Our reconstruction of von Balthasar’s metaphysics has so far been concerned with answering the question (Q): “What is the nature or character of the God-creature relation?” So far, we have seen that the relationship is not to be construed according to the Pure Difference Thesis—rather, the language of archetype, exemplar, and participation in the analogical, katalogical, and ideal investigations have driven the analysis in the direction of the Identity Thesis. Even so, we have already seen that von Balthasar must shy away from asserting pure identity for fear of landing the system in pantheism. There is therefore already a tension between considerations that on the one hand seem to be driving towards the strongest type of identity (driven by the notion of unification with the metaphysical ground) and the need to respect a distinction between the first principle and the dependent realities. The prejudice within the Balthasarian system is in the direction of identity: to err on the side of the Identity Thesis at least allows one to construct a Christology, which is the central point of von Balthasar’s own system, and therefore is of central concern. Von Balthasar is in fact after a principle that will allow him to steer a course between these two extremes, but he is not after a median, equidistant from both dangers. Rather, he wishes to affirm the intuition behind identity without valorizing the systemic consequences of identity. The principle he seeks is one that can drive the relationship as far as possible in the direction of the Identity Thesis while at the same time blocking the collapse into it.
The line is thus to be drawn between identity and analogy. This distinction defines a battle against compromise, which follows when analogy is allowed to slide over into identity.[1] In fact, von Balthasar credits Aquinas with a major victory in this battle, arguing that, on the basis of Aquinas’s revolutionary doctrine of being, a safeguard is established against the dialectic of identity.[2] It is for this reason that Aquinas occupies so conspicuous a place in the Theologic, though he is hardly discussed in The Glory of the Lord, and seems to be held in little esteem when he is.[3]
The Identity Thesis, it will be remembered, is the claim that God and creatures turn out, in the end, to be identical. Now, this thesis, even more so than the Pure Difference Thesis, comes in many forms. Aside from a distinction between pantheism (the whole is God) and panentheism (the whole is in God, to whom it is identical but who exceeds it), there is a great difference in whether this identity is considered to be actual right now, or in a temporary state of alienation which will be overcome at some eschatological re-absorption. Further, this re-absorption may be seen as a simple return to the primal state of things, or as an enrichment whereby the One becomes more than what it was before the journey of estrangement and reconciliation. In spite of this diversity, all versions of the Identity Thesis are founded on a fundamental affirmation of the identity of God and creatures, and it is the implications of this that are of interest for von Balthasar’s dismissal of these styles of theology.
Here we have to look at von Balthasar’s reflections on Plotinus and the Neo-Platonic tradition that follows him. This will clarify the historical version of the rejection of these sorts of views.
In the beginning of the metaphysical investigations which occupy the first half of the third volume of The Glory of the Lord, von Balthasar admits that there is a great danger that his work will be misunderstood and dismissed as Neo-Platonic; at the same time, he believes that he must be willing to run this risk in order to articulate the theological vision he is after.[4] This fact alone announces a complicated relationship with the entire Neo-Platonic tradition; for on the one hand von Balthasar believes it is critical that he not be associated with it, while on the other he recognizes that the things he must say will invariably remind many readers of Plotinus and his followers.
As the great patriarch of Neo-Platonism, Plotinus is mentioned no fewer than twenty times in the second volume of The Glory of the Lord, largely in connection with Augustine and Denys. He is someone Augustine goes beyond,[5] a storm in theology which has passed,[6] and an example of the way in which the theology of Denys is not to be understood,[7] to name a few. Yet in spite of this, when von Balthasar treats Plotinus directly in The Glory of the Lord,[8] the overall treatment is very sympathetic. Plotinus is discussed with regard to his contributions to a theology permeated by beauty; therefore, if one comes to these pages seeking a polemical treatise against all that is wrong with theology under the transcendental of beauty (an expectation which might have been developed from the reading of The Glory of the Lord to this point), one will be disappointed. What we find instead is an extended reflection on why Plotinian theology is so attractive in the first place, without much thought given to the danger that attractiveness empowers.
In order to accomplish this, it is necessary for von Balthasar to rescue Plotinus from being read in light of the doctrines that trace their lineage back to him. Thus, after concluding that the intellect or nous eternally finds itself in its unceasing activity (energeia), von Balthasar asks: “Why ought one not interpret Plotinus definitively towards Hegel, by belittling and removing every other aspect of his doctrine as relics of a by-gone era?”[9] The answer, which doesn’t come for several pages, proves to be surprising.
To understand the answer, we must back up slightly. The Plotinian cosmic picture, it will be remembered, bases itself upon the One, which is the eternal existent, and the emanations which flow from it. The first emanation is Nous, the pure act of thinking and the condition of the possibility of any thinking whatsoever.[10] The object of Nous (that is, the object of thought) is not external to Nous; rather Nous is its own object. Nous is thus always driven by yearning, eros, insofar as it is driven to seek its object (as all acts of intellectual striving are), but insofar as it eternally possesses its object (itself), it is at rest (stasis). The object of thought, however, exists only as it is in fact being thought; thus, its reality (energeia) is to be found in thought. Therefore the subject (whose energeia, conceived of as activity, consists in the activity of thought) and the object (whose energeia, conceived of as reality, consists in the fact of being thought) are said to have an identical energeia, as it is the common space that they inhabit.[11]
Pure reason, von Balthasar continues, is always in act, and pure being (the One) is always actual. All of this leads him to conclude that there is a complete reciprocity between thinking and being, between the One and Nous. Thus, von Balthasar concludes, because the One thinks, it is two, but because what it thinks is itself, it is One.[12] Von Balthasar considers this an attempt to sum up the entire history of Greek philosophy. It is, he says, an objective idealism or ideal realism.[13]
This leads to the question of the relationship of the two-in-oneness of thought-being to the pure unity of the One.[14] As it is a Plotinian doctrine that the proper object of Nous is the One, and what the Nous finds in its striving is itself, it seems clear that a collapse into the One is not really to be avoided. This is the point at which it makes sense to ask why this is not to be understood in a Hegelian sense as the journey of the One into alienation through Nous and its ultimate return to itself in a final sublation.
Before answering the question, von Balthasar admits that there is much in Plotinus to support such a reading.[15] Owing to the fact that Nous encompasses all in its synthetic identity, no revelation can come to Nous except from the very depths of Nous.[16] “But then there remains nothing other than to turn the One into the element of identity in the stretching out of the mind: God is nothing other than the ‘inner depth’ of things, the center of that circle whose periphery they are.”[17]
This is, however, as far in this direction (at the end of which lies Hegel) as we are able to go, according to von Balthasar. For while it is true that Soul, Nous and the One coincide in their centers, the hierarchy between them is not demolished.[18] The One cannot be reduced to Nous, for it is that theological reality which stands above and beyond being and thought, though it breaks through from the depth of being. In so doing, it bestows on being its transcendental beauty, allows it to be an epiphany of glory.
Now, it is crucial here to observe the way in which the defense of Plotinus was achieved. von Balthasar in effect argues that Plotinus is not to be read in a Hegelian fashion because, unlike Hegel, in Plotinus all of reality cannot be reduced to identity. The Hegelian mistake, he claims, is that while noticing the close coincidence of the One, Nous, and soul, Hegel fails to attend to their differences. In short, von Balthasar defends Plotinus against the synthetic reduction to identity in Hegel on the basis of something approximating analogy in Plotinus. This putative Plotinian analogy consists in whatever conceptual space is to be allowed between the One on the one hand and being, thought, and Nous on the other.
This very generous reading of Plotinus is not sustained throughout The Glory of the Lord, as has already been mentioned; apart from this one privileged moment, Plotinus will continue to be the prime example of a philosophical theology that rushes down the road to identity. This defense is necessary here in order to avoid losing the substantive theological achievement of Plotinus in the great cloud of error that threatens to loom at every stage: He has integrated beauty (which consists in the harmonious correspondence between the various aspects of reality) into the theological system, even though his tendency to exalt identity over everything else will ultimately dissolve this correspondence, thereby stripping theology of its beautiful dimension. Nearly everywhere else Plotinus is mentioned in the Triptych, he is frowned upon as the source of a most pernicious misstep in the development of a proper theological metaphysics. But if the explication of the nature of that misstep is not to be found here, where Plotinus is directly treated, we must turn to the treatment of the intellectual heirs to this tradition, the German Idealists.
Von Balthasar briefly discusses the Idealists in the “Prolegomena” of Theodrama. He is concerned with their notions of individuality, and whether these notions will be strong enough to allow a robust analysis of the actors in the drama between God and humanity. The tyranny of identity therefore presents itself here as the disappearance of individuality into the impersonal whole of the universal Spirit. Plotinus is mentioned at this point in the text: his monos pros monon becomes, in the hands of the Idealists, the expectation that one’s own uniqueness can only be found when one is face to face with the uniquely One. This leads to the paradoxical notion that in the discovery of one’s own uniqueness, one also loses one’s individuality.[19]
Of the Idealists considered (Fichte, Schelling and Hegel), it is Fichte in whom this is most clear for von Balthasar. It is Fichte who, “discovering the ethos of the Neo-Platonic upward gaze,” considers the One to be the “tomb of concepts.”[20] Therefore, it is to von Balthasar’s discussion of Fichte that we shall turn for an explication of the dangers of the Neo-Platonic descent into identity.
At the beginning of Fichte’s ethics, founded as they are on a radical freedom wherein we shape ourselves and are a law unto ourselves, von Balthasar finds that Fichte has already made a place within his logic for the dissolution of the individual. There exists what von Balthasar calls a “sheer demand” to sacrifice the individual to the universal, the person to the idea.[21] Thus, the ethical duty of human persons is to dissolve into spiritual fullness[22] with self-forgetfulness (Selbstvergessenheit), always concerned only for the totality. The totality or ideal here is humanity, which is set over against individuals as a species.[23] Thus, when the One manifests itself in an individual, the resultant concretivity is purely expressive of the eternal realities of the One—the distinctiveness of the individual is not taken up as distinct into the One.[24] Thus, the particularity of the individuals is extraneous.[25]
What is theologically dangerous about such an idea becomes explicit when a theological transformation is attempted. According to von Balthasar, Fichte’s system takes a turn towards pantheism at this juncture.[26] The identity of subject and object within the I is taken as the first step in the relativizing of the I.[27] This process of reduction of the I continues when one comes to contemplate the ground of the I; originally parsed as “life,” it becomes the Absolute, “pure being.”[28] This entails a transformation of the type of ethical surrender required of the I; for where it was originally called on to submit to I-ness in general, to lose the specificity of being this I for the sake of the general concept and ideal of I, it is now to surrender to the ground of I-ness. This amounts to a sublation [aufheben] of the I and I-ness as such.[29]
Such a metaphysics of identity is unable, in von Balthasar’s view, to support the claims of Christology. It will ultimately “erase, as it were, the ‘two wills’ in Christ, in such a way that God and humanity coincide in a way that is monotheletist (and therefore in the final analysis also monophysite)” (TDg I.531).[30]
This conclusion underscores that what is at stake for von Balthasar in the rejection of the Identity Thesis, as it was in the rejection of the Pure Difference Thesis, is Christology. It is thus clear that claims about the person of Christ serve as both the motivation and the measuring stick for metaphysical claims about the relation of God and the world. Christ, though he will be viewed in a very traditional way as the point of closest rapprochement between God and creatures, also carries within his metaphysical make-up the demand that a final difference between God and creatures be respected.
The rejection of the Identity Thesis is perhaps the metaphysical topic von Balthasar takes up most frequently in his writings. So many other statements are reducible to this one, and it is dismissed out of hand or argued against in a sustained way so often that it is challenging to set forth the full force of the polemic. The following examples will be taken as representative of the generally sustained negative evaluation; other examples will follow in the succeeding discussion.
In Theologic volume 1, von Balthasar disapproves of “every kind of pantheist-idealist or immediate or dynamic-progressive equation of the finite and the divine subjects” as “a failure to grasp the most basic laws of truth” (TL I.228). He goes on to say: “But if there is an absolute self-consciousness, it must by nature possess in itself the measure of all being and, therefore, must have no need of any natural, unfree relation of expression or passive receptivity. The infinite freedom that comes with infinite self-consciousness guarantees the infinite subject an infinite interiority and, therefore, an absolute transcendence vis-à-vis all subjects and objects in the world” (TL I.228–29). What this means is that an identity between God and God’s creation is ruled out by the proper understanding of just what type of being God is. That is to say, when we have grasped that God is not just the supreme being but absolute being (which means that anything else can only be a being by participating in God’s own being), we should also see that God’s infinite interiority is something that could never be transposed out of itself in a way that would be sufficient to identify the external expression with that interiority of which it is the expression. Were this to be the case, that interiority would be in a sense repeatable; but von Balthasar has said earlier in this text that interiority is the result of this unrepeatability (TL I.81).
However, the above logic only rules out pantheism, not also panentheism. For one could argue that the divine interiority is not transferrable to the outside in toto, but nevertheless some part of it may be so transferred, such that the created world is in fact identical with the divine interiority, but not in such a way as to be co-extensive with it. This is certainly allowable on the basis of the second quotation above; but it still fails, in von Balthasar’s scheme, to “grasp the most basic laws of truth,” because truth requires a real positivity of the other as other.
In considering the range of Balthasarian texts, there are two main concerns that must be satisfied in the rejection of the Identity Thesis: a) the positivity of the world,[31] and b) the possibility of union with God. It is noteworthy that the positivity of God is not one of the primary concerns. This is a recognition that in identity schemes everything collapses back into God; therefore not even proponents of the Identity Thesis endanger the positivity of God.
In Cosmic Liturgy, von Balthasar says that: “A certain ineradicable mistrust for an autonomous, objective nature, which exists prior to all participation in grace and which is not only spiritual but corporeal—a mistrust, in fact, for the fundamental analogy between God and the creature—has always characterized Eastern thought and his led it to feel primordially related to all forms of self-transcendence, absorption, release of the finite into the infinite” (CL 190). The correlation between a “mistrust for an autonomous, objective nature” and “self-transcendence, absorption, release of the finite into the infinite” is for von Balthasar a very tight correlation. How justified is this?
Von Balthasar phrases the correlation very judiciously: precisely because what he is talking about is “mistrust,” he cannot say that it leads necessarily to the stated conclusions. Rather, this mistrust grounds what he calls a feeling of “primordial relation;” one is tempted to say merely “attraction.” As such it may be resisted or overcome, but to the degree that the mistrust is present, this fundamental intuition or orientation will also be present. Let us call this claim [T]: “a mistrust of the notion of an autonomous, objective nature increases the likelihood of the acceptance of some form of self-transcendence, absorption, release of the finite into the infinite.”
To test this, it is perhaps necessary to absolutize von Balthasar’s laudably restrained phrase. So, what if the claim were [Ta]: “A rejection of the notion of an autonomous, objective nature leads to some form of self-transcendence, absorption, release of the finite into the infinite?” This stronger version of the claim allows us to test the intuition that guides the plausibility of von Balthasar’s weaker version. For if we approve of [Ta], we are likely to grant [T]; if we do not approve of [Ta], [T] is likely to feel under-motivated to us as well.
To evaluate [Ta], it is necessary to pay attention to the clarification of terms as von Balthasar presents them in the original text. For he specifies that the type of autonomous, objective nature he means is one that “exists prior to all participation in grace and which is not only spiritual but corporeal.” These are, in fact, two possible evasions that might enable one to claim that creation is good, but in so doing, uphold the intuition of suspicion about its character. Thus, we are not allowed to affirm the goodness of creation 1) purely on the grounds that it has received grace: to do so would be to say that it is not in itself good, but is only good because God has added something on after the fact. Likewise, we cannot say that it is good because 2) it is spiritual; this would leave us still having to deny the goodness of the physicality of creation. This last is ruled out by the Christian doctrine of the bodily resurrection. To accept (1) or (2) is not really to say that creation is good: it is to say only that it has been made good (1) or that only part of it is good (2).
At this point, we might suppose that the way to proceed would be to ask whether, given that the acceptance of either (1) or (2) is the definition of the first half of [Ta], the acceptance of either (1) or (2) necessarily leads to the second half of [Ta]. However, it is not clear to me that von Balthasar thinks that (1) and (2) are the only ways of fulfilling the first half of [Ta]: it is not necessarily true that the denial of the goodness of ungraced creation (1) or the denial that part of creation is good (2) entails the rejection of an autonomous, objective nature: it would only entail the rejection of a positive value judgment of that nature. To connect the two ideas in von Balthasar’s thought requires another assumption, namely that “autonomous and objective” are a sort of crib for “good in their positive existence.” The missing material is supplied by von Balthasar with a phrase that replaces the entire notion of autonomous and objective, namely “the fundamental analogy between God and the creature.” The fact that what he means when he says “autonomous and objective” is something whose denial would count as a denial of “the fundamental analogy between God and the creature” shows us that autonomy and objectivity are not considered in themselves, as quasi-scientific terms, but are pointed at participation in the divine being. They therefore mean a certain gift of participation in the divine being which is itself a positive good. Augustine’s understanding that it is better to exist than not to exist is all that is required here, but we may safely surmise that for the future author of the Triptych, more is at stake. It is not merely that being or existence is a good, but rather, Good is a transcendental property of being, which means it inheres necessarily and properly in everything that participates in being.
At this point, an adjustment to [Ta] is probably in order to clarify just what two things are being correlated. Perhaps we ought to say: [Tb] “A rejection of the fundamental analogy between God and the creature leads to some form of self-transcendence, absorption, release of the finite into the infinite.” In this form, it is clear that the thesis is false, because it could, as we have seen, just as easily lead to the Pure Difference Thesis. It is only when coupled with the Identity Thesis that [Tb] has any chance of being true.
Very well, but we still have to test this thesis: [Tb1] “Given the rejection of Pure Difference, a rejection of the fundamental analogy between God and the creature leads to some form of self-transcendence, absorption, release of the finite into the infinite.” Since von Balthasar only admits of three possible theses governing Divine-creaturely relations, the rejection of the Pure Difference and Analogy Theses necessarily entails the acceptance of the Identity Thesis.[32] This brings us to one final thesis: [Tc] “The Identity Thesis leads to some form of self-transcendence, absorption, release of the finite into the infinite.” And this form of the thesis seems true, unless one holds out the possibility of an eternal estrangement within the greater God-world identity. But even in that case, it could be argued that some form of self-transcendence is still in play, at least at the level of the subjective consciousness that recognizes that it is part of this greater whole that is all things.
What is clearly at stake in this whole discussion is the affirmation of the goodness of the world, of its character as an intrinsically good positive thing. It is in light of the preceding reduction that von Balthasar interprets all those committed to the Identity Thesis. We have already seen this in his treatments of Plotinus and Fichte; one would necessarily have to add Hegel to the list, who von Balthasar says is “the final conclusion to that interpretation of the world which understands the universe to be the self manifestation of God” (GL V.574).[33] A detailed description of von Balthasar’s problems with Hegelian theology is not necessary here: the outlines are present in what has already been said in this chapter.[34] We will turn instead to a name that one perhaps finds surprisingly listed in a consideration of the problems of Identity: Karl Barth.
The reason Barth must be mentioned here is because in von Balthasar’s read, Barth’s struggle to come to the concept of analogy was a struggle to free himself from an allegiance to some form of the Identity Thesis. This is stated explicitly in the chapter on Barth’s dialectical period: “What goes unchallenged is this whole notion of ‘Being in the Idea,’ that original existence, the only true and authentic existence, is ‘Being in God.’ In this first edition we read that this Being is ‘immediacy’ (15, 73, and so forth), ‘immediate, direct relation’ (106), ‘immediate union’ (202). [. . .] The ‘divine in me’ (207), ‘the original divine nature and humanity’ (61), empowers humanity to become ‘a divine race of beings’ (18) that ‘sees things as God sees them’ (94) and creates an ultimate identity: humanity is thus a ‘particle of God’s universal power’ (237), for ‘it is not we who are at work, but it is God who is working in and through us’” (194) (Barth 65; the emphasis is von Balthasar’s). Thus, the dialectical starting point from which Barth would struggle through so much of the Church Dogmatics to free himself was one that was committed to some form of the Identity Thesis. von Balthasar characterizes Barth’s understanding on the eve of the Church Dogmatics in the following way: “The best way of characterizing this ideology is by describing it as a dynamic and actualist theopanism, which we define as a monism of beginning and end (protology and eschatology): God stands at the beginning and the end, surrounding a world-reality understood in dualistic and dialectical terms, ultimately overcoming it in the mathematical point of the miracle of transformation. . . . As we have seen, this monism of the Word of God, which invades the hostile world and is expressed in such idealist categories as mediacy and immediacy, object and objectlessness, threatens time and again to swallow up the reality of the world” (Barth 94). Von Balthasar then points out that Barth would eventually come to “feel the deeply unchristian tenor of such a panorama” and strive “with all his might to overcome it” (ibid.). The precise task von Balthasar finds Barth engaged in during this period is the attempt to save the world from being absorbed into God while holding on to his original principles.
There can be no negotiating with the Identity Thesis for von Balthasar, because it will constantly eclipse the world’s positivity as an other in relation to the divine Other who does not need it in order to be or in order to be God, but nevertheless freely willed to make an other with whom to enter into relationship and covenant.[35] But why fight for such otherness at all? Even granted the Christian story, which posits that we were created for God, what grounds the necessity of an abiding creaturely otherness? Why not, for example, say that our destiny in God is precisely to be re-absorbed into the most intimate of relations, the relation of unity? The answers to these questions give von Balthasar’s fundamental ground for distinction, and therefore his fundamental ground for the rejection of the Identity Thesis. It is the necessity of distinction to the possibility of union.
It is axiomatic for von Balthasar that there can be no union if the terms involved were a) not really distinct in the first place and b) do not remain distinct even in union. This is a somewhat controversial claim, and rather than trying to prove or defend it with complicated articles, let us instead notice what this really amounts to: it is a fundamental choice of one philosophical intuition over another.
When it comes to thinking about something in relation to itself, one has an option. One might think that self-identity is a relation whose two terms are identical: “a = a” is thus “a has a relationship of identity to a,” and is structurally analogous to “a has a relationship of similarity to b.” Alternately, one could interpret “a = a” as “a is a” in such a way that one denies that there is a relation involved. One in fact denies that “a = a” is analogous to “a has a relationship of similarity to b.” In this second instance, likeness goes right up to but stops short of identity: once numerical identity has been attained, a is no longer likeb, it isb.
We needn’t be distracted by the intricacies of the debate among philosophers: we already have what we need for understanding von Balthasar. For in choosing the second intuition about identity and relations, von Balthasar is in effect affirming that likeness necessarily presupposes unlikeness: when all unlikeness disappears (and the last bit of unlikeness to go is numerical), likeness also disappears, and one is left with identity. The terms used here are significant and decisive: a principle of analogy is at work here whereby likeness and unlikeness are united in one. It is not the ever-greater unlikeness of the analogy of being; but it is nevertheless the logic of analogy. Once we have seen this, we see that von Balthasar could not have opted for the other account of identity and relations.
This philosophical intuition, that something is not like itself, it is itself, is an important part of von Balthasar’s insistence on the positivity of otherness. But this alone does not account for the valuation of difference over sameness. It may be true that distinction is required for union, but it does not follow that union is to be preferred to identity. Would it not be better to be God than to be united to God?
Von Balthasar disapproves. At an obvious level, this is the first temptation and sin of humanity, to seek identity with God rather than union with God. But there is a deeper reason, transcending the order of creation and the contingencies of its subsequent history, why von Balthasar wishes to affirm union over identity: because union requires that both terms remain in their own proper natures, it affirms the fundamental goodness of both terms. A choice for union over identity is thus a choice for the inherent good of otherness and difference as opposed to a choice for the inherent good of univocal sameness. It is not just that the other is good, but otherness as such is good. This von Balthasar finds grounded in the Trinity, where otherness is elevated to an eternal and necessary principle in the life of God.
All of this is summed up well in von Balthasar’s words from Cosmic Liturgy: “This mutual ontological presence (περιχώρησις) not only preserves the being particular to each element, to the divine and the human natures, but also brings each of them to its perfection in their very difference, even enhancing the difference. Love, which is the highest level of union, only takes root in the growing independence of the lover; the union between God and the world reveals, in the very nearness it creates between these two poles of being, the ever-greater difference between created being and the essentially incomparable God” (CL 63–64).
So also Barth, when, according to von Balthasar, he had emerged from the confusion of the Identity Thesis, correctly cognized the issues: “The relation between God and creature can in no way be one of identity. ‘Identity would either mean that God had ceased to be God or conversely that man had himself become God.’ But the relation cannot be one utterly lacking in any resemblance either. ‘Such total dissimilarity would then mean that we could not in fact recognize God. For if we re-cognize God, this must mean that we see God using our prior views, concepts and words; thus we see God not as something totally Other. But in and with these human means of images, concept and words (the only ones we have), we truly do see God’” (Barth 109). In this we see the rejection both of the Identity Thesis and the Pure Difference Thesis. This is the triumphant conclusion of Barth’s journey to analogy, and von Balthasar expresses it in words that describe his own doctrine of analogy equally well: “Thus the relation must be described as a middle ground lying somewhere between two extremes, and this we call analogy. This middle term cannot for its part be transposed to another level or reduced to a ‘partial identity’ and a ‘partial dissimilarity’ (3, 264f). [. . .] Analogy is an ultimate relational term: it cannot be explained by any more fundamental identity or nonidentity” (Barth 109). And so the reasons for the rejection of the Pure Difference and Identity Theses are clear, as are the basic reasons for the acceptance of the Analogy Thesis. It remains to see what the structure of the acceptance of the Analogy Thesis is.