Our study has illustrated from the philosophical side the momentous importance von Balthasar attaches to Incarnation—it is here that the Ideal Metaphysics of the exemplar pass over to and are fulfilled in the Historical Metaphysics of the one who is the concrete analogy of being, the embodiment and measure of every interval between God and humans. This focus on the Incarnate One was signaled from the start: The Glory of the Lord warns that the goal is the retrieval of an index of interpretation of the glory of God as it appears in this world. This glory is seen in its decisive form in the Incarnate Christ,[1] and this definitive theophany is to be understood not by reference to something external to the decisive event, but rather precisely in terms of its own native logic.[2] Therefore, the task was always to have been the explication of the ramifications of the Incarnation in terms of the eternal ground of the Incarnation in God (it always being understood that we only know this eternal ground through the definitive revelation accomplished in the Incarnation itself).
This creates a dynamic of “from Christ” and “for Christ” that will permeate both the Ideal and the Historical Metaphysics at every moment. The Ideal Metaphysic describes all being as coming from the Son and being directed back toward him;[3] thus, all creation both reflects its archetypal origin and points forward in myriad anticipations to the coming of the Anointed One. The Historical Metaphysic describes all being as from Christ in the soteriological opening of a new space of ontological affirmation accomplished by the redemption of human sin, without which redemption creaturely being was not free to be joyfully and existentially directed toward Christ and union with him in realization of the highest possibility of its being.
If therefore it is granted that all things must be referred to Christ, and specifically, in the aftermath of the decisive event of revelation in his earthy life, to the Incarnate Christ, then we necessarily have to deal with the double motion of this life. For Christ, as we have seen, descended into the deepest depths of an existence shattered by sin, but he did so precisely in order to ascend again, bringing the restored creation alongside him to new and glorious heights. In our last chapter, we saw the depth of the downward motion, and located that motion in the very character of God, in the groundless love that is most like itself when it groundlessly (without cause) gives itself away. If there were no Holy Spirit in the Trinity, the story could end there.[4] But because in God the divinity which is poured out in its entirety in Christ returns to God hypostatically (and therefore irreducibly and subsistently) in the love of the Holy Spirit, we must go on to speak of the ascension of Christ, which grounds the possibility of returning to God that being which was gifted to us in our creation. And because this return is made in the irreducibility of personhood, every question of absorption into an indiscriminate identity, of the loss of the many in the super-essential unity of the being of the One, is ruled out from the beginning.
The resurrection and ascension, in spite of their critical importance for the destiny of the creature and the fulfillment of the purposes of God, are not hypostatic changes for Christ, and therefore they do not inaugurate a change in the fundamental character of the metaphysics. Although, as we shall see, the ascension does in a certain way involve the creation of a new reality, it is a new reality within the metaphysics established with the hypostatic union of God and humanity in the Logos.
In this way, the logic of love, which calls forth its like in the beloved, demands that we add to our reflections of the point at which theological reality breaks into the metaphysical some comment about the transformation of all metaphysical reality into theological reality. This is the inner meaning of the fact that in the analogy of being the proportion of the Trinity is always dominant over the God-world proportion: this very fact signals that the destiny of creation is to be elevated into the divine, that the creaturely necessity to be explicated in terms of the divine being is not just epistemological or even merely ontological, but also existential.[5]
The destiny of earth is heaven, and the destiny of heaven is earth;[6] they have been set over against one another in order that they be able to draw near to one another.[7] Christ will prove and fulfill this by first filling an earthly life with eternal content and afterward making a place in heaven for the earthly life lived here below.[8] This opens the place of heaven for us for the first time—one might go so far as to say that this is the moment of the creation of heaven.[9]
Von Balthasar is clear that the issue at stake in return is not the transposition of earthly realities into heavenly realities, the crossing over from one cosmic sphere to another—rather, it is the conversion of the mortal world into an enduring, immortal world. This gives a properly cosmological signification to the ascension of Christ as that which archetypally (and eventually causally) institutes the transformation.[10] Embedded in this claim, von Balthasar thinks, is a twofold presupposition about the type of honor created persons will receive as they are taken up into their new, heavenly form: the first is that this must come as pure grace, as a gift which is not able to be expected; the second is that the creature must bring with it something of itself, something which will qualify the recipient as a “victor” who has overcome.[11]
Here the discourse forks: the necessity of the creature bringing something along with it becomes the grounding for a theology of the Eucharist which focuses on the way the Eucharistic presence opens for humanity and all creation a heavenly space in which to live.[12] This space is the first return of the cosmos to its origin, and it already surrounds us. The Eucharistic space thus opened not only welcomes all reality into itself, but conditions it: Everything that enters into that space partakes of its character,[13] grounding a “eucharistic permeability” of all subjects one to another that ultimately grounds the communion of saints.[14] Thus, as Christ pours himself out for us in the form of the Eucharist, creating within the transformed and ascended physicality of his existence room for our as yet untransformed, mortal existence, so do we analogously make room for others within our renewed hearts.
Von Balthasar would maintain that this Eucharistic reality is ontological, and so we are not merely speaking in figures or imprecisely here. However, we are certainly speaking incompletely, and this can hardly be the metaphysically robust redditus we have been seeking to complete the story of creation’s journey.[15] For this reason one must take the other road opened to us. Returning to the claim that the type of honor created persons will receive as they are taken up into their new, heavenly form requires that this honor must come as pure, unexpected grace, we see the path opening before us to a discussion of that ultimate honor. This is to enter properly into the discussion of the nature of grace, and this alone can complete the picture we have been at such pains to describe.
At this point, the Theodrama cannot carry us forward, for its concerns do not allow it to penetrate deeper than the world’s existence in the divine in the most economic terms. Accordingly, although at this point in the discussion von Balthasar has opened the fundamental philosophical question of the way in which creaturely being is embraced by uncreated being, he goes on to treat it with respect to its origin in the archetype on the basis of the Platonic notion of “ideas.”[16]Theodrama never progresses further than the existential condition of a created freedom embraced within an unconditioned and unconditional freedom. Theology in the mode of the Good stops short of achieving the ultimate goal.
Similarly, Theologic stops surprisingly short: after speaking of the return to the Creator in terms of a fundamental openness between the One and the many,[17] the discourse shatters on the unsearchable depths of God[18] and can ultimately only gesture toward the glory of the invisible Father.[19] Theology conditioned by the transcendental True pulls up short due to the abiding mystery of God, which is revealed precisely as that which remains protected by inner mystery.[20]
The Glory of the Lord too can only speak in its final volume of a “departure toward God”;[21] the New Testament horizon restrains the discourse, limiting it to the transition from Old to New Covenant and the glory of God appearing in the Church, with only occasional and heavily veiled glimpses beyond the conditions experienced this side of creation’s exaltation. The great hope it offers is not the eschatological return, but the reality of the Church within the confines of the existential difficulties of a world dominated by sin.[22] Even the great opening volume ends with no more than a glance at the reality of the final consummation of grace.[23] Theology in the mode of the Beautiful equally falls short.
To make sense of this, we must turn to the Epilog. Here, von Balthasar warns us that although throughout the Triptych being is shown increasingly to be epiphanic, nevertheless the “deepest mystery of being” came into view only imperfectly.[24] What does arise from all of this, however, is the miracle of fruitfulness, which is immediately linked to death, to the necessity of sacrifice.[25] This link grounds the self-understanding of the church as body and bride of Christ in Christ’s act of self-surrender.[26]
At this point, another road to the sacraments has been opened.[27] If we eschew this path for the sake of the examination of the nature of grace, we are led immediately back to the cross, and to the “marvelous exchange.”[28] The last word reaches no higher than the real possibility of an ultimate rejection of the gift of God and the hope that love brings that such a tragedy will not materialize.[29] Even here at the end, we seem to encounter a dead end.
The Epilog has at least given us the possibility of understanding why the variously modulated theological discourses fall short at this precise point. There is every indication that we are approaching the limit concept for the transcendentals of being. And our investigations in the last chapter have prepared us for the realization that there is something greater than the transcendentals, something which trumps even their universality: the transcendental par excellence, love. It would therefore seem to be a reasonable conclusion that each of the works must fall short of the explication of grace insofar as this, being absolutely undeducible and totally free, does not submit to the logic of being as such, but rides above it as the most likely (and yet not necessary) act of thoroughly free being.
The transition from philosophy to a theology grounded in Biblical revelation is what von Balthasar calls in the Epilog a threshold.[30] Beyond this threshold are the “mysteries of Christianity,” which are precisely those things that cannot be derived from religious philosophy.[31] Therefore, even the Epilog can only hint at them. But for von Balthasar, that which is underivable is that which is free. Therefore, beyond the confines of being controlled by the transcendentals, beyond the transition from metaphysics to theology, in the realm that philosophy can only term the One because it is ignorant of the trinitarian depth that is the rule there, there exists only the eternal, hypostatically expressed, co-equal trinitarian love.
It is at this point that von Balthasar, after so much speech, falls silent. Yet he has not left us without resources. Clearly, the understanding of grace that must be developed is utterly free and therefore to the highest imaginable extent an act of love. And we have learned that all acts of love are kenotic—not just characterized by self-sacrifice but by the gift of one’s self. Thus even deifying grace must be seen to be in some significant sense the gift of God’s being to us, a sharing of Godself in order to elevate us as high as contingent, dependent creatures may be elevated. It is along these lines that any Balthasarian understanding of grace must be motivated.
At any rate, our study of the metaphysics of von Balthasar can progress no further. At this point, the theological analysis of von Balthasar would have to begin. We have already indicated (for example, in the brief discussion of eucharistic reality in this epilogue) some of the directions possible within the Balthasarian framework. The task of pursuing these highly suggestive avenues must, however, remain the work of another project.