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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.

Chapter 6 provides a short synthesis of the book. Balthasar's program challenges us to first “see the form” in the world, but also to see the Beautiful, the Good, and the True at work in a broad variety of narrative art. The book finds that, while Balthasar presents us with some practical directives that aid in elucidating the presence and veracity of such a vision, the Catholic imagination proposed does not have a monopoly on such tendencies. At minimum, the examination of the Catholic imagination helps recover the legitimate place of a “theological imagination” in the critical study of literary and narrative art. One conclusion posited is that the careful restoration of the theological imagination to discourses in meaning will aid in reestablishing “a theology of criticism,” that is, the kind of criticism that cultivates a more inclusive array of epistemologies. Another conclusion is that many aspects of postmodern critical thought are helping develop a more grounded—and interdisciplinary—theology of language.

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 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.