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Balthasar and his Christology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Aidan Nichols OP
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Extract

Hans Urs von Balthasar, the important Swiss theologian, will be celebrating his eightieth birthday on August 12th.

Pope John Paul’s singling out of Hans Urs von Balthasar for the Paul VI award, for his contribution to Catholic theology, almost certainly marks his emergence as the preferred Catholic theologian of the pontificate. Interest in his thought is bound to increase, especially with the English translation of his master-work Herrlichkeit, now proceeding. Our aim here is to present what can only be an introductory picture of the man and his work, still—amazingly—so little known in the English-speaking world in spite of the fact that his eightieth birthday is at hand and he has been writing for fifty years. We are not attempting to summarize everything (that would be an impossibility) but considering the central theme of his writing, his Christology.

Balthasar was born in Lucerne in 1905. It is probably significant that he was born in that particular Swiss city, whose name is virtually synonymous with Catholicism in Swiss history. The centre of resistance to the Reformation in the sixteenth century, in the nineteenth it led the Catholic cantons in what was virtually a civil war of religion, the War of the Sonderbund (which they lost). Even today it is very much a city of churches, of religious frescoes, of bells. Balthasar is a very self-consciously Catholic author. He was educated by both Benedictines and Jesuits, and then in 1923 began a university education divided between four Universities: Munich, Vienna, Berlin—where he heard Romano Guardini, for whom a Chair of Catholic Philosophy had been created in the heartland of Prussian Protestantism—and finally Zurich.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 66 , Issue 781-782 , July 1985 , pp. 317 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 On 23.6.1984; an English‐language account is provided in L'Osservatore Romano for 23.7.1984.

2 Balthasar, H.U. von, Herrlichkeit. Eine theologische Ästhetik (Einsiedeln 1961–9)Google Scholar; ET, The Glory of God (Edinburgh and San Francisco 1983–)Google Scholar.

3 Balthasar's own estimate of his life and work is in Rechenschaft (Einsiedeln 1965). The most thorough study of his theology to date is Moda, A., Hans Urs von Balthasar (Bari 1976)Google Scholar; for his Christology see also Marchesi, G., La Cristologia di Hans Urs von Balthasar (Rome 1977)Google Scholar.

4 See Balthasar, H.U. von, Romano Guardini. Reform aus dem Ursprung (Munich 1970)Google Scholar: the title is significant.

5 See especially Herlichkeit III/1.

6 By deLubac, H. in ‘Un testimonio di Crislo. Hans Urs von Balthasar’, Humanitas 20 (1965)p. 853Google Scholar.

7 vonBallhasar, H. U. Die Metaphysik Erich Pyrzwara’, Schweizer Rundschau 33 (1933), pp. 488–499Google Scholar. Pryzwara convinced himself of the importance of the analogy of being in theology.

8 Balthasar has compared the ‘evangelicalism’ of the Exercises to that not only of Barth but of Luther! See Rechenschaft op. cit. pp. 7–8.

9 See R. Aubert's summary of the Nouvelle Theologie in Bilan de la théologie du vingtième siècle (Paris 1971), I. pp. 457–460Google Scholar.

10 Pius XII, Humani Generis 14–17.

11 Stressed by Mondin, B., ‘Hans Urs von Balthasar e I'estetica teologica’ in I grandi teologi del secolo ventesimo 1 (Turin 1969), pp. 268–9Google Scholar.

12 De Lubac spoke of Balthasar enjoying ‘una specie di connaturalità’ with the Fathers; but he has never suffered from that tiresome suspension of all criticism of patristic theology which is sometimes found, not least in England. In Liturgie Cosmique: Maxime le Confesseur (Paris 1947) he points out that the Fathers stand at the beginning (only) of Christian thought, pp. 7–8.

13 von Balthasar, H.U., Erster Blick auf Adrienne von Speyr (Einsiedeln 1967)Google Scholar, with full bibliography.

14 Parole el mystère chez Origène (Paris 1957)Google Scholar; Présence et pensée. Essai sur la philosophie religieuse de Grégoire de Nysse (Paris 1942)Google Scholar; Kosmische Liturgie. Höhe und Krise des griechischen Weltbilds bei Maximus Confessor (Freiburg 1941)Google Scholar.

15 Bernanos (Cologne 1954)Google Scholar.

16 Apokalypse der deutschen Seele (Salzburg 1937–9)Google Scholar.

17 Wahrheit. Wahrheit der Welt (Einsiedeln 1947)Google Scholar.

18 Thus Herrlichkeit op. cit.

19 Theodramatik (Einsiedeln 1973–6)Google Scholar.

20 The ‘Theoligik’ is not yet written; a good idea of its likely contents may be gained from Das Ganze im Fragment (Einsiedeln 1963)Google Scholar.

21 ‘Der Ort der Theologie’, Verbum Caro (Einsiedeln 1960)Google Scholar.

22 Karl Barth. Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie (Cologne 1951)Google Scholar.

23 By Professor T.F. Torrance, to the present author in a private conversation.

24 op. cit. pp. 335–372.

25 Pensées 449 in the Lafuma numbering.

26 See Schleifung der Bastionen (Einsiedeln 1952)Google Scholar; Wer ist ein Christ? (Einsiedeln 1965)Google Scholar; Cordula Oder der Ernstfall (Einsiedeln 1966)Google Scholar. The notion that, because Christian existence has its own form, which is founded on the prior form of Christ, Christian proclamation does not (strictly speaking) need philosophical or social scientific mediations, is the clearest link between Balthasar and Pope John Paul II. See, for instance, the papal address to the South American bishops at Puebla.

27 Herrlichkeit I pp. 123–658.

28 Einfaltungen. Auf Wegen christlicher Einigung (Munich 1969)Google Scholar.

29 Cf. Nichols, A. OP, The Art of God Incarnate (London 1980), pp. 105–152Google Scholar.

30 For an excellent analysis of Balthasar's twofold Christological ‘evidence’, see A. Moda op. cit. pp. 305–410.

31 By H. Vorgrimler, in Bilan de la Théologie du vingtième siècle op. cit. pp. 686ff.

32 We can say that, had Balthasar been St. Thomas, he would have begun the Tertia pars of the Summa at Question 36: de manifestation Christi nati.

33 ‘Mysterium Paschale’, in Mysterium Salutis III/2 (Einsiedeln 1962), pp. 133–158.

34 Glaubhaft ist nur Liebe (Einsiedeln 1963), p. 57.

35 ‘Mysterium Paschale’, art. cit. pp. 227–255. Balthasar speaks of a ‘contemplative Holy Saturday’ as the centre of theology, in contra‐distinction to G.W.F Hegel's ‘speculative Good Friday’.

36 See J. Chaine, ‘La Descente du Christ aux enfers’, Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplément II.

37 G. Marchesi, op. cit. p. 351.

38 The French translation of Herrlichkeit is entitled ‘La Gloire et la Croix’.

39 Newman's affirmation in verse four of the angelic chorus in the ‘Dream of Gerontius’ that what refined flesh and blood in the Incarnation and Atonement was a ‘higher gift than grace’ recalls Balthasar's insistence that the divine Son did not come primarily to teach (verum), or to help us (bonum) but to show us himself (pulchrum).