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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.

This short Epilogue enhances the central leitmotif of the “drama of the divine” economy. A compelling analogy obtains here with the work of contemporary theologians like Kevin Vanhoozer and Hans Urs von Balthasar, who have reintroduced drama (“theo-drama,” “Christo-drama”) as an evocative theological template. The construction of a drama—with the supporting “scripts” of creation and Scripture, and the interplay of “thick” narrative (mythos) and theological interpretation (logos)—describes well the overall project of developing doctrine on creation in the early church. Irenaeus provided a crucial and enduring model with his principle of the “recapitulation” of all creation in Jesus Christ, and much of the theological cosmology of the early church took the form of an expansion of the fuller christocentric drama and sensus plenior of the “economy” of the triune Creator’s operations in and for the world.

Opening a new section of the book on the “cosmic landscapes” of Maximus’ theology, this chapter presses beyond philosophical cosmology and argues that, in the spirit of his distant predecessor Irenaeus of Lyons, the Confessor envisioned creation as a “theo-drama” gradually disclosing the Logos (Jesus Christ) as the Creator’s embodiment of Wisdom and of sacrificial love for the created “other.” This revelation—both aesthetic and dramatic—is already happening in the deep structure of created nature itself, in the embodiment of the Logos in the logoi, or natural principles, of all things; but it also unfolds at the level of the motion and interaction of individual creatures in their exercise of freedom and their engrained desire to reach their end (telos). But the telos of all creation is participation in the new politeia (existential modality, motion, life, virtue) inaugurated by Jesus Christ.

This chapter discusses Maximus’ interpretation of the oikonomia of salvation and deification, his perspective on the beginning and end of humanity in terms of the concrete contingencies of history and “the fall.” Since Adam lapsed “at the instant he was created,” the burden of Maximus’ theological anthropology is to demonstrate how human “nature” is sufficiently dynamic and resilient not only to survive the fall but to thrive amid its consequences. Maximus treats “nature” dialectically as graced and as stunted, and likewise treats human passibility dialectically as punitive and as contributing to deification. Adam the proto-ascetic shares with his progeny the challenge of negotiating this terrain, wherein sin is not abstract but concrete vice to be overthrown by virtue, including in the context of human sexuality, so vital to cosmic reconciliation and transformation. Maximus relishes the theo-drama of God bringing clarity out of the “ambiguity” of this human history.

This concluding reflection pulls together some of the key proposals of the monograph, reiterating the value of a “theo-dramatic” reading of Maximus’ theology and suggesting once more how his “cosmo-politeian” worldview speaks to the context of seventh-century Byzantine Christian culture. In the end, Maximus thoroughly relativizes imperial authority in the world, and holds all earthly principalities and authorities up to the supreme politeia of Jesus Christ. His rigor with respect to Christology and christological definition were a function of his devotion to this politeia and his conviction that careful understanding of the person of Christ went hand in hand with active participation in the salvific “mystery of Christ.” The Epilogue ends with some musings on Maximus’ significance as an “ecumenical” theologian who, from out of his own context, may yet be “retrieved” for new contexts in East, West, and “Global South.”