Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Dramatizing theology
- 2 Freedom and indifference
- 3 Epic history and the question of tragedy
- 4 Eschatology and the existential register
- 5 Analogy's unaccountable scaffolding
- 6 Theodramatics, history and the Holy Spirit
- Postscript
- Select bibliography
- Index
5 - Analogy's unaccountable scaffolding
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Dramatizing theology
- 2 Freedom and indifference
- 3 Epic history and the question of tragedy
- 4 Eschatology and the existential register
- 5 Analogy's unaccountable scaffolding
- 6 Theodramatics, history and the Holy Spirit
- Postscript
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
JACOB
A clear night in the desert
And even the camels are blinking in wonder:
The ladder is too famous
To be anything other than golden
glorious, great before God,
Unless you were there
In which case it shone
In a ray of moon made sun
Softly enmetalled and yet
A thing of wood
Angled from earth
To heady nothingness.
Jacob sees each rung
Each nail dug in
Unaccountably scaffolding skyward.
How long it must have taken
What endless patience
In heavenly construction.
How it must have disturbed the angels –
Who watched it with a thankful sigh
Lower through cloud –
Who tread upon it cautiously.
(sally bushell)Identity and analogy
What the last chapter raised was the crucial question of whether the force of theodramatics – with all its potential in the service of a vibrant theological approach to history, and a vibrant eschatology – is not inevitably muted by stressing the importance of a certain sort of Christian ‘indifference’. A concept of ‘indifference’ in the guise of ecclesial obedience is what we find in von Balthasar's work; it is a concept which, while drawing on a long Christian tradition, nonetheless acquires a significant part of its content from a set of Hegelian associations.
It was a question that had begun to emerge already at the close of chapter 2.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Theology and the Drama of History , pp. 165 - 195Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005