Search Results

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.

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 3 focuses on Balthasar's theological aesthetics as a well‐articulated critical methodology. Balthasar's fusion of aesthetics with history forges both a Christology and an analogy of being that is developed in light of that Christology. Balthasar urges us to “see the form [of Christ]” in all manner of being and experience—human activities, natural phenomena, and especially human works of art. “Seeing the form” becomes a central critical and theological hermeneutic; and the chapter cultivates a parallel between “seeing the form” and interpreting, broadly, the “word(s)” of narrative art. The first three sections of the chapter develop an aesthetics of a representative word (in this case, the term “hierarchy”); the last section is an application of what is gleaned from the first three upon Flannery O'Connor's “Revelation.” While a close reading of O'Connor's text serves as a literary exemplum of a Catholic imagination, other poets and authors who demonstrate a similar theological aesthetic are considered in order round out the discussion.

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.

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.

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 chapter discusses another domain within which hybrid goods may be realized, again seeking to extend the range of such goods beyond what is envisaged in Aquinas’s account. This time, we examine the contribution of bodily demeanour to the spiritual life, distinguishing the phenomenon that is of interest for us from behaviour that is theologically appropriate because morally efficacious. We also explore the idea that the hybrid goods that arise in this context have an aesthetic character. We consider the novelty of this proposal by introducing two other accounts of the aesthetic significance of the body for the spiritual life, here drawing on the work of Jeremy Begbie and George Pattison. The approach developed in this volume occupies a middle ground, by affirming that there are distinctively theological aesthetic goods, while at the same time retaining, and extending, conventional measures of aesthetic excellence.

This chapter advances the central claim of this study: Balthasar’s theological aesthetics calls for perception of the ‘form’ (Gestalt), and the form consists of both sensory and ‘supersensory’ aspects (i.e., a material component and a ‘spiritual’ dimension, species and lumen, forma and splendor). Therefore, some account of the way in which this human perception exceeds the material realm is absolutely essential to the success of Balthasar’s project. In other words, it is precisely because the form itself has both sensory and supersensory aspects that the perception of that form must be both sensory and supersensory. Balthasar’s theological aesthetics thus clamours for a doctrine of the spiritual senses; in fact, one could go so far as to claim that if such a doctrine did not already exist, then for purposes of his theological aesthetics Balthasar would need to invent it.

This chapter explores the far-reaching implications of the claim made in Chapter 5 by looking at Balthasar’s engagement with the pressing theological issues of his day. It demonstrates that many of Balthasar’s critiques of Neo-Scholasticism, Catholic Modernism, Rahner, and Barth all actually have, at their core, his version of the spiritual senses. By examining topics such as the nature of faith, natural theology, apologetics, aesthetic experience, and the relationship between nature and grace, we shall see that the spiritual senses comprise an integral component of the Balthasarian solution to the problems encountered in these debates. Therefore, the treatment of the spiritual senses in this chapter offers ways of advancing theological discussion, not only for Balthasar scholarship, but, more broadly, for a recurrent set of challenges presented to modern theology.