God's Glory Appears: Prophet of all Prophets on the Cross

THE NOTION OF OBEDIENCE plays an important role in von Balthasar's understanding of ethics.  However, his understanding of obedience is not a concept of submission to an external authority.  His concept of obedience is how he characterizes an authentic human response to beauty, in particular, to the beauty of the divine form in response to the divine address, a response to the glory of God expressed in the theodrama, specifically, the Christ-event.  Obedience is, in von Balthasar's view, response to God's glory, in particular God's salvific work in Christ.

The Christ-event revolutionizes the Christian and transforms his ethics.  The obediential (if also fully autonomous) response of a Christi to Jesus is one informed by thanksgiving, by gratitude, ultimately by love.

The form of the crucified love "is so majestic" that its perception "exacts" something from the beholder, an "attitude of adoration." [But it also] transfixes it: the Christian lives and acts in the horizontal but with eyes of love turned upward. The moral good now includes a contemplative dimension, not only in discerning the good but also as an essential aspect of what it means to live that good. This essential verticality opens our lives to the personal God of Jesus Christ because it is in this moral response tied to God that we are receptive to being surprised, challenged, disturbed, undeservedly called, and unexpectedly favored by God's addressing word.

Steck, 66. The vertical component is central, and von Balthasar is unwilling to bracket it from any other component of the moral life (what we might call the "horizontal" component).  It follows that a notion of "natural law" that is removed from the Cross is foreign to von Balthasar.  The Cross is too central to von Balthasar's ethics for him to engage in the notion of pure nature.  Grace is preeminent.

Interpreted in light of the New Testament, the Old Testament can be seen as prefiguring this life of obedience to God's progressive revelation to Abraham, to Moses, and to the prophets.  But this revelation was limited, as was its response.  "The word was heard, but it did not have the power to claim its hearers in the depths of their being, to open their eyes, and to enable them to embrace the truth it proclaimed."  Steck, 69.

It is at the Cross that von Balthasar finds the prefigured obedience resplendently displayed, transformed so that it demands a completely new response, a total response.  "Only here, in the Word made visible as love, and not just as "heard," does that Word claim the full and perfect response of its recipients, a response that is not only obedient but loving."  Steck, 70.

It is as if the entirety of man's salvation history--from Fall to Redemption in Christ--is played out in the life of every person who beholds Christ on the Cross.  He realizes he is fallen, that he is no longer in status naturae integrae, but rather in status naturae lapsae.  This lapsed state requires fixing, and Christ on the gross allows him to repair this lapsed status.  The beholder of the Crucified One therefore finds the means to repair what is broken.  He finds himself in status naturae reparandae, a repairing stage, a status which is intended to lead to a full fixing of his human nature into the status naturae reparatae.  And these stages occur over and over again in the Christian ethical life.  What is sinful in us is a departure from what we are, in our full integrity, intended to be. Christ helps repair that sinfulness in us, and we overcome that sin and gain a new integrity.  All this is empowered by being transfixed upon the One who is transfixed for us on the Cross.

The Christ-event is the central act of the drama, its unifying center, and the point at which the economy [of salvation] becomes a coherent drama. However, the Christ-form is perceived not only by attending to those acts prior and subsequent to the central act of Incarnation, death, and resurrection. Those acts are themselves part of the form of Christ--not in the sense of component elements but rather, in line with Irenaeus's idea of recapitulation, they are the beginning and promise to which Christ is the end and fulfillment.

Steck, 70.  It is as if we see in Christ the entirety of salvation history as manifested in the prophets.  We see the "absoluteness of God's, in contradistinction to human, measure" as proclaimed by the prophet Amos.  We see the "necessary disposition of all spheres," a life ready to be given for God's use, as we seen in Hosea.  We see "the awe and submission of that divine majesty" that is found in Isaiah, the seeming "total futility" of mission as we find in Jeremiah, and the "surrender . . . [of] very self to the mission he was given," such as we see in Ezekiel.  Jesus is the sum total of the prophets.

Again, obedience to command is central to the Christian ethical life in von Balthasar's ethical construct.  And just as the prophets were, in varying ways, obedient to their call, to their mission, so also do we find this in pure form expressed in Jesus, since the "earthly obedience of Christ includes these elements of prophetic obedience" manifested by Israel's earlier prophets.  Steck, 71.

The Crucifixion by Graham Sutherland

It must, however, be insisted that what we have in Christ on the Cross is not simply all the earlier prophets rolled into one.  We have that, but we have something here that is remarkably unique.  It is a one-of-a-kind event that demands obedience of another kind entirely.  Christ's obedience demands our obedience because it is historically and ontologically unique:

The obedience of Christ becomes "the place where the glory [i.e., God] may give utterance to itself" and reveal itself as "boundless self-giving love". In Christ's fidelity to the Father's will, the human word stretches to heaven and begins an unbreakable dialogue of love between the Father and sinful humanity. And as the Christian comes to share in the story of triune love, not merely as recipient off its gift but also as a real participant in the central role, so too will the Christian's life reflect the layered richness of salvation history, including the notes of the discontinuity of prophetic obedience so recapitulated in the obedient and loving surrender of the Son.

Steck, 71.

For von Balthasar, the unique sort of obedience mandated by the Christ-event is not at cross-purposes with human fulfillment.  Indeed, that obedience is intrinsic to human fulfillment.  To see how this is so, however, we need to look at what von Balthasar understands as human fulfillment.  We will look at that in our next posting.

God's Glory Appears: Divine Drama and Divine Command

HANS URS VON BALTHASAR'S thoughts regarding aesthetics and our response to beauty (which is an analogy to our response to the glory of God) and its extension in the the dramatic art form (which is an analogy for understanding the "theodrama" of the Christ-event in its Trinatarian aspect) interplays with his voluntaristic or "divine command" ethical thought and so colors it and distinguishes it from more naked theories of divine command ethics such as Karl Barth's theory (which relies, of course, on its Calvinistic antecedents).

For von Balthasar, "the Godhead is already dramatic life, [and] God can encompass our drama into the divine dram.  This is the meaning and fruit of the Christ-event.  The drama of revelation is a new moment in the already existing drama among the processions" between the three persons of the Trinity.  Steck, 61.

A divine command theory of ethics "holds that the goodness of at least some acts depends in a nontrivial way on God's will."*  Steck, 59.  Von Balthasar appears to hold to a divine command theory of ethics, but it is radically colored or oriented by his  "divine address" theory.  Von Balthasar's divine command theory revolves around the address of God in the dramatic Christ-event.

"For von Balthasar and Barth, the new relationship that Christ effects between God and the human person is not at all peripheral to daily existence, but rather is an essential part of our manner of being in the world."** Steck, 59.  It, of course, involves a deeply personal encounter between one man and the one God.  It is an I-Thou ethic. 

Like any relationship, this divine-human relationship implies interchange, address, and response. And if our covenantal relationship with God is constitutive of our identity as a human person . . . then it follows that the address given us by God and our response to it affect us to our core; they establish us as persons.***

God's address to us in Christ, then, is not something extrinsic to us.  It is not simply carrying out something that God wishes; rather, it is something constitutive to the person, something that confirms us as persons, something that allows us to realize ourselves as persons in an authentic way.

Christ Calls Peter and Andrew by Duccio di Buoninsegna 

The notion of God addressing the human person in Christ is according to Steck something that fits neatly with a divine command theory of ethics, and this for a number of reasons.  First, divine ethics "understands moral action in terms of a response to God's personal call," and so shares in the quality of call-and-response that is central to Von Balthasar's view of the Christ-event.  It seems to be "word-based," not "thing-based" or "good-based."  Viewing the ethical life as call-and-response gives a personalistic ring to ethics, emphasizes the freedom in response, and avoids viewing ethics as involving obedience to "some kind of impersonally valid natural law."  (Steck, 60) (quoting TD2.292)  A command is different than a law.†

Second, a divine command theory is more easily fitted into a covenantal frame of reference.  The Christ-event is at root an invitation to a covenant, an invitation by a sovereign God to an insignificant man to participate in the Trinitarian life of God.  For von Balthasar, "obedience is not only a creaturely submission to God but also a participation in Christ's receptivity to the Father's will."  Steck, 60.  Such participation expands our personhood as it participates in divine personhood and so is ultimately freeing.  "[T]he address to the human existent, like the address of the Father to the Son, is autonomy-granting, personalizing, and indivudalizing."

This intimate, concrete, and covenantal view of von Balthasar's ethics makes it more mission-like.  The command that invites us into the Trinitarian life also invites us to share in the one mission of Christ.

God addresses humanity not only universally but personally, giving each of us a christological "name" that constitutes our idenity and the norm of our conduct. Thus, in describing divine desires for the human agent, von Balthasar rarely uses Barth's favored term, "command," preferring instead terms such as "call," "will," and "address," which have less punctualistic and occasionalistic connotations.

Steck, 60. 

A big distinguishing factor between Barth's ethics and von Balthasar's ethics may be what Barth (disparagingly) called the "damned Catholic And," das verdammte Katholische Und.††  In Barthian ethics, man is nothing next to the sovereign and infinite God.  In von Balthsarian ethics--which are founded within the Catholic tradition--man has his nobility even ad coram Dei. when face-to-face with God.  "For von Balthasar, however, the "And" is part of the glory--the "masterpiece," as he calls it--of God's act of establishing a covenantal relationship."  God "lifts up a genuine dialogue partner, by creating a space where divine and human freedom can encounter one another, without the latter becoming a moment in the former."  Steck, 61.

"The contingent, free [and autonomous] yes to God's address is the place where God's glory shines through in the earthly.  Eliciting this free yes is the goal of the divine drama in Jesus Christ."  Steck, 61.
_______________________________
*This definition given by Steck seems to prove too much, as it suggests that all theologically-based ethical theories are voluntaristic or divine command theories.  For the will of God to be trivial (which would be required to have a theory that is not based upon divine command, i.e., one based upon God's reason or ratio) is close to suggesting that such theories must hold that the natural moral law is untied to God's will, which comes close to saying that God's will is irrelevant in morality. 
**This, of course, is true for any Christian-based ethic. 
***This seems like a problematic formulation.  The address by God to us through Christ does not "establish us as persons."  We are persons by God's creative act (persons by nature) before God addresses us in Christ.  We are  a person that Christ saves, not a thing saved to be a person.
†A command without law (i.e., not placed within a greater context of law or reason) runs the risk of being arbitrary.  Hence the danger of divine command theories, which tend toward occasionalism.
††I haven't been able to find where this is in Barth's writings.  However, it is quoted (without reference) by Hans Küng in his Theologie im Aufbruch: eine ökumenische Grundlegung as the Barthian response to the Catholic insistence that Revelation is found in both Scripture and Tradition ("das verdammte katholische Und").  See also the translation of that work, Theology for the Third Millennium: An Ecumenical View (the "damned Catholic And").

God's Glory Appears: From First Triad to Trinity to the Moral Life

THE MOST FRUITFUL WAY to understand the Revelation of God to man in Von Balthasar's eyes is to understand it as a sort of dramatic event, a particular, one-of-a-kind dramatic event, a "theodrama." Understood through the lens of this "dramatic form" allows us to gain the full Trinitarian aspect of God's revelation in Christ.

Von Balthasar identifies two "triads" that are intrinsic to the dramatic form and so may be found to exist in the theodrama.  The first triad is author, director, and actor.  The second triad is presentation, horizon, and audience.

Just like plays have an author, a director, and actors, so does the theodrama have this triad.  For von Balthasar, this is a "perfect metaphor for the economic Trinity in the theodrama."  (Steck, 55, quoting TDI 3.352)  In other words, what we have here is a pattern or analogy for understanding the Triune God, not in His transcendency (ad intra), but in his expression to the created world (ad extra). 

God the Father is the "author who shapes the drama and makes sure than it has its intended effect on the audience."  Steck, 55.  While he does this, he also must rely upon and grants a certain freedom and spontaneity to the director and actors in performing the work.  While the actor in one perspective "stands above" the director and the actor, he also must "cherish their autonomy."  Steck, 55 (quoting TD 1.280)

The Son of God is "the actor who makes real the author's dramatic idea."  Steck, 55.  While he is bound in a manner to the author's script, he is also designedly free to apply it in a non-mechanistic or non-manneristic way, as the author, God the Father, has necessarily left room for freedom of expression within his work.

The Holy Spirit is for von Balthasar the director, who takes the author's text, interprets, and allows it to speak "in a living and spiritual manner," by "prompting, inspiring, and organizing the actors as they bring their talents and energies to their respective roles."  Steck, 55.

 Trinity by Lucas Cranach the Elder

So, to put it all together, "God the author brings the dram 'into being as a unity'; God the actor conceives and executes his role 'on the basis of a single, unified vision.'; and God the director comes up 'with a unified vision embracing both the drama (with the author's entire creative contribution) and the art of the actors (with their very different creative abilities).'"  Steck, 56 (quoting TD 1.268, 284, 298)

To view Jesus as the divine "actor" in this theodrama allows us to view him further as an actor in a form of tragedy.  He is, as it were, a personification of the Greek tragic figure "who now does what Greek tragedy could never do: tie the contingent to the absolute in a universal way that stamps every existent with its pattern."  Steck, 56.  Jesus overcomes the limitations of philosophy (its universal, non-concrete quality) and the limitations of Greek tragedy or myth (its contingency, its lack of basis in reality).  Jesus is the "concrete universal."  Steck, 56.  (Jesus as the "concrete universal" is another way of stating the historical, ontological, and religious "scandal of particularity" we find in Jesus.)

The reason Jesus is the "concrete universal" is that he "opens for the finite, historical creature a stage in which his finitude is granted eternal (absolute) meaning."  The infinite absolute and universal become man in a contingent, particular, concrete existence in the Incarnation.  This bound together into one divine person both the universal and concrete, both God and man, the Uncreated Absolute and the created particularity.  It thus allows man to overcome his contingent existence and through this "concrete universal" himself become part of the absolute.

As we stated in our last posting, von Balthasar's view of the Christ-event as a sort of theodrama, and this triadic division of the theodrama into author-actor-director is wed to his Christian ethics.  "Whatever form of divine command ethics appears in von Balthasar, it must be interpreted in light of a God who 'authors' our play and give us our (christological) roles but who also makes room for our contribution as we are prompted by the Spirit."  Steck, 56.  Succinctly, the moral life is participation in the theodrama.

God's Glory Appears: The Theodrama

IN PRIOR POSTS WE HAVE SEEN how beauty in nature, particularly in persons, requires not only an openness on the part of the recipient, but a receptiveness to the form of the beautiful object, and a giving of self to the other, all within the envelope of freedom, therefore resulting in a sort of dialogue, a loving exchange, that leads to communion between one person and the other. It is more akin to a mutual self-giving. "[T]he beauty of this form reflects the aesthetic rightness of the mutual exchange of gift given and gratefully received. The epiphany of goodness, we can suggest, is a theophany in earthly form of the triune life." Steck, 50.

So there is for von Balthasar implicit in every authentic human response to beauty a trinitarian aspect.  But though this may be a sort of theophany, it is not, strictly speaking, Revelation.  Our reaction to beauty, however, provides us an analogy for our reaction to the divine beauty, i.e., God's glory.  It provides us therefore a fitting model of how humans ought to response to Revelation.

Revelation--which is a manifestation of the divine beauty or glory of the Lord--is encountered when we have a manifestation of the divine love, specifically "the triune nature of God's love."  Revelation also must contain and effect "God's covenantal intent to include the individual human existence in God's triune love."  Steck, 51.  There is always the possibility of human static in "seeing" God's glory revealed, in choosing another good, or as a result of a disordered soul which hides in its shell of egoism.

To overcome the static, the disordered egoism in our soul which makes us incapable of proper response to God's glory revealed, God must enter history in a "dramatic form," specifically, the form of tragedy.  It is tragedy that is the dramatic form by which God reveals his glory, and so it is tragedy that is "the great, valid cypher of the Christ event." Steck, 51 (GL4.101)

This dramatic form is something more than philosophy, and certainly something entirely other than myth.  Philosophy deals in universals, not particularities.  While myth has the advantage of being open to revelation from above and a sort of particularity, in its Greek form it reached a dead end.  There was "darkness" and "absence" in and ultimate impersonal.  The Greek gods are "above" us and never "with us."  That is why philosophy replaced myth in Greece.  However, philosophical truths do not result in a one-on-one encounter, and do not lead to a communion of giver, gift, and receiver of the gift.  So something other than philosophy and something more real than myth is required for the true God to reveal his glory.  The dramatic form allows for an interpersonal encounter, which is real, and so exceeds the general, impersonal encounter with philosophical truths and the unreal encounter with myth.

 The Oberamagau Passion Play

The dramatic form, however, does borrow the "encounter from above" that is found in myth, but in Revelation the unreal aspect of the myths of men is exchanged for the real aspect of God's glory being revealed.  Ultimately, this is done through tragedy. 

In drama, human action is interpreted in light of some overarching meaning that bestows a final and authoritative judgment on the agent's free historical choices of limited values and goods. The capacity of the dramatic form to interpret concrete existence makes it a particularly appropriate tool of a theological aesthetics. The dramatic story of Christ--what von Balthasar calls the "theodrama"--is the horizon in which the Christian interprets his concrete story. Like the beautiful form, the theodrama awakens a particular response on the part of the person by inviting him to interpret his life in terms of the absolute horizon of covenantal love.

Steck, 53. When Christ reveals himself in the theodrama of the Christ-event, we do not abandon the "'aesthetic lens, but rather move from an 'iconic' aesthetics to a 'dramatic' one."  Steck, 43.  From stasis to dynamis.  The theodrama of the Christ-event is dynamic in the fullest sense of the word since it is dynamic in terms of He who reveals his glory and he who receives the glory of the One revealing.  "God has brought into drama of triune life the drama of fallen human existence, so that 'our play 'plays' in his play."  Steck, 54.   So it is that God enters into our world.

That is why the Christ-event must not be seen only as a Christological event (Christ-in-man), but also as a Trinitarian event (God-in-Three-Persons).  The Trinitarian eternal "play" plays in our temporal "play."  It is a remarkable event wherein God as judge suffers the humiliation of allowing Himself to be judged.  God judges the God-man, and so "something akin to drama is played out between the sovereignty of [God's] judgment and the humiliation whereby he allows himself to be judged," and the voices of the judge and the judged, "are both united and kept distinct by a third, ineffable voice."  Thus Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In Christ . . . [w]e see in this life a God who allows the distance between Father and Son to become the distance of sinful alienation in order that it be overcome through the ever greater unity of divine love.

Steck, 55.

In a sense, there are two "dramas" in the Christ event: the "economic drama," which is the salvific activity of God to man, but there is also the "triune drama" where God reveals his internal life.  There are therefore two separate "triads" associated with a play and likewise with the theodrama.  The first such triad is author, director, and actor.  The second triad is presentation, horizon, and audience.  To grasp these two triads as occurring in the Christ-event is important, because von Balthasar uses the triads as metaphors to help us understand the "economic Trinity," as well as "the manner in which God accomplishes his reconciliation with humanity, without compromising divine transcendence or human freedom."  Steck, 55.  They are also important points of reference in understanding our response to the Christ-event and therefore in understanding the moral life. 

We shall explore these triads a little further in our next posting.

God's Glory Appears: Living "in Christ"

VON BALTHASAR'S ETHICS ARE PAULINE. They heavily rely on the prevalent notion of St. Paul of living a life "in Christ," ἐν Χριστῷ. This phrase (or synonymous phrases such as "in the Lord" (ἐν κυρίῳ) or "in him") are peppered throughout St. Paul's letters, and they clearly envision an incorporation in Christ as do the related formula "with Christ" (σὺν Χριστῷ), "through Christ" (διὰ Χριστῷ), "of Christ" (Χριστοῦ), "for the Lord" (τῷ κυρίῳ) and the like which are also found in St. Paul's epistles. These might be called the "incorporationist formulae" of St. Paul and it is central feature of his moral theology.

The term is both indicative and imperative.  That is, it is used to both express an existing truth and a truth to which we must strive as an ideal.  Perhaps this notion is best encapsulated by the notion of "be what you are."   We are incorporated into Christ, so we ought to act as Christ. 

There are three aspects which may be gained from St. Paul's teaching and which prevail in von Balthasar's ethical theories.

First, the formula "in Christ" clearly envisions an intimate union between the individual Christian (and the Church) and  Christ. It is Christocentric.  This is a vital, symbiotic union, one which is of dynamic influence.  Indeed, St. Paul expresses this symbiosis, this dynamism in language that is reciprocal, where we ebb into Christ and he ebbs into us, to the point that there is a union of persons that can hardly be separated.  "Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me," St. Paul says in Galatians 2:20.  Von Balthasar shares in this Pauline idea, and sees, moreover, like Paul, the Eucharist as being its highest expression.  (1 Cor. 10-11; TD3.24) (Steck, 47)

The second aspect is what effect incorporation into Christ causes the individual Christian.  It is Christomorphic.  Here we come into the notion that incorporation into Christ results in Christ's image being put in man.  The Christian becomes an image, an icon (εἰκών) of the risen Christ. We are "to be conformed to the image of the Son" (τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ).  (Rom. 8:29)  We are therefore to imitate Christ, his poverty, his obedience, his humility, his willingness to suffer for others.  Within this notion is comprehended the imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ.

 Ite, missa est.  

Go forth on your mission to bring the world to Christ!

Yet for von Balthasar, there is something more than incorporation and imitation in the Christian's ethical life.  A third aspect is complementary of the above two aspect.  Our incorporation into Christ, our efforts to become an image of Christ, both lead to the fact that were are to participate in the mission of Christ.  In von Balthasar's words: "For Paul [his being seized by God] means that he must respond to Christ's personal love by surrendering to him in faith and by devoting himself to his apostolic mission.  Thus en [i.e., 'in Christ'] becomes syn ['with Christ'], a participation in Christ's dying and rising and in his work (synergoi)."  Steck, 48 (quoting TD3.247)


Part of Christian living is "making Christ visible," and this task, this mission is part of all those who share in the one body of Christ, by incorporation, through the Eucharist, through conforming themselves to the Lord.


Ite missa est.  Go!  You are sent forth!