Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar.

A dozen years ago I reviewed the English translation of the first volume of von Balthasar's The Glory of the Lord (Commonweal, November 4,1983). Since the, the entire seven volumes of his monumental "theological aesthetics" have appeared in English. And this remarkable achievement is itself only the first part of Balthasar's massive trilogy that includes the multivolume Theo-Drama (some volumes of which have appeared in English) and the Theo-logic (in process of translation). Many readers are familiar with Balthasar's name and some of his more occasional writings, but whether a new epoch of Catholic theology will begin with him ultimately will be decided by the reception of this great trilogy. Hence the pressing need for a reliable guide through the awesome and intimidating edifice. Oake's book provides such a guide, disclosing the underlying pattern that structures Balthasar's work, holding myriad details in dynamic tension.

Oakes writes that his book is not so much for the professional theologian as for "the student and general reader curious about this man much rumored about but little known." As one who probably falls under the rubric of "professional theologian," let me attest that members of the guild have much to learn from this book, even as nonprofessionals will be treated to a demanding, if bracing, theological workout. Oakes rightly allots ample space to the intellectual influences that shaped Balthasar, whose own doctorate was not in theology but in German culture and literature. Goethe and Nietzsche figure as prominently in his background as do his beloved Fathers of the church. Indeed, Balthasar's interest in the Fathers (and Mothers like Elizabeth of Dijon and Therese) is never antiquarian; they teach him to engage his own culture as critically and creatively as they did theirs.

Furthers, Oakes does not merely report or comment, but genuinely interprets and appropriates Baltharsar's thought in style respectful and enthusiastic, but not hagriographic. Oakes laces his labor of love with references to Pascal and Newman, Hopkins and Eliot, that prove to be not distractions, but helpful elucidations of a theologian who restored "beauty" to the heart of the theological enterprise. For the first part of the trilogy views God's revelation "aesthetically": under the form of the beautiful.

This focus upon beauty allows Balthasar both to appreciate the eros, the striving for the beautiful, represented by "Athens," and to celebrate the fulfillment manifested uniquely in "Jerusalem." The revelation of the glory of God on the face of Christ recapitulates and transforms all the intimations of beauty found in nature and history and enraptures the beholder. The believer's proper response is neither demonstration nor defense, but worship and contemplation. Balthasar's stated aim is to provide "a kneeling theology," whose poles are "adoration and sanctity, or love of God and neighbor."

This reforging of the links between theology and spirituality, between study and sanctity, is what makes Balthasar's thought so compelling. Yet it does not entail any retreat from the world, any lessening of commitment to action. Balthasar made a painful decision to leave the Jesuits in 1950, having discerned a call to support and promote a secular institute, the Community of Saint John. His theology allows no simplistic separation between orthodoxy and orthopraxis, contemplation and commitment. Rather, "the deeper must be the contemplation that precedes and follows it."

In Balthasar's view, the divorce of theology and spirituality bears special responsibility for the tragic dissociation of sensibility that has plagued Western Christianity for centuries. Oakes takes up-this theme in his chapter, "The Archaeology ok Alienated Beauty," rehearsing Balthasar's passionate lament over the devolution that saw "those theologians most attuned to the beauty of the Christian religion" (thinkers and poets like Dante, Pascal, and Peguy) progressively alienated from it. They protest a narrowing down of Christian theology" to the "timeless pursuit of the schools;" and demand, instead, "an understanding of revelation in the context of the history of the world and the actual present." Dante's great refusal, embodied in the figure of Beatrice, to isolate revelation from contemporary history, epitomizes this genuinely sacramental aesthetic.

In the second part of the trilogy, the Theo-Drama, Balthasar presents the dramatic encounter of infinite and finite freedom, of divine grandeur and human dignity. Here the Christological concentration grows most intense, culminating in Balthasar's controversial meditation upon Holy Saturday as Christ's descent among the dead to share their dreadful estrangement from the God of life. This paschal pattern of redemption reveals the pouring out of Love into the depths of abandonment and the power of Love transfiguring even the abyss.

Inspired by the Swiss mystic, Adrienne von Speyr, Balthasar came to see Christ's descent into hell as the consummation o the kenosis, the self-emptying of God' Word. In this ultimate revelation of God's glory, beauty is purged of all aestheticism and the action of salvation is accomplished in that disfiguring passion, whose cost is not less than everything. Here the drama of infinite and finite is resolved infinite freedom is expended and finite freedom raised up in the awesome scene of "converging darkness and expanding light."

Most astoundingly, Oakes avows that in the three-day period of Good Friday Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, "some thing happens to God, and this is why this part of the trilogy deserves the title Theo-Drama Drama in every sense of the word, being both a subjective as well as an objective prefix." In the light of so radical a vision how limp and paltry the effort to pigeonhole Balthasar as a "conservative." For, in his thought, suffering," "loss," and "renewal" are somehow part of God's very life, incorporating "godforsakenness into the trinitarian relation of love."

The Theo-Logic draws Balthasar's three-part symphony to its climax. The eternal "logic" of God expresses itself as a "dialogue" of persons: Word of Truth spoken, communion of Spirit shared. Within this eternal rhythm of trinitarian life, the whole historical drama of freedom and sin transpires ... and is transformed. The outcome is not fusion, but communion. The human is embraced, not absorbed, by the transcendent Other who is communion of persons: Trinity. So far is Balthasar's theological vision from any monistic and disincarnate Platonism that he can confess: "the deepest thing in Christianity is God's love for the earth."

A sympathetic commentator has written: [Balthasar] wrote more books than a normal person can be expected to read in a lifetime." How fortunate, then, to have Edward Oakes's erudite and passionate guide to direct our reading (annoying misprints and occasional hasty construction notwithstanding)! For Balthasar's theology leads, with reverence and sureness, to the very threshold of Mystery.