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This chapter shows that Hans Urs von Balthasar and Marie-Dominique Chenu were particularly insistent on the goodness of the created order. Their sacramental approach highlighted the ‘downward’ direction of grace, and they were more insistent than de Lubac and Bouillard on the autonomy of the created order. Balthasar's reading of Irenaeus, Denys, and Maximus regarded analogy of being as the key to their theology, a doctrine Balthasar also defended in dialogue with Karl Barth. At the same time, Balthasar had deep appreciation for Barth's starting-point in Christology. The sacramental character of Chenu's theology stemmed from his focus on theology as contemplation and from his reliance on Denys's symbolism. At the same time, Chenu's accentuation of the autonomy of the created order and his positive evaluation of the desacralizing that set in during the High Middle Ages meant that his sacramental ontology was not always consistent.

The chapter serves both as a brief biography of Balthasar and a protracted bibliography of his work. The consideration of Balthasar's monumental opus (The Glory of the Lord, Theo‐drama, and Theo‐logic) provides a critical “system” in which to read texts and begins to illustrate Balthasar's unique contribution to current discussions about the intersection between theology, history, philosophy, and narrative art. The chapter demonstrates that not only is Balthasar one of the most important Catholic theologians of the twentieth century, but also his work has practical contributions to make to discourses in critical theory. Like critical theory, Balthasar's work is theological, literary, anthropological, philosophical, psychological, political, and historical, which are critical theory's main components. In the spirit of the ressourcement theology that shaped him, Balthasar is primarily interested in renewing attention to older sources in order to critique the idealistic excesses of modernity. In this sense, Balthasar reveals a postmodern temperament: he too is concerned with issues of language and difference, with aporia, with plurality, with surplus, and with horizons of meaning, to name a few. The difference between Balthasar and the majority of critical theorists resides in ontological and theological orientation: it is therefore a difference of imagination and of grammar. The chapter elaborates on these and other dynamic relationships.

Chapter 4 examines the writings of de Lubac’s protégé, Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) to re-evaluate Balthasar’s critique of Kierkegaard’s view of anxiety and aesthetics. It argues that there is a particular Christological problem in Balthasar’s thematization of ‘distance’ in his theology of anxiety and beauty, which could be better addressed if Balthasar attended to Kierkegaard’s dialectical view of anxiety and aesthetics.

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion on how the interpretation of Karl Barth’s theological development has been dominated by Hans Urs von Balthasar’s book, Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie (1951) for over forty years. It identifies three studies that have challenged von Balthasar’s thesis: Eberhard Jüngel’s ‘Von der Dialektik zur Analogie’, Ingrid Spieckermann’s Gotteserkenntnis, and Michael Beintker’s Die Dialektik in der’dialektischen Theologie. A new paradigm for interpreting Barth’s development is then presented.

In addition to laying out a general groundwork for the Catholic imagination as a critical lens—and suggesting a variety of ways that the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar aids critics in articulating such a theological vision—the chapter also attempts to locate the particular phenomena of postmodernism and deconstruction within the intersection of theology and narrative art. Balthasar anticipates the tendency of current critical theory to privilege and emphasize the amorphous breadth of both linguistic and cultural expression; and he anticipates the critical tension between those who read Catholicism as theological truth and those that might read Catholicism as a “fluctuating signifier,” as a cultural and/or literary text. Under this general theme, a dialog is opened with such diverse critics as William Lynch, Paul Giles, Michel De Certeau, and Jacques Derrida. Like them, Balthasar's theology plots a route for appreciating the aesthetic complexity and theological possibility of a broadly canvassed intertextuality and interdisciplinarity. However, Balthasar's program also defends the critical uniqueness of certain theological commitments (e.g., the transcendentals, the Incarnation, and the trinitarian structure of being) and looks to the arts to demonstrate the formal expression and aesthetic span of these phenomena. The chapter concludes with the proposition that it is the recognition of these essential questions that both challenge and aid the articulation of a Catholic imagination and that a turn to representative work in literature, poetry, and film will aid in such an articulation.

Chapter 4 isolates several essential aspects of Balthasar's theodramatic theory and discusses how they “play” in and through Lars von Trier's dramatic film Breaking the Waves (1996), the first installment of his Golden Heart trilogy. It is no coincidence that Balthasar places his theodramatic program precisely between his Aesthetics and Logic in order to emphasize the spatial centrality of God's dramatic action in, with, and through the world. In addition to examining theological mysteries (such as kenosis and the “events” of Holy Saturday), the chapter demonstrates more acutely the many contributions that Balthasar provides the contemporary religious critic. The chapter finds that the retrieval of this powerful relationship between theology and narrative art—between theological rhetoric and dramatic representation—is a main topic of Balthasar's Theodrama and that a serious study of the implications of his theodramatics bears ripe fruit for theorists of contemporary literature.

Revelation is complete with Christ but does not come to a close with him. There is a deep unity between the Christ event and its unfolding through the action of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church. In this sense, Christianity is not a final but a preliminary stage between Christ's first and his last coming. This recognition is important for the understanding of the concept of tradition. Tradition should not be seen in the sense of traditional, but signifies a living reality in which Christ continues to unfold and actualize his truth in every new generation. Prophecy is one of the realizations of this dynamic actualization process. In fact, most of the instances in which revelation is actualized through time (Scripture, Magisterium, theology, dogma, pious traditions, liturgy) have been inspired by prophecy.

This chapter provides an account of the theology of salvation for both Hans Urs Balthasar and Karl Rahner, eminent Roman Catholic, Jesuit theologians of the twentieth century. Dickens explores both the similarities between these two theologians, such as their disdain for the neoscholastic theological method, and their differences, which primarily exist in their conception of the person, distinctive views of sin, and the scope of the reconciliation of God in Christ.

This chapter examines the connection and convergence between the religious music composition of Olivier Messiaen and the works and philosophy of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Messiaen considers von Balthasar a major influence. However, the music of Messiaen appears to fall beyond the theological schemes that it alleges to adhere to, and these theological schemes have the greatest difficulty in maintaining what they actually assert. An analysis of von Balthasar's philosophy indicates that he bases his musical theology on the notations of Gestalt and on the information of the total Idea in the arts, in the form of a flowing rhythm, evolving melody, and theatrical plot of development.

This chapter argues that, for all his debt to the ressourcement theology that he learned at the Jesuit theologate in Lyon, Hans Urs von Balthasar is in fact quite nuanced in his appropriation of the theology of that school, especially of Henri de Lubac's theology of the supernatural. Indeed, he is not just nuanced but also often critical of de Lubac. Even more, for all of his important work in patristics, Balthasar can be quite critical of the project of the church fathers to bring Platonism and the worldview of the Bible into harmony. In both these areas, Balthasar finds himself much more in agreement with the insights of contemporary neo‐Thomism than is usually recognized by contemporary scholarship.

Although Christian prophecy has had a significant impact in the life of the church, it has received rather scarce theological elaboration. This is strange, for with Hans Urs von Balthasar one can rightly ask why God continues to provide prophetic revelations, when apparently they hardly need to be heeded by the church and theology. One of the reasons for the scarce theological elaboration of prophecy is that theology has been highly diversified and specialized in different sub-disciplines. Such necessary specialization constitutes a challenge for the unity of theology. It equally constitutes a challenge for Christian prophecy that calls for diversified theological treatment including dogmatic theology, fundamental theology, exegesis, church history, and mystical theology.

Hans Urs von Balthasar's theological project has often been juxtaposed to Karl Rahner's theological methodology and optimistic tenor. If Rahner was hopeful about the Catholic Church's engagement with modernity and the progress of Vatican II, von Balthasar was highly critical of what he called the epic pretensions of the modern theological project. Von Balthasar's starting point in theological aesthetics is a markedly different starting point than Rahner's Transcendental Thomism. The two theologians, often at odds in their theological judgment of the other's work, continue to represent two competing visions of theological investigation today. This chapter offers a conciliatory reading of Rahner and von Balthasar and argues against the notion that Rahner lacks a theological aesthetic. In effect, it helps both to expose the somewhat artificial gap that exists between Rahner and von Balthasar's theology and to extend paths in which future Rahner scholarship might lead.

The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar points out that life is the drama of God's action in the world. Drama has a unique capacity to illuminate that life and what it reveals about God. By its nature, drama is the most incarnational of the literary genres: for its full realization it needs to be enfleshed, or incarnated. The play provides a glimpse of eternity. It also provides those who experience it with an opportunity for transcendence. The action beckons and invites audiences to approach a transformative truth that can be personally revelatory. The interplay of relationships is the essence of theater, and in this interplay the nature and ambiguity of existence itself can be revealed. Some plays with a distinctly Catholic sensibility are especially attuned to and revelatory of the relationship of the human and the divine. Two that deserve careful attention are Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons and Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa. Both emphasize the interplay of relationships with the eternal meaning that springs from true self-knowledge. It is this interplay that allows individuals to enter into relationship with God and their neighbor.

This chapter argues that nouvelle théologie was characterized by a sacramental sensibility that offered to the modern world a theological recovery of mystery and that this sensibility comes to the fore particularly in the understanding of truth as developed by theologians such as Henri Bouillard, Marie‐Dominique Chenu, Louis Charlier, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. This sacramental view of truth expanded the traditional Thomist doctrine of ‘analogy of being’ (analogia entis) from the area of ontology to that of epistemology. Just as one could say that creaturely being participated in God's being, so also creaturely truth participated in God's truth; at the same time, both divine being and divine truth infinitely transcended human being and human truth. A sacramental or analogical view of truth enabled the nouveaux théologiens to avoid the univocity and extrincisism of neo‐Thomism as well as the equivocity and relativism of Modernism.

This last full chapter confirms, first of all, that tragical vision and mimesis constituted a theological artform in early Christian literature, whereby literary, rhetorical, and dramatic artistry were vital to the eminently theological interests of patristic tragical visionaries and not mere artifices. The “theodramatic” interpretive paradigm of the modern theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar is introduced as a lens through which to reevaluate the compatibility of theology and tragedy in early Christian authors. Other modern Christian tragical visionaries besides Balthasar are also brought into “conversation” with patristic interpreters of the tragic character of creaturely existence, in an effort to demonstrate the theological intelligence and accountability of early Christian tragical mimesis in its various forms, and to highlight the criteria by which “the tragic” has come to be identified in the Christian tradition. It is shown that patristic interpreters often played up human experience of intractable evil and “fateful” suffering in order, paradoxically, to enhance the depths of the divine wisdom and providence operative in creation. Tragical mimesis ultimately integrated “dark” comedy in dramatizing the “folly” of the economy of salvation.

Chapter 5 presents a reading of David Lodge's novel Therapy (1995) in light of Balthasar's Theo‐logic. Lodge does well to illustrate that the erasure of God that preoccupies postmodern consciousness significantly affects contemporary conceptions about “subject formation” and “people in relation.” Lodge develops these themes by constructing a narrative that mirrors both the theological trajectory of Balthasar's tripartite program and the existential progression identified by the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard—namely, the aesthetic, ethical, and religious “stages” of human experience. Importantly, a close consideration of Kierkegaard's stages reveals a direct analogy with the transcendentals, which, in turn, illuminates one of the many reasons why Balthasar admired Kierkegaard and why Lodge's novel is a fertile literary example of Balthasar's Theologic. By a close consideration of the triadic structure of being presented by a variety of sources, the chapter begins to discern how God's logic—how human logic—exists in a trinitarian dynamic.