without the historical revelation of God. In its present state, nature remains a
testimony to a great and beautiful God worthy of praise, but this God remains in a state of
ambiguity, as largely unknown. Countless mythologies and religious ideas and practices
testify to this awe-inspiring give-and-take god(s) of nature. With respect to the natural
knowledge of God, the complexities of sin as part of the human condition and evil as present
in the world make us remain in a state of ambiguity. This ambiguity underscores the
importance of the kata-logical interpretation of analogy: Analogy is insufficient as a
philosophical method of arriving at a determined knowledge of God. And when
philosophical-analogical procedures are followed, their result is always in need of
confirmation and criticism by kata-logy.
The ambiguity of the present state of nature is expressed brilliantly in poetical terms by
Leonard Cohen: “There is a crack in everything” goes a line in the song “Anthem.” The result
is that “you can add up the parts but you won’t have the sum.” But the “crack” of the
universe, its corruptibility and the presence of evil make it remain open to something other:
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“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”593
Cohen has here expressed
Paul’s point in Rom 8 brilliantly: The ontological bondage of creation is an anomaly that is
relieved only by the coming of the glory of the love of Christ. Cracks are generally not seen in
the dark (comparable to watermarks), nor perceived as cracks, but they become clear when
light shines in. Creation as human beings know it, apart from the revelation in Christ, remains
a witness to a great, beautiful God worthy of praise, who is true and trustworthy, but it also
invokes an unfulfilled hope of justice and salvation, awaiting the full determination of the
truth about us and our Creator.
Christ as Truth “In Person” and the Philosophical Determination of Truth
as a Maximally Determined Proposition
The affirmation of katalogical analogy in the foregoing has rested throughout on the kata-
logical event par excellence, the revelation of God given through Jesus Christ. The open and
analogical relation of worldly and divine truth is by this notion tied absolutely to a concrete
existence in the world, and, according to the ancient creeds, to the category of person. Can
this personalization and linking to the incarnation be understood coherently inside the
theoretical framework of Puntel? How should Christ be understood in light of the definition of
truth as a maximally determined proposition?
In his article on the concept of truth in philosophy and theology, Puntel has some critical
remarks on Balthasar’s interpretation of John 14:6 in the article on this saying.594
The context
is a general criticism of theologians for using the word “truth” without sufficient clarity and
preciseness. He is especially after the simple criticisms of Aussagewahrheit or Satzwahrheit
widespread among theologians, and gives the theologians the challenge of giving statements
like “God is the truth” (Aquinas) a theoretically worked-through framework.595
A footnote596
contains a lengthy critique of the attempts of Walter Kasper and Eberhard Jüngel to make
sense of theological truth in relation to the biblical understanding of truth and Christ as the
truth.
593 From “Anthem” recorded on Live In London. Text cited from www.leonardcohen.com.
594 Balthasar, “Was bedeutet das Wort Christi: ‘Ich bin die Wahrheit’.” Cf. ———, “The meaning of Christ’s
saying, ‘I am the truth’.” See 9.1. The article is something like a summary of certain important lines of thought
in TL 2, so the criticism might apply to that work as well. 595
Puntel, “Der Wahrheitsbegriff in Philosophie und Theologie,” 39f. 596
Ibid., 40-42n42.
143
Kasper criticizes Thomas for having forgotten the biblical understanding of truth in his
definition from De Veritate. That Thomas does not articulate biblical concerns there is true,
says Puntel, but it is due to the fact that he articulates a philosophical understanding of truth
in the work referred to, not a theological one. Thomas tries to articulate a precise theoretical
notion of truth, not the breadth of the biblical usage.
Jüngel argues that “the identification of the truth with the person Jesus Christ” is constitutive
for the Christian understanding of truth.597
Puntel comments threefold that i) if one adheres to
Puntel’s theory of truth, there can be no strict “identification” of truth and the person of
Christ. Rather, one must discuss the hermeneutical and soteriological consequences of the
saying “I am the truth [alētheia],” which establishes Christ as the absolute point of reference
[absolute Bezugspunkt] for all truth rather than making an identification. ii) Another option is
to interpret Jesus’ saying in the direction of the traditional understanding of “ontological
truth,” meaning that Jesus in his person discloses absolute Being (alētheia as unveiling of
being). If so, one should be clear on the differences between this sense of truth and other uses
of the word. And the sense of “identification” is still too unclear. iii) At the end of the day,
however, this way of speaking remains vulnerable to Puntel’s critique of those who confuse
biblical (OT–Hebrew; NT–Greek) and philosophical use of the word “truth” and the implied
concepts of this use.
To the criticism of Kasper and Jüngel, Puntel adds that similar remarks could have been made
to Balthasar.598
The critique is not very specific. The remarks on Kasper’s reading of Aquinas
are out of view as the reference, because Balthasar does not criticize Aquinas on this point.
Like Puntel, he interprets Thomas’ adaequatio definition as a part of a philosophical
perspective on truth.599
Of the three points made against Jüngel, the second is probably the
most fitting and hitting. With respect to the first, Balthasar does not think in the category of
identification when speaking of truth and Christ, rather in terms of integration. The general
critique of confusion of philosophical and theological senses of the word “truth” in iii) is
likewise only applicable to Balthasar in a very general sense, if at all. Even if he has a degree
of fluidity in his way of speaking of truth that results from the phenomenological approach
that consciously does not want to reduce truth to one strict definition, Balthasar does not make
597 From Jüngel’s Gott – Wahrheit – Mensch. Cited in the footnote referred to. Cf. earlier in the article, ibid., 25.
598 “Ähnliche kritische Bemerkungen wären zu dem von Hans Urs von Balthasar unternommenen Versuch zu
machen, die Bedeutung der Aussage ‘Ich bin die Wahrheit’ zu explizieren.” Ibid., 42n42. 599
Cf. Balthasar’s remarks on Thomas’ definition in Balthasar, TL 1, 41. See 6.1.
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the fatal errors of trying to devaluate philosophical notions by way of theological bulldozing.
The second point is where Puntel’s criticism can find a mark to hit in Balthasar, who operates
with a view of truth that is more centered on the ontological-realistic aspects than Puntel’s
more strict sentence-based theory is. But even here the charge lies more at a level of general
lack of determinacy than on matters of disagreement in content, because Balthasar reflects
thoroughly on the relation of language and reality. Through his idea that all beings are
worthaft, Balthasar is close to giving a further theological determination of Puntel’s
philosophical thesis that semantics and ontology are two sides of the same coin. This is not,
however, expressed with stringency and theoretical rigor.
A weak point in Balthasar’s article on John 14:6 that may be a further target of Puntel’s
criticism is the role of the Spirit and the Church in acquiring knowledge of the one
philosophical-theological truth. It is assumed as a fact that the “seeing of the Father” (John
14:9) in the human person of the Son can only be done in the Holy Spirit (“was nur im
Heiligen Geist erkennbar wird”), and that the following required by this knowledge of truth
must happen in the language of the (Catholic) Church. Both aspects are affirmed in the article
without theoretical or conceptual determination and preparation, as a kind of addendum.600
Balthasar does, however, undertake the task of making some of the implicit questions more
explicit in TL 3. His deliberations there and the indispensable discussion of the Spirit’s work
as the Spirit of truth will be returned to in Part III. For the discussion here the important point
is this: To establish a philosophically informed truth concept that integrates theological
aspects, one must not make sense only of the person of Jesus Christ, but also of God revealed
as Trinity, with the Spirit requiring explicit treatment. The discussion that centers on John
14:6 should not miss the fact that it is not exclusively the Son that is named “the truth” in
Johannine texts, but also the Spirit (1 John 5:6). As such, Balthasar’s addendum in this article
is in one perspective appropriate, but it is too indeterminate and imprecise to meet criticism
with the clarity and strength of Puntel.
Returning to the question of understanding John 14:6 within the theoretical framework of this
dissertation, it is found that Puntel’s proposal of the notion of making Christ an “absolute
600 Both aspects belong to the last section of the article, introduced this way: “Doch ist hier ein Letztes
beizufügen.” ———, “Was bedeutet das Wort Christi: ‘Ich bin die Wahrheit’,” 356.
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point of reference” can be seen as fitting neatly with katalogical analogy.601
The notion can be
further determined by many of the aspects of Balthasar’s considerations of Christ’s person
visited throughout this chapter. Christ can serve as the absolute point of reference because in
him the analogia entis finds its concrete katalogical enactment. Created contingencies can
express divine self-explications because they are all created in the Logos, thus imaging the
Logos who is the internal and external impression and expression of the Godhead. Through
his uniting of nondivine created and divine uncreated nature in his person, Christ is the
maximally determined explication and expression of the absolute within the contingent, with
an immediacy that is unthinkable to every pre-incarnational consideration or philosophy, even
the negative philosophy that has had an impact on Christian theology, especially through the
apophaticism of the Eastern tradition.
In Puntel’s structural-systematic philosophy the notions of self-explication and expressibility
are central elements. Truth is maximally determined propositions that by expressing the facts
are ontologically identical to what they express. This definition may seem hard to reconcile
with truth as a person. The step is, however, not that long. In making propositions of beings,
speaking and theoretically engaged agents give word to their self-explication. For the self-
explication and determination of absolute Being beyond the characterizations as absolutely
free, minded and absolute creating, Puntel looks to history, to the revelation of absolute
Being, for God reveals himself through creating and relating to the world. This explication
can only happen through the concrete enactment of the personal freedom of absolute Being,
he says, and as such the concrete existence of a person that by his whole being is a proposition
of how God is, an expression of the truth of God, becomes a most fitting idea.
To integrate the breadth and wealth of the idea of Christ as the expression of God, however,
Puntel’s thinking should be opened more to the communicative aspects that lie beyond
language in the strict sense of words (e.g. semantic systems of signs).602
Christ makes
601 Cf. Treitler’s remark: “if Christ is absolute analogy, posited in a descent from God, then he must be
understood as the totality that sums up everything in itself, and as the center that brings everything to its goal in
itself and relates everything to itself.” Treitler, “True Foundations of Authentic Theology,” 176. 602
This point is also made by Barbara Sain in her critique of Bruce Marshall’s theological engagement with
analytic philosophy on the question of truth. Some of her suggestions to Marshall from the perspective of
Balthasar can also be directed at Puntel, who is likewise engaged with the analytic tradition, although within a
more comprehensive philosophical framework than Marshall’s. Sain says: “Jesus certainly articulates truth about
the divine in words, but his revelation goes beyond what he says. He is the Word: his entire person discloses the
divine. God has chosen to enter into the structures of the created world and to disclose the divine truth through
them.” Sain, “Truth, Trinity and Creation: Placing Bruce Marshall’s Trinity and Truth in Conversation with
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theo-Logic,” 285.
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propositions of God not only through his words (Christian theology speaks not only of an in-
verb-ation) but through his whole concrete and bodily existence (that is, in-carn-ation), a fact
stressed by Balthasar. To him the concrete analogy of divine and creaturely truth in Christ is
primarily deed, fact, act. A central support for this claim is Balthasar’s Christological
reflections on the Hebrew dābār, which in addition to “word” means “thing,” “occurrence”
and “event.”603
This idea fits his notion of logoi spermatikoi and created being as worthaft
very well. Both in creation and incarnation God’s word is spoken as accomplished facts. Thus
Balthasar rightly emphasizes that the incarnation is a fact that cannot be reduced to a language
event.604
Balthasar’s quite harsh criticism of understanding Jesus as a proposition [Satz] or an
impersonal fact [Sach-Verhalt]605
must be seen in this light. His intention is not to remove the
figure of Jesus from the general expressibility of being or the possibility of expressing the
impact of his life through language, but to underscore that what he expresses is the revelation
of absolute love through a whole, concrete existence.
In accordance with the Church Fathers’ saying that what is not assumed is not healed,606
the
Christian message promises not only the perfection of language, but the resurrection of the
flesh. In the Gospel of John, Jesus repeatedly refers to the works he has been given by the
Father as his testimony (John 5:36; 10:25.38; 14:10f).607
The “seeing” of the Father in Jesus
involves his gestures, his acts of compassion, healings, the laying of hands on the children, his
washing of the disciples’ feet and much more, including the ultimate kenosis of the cross and
the miracle of the resurrection. Through all this, Jesus is the explication of the God who freely
created the world, and relates to the world through the innermost characteristics of it: in a
contingent, bodily existence that is even subject to (the consequences of) sin, corruptibility
and death in its most extreme expressions, in order to give humans and all creation the hope
of salvation, restoration and full vision of God.
Concluding Remarks on Christ and the Universal Philosophical-
Theological Perspective on Truth
The historical event of Christ’s “analogical” constitution as God-man expressing God through
a concrete existence in the world opens the possibility of a universal philosophical-theological
603 Balthasar, TL 2, 276.
604 Balthasar briefly criticizes the late Wittgenstein, Mascall and McPherson in general terms in this respect.
Ibid., 277. 605
Ibid., 318, G:290. 606
Gregory of Nazianzus, Epist. 101,32; cf. Athanasius, Epist. ad Epictetum, 7. 607
Balthasar, TL 2, 278, cf. 14.
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concept of truth. In lack of better alternatives (due to the diverse connotations and
implications the phrase carries in different systems), we can speak of an analogia entis,
personified and made concrete in Jesus Christ, who is the Logos of the Father and of creation,
archetype, image and principle of all creation and adequate expression/exposition [Auslegung]
of God in finite being. This analogy is revealed kata-logically, through the movement from
above that fulfills the upward-glancing receptivity that really exists below. But important
warning signs must be placed against traditional ways of speaking metaphysically of analogy.
With Heinrici it is affirmed that “[i]t is only in theological terms that one can speak
adequately about analogia entis.”608
This claim holds for the whole phrase, for analogia and
in a certain sense entis. Analogia entis does not offer any direct access to God through an
idealistic philosophical or metaphysical procedure of analogical affirmation and negation
starting (and remaining) in created beings. Neither are God and creatures subsumable under a
common undifferentiated concept of being. Analogia entis cannot preserve itself as a strictly
philosophical idea, but is philosophy fulfilled and criticized by theology (with Puntel)
understood as examination and interpretation of the works of absolute minded Being in
history. Thus it answers the demand for a universal perspective on Being as a whole, and can
be conceived as a doctrine of the single philosophical-theological universal science of Puntel
(5.2). The status of analogia entis with respect to philosophical and theological method
remains somewhat ambiguous. Philosophically, analogy needs further theological
determination and confirmation, and theologically, analogy must be understood as katalogical.
Analogia entis can never be turned into an instrument to predicate the content of revelation in
advance, but is a theological ontology of God and creation that shows how the incarnation can
possibly be a real revelation of God and the depths of created being, including the human
condition. Analogy, in other words, prescribes a method for theological discourse rather than
providing a philosophical way to theological content.609
As the concrete analogia entis the person of Christ can call himself “the truth,” a statement
whose coherent systematic-theological interpretation is that he, as the historical presence of
God as man, is the absolute point of reference that can serve to unite worldly and divine truth
and thus make it possible for theology to interact with philosophy. Worldly and divine truth is
united not through the abolishment or suspending of the first, but through the unexpected,
608 Heinrici, “The Philosophy of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 166.
609 This point is emphasized in Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, 300-318.
“..analogy (as a linguistic event) constitutes, for Christian thought, a true (and so peaceful) rhetorical style” (301,
emphasis mine).
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though natural, fulfillment or full determination of worldly truth that happens through the
revelation of the absolute in relation to and within the contingent. The elevation and
perfection of worldly truth through the revelation in Christ turns on the unity of his person as
both archetype of creation and actor of redemption. In both orders there is but “one Mediator
between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human” (1 Tim 2:5). Thus the Christian
faith is in the “one Lord, through whom all things were made, who for humans and the sake of
our salvation came down (kat-elthonta: kata-logy) from heaven, incarnate from the Holy
Spirit and the Virgin Mary” (NC). The cosmic Christ is the key to a universal perspective on
being as such and as a whole and thus to a unified theological-philosophical concept of truth.
§ 10. Truth and Trinity
In § 9 it was argued that it is possible to speak of a universal philosophical-theological
concept of truth on the basis of the incarnation. The incarnation was understood as the kata-
logical concretization of the analogia entis, the asymmetrical reciprocal relationship of
likeness in unlikeness between Creator (philosophically, absolute being) and creation
(contingent being). Although the entryway to this truth concept is primarily Christological, it
was argued that it necessarily also has Trinitarian implications, a dynamic that can be easily
seen by a short reflection on the doctrinal development of the early Church, where
Christological and Trinitarian dogma developed in mutual interdependence – when the
homoousios divinity of Christ with the Father was established, the divinity of the Spirit and
the thought of a divine tri-unity were but steps on the same path. Thus I have already
indirectly been involved in Trinitarian theology through the discussion of the person of Christ.
The Son as the truth, as has been argued, is dependent not only on his position as God
incarnate between God and creation, but also on his position as the inner expressio of God: He
is the image of the Father (Heb 1:2). Likewise, the incarnation is only understandable within a
Trinitarian theology; the Father sends the Son through the Holy Spirit who “comes upon” the
Virgin Mary (Luke 1:35). Balthasar catches this point in a passage from the introduction to
TL 3:
Christian truth is trinitarian because Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son made man, incarnate through the
Spirit and accompanied by the same Spirit through his life, work and suffering, is the revealed
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Word and hence “the truth” (John 14:6) in that–into death–he gives an adequate [Adäquat]
portrayal of the Father’s love.610
In this chapter the aim is to explicate some Trinitarian dimensions that are important to a
further theological determination of truth, and the love mentioned in Balthasar’s quote will be
central to the discussion. Some Trinitarian questions that pertain closely to pneumatology,
however, are postponed and treated in Part III. Different aspects of the relation between Son
and Spirit (as the “Father’s two hands” and beyond) are an important case. This chapter thus
focuses on the doctrine of the Trinity per se concretely by discussing the issue of plurality and
otherness (with)in unity and the notion of the divine Trinity as love (cf. 1 John 4:8.16).
Moreover, an observant reader will note that Trinitarian theology permeates the theological
discussions throughout this dissertation. Part III on pneumatology is also largely Trinitarian
theology, for the theology of the Spirit is one of the most pressing issues in contemporary
Trinitarian theology.611
The guiding question in the following is: What can the doctrine of the
Trinity contribute to a further determination and explication of the universal philosophical-
theological concept of truth arrived at through § 9?
10.1 The Truth of God as Loving Trinitarian Difference in Symphonic
Unity According to Balthasar
Balthasar is that kind of Christian thinker who not only has a (somewhat isolated, perhaps)
doctrine of the Trinity, but who is a Trinitarian theologian. That is, reflections on the Trinity
are integrated in the whole of his thinking,612
e.g. as seen above in the treatment of his version
of the concept of analogy, which in his theology is perhaps more Trinitarian than ever
before.613
Thus he accompanies Karl Barth and Karl Rahner as a central participant in the
Trinitarian renewal of theology during the twentieth century. Furthermore, as Karen Kilby
610 Balthasar, TL 3, 23.
611 Cf. the remarks in Peter C. Phan, “Systematic Issues in Trinitarian Theology,” in The Cambridge Companion
to the Trinity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 20-24. 612
Cf. the opening of Karen Kilby, “Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Trinity,” in The Cambridge Companion to
the Trinity, ed. Peter C. Phan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 208. Likewise: Balthasar’s
theology is “von einem trinitarischen Denken geprägt und durchdrungen,” Silvia Cichon-Brandmaier,
Ökonomische und immanente Trinität: ein Vergleich der Konzeptionen Karl Rahners und Hans Urs von
Balthasars (Regensburg: Pustet, 2008), 178. In his own words: “…the whole divine Trinity is the focus in all
three parts of the trilogy.” Balthasar, TL 1, 20. 613
As Rowan Williams states, “Balthasar effectively makes trinitarian difference the basis of all analogy, all
identity in difference.” Rowan Williams, “Balthasar and the Trinity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs
von Balthasar, ed. Edward T. Oakes and David Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 50. Cf.
Franks, “The Epiphany of Being: Trinitarian Analogia Entis and the Transcendentals in Hans Urs von
Balthasar.”
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notes in her analysis of Balthasar’s doctrine of the Trinity, his doctrine of the Trinity is not
formed in abstraction, and thereafter sent out on the search for a meaning, as in some social
theorists’ use of the communion of God in ecclesiology (Kilby’s example is Jürgen
Moltmann). Balthasar’s doctrine of the Trinity is rather a direct result of the attempt to
understand the person and mission of Jesus, focusing on his death on the cross.614
In the
volumes of Theo-Drama that constitute his most explicit treatment of the doctrine of the
Trinity, this doctrine is formed in close connection to (or perhaps better: through outworking
of) his soteriology and eschatology.615
In other words, the characteristic dramatic aspects of
his thinking of the relation between God and the world are an integrated part of his doctrine of
the Trinity.616
God, as Father, Son and Spirit, is an eternal dramatic event of giving, receiving
and loving.
Symphonic Truth
In the little book Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism (orig. 1972), Balthasar
presents some important reflections on truth in theological perspective. The main point of the
book is to argue that Christian truth is pluralistic. That is, it comes to expression through a set
of differentiated voices gathered into a unity by Christ, and it is not reducible to one particular
way of expressing it.617
The positivity of difference involved in this argument is grounded by
Balthasar in the differences between the persons of the Trinity. The notion of difference is
also central to his outworking of the relation between being, love and truth in TL 2. By
emphasizing the difference between the Trinitarian persons, Balthasar adheres to an important
element in contemporary Catholic Trinitarian theology, which is also central to Karl
Rahner.618
Truth Is Symphonic unfolds a musical metaphor: Truth is a symphony, a piece of music
played out by the different voices of an orchestra. It is not surprising that the aesthetically
minded Balthasar uses a metaphor from art as a key to his understanding of truth. Music was
614 Kilby, “Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Trinity,” 213.
615 See esp. Balthasar, TD 3, 149-229; 505-35; ———, TD 4, 317-423; ———, TD 5, 61-109; 191-521.
616 “The Christian God … is the most dramatic of all gods.” Thus the world he produces and takes responsibility
for, by analogy, “is bound to be sublimely dramatic.” ———, TD 3, 531. 617
Cf. his emphasis on perspective in TL 1; see 6.3. 618
As noted by Vincent Holzer, “Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Twentieth-century Catholic Currents
on the Trinity,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, ed. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011), esp. 321f.
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an important part of his life.619
The musical metaphor (“symphonic”) emphasizes that truth
comes to expression through many differentiated voices (the different instruments or voices)
who participate in a single whole (the symphony). But the sum of the symphony is more than
the collection of its individual voices. Thus the metaphor underscores a similar point to his
emphasis on the importance of perspective: Truth can never be reduced to a single contingent
expression. But the pluralism and nonreducibility of truth participates in an order. The world
scene, he says, is like the chaotic sound of an orchestra warming up and tuning up before the
concert, until God enters the stage in his Son and all tensions are taken up into him, the
truth.620
In the opening pages of Truth Is Symphonic, Balthasar hints at the importance of the doctrine
of the Trinity for the understanding of truth as symphonic. For Balthasar, Christian pluralism
is grounded in the Trinity, where the one is not the second and the third, and the three does
not exhaust the others; neither are they reducible to each other, but resound together in
harmony. Thus, he says, “even eternal Truth itself is symphonic.”621
That God is (the) truth is
thus understood by Balthasar in a Trinitarian way; the eternal truth of God is the plurality-in-
unity of the hypostases of the Trinity. And this symphonic unity of the triune God is the
source of creation in all its diversity and variation.
The Positivity of Difference
The link between Trinitarian difference and creaturely difference and plurality is further
unfolded in TL 2. Here Balthasar underscores the positivity of difference, and even speaks of
the “absolute positivity of difference,” borrowing the words of his philosopher friend Gustav
Siewerth.622
The positivity of the other has its prototype in God, where the difference between
Father and Son (and Spirit) is a pure positivity (it is “absolutely good”623
). It is this otherness
between Father and Son that makes their love possible, so we are thus speaking of something
that concerns the deepest essence of God as love. The otherness of creation in relation to God
is a reflection of the otherness of the Logos in God: “the creaturely ‘other-than-God’ is
plunged into the uncreated ‘Other-in-God’ while maintaining that fundamental ‘distance’
619 Heinrici, “Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Sketch of His Life,” 8f; ———, “The Philosophy of Hans Urs von
Balthasar,” 36. 620
In TL 2 he uses a similar metaphor in saying that when Christ arrives, the language of his whole life and
person is like an organ with many registers. Balthasar, TL 2, 248. 621
———, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism, 12. 622
———, TL 2, 185. 623
Cf. ———, TD 5, 81.
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which alone makes love possible.”624
So, the love of God for creation as other is made
possible only by the otherness within God, just as personal conscious existence arises out of
the encounter with the (m)other’s smile. The child needs to be differentiated and distanced
from its mother in order to receive her loving smile.625
This positivity of difference and otherness is very important for the Christian doctrine of
creation, which according to Balthasar rests on the doctrine of the Trinity. Any kind of
understanding of God or Absolute Being as “the One” understood as a mere unity, be it in
Plotinus, Islam or Judaism, fails to account for the questions “Why are we not God?” Why did
he create “a world of which he did not have need in order to be God?”,626
and ends up in
viewing creation either as a fall (a negativity), a necessity (thus excluding the freedom of
God) or as an absurdity.627
By the light of the doctrine of the Trinity, however, creation is
illuminated as fundamentally good, brought forth by God’s loving free will, in all its
difference vis-à-vis God and all its internal variations and differences. In support of his
thinking on this point Balthasar cites a text from Thomas Aquinas twice in TL 2 that states
plainly that knowledge of the Trinity is necessary to account for the doctrine of creation.628
This is an important example of how Balthasar’s version of analogy is informed by the
Christological and Trinitarian perspective. In TD 2, he says that it is this same otherness or
not-identity within the Godhead that hinders the breakdown of the analogia entis in the
creaturely not-God.629
In Balthasar’s Trinitarian theology, what can be said of God as source
of created being by means of a deductive (“philosophical”) movement from below is thus
completed and further determined when the relation of God and world is recast in light of the
eternal divine relationships. The Christological katalogical analogy reveals that God’s loving
624 Ibid., 105.
625 Balthasar is influenced by Ferdinand Ulrich’s reflections on the separation of giver, gift and receiver in love
on this point. See, with references, Martin Bieler, “Kreuz und Gott: Implikationen der Kreuzestheologie Hans
Urs von Balthasars für die Gotteslehre” (paper presented at the Jahresgedächtnis für Hans Urs von Balthasar,
Basel, 2013), 9f. 626
Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect, 113. 627
———, “A Résumé of My Thought; ———, TD 5, 82; ———, TL 2, 181, 185. 628
“The knowledge of the Divine Persons was necessary… for thinking correctly about the creation of the
universe. For by our saying that God made all things by his Word, the error of those who assert that God
produced the universe out of a necessity of nature is ruled out. Moreover, by the fact that we affirm in him a
procession of love, it is shown that God did not produce creatures on account of some need, nor for the sake of
any cause outside of himself, but for the sake of the love of his own goodness.” S. Th. I, 32, I ad 3, quoted in —
—, TL 2, 186, cf.180n13. The quote concludes the section “Trinitarian Difference and Ontological Difference”
in TL 2. 629
The reason is that: “The infinite distance between the world and God is grounded in the other, prototypical
distance between God and God.” ———, TD 2, 266.
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goodness in creating and redeeming the world is an “echo [Nachhall] of the love within God,”
and thus a result (although not a necessary one) of the Father’s begetting of the Son in love.630
By use of a likeness/unlikeness pattern, this emphasis on the positivity of difference has
consequences for thinking about a series of created phenomena. For in the life of the Trinity,
receiving is as positive as giving, letting happen [Geschehenlassen] just as positive as making
happen [Wirken]. Even the difference between action and contemplation and man and woman
(both created in the image of God, cf. Gen 1:26) is ultimately grounded in the Trinity. The
distinction of being and becoming can also be seen as a positive reflection of the life of the
Trinity, in that God is not subject to creaturely becoming, but that God is ever-actual event,
the fresh newness that is the condition of creaturely becoming.631
Even creaturely
transitoriness and mortality (in the sense of “good death”) have an archetype in God through
the unconditional self-surrender (kenosis) of each divine hypostasis to the others. The created
realities of time and space are likewise a reflection of the perichoretic life of God. Time is
seen as a shadow of eternity, a reflection of the divine persons’ letting one another subsist in
mutual love. Created space is likewise a reflection of the infinite spaces allowed by the divine
persons to each other to be themselves. All those elements point to the idea that God from the
beginning created everything to be on its way beyond itself, to God. But this self-transcending
of creation can never reach out to God without his own immanence in the world, which the
world receives as pure grace, and God’s revelation is a perfect expression of his own
nature.632
All those aspects are by Balthasar related to the real distinction, which he speaks of
as a “structural reflection of triune Being.”633
The nonidentity of essence and existence in all
created beings is both a likeness and a greater unlikeness to God.
630 ———, TL 2, 140, G:130. Note that the German Nachhall has a wider significance than echo; it points not
just to an immediate singular reflection, but as much to a continuous resonance or reverberation. See further the
treatment of Bonaventure on this aspect, ———, GL 2, 296. “The world can only be created within the Son’s
‘generation’.”———, TD 3, 326. 631
“All earthly becoming is a reflection of the eternal ‘happening’ in God.”———, TD 5, 67. 632
———, TL 2, 84. 633
Ibid., 82. Quote from ———, TD 5, 75. This section in TL 2 (“Transcending Immanence and Immanencing
Transcendence,” 81-85) integrates and refers to many points from a larger section in TD 5 (first part of “The
World is from God”) that to an even larger degree relates the positivity of the Creator-creation difference to the
Trinitarian differences, and views it as an integral part of the eschatological fulfillment, ibid., 61-141. This
passage from TD 5 unfolds this idea: “[B]oth aspects characterize the creature’s non-divinity: neither can its
particularity (essentia) give itself reality (esse), nor can its participation in reality (esse), which is universal,
guarantee its essential particularity (essentia). Nonetheless this fundamental quality of creaturehood (its
unlikeness to God) must have some basis in God himself if it is to be posited at all. Of course it cannot be said
that the substance possessed in common by the Divine Hypostases is like that being in which all finite beings
share; after all, these finite beings are precisely not identical with their real (posited) being, whereas each of the
Divine Hypostases is identical with the divine essence, otherwise there would be three gods. Nonetheless, just as
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The Truth is Love
The difference-in-unity of the Trinitarian persons unfolds, according to Balthasar, “as
absolute love, and in doing so, as absolute truth.”634
There is a very close connection of truth
and love in his thought, and both of these concepts are understood in a Trinitarian way. “Truth
belongs primarily to the Son,” he says in Johannine terms, “both within God and in the
economy.”635
But the ground of this idea of divine, theologically informed truth, what it “rests
upon,” is “the wonder of the Father’s generative act,” which is a groundless love. The truth
that the Son is through his life and words can only be understood as the truth of the love of
Father, Son and Spirit.636
Truth must therefore not be thought of as something thing-like (as
some thing) and self-enclosed, but as an expression of love. To state it in dogmatic terms,
revelation and salvation are two sides of the same coin: God reveals his essence as love
through saving acts. Revelation is not mere passing on of information, but gift of self.
An investigation of the mutual influence of truth and love leads to consideration of the deep
structures of Balthasar’s understanding of truth and theological rationality. In perhaps his best
and most popular smaller book, Love Alone Is Credible, Balthasar in a few pages lays out the
method of his theological aesthetics, which is treated in many pages in GL 1-7.637
In this
work, the Balthasarian keywords “love,” “glory” and “truth” are conceived as largely
interchangeable. In the natural realm, eros is the yearning for beauty, corresponding to
revelation, where agapē expressed through the Logos is the expression of the glory of God.
the divine essence is not a blank, homogeneous block of identity but a giving (in the Father), a receiving (in the
Son), gift given to the Spirit by Father and Son together, and a cause of thanksgiving by Son and Spirit, so the
kind of being that is given to finite creatures also possesses a fluidity and a transitional quality that is ‘fixed’
only in such creatures.” Ibid., 75f. For a fuller discussion of the real distinction and the positivity of difference in
Balthasar through a dialogue with Aquinas, see Healy, The Eschatology of Hans Urs von Balthasar: Eschatology
as Communion, 27-53. 634
Balthasar, TL 2, 180. I have unfolded some aspects of Balthasar’s thought on God as love in a Norwegian
article. Some themes are common to the discussion here, but the article does not relate love explicitly to truth.
Gunnar Innerdal, “‘Gud er kjærlighet’: en utlegning i lys av Hans Urs von Balthasars teologikk,” in En bok om
Gud: Gudstanken i brytningen mellom det moderne og det postmoderne, ed. Svein Rise and Knut-Willy Sæther
(Trondheim: Tapir akademisk forlag, 2011). [Title in English: “‘God is love’: an explanation in light of H. U. v.
Balthasar’s theologic.”] On truth and love in Theo-Logic see also Fadi Abdel-Nour, Vérité et amour: une lecture
de “La théologique” de Hans Urs von Balthasar (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2013). 635
Balthasar, TL 2, 155. Cf. the earlier treatment of Bonaventure’s notion of Christ as the expressio of God
inwards and outwards. 636
Cf. what Balthasar says in TD 5, followed by a host of quotations in support from Adrienne von Speyr: “The
Son is the revelation of the Trinity”; “In contemplating the Son we must not for a moment abstract from the
Trinity” (Adrienne). ———, TD 5, 121f. 637
———, Love Alone Is Credible, 11. Cf. also the remarks in the conclusion to Plaga’s dissertation: “Liebe ist
insofern ein Leitmotiv für Balthasars gesamte Arbeit. Schon der Buchtitel ‘Glaubhaft ist nur Liebe’ zeigte daß
Liebe mit Logik zusammenhängt und nicht etwas ist, was mit Logik gerade nichts zu tun hat.” Plaga, “‘Ich bin
die Wahrheit.’ Die theologische Dimension der Christologie Hans Urs von Balthasars,” 437f. See also Walker,
“Love Alone: Hans Urs von Balthasar as a Master of Theological Renewal.”
155
Thus the Logos, Balthasar says, “makes himself known as ‘loving grace’ (χάρις), and thereby
as ‘glory’ (the ‘divinely beautiful,’ δόξα), and precisely for this reason as the ‘truth’
(ἀλήθεια), Jn 1:14.”638
The central idea of the book is that Christian revelation should not, and
cannot, be reduced to or sought grounded in something outside itself, as a proof or vindication
of some other idea or system of thought – the revelation of the true Triune love for the world
through the economy of the Son fully carries its own weight, truth, intelligibility and
credibility. The absolute love made known in Christ is the inexhaustible mystery that
everything else comes down to. Thus it is a sound reading of Balthasar to say that in his work
the truth is love, as the title of a dissertation by Michael Albus suggests,639
and vice versa, that
love is truth.640
This is not only a philosophical truth according to Balthasar,641
but also a truth
that is theologically deepened by the doctrine of the Trinity.
Balthasar’s idea of how truth and love are interrelated can be further illuminated theologically
by his idea of the Unvordenklichkeit [“unprethinkability”] of the love of the Father that
generates the Son and makes the Spirit proceed from their mutual love.642
The word is
introduced into a discussion of the divine essence and the procession of the Trinitarian
hypostases or persons in TL 2. Balthasar thinks that the one divine essence is not some agent
preceding the processions, but the relation and mutual indwelling (cirumincessio -
perichōrēsis) of the divine persons. The Father is Father by “always already having given
himself away,” giving his “perfect invisible godhead” totally over to the Son in generating
him, before thinking about it. That is, the Father possesses his godhead “only as given away.”
This means that the Father’s (the fountain of the divinity643
) love of the Son is “absolutely
638 Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible, 55, G :35. Translation altered, emphasis mine. Balthasar apparently
interprets charis in this passage in light of the broader Johannine concept of agapē, love. The same idea of
interchangeability is present in the section “Truth as ‘Glory’ and ‘Goodness’” in TL 2: “Ultimately, the two
words, truth and glory, express the same thing: the Son’s exposition of the Father, which is true and glorious, not
only because it is able to make visible God’s truth and glory, but because it is itself truth and glory […] the Son
reveals nothing other than the goodness or love or grace of the Father…” ———, TL 2, 16f. 639
Michael Albus, Die Wahrheit ist Liebe: Zur Unterscheidung des Christlichen nach Hans Urs von Balthasar
(Freiburg: Herder, 1976). The interchangeability of truth and love is also evident in Balthasar’s essay on the
Holy Spirit as love. He says that the authentic character (the personality) of the Spirit is to be a Person out of
Persons and in Persons, which means precisely that the Spirit’s “truth (his love) consists of revealing the truth
(love) of these other Persons and bestowing it (as fruit).” Balthasar, “The Holy Spirit as Love,” 128. 640
Cf. ———, Love Alone Is Credible, 105. 641
Cf. Balthasar’s treatment of love in TL 1: “the sense of truth as a whole is love.” ———, TL 1, 175. 642
For the following see the section in TL 2 entitled Die Unvordenklichkeit der Liebe, translated in the English
edition as “Love Cannot Be Anticipated by Thought” and Adrian Walker’s translator’s note to that section, ——
—, TL 2, 135n11, G:126. “Unprethinkability” (a precise translation, but perhaps a rather un-English way of
saying this) is used by Alan White in the English translation of Puntel’s Sein und Gott where this text is cited,
Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 316. 643
Balthasar, TL 2, 128.
156
groundless,” meaning that it is not grounded in reasons or conditions logically or temporally
prior to itself, and that it has no limits or end to its depths. The Son, on his part, never exists
except as the beloved begotten of the Father, and similar things may be said of the Spirit, such
that God’s essence never exists “except as fatherly, sonly or spirit-ually.”644
In the same line
is this assertion in the Epilogue: “‘God is love’ and nothing else,” not a metaphysical
necessity, not a dialectical process under some heading, not a system. Balthasar can think of
no thought or truth preceding God as absolute Trinitarian love. And “in this love lies every
possible form of self-expression, of truth and of wisdom,”645
that is, this groundless,
unthought-of love grounds everything else. As such, the eternity of God’s love has a priority
to all truth and all thought; God always shows himself to be “truthful” through his love.646
The Spirit who leads into “all truth” leads nowhere else than to the depths of this love, for
“there is no truth outside the truth of the love between Father and Son.”647
Thought can
always rest in this faithful love; it needs not and cannot go behind it. The love of God
revealed in Christ is the love that according to the Letter to the Ephesians “surpasses
knowledge” (hē hyperballousa tēs gnōseōs agapē, 3:19), even though it can be known.
Balthasar often appeals to this verse for the primacy of love over knowledge. But note that he
interprets “surpasses” not as meaning “suspends”; that God’s love surpasses knowledge does
not obliterate the use of logical interpretation as the reflective receiving of this revelation of
love that stands as its center.648
Love is not irrational, because it is the source of reason
itself.649
Knowledge must therefore be sought through love and the gift of love.
As the ground of everything, love must also be related to being and the transcendentals.
Balthasar clearly holds that the answer to the primary metaphysical question – why is there
anything rather than nothing? – can be answered only by God’s love and his gift-full will to
create out of this love. As such, being in a sense is love, as it is an expression of the divine
love that freely willed it and posited it into being. “Love can,” says Balthasar, “be considered
the supreme mode, and therein the ‘truth,’ of being, without, for all that, having to be
transported beyond truth and being.”650
The last clause contains the kernel of Balthasar’s
644 Ibid., 135-7.
645 ———, E, 93. The context makes it clear that this love is conceived as the beauty/splendor of the reciprocal
gifts of the divine Persons, in typical Balthasarian fashion. 646
———, TL 2, 144. 647
———, TL 3, 249. 648
———, Love Alone Is Credible, 106n1. Cf. ———, TL 2, 140f. 649
———, TL 3, 442. 650
———, TL 2, 178.
157
critique of Jean-Luc Marion’s attempt to think God without Being, the title of a book where
Marion says that God loves before he is, and aspires to free love from metaphysical
constraints.651
On the contrary, Balthasar contends that love and being are not opposing
categories: “groundless love is not prior to being but is the supreme act of being, the reef that
shatters every attempt at conceptual capture.”652
He holds that God’s being is to be love, and
hence, gift-offering: “In his innermost principle [Grund], God is a bottomless [grundlose]
spring that is, in that it gives,” as Balthasar puts it in one of his important essays on the Holy
Spirit.653
God is by being love and loves by being this love. “This [inexhaustible] love is not
the absolute Good beyond being, but is the depth and height, the length and breadth of being
itself.”654
In other words: “Being and love are co-extensive.”655
This holds in God, and it
holds analogically for the experience of being as a whole as this opens up to the child through
the mother’s smile.656
The Son reveals that the truth of God is not barely “to be” or that he
“exists” in some kind of technical-positivistic sense, but that God as Trinity is as supreme
loving beauty, a beauty giving itself away in goodness. The same goes analogically for
created being, it is not just “there” as some logical, materialistic feature; it is beautiful and
gives itself away to perception. The philosophical wonder that Balthasar was referred to as
speaking of in the first part of this study finds its fulfillment in the wonder at the mysterious
groundless love of God that appears in Christ. On this basis, Balthasar calls love the
“transcendental par excellence [schlechthin]” (referring to Gustav Siewerth) that
comprehends [zusammenfaßt] being, truth, goodness and beauty.657
The revelation of the Trinity through Christ is thus the final manifestation of a fact that for
Balthasar is already included in the child’s first apprehension of her mother’s smile, namely
that “truth is identical with the good.”658
Balthasar unfolds this idea by appealing to Gerhard
Ebeling: In the meeting of parents and child, “life, love and language are still indivisibly one.”
This is apparent in the expression “mother tongue,” which points to the living relation of love
between mother and child as the original place of learning language. The truth of language, or
651 Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being: Hors-Texte (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991).
652 Balthasar, TL 2, 177n9,134f. Eph 3:19 is cited as what follows. For a fuller discussion see Puntel and White
(trans.), B&G, 315-7; Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 413n166. 653
Balthasar, “The Unknown Lying beyond the Word,” 105, G:95. The close link between being and giving is
also emphasized in ———, TL 3, 158f. 654
———, Love Alone Is Credible, 145. The wording echoes Eph 3:18. 655
———, “Movement toward God,” 17. Cf. on this topic Werner Löser’s well-written essay: Löser, “Being
Interpreted As Love: Reflections on the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar.” 656
Balthasar, “Movement toward God; ———, TL 2, 177. 657
———, TL 2, 176f. 658
———, Unless You Become Like This Child, 18.
158
the verification of propositions, needs to be related to life, because the “the only truth is
love.”659
The emphasis on Jesus’ concrete bodily existence and his deeds as revelation of
absolute divine love proves in this context to be a matter of Trinitarian theology. As the
Trinitarian relationship of love, God is the fullness of truth, goodness and beauty. This theme
is developed particularly in the Epilogue, where Balthasar says that “the manifestation of the
inner divine life (the processions) is as such identical with the transcendentals, which are
identical to each other.”660
All worldly appearances of beauty, goodness and truth are only
analogous reflections of the total interpenetration of the transcendentals in God. The entrance
into this fullness of the transcendentals is the same as the entrance to God’s love, namely the
epiphany of God in the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of the Son. “Above all,” says
Balthasar,
we must not overlook that everything in Christ–the circumincession in him of all transcendentals, even in
their intraworldly polarity–always remains a pointer to God’s wealth of love, because he is the Word of the
Father in the Spirit in such a way that the transcendentals appearing in him, as we have shown, are the
revelation of the tri-personal vitality of God.661
The idea that the transcendentals always ultimately point to God’s love, and that this happens
through a circumincession of the transcendentals, shows that Balthasar’s repeated insistence
of a close relation between truth and love, between knowing and acting, has a Trinitarian
foundation. The Son reveals God in his tri-personality and vitality through a concrete life,
thus unveiling being.
Trinitarian Difference/Distance and the Love of the Cross
As has been emphasized throughout this chapter, and already mentioned in 9.1, Balthasar
holds that the Son is the truth insofar as he reveals the love of the triune God for the world.
The climax of this truth revealed as love is the Trinitarian event of the cross. Balthasar’s
emphasis on the positivity of difference between the Trinitarian persons, at other places
closely related to expressions as distance [Abstand]662
and separation, is the basis for his
radical and controversial interpretation of the substitutionary atoning death of Christ and his
659 ———, TL 2, 278. Balthasar cites Gerhard Ebeling’s Einführung in die theologische Sprachlehre.
660 ———, E, 93.
661 Ibid., 97f.
662 On Balthasar’s notion of Abstand see Williams, “Balthasar and the Trinity,” 41; Kilby, “Hans Urs von
Balthasar on the Trinity,” 216.
159
descent to the dead.663
Balthasar’s theology of Holy Saturday and the descent into hell cannot
be analyzed and assessed at full length in this dissertation for reasons of space.664
The focus in
the brief section presented here therefore lies on the significance of this doctrine for
Balthasar’s way of conceiving the unity of truth.
Balthasar’s Trinitarian interpretation of the cross takes its cue from the words of Jesus on the
cross recorded by the evangelists: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt
27:46). Alluding to this cry, Balthasar says:
The Son’s “God-forsakenness” on the Cross cannot be interpreted one-sidedly as something felt solely by the
dying Jesus; if God is objectively forsaken here, then we must say that God is forsaken by God [emph.
mine].665
Holding fast to the central insight of Christological dogma that Christ is God and man in one
person, Balthasar cannot interpret Jesus’ cry of dereliction as a mere human cry. It is also the
663 The most important development of this doctrine by Balthasar is found in the latter volumes of Theo-Drama
and in Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990).
When it is mentioned in the last volumes of Theo-Logic, it is mostly by way of harvesting its fruits in related
theological questions, without giving full-length arguments for it. 664
A concise, sympathetic presentation of Balthasar’s theology of the descent can be found in David Lauber,
Barth on the Descent into Hell: God, Atonement and the Christian Life (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), esp. 42-112.
Lauber holds that Balthasar fleshes out important aspects already present in the theology of Karl Barth. Thus he
challenges the popular picture sometimes painted that this aspect of Balthasar’s theology is based thoroughly on
the mystical experiences of Adrienne von Speyr. See also Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A
Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001).
In recent years the work of Alyssa Pitstick on Balthasar’s theology of Christ’s descent has raised considerable
debate, starting from her dissertation published as Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von
Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007). There have
been exchanges both in the American journal First Things and in the Scottish Journal of Theology. See Pitstick’s
web page http://lyrapitstick.com/index.html and http://hansursvonbalthasar.blogspot.no/2009/02/hans-urs-von-
balthasar-on-hope-hell-and.html for references. The debate focuses on Balthasar’s tendencies towards
universalism, and the Christological and Trinitarian implications of the doctrine, as well as the understanding
and authority of tradition within Catholic theology. To Pitstick, one of Balthasar’s main faults is that he has been
inspired by the theologia crucis of the Reformers, especially the notion of substitution and the blessed exchange
(admirabile commercium). From the perspective taken here, Pitstick’s framework is a kind of rigidly
traditionalist Roman Catholic one, or as Kilby puts it, she argues in “the style of neo-scholasticism,” Kilby,
Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction 11. A similar, more lengthy critique is found in Susanne Hegger,
Sperare contra spem: Die Hölle als Gnadengeschenk Gottes bei Hans Urs von Balthasar (Würzburg: Echter,
2012), 359ff. I prefer to work in a more open landscape of biblical and ecumenical theology in this dissertation,
and in such a framework many of Pitstick’s criticisms lose much of their force. Cf. the many remarks throughout
Bieler, “Kreuz und Gott: Implikationen der Kreuzestheologie Hans Urs von Balthasars für die Gotteslehre.”
More positive Roman Catholic critical assessments of Balthasar “after Pitstick” can be found in Matt C. Paulson,
“Christology, Trinity, and Divine Affectivity: Rethinking Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of Holy Saturday”
(paper presented at the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 2011); Joshua R.
Brotherton, “Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Redemptive Descent,” Pro Ecclesia 12, no. Spring (2013). A
comparison of Luther and Balthasar is found in Sigurd Lefsrud, “From Dialectic to Dialogic: Beyond Luther’s
Theology of the Cross to Balthasar’s Theology of Holy Saturday,” Louvain Studies 36 (2012). 665
Balthasar, TD 3, 530. Cf. the statement that on the cross, “the harshest destiny is endured, to the very end, in
the relationship between God and God,” ibid., 535. Emphasis mine.
160
divine Son who cries to the Father by whom he is forsaken. The Son is forsaken because he
on the cross is the vicarious [stellvertretend] bearer of the sins of the world (John 1:29; cf. 1
Cor 5:21).666
Therefore, he is cursed (Gal 3:13) and forsaken by the Father. Thus, “on our
behalf, Jesus undergoes the entire reality of sinful human existence right up to the dereliction
of Sheol.”667
Insofar as Balthasar understands the cross as the Trinitarian event per se, he also holds that
this forsakenness and abandonment happen in the Spirit who unifies Father and Son. The
extreme event of distance between Father and Son on the cross is conceived as a mode of
union in the Spirit.668
It occurs as a separation inside “the nearness that spans all distance”
(Adrienne von Speyr);669
and here “all” is meant in the most literal sense: All created
distance, kenosis, death, suffering and even sin occur “within” this primal distance in God.670
Thus “the economic Trinity … transposes the absolute distinction of the Persons in the
Godhead from one another into the dimension of salvation history, involving man’s sinful
distance from God and its atonement.”671
On this basis Balthasar says in TL 2 that all intra-
worldly contradiction (involving sin and lie) is “overcome by the trinitarian logic,”672
which is
truth as love. The total meaninglessness and contradiction of sin and lie is taken into the
groundless Trinitarian love that surpasses knowledge. Thus it can be believed and proclaimed
that “Easter is the victory of the triune God over every contradiction,”673
but in a way that can
666 The importance and seriousness Balthasar ascribes to Stellvertretung can be seen when he regrets in TL 2 the
use of the concept of solidarity (Solidarität) in Mysterium Pascale. ———, TL 2, 345n75. Rather, he says on
another occasion, it is the case that Christ identifies with us (Identifizierung), and puts himself in our place. See
the quote in Bieler, “Kreuz und Gott: Implikationen der Kreuzestheologie Hans Urs von Balthasars für die
Gotteslehre,” 12n77. 667
Balthasar, TL 3, 283. Bieler states the case in an even more comprehensive systematic theological way:
“Damit die reale Situation des sündigen Menschen vor Gott wieder heil werden kann, muss die Sünde aus der
Welt geschafft werden, und das ist nur so möglich, dass Gott sich in Christus mit der Situation von uns allen als
Sünder so identifiziert, dass er die Folgen der Sünde, d.h. das Getrenntsein von Gott, auf sich nimmt.” Bieler,
“Kreuz und Gott: Implikationen der Kreuzestheologie Hans Urs von Balthasars für die Gotteslehre,” 7. 668
The idea is present already in GL 7, with reference to Bulgakov: “[T]he whole Trinity remains involved in
this act [the kenosis of the cross], the Father by sending out the Son and abandoning him at the Cross, and the
Spirit by uniting them now only in the expressive form of the separation.” Balthasar, GL 7, 214. Similarly: “the
Holy Spirit, who in God is the eternal expression of this mutual relation, now sustains this relation in the mode
of pulling them apart.” ———, “Loneliness in the Church,” 274. The way of thinking is more thoroughly
described in ———, TD 5, 256-65. 669
———, TD 5, 264. 670
———, TD 3, 530. ———, TD 4, 324f. 671
———, TD 5, 257. 672
———, TL 2, 355. “[I]n the Cross the contradiction of sin, its lie, and its un-logic are taken into the logic of
the love of the Trinity,” ibid., 325. 673
Ibid., 359.
161
be grasped in its excessiveness only through silent lived adoration to the accomplished deed
of God. It is a dramatic victory, and therefore:
So long as the world endures, there remains for us the unresolvable contradiction between the atemporality of
the Cross, the different atemporality of hell, and the yet altogether different all-temporality of heaven. This
cannot be neatly calculated, much less be forced into a theory (of “universal redemption”, say). No one can
try to anticipate the judge and look at the cards.674
Such statements clearly express Balthasar’s reservations against a doctrine of universal
redemption, while at the same time admitting that it is not far off as an implication of his
theology of the cross. He is convinced that in the end God will take everything into his triune
love, and this is the truth. Exactly how that will happen, however, is beyond our grasp in this
world.
10.2 Critical Assessment by Means of Puntel’s Theoretical Framework
This section will critically assess crucial aspects of Balthasar’s reflections on truth in
Trinitarian theology. The discussion will use Balthasar’s work to offer proposals for further
theological determination and grounding of important aspects in the theoretical framework.
First, Balthasar’s metaphor of truth as symphonic is developed further by the help of works by
David Bentley Hart and Jeremy Begbie. This leads up to a comparison and synthesis of
Balthasar’s notion of integration and the theoretical framework’s important concept of
coherence. Second, the notion of the positivity of difference in a Trinitarian context is put in
dialogue with the concept of a plurality of theoretical frameworks, the regulative idea of the
one truth and moderate relativism. Third, I offer a perspective on the triad love-truth-being
inspired by Puntel and Balthasar’s shared opposition to postmodern takes as represented by
Jean-Luc Marion. Fourth and finally, Balthasar’s way of grounding the unity of truth in the
cross is positively evaluated in its main thrust while nuanced in some details.
Symphonic-Improvisational Integration and Coherence
It has been shown above that musical imagery serves as an important metaphor in Balthasar’s
thinking on truth. However, his use of this metaphor is vulnerable to criticism for not being
674 Ibid. On the basis of this dramatic uncertainty Balthasar makes it a virtue to hope that all men be saved
because this is the will of God and an expression of Christian love (cf. 1 Tim 2:4; 1 Cor 13:7). See his writings,
prompted by a debate in Germany in the 80s following Balthasar’s Theo-Drama, now collected in ———, Dare
We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? With a Short Discourse on Hell (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988). I
have given a short summary of important points in this work (in Norwegian) in Gunnar Innerdal, “Hans Urs von
Balthasar og alle menneskers frelse,” Luthersk Kirketidende 147, no. 16 (2012).
162
sufficiently developed to carry the weight it has in his thought. The metaphor also seems to be
too restricted to a particular strand of music, in a way that blurs the potential it has to be
expressive of Balthasar’s dramatic theo-logic. By engaging other thinkers that engage with
this metaphor theologically, this section aims to address those two weaknesses, and to show
that the metaphor has larger potential that can be applied to integrate the central Balthasarian
motif of integration, thus giving a fresh Trinitarian katalogical-analogical look on the concept
of coherence.
The American Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart expounds his doctrine of creation by
heavy use of musical imagery in his The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian
Truth, a work that is explicitly acknowledged to be heavily influenced by the works of
Balthasar,675
and thus can be seen as a conscious further development of elements in his
thought. Hart shows how the image of all created things as a hymn of praise to the Creator is a
prevalent way of speaking within a diversity of philosophical and theological traditions.676
In
the Old Testament, creation’s praise connects closely with the idea of calling and telos:
Creation is created in order to praise God. Through engagement with the Greek philosophical
tradition, the Church Fathers broadened the scope of this tradition and reflected more
thoroughly on the musical metaphor as a way of describing the order and beauty imparted on
creation by God. Here Hart finds his home when he says that “the image of cosmic music is
an especially happy way of describing the analogy of creation to the trinitarian life.”677
So
when Hart writes of creation as music, he relates this analogically to God:
As God is Trinity, in whom all difference is possessed as perfect peace and unity, the divine life might be
described as infinite music, and creation too might be described as a music whose intervals, transitions, and
phrases are embraced within God’s eternal, triune polyphony.678
Here Hart gives an impetus to a further explication of what it may mean to say that “eternal
Truth itself is symphonic.”679
It is worth noting how Hart combines the idea of difference, so
central to Balthasar’s Trinitarian theology of creation, to music. The reason is that music
communicates the idea of difference in unity in an especially vivid way; music shows forth
675 Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, 29.
676 A selection of references are found in ibid., 275n132. An important work for the theological appreciation of
the idea is Leo Spitzer, Classical and Christian Ideas of World Harmony: Prolegomena to an Interpretation of
the Word “Stimmung” (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1963). 677
Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, 276. 678
Ibid., 274. 679
Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism, 12.
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genuine otherness as part of a whole. The infinite musicality of God is the perfect peace and
unity of the difference possessed by the divine persons. Father, Son and Holy Spirit coexist as
a relational poly-phony, that is, different voices that sound together (sym-phony) in beautiful
harmony. The divine life is an infinite event of “dance and difference, address and response”
whose basis is in love.680
God’s glory is like an infinite musical theme, whose beauty and
variety unfold forever, in a richness that will never be exhausted.681
God is, as it were, an
eternal improvisation on the polyphonic theme of love that Father, Son and Spirit is. This
more robust account of the music of God makes room for a thorough account of what the
harmony of creation, thus of the unity of Balthasar’s “symphonic” truth, might be interpreted
as. Creation in this picture is not some kind of purely external and self-enclosed entity, but a
process whose life and movement spring from the inner life of God, as a participation in
God’s own musical theme. The unity of truth lies thus not primarily in the created voices
themselves, but in the interaction with their Creator. This metaphor therefore gives food for
the imagination to conceive how Christ can be the truth without overriding creation.
An important question arising out of such a description of created truth as a symphonic unity
is what kind of music we are talking about. In Hart’s musical vision of creation, notions such
as development, infinity and fullness play important roles. On this background he finds the
greatest theological resources in the music of Bach, where thematic development is more
smooth, creative and potentially boundless than anywhere else. Bach is also a master in
integrating tensions into the thematic development without harm to the final harmony and
resolution. It is possible to follow Hart at some length in all of this, but in the end he
absolutizes Bach’s music in a way that blurs more than it gives clarity.682
Balthasar, on his
part, tends to absolutize Mozart, even though he has positive things to say of other composers
as well. Karl Barth was of the same opinion. In Mozart’s music Balthasar sees a great ability
to make the voices of different instruments sound together, in a way that respects and utilizes
the integrity and qualities of each instrument.683
Thus, in their attitudes to music, these
theologians both share a tendency to absolutize one kind of music. The result is an account
that fails to be genuinely contemporary due to its absolutizing of a particular stage in the
680 Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, 276.
681 Ibid., 282.
682 “Bach’s is the ultimate Christian music; it reflects as no other human artifact ever has or could the Christian
vision of creation.” Ibid., 283. 683
“Mozart is the absolute master” when it comes to orchestrating for the particularity of individual instruments,
Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism, 7, 15.
164
history of music. In addition, the somewhat elitist one-sided focus on classical music does not
utilize the breadth of analogical possibilities inherent in music as a phenomenon.
Jeremy S. Begbie, the British musician and theologian, a leading scholar in the
interdisciplinary field of musicology and theology, has launched a similar criticism of
theologians generally for not making use of the theological potential of music.684
Here I will
refer primarily to his book Theology, Music and Time. Begbie employs a way of approaching
music that is more apt to the notion of katalogical analogy developed above, because he takes
music at face value as created reality, and does not tend, like Hart and Balthasar, to interpret
music only as a sophisticated encoding of theological programs. The phenomenon of music
opens analogical possibilities that may be interpreted discursively but that was not necessarily
theologically articulated at a pre-stage of composition. When it comes to Balthasar, his notion
of Christ as the one that gathers all the voices of the orchestra in his own person’s harmony
could integrate Balthasar’s own emphasis on the dramatic relation of God and the world (cf.
Theo-Drama) by reflecting more on the practice quality of music and the phenomenon of
improvisation.
According to Begbie, music is first and foremost a practice, or a multiplicity of practices.
Music is an event embedded in space and time, cultural and emotional contexts and physical
entities such as instruments and bodies, involving practitioners and hearers. Thus music is
dramatic not only as a movement that unfolds and resolves themes and tensions, but at its core
as a practice. In short, music means engagement between persons.685
To apply this thinking to
the metaphor of the truth of the world as a symphony would require a stress on the fact that
God’s engagement with the world is not only like a composer that prescribes a detailed score
for the whole orchestra, but more like the conductor who engages the instrumentalists in a
practice that involves them both. To stay in time and tune with the harmony of truth, each
player must interact closely with the conductor and simultaneously attune his voice to the
other instruments sounding around him in dramatic interplay.
Furthermore, God’s involvement with the world is perhaps even better conceived along the
lines of more improvisational forms of music. Every form of music, as practice, has an
element of improvisation pertaining to it, and most kinds of music proceed by some kind of
684 Balthasar is one of the happy exceptions mentioned in the footnotes at the start of Begbie, Theology, Music
and Time, 3; ———, Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music (Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2007), 13n1. 685
———, Theology, Music and Time, 9-28.
165
development of musical themes; even though a Bach fugue sounds quite different from a
trumpet solo by Miles Davis, many of the same mechanisms are in play.686
However, what
separates the writing composer and the playing improvisator is that the composer can change
his mind and undo the last steps of the development, while the improvisator is always bound
by his earlier involvement in the musical act. The next tone must be played in the situation
established by the former tones, and in cases of improvising in an ensemble, the choices of the
other musicians both open and close additional possibilities along the way. Thus understood,
God’s involvement with the world is not one-sided or one-directional, but dramatic and
complex; his action as redeemer is interwoven with his action as Creator and sustainer of the
world and the human race that repeatedly walk their own ways. When Christ enters the
world’s tuning-up orchestra and voices the theme that will integrate all others into the one
truth, he does so by a concrete engagement with the world as it is in reality, not through
correcting the score. In this way of thinking lies also a promising way to deal with the
disastrous disharmonies imputed to the world harmony by sin and evil. The creative genius of
God’s Trinitarian love is that he can manage to integrate every preceding tone in his
performance; as we heard Balthasar state earlier, all truth “spins” around the cross. Every lie
and untruth, all sin and evil, can then be thought to be opposing voices that are ultimately
conquered by Christ, more than tensions functioning as original and necessary developments
for the completion of the thematic movement, which may be the implication of thinking the
resolution of all tensions through Bach-like contrapuntal synthesis, as Hart tends to think.687
The mystery of divine love is that it can make the cacophonic mess encountered in Christ on
the cross into a beautiful melody about the restoration of creation’s original theme.
This creative genius of Christ the truth may serve as a preparation to a theological account of
integration, rooted in katalogical analogy.688
Integration is a central motif in Balthasar, as
noted briefly and pointedly by Peter Casarella, who also links integration and the idea of the
symphonic truth in Balthasar:
The notion of integration is […] present in the entirety of Balthasar’s consideration of both Barth and
Przywara [i.e. in his thinking of analogy]. This is a method quite central to Balthasar’s project that only
686 Further reflections on those aspects of music can be found in Cynthia R. Nielsen, “What Has Mozart to Do
with Coltrane?: The Dynamism and Built-in Flexibility of Music,” Expositions 3, no. 1 (2009). Begbie reflects
more extensively on the theological potential of improvisation in Begbie, Theology, Music and Time, 179-270. 687
Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, 283. 688
Cf. Treitler, “True Foundations of Authentic Theology,” 181.
166
seldom gets mentioned by scholars working on his thought. In sum, Balthasar conceives of the entire truth
about God and humanity as a symphonic whole whose unity is greater than its parts.689
Integration is, as we have seen, Balthasar’s program for the interaction between theology and
philosophy and his primary philosophical method.690
But its full significance comes to light
when the absolute totality of the incarnate Christ as the concrete fulfillment of analogy comes
into view. Christological and Trinitarian determination of the idea of integration into an
always greater totality results in a vision of the Logos, as the beloved Son of the Father,
endowed by the Spirit and bestowing the Spirit through his incarnate deeds, as the deepest
truth. The greatest totality that can integrate anything is the love that surpasses knowledge and
is co-extensive with being. Balthasar’s theological reservations against the maxim “whoever
sees more is right” are in accordance with this Trinitarian truth. As he quite humorously says,
the maxim, if viewed as a road to absolute knowledge, leads to Hegel, not to Christ.691
God’s
acts in creation and redemption are not part of a system that is greater than God. Rather,
creation is God “integrating” what is posited into being into God’s own all-embracing reality.
As with really good music, the case is that truth, in its divine foundation, has no other logic
than its own. A great piece of music can be analyzed into a thousand pieces, with great
intelligibility and fruitful understanding as results. It can follow all the rules. But still the
music remains the music, the practice of its own content, the genius of its own musicality.
This is why, according to a coherent Christian world view, the one looking for more truth will
sooner or later encounter Christ. This encounter may be analyzed theoretically, but its
significance must necessarily go beyond that, because God is the infinite excess of love that
transcends knowledge.
The Balthasar-based notion of integration has a close associate in Puntel’s concept of
coherence.692
To unite their ways of speaking, one could say that coherence results from well-
performed integration. The explication and discussion of musical imagery in talking of truth
here may also share light on Puntel’s notion of coherence. He emphasizes that coherence is
not only a negative criterion (i.e. lack of inconsistency), but that it is a positive concept
including the amount of data included in a theory and the degree of interconnections between
them. These two positive aspects occur in degrees or “scales” of coherence from weak to
689 Casarella, “Hans Urs von Balthasar, Erich Przywara’s Analogia Entis and the Problem of a Catholic
Denkform,” 205. 690
See 5.1 and 6.3. 691
Balthasar, E, 15f. 692
Cf. the presentation in 4.3.
167
strong.693
Although Puntel’s use of “scale” in this context is probably not intentionally
musical in connotations, it may provide an opening for making the use of musical imagery
relevant to his concept of coherence. The metaphor of truth as symphonic may serve as a way
to explicate what the interconnectedness of data in a theory in fact is. It is about the
“musicality” of the propositions, of how a proposition and its theoretical framework manages
to integrate different tones and voices into its own improvised totality, and whether the result
is symphonic or cacophonic. It expresses an aesthetic dimension of intelligibility.
Trinitarian Difference, One Truth and Plural Frameworks
Balthasar’s thinking on the Trinitarian differences in relation to truth opens up promising
possibilities for a further theological determination of important aspects of Puntel’s thinking
on truth and theoretical frameworks. According to Puntel, absolute truth functions as the
indispensable regulative idea of all theoretical activity. But concrete propositions are always
relative to their respective theoretical frameworks. Consciousness of the positivity of the other
grounded in Trinitarian difference can make this moderate relativism or Christian pluralism
an integrate part of a theological determination of truth.
The notion of Christ as absolute and concrete katalogical analogia entis, and thereby as the
expressio of God or the absolute point of reference for the full determination of Being
developed in § 9, can function as a theological explication and justification of the notion of
the one truth as regulative idea for theoretical activity. Christ is the Logos that performs the
perfect integration of all logoi, because they are all created in him according to his pattern,
and because he has united himself to creaturely logoi in order to reveal God. The coincidence
of the content of those two ideas is striking. From philosophical frameworks alien to or in
opposition to the Christian tradition, it might be asked whether Puntel’s notion is only a
philosophical version of the theological doctrine. A structural-systematic philosophical
answer to this objection would be that the one regulative truth is indispensable to the
intelligibility of theoretical activity and the most plausible reason why we human beings think
and evaluate theories at all. Where it comes from is thus strictly irrelevant. The coincidence is
perfectly coherent, because the philosophical notion of truth as a regulative idea is a
philosophically detected reflection (i.e. through katalogical analogy) of the creation of the
world in the Logos. Whether it is discernible from within a purely philosophical or analogical
693 Puntel and White (trans.), S&B, 464.
168
perspective, prior to theological perspectives and katalogical determination, remains open to
the eventual argumentative success of the philosopher.
However, one can conclude from the idea of Christ as the incarnation (literally and
figuratively) of the one truth that when Christ is grasped, truth as a totality is grasped, with a
resulting kind of uncritical realism. Here again Trinitarian reflection can illuminate the case.
As hinted at in my earlier discussion of negative theology, the Trinitarian plurality of God,
according to Balthasar, “is the supreme expression of the limitless plentitude of the divine
being, a plentitude that could never be exhausted.”694
The infinite and always remaining
excess of God that was argued as the adequate interpretation of negative theology is
ultimately rooted in God as Trinity. The maxim Deus semper major has a Trinitarian
foundation, and is as true for God himself as for human beings knowing God.695
To God the
Father, God the Son is always greater, new and full of surprising love and response. And God
the Spirit’s searching of “the depths of God” (1 Cor 2:10) will never come to an end, because
the divine persons are always new and greater to each other in their reciprocal love. To
Balthasar this excess means that the mystery of God is only approachable through
“countervailing propositions” [gegenlaüfige Aussagen].696
This way of speaking perhaps
sounds too close to accepting straightforward contradictions as part of the truth of God,697
and
could have been expressed in more appropriate language. Balthasar does, however,
underscore explicitly that this is the case not because the mystery contradicts itself, but
because it is always greater than what we can fully apprehend. But it is hardly intelligible that
the mystery does not contradict itself if true propositions referring to it positively logically
contradict each other. The tensions between different propositions ought rather to be related to
their location inside different theoretical frameworks and levels of grained-ness in order to
make sense. But to express the mysterious fullness of created being as well as the love of God
in true propositions, one must always say more than one thing, and always more than one says
when one says it. Because of the Trinitarian plurality of God, and its reflection in created
694 Balthasar, TL 2, 180. Emphasis mine.
695 ———, TL 3, 30. Cf. Klaghofer-Treitler, Gotteswort im Menshenwort: Inhalt und Form von Theologie nach
Hans Urs von Balthasar, 463. See also Balthasar, TL 3, 160, G:146. Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der
Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 260. 696
Balthasar, TL 2, 161, G:148. Cf. Ibid., 132f, 327. ———, TL 3, 155, 157, G:144. On another occasion, he
speaks more carefully of the mystery as being circled around from “often apparently contradictory
[gegensätzlich] sides.” Ibid., 113, G:103. 697
Gegenläufig literally means to run in confronting or opposite directions, a move that often results in
collisions. The English word countervailing has more connotations in the direction of a fullness or compensation
by supplement.
169
being, the necessary plurality of true propositions is a positive fact that will never cease.
Puntel’s moderate relativism with respect to truth is therefore in perfect accordance with
Christological analogy of the one God, Father, Son and Spirit, who is semper major in
relation to himself and created beings.
This Trinitarian analogy can even be expanded to the idea of the one truth and the
indispensable manifold frameworks for expressing truth: As God is one, truth is one, and as
God is only approachable as economically triune in katalogical engagement with the concrete
historical world, truth is always dramatic and plural in character in the sense of being
expressed inside a concrete contingent framework through a plurality of propositions. The
greater unlikeness is that God is as this concrete engagement with the world as always new
and reciprocally loving Father, Son and Spirit, otherwise the immanent and economic Trinity
would be two gods. The truths expressed through contingent frameworks, on the other hand,
are never more than fragmentary parts of a whole that is not fully attainable. The necessity of
formulating propositions that are always moderately relative to frameworks and a plurality of
frameworks to express them is a positive condition that is an expression of the unending and
knowledge-surpassing love of the Trinitarian God for the world.
Truth, Being and Love
Balthasar’s way of relating truth to being and love can be assessed as a welcome theological
determination of central aspects of the philosophical theory of being and God developed by
Puntel.698
Puntel and Balthasar make a similar kind of argument against typical kinds of
postmodern ways of thinking that reject the terminology of being and metaphysics applied to
God and thus, both thinkers claim, give up the claim of universality and intelligibility inherent
in Christian faith. However, some of Balthasar’s remarks on truth as love can be made more
precise and coherent by affirming more clearly that it is as a true explication of being, which
must be understood as love/a gift, that love is the truth.
The intuition of Balthasar’s somewhat in-passing rejection of Marion’s attempt to think God
without Being in TL 2 is central to Puntel’s full-length criticism in Being and God.699
Here
Puntel shows clearly the inconsistencies that result when the terminology of being is rejected
in favor of love as the primary category. It can make no sense to say that “God is, God exists”
698 In fact, Balthasar plays an important role as one of very few theologians that receive some positive evaluation
from Puntel. See Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 46f, 315-7, 328. 699
Esp. Ibid., 302-19.
170
or “God loves, is love” in a framework claiming any universality and consistency, and at the
same time say that the term “being” cannot in any way denote God.700
As I have noted earlier,
the rejection of the terminology of being applied to God may be an intuitive move responding
to some theological problems, but the move in most cases results in more confusion than
clarity. What is important is to be clear about what exactly is meant by using the term “being”
to designate both the reality of God and created realities.701
The inconsistency resulting from
this move is intolerable for Puntel because of its unintelligibility. It is likewise from a
Balthasarian viewpoint a serious shortcoming in facing the apologetic task of theology
because it gives up the claim of universality inherent in Christian faith in the one creator God.
Now, words have different meanings according to contexts and theoretical frameworks. Thus
it might on some occasions be appropriate to use radical formulations in order to express ideas
clearly, and notions from the apophatic tradition can be integrated into a coherent framework
based on this insight.702
But it is more coherent to pursue philosophical and theological
reflection based on a notion of a comprehensive theoretical concept (being) that is refined and
explicated as thinking proceeds than to start by rejecting the notion that commends itself as
most appropriate both through its obvious relevance to human existence philosophically and
the reciprocal sameness-difference relation of God-creation theologically. Thus it can be
concluded that God does not love more, but gets more confusing, when thought without
being.
When being is explicated theologically, however, it becomes clear that being itself is love.703
Puntel presents only a small but important glimpse of the breadth of Balthasar’s theological
thought when he counters Marion by using Balthasar’s notion of love as “Being’s highest
act,” “esse plenum” or “fulfilled being,” with reference to GL 5 and TL 2.704
What is
important to these notions in Balthasar’s thought from a theological point of view is that they
700 Ibid., 314f. What happens in such cases is what Puntel polemically notes: “Playing with words, a practice
common in postmodernist circles, does not solve philosophical problems.” Perhaps even more on the limits of
legitimate scholarly polemics, among some other examples, is Puntel’s talk of Marion’s “magic wand,” which he
waves in order to get rid of conceptual difficulties by taking “God’s point of view.” See ibid., 380f. 701
Some aspects of this clarity are gained throughout the discussion in 9.3. 702
Cf. the analysis of Maximus the Confessor in Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus
the Confessor, 88f. Maximus speaks of God as equally being (the one who is) and not-being. What Balthasar
says here is perhaps in some tension with his rejection of Marion, but the point is that Marion and Maximus use
the terminology in different ways in different contexts wanting to accomplish different theoretical tasks. 703
As mentioned in different contexts already, philosophical explication can also support this conclusion. But the
problem of evil and the idea of the divine revelation in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as genuinely new
suggest that theological explication is indispensable for its full explication. 704
Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 316f.
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are genuinely Trinitarian and based on the truth that the Son is and reveals by his being in the
world. The Son, who was given by the Father out of love for the world (John 3:16) so that he
should love “to the end” (13:1), came to do that because he was groundlessly loved by and
loving the Father from the beginning. And their reciprocal love was aflame by the gift of the
Spirit, who in the economy poured this love into human hearts (Rom 5:5). God as Trinity is
love and therefore God freely created the world and sent the Son to redeem it. Thus, some of
the most comprehensive propositions possible within the framework of this dissertation – and
thus close to the deepest truth – are the following: God is/God loves. God is love. God loves
the world.
Fully explicated absolute being is triune love, and all contingent being is gift that results from
this love. This is the ultimate reason why philosophy not only arises from wonder but ends in
wonder.705
It is also the reason why theology does not end in conceptual apophatic despair,
but points toward worship and adoration. In that act the groundless divine love, known as that
which transcends knowledge because of its groundlessness and infinity, becomes answered by
love from the creature that has received love freely.
The Cross, Difference and Abandonment
Balthasar’s theology of the abandonment and descent of Christ has raised considerable debate.
However, the analysis at the level of detail that has been undertaken so far in this dissertation
has not uncovered any very problematic theological notions or heretical doctrine.706
The
points under discussion here seem to follow rather seamlessly from important insights in
Trinitarian theology, Christology and biblical theology seen together. Balthasar’s
interpretation of Jesus’ cry of forsakenness on the cross can perhaps be questioned from a
strictly Markan or Matthean exegetical perspective, but Balthasar’s reading does not demand
an unambiguous conclusion in that perspective.707
Rather it follows more from his
interpretation of Jesus’ death as substitutionary atonement for sin and a more canonical
interpretation informed by Christology and Trinitarian theology. The biblical interpretation of
the cross must be guided by the idea that God is free to decide what God wills and can do,
705 Cf. § 5 and the reference to Schindler on the first page of the Prelude, § 1.
706 This is not to say that everything e.g. in the last chapter of TL 2 can be taken at face value. The style is very
impressionistic and sometimes blurry, and complicated theological themes, including some ecumenical hot
potatoes, are mentioned in passing without being worked out: Purgatory, universalism, double predestination,
von Speyr’s notion of “effigies,” the pre-redemption and co-redemptive work of Mary and so on. It would also
have been possible to discuss and question sides of the interpretation of Luther. 707
Cf. Kilby, “Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Trinity,” 215.
172
regardless of confines laid by traditional thinking or philosophical systems.708
This is also the
case concerning the possibility of salvation for all. Here Balthasar’s dramatic reservations are
important reminders that a theology anticipating the final judgment too much may end up
either limiting God’s infinite love or making it too obvious. More importantly, the emphasis
on love as the most basic thing to be said of God demands that a coherent view of a double
outcome of the final judgment must be constructed in a way that understands God’s holiness,
wrath and perdition as expressions of his love.709
One of the strengths in Balthasar’s thought is the move that makes the cross the center of the
question of the unity of truth facing sin and lie. This is a coherent move that follows from how
he constitutes Christology and Trinitarian theology. But it would be more coherent to express
the dilemma explicitly as a question of the unity of God’s love as explication of the truth of
being. That is, this aspect of the interpretation of the cross addresses a material and not a
formal aspect of how Christ is the absolute reference point for all truth. Furthermore, the
resolving of the contradiction of sin is presented primarily in poetical-metaphorical terms.
Balthasar says that sin and lie are taken into divine love, and overcome by it, and that divine
logic wins victory over every contradiction. The language is partly biblical and traditional. It
must be conceded that the character of the cross as saving mystery makes a comprehensive,
purely theoretical grasp of it difficult, and thus Balthasar’s dramatic and poetic reservations
have something to commend to them. Also he emphasizes that it is the event of the cross as
the extreme expression of the Son’s obedience to the Father that solves the contradiction by
way of the unity of Christ’s person going beyond the opposition between his natures. The
resolving of the contradiction rests on the person and work of Christ; it is not a formal
dialectic in some system. However, it is an important theoretical insight that everything that
happens on the cross and beyond has its conditions of possibility in the life of God, as stated
by Sigurd Lefsrud: “…Christian truth (indeed, all truth) finds its grounding in the perichoretic
relationship between the Persons of the Trinity.”710
There is no truth prior to the groundless
and Unvordenkliche love of God that is given to the world and revealed in the Son (cf. 1 John
3:16; 4:10).
708 This point is unfolded contra Pitstick in Bieler, “Kreuz und Gott: Implikationen der Kreuzestheologie Hans
Urs von Balthasars für die Gotteslehre,” 10ff. The way of reasoning must be applied regarding all the debated
notions of, say, divine apatheia, immutability, suffering, death and so forth. See 14.4. 709
Cf. Bieler’s suggestive notion of God’s wrath as a Nachbrenner to God’s love, ibid., 12. 710
Lefsrud, “From Dialectic to Dialogic: Beyond Luther’s Theology of the Cross to Balthasar’s Theology of
Holy Saturday,” 96.
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§ 11. Summary of Part II
In Part II the discussion of truth passed the methodological watershed from philosophy to
theology, aiming to make a further theological determination of the philosophical concept of
truth as being expressing itself through fully determined propositions identical to primary
facts. It was shown that Christology is the central key to a unified philosophical-theological
concept of truth, for in Christ God appears and reveals himself within created being. The
doctrine of the Trinity contributed to a “symphonic” understanding of truth where difference
and plurality can be positively assessed, and provided the basis for saying that fully explicated
being is love.
Balthasar’s interpretation of Christ as “the truth” (cf. John 14:6) has many aspects (9.1), but
hinges primarily on the idea of Christ as the personification of or the concrete analogia entis.
Balthasar often gives word to the doctrine of analogy by alluding to a catchphrase from the
Fourth Lateran Council (1215) speaking of the likeness (similitudo) within greater unlikeness
(maior dissimilitudo) between Creator and creation. Through the Logos’ role as mediator of
creation (cf. the ancient idea of logos spermatikos), created being has received a stamp or
watermark of the divine in such a way that the incarnate “comes to his own” (cf. John 1:11)
and therefore can express divine truth in an adequate way in the world. In a word employed
by Walter Kasper, analogia entis signifies for Balthasar the Ansprechbarkeit of creation for
God. Balthasar emphasizes, however, that the analogy is revealed kata-logically. Christ
therefore brings something genuinely new and surprising through his message and his person
that cannot be deduced by a purely ana-logical philosophical procedure alone. Thus his
version of the doctrine of analogy is explicitly Christological and Trinitarian. In Balthasar’s
words there is a leap from philosophical to theological understandings truth, but the analogia
entis ensures that this leap happens within continuity.
Balthasar’s emphasis on Christ and katalogy lead him over the years to a more critical stand
towards traditional interpretations of negative theology (9.2). The later Balthasar holds
explicitly that parts of the tradition of negative theology are more precisely to be understood
as negative philosophy. Rather than excluding God from human knowledge, Balthasar holds
that negative theology shows how God’s revelation in Christ is a super-word (Über-wort), an
excessive giving of divine love that transcends the total grasp of finite human beings (a
“positive incomprehensibility” instead of a negative one). He often grounds this by appealing
to Eph 3:19 on knowledge of the love that surpasses knowledge.
174
The discussion and critical assessment of Balthasar’s position (9.3) used his Christological
and katalogical version of the doctrine of analogy as a valuable resource for the articulation of
a coherent concept of truth in theology. Puntel and Balthasar have some shared concerns
regarding transcendence and negative theology. They both emphasize that the transcendence
and immanence of God must rather be conceived as increasing together than one on the cost
of the other. The likeness and unlikeness of creation to God result from the same act of God,
namely the creation of the world out of his freedom and love. Puntel rejects the traditional
Thomistic doctrine of analogy, but his criticism is not fatal to my Balthasarian version of it,
although Balthasar’s version can be made more theoretically clear and coherent. This
concerns especially the philosophical framework involving, although far from being reducible
to, a Thomistic conception of esse. It was argued that the analogical relationship of being
(analogia entis) as the similarity in dissimilarity between Creator and creation, interpreted as
the Ansprechbarkeit of created being by God, is presupposed by the incarnation. But it is also
in a certain way re-established and revealed in a way not conceivable beforehand, as Christ
becomes the final and concrete expression of this analogy in the unity of his person. Because
of this he can hold all truth together in himself, and express the mysterious depths of truth in
the Trinitarian love in an adequate way to the ear that is, by the work of the Spirit, able to
hear.
Systematic-theological statements or propositions, as philosophical ones, are true when they
are fully determined expressions identical to a primary fact (Puntel). And here primary facts
include God (absolute being) appearing in the Son within the history of contingent being.
Thus he must be conceived as the (implicit) absolute point of reference for all claims of truth.
In the person of Christ, however, it is also made clear that truth is not something merely
theoretical. He is the truth not only by his words, but by his whole person and his works,
which include the silent deed of the cross and beyond. As the Word revealing God he is
Logos, but also dābār (“word,” but also “thing” and “occurrence”).
The notions of symphony and difference are important to Balthasar’s explicating of
Trinitarian dimensions of theological truth (10.1). Here he thus provides further theological
grounding and explication of much of his philosophy of truth, which also emphasizes
difference.711
The difference inherent in letting the other be other is a condition of love, which
is the highest act of being and not without being according to Balthasar. It is also the notion of
711 Cf. Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, 1f.
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difference – on its flip side seen as distance and separation – that is the basis for Balthasar’s
way of conceiving the unity of truth in light of the cross. In cross and descent Christ
undergoes the most absolute abandonment possible and the truth of God as love wins over all
contradiction.
Balthasar’s notion of truth as symphonic was developed further by noting how it could profit
from integrating additional forms of music (10.2). The phenomenon of music as a practice
and its improvisational character could contribute to making this metaphor a part of a
dramatic notion of truth. Furthermore, it was shown how important points in Balthasar’s
Trinitarian theology could give further theological grounding of important notions of the
theoretical framework of the structural systematic philosophy, thus making them more
coherent. This includes the idea of theoretical frameworks that will always be plural (thus
implying a moderate relativism) and truth as a regulative idea for theoretical activity. With
Puntel and Balthasar it was affirmed that the most coherent way of conceiving love is as the
highest act or fullness of being, that is, fully explicated being is love. Thus it is true that the
truth is love, because the Trinitarian God is love, and that this truth has great importance and
many interconnections within a coherent Christian world view. The ultimate expression of
God’s love in the world is the Son’s atoning death and abandonment on behalf of all human
beings on the cross, culminating in the inevitable surprise of Easter morning. Through this
divine deed all sin, contradiction and lie are overcome and taken over by divine love.
On the basis of the argument in Part II, the intuition of Balthasar saying that “Christian
knowledge only fulfills on a higher level the structure of all human knowing”712
can be
affirmed. It is true insofar as theological determination of truth is further explication of
philosophical truth, which gives rise to wonder. It follows from the fact that God reveals
himself within the structures of the created world. The truth of fully explicated being is
Trinitarian love, and this theological explication of the truth calls forth love in response:
worship and a new life in the Spirit.
712 Balthasar, GL 1, 446f. Similarly, “for the Church, no other form of truth exists than the one established by
Christ, which has given the human (philosophical) form of truth a place within itself (preserving it and elevating
it), so that this latter cannot make any separate claims.” ———, “Truth and Life,” 275.
176
177
PART III: THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH
The discussion in Part II has shown that Christology plays a decisive role in an explicitly
theological interpretation of truth, which is a further explication and determination of truth
understood philosophically as discussed in Part I. At the same time, it was shown that this
Christological focus is intelligible only in relation to a theology of the Trinity, and that the
role of the Holy Spirit in the epistemological mediation and ontological establishment of truth
requires clarification. The division of the analysis of truth in systematic theology into two
parts, focusing first on the Son and later on the Spirit, is thus motivated as much by matters of
presentation as by thematic separateness,713
for the Son is never without the Spirit, and the
Spirit is never without the Son (neither in eternity nor in the economy), as will be thoroughly
underscored in § 14. This fact has an important and somewhat idiosyncratic expression in
both the Apostles’ and the Nicene Creed, where the Spirit is mentioned during the second
article of faith as the one that effects the conception of the incarnate Son of God, without prior
introduction. To articulate this reciprocal belonging together of Son and Spirit, Balthasar
reinterprets and expands a famous metaphor first used by Irenaeus of Lyons (d. c. 202).
Irenaeus understood the Son and the Spirit as “the Father’s two hands.” By the use of this
metaphor, Balthasar emphasizes that the Son and the Spirit never operate in separation from
each other, and that pneumatology must be seen in light of and as a part of a theology of the
Trinity.714
The Spirit’s work in the incarnation of the Son, which is, according to Part II, the concrete
expression and fulfillment of a katalogical analogia entis, is an important theme in what
follows. In a phrase that is reminiscent of Puntel’s thesis discussed in 9.3 that immanence and
transcendence are directly proportional, Wolfgang Tinnefeldt says, as he comments Balthasar,
that what is most transcendent is fulfilled in what is most human. What is of interest for the
discussion in this part of the dissertation is that he says that this process unfolds within a
pneumatological framework. The insights on how truth is always located in relations, in
dramatic lives in the realm of interpersonal love, find an expression in pneumatology, since
713 Similarly, Balthasar in a preliminary note to TL 2 says that the splitting of TL 2 and TL 3 into two volumes
is, strictly considered, “artificial,” ———, TL 2, 11. Cf. ———, TL 3, 28. 714
This point is expressed clearly in relation to Balthasar’s theology by Endre, who says that Balthasar’s
theology of the Trinity is very helpful for pneumatology “im richtigen Licht zu sehen.” Endre, “Die
Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 235.
178
this concrete, life-situated truth can unfold only in the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of life and
love.715
As in the previous parts of the dissertation, the analysis of Balthasar centers on the respective
volume of Theo-Logic, in this case vol. 3: The Spirit of Truth, while being complemented by
other texts, especially essays on similar topics from the Explorations in Theology series. After
an introduction to Balthasar’s pneumatology (§ 12) and its exegetical (biblical-theological)
basis (§ 13), § 14 discusses the interrelation of Christology and pneumatology. In § 15
Balthasar’s reflection on the Spirit’s work in the objective and subjective realm of the church
is analyzed and discussed. The role of the Spirit of truth in the world through the divine act of
creation and its continuation is the theme of § 16, which contains the most important critical
remarks on Balthasar’s theology in this dissertation (16.2). Part III closes with an outlook
reflecting on the Spirit’s role in the making of theology, particularly in the perspective of a
quest for truth (§ 17).
§ 12. Introductory Remarks on Balthasar’s Pneumatology
This chapter provides an introduction to some general aspects of Balthasar’s pneumatology,
which are neither analyzed nor criticized at the same length and precision as in § 13-16, where
aspects that are more central to the questions discussed in this dissertation are investigated.
The remarks presented in this section are included in order to situate the central questions
within their proper context in Balthasar’s theology and pneumatology. Some of the thematic
concerns central to the relatively few existing explicit studies of Balthasar’s pneumatology are
thus treated only briefly here.
The most significant of those works is the dissertation by Kossi K. Joseph Tossou, which is a
general analysis and systematic synthesis of the pneumatology of Balthasar’s works prior to
TL 2 and 3.716
This work is praised by Balthasar himself both in a Geleitwort at the beginning
715 Tinnefeldt’s text goes: “Das Transzendenteste vollzieht sich im Menschlichsten. Daß die Vorgegebenheit der
Wahrheit des Glaubens nur im Medium menschlicher Existenz und Glaubenserfahrung zur Selbstgegebenheit
gelangt, bildet die eigentümliche Gegebenheitsweise christlicher Wahrheit als Zeugniswahrheit. Dieses
Wahrheitsgeschehen nennt v.Balthasar die ‘Logik der Liebe.’ Sie kann erst im Rahmen der Pneumatologie
entfaltet werden, weil der Hl.Geist als Gabe der innerste Grund des Glaubens nur ist in der bleibenden Freiheit
seines Gebens. (…) Zur entfalteten Pneumatologie gehört wesensmäßig eine Philosophie der Endlichkeit, die
nicht mit sich selbst anfängt, um sich dann alles aus vorverstandenen Horizonten begegnen zu lassen, sondern
die Fähigkeit besitzt, Horizonte aus der unmittelbaren Begegnung mit etwas erst zu ziehen” (emphasis mine),
Tinnefeldt, “Ekstasis der Liebe und Einfaltung des Glaubens: eine Untersuchung zur Frage nach der Mitte und
Einheit der christlichen Wahrheit bei Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 272. 716
Tossou, Streben nach Vollendung: Zur Pneumatologie im Werk Hans Urs von Balthasars. TL 2 and 3 were
not written at the time of its publication.
179
of the dissertation where Balthasar points to some of the directions TL 2 and 3 will take
regarding the Holy Spirit,717
and in the Foreword to TL 3.718
Tossou situates Balthasar’s
pneumatology on the background of his anthropology and his theology of revelation in Christ,
and the central theme and concept is fulfillment (Vollendung) – the Spirit as the divine person
that perfects and completes or puts the work of God in creation and redemption into action.
The explicit treatment of the Spirit contains chapters on the Christological constellation of the
Spirit, the inner-Trinitarian determination of the Spirit, the Church and eschatology. Some of
those themes recur in TL 3 at some length, but Tossou does not, like Balthasar, place them
under the heading the Spirit of truth. Although Tossou acknowledges the importance of this
name of the Spirit referring to Johannine texts, it is treated explicitly in a section covering
only five pages.719
The reason is that Tossou has general pneumatology as his orienting point,
while Balthasar in Theo-Logic discusses the Spirit as a part of his theological engagement
with the transcendentals in the trilogy, including truth. Thus we will not find – and should not
expect to find – great fields of overlap between Tossou’s discussion and the one in this
dissertation, which focuses on pneumatology emphasizing the Spirit’s relation to truth.
Horváth Endre’s dissertation on Balthasar’s pneumatology is more guided by the perspective
and outline of TL 3, regarding both the structure and material content, than Tossou’s.720
Thus
Endre can function as a dialogue partner in more places throughout, but, for example, his
substantial treatment of the question of the Spirit as person721
will be treated more briefly here
due to the thematic focus of this dissertation.
12.1 The Johannine Entryway: Scriptural Background and Emphasis
The discussions in the theological part(s)722
of Theo-logic are undertaken by Balthasar
through the use of what he calls “the Johannine entryway.” TL 2 starts with a quite substantial
exegetical and biblical-theological treatment of the concepts of truth, glory and goodness in a
Christological framework under this heading.723
The section functions as a prelude to the
whole volume, its questions and the directions taken within it. Johannine texts are the central
ones from the beginning, and constitute the theological framework that later references to
717 Ibid., VII-IV.
718 Balthasar, TL 3, 13.
719 Tossou, Streben nach Vollendung: Zur Pneumatologie im Werk Hans Urs von Balthasars, 330-6.
720 Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen
Nachfragen.” 721
Especially as treated in chapter VI, ibid., 238-271. 722
See footnote 713. 723
Balthasar, TL 2, 13-24.
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Paul and the Synoptics are integrated into.724
Similarly, TL 3, after some preliminary preludes
to the themes of that volume (and the first of those is as “Johannine” as the start of TL 2725
),
contains a section with exegetical and biblical-theological remarks on the Spirit.726
In both
volumes these sections are guided by the Johannine perspective, which is introduced as the
entry to the breadth and wealth of the biblical material as well as the concluding reflection
within it that contains and integrates everything else in it. The methodological importance of
this entryway for Balthasar’s Christology and pneumatology as it is presented in Theo-logic
should not be underestimated. His Christology would have acquired a very different form if
the entryway was, say, the synoptic teacher-Rabbi and healer, rather than the Johannine “I am
the truth” and “we saw his glory” (John 14:6; 1:14). And a pneumatology guided more by the
Pentecost narrative than by the Johannine “he will lead you into all the truth”, for “he will
glorify me” (16:13), would give a different impression than Balthasar’s.
This state of affairs raises important general questions regarding how the biblical material
should be used in a systematic theology that sees communicating, systematizing and
contemporizing the content of biblical texts as one of its important tasks. Those are questions
of extraordinary ecumenical complexity and importance. Historically, especially Eastern
Orthodox, but also Roman Catholic, theology has tended to emphasize the Johannine
perspective, while different strands of Protestantism following Martin Luther have found a
particularly important strand in the canon in Paul’s teachings on justification by faith,
especially in the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. Pentecostals of all types have
traditionally given precedence to the Pentecost narrative and biblical texts speaking of mighty
deeds performed in the Spirit. On this background, and because of the hermeneutical intricacy
of those questions, one cannot hope that all of those questions can be solved in this
dissertation. The most important question in the case of Balthasar’s Johannine entryway is the
question of what methodological guidelines should be applied when “weighing” biblical texts
against one another, especially as regards their importance or priority in the systematic
theological result. This question will be our focus in what follows. Behind the question lies
the broader hermeneutical problems related to the use of biblical texts in a contemporary
724 The first 47 biblical references in the English translation (some added by the translator) are Johannine. In the
whole section, approximately two thirds out of 92 references (the counting is dubious (Balthasar sometimes cites
or alludes without reference, and some verses are repeated); numbers are given as an indication only). 725
“What has the Spirit to do with logic,” Balthasar, TL 3, 17-24. The first sentence of this section, which is also
the first of the main text of the book, starts: “Faithful to the Johannine approach of the previous volume [...].” In
this section the first 14 of 29 out of 36 biblical references are Johannine. Cf. preceding footnote. 726
Ibid., 61-104. The content of this section is analyzed more thoroughly in 13.1.
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normative frame. What methodical standards and criteria for exegetical work will be applied?
How will the meaning of the text established by exegetical work be brought into the
systematic theological reflection? This dissertation cannot answer those questions in detail,
but both the analysis of Balthasar’s theology and my discussion of it are informed throughout
by a critical awareness of the use of texts from Scripture.
Surprisingly few of the commentators on Balthasar’s Theo-Logic have raised those or similar
questions. There are studies treating Balthasar’s exegesis in a more general perspective
written and concluding in more or less critical attitudes,727
but the only more substantial
treatment of the particular case in Theo-logic that I have found is in Ulrich Johannes Plaga’s
dissertation.728
Plaga focuses on Christology throughout his dissertation, and the section on
the Johannine entryway concerns only TL 2. He discusses primarily the theme of pre-
existence in biblical and historical perspective. The conclusion is that it is exegetically
justified to view John as some kind of concluding reflection to the Christological content of
the canon.729
Likewise, Plaga gives a mostly positive judgment of Balthasar’s interpretation of
alētheia [truth] as Johannine term and his use of it.730
In those questions it is more
uncontroversial to follow Plaga; therefore I have not discussed the Johannine entryway as an
important question in Part II of this study. A primary reason is that the Johannine emphasis on
the preexistence and co-creation of the Logos has been established as central to the Church’s
Christological reflection through, for example, the Nicene Creed and the Christological
debates of the early centuries of the Church. There is, however, not the same direct and
explicit creedal support for privileging of Johannine texts, perspectives and questions in
pneumatology. Balthasar’s main Johannine entryway to the Spirit, which is the last of the
Paraclete sayings of the farewell discourse in John (16:13f),731
is not alluded to in the Nicene
or the Apostolic creed. Arguably, Balthasar’s stark emphasis on the Johannine perspective
does at times lead him to neglect relevant material for the articulation of pneumatology, or at
727 Some examples include W. T. Dickens, Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics: A Model for Post-
critical Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003); Johannes Schelhas,
Christozentrische Schriftauslegung: Hans Urs von Balthasar und Karl Barth im Vergleich (Freiburg: Herder,
2012). Cf. also Jason Paul Bourgeois, The Aesthetic Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Hans Urs von
Balthasar (New York: Peter Lang, 2007). 728
In the section “Johannes in seiner Bedeutung für die Theologik,” Plaga, “‘Ich bin die Wahrheit.’ Die
theologische Dimension der Christologie Hans Urs von Balthasars,” 315-347. 729
“Aus exegetischer Sicht sollte also Johannes als Grundbaustein für eine Christologie nicht ausscheiden,
sondern eher als Konklusion der biblisch – christologischen Reflexion ausdrücklich mit eingeflochten werden.”
Ibid., 331. 730
Ibid., 331-8. 731
See Balthasar, TL 3, 17, 69.
182
least to make too narrow restrictions of what can be justified as dogma in antithesis to
speculation.732
Concrete examples of this practice will be returned to later, especially in § 16,
because the complexity of the questions hardly makes them answerable in an abstract context.
But here some initial arguments will be offered in favor of the use of a Johannine entryway
conceived in a Balthasar-like way. It will be unfolded first through a closer look at the inner
coherence and connection of Balthasar literary output and his lifework, and second through a
discussion of the status of the Johannine writings in systematic theology in general.
The Johannine sympathies of Balthasar reach far beyond Theo-logic. It is worth noting here
that it also extends beyond his writings to the institutions he himself described as more
important than his writings.733
Two of the most important institutions he worked through,
both in close company with Adrienne von Speyr, were the publishing house he founded for
the publication of their works, the Johannes Verlag, and the secular institute
Johannesgemeinschaft [Community of (St.) John], a religious order for laity, most of them
working in secular professions.734
The choices of names for those institutions are hardly
random.735
In this light neither is it surprising that von Speyr’s only four-volume biblical
commentary (edited by Balthasar) is the one on the Gospel of John.736
Returning to his books,
Balthasar accords a central place to Johannine texts and theology not only in the Theo-Logic.
Quotations from John often figure in his book titles,737
and the section on “Spirit” in
Explorations in theology III: Creator Spirit738
is as influenced by Johannine perspectives as
TL 2 and 3. Thus it is to stretch the evidence a bit far when Plaga says that the Johannine
entryway is not the entry to the whole of Balthasar’s theology, but only to the realm [Raum]
of logic. More appropriate is Plaga’s thesis that John functions as the link [Bindeglied]
between dialectics and logic, between aesthetics, dramatics and logic in the thought of
732 Concrete examples of such cases will be given in § 15 and § 16. For the use of the word “speculation” here cf.
Ibid., 425. 733
Cf. Heinrici, “Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Sketch of His Life,” 28. 734
Ibid., 28-30. For further reading: Hans Urs von Balthasar, Our Task: A Report and a Plan (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1994). See also Guerrerio, Hans Urs von Balthasar: Eine Monographie, 153-68, 413-8. 735
Heinrici, “Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Sketch of His Life,” 42. 736
Adrienne von Speyr, John, Vol. 1-4 (San Fransisco: Ignatius Press, 1987-1994). The German original covers
over 2000 pages, and was one of the first works published at Johannes Verlag. According to Cornelia Capol,
Balthasar’s trouble in having others publish these books was an important reason for the establishment of his
own publishing house. See Maximilian Greiner, “The Community of St. John: A Conversation with Cornelia
Capol and Martha Gisi,” in Balthasar: Life and Work, ed. David L. Schindler (1991), 98. 737
E.g. Verbum Caro (cf. John 1:14) is the German (i.e. Latin) title of Balthasar, The Word Made Flesh. Also
(cf. John 6:68 and 12:24), ———, You Have Words of Eternal Life: Scripture Meditations (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1991); ———, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms. 738
———, Creator Spirit, 105-277. This section contains among others the important essays “The Unknown
Lying beyond the Word,” “The Holy Spirit as Love” and “Truth and Life.”
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Balthasar.739
But is this not just what is central to his theology overall? The Johannine
emphasis is thus not only a mark of Theo-Logic, but on the whole life and work of Balthasar.
There are good arguments for a certain privileging of Johannine texts in systematic
theological questions. It is therefore not surprising to find that Balthasar plays on a long
tradition in Christian theology by making the Johannine writings his entryway. An early and
profound expression of this privileging of John is found in Origen’s introduction to his
commentary on the Gospel:
I think that John’s Gospel, which you have enjoined us to examine to the best of our ability, is the firstfruits
of the Gospels. It speaks of him whose descent is traced and begins from him who is without a genealogy….
The greater and more perfect expressions concerning Jesus are reserved for the one who leaned on Jesus’
breast. For none of the Gospels manifested his divinity as fully as John when he presented him saying, “I am
the light of the world,” “I am the way and the truth and the life,” [etc.] … We might dare say then that the
Gospels are the firstfruits of all Scripture but that the firstfruits of the Gospels is that according to John[.]740
Similar expressions and intense use of this gospel can be found in Augustine and John
Chrysostom, to mention some important figures.741
This traditional high evaluation of John
can present the following arguments in support of itself.742
They are probably implicit in
Balthasar’s use of the Johannine entryway.
A first argument to be noted is the place of John within the canon, in several respects. Most
scholars assume that it is the latest of the gospels, perhaps the latest writing of the entire NT, a
date about AD 90 is often supposed, probably written in Ephesus.743
Seen in isolation this is
not very significant, but add the fact that the Gospel in several places seems to presuppose the
synoptic tradition (the affinity is closest to Mark),744
and the door opens to an understanding
of this gospel as a self-conscious, integrative, supplementing commentary to the Jesus
739 Plaga, “‘Ich bin die Wahrheit.’ Die theologische Dimension der Christologie Hans Urs von Balthasars,” 345.
740 Origen: Commentary on the Gospel of John 1, 21-23, cited from Joel C. Elowsky, John 1-10, ed. Thomas C.
Oden, vol. NT IVa, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 2f.
Emphasis mine. 741
Cf. Ibid. 742
On the role of John in Christian theology see further: Richard Bauckham and Carl Mosser, ed. The Gospel of
John and Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). 743
For early witnesses to this view, see Elowsky, John 1-10, xxiv-xxvi. Overviews of the modern discussion can
be found in commentaries, for example Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII: A New Translation with
Introduction and Commentary; Donald A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1991); Urban C. von Wahlde, The Gospel and Letters of John: Introduction, Analysis, and Reference, 3 vols.,
vol. 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). 744
Cf. the remarks in John 1:32; 3:24; 4:44; 12:15. As regards the relationship to Mark, the most important case
is the similarities between John 6 (the feeding of the five thousand and the walking on the water) and Mark 6:30-
45. Another interesting case is the relationship of John 13 to the synoptic accounts of the last supper.
184
tradition that was already flourishing in the Christian congregations. Among the gospels, John
is also the one being most intimate on the disciples’ relation to Jesus, seen particularly
through his relation to the disciple described as “the one Jesus loved,” who traditionally and
by some today is seen to be John of Zebedee and author or primary eyewitness-source of the
gospel.745
A second and perhaps more important reason for a privileging of Johannine perspectives in
systematic theology is the character and content of this writing. In traditional imagery John is
often symbolized as or in relation to an eagle,746
thus referring to the majesty, mysteriousness,
comprehensiveness and “bird’s eye view” often taken in this gospel. Here the perspective
extends beyond the miraculous birth and baptism of Jesus of Nazareth into divine life from
eternity and to the ends of the world. The traditional epithet of John the evangelist in the
orthodox tradition as “theologian” points to the same comprehensiveness.747
The Johannine
writings have furthermore been central to the development of Christian theology of the
Trinity, especially due to the many texts that speak of the oneness, distinction and intimate
relationship of the Son to God the heavenly Father.748
Closely related to this is also the
comprehensive Johannine perspective on the incarnation.749
As regards pneumatology, the
Paraclete sayings of the farewell discourse are some of the most elaborate texts on the Spirit
in the NT. The Johannine focus on the Trinitarian relations thus also includes some important
sayings on the character and work of the Holy Spirit.
Although this discussion has not been comprehensive enough to make final conclusions, it
can warrant an initial conclusion that Balthasar’s Johannine entryway to theology, and
especially to the Christology, pneumatology and theology of the Trinity presented in his
Theo-Logic, can be justified in some respects. What has not been justified, however, is a
theological procedure that from these arguments tends to repress or oversteer texts from other
layers of the canon. This initial conclusion will be given more flesh to the bone through the
analysis and discussion in the following chapters.
745 The theory is developed against the background of John 21:20-24, referring to 13:23ff. According to John
19:25-27, this disciple had a close relationship to the mother of Jesus. For the traditional view see the references
in Elowsky, John 1-10, xxvi-xxvii. 746
Ibid., xix. 747
The epithet is shared only with Gregory the theologian (= Gregory of Nazianzus, c.329-390) and Symeon the
new theologian (949-1022). 748
Esp. John 1:1-18; 3:35; 5:17ff; 10,29ff; 14:6ff; 17:1ff; 20:21f. 749
Esp. John 1:14; cf. 1 John 4:2.
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12.2 On Speaking of “the Unknown Lying beyond the Word”
In the theology of Balthasar, the mysterious all-overflowingness of the Spirit implies that he
cannot be grasped immediately and directly. The Spirit can thus not be reduced beyond the
images used in Scripture and the tradition into a graspable, neatly defined concept.750
Some
central aspects of Balthasar’s pneumatology are the Spirit as love, fruit, gift and freedom. And
those are all in some way related to the question of whether and in what sense the Spirit is a
person. The following sections therefore treat briefly Balthasar’s position regarding the
problem of access to the Spirit and some aspects of his discussion of the Spirit’s personal
mode of being.
The Possibility of Pneumatology
“Is a theology of the Spirit possible?” Balthasar asks this question in one of the preludes to his
treatment of the Spirit in Theo-Logic 3 – somewhat surprising, perhaps, in a volume carrying
the title The Spirit of Truth (Geist der Wahrheit). The answer ought to be yes lest the whole
project would be undermined. The question does not address primarily the questions
surrounding the possibility of speaking of God or doing theology at all,751
nor primarily the
question of whether or not it is appropriate to speak of the Spirit as a person, a question that
Balthasar treats at length later in the same volume, and which, admittedly, constitutes an
important part of an answer. What Balthasar wishes to enquire into is the possibility of
“objectivizing” the Spirit, of making the Spirit the object of investigation, rather than what the
Spirit mediates. His approach is guided by Basil of Caesarea (c. 330-379), who through his
De Spiritu Sancto laid an important part of the foundation for the confession of the Spirit in
the Nicene Creed as the one who is “worshiped and glorified together with the Father and the
Son,” thus implying that the Spirit is of the same essence (homoousion) as the Father and the
Son. A central insight that Balthasar finds in Basil’s work is the notion that the Spirit is “the
One by whom we are enabled to see God.”752
This insight leads logically to the divinity of the
Spirit,753
but it also says important things about the character of the Spirit and his work. It is
the emphasis on this “enabling” that creates the ambiguity and hesitancy of Balthasar as he is
undertaking the task of speaking of the Spirit. The line of thought is consistent with
750 Cf. Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen
Nachfragen,” 270f. 751
Cf. my discussion of negative/apophatic theology in 9.2. 752
Balthasar, TL 3, 25f. 753
This follows from Balthasar’s argument that “any principle that can introduce us to God must itself be
divine.” Ibid., 107.
186
Balthasar’s Johannine sympathies, for the Spirit is presented in John as the one who makes
Christ present, witnesses to Christ, glorifies Christ, takes what is Christ’s and proclaims it to
the disciples, thus teaching and reminding them of his words. In John, the Spirit is the guide
into the truth revealed in the Father’s sending of Christ (John 14:16-18; 14:26; 15:26; 16:7-
15). On the basis of such texts, Balthasar says:
This Spirit is breath, not a full outline, and therefore he wishes only to breathe through us, not to present
himself to us as an object; he does not wish to be seen but to be the seeing eye of grace in us, and he is little
concerned about whether we pray to him, provided that we pray with him, “Abba, Father”, provided that we
consent to his unutterable groaning in the depths of our soul. He is the light that cannot be seen except upon
the object that is lit up: and he is the love between Father and Son that has appeared in Jesus.754
The breath that breathes and the eye that sees in us, the light that falls on its object, and the
prayer uttered wordlessly from the heart, all those expressions are ways in which Balthasar
wishes to underscore that the Spirit is the “unknown God who makes God known to us,”
hence the title of the essay this citation originally derives from, “The Unknown Lying beyond
the Word” [“Der Unbekannte jenseits des Wortes”].755
According to this text, the first aspect
of the Spirit as unknown is that he is one who never points to himself or places himself in the
limelight, but always lets his light fall on the love of Father and Son.756
The Spirit as
unknown has another important aspect in his action in human beings: he becomes so internal
to the believer’s spirit “that it becomes impossible to distinguish him from ourselves.”757
Both aspects come together in what Balthasar calls the “selflessness” [Selbstlosigkeit] of the
Spirit,758
an aspect of Balthasar’s pneumatology that has been unfolded in an article by Jeffrey
A. Vogel.759
Vogel’s analysis appeals frequently to a section in GL 7 named “Glorification as
Assimilation and Return of the Gift.”760
The Spirit is selfless or “unselfed” as he refuses to be
grasped in himself through his action of making humans grasp Christ. Furthermore, the Spirit
does his “unselfing activity” even on and in believers, in a process where they are “mortified
and glorified by a single motion of the Holy Spirit,” corresponding to the simultaneous
754 ———, “The Unknown Lying beyond the Word,” 111. Balthasar cites extracts from this article, including
from this citation, in the prelude of TL 3 already referred to, ———, TL 3, 26. Cf. also the citation of and
remarks on this text in Vogel, “The Unselfing Activity of the Holy Spirit in the Theology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar,” 16ff. 755
Balthasar, “The Unknown Lying beyond the Word,” 114. 756
Cf. ———, TL 3, 31. 757
———, “The Unknown Lying beyond the Word,” 114. 758
———, TL 3, 27. 759
Vogel, “The Unselfing Activity of the Holy Spirit in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar.” 760
Balthasar, GL 7, 389-431.
187
humiliation and exaltation of Christ on the cross.761
Vogel interprets sin as self-enclosure, as
the egoistic turning in on oneself that closes the person off from open and healthy relations,
which is really a constituting aspect of being a person. As such, Christ, who opened himself to
the world in total love and self-giving, is the supreme expression of genuine personhood. The
Spirit’s unselfing activity consists in breaking the vicious circle of self-enclosure, letting the
sinful self fade away in order to give room for Christ. Here he, as Balthasar, appeals to Gal
2:20, where Paul states that he is crucified with Christ and do not longer live himself, but
“Christ lives in me.” In a subtle sense, the Spirit has made Christ the “I” of the apostle, or
seen from the opposite angle, Paul lives only “in” Christ762
and thus “in” the Spirit.
The Spirit’s selflessness thus always results in giving room for Christ: he lets Christ shine
forth with the glory of God through his giving the Father a face towards the world, and he
makes Christ live through and in the faithful. The Spirit thus in a sense hides himself in
revealing Christ. Although not made explicit by Vogel, this aspect of Balthasar’s
pneumatology is also close to another emphasis in his Christology and theology of the Trinity,
namely the notion of kenosis. Christ “emptied himself” (Phil 2:7) on the way from glory
through suffering to glory – a movement that according to Balthasar has its ground in an
eternal intra-Trinitarian kenosis in the immanent Trinity.763
The unselfing activity of the Spirit
in the economy could thus be interpreted as the economic form of the kenosis of God proper
to the hypostasis of the Spirit. The Spirit’s kenosis consists in giving himself away through
the hiding of himself in the process where he declares Christ and makes him known to sinful
men.764
Furthermore, as is emphasized by Tamás Kruppa, the Spirit in Balthasar’s thought is
the “personification of the fellow kenosis of the Father and the Son,”765
that is, the Spirit is the
result of their mutual kenotic loving relation.
761 Vogel, “The Unselfing Activity of the Holy Spirit in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 24, cf. 18.
762 Cf. Balthasar, GL 7, 407.
763 See ———, TL 3, 300. Some further references and remarks on kenosis in Balthasar’s thought are given in
9.3. 764
Balthasar goes far in making this explicit when he by reference to the work of Théo Preiß speaks of a “kind”
[Art] of kenosis by the Spirit as he “gives place to Father and Son” in ibid., 147, G:135. Thus Endre overstates
the case in saying that “Balthasar für den Heiligen Geist nirgends das Wort Kenose benutzt,” even if the context
qualifies the assertion further. Similarly, it is to press the case a little bit to say that Balthasar “nirgends
ausdrücklich von einer Kenose des Heiligen Geistes spricht,” Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie
Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 253, 222. 765
“Der Geist ist […] Personifikation der gemeinsamen Kenose des Vaters und des Sohnes,” cited (in German
presumably translated from an Hungarian original) in ———, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs
von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 222.
188
The selflessness of the Spirit can also be described by Balthasar as anonymity, an aspect he
finds expressed in iconography, where the Spirit is normally not given his own face.766
Instead, the Spirit glorifies the image of God in the Son, who is God’s face toward the world.
As anonymous, the Spirit is ungraspable, though graspable through his works. Balthasar refers
to the words addressed to Nicodemus (John 3:8), in which the Spirit is described through an
etymological play (pneuma in Greek can refer to breath, wind or spirit, in theological contexts
the Spirit) in likeness to the wind as the one whose effects we can discern, but who is not
possible to lay hold of himself. Nor can the Spirit or the wind be instructed in which direction
it is to blow; the blowing spoken of here is always free, unconstrained and surprising, it is
genuinely new as it brings forth new birth, birth from above (anōthen).
The Spirit, who is in this sense unknown, however, is the one who illuminates and declares
God as “known” in the human form of the Son Jesus Christ. Thus he can make humans see
God to the extent that God can be seen in his mysteriousness. But through his action in this
process the Spirit himself can also be perceived. The German expression from “The Unknown
Lying beyond the Word” is that the Spirit is “erahnbar.” The point is that the Spirit can be
perceived, although dimly and in forebodings (that is, not in the more direct sense of
wahrnehmen), through his work in making the revelation of God in the Son inward and
understandable to the world.767
For Balthasar, pneumatology springs from Christology, and
cannot stand on its own feet apart from that. Theology in Balthasar’s thought is a matter of the
same process of interpreting and making the Son’s revelation of the Father known. As such,
the Spirit is the subject of theology more than its object.768
Spirit-filled theology is more
strikingly described as discourse in the Spirit than discourse about the Spirit. This aspect will
be discussed more thoroughly in § 17.
The Complexities of the Personhood of the Holy Spirit
Closely related to the emphasis on the challenges inherent in the Spirit’s kenotic selflessness
and fading into the background as he enlightens Christ is Balthasar’s discussions about the
sense in which the Spirit is a person. This theme plays a very important role in TL 3 in terms
766 Balthasar, TL 3, 27.
767 ———, “The Unknown Lying beyond the Word,” 112, G:101f. The English translation verbalizes the term
“erahnbar” and says that it makes it possible for us (only) to “guess” at what belongs to the Holy Spirit. This
rendering can be a bit confusing. Balthasar does not intend to say that the theology of the Spirit is made by
guessing, at least not in the sense of random choices between available options; in that case we must have
spoken of a highly learned guesswork. 768
———, TL 3, 27-29.
189
of use of pages,769
although it is contestable how much of what they contain are directly
relevant to the question. The discussion of this question in the dissertation of Horváth Endre
goes even further in the same direction.770
Under the heading “the Holy Spirit as person” is
treated not only anonymity as “Grundzug des Personseins des Geistes,” but even the Spirit as
fruit of trinitarian love, as the “always more” of God, as gift and as freedom. As such, the
discussion of the use of the word “person” describing the Holy Spirit tends to be a loose
heading covering not only the question of whether the Spirit is a person, but how the Spirit is
a person (including the discussion of the concept of person itself), a question that at times
could be paraphrased as who the Spirit is.771
The section in TL 3 consists, in typical Balthasarian fashion, of some remarks based in
biblical theology, glimpses from the history of theology (the Fathers, the Middle Ages and
Modern times) and a more independent treatment at the end. Throughout Balthasar is careful
to not make “person” and derivatives a monolithic, univocal concept that the Spirit must or
must not conform to, but discusses the concept continually along the way.
From Scripture, Balthasar emphasizes that the Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ are
differentiated, although they can be spoken of as very closely related, even in unity. He
admits that the Spirit is not described in personal terms as often and explicitly as the Father
and the Son. Rather, the Spirit is often portrayed as a power, or through images from the
created realm such as the elements of wind, water and fire, or the dove ascending from heaven
at the baptism scene. At the same time, many of the actions the New Testament ascribes to the
Spirit can hardly be thought of in a purely impersonal way.772
Love, interpretation, guidance
into a personal relationship to Christ and sanctification imply a person as their active agent.
At the end of the section, Balthasar concludes that the facelessness of the Spirit in Scripture
769 “The Holy Spirit as Person,” ibid., 105-164.
770 Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen
Nachfragen,” 238-271. 771
Cf. Balthasar, TL 3, 107. Cf. Endre’s pointed remark: “Die Frage, die hier in Focus steht, ist also nicht die
Frage, ob der Heilige Geist Person ist.” Rather, it is the tricky question “Wer ist der Geist,” Endre, “Die
Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 238. 772
Balthasar presents an exegetical argument against the impersonality of the Spirit, considering the presence
and absence of the definite article in several biblical passages speaking of the Spirit, in Balthasar, TL 3, 49-51.
The argument basically goes that presence and absence do not coincide with the “degree” of personality of the
Spirit implied by the texts. In other words, the texts are not rigid enough in their use of the definite article to
make that a significant argument.
190
does not mean that he is not a person, but that his mode of being person is always ordered
toward the enlightening of the face of God shown the world in Jesus Christ.773
Regarding the Fathers, Balthasar first praises their reluctance and caution in speaking about
the Spirit compared to later developments. Then he argues that the questions concerning the
personhood of the Spirit cannot and must not be addressed before and apart from the
Trinitarian theology that follows from the Nicene determination of Father and Son as
consubstantial, and presents some reflections regarding the determinability and
mysteriousness of the divine persons.774
Balthasar sums up the positive content of the
reflection on the Spirit contained in the Church Fathers in three paths. The first is from the
baptismal formula and the use of it in the Church’s liturgy, which is the real starting point for
all Trinitarian speculation. The second appeals to “the effects of the Spirit attested in
Scripture.” The third is the emphasis that although the works of God in the economy are
ascribed to each person according to their character, the work of God is fundamentally one:
the hypostases work together in the world.775
To this section Balthasar also adds what he calls
a briefest note (an appropriate description of a section that is very short and tends in the
direction of the polemical) on Palamism, a discussion that arguably has a more natural place
in a discussion of negative theology.776
The point in addressing it in this context is
presumably to make clear that in Balthasar’s theology the problem of how God can relate to
and give himself away to participation by the world is solved not by the philosophical
distinction between essence and energy, but through Trinitarian theology. Thus it is relevant
to the question of the personhood of the Spirit, which according to Balthasar is the mysterious
divine person that enables us to see God through his revelation in the Son.
The description of the Middle Ages focuses on the discussion regarding the concept of person,
which was received from the Christological and Trinitarian use of person (hypostasis and
persona). Here Balthasar makes a point very suggestive of katalogical analogy: the concept of
person was first used in a theological context, and its anthropological value is dependent on a
continuous irradiation from the divine sphere.777
The light this concept shares on God and
humanity goes both ways, but the primacy lies with the creator who made man in his image.
773 Ibid., 109-16.
774 Ibid., 117-25.
775 Ibid., 125-8.
776 Ibid., 128-30. Cf. also the remarks on Palamas that go in the same direction in ———, TL 2, 148.
777 ———, TL 3, 131 (with note 2 citing A. Guggenberger).
191
In the section Balthasar also criticizes a lack of emphasis on person as a concept that lives in
relations in this material.
The section on modern times touches on some important concerns of the Reformers (Calvin,
Luther) on the Spirit’s illuminatio and glorifying of Christ and the interpretation of the word
of Scripture, mostly in a positive tone, but also with critical overtones against Protestant
“restriction” to the work of the Spirit, from a full-fledged guidance into the person and
mystery of Jesus Christ in all aspects to a single-dimensioned focus on Scripture. The
personhood of the Spirit, however, was not questioned until the Enlightenment. Balthasar sees
a positive development in modern times in the rise of personalism and the re-establishment
(Augustine had already grasped this) of person as a concept thinkable only in relations. There
is no “I” without a “Thou.” And again in katalogical analogy, he says that it is not
“antropomorphic” to speak of God as persons, but “theomorphic” to speak of the human as
person.778
The closing treatment of “who the Spirit is” does not say much about the concept of person
strictly defined. It is rather an attempt at a reflection on the Spirit’s place in the Trinity. The
important points are that the Spirit is subjectively the relation of Father and Son who give
themselves reciprocally in love, and also objectively the fruit of and gift proceeding from this
love. As such, the Spirit is both the “inside” and the “outside” of divine love.
Some critics have accused Balthasar of making a theology that is effectively binitarian, or
where the Spirit remains only in the background compared to the importance given to the
relation of love between Father and Son.779
It is not necessary for the purposes of this
dissertation to give a full evaluation of Balthasar’s theology of the Trinity as an answer to this
accusation. However, some remarks that take away most of its force can be made briefly. In
several places Balthasar gives responses to a possible objection of this sort. He is, in other
words, aware of the problem. In the section just surveyed he says that the rejection of the
778 Ibid., 143-51. Citation p. 149.
779 Kilby voices the accusation that the Spirit is only an “afterthought” or an “addendum” in Balthasar’s theology
of the Trinity, Kilby, Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction, 104. Vogel says that Balthasar is not a
“binitarian” thinker, which is a charge often leveled against Karl Barth, but he does not say explicitly that
anyone has leveled it against Balthasar, Vogel, “The Unselfing Activity of the Holy Spirit in the Theology of
Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 17. Endre says in his introduction that many theologians complain that Balthasar’s
pneumatology is underdeveloped or fragmentarian, and that the Father-Son relation is in the foreground and the
Spirit in the background at first sight, while a deeper investigation into Balthasar’s theology shows that
pneumatology is its crown, Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel
der kritischen Nachfragen,” 6.
192
divine personhood of the Spirit is unthinkable on the basis of Nicene theology, and that
therefore “[n]o Christian theology, Catholic or not, has ever maintained such a view.”780
Earlier in the same volume he accuses Hegel of being binitarian because he does not give
enough attention to the fruitfulness of God, which is a very central aspect in Balthasar’s own
theology, tied closely to the divinity, personhood and character of the Spirit.781
The inclusion
of a whole volume on the Spirit as the crown of his trilogy is also a sign that the Spirit is not
in the background in Balthasar’s theology. The preface to this volume starts by asking
whether there is “any article of faith in which [the Spirit] is not present–patent or latent–in
manifold ways.” In response to this problematic one can also, like Endre, refer to the inner
logic behind the seemingly secondary place of the Spirit in a first view of Balthasar’s
theology, namely his economic function as the one who makes the Son known and is
experience-able [erfahrbar] only through this function. Whether the Spirit is central to
Balthasar’s theology of the Trinity can thus not be judged by statistical means. What is
needed is a careful investigation of how the Spirit functions patently or latently in what he
presents. Rather than viewing this feature of Balthasar’s pneumatology as a lack, says Endre,
it should be seen as an original or characteristic element of it.782
Balthasar’s deliberations concerning the personhood of the Spirit will not be analyzed and
criticized in detail here, because the conclusion that the Spirit is a divine person is
uncontroversial within the framework of Christian theology. Neither is it a very important
question in the treatment of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of truth. What is worth noting,
however, is that the personhood of the Spirit implies that pneumatology is, so to speak, made
for integration with a Balthasarian view of truth, which is characterized among other things by
the notions of love, being as gift and the relational-dramatic interpersonal nature of truth.
Some consequences and implications of this view will resound throughout Part III.
780 Balthasar, TL 3, 215.
781 Ibid., 46.
782 This is the main point of Endre’s reading and criticism of the perhaps most careful and compelling version of
the binity criticism, namely Thomas G. Dalzell’s. See the section “Ein auf die Vater-Sohn-Relation reduziertes
trinitätstheologisches Modell?” Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im
Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 241-4. Endre dicusses Thomas G. Dalzell, “Lack of Social Drama in
Balthasar’s Theological Dramatics,” Theological Studies 60(1999). A similar argument vs. Dalzell can be found
in Müller, “Der Geist als wirkmächtiger Zeuge Jesu Christi in der Kirche nach Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 214f.
193
§ 13. “He Will Guide You into All the Truth.”: The Spirit as Interpreter
of the Christological-Trinitarian Truth
The notion of the Spirit as the interpreter [Ausleger] of and guide [Einführer] into the truth of
God made known through the God-man Jesus Christ is of great significance for Balthasar’s
pneumatology.783
And even if this notion is perhaps the most traditional784
(at least in a
Western sense) and least contested785
side of his thinking on the Holy Spirit, it is nevertheless
an important source for and entryway into almost everything else he says of the Spirit, which
is not that uncontested. Horváth Endre’s dissertation on Balthasar’s pneumatology and TL 3,
which is Balthasar’s most thorough and systematic-tending treatment of the Spirit, both attest
to this fact. Both works outline the central aspects of pneumatology by placing a chapter on
the Spirit as interpreter and guide at the beginning.786
In TL 3 its importance is also
underscored by the character of the chapter: This chapter is made up of biblical-theological
studies, and as such it contains the starting point and important building blocks for all that
follows. However, one should be careful to label it the essence or core or another concept that
presupposes a totally comprehensive system of pneumatology.787
Because of its importance to
Balthasar’s theology of the Spirit of truth and its suggestiveness of Balthasar’s interpretation
of Scripture in pneumatology, I will now offer a thorough analysis of it.
13.1 Balthasar’s Whole-Biblical Exegesis of a Key Johannine Saying
Balthasar starts his approach to the Spirit as the Interpreter in TL 3 from the assertion that the
Spirit “is that by which God discloses himself [zu erkennen gibt], as God, to what is not God,”
a more general determination of the idea already presented in a more metaphorical way in one
of the preludes, that the Spirit makes us “see” God.788
The statement includes not only the
idea of the subjective side of the Spirit as the mediator of knowledge of God to the human
person, but also the idea that the Spirit is active when God gives himself away to perception
through revelation; as will be seen later, Balthasar develops this idea into a doctrine of the
783 Its importance is clear in this citation from the opening page of TL 3: “The Spirit’s entire role is to guide us
into the truth and to declare it: all the other, manifold utterances concerning the Spirit that we find in John and
the Scriptures of the Old and New Covenants come back to this fundamental role.” Balthasar, TL 3, 17. 784
Endre says that it is not characterized by its originality, rather by its dependence and truthfulness to Scripture,
Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,”
23. 785
Cf. Ibid., 12. 786
“The interpreter,” Balthasar, TL 3, 61-104. “Der Geist der Wahrheit: Der Ausleger und Einführer,” Endre,
“Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 22-65. 787
Cf. ———, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen
Nachfragen,” 22. 788
Balthasar, TL 3, 63. Cf. citation in 12.2.
194
Spirit’s active role in the incarnation and the life of Jesus. The statement is followed by a brief
and variegated outline of some aspects of God’s “spirit” in different parts of the Old
Testament, focusing on prophecy and the relation of Spirit, Word and Wisdom, especially in
the later OT and the period between the testaments. Balthasar’s main perspective on this
material is that “word is primarily the content and particular application of God’s command,
and spirit the divine power with which God executes what he has determined.”789
This
interpretation is an important background for his later treatment of Son and Spirit as the
Father’s two hands. Late OT and intertestamental concepts and imagery may be important
forerunners of the theology of the hypostases of the Trinity, but Balthasar issues a warning
that they should not be seen as transitions, that is, as parts of a linear development, because it
is the radical newness of the impression made by Jesus recorded in the NT that is the
departure point for a Christian Trinitarian theology.790
This impression made it unavoidable,
in the historical and religious milieu of his early followers, to interpret Jesus onthe
background of the prophetic sayings of the OT, where people were inspired by the Spirit of
God to speak the word of God. The Spirit was likewise not primarily what Jesus spoke about,
but what inspired his whole earthly existence and his message. But he did occasionally point
forward to the presence and action of the Spirit in the community after his ascension (Matt
10:20 par), a subject that flourishes through Acts and the New Testament letters.
It is, however, the Johannine perspective that is something like a crown to pneumatology, the
“final simplification” that is simultaneously “an opening out into the highest fullness” and
thus “the concluding formula”791
when it comes to the biblical account of the Spirit in
Balthasar’s interpretation. Thus he cites the last of the five “Paraclete” sayings in John (16:12-
14) as a text that “contains a summa of all that the Holy Spirit does and thereby, indirectly,
reveals his essence”:
[Jesus said:] I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth
comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak of his own authority, but whatever he hears
he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what
is mine and declare it to you.792
789 Ibid.
790 Ibid., 65.
791 Ibid., 66f.
792 Ibid., 69. The significance of this text to Balthasar is further underscored by the citation of it and comments
on it already on the first page of the preludes to TL 3, ibid., 17.
195
Although the assertion that this text is a “summa” of pneumatology is made in an inner-
Johannine context, the outline of the chapter shows that Balthasar regards it as true also in the
larger biblical picture. The citation of it is followed up first by a 14-page exegesis treating
three important phrases in it in a full New Testament perspective,793
and this survey is further
complemented by a 25-page “retrospect” to the Spirit theology of the earlier phases of
salvation history, which supplies complementary insights to enrich the picture (Paul, the
Synoptics and the OT).794
All the details of these exegetical tours cannot be referred to nor
criticized here; I will therefore concentrate on the topics of interest for our main question.
There may be reasons from the formation history of the Christian canon and the character of
Johannine texts to regard them as especially synthetic and comprehensive as resources for
systematic theological reflection,795
which was probably also important to Balthasar. But the
saying just quoted has the additional feature of the linking of “guiding” and “glorification,”
and the latter concept had acquired central importance in Balthasar’s theology through the
first part of the trilogy (Herrlichkeit=glory). Thus the idea that when the Spirit guides into the
truth made known in Jesus, this is simultaneously the glorification of him who is the earthly
form [Gestalt] and image of God’s glory, fits the deeper structures of Balthasar’s theology
very well. The notion of the Spirit’s action as guiding or setting on the right path (hodēgein)
also recalls the emphasis on Christ as not only the truth, but also the way and the life.796
To
see his glory is simultaneously to be glorified in and by him, and to know him as the truth is
simultaneously to be transported to a new life through the Spirit of truth. Those aspects
present in the text are probably an additional reason behind the importance Balthasar ascribes
to it.
Balthasar’s interpretation of this text is explicitly Trinitarian. The “whole” (ganze) truth
appearing in the Son is his making known of the Father, and it is this truth that the Spirit who
comes from the same Father (Joh 14:26; 16:26) guides into. But even more, the Spirit leads
into the relationship of Father and Son: It is on the day that the Paraclete comes that the
disciples will know the oneness of Father and Son (14:19),797
a oneness that is seen primarily
through the lens of love. Thus the movement of the Spirit’s guidance is a movement into the
793 Ibid., 70-84.
794 Ibid., 85-100.
795 Cf. 12.1
796 Cf. Balthasar, TL 2, 363.
797 ———, TL 3, 80.
196
“milieu of love” between Father and Son.798
As such, it is not only a passive or noninvolved
declaration, but an actual movement, an introduction to “the truth that is love if it is to be put
into practice”; thus knowledge of “all the truth” in Balthasar’s view involves action.799
Departing from this idea, the Spirit’s guiding into the Trinity and the Trinitarian relations is
also presented in the language of participation. It is introduced as an alternative to the Spirit’s
work as something different from mere “imparting of information.”800
The use of this concept
is consistent with Balthasar’s use of it in his account of truth in philosophical perspective, and
fits the broader notion of the Creator-creation relationship in Balthasar’s thought. It is,
however, an example of a very systematic theological-oriented exegesis, because the concept
is not present in the particular biblical text treated. But Balthasar refers to texts that use
language of participation connected to the Spirit’s role in interpreting Christ elsewhere that
may lie behind his train of thought here. An example is his use of Phil 2:1 (on the koinōnia
pneumatos: fellowship, share or participation of the Spirit) to explain the connection of the
mind of a Christian to the mind of Christ.801
Balthasar also uses this text as an entry into the question of why a further making known was
necessary after the Son’s exegesis of the Father (cf. Joh 1:18, Balthasar is aware that he
stretches the etymology here). His take on this question centers on the cross. The “things that
are to come,” in Balthasar’s interpretation, refer initially to the glorification of Christ (cf.
17:1.5) through cross and resurrection, but also beyond this to the already-but-not-yet
eschatological dimension that those events have opened up.802
The Spirit’s task of making
God known through Jesus started during his earthly lifetime, as he was the anointed one per
se, who could induce certain preliminary kinds of faith through his works and words even
prior to the cross and resurrection.803
But this faith had to be fulfilled (cf. the remarks on the
post-Easter understanding referred to in 2:22 and 12:10) by the hour of the cross and the
following outbreak of the Spirit as a stream of living water (Joh 7:37-9).804
It is on the cross
that Jesus cries out his tetelestai [it is finished] and gives up his pneuma (19:30), and on the
798 Ibid., 74. Cf. the Spirit’s “truth (his love) consists of revealing the truth (love) of these other Persons [Father
and Son] and bestowing it (as a fruit),” ———, “The Holy Spirit as Love,” 128. 799
———, TL 3, 76. 800
“[W]hen the Spirit leads us into all truth he also causes us to participate in the divine realm of the Father-Son
relationship.” Ibid., 74f. Emphasis mine. 801
———, “The Holy Spirit as Love,” 133. ———, TL 3, 83f. 802
———, TL 3, 73. 803
As examples Balthasar cites the disciples (2:11), the Samaritan woman (4:23), the official (4:53), the chief
priests’ officers (7:46), the formerly blind man (9:35ff), Martha (11:27) and Peter’s confession on behalf of the
disciples (6:69). 804
Balthasar, TL 3, 71f.
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basis of the resurrection Jesus can in the Johannine account give the Spirit to his disciples
(20:22).805
Balthasar also notes, however, that the Lukan perspective sees the ascension as the
prerequisite of the full giving of the pneuma (Acts 2:33). But in Balthasar’s interpretation
both aspects underscore a single point, namely that the giving of the Spirit was possible only
on the basis of the completed work of Christ.806
Closely connected to this aspect is the
assertion that the “departure” of Jesus (14:18; 16:7) in order to make the Spirit arrive is not a
loss for the disciples. Rather, the cross and the outpouring of the Spirit make Jesus present in
a new and better way (“I will come to you,” 14:18; cf. v. 23), not restricted as he was in his
incarnate earthly body to the sphere of time, place and particularity.807
Regarding this presence to the world, Balthasar focuses on the forensic aspects of the
Paraclete, as the one who gives his witness to the vindicated Jesus in the trial that is set up
between him and the world. Here again the Spirit is not only a distant imparter of information
that offers the truth of Jesus as an optional choice among many, but the guide into the divine
revelation in Christ, which includes the judgment and sin of the world (16:8-11). The Spirit is
thus “the One who introduces us into all truth, simultaneously refuting all error.”808
In this
process, however, the Spirit always strives against the flesh that is of no avail (6:63): human
misunderstandings resulting from an approach to Jesus “from below,” on purely human terms.
But through the death and resurrection of Jesus the Spirit is breathed forth in a way that makes
his words of spirit and life (6:63) understandable to his disciples. As the reflections on John
16:12-14 closes, Balthasar compares this aspect of the Spirit’s leading into all truth to Paul’s
way of speaking in 1 Cor 2: the Spirit of God, who searches the depths of divinity, discloses
“what formerly seemed folly and a stumbling block” as “the superior wisdom of God.”809
In the following retrospect to other layers of the canon, which according to Balthasar confirms
the importance of the Spirit as interpreter and guide, Paul is the first, “richest and most
nuanced” case.810
In Paul, Balthasar finds confirmation of the importance of the cross, both as
the apex of “what is mine” that the Spirit declares to the world and as the prerequisite of the
805 Cf. the later assertion that the streams of living water (7:37-8; the gift of God, 4:10) from the One who
possesses the Spirit without measure (3:34) was always there, but “we are unable to accept this offer until the
Vessel on the Cross is emptied to the last drop.” Ibid., 83. 806
Ibid., 73. 807
Ibid., 80. 808
Ibid., 80-2. Emphasis mine. 809
Ibid., 84. 810
Ibid., 85. This view of and use of Paul also comes to expression in the opening prelude of the book; see esp.
24.
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outpouring of the Spirit. Paul’s message consists above all of the “the word of the cross”; his
mysterious wisdom, opposed to all human wisdom of the world, is Christ crucified (1 Cor 1-
2; esp. 1:18; 2:2). And it is only through the weakness of the cross that the glorification of
Christ through the dynamis of the resurrection in the Spirit is possible. The Spirit leads Jesus
into glory, and this is his role for us, too, by changing believers into his likeness (2 Cor 3:18).
As the believer is “saturated” in Christ’s body through baptism, the Spirit makes him/her
understand and live within divine truth by his guiding into it.
The first aspect of this guidance is the Spirit’s interpretation, explaining or making us
understand divine truth. Balthasar’s central text here is 1 Cor 2. The Spirit knows the depths
of God (v. 10), and because of that he can also teach us (v. 13), and make us “understand the
gifts bestowed on us by God” (v. 12). The Spirit grants access to a new discernment not
available on purely human terms (v. 14-16). Thus again Balthasar sees the Spirit’s work in the
striving between two spheres: the lower, “sarkic” [fleshly] sphere, where the wisdom of God
hidden in the cross is folly and nonsense, and the higher, “pneumatic” sphere, “from which
everything else can be evaluated.”811
Exactly how the Spirit’s action can be discerned in this
evaluation that gives understanding is not unfolded in this context. What follows, however,
gives a glimpse of an important aspect in Balthasar’s answer to that – understanding arises
through practice.
For the second aspect of the Spirit’s guidance is that he leads into a life according to truth.
The Spirit is the inspirer of the confession of Jesus as “Lord” (1 Cor 12:3; cf. Rom 8:9),
understood by Balthasar as the foundation of the walking in the Spirit, bearing his fruits,
which Paul often speaks of (e.g. Gal 5:16ff). This Christian way of life is marked above all by
love [agapē], poured into our hearts by the Spirit (Rom 5:5). Balthasar emphasizes strongly
that Paul regards love as more important than the other spiritual gifts [charismata] (1 Cor
12:31; 13:2). In conscious opposition to the charismatic movement, he plays down the
significance of glossolalia [speaking in tongues], visions, sign and wonders. The spiritual
gifts given to the members of the Christian community are mostly “normal social functions.”
The most important one is prophecy (Rom 12:6; cf. 1 Cor 14:1-5), which Balthasar exegetes
as “nothing other than the ability to give a correct and fruitful verbal expression of the
Christian faith for the other members of the Church.” The “real work” of the Spirit of truth is
thus “to lead him, through his mind and his natural intelligence, to full insight, knowledge,
811 Ibid., 86.
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and understanding.”812
Balthasar has thus presented a very down-to-earth view of the Spirit’s
guidance into truth based on Paul. The Spirit works through the interpretation of the
revelation of Christ in explanatory prophecy and in whole Spirit-filled lives by imitators of
Christ (1 Cor 4:16; 11:1; Phil 3:17).813
Balthasar continues his exegetical tour through Joh 16 by means of the rest of the canon with
a treatment of Luke-Acts and the synoptics814
that is not marked by the same emphasis on the
Spirit as the Spirit of truth. It rather recapitulates important general pneumatological insights
from these books, such as Matthew as source of the traditional Trinitarian baptismal formula
and the baptism of Jesus as a Trinitarian event witnessing Jesus as the Spirit bearer. Most
explicit regarding the Spirit of truth is Balthasar’s interpretation of Jesus’ promise to the
disciples that the Spirit will give them words to speak when brought to trial (Mark 13:10-11
par). Following W. Grundmann’s commentary, Balthasar interprets this promise as “included”
in the Johannine promise of the Paraclete – in accordance with his view of the place of John
in the canon. It is also emphasized that the trials in the text are linked to the preaching of the
gospel to all nations, and thus Balthasar interprets this saying as witnessing the idea that the
Spirit is responsible for and sustains the “correct proclamation” of the gospel through the
Church. Here, as in the Johannine perspective where the Spirit makes the truth of Jesus
known, the Spirit is an interpreter of the truth not only on the side of the receiver of Christian
proclamation, but in and through the one who speaks.815
The short retrospect to the Old Covenant816
repeats that Word and Spirit are related and
largely synonymous concepts in the OT. With respect to truth they are both interpreters of the
same divine truth and truthfulness. This interrelatedness continues in the NT, especially in the
Johannine strand, but texts from 1 and 2 Cor are adduced as well. References to a variety of
OT texts serve to underscore this point of unity between God’s Word and God’s Spirit, in a
treatment that mostly points forward to Balthasar’s elaborations on the Father’s two hands. As
for the work of the Spirit in the OT, Balthasar says that his manifestations always evidence
the presence of God, and that this happens in nature, covenant history and events, and
prophecy, where the Spirit speaks more than is spoken of.
812 Ibid., 87f. In the last sentence Balthasar cites Kurt Stadler.
813 Ibid., 89.
814 Ibid., 89-97. The treatment consists of three sections: “Luke” (p. 89-92), “Matthew and Mark” (p. 92-96) and
“Matthew” (p. 96-97); the division is based on which texts are with and without synoptic parallels. 815
Ibid., 96. 816
Ibid., 97-100.
200
And the end of his biblical theological survey of the Spirit as Interpreter and Guide, Balthasar
follows up his retrospect [Rückblick] from the concluding Johannine heights of the canon with
a short preview [Vorblick] into the early phase of the history of theology. Some references to
the Apostolic Fathers and other early theologians, Irenaeus and Tertullian being central ones,
serve as a confirmation of the centrality of this Johannine concept in pneumatology. In this
early phase the theological reflection on the Spirit centers around the understanding of OT
prophetic proclamation as a Spirited proclamation of Christ (cf. 1 Pet 1:10-12 et al.), and thus
the Spirit’s guiding and interpretation in a privileged way concerns Scripture. This idea will
later culminate in the Nicene Creed’s confession of the Holy Spirit “who spoke by the
Prophets.”
The inclusion of this preview into the history of theology unveils Balthasar’s pattern of
thought regarding the historical development of pneumatology that underlies the structure of
TL 3. This development starts with the forebodings of word, spirit and wisdom in the OT.
Those are reinterpreted and set in new light by the appearance of the Son, the truth, on the
stage of history. The Johannine concept of the Spirit as guide and interpreter of this truth is
the central point in pneumatology. From this canonical conclusion arise the efforts of
subsequent theologians to clarify the Spirit’s role in relation to Christ as the Word of God and
the growing Trinitarian dogma that gives rise to the questions regarding the personhood of the
Spirit.
This development can be illustrated graphically:
Trinitarian reflection on the Father's two hands at work in Church and world
The divinity and personhood of the Spirit
Center: NT (Johannine): The Spirit of truth (truth=Christ)
OT preliminaries: word, spirit, wisdom
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Balthasar seems to think of this movement both as a historical process and a logic or train of
thought necessary to any development of pneumatology. It is only when those building blocks
are in place that the landscape opens to more nuanced interpretations of the Spirit’s concrete
works through Church and world.
13.2 Some Remarks Pointing Towards a Critical Assessment
It is not within the scope and limits of this dissertation to make a detailed assessment of all the
aspects of Balthasar’s exegetical and biblical-theological comments presented in the
foregoing. A few remarks that point towards a critical assessment must suffice. As the
analysis shows, Balthasar’s exegesis comes close to the content of the texts, both through his
knowledge of ancient language and ideas, and because of his skills as a comprehensive reader.
His readings are also situated close to understandings present in the Christian tradition.
However, it is easier to criticize him for what he does not say than for what he says. A general
question that can be addressed to the analysis above is whether the emphasis on the Johannine
perspective ends up neglecting or playing down other themes and layers of the canon. From a
Protestant perspective it is also natural to ask some questions concerning the interpretation of
the Farewell discourse, which is done in light of Roman Catholic ecclesiology and the
theology of the Magisterium. Some aspects concerning this will be returned to in § 16.
Perhaps the greatest strength in Balthasar’s summary of the biblical material is his emphasis
on the strong connection of the Spirit to Christ, which is not only Johannine, but also Pauline,
and generally affirmed throughout ecumenical theology today.817
Some more particular
questions concerning the relation between the Son and the Spirit follow in § 14.
§ 14. The Father’s Two Hands: On the Unity and Inseparability of
Christology and Pneumatology
The primarily biblical-exegetical considerations in § 13 have already pointed at a close
connection between the work of the Spirit and the person of Christ (“he will glorify me”) at
the heart of pneumatology. This chapter will explore the relation between the theology of the
Spirit and the Son further. The task will be undertaken under the heading of the Son and the
Spirit as “the Father’s two hands,” a notion that plays a major role in Balthasar’s
pneumatology. In the preludes to TL 3 he speaks of the necessity of a Spirit-Christology
817 Cf. Thiselton, The Holy Spirit: In Biblical Teaching, through the Centuries, and Today, 70f.
202
[Geistchristologie] in order to integrate pneumatology and Christology in a proper way,818
and
later in the work he dedicates a long chapter to “the Father’s two hands.”819
Horváth Endre remarks correctly at the end of his treatment of this aspect of Balthasar’s
thinking that he acquires the way of speaking from Ireneaus, but he uses the concept to
accomplish quite different theological tasks than in the theology of the coiner of the phrase.820
Thomas Schumacher uses this phrase only rarely compared to Balthasar,821
but the topic unity
and inseparability of Christology and pneumatology in Balthasar822
are treated at length in his
dissertation Perichorein, which focuses on its implications for the theology of the (immanent)
Trinity and its economic outworking.823
This chapter will not go into the broader question in
the same degree of detail, but in analysis and discussion will focus on the questions in this
larger field that are most relevant to the question of the theological ontology and
epistemology of truth. The analysis of Balthasar’s thinking starting from Theo-Logic 3 is
divided into three sections, the first on the question of the Spirit as the Spirit of Christ,
focusing on what the Spirit offers to the Gestalt of Christ as “the truth,” the second treats
Balthasar’s idea of an “inversion” of the Trinitarian “taxonomy” during the earthly life of
Jesus, and the third discusses the idea of the affection of the Spirit through these events,
focusing on what the Spirit “gains” from the economic outworking of God’s love for the
world in Christ.
14.1 The Spirit of Christ’s Incarnation, Life, Death and Resurrection
Christ, Balthasar reminds, referring to Sergei Bulgakov (who in the context is referred to as
the compiler of a long chain of citations from Athanasius), means literally “anointed,” more
818 Balthasar, TL 3, 33-60.
819 Ibid., 165-218. Cf. Endre’s pointed remarks: “Für den Schweizer Theologen gehören nämlich Christologie
und Pneumatologie so sehr zusammen, dass er in seinem Buch TL III für eine Christologie plädiert, die Person
und Werk Christi nicht ohne den Zusammenhang zum Wirken des Heiligen Geistes schildern würde. […] die
Gestalt Christi nur in trinitarischem Licht sachgerecht zu sehen ist. […] Es gibt keine Christologie ohne
Trinitätslehre.” Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen
Nachfragen,” 101, cf. 109. 820
———, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen
Nachfragen,” 134. Note that it is not within the scope of this dissertation to inquire into Ireneaus’ theology on
this point or to judge whether Balthasar represents him fairly. For a historically oriented investigation of
Irenaeus’ position, see, e.g., Anthony Briggman, Irenaeus of Lyons and the Theology of the Holy Spirit (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2012), esp. 104ff. 821
See Schumacher, Perichorein, 151, 186n229. 822
Balthasar speaks of the “inseparability of Son and Spirit” in Balthasar, TL 3, 176. 823
Schumacher, Perichorein, esp. 7.
203
precisely though implicitly anointed with the Spirit.824
A rich biblical heritage is behind such a
reminder.825
Luke-Acts portrays how Jesus is proclaimed by Peter in the house of Cornelius as
the one who was by God “anointed (echrisen, from chriō, the verbal root behind the adjective
christos, anointed) with Holy Spirit and power” (Acts 10:38; cf. 4:27; Heb 1:9), and narrates
how Jesus applies the words of the prophet Isaiah to himself in the synagogue in Nazareth:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Luke 4:16-21). Both cases allude heavily to OT texts (Is
11:1ff; 61:1ff) depicting the righteous king and servant of God that opens up to a whole
landscape of Spirit-ual endowment and anointment of judges, kings, prophets and priests.826
In additional NT texts, often connected to the baptism of Christ, Christ is described as the
Spirit-ed one per se (Mark 1:10 par; John 1:32f). On this background, in addition to the strong
Christological overtones of his pneumatology based on the Johannine entryway,827
Balthasar
emphasizes the close reciprocity of the work of Christ and the work of the Spirit. Son and
Spirit belong together; they are the “two hands of the Father” who
do not operate separately in juxtaposition or in sequence (as if the Spirit only arrives once Christ’s work is
completed): they operate in very distinct manners with and in one another, for (it must be remembered) the
Spirit is always Christ’s own Spirit.828
Thus, in light of Christ as the anointed one, the Spirit is called “the Spirit of Christ” (1 Pet
1:11) or “the Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:7; cf. Phil 1:19: “the Spirit of Jesus Christ”). It is the
distinct unity of operation829
spoken of in this quote that is Balthasar’s main point in using
Irenaeus’ metaphor, which he consciously lifts out of its original anti-gnostic creation-
theological context and expands into a kind of rule for Trinitarian reflection on redemption
and final consummation as well as creation.830
For Irenaeus, the metaphor primarily concerns
824 Balthasar, TL 3, 169. He refers to several places in the original French edition (Paris, 1946) of Sergei N.
Bulgakov, The Comforter (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). 825
Balthasar’s treatment of the biblical material with respect to this question in TL 3 is done in two sections
(although there are biblical references scattered elsewhere too), which I, for purposes of presentation, will not
keep apart. The first section stands at the end of the preludes after an initial treatment of Hegel, the other at the
start of the treatment of the “two hands” after initial references to Irenaeus, Athanasius and Bulgakov. Balthasar,
TL 3, 48-51, 171-6. 826
See esp. Part I and II of John R. Levison, Filled with the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). 827
Cf. § 13 and this citation from Adrienne: “The Spirit’s pathway to men always runs through the Son.”
Balthasar, TL 3, 176. 828
Ibid., 185. Emphasis mine. Cf. from the conclusion to TL 2: “All of this [the Spirit’s work in Christian life
through the Church] … is no solitary operation of the Spirit, as if the Son had gone into retirement, but is a new
operation that from beginning to end is common to Son and Spirit.” ———, TL 2, 365. Emphasis mine. 829
Again, citing Bulgakov: “The two, Word and Spirit, are differentiated as different modes of the paternal self-
utterance; they constitute a kind of dyad, whereby it is impossible to grasp one Hypostasis without thinking of
the other at the same time…. Personally distinct, they are inseparable.” ———, TL 3, 169. 830
Ibid., 167f.
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the relationship of God to his creation, while for Balthasar its emphasis is placed on the
Trinitarian relations, their inner ordering or taxis as well as their external operation.
The first important event of the life of Christ, who in his divine-human constitution
personifies the analogia entis and thus calls himself the truth in his worldly revelation of the
Father, is the beginning of his incarnation in the conception. Here, according to Balthasar, the
Father’s two hands are at work. Starting from the creeds (“conceived by the Holy Spirit”) and
the tension in Scripture between the account in Luke 1 – where the Spirit plays the active part
– and Philippians 2 – where, according to Balthasar, the Son “takes” his human nature –
Balthasar discusses the work of Son and Spirit in this event.831
Balthasar’s path of discussion
leads into consideration of historical debates on how the human nature of Jesus received
God’s grace. Did this happen in the event of conception itself (implying the Son’s active
incarnating of himself), or by a subsequent gift of the Spirit? Balthasar wants to go behind this
dilemma, by viewing the incarnation as a Trinitarian event where all three persons work. The
Father sends the Son, but he does this by sending the Spirit with sperma theou [the seed of
God]832
into the womb of Mary. The Son participates in his conception as man by actively
letting it happen, as an expression of his “a priori obedience.”833
The Spirit acts by coming
upon Mary and conceives in her womb, but at the same time, as the Spirit of the Son, he is the
Spirit of the Son’s obedience. The Incarnation and “anointing” by grace is thus two sides of
the same event; Christ’s human nature is sanctified by the union itself, but at the same time
Christ is anointed by the Spirit of the Father as he is sent into the world. The obedience of
Christ in the Spirit that happens in the conception is Balthasar’s entryway into speaking of his
notion of the Trinitarian inversion, which will be returned to shortly. What is important to
note from Balthasar’s discussion this far is the active role he ascribes to the Spirit in the
incarnation. The Spirit continues to play an active role in the life of Christ, more specifically
through mediating Christ’s obedience to the Father.834
The implication is that the work of the
Spirit of truth is not something undertaken only after the concrete life of Christ; the Spirit of
truth is an active and indispensable agent in making Christ the divine-human person who is
831 Ibid., 33f, 48f, 177-84.
832 Balthasar refers here to 1 John 3:9, but the application of this text to a discussion of the conception is at best
creative, at worst totally misguided. This verse can hardly exegetically be taken to refer to a seed in a sense
reminiscent of the conception of Jesus. 833
This concept is developed by Balthasar in Theo-Drama, and only recalled in TL 3; Balthasar, TD 3, 186f; —
——, TD 5, 247f; ———, TL 3, 182. 834
———, TD 3, 187, also 183, 186.
205
the truth in his living person. For Balthasar, not only the universality but also the concrete
particularity of the person of Christ as the truth depends on the work of the Spirit.
Christ, as the one conceived by the Spirit, continued to live in that same Spirit. Although he as
divine Son was already anointed by the Spirit, even in his human nature, he received an
additional messianic anointing at his baptism in Jordan. Balthasar refers to how the
Cappadocians Basil and Gregory Nazianzen testify to the Spirit’s presence in the life of Jesus,
from baptism to temptation (“led by the Spirit,” Matt 4:1), through wonderful works (Matt
12:28), finally culminating in the cross, resurrection, ascension and outpouring of the
Spirit.835
While the Spirit remaining over Jesus throughout his earthly life is an uncontroversial topic,
Balthasar’s interpretation of the Spirit’s action through cross and descent is more
controversial. Relying on Heb 9:14 (lit. an eternal s/Spirit; pneumatos aiōniou), Balthasar says
that the Holy Spirit operates in a mysterious way in Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.836
Furthermore, he interprets the scene where Jesus dies in the Gospels (Matt 27:50 aphēken to
pneuma; Mark 15:37/Luke 23:46 exepneusen; John 19:30 paredōken to pneuma) as referring
to the Spirit, not only to pneuma as spirit in the sense of life principle, breath. He speaks of
this breathing out of the Spirit both as a gift to the world (now he has accomplished his
mission and earned the right to pour the Spirit out on all flesh) and as a gift to the Father
(returning to him everything he has been given).837
But the work of the Spirit in the life of
Christ goes even beyond the death of Christ. In Balthasar’s original and contested theology of
Christ’s descent into hell, he conceives of the Spirit as the bond of love and unity between the
separated and abandoned Son and the Father.838
In bringing the resurrection about (Rom 1:4; 8:11), the Spirit consecrates Jesus’ death as what
it is: “that act of his which is most filled with life,” because it is the highest point of the
revelation of his mutual love for the Father.839
With the risen and ascended Son seated at the
835 ———, TL 3, 172.
836 Ibid., 56f, 173, 268, 334.
837 Ibid., 56, 173-75.
838 “It was the Spirit–who is both the Spirit of love and the objective guarantor–who ensured that the unity
between Father and Son survived in the form of their mutual, utter abandonment.” Ibid., 174. The idea is
developed and more fully explicated in different volumes of Theo-Drama. An overview with many references
(written with a very critical attitude) can be found in Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and
the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell, 217-43. 839
Balthasar, TL 3, 57f.
206
right hand of the Father, the Spirit is in an even more intense sense the Spirit of Christ:840
now
he can freely send the Spirit out into the world, pour the Spirit out on all flesh (Acts 2:32f).841
Balthasar’s conclusion is that “Christology has a pneumatological form.”842
The one hand of
the Father always works together with the other; the left hand, so to speak, always knows
what the right hand does, for God’s works through Spirit and Son are one. Indeed, as the
Fathers said, “no word can issue forth from the mouth of man or God apart from the
breath.”843
14.2 The Trinitarian Inversion
Inspired by Sergei Bulgakov,844
Balthasar develops a notion of a “Trinitarian inversion”
(Inversion, Umlegung; that is, a change of places in the Trinitarian taxis or order). The notion
is acclaimed by some and criticized by others.845
It has its starting point in what was said on
the Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus above, especially in the speculation on the Spirit’s active role
in the conception of Jesus. The notion tries to answer the tension that arises from the fact that
“it was the Spirit who brought the Son into the world, but now the Son sends the Spirit into
the world.”846
Taken at face value, this statement is not very puzzling in light of the biblical
motifs surveyed above. However, when it is brought to bear on traditional notions on the
theology of the inner-Trinitarian relations and the discussion that is central to much modern
theology regarding the so-called immanent and economic Trinity (God as he is eternally in
himself vs. God in his “historical” relation to the world), some theological work has to be
done.847
Balthasar’s notion of the Trinitarian inversion therefore must be approached first
through a look at his position in the debate regarding the immanent and economic Trinity, a
840 “This is [referring to the Spirit’s involvement in Jesus’ life, death, descent and resurrection] the Spirit of Jesus
who will be breathed upon the Church.” Ibid., 204. Emphasis mine. 841
Ibid., 176, 193. 842
Ibid., 58. 843
Ibid., 200, cf. 56. 844
A clear statement of this source of inspiration is found in ibid., 34. 845
Endre observes correctly that “der Gedanke der trinitarischen Inversion im Kern alle umstrittenen Fragen der
Geistlehre Balthasars umfasst.” Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im
Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 82. Some differing scholarly judgments will be surveyed in the discussion in
14.4. 846
Balthasar, TL 3, 175. 847
This link is seen with clarity by Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im
Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 87.
207
look that has to go beyond Theo-Logic into Theo-Drama in order to give any meaning worth
mentioning.848
On the immanent/economic question, Balthasar is totally clear when it comes to the
epistemological side, in consensus with most contemporary theologians:849
our only access to
the immanent Trinity is through the economic,850
that is, through the revelation given in
Christ, who is sent by the Father and filled by the Spirit.851
God can be known only through
God’s Trinitarian actions in the world, centered on the cross.852
Thus Balthasar follows Barth
in saying that a philosophical “naked essence” thinking of God that is not concerned with the
hypostases is not genuine theology,853
for there is no economy of the naked essence, only of
the Three-in-One. Balthasar, however, has reservations about some ways of speaking of the
close connection between the economic and the immanent Trinity.854
His overall perspective
on this issue is the distancing from Hegel, who, he says, “incorporates the world process into
the internal ‘history of God’.”855
The result is a mythological god that needs the world in
order to become or to realize856
himself. Balthasar sees a clear version of this problem in the
theology of Jürgen Moltmann.857
Balthasar is also critical of Karl Rahner’s oft cited “rule,” that is, his way of speaking of an
identity between the economic and immanent Trinity. Balthasar thinks that the implication is
848 When Balthasar deals with the Trinitarian inversion in TL 3, he not only refers back to his own work in Theo-
Drama, but even back to the origin of the entire trilogy. Balthasar, TL 3, 34, 182, 203. 849
Cf. Phan, “Systematic Issues in Trinitarian Theology,” 18ff. 850
“All Christian theology acknowledges that statements about the ‘immanent’ Trinity can only be reached via
the ‘economic’ Trinity.” Balthasar, TL 3, 138. “We have no access whatsoever to the immanent Trinity except as
a result of the Trinity’s economic self-manifestation.” Ibid., 210. “[T]he immanent Trinity is disclosed and given
over to our participation in the passing-by of the economic Trinity.” ———, “Truth and Life,” 270. Thus
“discourse about the immanent Trinity that uses the economic Trinity as a springboard for a reflection that leaves
it behind” is ruled out. See also his defence against Rahner in the general introduction to Theo-Logic, ———, TL
1, 19f. 851
“Only in [Christ] is the Trinity opened up and made accessible.” ———, TD 3, 508. 852
———, TD 5, 560. We “see the Son’s ‘economic’ death as the revelation, in terms of the world, of the
kenosis (or selflessness) of the love of Father and Son at the heart of the Trinity,” ———, TL 3, 300. 853
———, TL 2, 138. 854
“Many theologians, in attempting to establish the relationship between immanent and economic Trinity, seem
to lay such weight on the latter that the immanent Trinity, even if it is still distinguished from the other, becomes
merely a kind of precondition for God’s true, earnest self-revelation and self-giving.” ———, TD 4, 320. 855
Ibid. Cf. Balthasar’s criticism of Hegel in TL 3: Hegel “sublates” [aufhebt] the immanent Trinity into the
economic. Thus Hegel collapses the immanent into the economic Trinity, and consequently constrains God’s
freedom. God is God, even if he had not created; the world process is not necessary for God to realize himself.
———, TL 3, 41ff. 856
Realize can here be taken both in the sense of self-insight and self-realization. 857
Balthasar, TD 4, 321f. An excellent discussion of the differences between Moltmann and Balthasar (and Barth
closely resembling his position) on this point, undertaken through the lens of interpretation of the cross and
descent of Christ into hell, is found in Lauber, Barth on the Descent into Hell: God, Atonement and the Christian
Life, 113-151.
208
that the immanent Trinity is reduced to a “necessary condition,” or a “because” of possibility
for God’s self-revelation in the economy.858
So although Balthasar acknowledges the value of
Rahner’s granting of a distinction between the eternal, immanent Trinity and the economic
Trinity, he thinks that Rahner relates it too one-sidedly to the aspect of revelation or self-
communication. According to Balthasar, the important point of the notion of the immanent
Trinity is to establish that God as eternal Trinity is love in himself regardless of the world, and
that this love, welling forth from God in freedom, is what motivates God’s involvement with
the world through creation and redemption.859
But this, Balthasar insists, does not mean that
the economic Trinity is not the same God as the immanent; when God relates to the world
God is fully himself.860
It is really the immanent Trinity that relates to the world in the
economy.
The difference between Rahner and Balthasar on this point is, like on many other topics, not
very great, although neither is it insignificant. A way of pointing out the difference could be
to say that while Rahner says that the immanent Trinity is as the economic Trinity reveals,
Balthasar beholds the economic revelation and asks: What must God be like in the immanent
Trinity if God acts and reveals himself just this way in the economy? To Balthasar the
immanent Trinity is always excessive in relation to the economic, akin to his conception of
truth as a mysterious more that is given through the appearances of images. Thus in
Balthasar’s own words, he has to “feel his way back” and “walk on a knife’s edge” to the
immanent Trinity from the economic,861
while for Rahner this process is more uncomplicated.
One could also say that for Rahner God is “dramatic” insofar as God is really involved with
the world, while for Balthasar God is dramatic in himself, and therefore can and does relate
dramatically to the world.
A foothold against a collapse (or more cautiously, with Rahner, a declaration of identity) of
the economic into the immanent Trinity in Balthasar’s theology is his notion of the
858 The so-called “Rahner’s rule,” what Balthasar calls an “axiom” (“The economic Trinity is the immanent
Trinity, and vice versa”), is the reference point. See, e.g., Balthasar, TD 3, 508; ———, TD 4, 320f. For a
thorough discussion of Balthasar’s criticism of Rahner and the differences between them on this topic, see
Cichon-Brandmaier, Ökonomische und immanente Trinität: ein Vergleich der Konzeptionen Karl Rahners und
Hans Urs von Balthasars, esp. 186-199. 859
“The immanent Trinity must be understood to be that eternal, absolute self-surrender whereby God is seen to
be, in himself, absolute love; this in turn explains his free self-giving to the world as love, without suggesting
that God ‘needed’ the world process and the Cross in order to become himself (to ‘mediate himself’).” Balthasar,
TD 4, 323. Cf. ———, TD 3, 508f. 860
Cf. Schumacher, Perichorein, 168. 861
Balthasar, TD 4, 324.
209
“Trinitarian inversion.”862
The notion starts in an apory hinted at above: The Trinity seems to
be ordered differently in the immanent and economic version.
On the one hand, the traditional language of the eternal generations or processions in God (i.e.
in the immanent Trinity) implies a “taxonomy” where the Father begets the Son, while the
Spirit proceeds from them both or from the Father through the Son, as the unifying bond of
their mutual love, as implied in the standard Trinitarian formula Father, Son and Holy Spirit
(cf. Matt 28:19). This is especially clear within Balthasar’s Western theological framework,
which includes the Filioque.863
Balthasar’s take on this “tiresome issue” of a thousand years
of dispute864
is surprisingly traditional when compared to his general ecumenically open and
Eastern-friendly attitude. He makes no claim to solve the problem, but acknowledges that
many of the accusations from both sides are wrong and due to different understandings of
words and conceptualities, and must be played down because of a shared apophatic
concern.865
Examples are the precise meaning of the Latin term procedere and the Spirit as
proceeding dia (through) the Son. In the end, however, Balthasar concludes that filioque is
needed in order to make sense of the name “Love” given to the triune God.866
On the other hand, both biblical texts (esp. Matt 1:20; Luke 1:35) and the creeds (“incarnate
of/conceived by the Holy Spirit” etc.) affirm that the incarnation was brought about actively
by the Spirit (i.e. in the economy). So, in the immanent Trinity, it seems that we have the
order Father-Son-Spirit, while in the economy it goes Father-Spirit-Son. Balthasar meets this
tension by saying that the Son relates in two ways to the Spirit during his mission which his
person is:867
in his earthly life (status exinanitionis), he lives under the rule868
of the Spirit,
862 The notion is first developed in ———, TD 3, 183-91, (515-)521-3. It is returned to later in ———, TL 3,
35f, 182-4, 203-5, 210f. A concise and precise presentation of Balthasar’s development of the Trinitarian
inversion (limited to Theo-Drama) is found in Matthew Lewis Sutton, “A Compelling Trinitarian Taxonomy:
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of the Trinitarian Inversion and Reversion,” International Journal of
Systematic Theology 14, no. 2 (2012): esp. 169ff. 863
The Latin term filioque means “and the Son,” and the theological dispute connected to the term refers to the
clause added to the Nicene-Constantinopolitian Creed by the Western Church that the Spirit proceeds from the
Father “and the Son.” The clause was an important part of the background for the formalized break between East
and West in 1054. 864
Balthasar, TL 3, 207-18. Citation, 207. 865
Here his thinking resonates with many ideas central to recent Roman Catholic-Eastern Orthodox ecumenical
dialogue, for example “The Filioque: A Church-Dividing Issue? An Agreed Statement of the North American
Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation,” United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, October 2003. 866
———, TL 3, 217f. 867
Balthasar develops his thought of identity of person and mission in Christology in Theo-Drama 3. This was
referred to summarily in several places in 9.1. Endre points out how this notion is important to Balthasar’s “two
hands” reasoning and consequently for the notion of Trinitarian inversion, because it implies the Spirit as the
mediator of the will of God that Jesus is obedient to, Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs
210
obeying the Father through him. After he has given up his Spirit (Matt 27:50) in the
accomplishment of his mission on the cross (John 19:30), however, he has earned the right to
breathe the Spirit into all flesh (his status exaltationis at the right hand of the Father).869
Thus
there is an inversion (a change of places/order) in the Son’s relation to the Spirit throughout
his mission that is grounded in the immanent Trinity. This inversion “had to take place” for
the Son to complete his kenotic mission as obedient servant (cf. Phil 2), and as servant the
Son also had to refrain from his Lordship over the Spirit.870
In response to this way of speaking one might ask, as Balthasar himself does, whether this
inversion of the order of the immanent Trinity through the economy implies a change in God
that challenges the idea of divine immutability? His answer is a carefully paradoxical “no”:
It is not that God, in himself, changes but that the unchangeable God enters into a relationship with creaturely
reality, and this relationship imparts a new look to his internal relations.871
In other words, Balthasar thinks that God is really affected by his engagement in the world
drama, in a way that “inverts” and “imparts a new look” at the relation between the divine
persons, but that this engagement does not change God’s essence, which is still the eternal
immanent love of Father, Son and Spirit. On another occasion he speaks in paradoxical
language borrowed from Francois Varillon of “change” as “a perfection of immutability.”872
Thus in Balthasar’s thought God is eternally identical to himself as the immanent relationship
of triune love, and this immutable love unfolds through the economic drama of God’s relation
to the world, where the Father relates to creation through the “two hands” of Son and Spirit.
von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 102f, cf. 137. He cites Schumacher: “Die Koinzidenz von
Sendung und Person in Jesus Christus kann daher nicht anders begründet sein als im Pneuma. Der Geist ist es,
der Jesus den Willen des Vaters ergreifen und in diesen einwilligen läßt.” Schumacher, Perichorein, 143. 868
Balthasar’s emphasis on the Spirit as rule over the Son is probably inspired by the spirituality of Adrienne
von Speyr. See Sutton, “A Compelling Trinitarian Taxonomy: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of the
Trinitarian Inversion and Reversion,” 170f. 869
Thus, for Balthasar, the reversion to the traditional taxonomy, where the Son again is in position to send the
Spirit, does not happen at Pentecost, but at the cross. See ibid., 175; Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der
Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 113; Blättler, Pneumatologia
crucis: das Kreuz in der Logik von Wahrheit und Freiheit; ein phänomenologischer Zugang zur Theologik Hans
Urs von Balthasars, 349. 870
Balthasar, TL 3, 203. 871
———, TD 3, 523. 872
———, TD 5, 243.
211
14.3 The Affection (Erfahrung) of the Spirit in and through the
Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Christ
Even more radical than Balthasar’s saying that the inner-Trinitarian relation between Spirit
and Son is inverted and reverted during his earthly lifetime are his statements about how “the
Spirit has acquired a kind of earthly experience [Erfahrung]”873
through being the Spirit of
Jesus. Such language is very fresh and may be disturbing (to say the least) to some sides in the
debate concerning the immutability of God, where Balthasar is a controversial name.874
Surprisingly, this notion has received, as far as I have been able to detect, only scant (if any)
attention from commentators on Balthasar’s pneumatology. The idea is present in the essay on
“The Holy Spirit as Love” (orig. 1967), where Balthasar says that the Spirit is “affected” by
the Son’s humanity.875
It is more fully articulated in TL 3:
When the eternal Son becomes man, the immutable Son of God takes on the “other” [andere], “mutable”
[verändernde] form of man. Necessarily, therefore, this also involves a mutation in his (immutable) relation
to the Holy Spirit [mit Notwendigkeit “ändert” sich damit auch sein (unveränderliches) Verhältnis zum
Heiligen Geist], who has always been the Spirit of his loving response to the Father. This loving response
brings out in man–and particularly in the one who substitutes for sinners–the readiness to go to the very limit
in obeying the Father’s commands. So we can say, again, that the “inversion” to which we have referred,
which is based on the Son’s “becoming obedient to death on a Cross”, causes the Holy Spirit to have a share,
as it were, in the experience of what it means to be a creature vis-à-vis God. The Spirit is not merely an
“external” witness of what Jesus does and suffers on earth (–he is that, too): but as the “Spirit of Christ”
(Rom 8:9) he also acquires a kind of inner experience [eine Art innerliche Erfahrung] of Christ’s deeds and
sufferings. He is not only the Spirit “who searches the depths of God”: now, as the Spirit of the Son, who
plumbs the “depths of the world” right down to the katōtera tēs gēs, he is the terminus of all human
existence: Death followed by Hades (see Rev 6:8).876
In the aforementioned essay, it is also emphasized more thoroughly that the Spirit experiences
sin as a part of the “entire humanum” experienced by the Son through his suffering,877
and
that the Spirit, as breathed forth from the cross, “always comes from the most extreme point
873 ———, TL 3, 175.
874 Cf. Gerard F. O’Hanlon, The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990). See also the many critical references to Balthasar throughout James F.
Keating and Thomas Joseph White, ed. Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 2009). 875
Balthasar, “The Holy Spirit as Love,” 123. 876
———, TL 3, 204, G:187f. Translation slightly modified. 877
Cf. also the mention of the Spirit as the “Spirit who accompanied his entire human existence and suffering,”
———, “Preliminary Remarks on the Discernment of Spirits,” 344. And furthermore: “the Spirit who
accompanies the Son to his “end” […] has coexperienced this end [abandonment, “all of the alienation of sin”]
for all time [!].” ———, “Loneliness in the Church,” 275.
212
that God’s fatherly and filial love could find in order to be God even in what is the most
ungodly, in order to experience to its very depths the inconceivable profundity of mutual love
in the abandonment by God” experienced by the Son.878
Through this notion Balthasar, as it were, works out the implications for the other hand (the
Spirit) of God from what he has said on the “becoming” of the first (the Son) in TL 2.879
Where, with Karl Rahner, he says that the Son, as he becomes man (sarx egeneto, John 1:14),
expropriates himself through a “humanity [that] is not already in existence but comes to be.”
From this it follows that “God can become something, the unchangeable can himself be
changeable in the other [am andern].”880
From the vantage point of this other, the Son
experiences how it is to be a creature vis-à-vis God.881
Thus, in the same sense that the Son
through the incarnation became something he was not before, the Spirit experienced
something he had not; he initiated and accompanied the Son throughout a journey [Erfahrung
from er-fahren, lit. impression acquired through travel] of humanity from heaven to earth,
through death and Hades, the inescapable wonder of the resurrection and back to the throne of
heaven.
This Spirit, says Balthasar, is the Spirit that is given to every Christian, breathed out into the
Church by the Son of Man exalted to the right hand of God. The significant inference from
this Erfahrung the Spirit goes through as he is affected by Jesus’ humanity is that he knows
every possible depth of human existence, and it is on this basis that he can cry “Abba” from
human hearts (Gal 4:6) and recognizes every possible “sigh too deep for words” hidden in a
human heart as he prays for us (Rom 8:26f).882
No one could, in Balthasar’s judgment, be
more appropriate for the mission of subjective and objective witness to Christ the truth in the
Church than this Spirit.883
14.4 Critical Assessment by Means of Puntel’s Theoretical Framework
Balthasar’s emphasis on the reciprocity and unity-in-distinction of Spirit and Son in their
respective missions given by the Father grows out of careful use of biblical texts and
878 ———, “The Holy Spirit as Love,” 123f.
879 ———, TL 2, 282-6.
880 Ibid., 283, 285. Both of the citations are from Rahner, the 1960 edition of “[Zur] Theologie der
Menschwerdung” (from Schriften, vol. 4). 881
This must be understood, in light of the Son’s acquaintance with creatureliness as such through his mediation
in creation (analogia entis) (cf. 9.1), to be a kind of inward fulfillment of something he already had an inkling of. 882
Balthasar, “The Holy Spirit as Love,” 123. 883
———, TL 3, 204f.
213
sensibility to the tradition, as should be clear from the analysis above. As such, the general
insights contained in the notion of the Father’s two hands as Balthasar understands it can be
assessed positively as an important part of a genuinely Trinitarian theology. However, some
of the consequences he draws from the notion are debated, and some of his arguments may be
refined. It is the task of this section to clarify the position of Balthasar in light of those debates
and to develop the consistency and coherence of some of his important arguments.
The Roles of Son and Spirit in the Conception of Jesus
Throughout the discussion of the activity and passivity of Son and Spirit in the conception of
Jesus, Balthasar seems to exaggerate some points of tension, especially between the biblical
accounts of Luke 1 and Phil 2. The “hymn” of Phil 2:6ff884
can be interpreted in a way that is
as much an argument for Balthasar’s position as an obstacle to it. Balthasar reads the word
that most explicitly speaks of the assuming of humanity (lit. “form of a slave or servant,”
morphē doulou), the aorist participle labōn (from lambanō), as referring to a completely
active “taking” (in German a Nehmen885
and [Christ] nimmt886
). What he does not reflect on
(like most commentators on the verse) is that lambanō does not only mean “to take” in the
sense of an active grasping or seizing for oneself, but also means (passively) “to obtain,”
“receive” or “approve as one’s own” in response to a giving.887
Thus labōn in Phil 2:7 can be
interpreted as meaning that Christ obtained or received his humanity as much as did take it for
himself in some kind of (perhaps “violent”) grasping. This interpretation is consistent with the
other occurrence of lambanō in Philippians (3:12). Here lambanō is contrasted to the
compound katalambanō, which stresses the “taking” as a forceful grasping or bringing under
one’s own control (cf. the very lively diōkō, lit. “to chase,” “run after”), while lambanō in this
context emphasizes not the “taking” but the resulting possession (most English translations
use “obtained” for elabon here). Another NT text suggesting this interpretation of labōn in
Phil 2 is Heb 10:5: “a body you [God] prepared (katērtisō) for me.” The text stresses in
reference to the incarnation that the body of Christ was made or prepared for him by God (and
thus not by himself). The other verbs in the Philippians passage describing the incarnation are
884 According to most exegetes, Paul is here using a poetic (perhaps liturgical) text handed over to him from the
Christian congregations. For a good example of an informed and balanced discussion critical to the consensus
position in the lack of concrete evidence but still open to it, see Markus N. A. Bockmuehl, A Commentary on the
Epistle to the Philippians (London: Continuum, 1997), 114-21. 885
Balthasar, TL 3, 49, G:42. The English version (G. Harrison) translates as “taking.” 886
Ibid., 177, G:162. English translation: “assumes.” 887
A compelling example of this use of the word is found in John 1:12, where it denotes the “receiving” (elabon)
of the Logos by those who believe in him. Similarly, in Rom 8:15 it is used for the reception of the Spirit by
Christians.
214
either verbs of active emptying and humiliation (ekenōsen, etapeinōsen), of becoming
(genomenos, twice) or in the passive voice (heuretheis). On this background, much of the
tension Balthasar constructs between Luke 1 and Phillipians 2 can be dismissed as
unnecessary.
Furthermore, some of Balthasar’s considerations in this regard take their point of departure
from the passive phrase “conceived by the Holy Spirit” from the creeds. It is worth noting that
this phrase in the Nicene Creed is preceded by an active expression concerning the Son:
katelthonta (“he came down”). Here a central text in the tradition provides support for
Balthasar’s own way of speaking when he speaks of the Son’s active “letting” as he
obediently allows the Spirit to make him incarnate in the womb of Mary.888
This expression
from the creed can even illuminate the understanding of Phil 2 further: If we take the active
verbs of “emptying” (together with the active verbs that precede it, hyparchōn, hēgēsato) to
refer to this going down from his heavenly position and glory, we can still retain the concrete
acquiring of his human flesh as something he receives [labōn] through the work of the Spirit.
Thus it can be concluded that although Balthasar’s argument has biases, his basic intuition can
be retained: In the conception, the Spirit is the primary active agent as he comes upon Mary to
conceive in her. The Son is actively consenting to this act of the Spirit through his eternal
obedience to the Father; he contributes to his incarnation by an act of (passive!) obedience.
On this basis, the notion that the Spirit is indispensable to the event of the God-man Jesus
Christ as the truth must be retained. As such, the Spirit has an ontological function in
establishing the truth of God incarnate. The conclusion to follow is that the unity of
philosophical and theological truth argued for in Part II of this study includes a necessary
element of pneumatology as well as Trinitarian thinking even if it has Christology as its key.
Christ, the incarnate eternal Son of God, is “the truth” as sent from the Father and conceived
as man by the Holy Spirit.
Trinitarian Taxonomy and Inversion
The “Trinitarian inversion” has been received very differently by commentators. Here I will
first briefly refer to some examples that go far in opposite directions. Alyssa Pitstick holds
that Balthasar’s idea of the Trinitarian inversion, among other faults, is self-contradictory and
888 Cf. “his coming to be as a man is already an act of making himself available,” Balthasar, “Spirit and
Institution,” 227.
215
violates divine immutability, because it involves change in the divine relations.889
A more
carefully argued negative stance is found in Silvia Cichon-Brandmaier’s dissertation on the
immanent and economic Trinity in the conceptions of Balthasar and Karl Rahner.890
She holds
that the notion is unnecessary [nicht zwingend notwendig; überflussig] inside Balthasar’s own
theological framework; through consideration of the Spirit as the Spirit of both the obedience
and freedom of Jesus,891
and the Trinitarian perichoresis,892
the notion can be abandoned. The
notion also has, according to Cichon-Brandmaier, the problematic implication of resisting the
version of Rahner’s identity thesis of economic and immanent Trinity that she holds,893
and of
creating, as it were, two missions for the Spirit: one during Jesus’ lifetime and another after
the resurrection and exaltation.894
While bringing important criticisms to the fore, her
evaluation of Balthasar seems to be heavily influenced by her own Rahner-like position. And
I would argue that the and vice versa and identity of Rahner’s rule is problematic because it
does not secure the freedom of God as love sufficiently from being caught up in a necessary
process where the world has some kind of upper hand. Here Balthasar’s argument against
Hegel is important to keep in mind. Moreover, Cichon-Brandmaier neither solves nor resolves
the apory between different sayings of the creeds that make up Balthasar’s starting point for
developing the notion, and as such does not provide any alternative more coherent solution.
Thomas Schumacher, on the other hand, adopts a very positive stance in his dissertation on
the Christo-logic and pneumato-logic in Balthasar dramatically constituted theo-logic. He
speaks of the genius [Genialität] of Balthasar’s Trinitarian inversion.895
Schumacher often
makes use of the expression “unity” [Einheit] of the immanent and the economic Trinity in
Balthasar.896
The inversion or change of place [Umlegung] of the immanent “dimension” of
the Trinity into the economic “dimension” he speaks of as a “self-fulfillment” [Selbstvollzug]
889 Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell,
esp. 230-4. 890
Cichon-Brandmaier, Ökonomische und immanente Trinität: ein Vergleich der Konzeptionen Karl Rahners
und Hans Urs von Balthasars. The initial analysis of the notion in Balthasar is found on pages 190-3, and it is
returned to in different contexts, e.g. at 281f, 289, 363 and 391f. 891
Ibid., 193. With reference to Michael Schulz. 892
Ibid., 282. 893
Cichon-Brandmaier says that Rahner’s axiom of an identity between the economic and the immanent Trinity
must be withheld, but admits that the wording is easy to misunderstand. She uses Walter Kasper’s criticism and
interpretation of Rahner to make his axiom more precise. An important point is that “Identität im Sinne Rahners
sei nicht im Sinne der Formel ‘A = A’ zu verstehen.” One might then wish to ask why the word “Identität”
should be retained. Ibid., 88f, cf. 363. 894
Ibid., 392. 895
Schumacher, Perichorein, 359. 896
Ibid., 8, 217, 346.
216
of God. In other words: In the economy, the immanent Trinity fulfills its own essence as love
in its dramatic, freely chosen relation to the world. Thus the eternal God is in a sense affected
by the engagement with the world, but throughout God only becomes (without change to his
essence!) what God is: love, in freedom manifested through action towards this particular
world. Schumacher’s perspective is informed in a deeper way than Cichon-Brandmaier’s by
an insider’s view on Balthasar’s thought, although he does not discuss the concerns of
“Rahner’s rule” broadly, and his expression of a self-fulfillment of God is perhaps more open
to Hegelian ways of thinking than Balthasar would accept.
A more nuanced positive evaluation is made by Matthew Lewis Sutton.897
His work can
function as a framework for positive assessment within certain limits. The strength of his
approach is that he, like Balthasar, understands the question within a dynamic interplay
between traditional creeds and theology, biblical theology and contemporary theological
reflection. He also very clearly and consistently emphasizes the apophatic reminder that there
will always be an excess behind human concepts of Trinitarian taxonomies, begetting,
procession etc. For, as I have argued with Balthasar, divine triune love is Unvordenklich.
Sutton further shows that attempts to resolve the apory behind the Trinitarian inversion by
simply abandoning the traditional Trinitarian taxonomy – or simply the idea of a Trinitarian
taxonomy at all – is a very unpromising alternative for future ecumenical dialogue.898
However, some aspects remain for an assessment of Balthasar’s theology of the Trinitarian
inversion. It is a valuable idea for theological reflection because it strives for an integrative
and coherent version of the immanent and economic Trinity tightly bound to detailed
exposition of the biblical texts that narrate the central soteriological events. An important
reason behind some critical attitudes is that it seems to imply a way of conceiving the
Trinitarian taxonomies immanent and economic in a sense with little flexibility. Who made
the implicit rule that the immanent Trinity has a single taxonomy that can be comprehended in
only one way, as it were? Some tension could be removed and consistency increased if one
allows that the Trinitarian taxonomy allows itself to be seen under different perspectives. The
metaphor of the Church Fathers’ mentioned by Balthasar that the spoken Word always also
issues by the Breath (Spirit) (cf. the parallelism in Ps. 33:6) could also be applied here to
underscore that whether one starts with Son or Spirit or orders them in this or that way, an
897 Sutton, “A Compelling Trinitarian Taxonomy: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of the Trinitarian
Inversion and Reversion.” 898
Ibid., 167-9.
217
important point is that they always belong together in their unity with the Father.
Furthermore, without being able to unfold that discussion at length here, Balthasar’s version
of the Trinitarian inversion is also dependent upon a take on the Filioque that could have been
more flexible. To explore the application of the Word/Breath metaphor even in this question,
conceiving the begetting of the Son and the procession of the Spirit more as one unified event
than as two successive ones899
can perhaps help remove some tension regarding that question
too.900
What is important to add from Balthasar’s theology of the Trinitarian inversion for the
articulation of a coherent answer to the question pursued in this dissertation is that it offers an
integrative view on the close interplay and interconnectedness between Son and Spirit as the
two hands of the Father that reveals the truth of divine love in the world. A coherent account
of their common mission cannot be given if one is granted decisive priority over the other. In
eternity as well as in the economy the true Father is always with and working through his two
hands, the Truth in person and the Spirit of truth who establishes and communicates the
divine truth of love in the world.
Impassibility and the Experience of the Spirit
Again, when wanting to make an assessment of Balthasar’s notions of the experience of the
Spirit in the incarnation, one touches on theological dilemmas of considerable size: the
question of divine impassibility, immutability and affection. Such questions cannot be
addressed at length here, but I will just point to some important ideas concerning them that
open up a coherent framework for a positive assessment of Balthasar’s way of speaking.
Balthasar’s own take on the question of immutability, conceived more as a supra-mutability,
can serve as a starting point.901
Through paradoxical formulations he affirms that God in one
899 The notions of event and succession, of course, can be used in this respect only analogously, as God is
eternally one and three. But sometimes the metaphors applied make more noise in the system than necessary. 900
This is only to point out a possible way forward in a renewed engagement with the Filioque. The enormous
literature in this field makes it impossible to come to any more comprehensive conclusions within the limits of
this dissertation. 901
In the most thorough study of Balthasar’s theology of the immutability (or rather, supra-mutability) of God
available, Gerard F. O’Hanlon makes this statement in his “Final assessment,” an assessment of Balthasar’s
theology on this point very close to the position advocated here: “The great advantage of Balthasar’s position on
the divine immutability, presented in the form of a theology of the trinitarian event, is that it allows us to speak
coherently about God as transcendent and yet as intimately involved with us. It does so in conformity with
scriptural revelation and Christian experience but in contrast to some of the traditional terms of Christian theism,
by showing how creation is distinct but not separate for God, and, crucially, is an analogous expression of God.
Balthasar has identified and developed the similarity, within dissimilarity, of the created and divine spheres in
their analogous relationship (revealed primarily in Christ) in such a way that he may speak about a supra-
218
sense changes, but he changes as the Unchangeable. This is the most coherent way to resolve
the tension in the Scriptures between texts affirming the transcendence and constancy of God
(e.g. Isa 40ff passim; Rom 11:33-35; Hebr 13:8) and the texts that speak of divine change of
mind (e.g. Gen 6:6; Ex 32:14) and the becoming of the Word in the incarnation (e.g. John
1:14). God always becomes what he is; his involvement with the world is the affirmation of
his own identity and unity. In a similar vein, it can be said that God suffers, but not in the way
created beings suffer. In Jesus, God suffers humanly, but he suffers humanly as God. Here
again it is worth noting Martin Bieler’s (with Karl Barth) that God is free to be affected or
suffer in the way God wills. He adds a thought experiment on the basis of Thomas Aquinas’
distinction between the different orders of being, where it is an important point that “lower,”
inanimate beings are less susceptible to suffering than “higher,” animate and soul-possessing
beings.902
However, at the top of this hierarchy of being stands God, and the point is that a
divine (supra-)ability to suffer does not necessarily relegate God to a lower sphere, but instead
manifests his place as over and beyond created beings.
Within a framework such as the one sketched here on the immutability of God, Balthasar’s
remarks on the experience of the Spirit through the life and death of Jesus can be assessed as
coherent. For the most part, his observations on this theme are nothing more than an
outworking of the consequences of what he has said on how the Son is affected in the
incarnation, applying them also to the other hand of the Father, the Spirit. However, it must be
noted that the notion is perhaps based more on systematic-theological interference than on
explicit biblical texts, although there may be some relevant biblical texts for this idea to be
noted on a closer look. Balthasar’s theology of the cross and descent of Christ and the Spirit’s
affection in this event can be seen as the Christological and pneumatological fullness behind
the words of comfort and trust prayed in Psalm 139:7-10 (RSV):
Whither shall I go from thy Spirit?903
mutability and suffering in God which are clearly not identical with and yet relate positively to created change
and suffering. In this way he avoids the appearance (common in other approaches) of a ‘split’ in God, whether
between God in himself and God in the other, or between the economic and immanent realms, or between the
human and divine natures of Christ, while being able to maintain the distinction proper to the divine
transcendence. Within this trinitarian ontology of love, then, he offers a nuanced and developed theology of the
divine immutability.” O’Hanlon, The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar, 170. 902
Bieler, “Kreuz und Gott: Implikationen der Kreuzestheologie Hans Urs von Balthasars für die Gotteslehre,”
10f. 903
Some modern translations do not capitalize the word “Spirit” or translate ruach as breath etc. It is here cited
from a capitalized version in keeping with a long tradition and for the sake of clarity of argument. Further
219
Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend to heaven, thou art there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there!904
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, “Let only darkness cover me, and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to thee, the night is bright as the day;
for darkness is as light with thee.
Through the work of Christ in the Spirit, God has gone everywhere and anyhow a human
being can ever (forever!) go. In the depths of hell and the heights of heaven, every lonely
human905
being must say: “You are already here for me” (pro nobis). In the words of Paul:
Nothing (and this is to be taken in the most direct and all-encompassing sense: nothing) or no
one, be it in heaven, on earth or below, “can separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ
our Lord” (Rom 8:39). The guarantee of this is the Spirit of truth, who holds Father and Son
together in love through the abandonment of hell, and thus guarantees that truth is one. The
truth is God’s triune love, shown and given to the world in Jesus Christ. The oneness of the
truth in the cross is thus an indispensable aspect of the oneness of philosophical and
theological truth in the person of Christ. Stat crux, dum volvitur orbis, as Balthasar was
referred to as emphasizing in 9.1. And in the outworking of as well as the communication of
this event the Spirit of truth is an indispensable agent. More than that, by his involvement in
this event he is not only able to communicate divine insights, but he is able to communicate
them from the inside of human experience confronted by sin, lie and contradiction. Because
he has been exposed to these forces, he can also free human beings from them.
§ 15. The Pneumatic Body of Christ: The Spirit of Truth in the Church
The foregoing chapters have surveyed important aspects of Balthasar’s pneumatology in
relation to truth in the broader, more abstract context of Trinitarian theology. This chapter and
the next will go more into concrete detail on the activity of the Holy Spirit of truth inside and
outside the church. At this point it is worth noting that the explicit development of Balthasar’s
considerations on the interpretation of OT texts on S/spirit/divine breath in historical and systematic theological
perspectives can be found throughout § 16. 904
Balthasar cites this line of the Psalm, which “receives a whole new meaning” in light of his teaching on
Christ’s descent into hell, but without linking it explicitly to the Spirit, in Balthasar, “On Vicarious
Representation,” 422. 905
An interesting “Ausblick” on the connection between “Angst” (Dasein) and hell is found in Hegger, Sperare
contra spem: Die Hölle als Gnadengeschenk Gottes bei Hans Urs von Balthasar, 465ff.
220
theology in those fields in Theo-Logic 3 is of very unequal length and level of detail (about
160 compared to 15 pages),906
a fact that attests plainly to what Stephen Wigley describes
correctly as its “strongly ecclesial” nature.907
This dissertation will treat those questions at
more equal length, for several reasons. The first and most important is the systematic position
articulated here, where the work of the Spirit of truth outside the church is emphasized in a
stronger and different way than Balthasar does (see esp. 16.2). Another, still important reason
is the thematic focus of this dissertation with its aim of integrating theology and philosophy,
which justifies the reservation of some (important enough!) questions in ecclesiology for
other works. The third is the theological context of this dissertation. It is written as part of the
ecumenical dialogue starting from an evangelical-Lutheran position.908
As such, it is not as
concerned with the intricacies of Catholic ecclesiology and teaching on the office as are
Balthasar’s works. It would hardly surprise the reader of this dissertation to hear that a
Lutheran theologian does not think that the Holy Spirit and his truth ultimately reside in
Rome!
As a point of departure and guiding principle of structuration this chapter uses the distinction
between the “objective” and “subjective” work of the Spirit in the church central to Balthasar
in TL 3. The terminology has roots in Hegel’s philosophy of religion, but as in the case of
Irenaeus’ two-hands metaphor, Balthasar uses the words in a consciously different but not
unrelated sense. This distinction provides a way into the general discussion of the relation
between institutional and charismatic elements central to theological research in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the present ecumenical dialogue.
15.1 The Objective and Subjective Work of the Spirit of Truth in the
Church
At the end of the preludes of TL 3 Balthasar adds a quite lengthy consideration of the
soundness of the concept “Spirit-Christology.”909
In this section one of his important aims is
to sketch the important points in his distancing from Hegel in the teaching on the Holy
906 “V. The Spirit and the Church,” Balthasar, TL 3, 251-411. “VI. Spirit and World,” ibid., 413-429. One would
find a similar proportionality between inside and outside the Church if the rest of the book was investigated in
detail with the aim of placing the reflections there in one of those two spheres. 907
Wigley, Balthasar’s Trilogy: A Reader’s Guide, 141. 908
Cf. the remarks made in the Introduction, 4.1. 909
Balthasar, TL 3, 33-60.
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Spirit.910
The distinction between “objective” and “subjective” Spirit, central to later parts of
the volume, is introduced here. For Hegel, the point of the distinction is to describe the
necessary self-fulfillment of the Absolute through creation, incarnation and death, understood
as the objective Spirit’s subjective self-realization in the community, where God through
Christ becomes Spirit. In the ears of Balthasar this sounds more like a transformation of the
original unity (in the sense of identity) of Father and Son (a “binity”) that is sublated [aufhebt]
into Spirit, more than a Trinitarian doctrine of divine persons in loving relation. As shown
earlier in the section concerning the immanent and the economic Trinity, Balthasar strongly
rejects Hegel’s effective denial of the absolutely free love of God by posing the necessity of
his involvement with the world in creation and incarnation for his self-fulfillment or self-
manifestation. Balthasar thus also rejects the idea that God the Spirit in any sense must be
fulfilled or realized from an objective to a subjective state,911
but twists the idea into a
simultaneous two-sidedness of the essence of the Holy Spirit in the immanent Trinity:
The Holy Spirit is both the innermost crucible of the movement of love between Father and Son [“subjective
love”] and its product and fruit–the objective testimony to that fire of love.912
The distinction thus explicates notions familiar from the earlier analyses, pointing out how
important the Holy Spirit as love and the bond of unity between Father and Son is to
Balthasar’s theology of the Trinity and the descent (the subjective aspect; see 14.3), and the
centrality of the concepts of gift and fruitfulness as result from the “unprethinkable”
[unvordenkliche] Trinitarian love, cached in sight through Balthasar’s emphasis on the child
as created image of the Spirit (objective aspect; 10.1).
Now, in the inner Trinitarian life there is a perfect coincidence of those two aspects: The Holy
Spirit is two-in-one: subjective love and objective fruit, simultaneously. But this distinction,
910 Ibid., esp. 40-47. The reason is that “there can be no doubt that Hegel produced the most comprehensive
outline of a Spirit-Christology, that is, a theological philosophy in which the Spirit is that which is the all-
embracing, the Alpha and Omega, yet in such a way that it is centered in a Christology that alone renders it
intelligible in the Spirit” (p. 40). On the question of Balthasar’s relation to Hegel generally and regarding the
Spirit, see (resp.) Michael Schulz, “Die Logik der Liebe und die List der Vernunft: Hans Urs von Balthasar und
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,” in Logik der Liebe und Herrlichkeit Gottes: Hans Urs von Balthasar im
Gespräch: Festgabe für Karl Kardinal Lehmann zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Walter Kasper (Ostfildern: Matthias-
Grünewald-Verlag, 2006); Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel
der kritischen Nachfragen,” 141-49. 911
That is, the “necessity of Spirit to objectify itself (as the not-I or as an objective moral norm) in order to
achieve its full, absolute subjectivity” in Idealism. Balthasar, TL 3, 307. 912
Ibid., 307, 310, 369, cf. 46, 245. Cf. Tossou, Streben nach Vollendung: Zur Pneumatologie im Werk Hans
Urs von Balthasars, 49, cf. 327. See also the title essay of ET IV (central to Tossou who wrote before TL 3 was
published): Balthasar, “Spirit and Institution,” esp. 227, 233, 239f, 242.
222
Balthasar maintains, has its corollary in different aspects of the Spirit’s work in the Church,
and here there arise tension between the aspects due to human sinfulness:
Here […] we see the Spirit’s twofold form as love […:] as the act of love between Father and Son [and]
equally as the highest fruit of this love. Therefore, in all the Church’s objective institutions that the Spirit
builds, we must recognize the work and expression of divine and holy love, just as much as in the subjective
holiness that the institutions make possible. It is only man’s imperfect view of things that sees a tension
between pneuma and institution: from the perspective of the Spirit they belong together; indeed they are one,
just as he himself, within the Godhead, is one, both act and fruit, event and result, conditioned (by origin) and
unconditioned (in freedom).913
Here it can be seen clearly how Balthasar reasons theologically from the personal attributes or
essence of the Spirit (in the immanent Trintity) to his activity in the Church (in the
economy).914
As Endre notes, this connection is also an important background for Balthasar’s
theology of the Trinitarian inversion, because the Spirit needs to be in both “positions”
objectively in the immanent Trinity if the economic reversal shall not be conceived as a
straightforward change in God.915
Furthermore, the quote makes clear how short the step is in
Balthasar’s thought from the distinction between objective and subjective Holy Spirit to other
important distinctions-in-tension in the realm of ecclesiology:916
Spirit and institution, love
(freedom) and obedience to the rule or command of God (fulfilled in the life of Jesus),917
life
and form [Gestalt],918
charism and office,919
invention and tradition,920
enthusiasm and
913 ———, TL 3, 247. The theme of sin in this regard is explicated more fully in ET IV: “Since the Spirit has
been sent by the Father and the glorified Son into the Church and since, on the other hand, the Church still lives
in transitoriness and still shares in the suffering of Christ and must be like him by dying (Phil 3:10-11), the form
in which the Spirit is being sent into the Church shows both modalities: that of economic objectivization as
‘institution’ and that of the immanent, inner-trinitarian ‘gift’ (as the personified intimacy and, to that extent, the
objectivized subjectivity). And inasmuch as the Church is always also a failing, sinful Church – which Christ
was not – the economic objectivization of the Spirit can apparently assume a much more law-like and demanding
form.” [… Sinners] “can feel the institutional form of the Spirit to be a form of alienation blocking their way to
what they as sinners would like to understand by love and mercy. The institutional bracket in which the Spirit
has inserted sinners to lead them to that faith, hope and love really mean is in its very essence a liberation to be a
Christian and is only experienced as a chain and a tutelage when one as sinner chafes against it.” ———, “Spirit
and Institution,” 236f. 914
Endre says on the connections established here: “diese Eigenschaft der kirklichen Instution aus der
innertrinitarischen Stellung des Heiligen Geistes (und damit aus seinem persönlichsten Proprium) abzuleiten, ist
ein theologisches novum.” Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel
der kritischen Nachfragen,” 170. 915
Ibid., 169f. 916
Balthasar can even use the categories of objective and subjective in the Church without explicit reference to
the Spirit, as is the case with the treatment of ecclesial holiness in Balthasar, “Should We Love the Church?,”
187-91. 917
See ———, TD 3, 356. 918
The three first, most obvious, pairs are mentioned by Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs
von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 255. 919
See Balthasar, TL 3, 315-9.
223
soberness,921
activity and passivity, spontaneity and receptivity,922
powerlessness
(selflessness) and power,923
mystical experience and academic theology, subjective, interior
involvement and objective (critical) distance.924
Only the Spirit can hold all those elements
together in harmonic unity.
As an argument against leveling down the importance of the institutional, objective side,
Balthasar points to a central aspect from his Johannine entryway and the logic of the Father’s
two hands: The Spirit always takes what belongs to Christ (“what is mine,” John 16:14) and
gives it to the Church. Thus, “the Spirit’s testimony is always incarnational.” And hence “all
philosophy, theology, and mysticism that is hostile to the body [...] is shown to be anti-
Christian.”925
The “incarnate” aspect of Christ motivates a positive judgment of what is
bodily, material and objective/institutional. Therefore the main criterion for evaluation of the
expressions on the subjective side always lies in Christology (1 John 2:23; 4:2-3). For the
truth that the Holy Spirit of truth objectively declares and subjectively interprets to the Church
is the truth of the Father’s love, appeared in the incarnate life, death and resurrection of the
Son.926
On the other hand, Balthasar also emphasizes that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’
except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3).927
Balthasar’s Trinitarian interpretation of John 4:24
(“worship in spirit and truth”) points in the same direction:
If God is called “spirit” here, this does not amount to defining him thus in a philosophical sense [vs. Hegel!].
Rather, this passage “asserts that God discloses himself in the Spirit; it is in this sense that God ‘is’ spirit.”928
In this saying Jesus asserts
that God makes himself present for us in the pneumatic mystery that comes to us in Jesus’ unity with the
Holy Spirit. In the expression “true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” ([John] 4:22), we
have a trinitarian formula, for “spirit” points to the Holy Spirit, and “truth” to the Son.929
920 See ———, “Preliminary Remarks on the Discernment of Spirits,” 347.
921 See ———, TL 3, 369.
922 See ———, “Preliminary Remarks on the Discernment of Spirits,” 343.
923 See ———, TL 3, 399-405.
924 See ibid., 358-67. For a similar list of tensions see ———, TD 4, 453.
925 ———, TL 3, 246f. Cf. ———, “Preliminary Remarks on the Discernment of Spirits,” 343f.
926 “According to Paul [sic!], the Spirit of the exhalted Lord is identically the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of the
Father: he is the Spirit of their reciprocal love in the latter’s personal freedom. Thus the Spirit has ‘all truth’ at
his disposal: he administers it in divine sovereignty, yet in such a way that there is no truth outside the truth of
the love between Father and Son.” ———, TL 3, 249. For all its to the pointness, the quote is perhaps to be
evaluated as a better expression of the explicit view of a Johannine-inspired Balthasar than of Paul’s! 927
Ibid., 365. 928
Ibid., 370. Emphasis mine. Cf. the translator’s note on the impossible choice between spirit and Spirit in
translating the German noun Geist (always capitalized). Balthasar here cites H. Schlier, “Zum Begriff des
Geistes nach dem Johannesevangelium” in Besinnung auf das Neue Testament, Herder 1964 (not consulted).
224
The Spirit’s is God’s presence in his “objective” present-making of Christ. All of this points
to embodied ecclesial existence as the organic body of Christ, animated by his Spirit.
A last general observation to be made on Balthasar’s use of the distinction between subjective
and objective in the pneumatic body of Christ is his connection of the aspects to the theology
of Mary and Peter, the two representative figures of the Church.930
Peter is the objective
“rock” (John 1:42; Matt 16:18), the objective faith given to him is the official building ground
for the Church.931
His living of this faith, however, is imperfect. The objective priestly
holiness given to the Church in Peter therefore always strives towards the subjective, perfect
holiness of Mary. Mary embodies the subjective side of the Church, the “Yes” to God of the
whole human person. In accordance with Catholic teaching on the Immaculate Conception of
Mary and her absence from actual sin, her subjective holiness is “perfect.” She is thus the
Mother of the Church and “she can ‘fill out’ the deficiencies in people’s subjective reception
of the sacraments.”932
There is an asymmetry between Peter (objectivity), who strives towards
subjective perfection, and Mary (perfect subjectivity), who is both the precondition of the
institutional Church and the goal that the Church strives towards. The Church’s objective
holiness, including official authority and the claim of papal infallibility, is by those ideas
anchored in and presupposes Catholic Mariology. After these general observations concerning
the objective and subjective sides of the work of the Spirit, I will turn to the concrete content
of each side.
The Objective Spirit
Under the heading of “Objective Spirit” in TL 3, Balthasar deals with the topics of “Tradition-
Scripture-Church Office,” “Proclamation and Liturgy,” “Sacraments,” “Canon Law” and
“Theology.” For reasons of space and thematic focus, the fourth aspect will be dealt with only
in passing here, while the second will be treated mostly as an aspect of the first. Balthasar’s
929 Ibid., 408.
930 Ibid., 312-5. Earlier in the book some of the same points are made in the framework of a triadic structure,
where Peter stands for the objective aspect and the unity of Mary and John beneath the cross represents the
subjective aspect. Ibid., 76f. John may also figure in Balthasar’s thought as the personification of the unity of
objective and subjective aspects in love; see Müller, “Der Geist als wirkmächtiger Zeuge Jesu Christi in der
Kirche nach Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 131. Balthasar’s Mariology and his teaching on Peter and the Petrine
office of the Pope are unfolded at much greater length elsewhere. Important works, in addition to many essays in
the Explorations in Theology series, are Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Office of Peter and the Structure of the
Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986); Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Mary:
The Church at the Source (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005). See also Balthasar, TD 3, 283-360. 931
Cf. ———, “Spirit and Institution,” 241. 932
———, TL 3, 314f.
225
reflections on theology will be postponed until § 17 where some of the findings of this
dissertation will be put in dialogue with his thought on theology and holiness.
In the opening pages of TL 3 Balthasar declares that “the Spirit’s declaring of, and leading
into, the truth […] takes place preeminently in a particular realm that Paul calls the Body of
Christ, or the Church.”933
He returns later to the question of what the Church is and the
concrete realm of this work of the Spirit. In the foreground of what the Spirit does
“objectively” in the Church stands the handing over and continual interpretation of the sacred
tradition (paradosis, traditio), in Balthasar’s ecclesiology concretized through the teaching
office of the Church. This objective reality is the indispensable framework for every
subjective application of the fullness of Christ.934
The emphasis on this aspect corresponds
closely to his emphasis on the Spirit who proclaims Christ acquired through the Johannine
entryway,935
and tries to flesh out what that looks like in practice. Balthasar gives credit to
Protestantism for the acknowledgement of the need for an objective norm for Church teaching
and life through the principle sola scriptura, but disagrees in the understanding of what this
principle ought to be. In line with the conciliar constitution Dei Verbum he says that the
Catholic Church
sees the circumincessio of Scripture (norma normans)–tradition–office (normae normatae) as the full form of
objective holiness, which even guarantees the normative character of Scripture itself.936
Balthasar also notes that Dei Verbum often refers to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, on
many occasions, and in concrete reference both in relation to Scripture, tradition and office.937
Balthasar’s reference to the Council at this point is suggestive of his own position, which is
similar to other important figures in conciliar and post-conciliar theology such as Henri de
Lubac, Yves Congar, Joseph Ratzinger, Karl Rahner and Louis Bouyer.938
Balthasar cites all
those theologians affirmatively in his treatment of this question.939
Their way of thinking
plays down the two sources of revelation associated with the Council of Trent, affirming
933 Ibid., 19.
934 Ibid., 319.
935 Cf. the citation from John 16:14 at ibid., 321.
936 Ibid., 311.
937 “The Spirit, who is the animator of the whole Church, will be simultaneously the Spirit of tradition, of
Scripture, and of Church office. Ibid., 321. Cf. Dei Verbum, 7, 8, 10. 938
It is not unlikely that Balthasar’s thought influenced the composition of Dei Verbum, especially through his
relationship to Joseph Ratzinger. See, with references, Müller, “Der Geist als wirkmächtiger Zeuge Jesu Christi
in der Kirche nach Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 133n157. 939
Cf. the footnotes to Balthasar, TL 3, 319-28.
226
instead a single source of revelation in Christ,940
handed down the ages through “Scripture in
Tradition.” Scripture is the authoritative center of a tradition flowing from Christ in the Spirit
that it both grows out of and affirms.
With Dei Verbum Balthasar holds that the right interpretation of Scripture requires a right,
spiritual (“subjective”) attitude towards it. It should not be treated “like any other text,” but
the Spirit must indwell the whole process of receiving, interpretation and transmission, so that
“God’s gift of love be handed on through the believing and loving Church through all the
ages.”941
This gift is Christ himself, prior to any written fixation of the gospel. Thus “scripture
points beyond itself to an ever-living mystery,”942
which must be made present and
contemporary by the Spirit.943
This “event” happens first and foremost in proclamation,944
which is the main task of the teaching and preaching ecclesial office,945
and stands at the
center of the liturgical life of the Church.946
The word of Christ does not exist primarily in
order to be understood or to produce dogmatic abstractions, but to be heard, lived and passed
on. In this sense proclamation is a task for every believer.947
Thus the right use of Scripture
and its message happens as much where it is lived and preached as where it is used for
theoretical exegesis in theological offices.
It is the lack of this official ecclesial context for interpretation and proclamation of scripture
that is Balthasar’s main point of disagreement with the formal version of sola scriptura in
Protestant orthodoxy, which he says was prepared by the Reformers by “cutting the Bible
loose from tradition and office and then linking it with the Holy Spirit in such a way that the
Spirit rendered the Bible ‘self-evident’.”948
Scripture, in his view, must be read by and for the
Church in the Spirit who inspired it, under supervision of the Magisterium. The Magisterium,
however, must be ready to be open to discern the spirits and to welcome movements from
940 “The Gospel is none other than Christ himself. He is the source (fons) whence we receive everything, by word
of mouth or by written letter.” Ibid., 321, cf. 326. A more thorough treatment of this question, delivered by
Joseph Ratzinger during the Council, can be found in Jared S. J. Wicks, “Six Texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as
Peritus Before and During Vatican Council II,” Gregorianum, no. 2 (2008): 269ff. See also Brendan J. Cahill,
The Renewal of Revelation Theology (1960-1962): The Development and Responses to the Fourth Chapter of the
Preparatory Schema De Deposito Fidei, Tesi Gregoriana (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1999), esp. 172ff. 941
Balthasar, TL 3, 322f, 325. 942
Ibid., 331. 943
Ibid., 327. 944
Ibid., 330. 945
Ibid., 326. 946
Balthasar is eager to make the case in response to Karl Barth that it is no longer true that preaching is played
down in the Catholic celebration of the mass; see ibid., 328ff. 947
Ibid., 330ff. 948
Ibid., 327.
227
below (and, ultimately, without) where the Spirit blows in new and fresh directions in order to
unveil new aspects of the ever-greater mystery of Christ. The hierarcy “must always
remember that it is rarely the originator of those new departures in the Church that are willed
and executed by the Spirit.”949
The task of the Magisterium is to discern the sparks of the
Spirit who blows where he wills and integrate what is good in the objective norm of the
Church.
On the whole, Balthasar’s stated theology of Scripture-tradition-office is, as shown, close to
the current mainstream position in Catholic teaching. This kind of position, affirming tradition
and the community of the Church as important to the authoritative understanding of the
Christian message as witnessed by Scripture, has even received considerable ecumenical
acceptance, although controversies still remain regarding the office of the Pope and the sense
and necessity of apostolic succession. The way Balthasar practices his position, however, has
been subject to dispute. His active use and integration of important Protestant figures such as
Luther and Barth in his theology often makes more of the critical function of scripture over
against tradition and office than is the case in most mainstream Catholic theologies. Similar
remarks can be made in the opposite direction, in that Balthasar self-consciously uses the
mystical theology of Adrienne on Speyr actively in the development of his own theology.
Both of these aspects converge in his controversial theology of Holy Saturday and his hope
for universal salvation.950
His own general appeal for goodwill from the Magisterium in
response to new departures in the Church is perhaps consciously an application for the
reception of his own theology. The years he spent on the margins of influential circles of the
Church following his leaving of the Society of Jesus may also be an important biographical
background for his appeal to the hierarchy to be open to the blowing of the Spirit of truth
outside of its own self-enclosed sphere. It can also be added that he has come under Protestant
criticism for being too affirmative regarding the exclusivist elements of Roman Catholic
ecclesiology.951
Closely behind Scripture-tradition-office in the objective work of the Spirit in the Church
stand the sacraments. In one sense, the Church is a sacrament, the living, Mystical Body of
Christ built and animated by the Spirit. Balthasar speaks thus of the Spirit in the sacraments:
949 Ibid., 318.
950 Cf. the treatment of these doctrines in 10.1, with references.
951 Cf. Wigley, Balthasar’s Trilogy: A Reader’s Guide, 149.
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The Spirit plays his part in the sacramental event as the one who brings about the trinitarian and ecclesial
dimension: the Spirit draws the individual subject […] into the ecclesial realm with its objective holiness,
which fills out any inadequacies of all that is subjective.952
In the sacraments, in other words, the Spirit completes and fulfills the presence of Christ in
the baptized believer, so that he is continuously confronted with the truth of Christ’s whole
person.953
The sacraments are part of the objective proclamation of Christ, while they are also
the means of subjective apprehension of this mysterious truth.954
Balthasar’s extensive treatment of the seven sacraments has not very much to say explicitly
on the communication of truth through the sacrament, although the life-situatedness of the
sacraments is emphasized throughout, corresponding to his emphasis on the life-situatedness
of truth.955
The treatment of priestly ordination, however, is interesting as a kind of case study
for his teaching on the objective and subjective sides of the Church and the Spirit’s work in
the Church. The rite of ordination is very explicit in the prayer for and the gift of the Spirit to
the office bearer, resting on Christ commission and equipment of the Apostles with the Holy
Spirit (John 20:21-23). This gift of Spirit is what prompts Balthasar to speak of office [Amt]
as a charism,956
a term that in some theological traditions is reserved for the extraordinary
gifts of the Spirit. Ordination makes the office bearer holy and authoritative in an objective
sense, which still must be seen in distinction from its subjective realization in the life of the
priest (the Donatists could not bear this distinction and turned it into an equation).957
But “no
consecrated person can avoid the urgency with which his objective office calls for subjective
holiness,”958
in the same way that the objective transmission of Christ through the Church’s
forms calls for a renewed, inner implementation of his truth in life.
952 Balthasar, TL 3, 335f.
953 “[T]he Holy “Spirit of truth” [gives witness] through water and blood, baptism and Eucharist[,] to the
constant presence of the whole truth of God in Christ.” Ibid., 77. 954
Cf. Ibid., 83f. 955
Ibid., 337-52. 956
Ibid., 315ff, 319, 346f. 1 Tim 4:14 can serve as a biblical motivation for this way of speaking. Endre notes
that although Balthasar emphasizes office as the work of the Spirit, the outworking of the Spirit’s work in the
Church more often refers to the Church as an institution and hierarchy in a more general perspective. Endre,
“Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel der kritischen Nachfragen,” 161. 957
Cf. and for further references, Müller, “Der Geist als wirkmächtiger Zeuge Jesu Christi in der Kirche nach
Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 161. 958
Balthasar, TL 3, 348.
229
The Subjective Spirit
Under the heading “Subjective Spirit” Balthasar deals with prayer, forgiveness, the experience
of the Spirit, discernment of spirits and the witness of life, in sections of very unequal length.
The longest and most important for him and for the questions considered here is on the
discernment of spirits, which contains in a nutshell Balthasar’s response to the charismatic
movement and liberation theology (perhaps even forms of secular theology) and the way truth
is conceived in those circles. The chapter begins, however, with an affirmation of the main
point of the Spirit’s work on the subjective side from the Johannine entryway: The Spirit
gives eyes to see Christ, guides the believer into the fullness of his truth as the Interpreter.959
Prayer, in the life of the Christian as it was in the life of Christ, is prayer in the Spirit.960
Thus
prayer always has a Trinitarian form; indeed, it is believers being enabled to “enter into God’s
personal dialogue, which is the Spirit.”961
The notion of “entering” confirms the importance of
prayer in Balthasar’s theology and spirituality; prayer is the starting point and continuous
realm of every relationship to God and knowledge of his truth. The Spirit’s “sighs too deep
for words” (Rom 8:26) is the subjective side of the fullness of Christ that goes beyond mere
words into the whole embodiment of the person, including gestures, images and symbols.962
When Christians pray “in the name of Jesus” they are by the Spirit attuning their hearts to the
truth of the Son in order to “pray as we ought” (Rom 8:26); Christ himself is always heard
because his prayers are necessarily “true” – according to the goodwill of God.963
Balthasar
furthermore describes, with reference to Adrienne von Speyr, prayer as a door-opener to
mystical experiences given by the Holy Spirit, potentially fruitful to the Church.964
A crucial question when it comes to the subjective side of the activity of the Spirit in the life
of believers is whether the Christian can actually experience (with some kind of security) the
presence of the Spirit in her or his life. Balthasar’s answer starts in Thomas Aquinas’
distinction between the created and uncreated (that is, given by the Holy Spirit) capacity in
the human being to love. The continuity-in-discontinuity between fallen and restored nature
on this point makes it impossible to make certain judgments of what precisely the Spirit’s
959 Ibid., 369.
960 Ibid., 369f.
961 Ibid., 371. Balthasar’s theology of prayer is outlined more thoroughly in ———, Prayer (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1986). 962
———, TL 3, 372. 963
Ibid., 372-4. 964
Ibid., 376.
230
genuine work is or what comes from the side of man with good or less good intentions.965
Balthasar goes on, with Jean Mouroux, to locate the most intimate experience of the Spirit on
a level beyond empirical-emotional experience and experimental-methodical experience
(gained through application of religious tecniques), an experience that embraces and rises
from the totality of the person’s life.966
The way of speaking resembles Balthasar’s emphasis
on Gestalt as a unified whole with a greater sum than its parts. The life of a Christian can
never become a proof of the Spirit’s presence, but will remain on the level of sign, faith
recognized through its fruits (Matt 7:16f). The rejection of immediate univocal experience of
the Spirit corresponds closely to Balthasar’s thought on the partial participation in the mystery
of truth in philosophical perspective and to his interpretation of negative theology, which
basically says that God gives himself to be grasped as more than can be grasped.967
The hesitance to grant the possibility of secure proofs of the Holy Spirit’s work is also an
important basis for Balthasar’s engagement with the use of extraordinary charisms, especially
through the “Charismatic Movement.”968
His slogan goes: “A spiritual enthusiast is not
necessarily a saint.”969
But he or she can be, if all is kept in balanced harmony, and experience
and enthusiasm are not searched for their own sake. In his retrospect to Paul’s theology970
of
the Spirit as Interpreter, Balthasar emphasizes that Paul evaluates prophecy above glossolalia
(speaking in tongues). He understands prophecy as “nothing other than the ability to give a
correct and fruitful verbal expression of the Christian faith for the other members of the
Church,”971
an “explanatory word”972
or
some instruction communicated to an individual by the Holy Spirit for the benefit of the assembled
community; more broadly it is what is called “inspiration”, the gift given to the community’s teachers,
preachers, catechists, “evangelists”, and, naturally, to the Apostle.973
965 Ibid., 379-82.
966 Ibid., 382-4.
967 This connection is outworked more explicitly in ———, “Preliminary Remarks on the Discernment of
Spirits,” 337-41. 968
Churches and groups associated with this movement must also be subject to the execution of the charismatic
gift of discernment of spirits, and cannot claim consciously or unconsciously to “maintain a direct pipe-line to
the Spirit via their experience.” Ibid., 348. 969
———, TL 3, 369. 970
For the treatment of Paul in this respect, cf. also ———, Paul Struggles with His Congregation: The Pastoral
Message of the Letters to the Corinthians (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992). 971
———, TL 3, 87. 972
Ibid., 89. 973
Ibid., 396.
231
By means of this prophetic practice, exercised mainly through the proclamation of the
Church, the primary work of the Spirit happens, which is to lead the believer by means of her
or his critically aware mind and natural intelligence, to insight, knowledge and understanding
of Christ.974
Glossolalia is edifying for the Church only insofar as its content is interpreted for
the community. Balthasar strongly rejects versions of Pentecostalism that view speaking in
tongues as the only sure and true sign of baptism in the Spirit, as well as the equation of
glossolalia in 1 Corinthians with the language barrier-breaking wonder at Pentecost (Acts 2,
xenoglossia).975
A similar careful and critical perspective is chosen on the practice of the
charismatic gift of healing. Its existence must not be denied, but it must be practiced for the
good of the Church and without any secure promises that Christ will bring healing to all. After
all, “the patient acceptance of serious suffering and death can be more fruitful for the
Kingdom of God than restored health (which can also be due to the doctor).”976
The criterion for testing of every practice of extraordinary charismatic gifts remains for
Balthasar at the center of pneumatology: Does it lead to the incarnate Christ, to glorification
of him and assimilation to him in his cross and resurrection?977
In addition to this “objective”
criterion one can add the “subjective” criterion of testing whether the preacher or practitioner
lives his life according to the divine call, the fulfillment (or nonfulfillment) of the message
and its faithfulness to the tradition.978
Finally, Balthasar calls for discernment of spirits when it comes to the Church’s relation to
earthly power and social change.979
The object of his criticism is theologies and Church
practice that tends to reduce the Christian message to a means for achieving social change,
peace and justice. In TL 3 he starts the discussion with an investigation of the sense of the
power Christ has received from the Father. The central idea is that power for the Church and
for a Christian is always received as a gift. It can only be practiced rightly in full obedience to
the giver, as it were, when it is considered as given away in return to the giver. The flip side
of Balthasar’s argument concerning earthly power and social justice in theological light is his
reflections on forgiveness, for forgiveness “transcend[s] the spheres of both cosmic and social
974 Ibid., 88.
975 Ibid., 88, 393f.
976 Ibid., 395. It could be added that this attitude is not very surprising given Balthasar’s acquaintance with
serious illness and his close friendship to the doctor Adrienne von Speyr, who also hardly suffered from illness. 977
Ibid., 393, 396. 978
Ibid., 386. 979
Ibid., 399-405. Cf. ———, “Preliminary Remarks on the Discernment of Spirits,” 350f.
232
justice.”980
Thus the lived existence of Christian love can never be reduced to the restoration
of some kind of balance, social or political. Therefore he also stresses that the success of
demanded Christian engagement with the evils of the world – war, hunger, unrighteousness,
underdevelopment – can never be made a certain truth criterion or proof of the presence of the
Spirit.981
Balthasar here also shows awareness of the complexities of development to be
strived for – technology and cultural progress can turn into a double-edged sword if applied
universally.
The consideration of power also leads Balthasar into some reflections on the Church’s witness
to the world, which, he says, in accordance with his thinking on power, must not be reduced
to advertising, manipulation and use of clever political tricks. The end, in short, does not
justify the means:982
The Church, as compared to most of the sects, does not engage in propaganda on her own behalf. She does
not campaign for herself but prefers to let her witness exert its influence. She simply considers what form of
witness is most authentic according to the mind of Christ; this is not the “most effective” one by worldly
standards. […] The most powerful attraction the Church has is that she does not seek to promote herself at
all.983
Truth, so to speak, speaks for itself, because the Spirit speaks for it. By holding this attitude,
the Church by its subjective witness reflects the Spirit, who according to Balthasar always
makes a selfless witness to Christ. It is also a very clear expression of a thread running
through all Balthasar’s considerations on the subjective aspect of the Spirit’s work in the
Church, namely the rejection of mere appearance as a criterion for discerning the Spirit.
Charismatic phenomena, mystical experiences, social development and Church growth all
need to be measured by the truth of Christ; they are not in and by themselves secure signs of
the presence and activity of the Spirit of truth.
15.2 Critical Assessment by Means of Puntel’s Theoretical Framework
As noted at the beginning of this chapter, its aim is not to fully work through ecclesiology,
and especially not in its intra-Catholic context. The argument given here will therefore focus
on explicitly pneumatological questions, primarily those pertinently relevant to truth. The
980 ———, TL 3, 377.
981 ———, “Preliminary Remarks on the Discernment of Spirits,” 350f.
982 The Norwegian equivalent to this proverb, “målet helliger middelet” [“the end makes the means holy”],
would make the case even clearer in the ecclesial context. 983
Balthasar, TL 3, 404f.
233
coherence of the position of Balthasar will be discussed and critically assessed by the use of
the theoretical framework of Puntel. Furthermore, at the end of this section the discussion
turns on a tension between Balthasar’s and Puntel’s way of working out the freedom of
philosophy in relation to ecclesial authority, focusing on the status of the magisterium.
A Balanced Trinitarian Pneumatology of the Church
Balthasar’s distinction between objective and subjective in the work of the Holy Spirit has left
a mark of originality on his theology. But as often in his theology the marks of originality is
not gained through pure innovation, but through careful reworking of elements present in the
tradition. It is no invention to conceive the Spirit both as love and witness to love in the
Trinity, nor to strive for a pneumatological unity between charism and office, or to understand
the institutional side of the church as a work of the Spirit. The close association of the Spirit’s
inner-trinitarian position and attributes and his work in the church serves an integrative
purpose of continuity between the immanent and the economic Trinity that is coherent and
welcome in light of the growing attention paid to Trinitarian theology in the past century.
To ascribe the institutional elements of the church to the Spirit and not only to Christ’s
institution is a move that is consistent with the discussions in § 14.984
Furthermore, it serves to
bring elements that too often are viewed as conflicting with each other, such as charism and
office, cognitive knowledge and “supernatural” experience, into a fruitful unity-in-tension.
This way of thinking can be a possible way forward even in many concrete conflicts and
discussions in church life, for it will always encourage the spiritual enthusiast to assess his
own contribution from the perspective of the sober and institutional, and vice versa.985
Thus
the church can find a unity of such elements in the Spirit, resting in his position as the unity
and love of Father and Son. And this unity will always point to the truth, Christ the revealer of
God through his personal existence of the world, the measuring point of all contact between
God and man. As such, this pneumatological distinction can be an opening for a genuinely
Christocentric theology of the different aspects of the church.
984 Taken in the context of the ecumenical discourse regarding the Lord’s Supper, this rule of thumb can be held
as an argument for the use of epiclesis in the liturgy. 985
Many valuable contributions in this direction situated primarily within Protestant theology can be found in
Thiselton, The Holy Spirit: In Biblical Teaching, through the Centuries, and Today. Thiselton’s dialogue with
the Charismatic movement regarding concrete questions is much more nuanced than Balthasar’s, but starts from
many of the same general insights.
234
This Christocentrism is also the building ground for Balthasar’s criticism of the
pneumatological tendencies of charismatic movements and liberation (and secular) theology.
This criticism is at times harsh and marked by the perspective of an outsider. It is not difficult
to discern how his perspective on certain kinds of mystical experiences in the Catholic
tradition is shaped by an insider’s view and often reads like a work in the discipline of
spirituality, while phenomena associated with the Charismatic Movement are described more
distantly and more in terms of (“neutral”) religious studies. When Balthasar’s intuitions,
however, are considered as general warning signs resting on genuine aspects of biblical
theology as much as concrete judgments on specific groups or practices, they can in general
be positively assessed. The concern throughout to evaluate every subjective side of the
Spirit’s work, be it in personal or mystical experience, charismatic phenomena and societal
engagement, as possible and desirable, but not necessary, contributions to the manifestation of
the truth in the church, is consistent with important biblical motifs as the ambiguity of signs
and wonders (Deut 13:1-5; Matt 7:22) and the ultimate criterion for discernments of spirits in
their witness to Christ (cf. 1 John 4:1-3). The Spirit of truth will always, through his gifts
ordinary or extraordinary in the realm of the church, lead us to him who is the truth, Christ,
God incarnate.
On the other hand, Balthasar’s genuine openness to such phenomena serves to keep his
theology from drying up into a fixed, infallible institutional prescription. The hierarchy must
be able to respond to new departures of the Spirit, which more often than not comes from the
outside, as the Spirit always blows where he wills, not where someone has prescribed him to
blow. Christ is a living reality, not a book. The image of tradition as a constantly reinterpreted
living source, including everything the Church believes and does, thus has much greater
ecumenical promise than the more traditional Catholic teaching on a two-source revelation.
Corresponding to the element of surprise and enlightenment that must be integrated into the
continuity-in-discontinuity of philosophical and theological truth, a theology of the Spirit
must leave room for his unpredictability and capability of enhancing not only the theoretical
and academic, but also the fullness of the practical side of life. § 17 will return to and expand
on those themes.
Truth and Magisterium
This assessment section closes with some critical remarks on the relation between the Spirit of
truth and the Roman Magisterium. The analysis has shown how Balthasar argues for a
mainstream Catholic position where the Magisterium plays an indispensable role for the
235
Spirit’s guiding into truth through the Church. He is, however, consciously rejecting
reductionist accounts where the pope becomes, as it where, the whole Church: “There is much
more truth in Christ than in the Church’s faith and much more truth in the Church’s faith than
in the formulated dogmas.”986
He can also speak differentiated and cautiously of the term
“Roman” and the city of Rome and their exclusivity in claiming the catholicity of the
Church.987
There is no doubt, however, that for Balthasar the real thing and the real solution
to the ecumenical problem are to be found in a return to Rome. A very clear statement of this
case is found near the end of Theo-Drama 4:
In concrete terms, Christ only exists together with the community of saints united in the Immaculata, together
with the communion of the ministerial office visibly united in Peter and his successors and together with the
living, ongoing tradition united in the great councils and declarations of the Church.988
The quote gathers many of the ecumenically disputed points in Catholic theology under the
heading of exclusivist language laying claim to Christ: Mariology (the Immaculate
Conception), the pope and sacramental communion, apostolic succession and tradition linked
very closely to the concrete institutional achievements of the Roman Catholic Church. Much
can be said on each of those points in fruitful dialogue that can advance far beyond old tracks
of Protestant and Orthodox polemics, as has been shown through the efforts of the ecumenical
movement, but Balthasar’s tone here is very harsh. In what immediately follows he concludes
that “[w]here these elements of integration are rejected in principle, it is impossible to return
to unity, however much good will is displayed in the partners.”989
Now his dialogue partners
must surely be careful to reject anything “in principle,” but what Balthasar seems to be doing
is the exact opposite: to affirm something “in principle.” The unity of Christ and the Spirit of
truth who blows where he wills to declare him must, in this way of speaking and reasoning, be
found ultimately in the communion of the Roman pontiff.
But in the same breath Balthasar also presents thoughts more promising for a renewed
dialogue between the churches. For “the branches” of the Church tree of phenomenology of
religion
contain much living sap from the original root-complex and trunk, thus they bear flowers and fruits that are
undeniably part of the Christian totality. So we have the paradoxical situation: the Catholica finds that things
986 Balthasar, TL 2, 21.
987 Cf. esp. the opening pages of ———, “The Claim to Catholicity.”
988 ———, TD 4, 456.
989 Ibid.
236
that are fundamentally hers, but which she has somehow forgotten or inadequately realized, are exhibited–to
her shame–by other Christian communities.990
So although the Church is in one sense objective, a community visibly united in Peter (where
Roman Catholicism, so to speak, is the only Catholicism), on the other, subjective side the
“mystical Body of Christ […] can have true members outside the Catholica.”991
The living
mystery of Christ, again, is greater than Roman Church boundaries. There is a certain fluidity
and paradoxicality here, which threatens to be inconsistent if sayings in both directions are
taken literally.
Beyond that, this dissertation does not address the question of truth only in an ecclesial realm,
as a question of authoritative Church teaching, but also in the sense of truth as being’s self-
expression through the theoretical work of a universal philosophical-theological science.
Puntel underscores in this regard that “philosophy’s sole commitment is to truth,” and that the
philosopher, which here by definition includes the philosopher (i.e. theologian) working on
the other side of the “methodological watershed” between philosophy and theology (cf. 5.2),
therefore cannot be bound from the outset to be a servant of a specific Christian denomination
or distinct doctrinal authorities.992
That this is the case is consistent with what this dissertation
has said thus far concerning truth: It is mysterious, but partly graspable; theologically
speaking it is Christ himself, whose loving self-surrender can be known only in fullness
exceeding the realized limits of conceptual knowledge. In other words, the grasp of truth has
an eschatological aspect.993
Puntel affirms this when he says that free theoretical questioning
and existential decisions for Christian or other faiths in the end must be able to correlate. But
he adds: “Just when ‘in the end’ comes is, however, an open question.”994
The theoretician committed to the quest for this truth cannot be bound by other authorities
than truth itself, or in theological terms, by God, who is and sustains truth. But there remains,
according to Puntel, a distinction between the thematic oneness and the particular ways of
990 Ibid., 456f.
991 Ibid., 453f.
992 Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 272f.
993 The theologian who has developed this aspect most thoroughly is probably Wolfhart Pannenberg. A main
point of his is that our grasp of truth is anticipatory in something of the same sense as the Jesus event is
anticipatory of God’s final judgment and the glorious coming of the Kingdom. See, e.g., Pannenberg, Systematic
Theology, 53-8. A possible biblical basis for this eschatological aspect of knowledge of the truth can be found in
1 Cor 13:9-10. 994
Puntel and White (trans.), B&G, 282.
237
speaking philosophically and theologically inside this universal science.995
This distinction
can legitimate an ecclesial situating of the theological task, insofar as the truth, if it is to be
conceived in Christian terms, always lives within the Spirit-animated Body of Christ. This
follows from the fact that as completely free questioning, theoretical philosophical enquiry
has as one of its possible outcomes the development of a coherent theory that can serve as the
basis of an existential affirmation of Christian faith.996
But with Puntel, this dissertation argues that the criteria of truth in the theoretical exercise of
universal philosophy-theology ultimately lie beyond ecclesial authorities. Nothing is true
because the pope, Balthasar, Puntel, Gunnar Innerdal or anyone else says so. Such an attitude
would also be deeply at odds with Balthasar’s insistence that there are no unambiguous proofs
of the Spirit’s work when it comes to charismatic phenomena. This is not to say that Churches
ought not to have some kind of teaching office, which seems to be indispensable to take
seriously the call for Christian unity. What this discussion prompts to question, however, even
more explicitly than does Puntel, is whether the Roman Magisterium is in any way consistent
with such a concept of truth. It cannot, he rightly says, be so in a philosophical framework.
But if the systematic position on the “unity-in-distinction” between philosophy and theology
argued throughout this dissertation is coherent, it is hard to conceive of an ecclesial teaching
office with the kind of absoluteness inherent in the Roman Magisterium without granting this
office a final authority concerning even philosophical questions. In other words, the ultimate
consequence of an infallible ecclesial teaching office is that philosophical as much as
theological questioning will not be completely free. Thus it will necessarily restrict freedom
of research and will possibly limit the grasp of truth in illegitimate ways.
And if one grants theologically that the Roman primate is not an essential characteristic of the
truly Catholic Church, as every denomination but one claims, and as most exegetes of the NT
agree, but a concretely pragmatic and partly theologically sober solution developed as
challenges facing the Church through the centuries were met, the ecumenical dialogue in
years to come ought to be more open to the elements of Catholic Christian faith and practice
found outside the Catholica than Balthasar allows in his most exclusivist moments. Perhaps
someday (“in the end”) the Spirit of truth can gather the Churches in a visible communion of
995 Ibid., 273.
996 Ibid., 281.
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confession of the truth of Christ upon the world, as the prayer of Jesus recorded in John 17
urges for:
[I pray] that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that
the world may believe that you have sent me […,] that they may become completely one, so that the world
may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17:21.23).
§ 16. Pneuma Spermatikon: The Spirit of Truth in the World
Having analyzed and discussed the primary dogmatic topics of Balthasarian pneumatology
through the Johannine entryway, including the Spirit’s personhood, his work as witness and
guide to Christ, the Spirit in Trinitarian theology and his activity in the church, I will now turn
to the work of the Spirit outside the church. Addressing the question of the Spirit’s activity
outside the church and transcending the confines of his work as a hermeneutical function in
biblical interpretation is an important aspect of a contemporary rethinking of a one-sided
illuminatio conception in pneumatology, where the Spirit sometimes is reduced to something
like a tool for biblical exegesis, a kind of hermeneutical key ensuring that our reading is the
correct one. The same can be said of the Spirit’s work in creation, which often is sparsely
articulated by theologians, thus missing an important opportunity for an integrative
philosophical-theological approach to truth.
The analysis of Balthasar’s take on this topic will show that his thinking has potential both as
promising resources and potentially restrictive drawbacks to doing that. His theology of the
Spirit in relation to the world and in creation is at times daring and creative, but at other times
more restrictive and defensive. His reflection on the Holy Spirit as he operates outside the
Church and the explicit revelation of Christ in the incarnation is thus the bearer of some
paradoxes. These paradoxes may be due to an overemphasis on the Johannine entryway into
Theo-logic and pneumatology, and stands in tension to the genuine openness to the entire
biblical witness and its importance in Balthasar’s theology generally.
The assessment section in this chapter is extensive, due to the importance of the questions
discussed here for the articulation of a pneumatology applied to a truth concept that seeks to
unite philosophical and theological reflection – in other words, due to their centrality for a
coherent articulation of the Spirit’s work as the Spirit of truth, answering this dissertation’s
main research question. A further reason is that it articulates a more extensive and intensive
criticism of Balthasar’s thinking than in any other chapter of this dissertation. Thus space is
required to articulate alternative and complementary perspectives. It starts by adding some
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important ecumenical perspectives to the discussion in order to open up the field for a critical
assessment of Balthasar.
16.1 Balthasar on the Spirit in the World
The questions considered in this chapter regarding the work of the Spirit of truth in the world
are put by Balthasar in the first prelude to TL 3 in a vital and open forward-looking way. His
train of thought starts from the correspondence of the operation of Son and Spirit reminiscent
of his focus on the Father’s two hands. If the Son operates not only through the incarnation
and in the Church, but even as the mediator of creation and the Logos inherent in all logoi in
the world, the question arises: “How far does the Holy Spirit act even outside the Church in
declaring the trinitarian truth?”997
The answer must, he says, relate to the relation between the
Trinitarian mystery revealed in Christ and the preliminary sketches of it in the Old Covenant.
The reason is that most of the texts speaking of God’s cosmic breath of life hovering over the
waters of creation and breathing through the noses of all living beings are located in the OT.
Taking his cue from the missionary openness inherent to both covenants, Balthasar presents
one of his most daring statements as his preliminary answer to the question:
...just as there is a logos spermatikos [...], we must assume that there is something like a pneuma spermatikon
that corresponds to it.998
The phrase pneuma spermatikon in theological usage is to my knowledge coined by Balthasar
in analogy to the famous expression concerning the Logos associated with Justin Martyr. The
argument brings the idea of the close correspondence between the Son and the Spirit as the
Father’s two hands at work in the world together with the notion of the Logos’ stamp or
watermark on created being, which is central to Balthasar’s Christological version of analogia
entis.999
The Logos could find a home in created being in the incarnation, because the world
was created in him, making it his likeness and resemblance. In the same way, this argument
goes, the Spirit’s guiding into all truth revealed in the Son must have a kind of pre-stage in a
pneumatological dimension inherent in all created truth.
In what follows, Balthasar adds that closely related to the question of the Spirit’s extra-
ecclesial operation as the Spirit of truth is the broader question of “the Spirit’s activity in the
997 Balthasar, TL 3, 20.
998 Ibid. In a similar, affirmative sense he later says: “It would be wrong […] to adumbrate a pneumatic
ecclesiology exclusively concerned with the question of how the Holy Spirit is related to Christ and the Church
without including the cosmic dimension of the Spirit and the missionary dimension of the Church.” Ibid., 258. 999
See § 9.
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whole of creation.” The prelude points to Part VI of TL 3 for the outworking of those
questions.1000
Given the significance and intricacy of those questions, one would expect a
quite thorough Part VI, but it consists of less than 15 pages, a small amount compared to the
more than 150 pages spent in Part V on the Spirit in the Church. Some aspects of the
questions stated in the prelude are treated elsewhere,1001
but the main reason for this particular
distribution of ink is, according to Balthasar, that it is appropriate that most
pneumatologies devote a brief chapter to the Spirit’s relation to nature before quickly–and rightly–moving on
to a more detailed study of the context in which the Holy Spirit acquires his distinctive soteriological
countenance.1002
A similar impression arises from a look at his collection of essays originally titled Spiritus
Creator (!),1003
in which none of them treats the Spirit’s work in nature and creation as its
main theme. In this picture it is possible to discern two lines of thought in Balthasar’s
argument that move in very different directions. The first consists of the emphasis on the need
for a theology of the Spirit’s operation through creation on Christological grounds, the second
of a restrictive attitude towards a dogmatic formulation of what this operation looks like. A
closer look at those two lines of thought will now follow.
Pneumata spermatika
The first line of thought can be discerned further in a section near the end of TL 3, Part III on
the Father’s two hands. Here Balthasar’s theme is the truth that is both universal and concrete.
Christ identifies himself with truth in his incarnate concreteness, in a Trinitarian sense: He is
the truth as the revealer of the true Father, and his message and the will of the Father is
mediated to him by the Spirit. The Spirit is the Interpreter that makes this truth a universal
norm and defends it against all other truth claims, again in a Trinitarian sense: He hands over
what is from the Father to the Son and through him to the world. Thus the Spirit guides us
into the truth of God: the love, faithfulness and goodness of Father and Son. In this regard it is
totally appropriate, says Balthasar, quoting Anselm,1004
that the Spirit is Love.1005
He carries,
1000 Balthasar, TL 3, 20f.
1001 Cf. esp. the footnotes in ibid., 415.
1002 Ibid., 428.
1003 ———, Creator Spirit.
1004 “Indeed, if this love is actually designated by the name Spirit, as by its own name, since this name equally
describes the Father and the Son: it will be useful to this effect also, that through this name it shall be signified
that this love is identical with Father and Son, although it has its being from them.” From Monologium 57, cited
in ———, TL 3, 201.
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or is, the name of the reality that he leads into, which is also his source of being; thus he even
interprets himself as love. His universalizing activity is thus not external even if he works as
an “advocate.”1006
Interesting in terms of the question raised here is Balthasar’s answer to how
the Spirit can undertake this universal interpretation: As his starting point, the Spirit can take
the creation of man in the image and likeness of God, meaning that the human being
possesses the image not only of the Son, but of the whole Trinity. Balthasar uses a Trinitarian
interpretation of Gen 1:26 to argue that categories exist in man that make the Spirit’s
declaration of God’s truth receivable. Furthermore, he argues that the inseparability of the
triune economy implies that not only are logoi spermatikoi put into the world, but even
pneumata spermatika.1007
According to Balthasar, this is implicit in the doctrine of the
Catholic Church that allows a participation in the grace of the sacraments through the desire
for them when they cannot be had in re (“baptismus in voto”: catechumenates “receive”
baptism through their desire to receive it and “spiritual communion”: When the Eucharist is
inaccessible for practical reasons, the believer can pray for its fruits).1008
So, just as the Son is
always preliminarily present as the truth through his work in creation, the Spirit is also sown
into creation in a way that makes openings for his work as the Spirit of truth.
A similar line of argument is followed at the beginning of TL 3 Part VI on “Spirit and
World.”1009
The Spirit’s activity cannot, by “two hands” reasoning, be restricted to the
(Roman Catholic) Church, in two senses. First, Balthasar acknowledges the openness to the
work of the Spirit in other ecclesial bodies that was affirmed by the Second Vatican Council
and opened a more active participation in the ecumenical movement by the Catholic Church.
The spermata pneumatika (“spiritual seeds”; the parallel expression would be spermata
logika) sown in the world challenges the Church to be “ready to transcend herself by going
into the world in missionary mode.” Despite this openness, Balthasar still gives voice to the
remnants of a Roman Catholic exclusivism by using Augustine’s imperialistic-sounding
language in saying that “many are ‘inside’ who ‘seem to be outside’.”1010
The language seems
to be close to an idea of Christians from other confessions as anonymous Catholics, to
1005 A more extended argument for the use of love to designate the Spirit is found in ———, “The Holy Spirit as
Love.” 1006
———, TL 3, 200f. 1007
The expression is also found in ibid., 260. 1008
Ibid., 201f. 1009
Ibid., 413ff. 1010
Ibid., 415f. Balthasar does not refer to a specific text from Augustine, but to an article by W. Kasper.
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paraphrase a famous phrase coined by Karl Rahner.1011
Second, the Spirit brings the whole
world to perfection. The Spirit’s “sighs too deep for words” (Rom 8:20ff) call for an all-
embracing redemption including not only humans and the Church, but the whole of nature,
rooted in the universal significance of the incarnation and salvific deeds of Christ. From this
perspective, Balthasar, with de Lubac, views the Church as an “inner circle” from which the
Spirit reaches outward to the world, but he immediately issues a warning that this idea should
not be taken in an absolute sense, in a way that reduces the Spirit to an influence on (secular)
history and social life.1012
A similar line of reasoning can be discerned earlier in TL 3 in a
discussion of the two biblical covenants in light of Augustine’s Civitas Dei, where Balthasar
states that behind the duality lies an implicit universality, and the world looks to the Church in
a similar way as the OT to the NT for its fulfillment. At the consummation, the world will be
taken up into the Spirit-filled sphere of the Church (rather than vice versa), and
[t]hen [implicitly: not now] it will be possible to say: Spiritus Domini replet orbem terrarum [the Spirit of the
Lord fills the world]; and that which holds all things together knows what is said (Wis 1:7).1013
Returning to the discussion of “Spirit and World,” the view of the Church as an “inner circle”
gives rise to a quite thorough discussion of the Spirit’s universal role in creation and the
evolutionary history of the world, where the tides turn and Balthasar follows a more
restrictive line regarding the Spirit’s operation in the world dimension.
Is the Spirit the Soul of the World?
The second line of thought is expressed through criticism of identifying the Spirit as the soul
of the world (anima mundi), a philosophical cosmological concept current in the ancient
Greek philosophers and Arab philosophers like Averroës. The theological discussion
regarding this concept was most intense in the twelfth century, and the identification of the
Holy Spirit with the world’s soul was condemned in Abelard at the Council of Sens. But
according to Balthasar, the topic has undergone a strange resurrection through the
cosmological theories of Wolfhart Pannenberg in more recent years.1014
Before Balthasar
rejects Pannenberg, however, he follows Karl Barth (and Calvin and Luther before him) at
1011 That is, “anonymous Christians.”
1012 Balthasar, TL 3, 416f. Here, as often, Balthasar is engaged in polemics against a loosely defined liberation
theology. 1013
Ibid., 285. This eschatological interpretation of the passage cited is exegetically wholly arbitrary and not
argued for. A reason why Balthasar refers to it so eclectically may be that the Latin phrase is often used in a
liturgical setting as an introitus. 1014
Ibid., 421.
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some length in his reflections on the Spirit’s work in creation. 1015
Barth, Balthasar says, is not
trapped in the pantheism resulting from Hegel’s “world spirit” [Weltgeist]. But at the same
time, Barth speaks of the Spirit as the divine person
who makes the existence of the creature as such possible, permitting it to exist, maintaining it in its existence,
and forming the point of reference of its existence.1016
The ultimate purpose of this “making existence possible” is the incarnation foreseen and
willed by God from eternity. As such, the Spirit’s work in creation points forward to and is a
necessary condition of the possibility of salvation history unfolding in the world. Therefore
Barth can read OT cosmological texts on the Spirit as direct antecedents of soteriological and
eschatological texts in the NT. Whether or to what degree Balthasar agrees with Barth on this
question is not made totally clear in the text, but the tone is sympathetic. At the end, Balthasar
writes that he has arrived at a “vantage point” from where the question of the Holy Spirit as
the “soul of the world” has acquired contemporary relevance.1017
The section that answers this question consists mainly of a presentation and rejection of
Pannenberg’s use of field theory in order to develop Teilhard de Chardin’s evolutionary
theology into a contemporary pneumatological cosmology.1018
Balthasar’s problem with
Pannenberg is that he blurs the difference between a largely cosmological OT and a NT
primarily soteriological pneumatology. Together with Barth, Pannenberg sees continuity
between the ruach Yaweh in the OT and the pneuma theou in the NT in a way that is too
smooth in the eyes of Balthasar. Barth, however, has made an important reservation in that he
“does not move outside the biblical framework and does not engage with science.”1019
Balthasar’s own “Reflection” on the question that follows goes along the same lines.1020
From
1 Cor 15:45 he argues that Paul distinguishes between the breath of God in the nose of Adam
(Gen 2:7) and the pneuma of the second Adam (and implicitly, so should we). He underscores
the difference between the Christian revelation in the NT and the preliminary expressions of
the Trinitarian persons in the OT, where the categories “word” and “Spirit” are more fluid.
Thus he feels bound to ask what the OT texts speaking of the Spirit’s breath of life and the
1015 Ibid., 417f.
1016 Ibid., 418. The citation is from Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. III/I (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), 56.
1017 Balthasar, TL 3, 419.
1018 At the end of the section, John V. Taylor, Charles G. Raven and, in a footnote, Jürgen Moltmann are also
criticized briefly for making similar flaws as Pannenberg made, ibid., 423f. 1019
Ibid., 422f. 1020
Ibid., 425-9.
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more concrete inspirations of OT political leaders and artists and so forth have “to do with the
Holy Spirit that we know from Jesus.”1021
Little, if I hear Balthasar’s rhetoric rightly. He finds
even more less common ground between the NT Spirit of Christ, of humility, service and
kenosis, and the spirit of evolution, which is a spirit of power and the triumph of the stronger,
that strives selfishly upwards more than it humbly comes down. Instead of Pannenberg’s
attempt at a pneumatological interpretation of questions raised in the encounter between
science and theology, Balthasar proposes interpreting the unfolding of the Creator’s world
plan solely to the “plan of creation of the one God,” because of the New Testament picture of
the uniqueness of the Spirit.1022
The Holy Spirit, by contrast, is “most creative” (Creator
Spiritus) when he is breathed forth as the fruit of what the Son won through the cross and
resurrection: the forgiveness of sins.1023
The preceding analysis describes two lines of thought in Balthasar’s reasoning in Theo-Logic
3 on the Spirit in creation that stand in tension to each other. On the one hand stands the
openness inherent in speaking of pneuma spermatikon, on the other hand restrictions laid on
speaking explicitly of the concrete activity of the Spirit in creation arising from the lack of
explicit NT material and hesitation to involve Trinitarian theology in the science/theology
conversation. In the background lurks the whole question of a theological engagement with
evolution with all its facets. It would be worthwhile to ask, in response to this material,
whether it is consistent to follow Barth as far as Balthasar seems to do while he rejects the
perspective of Pannenberg. Another question arising is whether Balthasar’s construal of the
relationship between OT and NT pneumatological texts simply makes many biblical texts
irrelevant to contemporary pneumatology. To such questions the discussion now turns.
16.2 Very Critical Assessment by Means of Puntel’s Theoretical
Framework
The aim of this section is to discuss some questions concerning Balthasar’s theology of the
Spirit in the world, giving priority to the ones that are most important to the main question of
this dissertation. The perspective taken throughout those discussions may surely in a certain
sense be labeled “speculative.” However, I contend that a more daring theology of the Spirit’s
activity outside the church than the one presented in the analysis of Balthasar is required by
1021 Ibid., 425.
1022 Ibid., 427.
1023 Ibid., 429.
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what has been affirmed thus far in this dissertation regarding the universality of Christian
faith and the aspired integration of theology and philosophy. But the complexity of the
questions dealt with here, and their discontinuity with significant strands of the Christian
tradition – which is presumably an important reason that Balthasar does not follow very far in
the same direction – push me to be cautious and proposing more than sure and concluding.1024
After an initial opening of the field for discussion by bringing in some perspectives from
recent documents resulting from ecumenical dialogue, I will start with an affirmation of
Balthasar’s phrase pneuma spermatikon, trying to sharpen and explicate the content of it in
the direction of the Spirit’s role in the mediation of worldly truth. Then will follow a section
with some critical remarks on Balthasar’s way of relating OT to NT in the questions central to
this chapter that even includes some more principal perspectives on the relation between
theology of creation and theology of redemption. Thereafter, Balthasar’s criticism of
Pannenberg’s pneumatological cosmology will be put in perspective by a section that reflects
on an updated version of a similar way of thinking, represented particularly by Amos Yong.
Ecumenical Opening of the Discussion
The questions considered in this chapter are acknowledged to be of ecumenical importance
and subject to debate among the churches, as well as topics of contemporary relevance. An
impetus to consider the strong and rich connections between the work of the Spirit in creation
and re-creation can be found in a recent document from the Commission on World Mission
and Evangelism (CWME) in World Council of Churches (WCC), Together Towards Life:
Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes,1025
esp. § 12-18. § 12-14 affirms the
identity of the Spirit that co-creates and animates creation in the OT and the Spirit coming
upon Mary, Jesus and the disciples in the NT. In § 15 and 18 we read:
The universality of the Spirit’s economy in creation and the particularity of the Spirit’s work in redemption
have to be understood together as the mission of the Spirit for the new heaven and earth [. …] The Holy
1024 Cf. the remarks of Amos Yong: “Robert Jenson [warns] that the tension in pneumatology between the
particularity of Spirit in Jesus and in the Church and the universality of Spirit as a cosmic reality ‘strains the
Western intellectual tradition to breaking…. [T]hose who have ventured cosmic pneumatology have not always
been able to avoid producing nonsense or myth’ (Jenson [and Carl Braaten (ed.): Christian Dogmatics, Vol. 2
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press)] 1984, 165). It is therefore with fear and trembling that I set us forth on this path of
exploring the implications of the claim that reality is [pneumatologically-trinitarian] relational, rational, and
dynamic.” Amos Yong, Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (Eugene:
Wipf & Stock, 2006), 84. 1025
“Together towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes,” International Review of Mission
101, no. 2 (2012). Also available through www.oikoumene.org.
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Spirit works in the world often in mysterious and unknown ways beyond our imagination (Luke 1:34-35;
John 3:8; Acts 2:16-21) [§ 15].
What is clear is that by the Spirit we participate in the mission of love that is at the heart of the life of the
Trinity. This results in Christian witness which unceasingly proclaims the salvific power of God through
Jesus Christ and constantly affirms God’s dynamic involvement, through the Holy Spirit, in the whole
created world [§ 18].
While those quotes unwaveringly affirm the identity of the Spirit at work in creation and
redemption (in a way going some steps beyond Balthasar), they still point to a mysterious and
ambiguous side of the Spirit’s work in the world, which stands in some contrast to his
straightforward work in the church. A central intuition behind the discussion that will follow
here is to both affirm this element of mystery and nontransparency and simultaneously
articulate some dimensions of this mysterious work of the Spirit in concrete terms. In other
words, I will seek a nonexhaustive look into the mystery, in a way similar to the discussion of
the incarnation throughout Part II, and the philosophical discussion of truth as mystery in Part
I.
Along the same lines as the CWME document, the Faith and Order paper Confessing the One
Faith (§200), which explicates the content of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in a
contemporary context, states:
To believe in the Holy Spirit is to affirm that the Holy Spirit is a divine person, always present and active in
the Church. Whenever the Father and the Son are at work, there also the Spirit is to be found. The whole of
creation and every divine blessing upon it comes from the Father through the Son in the Spirit.
The commentary to § 200 adds:
Christians differ in their understanding concerning the activity of the Holy Spirit outside the Church. Some
would claim it is only within the Christian community that the Spirit of Christ is active. Others would claim
that “whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just” (Phil. 4:8) in the life and actions of those
who are not Christians and even of those who do not believe in God is of God’s Holy Spirit, and yet others
that the sovereignty of the Spirit in history is hidden from our eyes.1026
1026 Confessing the One Faith: An Ecumenical Explication of the Apostolic Faith as it is Confessed in the Nicene-
Constantinopolitan Creed (381), Faith and Order Paper No. 153 (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1991),
75f. A slightly more affirming stance regarding the Spirit’s work outside the church is taken in Religious
Plurality and Christian Self-understanding, Preparatory and background document to the WCC Assembly in
Porto Allegre (World Council of Churches, 2006). Available through www.oikoumene.org. § 32 reads: “The
Holy Spirit helps us to live out Christ’s openness to others. The person of the Holy Spirit moved and still moves
over the face of the earth to create, nurture and sustain, to challenge, renew and transform. We confess that the
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While the main text affirms that the Spirit has a role in the divine act of creation, the
commentary describes differing and conflicting views on the Spirit’s activity in the world. For
our case it is worth noting that the quote from Philippians refers to truth, implying
disagreement over the question of the Spirit’s activity as the Spirit of truth. In what follows I
will argue that the most coherent systematic theological interpretation of this problem is to
say that “whatever is true” is always a work of the Spirit.
Pneuma spermatikon: The Spirit of All and Every Truth
An important line of thought for Balthasar on this topic was to assume that just as there is a
logos spermatikos, there must be “something like” a pneuma spermatikon. Although his
language in the passages where this phrase is applied is deliberately cautious in expressing the
actual content of the phrase, the reasoning behind the coining of it seems clear and worth
following. As in Confessing the One Faith, the Spirit’s activity is seen in relation to the
theology of the Trinity. Where the Father and the Son work, the Spirit always works with
them. If we grant that the creative work of the Father in positing the world into being happens
in and through the Son, his Logos, and results in seeds of his truth being scattered in creation,
it is but a short and consistent step to acknowledge that even the Spirit, who also partakes in
the divine act of creation, plays a role in this sowing (and harvesting) process. What Balthasar
concretely assumes, however, is not very precise. The notion logos spermatikos is in his
thought a way of expressing the Son’s role in the divine act of creation, resulting in the
world’s resembling of God. As such, this seminal scattering as the Son’s activity in creation is
proper to the Son’s position in God, as likeness or image of the Father, exemplar, archetype,
and so forth. The question is whether Balthasar’s “something like” can be made explicit as an
activity by the Spirit proper to his position in God and what is attributed to him. In TL 3 this
question is simply not unfolded. In the following I propose an answer to it based on more
general insights from pneumatology, following two intersecting but distinct lines.
The first line for an explication of the content of pneuma spermatikon starts in biblical texts
that speak of the Spirit as the breath of life in all living things (cf. Ps 104:29f et. al.). The
activity of the Spirit passes beyond our definitions, descriptions, and limitations in the manner of the wind that
‘blows where it wills’ (John 3:8). Our hope and expectancy are rooted in our belief that the ‘economy’ of the
Spirit relates to the whole creation. We discern the Spirit of God moving in ways that we cannot predict. We see
the nurturing power of the Holy Spirit working within, inspiring human beings in their universal longing for, and
seeking after, truth, peace and justice (Rom. 8:18-27). ‘Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity,
faithfulness, gentleness and self-control,’ wherever they are found, are the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23, cf.
Rom. 14:17).”
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concept is cached in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed’s term “giver of life” [zōopoion;
“life-making”]. The following sections will provide a fuller biblical-theological and dogmatic
framework for this concept. This aspect of the work of the Spirit in the divine act of creation
focuses on his ability to give life and movement (becoming) to beings created by God, formed
according to the archetype of his Logos. It is reflections along the same line that make
Balthasar affirm Barth’s saying that the Spirit makes created existence possible, permits and
maintains this existence. As such, the Spirit has a role as the divine person that perfects and,
so to speak, puts creation into practice. This central element in the work of the Spirit is
captured with brilliance in the title of Tossou’s study of Balthasar’s pneumatology, Streben
nach Vollendung. The Spirit works through active aspirations, drives or stretching out for the
completion and fullness of everything initiated by God, in creation as well as re-creation.
When considering the Spirit’s activity as the Spirit of truth outside the church, these
theological considerations can find resonance in important points of the philosophy of truth of
both Puntel and Balthasar. Both thinkers affirm a strong link between truth and being. Thus, if
the Spirit has a role in the existence of being and beings, he also has a role in the existence of
truth. Puntel says that his systematic philosophy contains an “ontologization” of the
theoretical domain. By this notion, he means that every theoretical activity happens inside the
all-encompassing dimension of being, not outside of it. Thus when truth is grasped or
articulated, it is not done by a subject outside of being, but by an act within the dimension of
being. As such, it is being that expresses or articulates itself through theoretical activity.
Puntel’s favored theoretical sentences of the type “it’s F-ing” or “it is the case that it’s F-ing”
presuppose a vitality and active side on the side of the world or being. I propose that
theologically speaking, we can understand the Spirit as an active agent in the subtle “subject”
of “it” in such sentences. By being an ultimate ground of the existence of creation, the Spirit
is also the ultimate ground of every expression, articulation and proposition of truth. This
notion can be seen in light of Balthasar’s emphasis on the active participation of an object in
the act of knowing in his philosophy of truth. The subject knows only through the object
giving itself away to perception. Although the language of gift is not reserved for the Spirit in
Scripture and tradition, the Spirit is spoken of as giving and as the gift of God in a significant
way.1027
Thus it could be worth noting the literal meaning of the German equivalent to “it’s”
1027 Cf. Apg 11:17; John 4:10ff; 7:37ff.
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doing something, namely “es gibt” – “it gives.” The object giving itself away to perception by
the subject can thus be understood theologically as a gift given by the Spirit.
The second line to be followed for an explication of the content of pneuma spermatikon starts
in the most central aspect of the Spirit’s work witnessed in the NT: the Spirit as guide into and
interpreter of the divine truth made known through the incarnation of Christ. While the first
line of explication emphasized the Spirit’s role on the side of the object, this line turns to the
side of the subject. The analysis above showed how Balthasar roots his notion of pneumata
spermatika put into the world in the creation of man in the image of God explicitly
understood as the image of the Trinity. This move is coherent as a reading of Gen 1:26 with a
view to 1:2 and 2:7 read through a Christian interpretative framework. The image of God
referred to in 1:26 must include the Spirit of God spoken of in 1:2 and closely related to the
breath of life given to ha adam in 2:7. And this Spirit is the Holy Spirit, divine person of the
Trinity. This case will be further argued in the next sections. By the creation of human beings
in the image of God, they receive a Spirit-ual gifting that makes them capable of knowing and
understanding truth.1028
As the Spirit guides into and interprets the truth of Christ incarnate,
the Spirit also guides into and interprets what the Logos has made known about himself
through the stamp, imprint or watermark of the divine archetype in created being.
Amos Yong has developed some important sides of this hermeneutical function of the Spirit
even at the level of created truth in his Spirit-Word-Community. The “foundational
pneumatology” developed in this book “attempts to correlate ecclesiological pneumatology
[explicating the presence and activity of God among the elect] with the most general features
of [God’s] presence and activity in the world.”1029
Yong is, in other words, out in the same
business of making the activity of the Spirit of truth explicit within an integrative
philosophical-theological framework as undertaken in this dissertation. Through careful
consideration of the Father’s two hands and the complex relationship of creation and
redemption (re-creation) of the world, Yong arrives at the thesis that
[t]he economic work of the Spirit […] involves interpreting the world (the Word of the Father) ontologically
and epistemologically. The latter means, for human cognition, that all interpretation, justification, and
1028 See the many OT passages carrying this idea in Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 34ff.
1029 Yong, Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective, 134f.
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reasoning are nothing less than pneumatically inspired efforts to correlate our understanding of the whole
with the whole.1030
Here, a robust theology of creation through the Word results in a universalistic outlook
regarding the hermeneutical activity of the Spirit. The Spirit given to the faithful is the Spirit
in all his fullness that leads to Christ in the inexhaustible richness of his concrete revelation of
the Father. But furthermore, he is also the Spirit that leads to the other parts of all
interpretation, justification and reasoning that happens outside the realm of the church, and
even outside the explicit realm of belief in God, the pneuma spermatikon, implanted in human
beings through the formation in the image of God by the divine breath. As Logos spermatikos,
according to Justin, must be distinguished from Logos himself in a full-fledged sense1031
(cf.
the notion of katalogical analogy), pneuma spermatikon is not identical to the fullness of the
gifts of the Spirit in redemption, but a preliminary prefiguring and anticipation of it. This
distinction is important to avoid the intuitive criticism of Balthasar that talk of the universal
mission of the Spirit threatens to undermine the special gift of the Spirit through Christ in the
new covenant. But it is simultaneously important to insist, from a comprehensive view of
creation and redemption, that it is the same Spirit working, and that he works inside the two
realms of those distinct yet not separated dimensions of God’s dealings with the world. The
most important category for Yong as he makes this hermeneutical activity of the Spirit
concrete and explicit is the imagination.1032
The imagination, in Yong’s proposal, is “an
aspect of cognition that is holistically imbued with affectivity, and driven volitionally toward
the beautiful, the good and the true,” which is “both reproductive and productive, that is
passive and active […], the integrative bridge between perception and the utmost capacities of
human cognition […], and worldmaking in the sense of holding together what is spacio-
temporally present and absent.”1033
The picture emerging from the discussion so far is that the doctrine of Logos spermatikos can
be regarded as a kind of raw material or resources for articulation of true propositions. The
1030 Ibid., 174.
1031 Holte, “Logos Spermatikos: Christianity and Ancient Philosophy according to St. Justin's Apologies.”
1032 Part II of the book consists of treatments of the imagination as pneumatic activity, and this pneumatological
imagination in relation to truthful discernment and normative engagement. Yong, Spirit-Word-Community:
Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective, 119-217. 1033
Ibid., 129. Another engagement with the concept of imagination, more explicitly in dialogue with Balthasar,
is found in Murphy, A Theology of Criticism: Balthasar, Postmodernism, and the Catholic Imagination. Yong’s
account of the imagination as part of the pneuma spermatikon could also be supplemented by Schindler’s
philosophical reflections on the “heart,” which in the Christian tradition is the seat of the “whole” of the person
as well as the place of the indwelling of the Spirit. Schindler, HUvB and Dramatic Structure of Truth, esp. 288ff.
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doctrine gives a theological interpretation of the expressibility of being, based on the notion
that the Son is the truth, as the Logos scattered in and holding all created things together.
Pneuma spermatikon, on the other hand, can be taken to refer to the Spirit’s activity in
keeping those seeds of the Logos in existence and as what puts the expressibility of being into
practice as something (an “it”) expressed. Furthermore, the Spirit also implants the ability to
grasp and articulate the seeds of the Logos in human beings. The pneuma spermatikon
exercises a hermeneutical function. As in the glorification of the Son through his work in the
church, the Spirit’s activity regarding all truth available through the Logos spermatikos is to
guide into it and interpret it.
Acknowledging the existence of a pneuma spermatikon thus conceived, the Spirit sown in all
creation that on account of that sows seeds of knowledge of truth in human beings, will result
in what Amos Yong calls Christian faithfulness, which “persists in asking questions and
believing that the Spirit of Christ is also the Spirit who leads into all truth, wherever that may
be found.”1034
Yong underscores in what follows that this asking also involves the sciences. In
other words, he, by way of allusion, speaks for a very inclusive interpretation of the words in
Joh 16:13: “The Spirit of truth will guide you to (or in/into, gr. en) all (or the whole, gr. pasē)
truth.” The analysis showed that Balthasar interprets this central text in a more limited way.
However, when seen in light of the cosmic outlook of the Prologue and the passages on the
Son as “truth” in John, the more inclusive interpretation of Yong is the most coherent one.
Having said that, however, the emphasis on the deepest truth revealed in Christ as divine
triune love must not be forgotten.
I conclude this section by affirming that Balthasar’s pneuma spermatikon is a promising
concept. I have made some suggestions of how its meaning and content can be articulated
more fully. Together with a robust katalogical analogy, this notion presents a theologically
satisfying way to speak distinctly of the activity of the Spirit of truth on all levels of truth. My
approach follows the Phil 4:8 alternative from Confessing the One Faith cited above, but with
additional remarks regarding the sense of identity between the Spirit as active within and
outside the church.
1034 Amos Yong, The Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue,
Philosophical Studies in Science and Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 245. Emphasis mine. Cf. “My claim [..] is
that all truth is God’s truth and therefore communicable universally and verifiable in other tongues.” ———,
The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids:
Baker Academic, 2005), 283.
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The Spirit and Breath of Life in OT and NT, Creation and Redemption
In § 13 it was shown that Balthasar’s pneumatology is structured by an underlying historical
and logical development, starting from OT texts, culminating through the NT and the
Johannine writings, and ending in the continuous theological reflection of the church, starting
with the oldest Church Fathers. Likewise, 12.1 showed how important the Johannine
entryway – where Johannine texts are conceived as the crown of the development of the
biblical canon – is for Balthasar’s theology generally and pneumatology specifically. His use
(or nonuse) of OT texts to articulate pneumatology is a helpful case to illustrate the limits of
the consistency of those principles in Balthasar’s thought. As argued in section 12.1, they can
be evaluated positively through initial investigation, but must be related more strongly to
other spots in the network if they are to be coherent inside a greater whole. The questions to
be asked here are whether those principles fit a coherent model of the use of OT texts in
systematic theology generally and pneumatology proper, and whether Balthasar’s strong
distinction between the divine “S/spirit-gift” in creation and the Holy Spirit known through
Jesus is consistent with a comprehensively articulated theology of creation and redemption.
The analysis in section 16.1 pointed out that Balthasar constructs an irreducible tension
between OT and NT pneumatology, affirming implicitly that they have little or nothing to do
with each other. A very different and more persuasive understanding of this relation is
presented in John R. Levison’s historical approach to the phenomenon of (holy) s/Spirit in his
magisterial Filled with the Spirit.1035
In this book Levison shows that while early Christian
sources are highly innovative in describing the activity of the Spirit, they are still firmly
situated within a flow of tradition stemming from Israelite (= OT) views of creation. Thus it is
possible to point out a line of development that is historically so strong as to exclude the
denying of a close relation between OT and NT themes here. When comparing NT and OT
perspectives, especially in what concerns creation, it must also be kept in mind that the
theology of creation in the NT is often more implicit and goes without full articulation. That
there are few texts that speak of the Spirit’s activity in creation in the NT does not prove
therefore that this part of the OT tradition is left behind as something that is unrelated to the
new reality arriving in Christ and the gift of his Spirit. Rather, the language and allusions
1035 Levison, Filled with the Spirit. Levison consequently does not capitalize “spirit” throughout his book. This
functions as a provocative eye-opener in some cases, especially in his treatment of OT and Jewish literature. It is,
however, not consistent with his use of capital letters in many other expressions, and in his treatment of many
NT texts it seems simply misplaced.
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applied when the re-creative work of the Spirit is bespoken often implies that the OT
perspective is in the background all the way through.
The question of whether there exist references to the Spirit (capitalized, as a person of the
Trinity) or the other Trinitarian persons in the OT is a well-known source of hermeneutical
debate for biblical scholars and systematic theologians alike.1036
Through a historical-
descriptive investigation of the original literal sense of the text, there can be no doubt that the
reference, for example, to the s/Spirit [some exegetes even translate “strong wind” etc.] of
God hovering over the abyss of the just-created chaos of heaven and earth (Gen 1:2) in the
original version of Genesis is not totally identical to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as a divine
person of the Trinity developed explicitly from the fourth century onwards.1037
But at the
same time, as shown clearly in Levison’s book and by many others, the OT knows a reality
called the s/Spirit of God,1038
although this reality is not explicitly worked out with respect to
divinity or personhood. When reading the OT as Christian Scripture, however, theologians
cannot dispense with the theology of the Trinity and start acting as if God is not triune.
Therefore the Christian tradition contains large amounts of reflection about, for example, who
of the divine persons OT revelations through events and words refer to.1039
If they are
revelations of God, they must by necessity be revelations revealing Father, Son or Spirit,
either one of them or in combinations. To read OT texts speaking explicitly of the Spirit of
God etc. (e.g. Gen 1:2; 2 Sam 23:2; Ps 51:11[MT 13]; 104:29f; Ezek 36:26f; 37:1ff) as
referring to the reality that is captured in Trinitarian theology is, in this perspective, not an
incoherent hermeneutical move. Balthasar thinks largely in the same way,1040
but has a more
reserved stance towards interpreting OT references to the Spirit as the same divine reality as
the Holy Spirit of Jesus. As shown above, this is a reservation at odds with the historical
development surrounding the term “(God’s) s/Spirit.” Furthermore, it may become
inconsistent if it rests on the presupposition that there is in fact total identity between the NT
picture of the Spirit and later Trinitarian theology. One must concede a hermeneutical
1036 An informed treatment of this issue can be found in Christopher Seitz, “The Trinity in the Old Testament,” in
The Oxford Handbook of the Trinity, ed. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2011). 1037
A brief discussion of Gen 1:2, with references, is found in Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 2
(Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 77-9. 1038
Esp. “Part I: Israelite Literature,” Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 14-105. There are also references to OT
texts in “Part II: Jewish literature.” 1039
The problem is stated with clarity, giving some important historical examples, in John Panteleimon
Manoussakis, “Theophany and Indication: Reconciling Augustinian and Palamite Aesthetics,” Modern Theology
26, no. 1 (2010). 1040
Cf. Balthasar, TL 3, 415.
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development even here (as with OT texts), but Christian theology will claim that the case is
more straightforward as regards the NT. Balthasar’s reservations thus seem at least
unnecessary and at worst hermeneutically incoherent.
Balthasar’s analyses of OT texts in order to develop Trinitarian theology focus on the
categories of word, spirit and wisdom.1041
He views the first two of these as preliminary
figuring of the procession of the Father’s two hands, Son and Spirit. Wisdom, however, is
harder to categorize. Some early Fathers interpreted wisdom as referring mainly to the Spirit
(the most important one is Irenaeus), but this category has also left an important influence on
the Logos-Christology associated with the Nicene Creed. This ambiguity leads Balthasar to
interpret wisdom as neither Son nor Spirit, but as “an attribute of the divine essence that the
Father reveals in the context of the Son’s works and bestows upon his children in the Holy
Spirit that they may understand these works.”1042
This conclusion rests on a particular
exegesis of the most explicit references to Christ under the name of Wisdom in the NT,
playing down the identification those texts make (Matt 11:19; Luke 7:35; 11:49; 1 Cor
1:24).1043
Behind this exegesis stands an analysis of texts on wisdom in the whole breadth of
OT tradition, including the Apocrypha (esp. Wisdom and Sirak). Balthasar’s argument goes:
Such is the category of wisdom in precedent texts. Because of this, the identification of Christ
with wisdom in the NT cannot be meant to be taken at face value, because it will, among
other things, give anti-Arian theology “headaches” because wisdom in Prov 8 is the first thing
God creates, not God.1044
In response to this, I propose that a more coherent way to read OT texts in Trinitarian and
pneumatological perspectives is to read them, so to speak, backward rather than forward.
Balthasar owes much to a reading forward where OT texts typically “lead up to” the full
revelation given in the NT. The hermeneutic model implied in the remarks regarding the
eventual Trinitarian interpretation of Gen 1:2 above, however, is rather a reading backward:
Because the NT (and later Trinitarian reflection) says such and such about the persons of
Spirit and Son as divine realities, those and those texts must be interpreted this particular way.
1041 See 13.1 and ———, TL 2, 157-61.
1042 Ibid., 160.
1043 See esp. chapter two in Oskar Skarsaune, Incarnation: Myth or Fact? (St. Louis: Concordia, 1991).
1044 Balthasar, TL 2, 159. Regarding Prov 8, it may be noted that the Hebrew text is much more open to an
orthodox Christological interpretation. That, however, was not a very much attended perspective during the
Arian controversy because at that time the LXX was the OT text referred to by all sides. I remember Oskar
Skarsaune (cf. entry in last footnote) making this point in a lecture I attended while I was a student of theology
some years ago.
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Such an interpretation has support in the historical development of pneumatology inside the
canon as pointed out by Levison, but does not rest fully there, because Christian theology
ultimately departs from the end, not the start, of salvation history. In such a perspective it will
be free of problems to interpret some OT references to wisdom as Christological and others as
pneumatological. It will also be possible to ascribe unclarities such as the eventual one found
in Prov 8 to the stage of salvation-historical development, and thus avoid a non-Trinitarian
interpretation of such a central category as wisdom. In other words, OT references to word,
wisdom and spirit ought to be read from an in NT Trinitarian perspective from the beginning,
not after an initial OT categorization that excludes alternatives for the interpretation of NT
texts. If not, one risks ending up incoherently making OT texts irrelevant to contemporary
pneumatology.
At the crossroads between the question of OT vs. NT and creation vs. redemption in relation
to pneumatology lies a question that is dealt with thoroughly by Levison. One of his main
theses in Filled with the Spirit is that Christian theology, responding to the work of Hermann
Gunkel, has tended to overemphasize a distinction between “the creative life-spirit and the
spirit as the principle of divine effects,”1045
so as to espouse
an artificial, anachronistic, and decidedly unnecessary division that serves only to obscure the relationship
that exists in Israelite literature between God’s initial gift of the spirit and a subsequent endowment of the
spirit.1046
Balthasar would probably be a welcome target of this criticism, as when he speaks of
all the confusion in which Old Testament legends concerning the “spirit” in relation to man’s natural life
(Gen 2:7) are mixed up with the (“supernatural”) spirit of God given to the prophets and those dedicated to
God.1047
Levison shows how the division applied by Balthasar that subsequently leads to “confusion”
and “mixing up” of sides divided from each other can be seen more consistently as careful
distinctions or facets of a unified reality. In the OT, “the spirit given at birth was considered
no less divine, no less the spirit of God, than the spirit understood as a subsequent,
charismatic endowment.”1048
The discussion so far has given no reason on the basis of NT
1045 Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 8.
1046 Ibid., 11f. The statement is made as a conclusion to the treatment of influential dictionary entries on the
spirit. 1047
Balthasar, TL 3, 417. 1048
Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 80. Emphasis original.
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texts to reject this unifying outlook, even if the focus of the NT is quite another, on
soteriology as much as cosmology and theology of creation. The reason that the NT only
sparsely refers to the Spirit as a life principle may also partly be that its world of thought is
influenced by the perspective rising from the OT itself, where the Spirit resides in the whole
of the world seen ultimately as “the shadow of death,” to use Levison’s terminology. The gift
of life breathed into human beings from the beginning is threatened by the reality of sin and
mortality outside Eden. Gen 6:3 testifies to this as a part of the downward spiral of Gen 1-11.
Here we possibly have “the very first description of human beings as those who are kept alive
by the spirit of God within.”1049
But this life principle outside of Eden is always tender and
ends ultimately in death. The eschatological visions of Ezekiel (esp. Ezek 37) that are picked
up by Paul associate the newness of the age to come with dead bones, that is, bodies deprived
of spirit. Thus it makes perfect sense that Paul in Rom 8 argues from forgiveness of sins
through resurrection to the Spirit that groans in believers and the whole of creation alike
towards redemption from all futility and perishability. The Spirit creates nature wounded by
sin and threathened death anew; super-nature is a wonderful restoration of nature going
beyond all expectations. In this light Balthasar’s “eschatologization” of Wis 1:7 is seen
clearly as completely off the mark both exegetically and theologically. That text clearly refers
to the world’s present state, and it is, in light of several biblical texts speaking of creation,
theological nonsense to implicitly deny that the world is filled by the Spirit now.
What is more, even in many of the cases speaking of a subsequent endowment of (the) spirit
in the OT, the gifts are as much to be placed at the “natural” as at the “supernatural” level. As
examples, Levison uses the artists working on the tent of meeting and the general association
of spirit with wisdom, learning and cultivation of talents.1050
Elsewhere, Balthasar engages the
question of the relation between nature and super-nature in the footsteps of Henri de Lubac
and rejects the notion of natura pura and its implication for the understanding of the relation
of nature and grace.1051
It would have been more consistent by Balthasar to conceive even the
1049 Ibid., 16.
1050 See the section “Wisdom and Spirit Within,” ibid., 34-86. Concluding this section, he writes: “The qualities
of this spirit – wisdom, knowledge, and insight – are to be cultivated” (81, emph. orig.). “There is a symbiosis
between spirit within and acquired learning in Israelite scripture” (83). 1051
See my discussion in the context of the question of the relation between theology and philosophy in § 5. A
more thorough outworking of this thinking, rooted in de Lubac, nouvelle théologie and Radical Orthodoxy, and
applied explicitly to pneumatology, can be found in James K. A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal
Contributions to Christian Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 99-105. Smith proposes that the
distinction between nature and super-nature in the activity of the Spirit should rather be interpreted in terms of
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relation of natural and supernatural endowment by the Spirit in a model emphasizing the
complexity and blurriness of this distinction instead of by an outdated division. It is the same
Spirit that is at work in the construction of a tent of meeting or a splendid cathedral as in the
utterance of a prophet’s words, old and new, as well as in the guidance into philosophical and
theological truth. He does, however, as in all the acts of God towards God’s creation, work on
both sides of the axis of creation and redemption.
The case can be made even more explicit when it comes to the relation between creation and
redemption. There is no need to construct a strong opposition between the Spirit’s activities in
both spheres, because redemption does not annul creation, but perfects it. As regularly done
concerning the Father and the Son, it is possible to speak of God the Spirit’s activity in
creation even after the dawn of salvation, and simultaneously with that. Even if the NT speaks
primarily of the Son as Messiah and savior, it does not exclude that he is also the creative
Logos of God, as is evident, for example, from the prologue of the gospel of John (1:1 and
1:12.14). While God the Father did create heaven and earth, he also sent the Son to save the
world. Thus, even if the Spirit is the giver of ecclesial life and charisms, the guider and
interpreter leading the Christian community to Christ, this does not exclude that the Spirit
gives life to every living being and leads into all truth.
Against this background Balthasar’s interpretation of the relation between the breath in
Adam’s nose (Gen 2:7) and the life-giving pneuma of the resurrected Christ (1 Cor 15:45)
becomes an unnecessary and inconsistent dichotomy. The point of the allusion between those
texts (as well as the allusion to the same text by the use of the word emfuō in John 20:22) is
exactly that there is a close relation between those two realities; they are works of the Spirit
exercised on the human being proper to the orders of creation and redemption. This case is put
straightforwardly by Levison commenting on 1 Cor 15:
There is […] a thoughtful and richly scriptural dimension to Paul’s contrast of the two Adams, for with it he
puts death squarely in its place – in the shadow of life. In so much of Israelite scripture the spirit subsists and
survives, though without thriving, in the shadow of death [cf. Ezek 37]. We learn that God breathes, in
intimate embrace, into the first human, whose origin and character, nonetheless, are dust and earth and whose
destiny lies in the dust [cf. Gen 2:7]. […] We learn that animals feel dismay and return to the earth as well
when God takes away God’s spirit, and that they are re-created when God gives again [cf. Ps 104:29f]. We
learn that there can be hope of a new and pure and generous spirit [cf. Ezek 36:26f] and that God’s holy spirit
degrees of intensity of participation. Because nature is always already en-spirited, the work of the Spirit is not a
“breaking in” on nature, but a sped-up “more” than the ordinary (and miraculous enough) presence of the Spirit.
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can remain within despite the threat that God may take it away [cf. Gen 6:3] and the fear that sin propels one
away from God’s presence [cf. Ps 51:13]. […] The resurrection is rooted in this scriptural realization that the
spirit cannot linger any longer in the shadow of death. […] The mortality that enshrouds the creation of the
first Adam provides the perfect foil for Paul’s conviction that the second Adam became a life-giving spirit at
the resurrection. God had intimately imparted to the first Adam, in a face-to-face embrace, the life-giving
breath. Now Christ, who is himself life-giving spirit, will thrive within believers. The resurrection of Jesus
brings about this radical revision of Gen 2:7 and a reordering of the relationship between the spirit and
death.1052
Levison’s many scriptural allusions show how the connection between OT creational
pneumatology and NT resurrection eschatology meets through the prism of life and death.
The life-giving spirit breath of creation fulfills its own presence in humankind and the whole
of creation by bringing about the new, imperishable life given to believers in Christ through
his resurrection, which is a foreboding of the restoration and redemption of all of creation.
This argument based on Levison’s work allows a clear conclusion in response to Balthasar’s
rhetorical question of what the OT breath of life and spirit-ual inspiration “have to do” with
the Holy Spirit that we know from Jesus. Instead of his implicit rhetorical “nothing,” the
answer ought to be “almost everything.” Historically (through the latter’s roots in the former)
and dogmatically (in light of the doctrine of the Trinity) we are talking of the same divine
reality, the Holy Spirit of God. Thus it is better to view the NT redemptive gift of the Spirit of
Christ not as something unrelated to the Creator Spirit of the OT, but as a fresh blowing of the
same Spirit that groans within all of creation and inside the hearts of believers in Christ (cf.
Rom 8:22f; John 20:22 and 1 Cor 15:45 alluding to Gen 2:7). Even the Spirit’s gift of
forgiveness of sins can and should ultimately be seen in this perspective, as the removal of
what Amos Yong pointedly calls “disobedience exercised in resistance against the promptings
of the divine breath.”1053
That would be the most coherent interpretation of the relation
between creation and redemption in pneumatology.
What is significant for the main research question of this dissertation is that this way of
interpreting the OT texts as relevant to Christian pneumatology provides further grounding for
some of the theses advocated in the previous section regarding the pneuma spermatikon
1052 Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 315f.
1053 Yong, The Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue, 84. Cf. also
“The Christian doctrine of redemption, then, pneumatologically conceived, involves the fresh blowing [...] of the
Spirit of God,” ibid. A further reason to accept this thesis is that (the) (holy) spirit in early Jewish literature is
often spoken of as a seat of virtue; see Levison, Filled with the Spirit, 109-221.
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dimension of the activity of the Spirit of truth. Levison’s work on the OT shows clearly that
the life spirit given at birth is also a faculty for cultivation of knowledge, wisdom and virtue;
even here, the Spirit is the Spirit of truth.
Towards a Pneumatological Interpretation of Scientific Cosmology
The foregoing discussion has emphasized that the OT vision of the Spirit of God as the source
of life for all living beings and thus (with Barth and Balthasar) the divine power of positing
into being and holding in existence ought to be integrated into a contemporary theology of
creation. Given the claims to universality and the openness to philosophical and scientific
claims advocated through that discussion and earlier in this dissertation, it would be consistent
to ask in what way this pneumatological theology of creation can be expressed in dialogue
with the cosmology of other sciences today. This question is also relevant to the discussion
here because of the close association of truth and being advocated elsewhere in this
dissertation, which implies that the question of the Spirit’s activity in creation is not irrelevant
to the question of his activity in relation to truth. If the Spirit has a role in the preservation and
development of created beings, he also has a role as the sustainer of truth insofar as truth and
being are closely related. Put in the terminology of Puntel, semantics and ontology are two
sides of the same coin. Therefore, I find reasons to follow Balthasar in raising this question,
implicitly affirming its relevance to a contemporary articulation of a theology of the Spirit of
truth.
Although the relevance of the question raised by Balthasar is thus vindicated, his answer and
argument are in need of critique. The discussion above of how to integrate OT texts in
contemporary pneumatology has already pointed out one direction for a critique of Balthasar,
in which this section will take additional steps. However, I even have critical remarks on the
view of the relation between theology and natural science implicit in Balthasar’s criticism of
Pannenberg and others. Those remarks might have been articulated by showing that
Balthasar’s criticism of Pannenberg is not successful in all or some important points. Such a
procedure would be more of historical than contemporary interest. In a world where science is
advancing faster than ever, every interdisciplinary engagement is in danger of getting trapped
in too close a relationship to the scientific insights of yesterday. Instead, I choose a procedure
of presenting an up-to-date version based on and developing the important theological
intuitions of Pannenberg further, represented by the leading American theologian Amos
Yong. A particular stress will be laid on the theological justification of making the
hermeneutical and theological moves necessary for his position, while the detailed explication
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of the material contents of a pneumatological theology of creation in dialogue with science
must be the task of a more substantial study, hence the “toward” of the title of this section.
The most recent version of Amos Yong’s reflection on Spirit and nature from a cosmological
perspective is found in his The Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-
Buddhism-Science Trialogue.1054
Yong finds it regrettable in light of the renaissance of
Trinitarian theology in the last few decades that “much Christian reflection on theology of
nature has proceeded on vaguely theistic terms.”1055
By saying this he points to something
important. Theistic starting points in interdisciplinary engagements from the side of theology
are seriously at odds with the view of the relationship of philosophy and theology, and, for
that matter, the Christological-katalogical version of analogia entis advocated in this
dissertation. It is only through a theology determined by Christological and Trinitarian
categories that a real dialogue with Christian theology and lived Christian faith can happen.
Balthasar’s attempt at placing just this reflection on the divine activity in creation back under
the rubric of “the one God” by denying it a genuinely pneumatological contribution is thus a
step backward in the development of contemporary theology of nature.1056
This move is also
inconsistent with his own thoroughly Trinitarian reflections on most other topics, as he was an
active voice in the revival of Trinitarian theology in the twentieth century.
Yong visits other contemporary attempts at pneumatological contributions to the theology of
nature in dialogue with science and some perspectives from the history of philosophy from
the pre-Socratics to Hegel, Schelling and beyond, but those engagements lead him directly to
the work of Wolfhart Pannenberg. Yong thus concurs with Balthasar that Pannenberg’s work
on those questions is where the issue is most pressuring. His theology on this point is original
and exercises great influence on current work in this field of research. Pannenberg, says
Yong, was
1054 Yong, The Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue. My
presentation relies mostly on Part one on the (Christian) theology and science dialogue (chapters 2-4). The book
is not very concerned with details, but concentrates on comprehensive perspectives. Earlier versions of Yong’s
thinking on this question that complete the picture are found in ———, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh:
Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology, 267-302; ———, “Ruach, the Primordial Waters, and
the Breath of Life: Emergence Theory and the Creation Narratives in Pneumatological Perspective,” in The Work
of the Spirit: Pneumatology and Pentecostalism, ed. Michael Welker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); ———,
The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-charismatic Imagination (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). 1055
———, The Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue, 37f. 1056
Balthasar, TL 3, 427. Cited above in 16.1.
261
the first to develop a pneumatological theology of nature in the direction of conceiving the Spirit as the field
bonding the Father and the Son in love, relating God and the world, and unifying the manyness of the
world.1057
Pannenberg combined ancient philosophical notions of pneuma animating the world with the
field theory of scientist Michael Faraday. Faraday held that the world is not constituted by
material substances, but by active fields of force in different degrees of concentrations.1058
From this interaction Pannenberg envisioned a pneumatology where the Spirit is active in the
dynamic field potencies of creation, material bodies and organic life. While the Logos is the
ordering principle of the created order, the Spirit is its principle of life (conceived in the
direction of movability), opening the field of creative, future possibilities to the world.1059
Yong finds reason to critically question Pannenberg’s conception at various points. One is
whether it presupposes a relation so constituted by mutuality between the physical world and
the divine spirit that it blurs the asymmetry between Creator and creation. Another is whether
his language is just theological staffage on an otherwise scientific picture. Here Yong could
find support in Balthasar for the criticism implicit in the questions. But lastly, Yong also asks
whether Pannenberg’s conception is wedded to an outdated version of science, a question
where Balthasar seemingly would not reject the spouse, but the idea of getting married or
even involved in a relationship.1060
Yong holds that the first two critical questions can be
answered satisfactorily, both with recourse to the analogical language of Pannenberg, which is
not directed at a “univocal equation of pneumatology and field theory but only a correlational
relationship between the two, recognizing both notions as analogues of human inquiry.” 1061
In
other words, the phenomenon described analogically by physicians as fields of force is the
same reality denoted by theologians speaking of the presence of the Spirit in creation.
However, the question of the status of the scientific theory that Pannenberg is in dialogue
with, says Yong, cannot be answered positively without further engagement with
contemporary science in light of a renewed reading of the texts of Scripture speaking of the
Spirit’s activity in creation.
1057 Yong, The Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue, 48.
1058 Note here, in connection to what has been said elsewhere (7.2; 9.3) about questions concerning the real
distinction and Thomistic esse, the concurrence between Faraday/Pannenberg/Yong and Puntel in the rejection
of Aristotelian substance physics (and metaphysics). 1059
Yong, The Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue, 45-50. 1060
Ibid., 50f. 1061
Ibid., 56f. Here Yong cites Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 83f.
262
Yong’s biblical interpretation that follows refers to texts (Gen 1:2, 1:30, 2:7; Eccl. 12:7; Ps.
33:6, 104:29-30) and hermeneutical moves consistent with my argument in the previous
sections. He emphasizes that the first creation narrative often speaks of ordering of created
matter and the earth itself bringing forth things on divine command, and relates this to the
creatio continua of the spirit that hovered above the primordial chaos. His conclusion is that
the process of separation, differentiation, division, and distinction seen in the creation narrative reflects the
character of the divine spirit clearly articulated elsewhere in Scripture as the dynamic, particularizing,
relational, and live-giving presence of God.1062
In what follows he proposes viewing the Spirit’s activity in those processes in light of
emergence theory and systems theory.1063
Emergence theory says that evolution happens in
unpredictable leaps where the results are qualitatively new, more complex wholes irreducible
to prior stages in the development, as much as stable, linear processes throughout.1064
Yong
proposes interpreting such leaps in light of the interaction between God and the created order
in the creation narratives. Systems theory views the world as different levels of systems open
to and interacting with each other, though irreducible to each other. Systems and their
interrelations are full of complexity; interchanges between them cannot be reduced to a single
formula. The notion is close to the concept of “field” as Pannenberg engages it: things viewed
more as webs of relationships than as quantitative substances. Yong’s proposal is to see the
Spirit as an agent within the receptive openness of the created order suggested by systems
theory, as well as a stabilizing force within the systems, as the Spirit of renewal as well as
continuity in the evolution of the world.
Through the engagement with emergence theory and systems theory, Yong is led by the
questions surrounding philosophy of mind to the question of philosophical and theological
anthropology in a pneumatological perspective. This move is an important difference between
his and Balthasar’s conceptions. While Balthasar acknowledges both that the Spirit has a role
in sustaining the existence of creation and that the Spirit is relevant to the constitution of the
human being as created in the image of God, he does not, like Yong, relate those dimensions
of pneumatology directly to each other and to current scientific insights. Here Yong’s
1062 Yong, The Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue, 60-4.
1063 Ibid., 65-79.
1064 An earlier engagement with emergence theory through the work of Phillip Clayton can be found in ———,
“Ruach, the Primordial Waters, and the Breath of Life: Emergence Theory and the Creation Narratives in
Pneumatological Perspective.”
263
reasoning has much more to commend it from an exegetical perspective, because the biblical
texts are clear enough that the life-giving and creation-ordering divine spirit is the same
reality as the breath that fills the human being with life. In other words, by this move Yong
establishes an exegetical link, useful for the science-theology dialogue, between the notion of
pneuma spermatikon inherent in the image of God and the Spirit’s activity in creation. The
first results from the latter, just as I have argued regarding the truth of the Logos (spermatikos
through his role as mediator in creation).
A recurring theme in Yong’s anthropological reflection is the avoidance of traditional body
vs. soul/spirit dualism giving place to a more holistic and complex understanding of the
human being.1065
This has much to commend it, for the Hebrew notion of nefesh is not
immediately translatable into the Greek psychē and its dualist philosophical connotations.
Thus the Spirit is not relevant to the human being only from the perspective of mind or
consciousness. I propose that this perspective of Yong can have implications even for the
understanding of the Spirit along the axis of church and world: A more dualist conception of
the Spirit’s presence in human beings leads to a pneumatology that emphasizes the genuinely
ecclesial and mind-oriented activity of the Spirit, while a holistic understanding opens
pneumatology to a more complex articulation of the relation between God’s work in creation
and redemption. The former alternative has an expression in the substantial literature
discussing the relation of the Holy Spirit to human (self-)consciousness in theological
literature responding to German idealist philosophy, which also has left its marks on the
theology of Balthasar.1066
Although it must be affirmed that human self-consciousness is a
point of entry [Einfallstor] to the human being for the Holy Spirit1067
and that the Spirit of
Christ has his primary place in the communal existence of the church, this fact should not
restrict theology from speaking of the Spirit’s activity through the physical and concrete and
outside of the strict boundaries of the church.
It lies behind the scope of this dissertation to articulate a final assessment of whether Yong’s
pneumatological theology of nature is the most coherent one currently available in the
science-theology dialogue. The discussion has shown, however, that it has important
1065 ———, The Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue, 81-92.
1066 A thorough discussion of this problem, which also involves Balthasar’s position, is found in Erwin Dirscherl,
Der Heilige Geist und das menschliche Bewusstsein: Eine theologiegeschichtlich-systematische Untersuchung
(Würzburg: Echter, 1989). 1067
Cf. Ibid., 143.
264
theological qualities, and is far more convincing than Balthasar’s take on those questions. It
also seems clear that his version is a welcome development of Pannenberg’s, building on his
work and expanding it through interaction with new perspectives and concepts. I also hope to
have shown that it is theologically legitimate to pose the questions in the hermeneutical and
theological framework in the way that Yong does and to answer them pneumatologically.
Nevertheless, not all questions are left behind after this engagement with Yong. There are still
many questions to be answered in the synthesis of theology and contemporary evolutionary
science, in general as well as regarding the Spirit. Balthasar’s question of how the upwards-
tending spirit of evolution fits the Spirit of Christ’s humility is still a tricky one, although
Balthasar seems to pose the question presupposing a more ideological version of the theory of
evolution (probably influenced by social Darwinism) than is current among biologists today.
Natural selection is not as easy as the all-conquering triumph of the strongest, but as complex
as the survival of the fittest or more precisely the fitter.1068
An option arising from Balthasar’s own theology that can serve to reduce the tension inherent
in this question is to see the Spirit’s activity in creation as kenotic.1069
That is, through the
evolutionary process, the Spirit lifts creation up to new heights by surrendering himself,
pouring his own creativity, vitality and possibilities out into the lowest: created beings in need
of the divine breath lest they fall to the ground without life. The same is the case with the
redemptive kenosis of Christ: He came down in order to lift us up. This kenotic movement can
be seen as paradigmatic for the Spirit’s activity in the social interaction of ecclesially situated
believers.
Another important question is how this understanding of the Spirit as an active agent in the
world’s evolutionary process should be related to the world’s eschatological telos. Even
though fulfillment can be seen as the crown of earlier developments, this idea has to be related
to the biblical texts that stress a downward spiral and catastrophe as events leading up to the
final end. Yong touches on this question in his discussion of the laws of entropy and the
Second Law of Thermodynamics.1070
But he does not relate it broadly to the question of the
status and implications of sin and futility, which I hold to be an important part of a future
1068 An extensive argument about these questions can be found in Conor Cunningham, Darwin’s Pious Idea:
Why the Ultra-Darwinists and Creationists Both Get It Wrong (Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2010), 27ff, 187ff, 241ff. 1069
For contributions to the doctrine of creation in light of kenosis see J. Polkinghorne, ed. The Work of Love:
Creation As Kenosis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). 1070
Yong, The Cosmic Breath: Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue, 74-6.
265
answer. The cosmological activity of the Spirit has to be related to the presence of sin, futility
and death in the world and human life. One ought to be careful that the Spirit is not conceived
as the subject of a process of necessary evils to complete the world’s (God-willed)
evolutionary process.1071
However, the discussion has made it possible to draw some conclusions. One is that the divine
“Spirit-breath” of life, who is also Christ’s Spirit of truth, sent from the Father, plays an active
role in the ongoing cosmological symphony of God’s creation.1072
Another is that this
doctrine, because of the universalistic aspirations of systematic theology, must be worked out
in interdisciplinary dialogue with contemporary science.
Summary
Jeffrey A. Vogel argues vigorously that the eventual charge against Balthasar’s theology of
being “binitarian” (in a sense often leveled against Karl Barth) does not apply.1073
Earlier in
this dissertation I too have defended Balthasar from this charge in the sense that the Holy
Spirit should be halfway forgotten or only an afterthought appended to his theology.1074
What
needs to be added after the preceding discussions is that even if Balthasar’s overall theology is
not binitarian in any full-fledged sense, his theology of creation has tendencies of
binitarianism or, more cautiously expressed, some aspects of his theology of creation suffer
from underdevelopment of a fully Trinitarian perspective that involves pneumatology. In
effect this means that Balthasar in questions relevant to the doctrine of creation stops the
development of pneumatology too early in the process and for dissatisfying reasons. An
expression of this is the small number of pages spent discussing those questions in TL 3.
While TL 1 is remarkable for its philosophical openness and creativity, seeking an integration
of theology and philosophy, TL 3 is marked by a more traditionalist and ecclesio-centric
approach to the questions concerning truth and the Spirit’s role in relation to truth. It seems as
if Balthasar’s pneumatology of creation threatens to turn into only a prolegomenon to an
ecclesiological and soteriological pneumatology, while the more general perspective ought to
1071 Dirscherl makes a similar point against Pannenberg’s conception of the Spirit in relation to human
consciousness, arguing that what he understands as Pannenberg’s nondistinction between the Holy Spirit and the
human spirit makes the Holy Spirit the subject of human sin, contrary to its epithet. See Dirscherl, Der Heilige
Geist und das menschliche Bewusstsein: Eine theologiegeschichtlich-systematische Untersuchung, 94f. I do not
follow him down the road in the criticism of Pannenberg, but the theological intuition behind the critique must
be taken care of. 1072
See § 10. 1073
Vogel, “The Unselfing Activity of the Holy Spirit in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 17. 1074
See the closing pages of 12.2.
266
be that creation and redemption are in fact two sides of the same coin: gratia perficit naturam
(grace perfects nature). The same must be said regarding OT references to the ruach of the
Lord: Even if it must be admitted that those references are not Trinitarian in a straightforward
NT or developed dogmatic sense, that fact should not be a hindrance to interpreting those
texts in a way relevant to a contemporary pneumatology.1075
The tone of this concluding summary and the discussions preceding it is clearly the most
critical one found among the assessment sections of this dissertation. At the end, however, the
section voices a note of praise for Balthasar’s coining and use of the phrase pneuma
spermatikon, which I hold to be a welcome and, in what it refers to, necessary component of
any future articulation of a theology of the Spirit of truth, who blows where he wills. The
Spirit blows and breathes life in and over every created being as well as from the cross into
the church and the church-situated life of every Christian. Every time truth is grasped or
articulated, whether it is a worldly truth resting in the Logos, mediator of creation, or the
unveiling of the loving Father in the incarnate Son, the one who has eyes to see and ears to
hear (and skin, however metaphorical, to feel!) can discern the activity of the Holy Spirit of
truth, who guides into all truth, centered around Jesus Christ.
16.3 Pointers to Implications for the Theology of Religions
The position argued in 16.2 has significant implications for the theology of religions. In
Balthasar’s theology of the Spirit of truth, this is a theme that is hardly mentioned.1076
It will
also go beyond the limits of this dissertation to work this question out in detail. But a few
pointers forward can be given. A theology of religion based on katalogical analogy and
pneuma spermatikon as argued for in this dissertation affirms that religions other than
Christianity can have seeds of truth in them, even that Christians can have new things to learn
1075 Cf. the remarks of Regin Prenter, perhaps as much contemporary and systematic as historically objective,
commenting on Luther’s pneumatology in light of Psalm 104 (I quote without affirming all details implicit in
this statement, as the somewhat too straightforward identification of the Bible and Luther): “The Bible and
Luther, who lived in the Bible’s cosmology, do not know a world existing independently of the Triune God. To
biblical–and Lutheran–Christianity the visible world is a creation by the Spirit of God, the same Spirit who gives
us new birth in baptism and comforts us in inner conflict [anfægtelsen; cf. German Anfechtung]. It is by the Holy
Spirit we constantly live and breathe (physically!), so that we break the bread and drink the wine which gladden
the heart of man. Yes, in the Holy Spirit we use God’s good gifts for our enjoyment and not only repent and go
to church” (translation from Danish slightly altered), Regin Prenter, Spiritus Creator: Luther’s Concept of the
Holy Spirit (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1953), 193. Balthasar also refers to this work in TL 3 as a source of
Luther’s theology of the Spirit, but without quoting it. 1076
This is the case at least in TL 3. Balthasar has some reflections on the integration of ideas from myth,
philosophy and foreign religions in theology that point in the same direction as the one taken here in other
works, but those are not connected to pneumatology. See, e.g., Balthasar, “Movement toward God,” 47-55.
267
from other perspectives that are not currently seen in their own tradition, but nevertheless
belong to the divine revelation in creation and redemption. Dialogue with the religions is thus
as indispensable for the development of a coherent systematic theology as is dialogue with
philosophy and the sciences. The Spirit and the truth he offers can be found in surprising
places, for he blows where he wills. However, even here the Christo-centric emphasis must be
remembered.1077
The fullness of divine revelation, the Son’s declaration of the Father (cf.
John 1:18), is found nowhere else than in Christ, the eternal Word and incarnate Savior. When
the Spirit leads to all truth, he always leads to Christ the incarnate Son of God or on the basis
of the eternal Logos as the mediator of creation. Sometimes, however, the best way to learn
something new about something familiar is to speak to an other.
§ 17. Outlook: Reflections on the Spirit’s Role in Theologizing
Insofar as this dissertation is intended primarily for readers interested in (systematic)
theology, it would be worthwhile to have a look at the potential consequences of what has
been argued throughout for the act of theologizing. As an outlook this chapter is constructed a
little bit more loosely than the others, and the style is more suggestive. The first section
presents and discusses Balthasar’s notion of theology on one’s knees, the second is a
reflection on the use of Scripture taking its cue from Balthasar, and the third discusses the
issue of continuity and innovation in theology.
17.1 Kneeling Theology?
“[N]othing is worthy of theological reflection unless it can be the subject of prayer.”1078
This
is something like a refrain on Balthasar’s treatment of theology as a part of the Spirit’s
objective work in the Church in TL 3.1079
The chapter, however, perhaps stresses the
subjective – the disclosure to the individual – as much as the objective – the Spirit-produced
object of theology as the incarnate Son interpreting the Father.1080
Here and in his essays on
1077 Endre argues that the Spirit can never be separated from the incarnate Son, but that the Spirit has power and
freedom to put anyone he wants in contact with the mystery of Christ. While this is surely the case (cf. the
dramatic eschatological reservation), this dissertation holds that the work of the Spirit in other religious
landscapes can also be conceived through his work connected to the Son as mediator of creation. It is not only a
kind of second option. See Endre, “Die Schwerpunkte der Pneumatologie Hans Urs von Balthasars im Spiegel
der kritischen Nachfragen,” 123n284. 1078
Balthasar, TL 3, 358, cf. also 365. 1079
Ibid., 358-67. Cf. 15.1 above. 1080
Ibid., 363. Müller says that the chapter has a “Brückenfunktion,” Müller, “Der Geist als wirkmächtiger
Zeuge Jesu Christi in der Kirche nach Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 167f.
268
theology and holiness1081
Balthasar argues for what he calls a “kneeling theology” or
“theology on one’s knees” [Kniende Theologie], an exercise of theology closely connected to
the Christian life in its ecclesial setting, especially worship/adoration and prayer.1082
It is
theology “intimately bound up with the liturgy,”1083
liturgy in its power of expression through
the arts and liturgy understood as the ultimate situatedness of theological reflection.1084
The
prayer or kneeling referred to here denotes receptivity and spiritual or existential engagement
with God as much as a genre of speaking/writing or the use of direct address of God.1085
Likewise, kneeling does not necessarily mean that theologians must substitute their desks and
office chairs for kneelers or prie-dieux: It describes an attitude of mind as much as a position
of the body, and attempts to situate the theological task within the broader framework of a
lived Christian existence.1086
This attitude reigned, Balthasar holds, throughout the era of the Church fathers – Dionysius
the Areopagite’s Ecclesiastical Hierarchy constituting an ideal peak point1087
– into the
Middle Ages where the critical moment is found in Scholasticism.1088
During these times, a
theologian was normally a saint. This is not only a claim regarding their life, but also
regarding their theological output: “Theology was, when pursued by men of sanctity, a
theology at prayer; which is why its fruitfulness for prayer, its power to foster prayer, is so
1081 Or, in another translation, “sanctity.”
1082 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Theologie und Heiligkeit,” Wort und Wahrheit 3(1948); ———, “Theology and
Holiness”; ———, “Theology and Sanctity,” 206; ———, TL 3, 358. “Theology and Sanctity” is a revised and
enlarged edition, originally published in 1960, of “Theologie und Heiligkeit.” In the German versions, all three
essays have the same title. See also Antonio OCD Sicari, “Hans Urs von Balthasar: Theology and Holiness,” in
Balthasar: Life and Work, ed. David L. Schindler (1989); Štrukelj, Kniende Theologie. Despite its, for our
theme, ambitious title, Štrukelj’s book contains only one chapter that directly deals with the question of kneeling
theology, and this chapter is roughly nothing more than a presentation of Balthasar’s essays on theology and
holiness completed by some references to TL 3 and other works. Sicari’s article has more comprehensive and
systematic perspectives. 1083
Balthasar, TL 3, 366. 1084
In this sense, Balthasar’s reflections come close to the liturgical theology often associated with Alexander
Schmemann. See, e.g., Alexander Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology (New York: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1986). 1085
“If a philosophy–or even worse, a theology–refuses to unfold itself in the atmosphere of prayer and to
acknowledge prayer (the ‘ability to be prayed’) as the testing-stone of its truth, then it cannot stand as an
exposition of Christian truth. The fundamental act of this prayer is ‘adoration,’ i. e., the unconditional
acknowledgement of the validity of the divinity of God’s love that reveals itself in the Cross in advance of every
possible human response.” Balthasar, “Summa Summarum,” 369f. Cf. also ———, “Theology and Sanctity,”
206f. 1086
“Theology and exegesis can border on prayer, but they are not of themselves necessarily prayer. Not
explicitly, at least. All acts of the Christian life, whether of the intellect or not, should be accompanied by an
openness for worship, like a basso continuo accompanying the soul, and this applies to the act of theology and
exegesis too.” ———, Prayer, 116. 1087
———, “Theology and Sanctity,” 183f, 201. 1088
Ibid., 181, 185f, 208.
269
undeniable.”1089
But the far-reaching and to Balthasar not only negative scholastic distinction
between natural and supernatural truth, philosophy1090
and theology over time made the task
of being a “complete theologian” too hard to bear.1091
The result was that kneeling theology
was substituted for theology sitting at a desk, using the head more than the heart and the body,
often haunted by too complex and too rigid philosophical systems that in practice laid
limitations and inescapable interpretative guidelines on Christian revelation. Later the
sciences of the Christian life and spirituality (“practical reason”) came into being as an
attempt to recover contact with the holiness that dogmatic theology (“theoretical reason”) had
divorced from. The result of this divorce is that preachers are faced with the impossible
choice between
on the one hand, the bones without flesh, “traditional theology” [überlieferte Dogmatik]; on the other, the
flesh without bones, that very pious literature that serves up a compound of asceticism, mysticism,
spirituality and rhetoric, a porridge that, in the end, becomes indigestible through lack of substance.1092
Thus Balthasar, as in his other cases of balancing subjectivity and objectivity in the Spirit’s
work in the Church, argues for the necessity of a balanced unity even between theology and
spirituality, for the common practical good of the Church.
Now one may be led to ask whether Balthasar in fact conceives the success of the theologian
as completely dependent on a purely subjective state, and in his most exposed moments this
seems to be the case, as when he writes that the saints’ “theology is essentially prayer,”1093
that the “life of the saints is theology in practice”1094
or that “only ‘theology’ as the unity of
sanctity and witness born in the life of the Church earns its name.”1095
However, also
according to Balthasar, saints are holy primarily through the objective work of the Spirit
through Christ and the sacraments, and afterwards and only successively through their holy
life that is a subjective reflection of this objective holiness.1096
It is thus impossible to reduce
the argumentative power of an articulated theology to the subjective holiness of the
1089 Ibid., 208.
1090 Here philosophy is understood as “a doctrine of natural being and excluding revelation,” ———, “Theology
and Holiness,” 185. 1091
———, “Theology and Sanctity,” 186ff. 1092
Ibid., 193. 1093
———, “Theology and Holiness,” 206. 1094
———, “Theology and Sanctity,” 204. 1095
———, “Theology and Holiness,” 347. 1096
Ibid., 345. Again cf. 15.1.
270
theologian, in whatever way this ought to be tested.1097
On the other hand, Balthasar even
acknowledges some sense of theology as a purely theoretical enterprise. In the essay “The
Place of Theology” he speaks of theology as a task for the Church that is necessary, but a
means and not and end in itself, for the end of theology thus understood is “adoration and
holiness, in other words, love of God and one’s neighbor.”1098
In this sense, he can say that
theology is something between act and adoration that “might be called theorizing about the
Word of God–a form of contemplation which is neither an act of worship nor conjoined with
action wherein the truth is embodied.”1099
And, theology, even in its most prayerful moments,
“must always be conducted with rigorous precision.”1100
A similar paradoxical expression is
found when he says that “[p]rayer is the appropriate [Sachliche: adequate, realistic] attitude in
which the mystery must be approached,” and this attitude “is never superseded or
outdistanced by the attitude demanded by knowledge.”1101
As the analysis so far shows, the word “theology” is used by Balthasar to denote different
kinds of activity. He has been cited as speaking of theology that is prayer, theology that is not
necessarily prayer and theology that is not prayer, but has prayer as its end. The case is further
complicated by the fact that he also has a range of uses for the word “theology” – sometimes
it is contrasted to philosophy, other times it is the Church’s intellectual reflection at large, and
finally it may denote dogmatics in a more limited sense. In TL 3, he distinguishes between
two types of theology: “confessing”/praying theology, exemplified by some ancient Church
Fathers and Pascal, Kierkegaard and Newman in modern times, and “rational” theology,
“which did not begin with Thomas but always had to be put forward by the Fathers
incidentally.” Rational theology is “an indispensable preliminary to” confessing theology.1102
1097 On the whole complex of issues only touched on here, see Victoria S. Harrison, The Apologetic Value of
Human Holiness: Von Balthasar’s Christocentric Philosophical Anthropology (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 2000). 1098
Balthasar, “The Place of Theology,” 152. 1099
Ibid. In the same direction: “There is a speculative, theoretical approach in faith, in theology and in Christian
life as a whole, and it is very necessary, but it can only be a constituent part of prayer’s totality and it retains the
essence of the whole from which it comes.” ———, Prayer, 79. Also the notion of theology as a “linguistic
event” [Sprachereignis] relates closely to this way of speaking, ———, TL 3, 359. 1100
———, “Theology and Sanctity,” 207. 1101
Ibid., 206. Translation of Sachliche altered from “realistic” to “appropriate.” Cf. the notion “appropriate and
(in a true sense) objective,” ———, Prayer, 79. Cf. the notion that, because of the necessary dramatic
involvement in the divine acts they bear witness to, the Apostles “exercise objectivity [!] by giving their witness
before the Church and the world, handing on the drama of Jesus’ life,” ———, TD 2, 57f. 1102
———, TL 3, 365. The distinction comes very close to the one made between “epic” (= theology; the
objective discussion of facts) and “lyrical” (= spirituality; prayer and personal involvement) theology in ———,
TD 2, 55ff, passim.
271
The double aspect of theology that has been looked at from different metaphorical and
terminological angles from Balthasar’s works unfolds in the Spirit, regardless of whether the
focus is on the unity or the distinction. For the Spirit is active both in an intellectual way and
in the way of love: “the Spirit who declares the truth is at the same time divine Love and
divine Wisdom: he is by no means mere theory, but the inspirer of a lived faith.”1103
The
Spirit-ual unity of the tensions and distinctions is described clearly in Balthasar’s final
summary of the “theology” section in TL 3:
Christian faith is always a confession before the world on the part of the ecclesial community, rendered
possible by the Holy Spirit; and since theology cannot be anything else but a meditative clarification of this
confession of faith in order to understand it and make it intelligible to others, theology, too, can only be
grounded, and can only unfold, in the Holy Spirit.1104
Here, theology is a theoretical (albeit meditative, prayerful) enterprise that comes from faith
living in the Church, and returns to the Church’s need for intelligibility of faith. The Spirit is
the giver both of the object of theology and the condition of possibility for its subjective
apprehension.
A precise theoretical assessment of Balthasar’s position in the questions analyzed in this
section would have to involve a great deal of terminological dissection, for the impreciseness
and varied use of terminology that has been noted throughout cannot stand a close test of
theoretical rigor, coherence and consistency.1105
This will not be the way of proceeding here.
Instead, the rest of the section presents some reflections concerning some of Balthasar’s
central intuitions within the framework of this dissertation and based on some of the
discussions so far.
A central intuition of Balthasar is that theology must be closely linked to prayer in a broad
sense and must lead to or aim at prayer. Thus it is a fine analysis of Balthasar when Štrukelj
1103 ———, TL 3, 21.
1104 Ibid., 367.
1105 Ulrich Winkler voices a similar criticsm: “Unleugbar baut Balthasar seinen Ruf nach der knienden Theologie
auf gravierende problematische Voraussetzungen – insbesondere sein Offenbarungs- und Theologiebegriff –, und hat damit zahlreiche Missverständnisse provoziert. Das ist eine empfindliche Schwäche[.]” Ulrich Winkler,
“Kniende Theologie: Eine religionstheologische Besinnung auf eine Spiritualität komparativer Theologie,” in
Wagnis der Freiheit: Perspektiven geistlicher Theologie. Festschrift zu Paul Imhof, ed. Friedrich Erich
Dobberahn and Johanna Imhof (Wambach: Via verbis Verlag, 2009), 165. Earlier in his treatment of kneeling
theology he states that it sometimes functions as “eine Tarnung von Rationalitätsverweigerung, intellektueller
Zimperlichkeit und Denkfaulheit. Deshalb bringt man sich in Verdacht, wenn man sich als Systematiker auf
diese Spuren begibt.” Ibid., 162.
272
says that theological thinking starts and has its end in prayer.1106
A more determined and thus
more coherent way of expressing this point is to introduce a distinction between different
semantic levels, for it is clear that even if there are points of connection between the language
of prayer and of precise theoretically expressed theology (as in Anselm), they are not the
same, a case also vaguely affirmed by Balthasar. Daily Christian living in and outside the
church has other and more pragmatic needs for communication, theoreticity and semantic
determination than academic theological discourse, but they must not be torn totally apart.
Asle Eikrem formulates the important point in the intuition of Balthasar thus:
religious reflection [= second-order discourse] is empty unless it receives determinable resources from first-
order religious discourses [= lifeworldly, pragmatic discourse], and without practical significance if it does
not provide means to live this or that way in various situations.1107
This potential emptiness and lack of significance of religious reflection comes very close to
Balthasar’s contempt at traditional or theoretical theology. However, Eikrem expresses the
case in philosophical language, claiming validity for all scientific engagement with religion,
not only the relation between Christian theology and worship. Thus he moves some steps
beyond Balthasar on the way towards integration of theology and philosophy in a universal
philosophical discipline. Some of Balthasar’s arguments concerning spiritual theology and
theology are too influenced by philosophy and seem to presuppose a version of the distinction
between philosophy and theology that is surpassed in his thinking. That is, that philosophy,
because it relates to pure nature (natura pura), cannot really relate to being in its religious or
theological orientation. The argument for the need of an insider’s perspective in religious
reflection generally and theology specifically can be made on a much more general basis than
Balthasar does.1108
It simply follows from the character of religious and Christian living itself.
However, this more general and philosophical perspective can also be complemented by a
dogmatic theological determination. The Spirit, it has been argued throughout this
dissertation, is in his togetherness with Christ the Son as the Father’s two hands the
1106 “Theologische Vernunft beginnt und endet im Gebet.” Štrukelj, Kniende Theologie, 16.
1107 Eikrem, Being in Religion: A Journey in Ontology from Pragmatics through Hermeneutics to Metaphysics,
227. For the precise meaning of first- and second-order discourses in this context, see ibid., 102ff. 1108
Winkler states this case clearly with reference to interreligious dialogue: “Religionen sind da für ihre
Gläubigen, damit sie mit ihnen leben. Deshalb ist eine interreligiöse Hermeneutik unabdingbar auf die
Integration einer Innenperspektive angewiesen. […] Theologie ist die Reflexionsform der Innenperspektive von
Religion.” Winkler, “Kniende Theologie: Eine religionstheologische Besinnung auf eine Spiritualität
komparativer Theologie,” 189.
273
establisher and sustainer of a truth that is holistic in the sense that it relates to all aspects of
human life, not only the theoretical sphere. In the words of Amos Yong:
The Spirit of Truth is not just a demonstrated theological definition but is the one who brings about
correction of error, healing of brokenness, reconciliation of fractured relationships, in short, who orients
human selves wholly–affectionately, spiritually, and materially–to truthful living.1109
Thus the truth sought by theology cannot be an end in itself, for theologically as well as
philosophically this reflection is of no practical significance if it does not prescribe ways of
living. Theology as inspired by the Spirit is the opposite of words isolated from “deed and
truth” (1 John 3:18).
Religious reflection may happen at different points along the scale of descriptivity and
normativity, but it always has some kind of pragmatic motivation (minimally, in the choice to
think theoretically) and must always reflect on the thing itself. For the case of Christian
theology, at least when it is conceived in a normative sense, it is necessary for the articulation
of a theology that has practical relevance (and thus coherence) that it is closely informed by
lived Christian religion. Thus Eikrem’s plea for the receiving of “determinable resources” and
Balthasar’s more vague and metaphorical way of speaking of prayer and worship as the air
theology breathes etc. together is a call to theologians to be very sensitive to current questions
of ecclesial concern. A possible way forward is to connect systematic theology more closely
to the empirical situation in relevant ecclesial bodies, as is urged by the many studies and
scholars reflecting on the so-called “empirical turn.”1110
But Balthasar’s good intuitions for
increased intimacy between academic theological reflection and spirituality must not be taken
as a justification of theoretical laziness or impreciseness.
17.2 The Spirit of the Scriptures
“Balthasar’s theory of Scripture […] is a masterful attempt to bring Scripture back into the
heart of theological reflection,”1111
says Bevil Bramwell as one of the important conclusions
to his article on Balthasar’s theology of Scripture. This section will argue that Balthasar has
an important point here, and that it has important pneumatological reasons.
1109 Yong, Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective, 175.
1110 Cf., e.g., the scholars in Practical Theology associated with the Ecclesiology and Ethnography network. See
http://ecclesiologyandethnography.wordpress.com/. 1111
Bevil Bramwell, “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of Scripture,” New Blackfriars 86, no. 1003 (2005):
322. See also Schelhas, Christozentrische Schriftauslegung: Hans Urs von Balthasar und Karl Barth im
Vergleich.
274
Although it is possible to raise questions about the sense in which Balthasar has a stringently
outworked theory of Scripture, it becomes very clear for anyone reading his work, and from
the analysis of his way of thinking in this dissertation, that exegesis and systematic reflection
on biblical motifs constitute a very important part of his theological output. The references to
biblical texts throughout the analysis of his works in this dissertation could easily have been
multiplied. In his theological aesthetics The Glory of the Lord, two volumes are constructed as
works of biblical theology,1112
and the discussions throughout the trilogy appeal to Scripture
very often. Thus Balthasar really practices a theological reflection where Scripture is at the
heart. The analysis of the triad Scripture-tradition-office in § 15 described Balthasar as an
important proponent of the conciliar and post-conciliar high valuation of Scripture as the
primary witness to God’s self-revelation. Scripture, furthermore, as the teaching of the
apostles to be handed on through the ages, must be at the heart of theological reflection
because it is at the heart of the life of the Church, as Balthasar polemically asserts in the essay
“Theology and Holiness”:
When a science calling itself theology ceases to stand in the following of the apostolic witness and, thereby,
in the mission of Jesus and in the sanctity that supports it, then that science has ceased to be of importance for
the believing Church.1113
Here Balthasar speaks not only for theological reflection that uses Scripture as an important
source, but also gives it an important authority for theology as well as for life. His attitude
closely resembles the confessions about the Spirit and the Church in the NC, where the
Church is confessed as “apostolic” (cf. NT) and the Spirit as having “spoken through the
prophets” (cf. OT). References to biblical texts that support both notions can easily be
multiplied: The Spirit is at work through the Word proclaimed by apostles and prophets.1114
A glance at a classical proof text for the doctrine of biblical inspiration may provide a further
argument for Scripture’s centrality to a theology inspired by the Spirit of truth:
…from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through
faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed [theopneustos, RSV: “inspired”] and is useful for
teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly
equipped for every good work (2 Tim 3:15-17).
1112 Balthasar, GL 6; ———, GL 7.
1113 ———, “Theology and Holiness,” 348.
1114 Some important examples: Acts 10:44; 1 Pet 1:10.
275
“Outspired” is perhaps a better rendering of theopneustos than “inspired.” As Word spoken by
God the Scriptures are also accompanied by the Spirit that re-creates and fulfills. Far from
asserting the inerrancy of Scripture in all matters (“wise for salvation”), this text affirms that
the spirited Scriptures are witness to the wisdom and teaching that give salvation in Jesus
Christ. And that is precisely the most important work of the Spirit: to lead us to Christ, guide
into his truth and make us live in it. Thus the Spirit and the Scriptures are on a common
mission, or rather, the Spirit is at this mission in an especially urgent way through the
Scriptures. Therefore reflection on the content of Scripture must be central to any theology
inspired by the Spirit of truth.
17.3 The Surprising Continuity of Spirit-filled Theology
The discussion of Scripture-tradition-office touched on the question of innovation in theology,
an area where Balthasar is both controversial and traditional. I will add some further
reflections on that issue here. Balthasar’s way of balancing objective and subjective elements
in pneumatology may be a possible way forward. In her article “Transcending tradition,”
Swedish theologian Jayne Svenungsson offers some important perspectives on the Spirit’s
work as reinterpretation within the Christian tradition. Balthasar’s balancing attitude, which
has been assessed in § 15, has, according to Svenungsson, an equal in the Reformation:
Luther’s pneumatology could be regarded as a golden middle way in the recurrent tensions between the Spirit
and the letter, between charisma and ministry, or between the spiritual experiences of lay people and the
clerical authorities.1115
Svenungsson argues that theology needs to stand in this middle, without resorting to any one-
sidedness that closes in on itself, even if this finds the form of a radical rejection of all
metaphysics, violence and Otherness on postmodern terms. Religion is never more dangerous
than when people believe they have found the absolute truth once and for all.1116
However, all
that is left in Svenungsson’s account when the conclusion arrives is a critical function of the
Spirit arising from only a trace left by Christ who “withdrew” in order to send the Spirit.1117
First, this is in tension with the Johannine account of the gift of the Spirit, where Jesus says
that the coming of the Spirit will give a more intense presence, not a greater distance. And
1115 Jayne Svenungsson, “Transcending tradition: Towards a critical theology of the Spirit,” Studia Theologica –
Nordic Journal of Theology 62 (2008): 70. 1116
Cf. John 16:2b: “…indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to
God.” 1117
Svenungsson, “Transcending tradition: Towards a critical theology of the Spirit,” 78.
276
second, such a way of thinking, common as it is, is not coherent with the position argued
regarding negative theology in this dissertation. Rather than seeing the critical and renewing
work of the Spirit on the tradition as something made necessary by absence, it is more
coherently interpreted as a result of the excessive surplus of the “Christ event,” which is also
for Svenungsson “normative for all further revelation.”1118
In Eikrem’s words, speaking about
the excess of the transcendent God, “finite determination [is] expandable ad infinitum,”1119
because the Christ message goes beyond total human grasp. Thus it can be affirmed with
Balthasar that “the Spirit never arrives at a concluding verbal expression of the whole of
Jesus’ adequate transposition,” because to affirm the opposite would be to erase the
dimension of silence from revelation and exhaust the maior dissimilitudo of God.1120
Furthermore, the “exposition of the Son’s truth […] [is] an exposition that the infinite
imagination of the Spirit keeps forever open.”1121
Therefore, when the Spirit transcends
tradition in the sense that he can lead the church and the theologian to insights that are
genuinely new and surprising, this is not to be conceived as an addition to the constitutive
Christ event, but as an opening of new ways of seeing the same thing.1122
The Spirit will take
what belongs to Jesus and declare it ever and endlessly new; his leading into all truth will
never cease. In addition to providing a potential for critical revision of the Christian tradition
from within, this way of thinking also makes a demand that theologians will have to show
precisely how new departures actually depart from within the tradition and are not brought in
illegitimately from the outside. The Spirit blows where he wills in novel, but not
discontinuous, ways. The thrust of the short reflections presented in this section can be
summarized in the words of Vogel:
Though the Spirit takes only what he has heard and declares it, never departing from it or going beyond it, his
interpretation of Christ to the world is, quite literally, endless. […] At one and the same time, his
interpretation is pure repetition and continually surprising, bound to the revelation in Christ and as free as the
love Christ reveals. Though the Spirit imparts no new truths, his interpretation never approaches closure,
1118 Ibid., 70.
1119 Eikrem, “Ontology and Religious Discourses: The Ontological Conditions of Religious Discourses
Reconstructed in Connection With Philosophical Perspectives Provided by Dewey Z. Phillips, Erica Appelros
and Paul Ricoeur,” 339. 1120
Balthasar, TL 2, 280. 1121
Ibid., 365. 1122
Cf. Balthasar: “Thus ‘all the truth’ does not mean a synthesis of a given number of individual truths but the
one truth of the Son’s interpretation of God in the inexhaustible fullness of its concrete universality.” ———, TL
3, 74.
277
because the object he interprets—the divine life—is itself always new, essentially creative, always more than
can be grasped.1123
§ 18. Summary of Part III
Part III has given the most explicit and most lengthy contribution to the articulation of a
coherent theology of the Spirit of truth, but this has happened throughout in close dialogue
with insights acquired in Parts I and II.
This part started by providing some general interpretative remarks on Balthasar’s
pneumatology (§ 12), first concerning his use of the Johannine entryway, that is, his far-
reaching prioritizing of Johannine texts and motifs in establishing pneumatology (12.1). The
emphasis on the Johannine was assessed broadly as a legitimate way of using Scripture in
systematic theology, but warning signs were also placed that this way of thinking must not be
used to repress other aspects and texts present in the biblical canon. Therafter I analyzed how
Balthasar deems it possible to speak about “the unknown lying beyond the Word” that always
turns the attention away from himself to Christ, and third, closely related to this, followed a
summary of his take on the personhood of the Spirit, which is fairly traditional (12.2).
In § 13 Balthasar’s exegesis of what he holds as the most important text concerning the Spirit
of truth, John 16:12-14, was analyzed at some length, both in order to establish the center of
his pneumatological reflection and as an example of his use and interpretation of the biblical
text. Balthasar views this Johannine text as a summary and heightening of the whole biblical
material on the Spirit that functions as a springboard for the succeeding doctrinal development
of the Church.
Different aspects of Balthasar’s use of Irenaeus’ metaphor of the Son and the Holy Spirit as
the Father’s two hands were the central theme of § 14. Balthasar’s basic idea that the Spirit
came upon Mary and was thus an active agent in the incarnation of the Son was positively
assessed while he was criticized for constructing an unnecessary strong tension between the
Spirit’s activity and the Son’s passivity in this event. From the Spirit’s active contribution to
the incarnation, it follows that the Spirit of truth has not only an epistemological function in
that he guides human beings into an already present revelation of God, but he also has an
ontological function in that he establishes the form of Christ as human and divine as the
ultimate revelation of God in the world (cf. the notion of Christ as “the truth” discussed at
1123 Vogel, “The Unselfing Activity of the Holy Spirit in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” 20.
278
length in Part II). Furthermore, the Spirit is also the Spirit of the messianic anointment of the
person and mission of Jesus, as seen particularly in the Trinitarian event of his baptism. The
Spirit remains in and over him throughout his whole life in deeds and words, culminating in
the cross, descent, resurrection, commission and ascension. Balthasar’s theology of the
Trinitarian inversion or change of places of the Trinitarian persons through the economic
outworking of the taxonomy of the immanent Trinity was presented and assessed as an idea
that manages to integrate theological ideas that often are not thought through together and
thus as a proposal for heightened theological coherence. But the notion must not be
understood as absolutely as to involve a plain contradiction between the orders of the
immanent and economic Trinity. Likewise, Balthasar’s notion of the Spirit’s affection or
“gain” through being the Spirit of the incarnate Christ was assessed as a promising theological
idea and as a legitimate pneumatological-Trinitarian development of the Rahnerian emphasis
on the Son becoming something he was not through the incarnation. But again, care is needed
that this notion does not shutter any coherent account of the immutability of God.
The Spirit’s work in the church was the theme of § 15. Ecclesiology has the most prominent
place in Balthasar’s development of his pneumatology, both as regards use of pages and
dogmatic importance. The chapter did not go into many intra-Catholic disputes because of the
ecumenical aspirations and theological context of this dissertation. The analysis centered on
Balthasar’s distinction between objective and subjective in the work of the Spirit, which he
quite originally deduces from the Spirit’s inner-Trinitarian position as both objective witness
to the love of Father and Son and as the flaming subjective love between them and uniting
them. Balthasar’s attempt to unify Spirit and institution was assessed as based on an important
biblical intuition, while some of his remarks on the Charismatic or Renewal movement were
deepened and made more nuanced through insights from the work of Antony C. Thiselton and
others. The chapter concluded with some critical remarks on Balthasar’s theology of the
papacy, whose notion of infallibility is deeply problematic in light of many of the findings of
this dissertation regarding truth; two particularly important aspects are the finiteness of all
human knowing and the need for complete freedom in the genuine search for truth. Roman
Catholic ecclesiology and papalogy are furthermore not consistent with Balthasar’s
acknowledgement in other contexts that there are no unambiguous proofs of the possession or
experience of the Spirit and his work in this world.
The Spirit’s presence and work outside the church was the theme of § 16. Balthasar’s
development of this aspect of pneumatology is sparse, and the very critical assessment
279
concluded that this is due to an overemphasis on the ecclesial in his pneumatology that rests
on an unwarranted restriction of the biblical material to the Johannine entryway. Although
sometimes restrictive, Balthasar’s take on those questions also has promising and creative
sides, and here his coining of the phrase pneuma spermatikon – the Spirit “sown” in created
nature analogous to Justin Martyr’s idea of the preliminary logos spermatikos accessible to all
– was seen as significant. The phrase, which follows coherently from a reflection on the
reciprocity of Son and Spirit applied to the theology of creation, was given a proposal for
further determination based mostly on the work of Amos Yong. I argued that the divine gift of
pneuma spermatikon can be seen as providing ontological resources for human access to
truth, both as regards the existence of being that can be known, and as epistemological
capacities given to human beings created in the image of God. Thus all hermeneutics are
implicitly or explicitly pneumatic. Furthermore, this preliminary and prefiguring gift of the
Spirit is always at work whenever the logos spermatikos is grasped.
Balthasar’s way of creating tensions and discontinuity between OT and NT pneumatology
was discussed by relating that question also to the question of the relation between creation
and redemption, in an argument dependent on the work of John R. Levison. His work shows
clearly that it is not at all “confusion” (Balthasar) when the life-giving breath of God is related
closely to the inspiration of the prophets, or to Christ and the church. As with Christ, the
Spirit is both nature and super-nature, preliminary gift of creation and eschatological fullness
of redemption. But to answer some possible criticisms from a Balthasarian perspective, care is
needed that such a model does not identify the partial with the whole, in other words that one
is conscious that in the same way as the Logos is more than logos spermatikos, the Spirit’s
eschatological-redemptive gifts are also genuinely new and bringing fullness beyond what
was given in creation as pneuma spermatikon. In the following, Balthasar’s rejection of
Wolfhart Pannenberg’s interpretation of the cosmological dimension of the Spirit was
discussed with reference primarily to the work of Amos Yong, who has developed
Pannenberg’s pneumatological cosmology further. Yong’s work manages, in a more extensive
way than Balthasar, to integrate Trinitarian theology in the interdisciplinary dialogue between
theology and science, and that results in presenting a pneumatology of creation that is more
coherent as an interpretation of the whole of reality, being as a whole. But there remain some
important questions to be pursued in future studies of scientific cosmology in dialogue with
pneumatology, especially regarding sin and futility in the evolutionary process and how to
interpret eschatology.
280
§ 17 as an outlook presented some reflections on the practice of theology as a quest for truth
guided by the Spirit of truth based on Balthasar and the findings of the dissertation. It was
argued briefly that a Spirit-inspired theology is practice-oriented in the way questions are
raised and worked out, deeply inspired by God-breathed Scripture and always surprisingly old
and new in its continuity and discontinuity to tradition.
The insights made available in the pneumatological Part III are in retrospect seen to be of
central importance even to the philosophical discussions of Part I and totally indispensable to
the Christological-Trinitarian deliberations of Part II of this dissertation, as the Spirit of truth
is both the Creator Spirit penetrating all being with the breath of life, the Spirit of all truth and
the divine agent of the incarnation: no Spirit, no Christ; no Spirit, no truth.
281
CONCLUSION
This dissertation set out to articulate a coherent systematic theology of the Spirit of truth (§ 2).
Throughout I have been investigating and explicating what it means for the concept of truth
and for pneumatology that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. The philosophy and theology
of Hans Urs von Balthasar have been analyzed in this respect, and they have been discussed
and assessed critically through the theoretical framework provided by Lorenz B. Puntel’s
structural-systematic philosophy (SSP). The most general conclusion is that the Spirit of truth
has ontological and epistemological significance for all truth, the truth of the world as well as
the truth of God revealed in Christ, the Son. This concluding section will unfold that most
general statement by drawing up some larger lines, but without restating the content of the
summaries of each part of the study (§ 8, 11, 18) in that same order.
The articulation of systematic theology in this dissertation, for reasons of presentation, started
in philosophy and ended in pneumatology. Throughout, many connections between those
areas have been shown. Thus the position on the relation between philosophy and theology
that was argued on the basis of Puntel and Balthasar in § 5 finds a performative confirmation
in the content of the dissertation. It has been shown that the posing of the question of who the
Spirit of truth is and what he does within systematic theology turns the attention to a universal
perspective on being as such and as a whole, where data as diverse as common-sense
experience and philosophical stringency, lived and dogmatic theology, must be integrated in
order to achieve some degree of coherence.
While it cannot be argued that the dissertation has arrived at the final “end”1124
where all lines
of thought or all fragments of truth converge, it has been shown that Christology, within a
framework of a “katalogical” doctrine of analogy, can be the key to a universal (that is,
philosophical-theological) relatively coherent concept of truth. Such a doctrine of analogy
emphasizes that creation is ready to receive the Word of God (cf. W. Kasper:
Ansprechbarkeit) because it was made “in” the Son. But because of human finiteness,
contingency and sin, the clearest sights of the watermark imprinted on creation come from
enlightening from above. As God, Christ was able to give all that God is and has, and as a
human being, as a creature, he was able to communicate it in a language and logic that we
could understand, even if it surpasses what we can grasp comprehensively, finally and
1124 Cf. 5.3 and the notion of truth as a regulative idea, 4.2; 10.2.
282
absolutely. Truth is semantic determination,1125
within being, of what is the case. As the truth,
as absolute being present within and in dialogue with contingent being, Christ is the absolute
point of reference, implicit or explicit, in every claim to truth.
The key role of Christ, however, would be a mere bi-role or no role at all without the work of
the Holy Spirit. The Word of the Father is always accompanied and brought forward by his
breath (the Spirit) (cf. § 14), in the economy as well as in eternity. It also holds in creation as
well as in redemption. The Spirit’s work in the life of Christ and within the Church should not
be viewed as exclusive or merely discontinuous, but as intensified and continuous, in relation
to his work through creation. Grace perfects and elevates nature! The Spirit is the breath of
life that keeps all creation in existence, and as such he is the condition of the existence of any
truth at all in this world; he is an indispensable part of the reason why something is the case at
all. That is the ontological aspect of the work of the Spirit of truth in creation. Furthermore,
this breath, this Spirit of wisdom and skill, is installed in human beings, giving them a
hermeneutical capacity to understand, explore and integrate the truth (Logos) inherent in all
kinds of good and beautiful things in all kinds of ways. This is the epistemological aspect. In
this sense, the Spirit is the pneuma spermatikon accompanying the logos spermatikos.
Balthasar’s gift-oriented philosophical phenomenology of truth is one important perspective
on this work of the Spirit, even if that is not very explicitly stated by himself.
When the Son becomes a part of world history, this happens by a work of the Spirit who
conceives him in the womb of Mary, and fills him throughout his earthly life (again, an
ontological aspect of the work of the Spirit of Christ, who is the truth). And since the days of
Christ’s earthly life, the Spirit has been out primarily to make human beings “see” Christ (an
epistemological aspect), to communicate the truth that he is and makes witness to in the
world, and in consequence, to the Church. This happens objectively, by means of the gospel
(as proclaimed and interpreted via Scripture, tradition and office) and the sacramental life of
the Church, and subjectively, through the outpouring of the knowable but knowledge-
transcending love in human hearts, the flame of prayer, mysticism and charismatic
phenomena within the limits of Christ-centeredness. And more than that, he guides believers
into this truth in order to make them live in it. Thus when the psalmist prays that he may
“walk in your [the Lord’s] truth” (Ps 86:11, cf. 25:5), Paul voices the same concern by saying:
1125 In Puntel’s thought, this semantic determination is explicitly related to (philosophical) language only. From
Balthasar, I have proposed expanding this notion of what semantic determination is by including the “language”
of the body (wordless communication), partly on the basis of the incarnation.
283
“walk in the Spirit!” (Gal 5:16; cf. Rom 8:4), for the Spirit is the truth (1 John 5:6), and to live
in the truth is therefore also to live in the Spirit. Even that holds as much philosophically as
theologically. Thus if Christ is the key, it was perhaps the Spirit who made or who constitutes
the lock.
In the closing of the introduction (§ 4) Herbert Fronhofen’s question of whether it is possible
to add a theory of the incarnation to the structural-systematic philosophy of Puntel was
referred to briefly. The dissertation has shown that this is possible at least in the questions
discussed within, although with minor adjustments in both theories. It has, furthermore, been
shown how central insights in the SSP can be further explicated by means of theological
determination. Important aspects include the idea of Christ as the key to a universal
philosophical-theological truth concept, elements of Trinitarian theology that support the idea
of the positivity of difference and plurality, and the determination of love as the highest act of
being.
Balthasar’s theology has been a valuable resource throughout the dissertation for the
articulation of a systematic theology of the Spirit of truth. Contrary to what is claimed by
some of his critics, his pneumatology is not some addendum to his theology (say, of the
“binity” of Father and Son, etc.), but an important integrated part of a theology that is in
general and in most thematic aspects Trinitarian, Christo-centric and philosophically
informed.
Formally, the strongest tension in his theology lies in his style. Though synthetically
integrative and creative in a way that is rare, his thinking and writing are also marked by some
“aesthetic” theoretical impreciseness and he perhaps sometimes asserts more than argues, in
handling both Scripture and the Christian tradition. In this respect, a reconstruction within a
more stringent and explicit theoretical framework has served to heighten the coherence of his
thought. Materially, the greatest difficulty in his theology in the questions discussed in this
dissertation has been found in a certain overemphasis on the Johannine entryway into
pneumatology, resulting in an underdeveloped theology of the work of the Spirit outside the
Church, or at the level of creation. Another important point, which has not been worked out at
the same length here, concerns the Thomistic understanding of esse, which needs to address
the criticism of Puntel and SSP in order to avoid inconsistencies and increase coherence. On
the positive side can be noted Balthasar’s very appealing down-to-earth phenomenology of
truth and the anchoring of consciousness dramatically in the “mother’s smile,” as well as his
284
original and suggestive solutions to some classical theological cruxes such as the economic
and immanent Trinity, Filioque, and the immutability and/or impassibility of God.
Furthermore, he also constructs a Christo-centric and Trinitarian theology of the Spirit’s work
in the Church that can help the Spirit vs. institution, charism vs. office, extra-ordinary vs.
ordinary etc. discussions and practices move forward. His doctrine of the Spirit’s work in the
world also contains valuable resources, such as the idea of pneuma spermatikon, but they
need to be integrated in a more developed pneumatology of creation.
Many times in my presentation I have pointed to questions that need further investigation than
what could be given within the limits of this dissertation. Some important areas include the
common Puntelian and Balthasarian criticsm of the Kantian “gap” (7.3), Balthasar’s theology
of Christ’s descent into hell (§ 10, § 14), the question of how to use Scripture in systematic
theology (12.1), the century-old Filioque debate (14.2), pressing concerns in ecumenical and
Catholic ecclesiology (15.2), the question of how to relate “cosmic” pneumatology to current
evolutionary sciences (16.2), and an outworking of pneuma spermatikon theology with
respect to the theology of religions (16.3). The current increase in theological work on
Balthasar suggests that those and other questions will be approached again as the scholarly
community moves forward. Hopefully, this dissertation has also contributed to that
movement, by showing some aspects of how the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of all truth.
285
At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense.
“You are out of your mind, Paul!” he shouted. “Your great learning is driving you insane.”
“I am not insane, most excellent Festus,” Paul replied.
“What I am saying is true and reasonable.”
(Acts 26:24f)
286
287
EPILOGUE: VENI, SPIRITUS VERITATIS
Gå gjennom byens lange, rette gater,
du sommerlyse Hellig ånd.
Stryk ømt henover slitte, grå fasader,
og rør de trette smilebånd,
så troen gror og håpet bor
der dørene blir åpnet for de andre.
Lås porter opp når kveldene blir sene,
septembermilde kjærlighet.
Ja, syng om Gud for dem som er alene,
og dem som kjenner bitterhet,
så triste ler og blinde ser
at livet stadig vekk er verd å leve.
Blås ny luft over byens torg og plasser
du vinterklare sannhetsånd.
Treng inn i maktens grå kontorpalasser,
og tenn oss med Guds milde hånd,
så denne by med lys på ny
kan smykke seg i glede til Hans komme.
Kom til oss når vi frykter andres dommer,
du vårens yre skapermakt.
Forkynn at Jesus Kristus, når han kommer,
vil gi oss liv, slik han har sagt!
Så vi går ut i tro til Gud
og lever uten frykt i nådens sommer.
(Holger Lissner 1990, trans. Eyvind Skeie)
288
In the beginning there was nothing.
No. In the beginning was the Word.
And the Word was no thing. The Word was God.
The Word was no thing, but all things were made in the Word and for the Word, they are his
own. In God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit all things live, move and have their being.
In the beginning – or before, over, throughout and beyond, and encompassing the beginning –
God the Word was with the Loving Father and you, the Holy Spirit, Lord and giver of life and
love, and truth.
From the beginning, we – and everything existent, living, good and beautiful – were a gift that
you have given us1126
by your glorification and perfection of everything that the Son receives
from the Father. You always take his untraceable riches and give them to us as the gifts that
exceed all measures. From the beginning you pondered the depths of this high, wide and long,
always-surpassing divine love in order to pour it out into our hearts and communicate it to our
minds.
Spirit of Truth, we adore you. You blow everywhere in order to direct our lives and attention
to the whole truth of the Son in whom the world was created and redeemed.
Spirit of Love, we love you. Or rather: You have made us love you by the love of the Father,
the love shown in the cross of the Son for us, the love that you have poured out in our hearts.
Let your flaming love that surrounds the ineffable mystery of the ever-loving Father and the
ever-beloved Son be on fire also in our hearts.
Make us Christ-bearers,1127
truth-bearers and truth-doers in our life on the way to the Father:
bearing the truth into the world by a true life in love – alētheuontes en agapē.1128
Veni, Spiritus veritatis: Come, Spirit of truth, renew everything damaged by sin and lie. Guide
us to the whole truth of the whole, to the depths of the triune love, home to the Father; by the
Son who is the way you make us walk on, the truth you make us know and the life you make
us live. Amen.
1126 Cf. Balthasar, Creator Spirit, 542.
1127 Cf. Ignatius’ Letter to the Ephesians 9:2.
1128 Eph 4:15.
289
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Cited Works by Hans Urs von Balthasar
The list below contains only the English version of cited works by Balthasar, adding some
works in German that have not been translated. For further information see the volume
compiled by Cornelia Capol and Claudia Müller, Hans Urs von Balthasar: Bibliographie
1925-2005. Freiburg: Johannes Verlag Einsiedeln, 2005. All details on original publication,
different editions and translations into various languages can be found there. The list is sorted
by publication year of the edition referred to.
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Das Ganze im Fragment: Aspekte der Geschichtsteologie. Einsiedeln: Benzinger, 1963.
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Heart of the World. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1979.
First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981.
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Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles. Vol. 2, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological
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The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986.
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290
“Theology and Holiness.” Communio: International Catholic Review 14, no. Winter (1987):
341-50.
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- “The Unknown Lying beyond the Word.” In Explorations in Theology III: Creator
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Cited Works by Other Authors
A complete list of secondary works on the work of Balthasar can be found at:
http://homepage.bluewin.ch/huvbslit/
Abdel-Nour, Fadi. Vérité et amour: une lecture de “La théologique” de Hans Urs von
Balthasar. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2013.
Albus, Michael. Die Wahrheit ist Liebe: Zur Unterscheidung des Christlichen nach Hans Urs
von Balthasar. Freiburg: Herder, 1976.
———. “Spirit and Fire: An Interview with Hans Urs von Balthasar.” Communio:
International Catholic Review 32, no. Fall (2005): 573-593.
Alfsvåg, Knut. What No Mind Has Conceived: On the Significance of Christological
Apophaticism. Leuven: Peeters, 2010.
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Baumgartner, Thimo Heisenberg and Sebastian Krebs, 45-61: University of Bamberg
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Augustine, Saint. The Trinity. Translated by Edmund Hill. New York: New City Press, 1991.
———. Essential Sermons. Translated by Edmund Hill. New York: New City Press, 2007.
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Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
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———. Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music. Grand Rapids: Baker
Academic, 2007.
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Analogy of Being, edited by Thomas J. White, 35-87, 2011.
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Theologie.” Catholica 40 (1986): 229-45.
———. “Meta-anthropology and Christology: On the Philosophy of Hans Urs von
Balthasar.” Communio: International Catholic Review 20, no. Spring (1993): 129-146.
———. “The Theological Importance of a Philosophy of Being.” In Reason and the Reasons
of Faith, edited by Paul J. Griffiths and Reinhard Hütter, 295-326. New York: T&T
Clark International, 2005.
———. “Analogia Entis as an Expression of Love according to Ferdinand Ulrich.” In The
Analogy of Being, edited by Thomas J. White, 314-37, 2011.
———. “Attachment Theory and Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Creation.” Analecta
Hermeneutica, no. 3 (2011).
———. “Kreuz und Gott: Implikationen der Kreuzestheologie Hans Urs von Balthasars für
die Gotteslehre.” Paper presented at the Jahresgedächtnis für Hans Urs von Balthasar,
Basel, 2013.
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phänomenologischer Zugang zur Theologik Hans Urs von Balthasars. Würzburg:
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———. “Lack of Social Drama in Balthasar’s Theological Dramatics.” Theological Studies
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de Schrijver, Georges. Le Merveilleux Accord de l'Homme et de Dieu: Étude de l'Analogie de
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———. “The Destiny of Christian Metaphysics: Reflections on the Analogia Entis.” In The
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———. The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss. New Haven: Yale University
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