At the wane of the twentieth and the dawn of the twenty-first century, two successive pontiffs expressed a clear concern for the relationship between truth and religion – or, more specifically, identified the importance of the search for truth and the knowledge of God. The possibility of such a search was seen to involve the use of faith and reason and the fruition of such a search to involve contemplation. The intellectual search for truth illumined by Gospel contemplation and integrating the mystery of faith and reason was a significant focus of attention both for Pope Benedict XVI1 and his predecessor Pope John Paul II, who stated: “Faith and reason seem to be like two wings by which the human spirit is raised up toward the contemplation of truth. It is God himself who implanted in the minds of men and women an inclination for knowing the truth and an inclination for knowing him, so that knowing and loving him, they may likewise attain the whole truth about their very selves.”2 There is then a graced desire for truth within human persons, and it finds expression in a search for truth that brings engagement with God; and contemplation of God also brings increased knowledge of the truth of oneself. Both John Paul II and Benedict XVI were influenced in this understanding and articulation of truth by the work of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar.
After a substantive introduction identifying key elements of the argument, this chapter is structured into three parts. First, I explore Balthasar’s understanding of the Trinity as source of truth and mystery as intrinsic to truth. Second, I consider the human experience of truth as rooted in the Trinity and inclusive. Third, I explore the way in which prayer is the ground of contemplative engagement with truth and the fecundity of such contemplation for action on behalf of truth.
The search for truth and the process of knowing, Balthasar asserts, must be both rooted and grounded in theology: “There is no such thing as a theologically neutral world for philosophy to investigate.”3 For Balthasar “mystery” is intrinsic to truth, not an optional additional extra.4 At the heart of this mystery is the truth of the Trinity. For Balthasar, the reality of the Trinity is the source of a fullness of interpretation of human existence. Because of my understanding of the distinctions within the Trinity – Father, Son, and Spirit – and the fullness of relationship inherent in one God, distinction and otherness as well as communion may all be an integral part of such mystery, bursting the bounds of any subjective identification. Such an assertion is important for contemporary understanding, where attention has been focused on the question of whether the transcendence that takes place in the knowing process and the search for truth is achieved only through the act of the subject or whether it is something that the object being known co-enables.5
The process of knowing for Balthasar is primarily God’s act of disclosing or unveiling objective content to the thought of the receptive person who then awakens to knowing in wonder and amazement. The divine initiative inspires the process of unveiling, and true reception of such disclosure involves the spirit of wonder and gratitude that is, as it were, the “natural” Christian response to God’s gift of self. Through this process, the receptive human subject transcends personal limitations through grace by being opened to an “other” who is beyond the knowing subject. The focus here is on engaged contemplation as the human subject contemplates the divine disclosure in wonder.
Receptiveness, an opening of one’s self by grace toward the revelation of God, allows for entrance into the intrinsic mystery of truth itself: “This revealed and revealing light, however, is being – the wonder that there is anything at all rather than nothing.”6 Since this knowing subject is only gradually opened to the truth of the object, elements of mystery and obscurity always remain, so that the subject never has total control over the object: “Truth is being’s property of unveiledness, uncoveredness, revealedness, non-hiddenness.”7 This truth in being, for Balthasar, ever remains a gift.8 Truth is not just a property of knowledge – “it is above all a transcendental9 determination of being as such.”10
Balthasar’s premise for this whole process of knowing is that all meaning and all unity lie in God. Individuals can only know God by being “in” God. God alone brings about being, which unveils itself within the world. Therefore, the process of knowing is primarily God’s action of disclosing or unveiling objective content to the receptive person. In this revealing, there is ultimately what Balthasar calls a “poverty of Being and of its sensibility [which] reveals that the sole treasure Being contains, is nothing other than – love.”11 This love is the divine dynamic operative deep within human reality that calls to relationship, and for the believing Christian this relationship is an interaction with the divine life of the Trinity:12 “To say that love is the communion of Christians is not simply to enunciate an abstract principle; rather in the Christian communion of love we share in a personal act of God himself, the tip of which may be seen shining in the person of Christ, but which in its depths contains the interpersonal life of the Blessed Trinity and in its breadth embraces the love of God for the whole world.”13 Here we need to listen to the other and above all the “Other” who is God. In this way, we come to know the truth about ourselves and to truly become ourselves. Above all in the contemplative engagement of prayer do the God-given truth of the human person and divine truth meet. Here there may be the fullest expression of human freedom graced and guaranteed in its lived expression by divine freedom. From this foundation, the salutary practice of speaking the truth can be a grace-filled reality.
As Aidan Nicholls indicates, Balthasar emphasizes that within his Theo-Logic, “a starting point generous enough to be congruent with its subject can only be the way God’s triune being is reflected in the being of the world: imago Trinitatis in ente creato.”14 Love is the final truth of being15 – in the divine essence, in the reciprocal self-gift of the persons, and, since God the Trinity is the Creator, in the created world itself, which bears God’s mark. Supremely in human persons made in the image of God, love is the final truth of human existence, for the creativity of divine love pours itself out in a “glorious self-sharing love of its own divine Source.”16 In this graced sharing of divine love, the individual is brought to a deeper expression of the creaturely reality of what it means to be both a creature and a beloved child of God. This lies at the centre of the covenant relationship to which we are invited.
For Balthasar, the foundation of the God/human covenant is the paradox of God’s glory as love – the divine desire to exchange love with human beings and to bear fruit.17 In consequence, it is not surprising that Balthasar’s own theological project is inherently paradoxical. Indeed, he excels at accentuating contrary – though not contradictory – claims about God and the world, while holding them tenaciously in tension. His method is one of “integration not evolution.”18 He sees the theological task as always involving a scriptural exegesis attentive to the signs of the times. For Balthasar, this theological task also has a “proper centre” in the kenosis19 of the Son.
The kenosis of Christ is where Balthasar’s Trinitarian theology becomes strikingly evident. For Balthasar, the created realm is Christo-form, because Christ is the mediator par excellence between God and the world – the way, the truth, and the life.20 And Christ in being the Word made Flesh is the legible form of the Father.21 His very divinity was hidden in his humanity and was revealed in the glorious drama of incarnation, passion, death, and resurrection. Within these events, Balthasar sees the place where manifestation and hiddenness are one – the very model of unveiled/veiled. The incarnation enables us to glimpse something of the reality of the mystery of love at the heart of God. The paschal mystery Balthasar sees as the culminating expression of the divine loving initiative of the Trinity in Christ’s self-surrender and obedience unto death. The Cross, for Balthasar, is the centre of the world’s history – the saving work of God and the gateway to radiant resurrection.22
Accordingly, the resurrection is the ground, in contradistinction to which the icon of the Cross and hence divine glory can emerge. In fact, divine glory emerges most profoundly because it synthesizes (and is simultaneously iconoclastic of) certain Old Testament images.23 These include the political messiah, the new David who would save the people from their oppressors; the one “coming from above,” the apocalyptic Son of Man who reveals divine power and might; the personification of divine Wisdom herself as co-fashioner of the cosmos; and finally the Suffering Servant, the prophet, whose body and entire being is possessed by God. In the Johannine gospel’s passion drama, the Logos (characterized by sapiential wisdom) who comes “from above” (rooted in apocalyptic tradition) is revealed as king of another realm (related to messianic expectations) raised up on his throne that is the Cross (foreshadowed by Isaiah’s Suffering Servant). The Cross thus becomes the entry point through which humanity encounters a new truth, a new goodness, and the awareness of the most provocative beauty. Christ on the Cross is the “way” to the Father, the eternal source of “life” and goodness as the “truth” of self-emptying love.24 In the drama of the Cross in which God’s heart is broken open and the Trinity is revealed most splendidly, God also hides in the horror of death. In this paradox of revealing as hiding, the truth about God – “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all”;25 “God is love”26 – is revealed. Indeed, Balthasar states, “no philosophy invented by man could dare to make the bold Johannine statement that ‘God is love.’ ”27 For Balthasar, Christ is the centre of life and reveals the reality of the Trinity.
This mystery of the revelation of God involves an ever-greater depth and richness whereby both existence and essence transcend our conceptual grasp of them. This mysteriousness of being Balthasar describes in terms of the interplay of veiling and unveiling as well as in terms of the ground of truth: “Truth is the unconcealment of being.”28 To the extent that being is unknowable, it is already unveiled as such. It is also always unveiled in some particularity, e.g., a human being. There is an ontological confession of particularity by existence itself – as human being and not dog or cat and so on. Balthasar says, “on the other hand, this confession in which things divulge their truth is neither indiscreet nor unlimited. It is bounded by the intimate space in being.”29 Accordingly, things are not only unveiled, they are in equal measure essentially veiled: “This veiling naturally entails a limitation of their unveiling but not necessarily a limitation of their truth.”30 This is because there is not a simple opposition between veiling and unveiling: “Rather, it is more like a form or property that is inherent in the unveiling itself. In fact, things are unveiled as veiled, and it is in this form that they become objects of knowledge.”31 This paradox of unveiled veiling is akin to St Paul’s contention that in our present earthly situation we see through a glass dimly.32
We glimpse something of the mystery of the Trinity, something of the truth that lies at the heart of all reality, but “precisely the unveiledness of being is as such its deep veiling,”33 for we know there is much more that we do not see and know. Yet what we do encounter can be the source of much wonder, joy, gratitude, and love.34 The unavoidable characteristic of truth is that its essence is always more than its appearance, and this “more” is displayed in the essence of its appearance itself.35 This is also part of the mystery of the Trinity. As Balthasar maintains, “only something endowed with mystery is worthy of love,”36 and love itself demands both unveiling and also reverence and thus veiling. True love is full of the true mystery of being’s intimacy, and in the eyes of love the object itself is always ever greater and never wholly comprehensible. The two movements of veiling and unveiling are inextricably interwoven; the life of love cannot be whole without both, for it involves a self-surrender in which love and truth are one.
The mystery of being is essential and ineliminable. As such, it shines forth triumphantly in the full manifestation of truth unveiled. It has to do with the depth, the interiority, and the inestimably precious worth of being. The possibility and actuality of love have their ground in this depth.37 Indeed, insofar as the mystery of love lies “behind” the truth, all truth is reducible to it, derives its meaning as truth from it, and, far from mastering and explaining it as mystery, must fall silent in humility before it.38 At the same time, truth irradiates mystery, and it is the very essence of truth to manifest this radiant mystery through itself.
Truth always presupposes a free, personal inner space, and this personal interiority is a vital keynote. The infinite ground appears in the background of every finite truth. Balthasar writes: “Because divine truth, being the truth of an absolute interiority, necessarily remains a mystery in all of its manifestations, all worldly truth has some share in this mysteriousness. Specifically, the mystery inherent in worldly truth is given into the possession of worldly being, which can therefore act freely and spontaneously out of a personal interiority, yet it always remains only a gift, the gift of participation in the absolute interiority of divine truth, from which the creature draws its own mysteriousness.”39 Absolute truth is precisely not the sphere of general, anonymous truth that is accessible to any and everyone. It is rather the sphere of God’s absolute personal freedom and, therefore, also the sphere of absolute mystery: “Whatever is unveiled before God is for that very reason hidden and veiled in God . . . For this reason alone, the creature knows that it is truly in God’s safekeeping.”40
With Balthasar’s emphasis on the revealing and unveiling God in nature as the truth within being, the object of the knowing process definitely has an active role and facilitates in the transcendence of the subject. God shares God’s truth with human persons inasmuch as God makes God’s ever deeper mystery visible as mystery; and we in turn share our truth with God insofar as we acknowledge this mystery and give it back to God. The love that God has lavished on the world is thus reciprocated with a response of love.
The strength of Theo-Logic is that Balthasar develops a balance between empiricism and Descartes by keeping the “I” and the world in tension: “By an absolute simultaneity, the subject becomes both self-aware and conscious of invasion by the truth of other realities beyond it.”41 Very emphatically, he states: “The subject needs the object in order to unfold itself and attain its own truth. Unless an object displays itself in its receptive space, the subject is incapable of transforming its cognitive potencies into actual knowledge. The stage has been set but remains empty; the drama of knowledge is not acted. It is not until the other enters into the space of the subject that, like Sleeping Beauty, it awakens from its slumber – at once to the world and to itself.”42 For Balthasar, God conducts the unveiling and is the revealer of the mystery of being: “Being’s opening in truth is not a relational ‘opening in itself,’ but an ‘opening for,’ an accessibility that implies that something has been offered to someone.”43 The subject for Balthasar receives and is opened, which leads to transcendence. The ontological unveiling of the creature before God guarantees that the truth of this world is in fact true. Truth is the unconcealment of being, while the full notion of this unconcealment requires someone to whom it is unconcealed.44 This is and only can be God; and in being unveiled to God there is the possibility of being unveiled to other subjects. The creature has its objective truth thanks to its being unveiled before the eternal subject.
Balthasar continues to affirm the deep and absolute human reliance on God. God draws this search for truth into the depths of trust and faith in an eternal search: “On the one hand truth produces definitive certainty, insofar as it puts an end to the tentative groping to know what is, but . . . on the other hand, this closure intrinsically awakens trust and faith and, in so doing, always opens the way to eternal seeking.”45 That search is into the depths of God’s ultimately inexhaustible mystery. This is because God’s truth rests on nothing other than itself and its own infinity.46
The premise on which Balthasar grounds his work is Aquinas’ phrase, “ ‘totius Patris expressio,’ the expression of the Father in his entirety, the Son became incarnate precisely as an act of love . . . so all human cognitive possibilities, which, if they are to converge at all, must do so in the service of love.”47 As Robert Doran has pointed out, “Balthasar . . . follow[s] Aquinas in understanding the divine mission as the eternal processions of Word and Spirit linked to created contingent, external terms.”48 There is truth in the world, and it is real and can be known because of the divine initiative of love.
Balthasar holds that the Trinitarian God who provides, unveils, and gifts all being opens a person to the truth within the world. The subject of knowing can only transcend the self and come to an understanding through the co-enabling of the object itself. Always, Balthasar points to the one God, who is the source of all truth. Temporality is the means through which God’s truth reaches us as creative freedom. Nowhere is this more so the case than when the incarnate Word becomes flesh. In the reality of our lives, though, it is “precisely because this imperishable eternity stands behind the perishable moment” that each moment of our time is so precious, exciting, and demanding.49
Balthasar’s exploration of truth, however, is always made known with an acknowledgement of the communal dimension of the relationship with God: “No creature stands alone before God. It knows that its fellow creature, whose mystery is hidden from it, stands together with it unconcealed and unveiled before God.”50 In this communal reality it is clear that just as individual persons find their full truth only in God, so together a common truth is found in God. To truly know the other, then, it is necessary to contemplate them. For it is only through prayer and self-denial that we are able to see others in their truth – a truth that is in God – and to perceive the common truth that links another with myself in a common humanity.51
This communal relationship with God is, for Balthasar, grounded in love. As he states: “To be sure, God is eternal truth and by this truth all other things are true and meaningful. But the very existence of truth, of eternal truth is grounded in love.”52 This love is made most visible in the person and redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Jesus described himself as “the truth,”53 a word that cannot be defined because it refers to something infinite: “It can only be approached asymptotically by countless definitions. He is truth in so far as he is the ultimate higher integration of all God’s individual self-revelations down through history; all of them are centered on his ‘I.’ Whatever truth is it is judged, aligned and instituted from this center. His ‘I’ is the organic and organizing focus of truth.”54 Everything that we might become aware of in terms of objectified knowledge of God is concentrated in Christ’s subject; in his subjectivity, Christ lives out the truth of God so that we may apprehend it. Living out this truth is the prerogative of God’s only Son, who, as his Word, demonstrates God’s truthfulness to the utmost in the unfolding of his passion, death, and resurrection. The ultimate and crucial test is the Cross, where God hides himself sub contrario.
The whole organism of the Church in all its parts, in other words, preaching, the sacraments, the conduct of Christian existence, those “truths of faith” of doctrine, are in reality modes of existence of Christ, who is at work in the world through the Holy Spirit.55 Since truth is centred on Christ, then Christians always derive their understanding of truth from what is given in and through Christ. In this reception of truth through faith, worship, love, prayer, and thanksgiving, Christians receive grace. Indeed Balthasar argues, “we need cords and ropes of living, constant prayer”56 to hold us to this centre, which is Christ.57
Glimpsing something of the mystery of human existence allows the necessity of prayer, and especially of contemplative listening in prayer, to become clear. For the relationship between God and human persons is now seen to depend on the marvel of the gratuitous love of God. Prayer, for those who pray, is pregnant with a life of the fullest freedom, if we are able to open and give ourselves to the experience. The rich tradition of the Christian Church points to numerous holy people who have borne witness in their lives to their experiences of the fruitfulness of prayer as a place for contemplative engagement with truth in a dynamic relationship with God. The realization of a dialogue is fundamental to prayer, as God’s Word speaks in the intimacy of heart as the Word made flesh and the focal point of all revelation: “In seeing and hearing God [the individual] experiences the highest joy, that of being fulfilled in [oneself], but fulfilled by something infinitely greater than [oneself] and, for that very reason, completely fulfilled and made blessed.”58
Such blessedness involves the recognition of the truth about ourselves, as the Word both reveals the intimate core of the individual and also “gives me to myself.”59 In this way, prayer and particularly contemplation continue the work of the Eucharist and the other sacraments in incorporating human persons in the incarnate Word, such that the sphere of our existence is in Christ.60 There is thus a twofold sense of blessing, in prayer and in the gift of grace, both of which are key constituents of the relationship between God and human persons. Balthasar affirms that through grace and in prayer that human persons are given a greater openness to the truth and a concomitant greater free self-giving: “We can now see the twofold presupposition – objective and subjective – of hearing the word of Christian contemplation: the divine truth must be open to [human persons] and the hearts and minds of [human persons] open to God.”61
Fundamentally, the grace of God, primarily in the Father, makes us able to engage in prayer and contemplation. From this grace we derive the power and the freedom to contemplate the truth open to us. In his twofold movement coming from and returning to the Father, in the power of the Spirit, Christ makes contemplative prayer possible. When the Word became flesh God in the created world became more concrete, and in the ascension the whole world was carried back to God. Both these actions were brought about through the Person of the Son, who is from all eternity the Word of the Father.62
Contemplation is also made possible for us through the work of the Holy Spirit. The sending of the Word of God (the Son) and the imparting of the Holy Spirit are but two parts of a single event, in which divine life and truth are brought to humanity. Through the gift of faith, the Holy Spirit teaches us the truth concerning the Son and we can speak of that truth. The Spirit also leads us progressively into the depths, already opened up, of the truth of God present within us. This is, however, no merely individual enterprise: “Contemplation must always be a renewed ‘hearing’ of what the Spirit speaks to the Church,63 a new hearing of what the Spirit unfolds inwardly to the contemplative mind in its own spirit of faith as members of the Church.”64 Through the Spirit, the Son’s return to the Father makes him the head and life-giving source of the Church, in the outpouring of the Spirit’s life in the sacraments, scripture, the liturgy, preaching, and in the whole of Christian living.65
Balthasar states, “contemplative prayer is the reception of revealed truth by one who believes and loves and therefore desires to apply to it all his powers of reason, will and sense. Consequently, the form of the truth itself must always determine and prescribe the mode of reception.”66 The preeminent form of truth is found in Christ. The life of the Trinity and the life of Christ are not mere paradigms. Crucial for Balthasar is that Christian action participates in the absolute freedom of God’s interpersonal love. Christ – through the incarnation and the bestowal of his Spirit – imparts to us a participation in the infinite freedom of his divine status as Son, by which we are made capable of taking part in his Trinitarian mission. This is an invitation into the realm of divine freedom, and here the false dichotomy between contemplation and action is overcome.67 Christian action is derived from and sustained by contemplation. The source of such contemplation is the divine action: “What we are looking at when we contemplate the love of God is Christ giving himself in love.”68 In contemplating this action of God, then, we are inspired to play our part in the divine drama. Indeed, the credibility of Christian action as an encounter with God and an inspired action for the life of the world is due to it being a grace-filled likeness to the “folly” of divine love. Preempting the inevitable criticism of such an understanding, Balthasar states: “It will be objected that such a program of action demands the character of a saint. This may well be; but from the very beginning, Christian living has always been most credible, where at the very least, it has shown a few faint signs of holiness.”69
God’s active work impels us to active works. In the act of contemplation, then, we encounter both a centrifugal and a centripetal force. We are drawn deeper into the divine depths, the source of all life, and we are also thrust from that source back into the areas of our own now more fecund activity. Paradoxically, if we engage with that activity, drawing from the life we have received in contemplation, we are then drawn yet deeper into that divine source: “The source contains riches sufficient to bless all our activities in this world with fruitfulness, if – and only if – we keep ourselves alive by abiding in the source and never wander away. For here alone is true fruitfulness, and the more we permit this spring of life to touch and quicken the springs of our existence, the more we allow this, the supreme Action, to be the principle of all our actions, the more, too, we shall be rich in fruit.”70 “Christian truth is symphonic,” Balthasar maintains, and is grounded in the Trinity as source of truth and reveals mystery as intrinsic to truth. “Symphony by no means implies a sickly sweet harmony lacking all tension. Great music is always dramatic: there is a continual process of intensification, followed by a release of tension at a higher level.”71 The whole paschal mystery reveals this drama. The musical analogy is most apt for Balthasar, who is an organic rather than a systematic expositor of theology. At the heart of the mystery of the Trinity is the divine dynamic of love that operates in the reciprocal self-gift of persons. From this source, God discloses the meaning of being and truth in a process Balthasar depicts as unveiling and veiling. Such disclosure is focused in and through Christ in the incarnation and paschal mystery. Here it becomes apparent that human experience of truth is rooted in an attentive receptiveness to God and is inclusive of otherness in a communal commitment. Foundational to such receptivity is the engagement with prayer that by the work of the Holy Spirit enables contemplative engagement with truth. Such prayer impels toward fruitful activity in a profound union of contemplation and action.
1 Each month of the year, the Pope announces a prayer intention so that people from around the world, not just Roman Catholics, may pray with him for particular needs. These can be found online at www.zenit.org. Pope Benedict’s general prayer intention for February 2010 was “for all scholars and intellectuals that by means of sincere search for the truth they may arrive at an understanding of the one true God.” The connection between the search for truth and a deep knowledge of God could not have been more clearly stated. In October of that same year, the Pope appeared to underline the importance of scholarly activity within universities in relation to this search for truth by emphasizing also the interconnectedness of faith and reason when he asked for prayers “that Catholic universities may increasingly become places where, in the light of the Gospel, people may experience the unity of faith and reason.”
2 Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio. Cited in Restoring Faith in Reason: A New Translation of the Encyclical Letter Faith and Reason of Pope John Paul II Together with A Commentary and Discussion, edited by Laurence Paul Hemmings and Susan Frank Parsons (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 3.
3 Aidan Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Logic (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 4.
4 For Balthasar, everything that may be known must have some characteristic of mystery, as all objects of knowledge have a creaturely character. This leads to the conclusion that the final truth of all things is “hidden in the mind of the Creator who alone may utter [their] eternal names.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic I: Truth of the World, trans. Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 17.
5 See, by way of comparison, David C. Schindler, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 4.
6 Peter Henrici, “The Philosophy of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, ed. David L. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 165.
7 Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost, 12.
8 As a gift, truth’s transcendental nature and its integral connection with goodness and beauty are most appreciated. Balthasar approaches the mystery of Being from the perspective of the transcendental properties of Being: the One, the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Balthasar deals with the transcendentals in his trilogy: The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (beauty), Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory (goodness), and Theo-Logic: Truth of God (truth). He writes: “We start with a reflection on the situation of man. He exists as a limited being in a limited world, but his reason is open to the unlimited, to all of Being. The proof consists in the recognition of his finitude, of his contingence: I am, but I could also, however, not be. Many things that do not exist could exist. Essences are limited but Being is not. That division, the ‘real distinction’ of St Thomas, is the source of all the religious and philosophical thought of humanity.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 112. At this point there may be fruitful intersection with the following chapter in this volume, “Truth as ‘Being Trued’: Intersections between Ontological Truth in Aquinas and the Contemporary Anthropology of Religion,” by Pamela J. Reeve.
9 Transcendental in this sense refers to a scholastic notion of the properties found in the praedicamenta of intelligible being rather than the post-Kantian condition for the possibility of x.
10 Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 11.
11 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord I: Seeing the Form, ed. Joseph Fessio and John Riches, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), 407. Also see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible, trans. David C. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), which clearly explores throughout this short book how love is the leitmotif of Balthasar’s work.
12 Such an interaction, though, is not just focused on a relationship with the Trinity but, in and through that relationship, a renewed engagement with other human persons. “The significant factor in being a Christian is that [one] does all with reference to and in dependence on the ultimate source of [one’s] action, through loving first and above all things, the God who loves us in Christ in order that [one] may then, by means of and together with love, turn [one’s] attention to the needs of those who are the object of the love of God.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Engagement with God, trans. R. John Halliburton (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2008), 40.
13 Ibid., 41.
14 Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost, 91.
15 Truth is first and foremost a transcendental property of being – rooted in love.
16 Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost, 93.
17 See, by way of comparison, John 15.
18 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord IV: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity, translated by Brian McNeil et al., ed. John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 18.
19 Kenosis or self-emptying finds its scriptural root in Philippians 2:5–11, which is Paul’s hymn extolling the self-emptying of the Son. For Balthasar, Christ’s kenosis is the supreme expression of the inner-Trinitarian love and the paradigm of God’s participation in the covenant.
20 John 14:6. Important to emphasize here is Balthasar’s understanding of the uniqueness of Christ, whose uniqueness is diametrically opposed to any form of relativism. Balthasar argues that if Jesus claimed to be the Truth then there can be no attempt to relativize this claim:
If the claim stands, the whole Truth must possess a ballast, an absolute counterweight, that can be counterbalanced by nothing else; and because it is a question of truth, it must be able to show that it is so. The stone in the one pan of the scales [of justice] must be so heavy that one can place in the other pan all the truth there is in the world, every religion, every philosophy, every complaint against God, without counterbalancing it. Only if that is true is it worthwhile remaining a Christian today. If there were any other weight capable, ever so slightly, of raising up the Christian side of the scales and moving that absolute counterweight into the sphere of relativity, then being a Christian would be a matter of preference, and one would have to reject it unconditionally. Somehow or other it would have been outflanked. To think of [this kind of relativized Christianity] as of more than historical interest would be a waste of time.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Two Say Why: “Why I Am Still a Christian,” by Hans Urs von Balthasar and “Why I Am Still in the Church,” by Joseph Ratzinger, trans. John Griffiths (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1973), 29–30.
21 Balthasar writes: “The Son of the Father allows himself to be born into a human womb, and so the heavens open in a new way and reveal a threefold life in God. Everything proceeds from the Father, who remains invisible in the background. It is not he who becomes man; rather, he sends his eternal Son. But the Son lets himself be disposed of. Therefore it is the Holy Spirit who is active; he accomplishes the will of the Father and bears the Son to where this will can be fulfilled.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Threefold Garland: The World’s Salvation in Mary’s Prayer, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 13.
22 Indeed, John Riches asserts, “perhaps in the end it is in the calling of theology back to its proper task of the unravelling of being, of the tracing out of the lineaments of the reality of the incarnate, crucified, descended and risen Lord that Balthasar’s most valuable contribution will be seen to have been made.” John Riches, The Analogy of Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 193.
23 Here the reader may find congruence with chapter 16 of the present volume, “A Concept of Artistic Truth Prompted by Biblical Wisdom Literature,” by Calvin Seerveld.
24 On the Cross, the eternal divine drama of Love mutually emptied between the Love and the Beloved is exposed for all to “see.” The Father abandons the Son in his death, creating a chasm between them bridged by the one who stretches from Heaven to the depth of Sheol – the Spirit.
25 I John 1:5.
26 I John 4:8.
27 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic III: The Spirit of Truth, trans. Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 445.
28 Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 206. For a number of readers this statement and what follows may appear very similar to German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s notion of truth, though, as becomes clear later in the chapter, Balthasar develops his understanding in a different direction than Heidegger. It is noteworthy that Balthasar, unlike Rahner, never attended any lectures by Heidegger. Yet as Fergus Kerr makes clear, Balthasar’s conception of metaphysics, “as well as his massive reinterpretation of the history of Western philosophy in the fourth and fifth volumes of the Glory of the Lord, are deeply indebted to his reading of Heidegger. Balthasar is far more radically ‘Heideggerian’ than Rahner ever was.” Fergus Kerr, “Balthasar and Metaphysics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. Edward T. Oakes and David Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 225. In the final analysis, Fergus Kerr maintains that Balthasar offers a unique version of Heideggerian Thomism. Interested readers might consider Balthasar’s article on Heidegger’s philosophy from the standpoint of Catholicism: Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Heideggers Philosophie vom Standpunkt des Katholizismus,” Stimmen der Zeit 137 (1940): 1–8. Perhaps the most accessible and best rendition of how Balthasar understood the interrelationship of philosophy and theology is Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Philosophy, Christianity, Monasticism,” in Explorations in Theology II: Spouse of the Word, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 333–72.
29 Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 207.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 I Corinthians 13:12.
33 Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 208.
34 As Balthasar writes, “moreover, insofar as the appearances emerge from this ontological depth, this depth becomes manifest as the precious and holy mystery of being, whose sheer interiority protects it from absolute alienation and objectification.” Ibid.
35 Ibid., 209.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid., 213. Also, “we find a further form of the veiling of truth in love – the form of creative forgetting and overlooking . . . and self-forgetful, loving attentiveness to the object, to its meaning, and to the preservation of its integrity.” Ibid., 215, 216.
38 Ibid., 223. Also, “but insofar as the mystery indwells the truth itself, insofar as truth is a moment in the self-disclosure of being, the mystery is not something alien to truth. From this point of view, the mystery is not some irrational background from which truth emerges.” Ibid.
39 Ibid., 231.
40 Ibid., 268.
41 Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost, 15.
42 Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 67.
43 Ibid., 217.
44 Ibid., 269.
45 Ibid., 227. Balthasar writes, “the trustworthiness and credibility of truth becomes an express invitation to entrust oneself to this promised manifestness, to follow the certitude that truth imparts, and to give oneself over to this movement, which is already underway. We can therefore understand why truth implies total transparency and apprehensibility on the one hand, yet eludes any attempt to nail it down in a definition on the other.” Ibid., 39.
46 “God’s truth is an identity of necessity and freedom: God is freely what he necessarily is and necessarily what he freely is. God grounds himself, and this self-grounding is an expression of his essence and of the fact that he is absolute person.” Ibid., 240.
47 Nichols, Say It Is Pentecost, 68.
48 Robert M. Doran, “Lonergan and Balthasar: Methodological Considerations,” Theological Studies 58 (1, 1997): 577.
49 Balthasar, Theo-Logic I, 244. Also, “the analogy of truth, as participation and revelation, is thus fulfilled in the ever greater obedience of the creature to the decree of the ever greater God as he reveals himself ever anew in each situation.” Ibid.
50 Ibid., 270.
51 Balthasar says: “The confession of one’s own unveiledness before God and the confession of the unveiledness of one’s neighbour before us are both only one aspect within the all-ruling confession of God’s mystery for every creature.” Ibid., 271.
52 Ibid., 272.
53 John 14:6.
54 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 34.
55 Ibid., 35. The Spirit who leads us into all truth is at once Christological and Trinitarian; for this person brought about the incarnation of the Word, and the will of the Spirit is that, in the Incarnation, Christ should be believed and acknowledged as a divine person, inseparable from the Father and the Spirit.
56 Ibid.
57 “The seamless robe is a symbol: all attempts to analyze and separate the different aspects of the mystery and so make it more comprehensible break down before the indissoluble mystery of the persona ineffabilis. That is the source of the Church with all its faults, rites and dogmas, which are but an emanation from the heart of the person, poured out in death and in the blood and water.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer, trans. A.V. Littledale (London: SPCK, 1975), 200.
58 Ibid., 21.
59 Ibid.
60 Prayer enables access to both Christological mediation and the Trinitarian archetype.
61 Balthasar, Prayer, 39.
62 In Balthasar’s words: “The act of faith is man’s acknowledgement and agreement that he has been from time immemorial, encased in the love of the God revealed to him, and this faith comprises everything in the historical sphere that the believer encounters a posteriori as ‘facts [or truths] of revelation.’ ” Ibid., 51.
63 Revelation 2:7.
64 Balthasar, Prayer, 59.
65 As Balthasar says: “To pray in the truth does not mean to begin by viewing it in a kind of detached way, as if we were first, by reflection, to convince ourselves that the Word of God we are actually contemplating is the truth, and then to assent to it on that ground. It means, rather, to set out from the affirmation of it as something already given long ago, and to give up and reject whatever in us militates against it. It is to live in the knowledge that the truth, which is the Spirit dwelling in us, is more interior to us than we are to ourselves since, in God and in his truth, we were predestined and chosen, before the foundation of the world, before our own creation, to be his children, pure and unstained.” Ibid., 63–4.
66 Ibid.
67 In Balthasar’s understanding, “the life of the Trinity is . . . a union of contemplation and action. The three persons exist in an unbroken gaze of love and yet they are supremely active in their mutual self-giving.” John O’Donnell, Hans Urs von Balthasar (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1992), 158.
68 Balthasar, Engagement with God, 47.
69 Ibid., 61.
70 Ibid., 49.
71 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic, 15.