Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905-1988)
I feel like I talk too much about Tillich and not enough other theologians who agreed that God is being itself. Balthasar is not as well know but is as deeply respected as Tillich in Catholic circles. He believe God is being itself and personal.
Balthasar
one of the most interesting and brilliant figures of the twentieth
century, yet hardly anyone has heard of him outside the confines of
academic theology. Even most theological students in the Proestant world
are not very familiar with his works. He was a friend of John Paul II,
called “the most cultured man of our time by Henri de Lubac. His
achievements are called ‘breathtaking’ my one of the major catholic
theologians of the century, Carl Rahner.[1]
He wrote over a thousand books and articles. He was born in Lucerne
Switzerland, 1905, and Grew up a Catholic, son of a pious mother.[2]
He took his doctorate from the Liberal Protestant University of Zurich,
having grown up educated by Benedictines and Jesuits. He became a
Jesuit priest. He worked as a student Chaplin in the 30s. He became good
friends with Protestant theologian Karl Barth, one of the greats of the
century.
Balthasar
was unable to work as a full fledged Jesuit priest due to the war years
and the arrangement the government had between Protestants and
Catholics, he was seen as belonging to the area of south Germany. He
made a living as a translator and lecturer and editor. He ran
publications and started a spiritual community. He spent most of his
adult life this way, in association with a woman named Speyr who was
never recognized as a mystic by the church. He had miracles and visions
but being unrecognized, Balthasar’s community was not accepted and he
was unable to gain a post. This situation dominated his life in the
40s,50’s, and 60s. He had to leave the Jesuits. He also lectured in
these years on spiritual topics and made a living that way, but his
health deteriorated as a result. In the 60s he began to be recognized as
a theologian and was given honors and doctorates. In 1988 John Paul II
made him a cardinal. That was also the year of his death. His community
of st. John was a publishing house and he ran a journal called Communio.
These eventually found great success in the 70s and were recognized by
the Vatican. The major avenue to his success was his books and his
lectures.[3]
Balthasar’s
overall theological project centers upon the dualities between human
conflict with ourselves and our place in being. Examples of the
dualities that fascinate Balthasar include: our own contingency and that
of the world around us in contrast to the sense of being itself.[4]
Balthasar openly and obvious equates being with God. In his work about
Balthasar’s live, David L. Schindler includes a short article by
Balthasar himself called “a Resume of my Thought.”[5]
He begins this “resume” by talking about the dilemma between human
contingency and limitation in contrast to the infinite nature of being.
This does not necessitate asserting God up fornt although he’s not
concerned with a “proof.” His thesis is that all human philosophy either
explicitly or tacitly concerns itself with this topic and by
implication tacitly affirms the infinite and the absolute.[6]
He comes to the conclusion that the duality is inescapable. The finite
is not the infinite. Even the monism of the east is seen through nuanced
dualities. Thus he asks the question “why are we not God?” The basis of
the question is that we are aspects of being. We are products of being,
yet we are contingent being, Why are we contingent and not necessary?
The solutions that he ponders seem to end in one way or another with an
indignant God creating a finite world out of need or alienation from his
own infinity. He finds that only the God of the Bible offers a
satisfactory answer, and that answer is in a sense the opposite of what
we would think.
The
common human tendency is to think God created because he needed
something. Balthasar is hinting, I think, that God creates because its
his nature as being to foment more being, in other words, its creative
and God is Creative. It is not for God’s need that he creates but for
what will become our need once we are created. In other words, God
created us so that we can enjoy being, not because he needed us because
once a part of being we would need and would be fulfilled in the need by
love.
No
Philosophy could give a satisfactory response to that question [why did
infinte create finite?] St Paul would say to philosophers that God
created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to obtain the Divine.
That is why all pre Christian philosophy is theological at its summit.
But, in fact, the true response to philosophy could only be given by
Being himself, revealing himself from himself. Will man be capable of
understanding this revelation? The affirmative response will be given
only by the God of the Bible. On the one hand this God, creator of the
world and of man, knows his creature. “I who have created the eye do not
see? I who have created the ear do not hear?” And we add who who have
created language, could not speak and make myself heard?” This posits a
counterpart: to be able to hear and understand the auto-revelation of
God man must in himself be a search for God, a question posed to him.
Thus there is Biblical theology without a religious philosophy. Human
reason must be open to the infinite.[7]
Notice
how he capitalizes “B” in being and refers to being as “himself.” He
personifies being and clearly speaks of it as the creator.
Balthasar
sees the understanding of the revelation of “being himself” (my phrase
based upon his) to humanity as rooted in the most fundamental human
relationship. He says, “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 opens unto him.”[8] What he means by that is it is only through being por soir,
for itself, in other words, consciousness, that we are able to
comprehend the infinite and that only in contrast to the finite. Before
we can do that, however, we have to become aware of ourselves so we can
know we are finite. I think he’s making an implication that love is a
link to being itself, and that through our encounter with love, the
mother, we encounter the father, so to speak—by way of encountering
love. We can see this in four truths that Balthasar finds rooted in this
encounter:
(1)
realizing that he Is other to the mother, the only way the child
realizes he loves the mother; (2) love is good, therefore, being is
good; (3) love is true, therefore, being is true; (4) love evokes joy
therefore being is beautiful.[9] Notice the link between being and love. He is one of the rare theologians to point out this curial link.
The
one, the true, the good, the Beautiful, these are what we call the
transcendental attributes of being, because they surpass all the limits
of essence, and are coextensive with Being. If there is an
insurmountable distance between God and his creature, but if there is
also an analogy between them which cannot be resolved in any form of
identity, there must also exist an analogy between the
transcendentals—between those of the creature and those in God.[10]
In
this quotation he as much as equates being and God, since he speaks of
the attributes of being then connects the understanding of these to the
link between God and the creature. There is more to be said about
Balthasar based upon this observation and it will figure importantly in
two more chapters, including the last one, and the over all conclusion.
Balthasar
confirms for me so many things I thought but didn't have the courage to
say, or that I "sort of thought" but didn't have the intellect to
formulate. I think he boldly and unabashedly resoled the problem of
paradox between personal God and being itself. He was the first to show
me the link bewteen being and love (although Tillich does mention it but
I saw it in Balthasar first). He capitalizes "B" in "Being" and speak
of Being a "he." The idea that God created not becasue he "needed to"
but becasue his nature is creative.
[1] Joel Graver, “a Short Biography,” website:Hans Urs Von Balthasar, an Internet Archieve. URL sighted: http://www.lasalle.edu/~garver/bio.htm (visited 12/3/10).
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid, “overview of Balthasar’s project: URL: http://www.joelgarver.com/writ/theo/balt/overview.htm
[5] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “A Resume of my Thought,” in David L. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work. San Francisco:Ignatious Press, 1991, on like version p1-2 URL:
[6] Ibid, 1
[7] Ibid., 3
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
No comments:
Post a Comment