Back in 1952, Hans Urs von Balthasar had some rather shocking words to say about Christology: “And what a dryness there is in the doctrine about Christ, which likewise has made scarcely any progress since Chalcedon, where an abstract formula has to answer for the central mystery. Once again the formula is excellent, but only if it is a skeletal structure that enables the living flesh of the word of revelation to stand and walk.”¹ Not many years before, Sergius Bulgakov made a similar point. While Chalcedon must be recognized as normative, it should not have ended Christological discussion. Its declaration was mostly negative: it stated who and what Christ was not, but left much room as to who and what Christ is.  The expectation was that there would be theological development. To be sure, there were few theological developments at II and III Constantinople, but they were minor, and beyond them, there really has not been any significant development in Christology.²  It was not meant to be this way.

Bulgakov believed that Christian theologians have far too long neglected this dogmatic problem. Christology, as it is today, provides answers which no longer satisfy the questions brought to it by believers and skeptics alike. Century after century, fundamental questions have remained unanswered, making it understandable as to why people end up floundering in their faith. But the task is more than a little daunting: would it not be indicative of pride if someone thought that they could accomplish what previous generations could not do? Any attempt to engage a new Christological territory will require one to do so with little guidance, making it likely that they will end up making more than a few mistakes in the process. And, for the theologian, this should be a major concern, because they should know that such errors often turn into heresy. Even if someone avoids theological pitfalls, and their insights are orthodox, it does not mean their disciples or critics will interpret them correctly, and so it is possible that their insight, even if valid, will not do as the theologian hoped: help the Christian faith.

It is in this context we must understand what it is that Bulgakov was trying to do as he brought Christology together with Sophiology, especially in his controversial, and difficult, text, The Lamb of God.  He knew that what he was saying was, in many respects, new. It was speculative, and therefore, dangerous. Yet, he believed what he was doing was necessary if Christian theology were to do what it was meant to do. He knew that he would have to combine the limited, technical terminology of the past with his own understanding of the faith, and create, as it were, a new Christological tradition. This would mean he would create a new, and therefore, questionable vocabulary to go along with his ideas. He must have known how easy it would be for someone to misinterpret what he said. If Christology did end up developing beyond its present stage, and the terminology he used would not be employed by future theologians, or if those words end up being used with a different meaning, it would be easy for some future reader to misinterpret what he said through an anachronistic reading of his text. That was something he knew he would have to work against because he saw, historically, that is what happened with Apollinarius of Laodicea.

Apollinarius, as a friend of St Athanasius, was a fervent opponent of the Arians. He understood that the Christological crisis of his time required one to provide a positive understanding of the relationship between the divinity of the Logos with the humanity which the Logos assumed. While he made mistakes, Bulgakov believed he did the best he could with the limited theological means he had, and in this way, he helped direct the production of necessary Christological reflections.³ Bulgakov didn’t want to dismiss the significance of those mistakes; after explaining what he thought Apollinarius meant, he still had some harsh words to say about Apollinarius’ thought.⁴ But behind it all, Bulgakov thought that Apollinarius was ultimately trying to say something similar to what was eventually produced at Chalcedon:  “Thus, Apollinarius’s significance in Christology can be defined as follows: (1) He was the first to pose the problem of the unity of the God-Man as composed of two natures, although his solution to this problem was imprecise. (2) He understood this problem as an anthropological one, and with his doctrine of the composition of the God-Man he anticipated the Chalcedonian schema, although his own answer to this problem was imprecise owing to the imprecision of his terms and the insufficient clarity of his anthropological thought. (3) He as the first to pose the problem of the interrelation of the Divine and human essences as the basis of their union in the God-Man, although he himself did not go beyond ambiguous and obscure propositions on this subject; here, he had neither predecessors nor successors in patristics.”⁵

When Apollinarius described the incarnation, he said that the Logos worked as the nous of Jesus Christ. Historically, most people read this to say that the Logos acted as the consciousness of Christ; therefore, Apollinarius believed Jesus lacked a human consciousness. Bulgakov ingeniously pointed out that we are reading too much in this, and that, instead, was Apollinarius saying something other than this, something which he had no way to do in his time, and that is to find a way to describe the hypostatic union. Bulgakov suggested that Apollonarius used the term nous in the way which later generations would use the term hypostasis.⁶ Bulgakov’s brilliant re-examination of Apollinarius demonstrated the kind of historical-critical research needed to adequately judge such an important, yet controversial, figure. Only in recent times has such a hermeneutic been possible, and it allows us to re-read the past without as much anachronism as others tended to engage.⁷ And Bulgakov’s ideas help us better understand Apollinarius’ relationship with St Athanasius. Finally, they let us know as to why, even after his speculations were condemned, his ideas continued to have a profound amount of influence on the development of Christology, especially upon St Cyril of Alexandria.⁸ Apollinarius’ insights, while not without faults, moved Christology forward, and because of it, rightfully belonged at the beginning of Bulgakov’s Christology, which itself was the start of his great trilogy.

Perhaps we should take Bulgakov’s comments about Apollinarius as a way for us to look at and understand Bulgakov’s writings as well. He noted that key questions of Christology revealed themselves through Apollinarius, and the Church has yet to sufficiently deal with them. Chalcedon’s response is the best that we have had, and it purely gives a rough outline as to what the relationship between Christ’s humanity and divinity is not. Obviously Bulgakov did not want to deny the value of mystery; he knew that there would be a limit as to how much we can comprehend about the incarnation. However, he thought, and with good reason, that what has been revealed is more than has been discussed and examined, and we could develop a better understanding of the God-man if we took the time and effort. It is also clear how great an impact such a theological enterprise would have on dogmatic theology. Even the barest minimum of speculation could end up revealing a hidden insight and move us forward to some real theological solutions, the kind which might impact all kinds of fields, including ecumenism. And thus, Bulgakov, who offered more than a few such speculations, should be mined for what he has discovered.

Not all that Bulgakov suggested will prove itself as a positive theological advance. It is no secret that Bulgakov faced in his lifetime criticisms which continue to influence how people treat his work as a whole. Some concerns were quite valid; his adaptation of 19th century idealism certainly provided troubling speculations which probably will have to be abandoned.⁹ However, many criticisms against him have been immature, and were incapable of stating what Bulgakov was believed. Sometimes he did employ terms which could be misinterpreted. Understanding uncreated and created Sophia as the distinction between God and humanity can easily be misread as a return to Gnosticism. Those who want an easy way to condemn Bulgakov, without actually thinking along with him, often do just that: he discussed Sophia, the Gnostics discussed Sophia, therefore, Bulgakov is a Gnostic. Guilt by association is an easy fallacy to use; its rhetorical force is impressive and quite convincing to those who do not already comprehend its faults. Yet the real reason why Bulgakov engaged Sophia, to be sure, was to re-engage a proper biblical and patristic term, one long abandoned and not sufficiently brought forward into Christian dogmatics. He used it to provide the category of being with positive content for theological use.¹⁰ Bulgakov perhaps went too far in trying to connect God with creation by using Sophia as a common principle between the two; but his approach allows us to reconsider what it means to speak of the analogy of being and what kinds of biblical images can be and should be used when engaging it. And this, Sophia as being, became the foundation for Bulgakov’s Christology. It was the start of something new, and while the terminology might not be the same, others have begun to follow his lead, showing us that his ideas could very well be the start of a positive Christological revolution. Those interested in Christology should look at the questions he raised as well as his solutions to them, not to judge them, but to learn from them. It’s too early to give a thorough judgment on Bulgakov’s theological enterprise, because its influence is only beginning, and we do not know where it will end up.¹¹ Obviously, he wasn’t infallible, and we shouldn’t expect him to be. We will find he made mistakes. That fact alone, however, should not deter us from learning from him; even theologians like St Athanasius can be shown to have made them as well.¹²

Like

Unlike

1. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Razing the Bastions. Trans. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 29.
2. Sergius Bulgakov, The Lamb of God. Trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2008), 194-6.
3. cf. Paul Valliere, Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov: Orthodox Theology in a New Key (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 2000), 297-8.
4. “Apollinarius delineated the problematic in all its acuteness when he posed the question of whether the fullness of the humanity in Christ implies instability as an inalienable property of His humanity, with this instability containing the threat of changeability. Frightened by this threat, Apollinarius abandoned the straight path and instead took the path that consisted in diminishing the fullness of the human essence in Christ in order to protect Him against instability. He thereby desired to insure that Christ was atreptos (without change). But Apollinarius had exaggerated the instability; he had bought the illusory insurance at too high a cost — the cost of doing violence to Christ’s humanity and thus destroying the divine-human work,” Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 296.
5. Bulgakov, ibid., 17-18.
6. “Thus, in Apollinarius’s Christology, pneuma or nous corresponds to the divine hypostasis, which is inseparably united with the divine nature,” ibid., 11.
7. Of course, we must never believe we can fully reconstruct the past and all of its thought patterns.
8. Nestorius made use of this fact in his criticism of St Cyril; see, for example, A. Grillmeier. Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chalcedon (451). Trans. J. S. Bowden (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964), 374.
9. This becomes quite apparent to the reader of his essay, “The Eucharistic Dogma,” where he is quite vague as to what he believes is being consumed when one partakes of communion. He is much clearer, and orthodox, in other places, but here he said, “In this world and for the life of this world, the bread and wine remain bread and wine. Their transmutation is not a physical but a metaphysical transmutation; it transcends this world. This transmutation does not exist for this world, which is why the eucharistic elements retain all the properties of natural matter even after transmutation,” Sergius Bulgakov, The Holy Grail & The Eucharist. trans.Boris Jakim (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1997), 110. “The meaning of this sacrament consists not in the fact that believers eat a particle of the body and blood in its natural form, but in the fact that they take communion of the one, indivisible body and blood of the Lord, being united with Him bodily and therefore spiritually,” ibid., 110-11.
10. That is, through Sophia, he established a way to provide positive content to God’s being, and through it, ours. “This coincidentia oppositorum finds its expression on this account in a relation of type and antitype, an identity in distinction, and distinction in identity. This is the primary and ultimate antinomy of sophiology. And this sophiological antinomy only serves to express the still deeper antinomy from which all theological thought springs and to which it inevitably returns: that of the identity and distinction of God and the Absolute. Absolute being, self-existent and self-sufficing, while maintaining all its absolute character, yet establishes as it were alongside or outside of itself a state of relative being, to which it stands as God. The Absolute is God, but God in not the Absolute insofar as the world relates to him. We find this theological antinomy reflected in a whole series of paradoxical relationships: God and the world, the divine and the creaturely Sophia, the type and the anti-type,” Sergei Bulgakov, The Wisdom of God. trans. Patrick Thompson, O. Fielding Clarke, and Xenia Braikevitch (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1993), 76-77.
11. All one needs to do is look through Balthasar’s Christological writings to see how significant Bulgakov’s dogmatics ends up being for Balthasar, especially as it relates so some of his most controversial theological ideas, such as Christ’s descent into the lowest depths of hell.
12. It would be easy to read much of what St Athanasius wrote in an Apollinarian fashion, and it is clear his theology held much in common with what we find in the writings of his friend, Apollinarius, with even some of the same mistakes.

The best I could gather is that even as (indeed because of his being) a historical figure, Christ bears no relationship to the WWJD Christian. His historicity places him in a group that has been sealed in a tomb of metaphysical irrelevance. Reality is dichotomized between the historical and the now, the two forever reft of the other. In fact, the only way Christ becomes relevant to us is in his moral example, which (strangely enough) is a kind of historical existence. But in terms of human nature, or salvific action, or the significance of resurrection (he does defeat death after all), many of my students could find no way to integrate Christ into their thinking about politics, ethics, the quality of life, the nature of life and death, the list goes on; they couldn’t bridge the historical gap. I wondered aloud why his humanity wasn’t a connection, or rather why the connection of human nature to Christ was limited to a moral significance. Why does Christ’s triumph over death for humankind rank below a mere moral imitation in Christian decision making? Why the lack of intimacy with Christ’s human nature and the resurrection consequences thereof?

In Why Study the Past, Rowan Williams suggests the answer to these questions might come from our intentions toward history. If studying Church History leads one to a dichotomized identity between the historic church and the present church, then of course, then we’re left primarily with making judgments, the criteria of which will come from the standards of research we have today, and not the standards by which previous Christians might have had. “Eusebius and John Foxe,” Williams states, “were not trying to write good twenty-first century history” (26). And if our standard of truthfulness, aka good history, leads us “to suppose that biblical chroniclers had no recognizable sense of truthful narrative” then, Williams argues, we’ve failed to realize that “there is a somewhat different kind of enterprise being attempted in which canons of history-writing alone will not tell us everything” (26).

For Christians, our role in reading the history of the church, our “enterprise”, is not merely to chronicle the history in our terms, but more so to engage in a community, an identity which stretches behind and beyond us. “In theological shorthand, the modern believer sees herself or himself as a member of the Body of Christ…. Who I am as a Christian is something which, in theological terms, I could only answer fully on the impossible supposition that I could see and grasp how all other Christian lives had shaped mine and, more specifically, shaped it towards the likeness of Christ” (27). On the next page Williams says, “For the historian who has theological convictions, that challenge [of understanding the church's life] is at last something of what is truly known of Christ in the agents of the past” (28).

This concept of the body of Christ, and our participation in it, seems to me to be the fruitful way forward in jettisoning the overly simplistic aspects of “what would Jesus do” moral reasoning. Following Williams, I think the harmful aspects of WWJD thinking is in the way that it misses the ecclesiological and metaphysical ways in which we’re not connected to Christ through a flat, modern notion of imitation, but rather through the Spirit’s intimately drawing us together into one body through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Thus, it’s not a matter of only looking to Christ for an example, but living as Christ, indeed being Christ in the world.

Like

Unlike

What we really need now is for folks to sign up as respondents. Again, you’re welcome to shoot me an email, or just respond to this post. Please include your name as you’d like it to appear, the session you’d like to respond to, and whatever university or website you’d like your name linked to… woops, hanging infinitive… to which you’d like your name linked.

Our Current Session Roster

Introduction
Cynthia Nielsen (Per Caritatem) – “An introduction to Bulgakov”

Ecclesiology and Eucharist
Halden Doerge (Inhabitatio Dei) – “Eucharist, Eschatology, and World in the Ecclesiology of Bulgakov”.
Gregory Voiles (Catholic University of America) – “The Divine Humanity of the Church”

Respondent: Joshua Brockway (Catholic University of America)

Apollinaris
Matthew J. Aragon Bruce (Princeton Theological Seminary) – “The Preface on Apollinaris”
Henry Karlson (Vox Nova) – “Bulgakov and Apollinarius”

Sophiology
Aron Dunlap (The Land of Unlikeness) – Sophiology
Maximus Daniel Greeson (Paideia) – “Vladimir Lossky’s Critique of Bulgakov’s Sophiology”
J. David Belcher (La Perruque) – “The ‘Interpenetrability’ of Divine and Creaturely Sophia: Freedom and Synergeia in Bulgakov’s Sophiology”

Mariology
M. Sophia Compton (St. Paul’s School of Theology, Kansas City) – “The Burning Bush and Bulgakov’s Kataphatic Theology”
Scott Sharman (University of Toronto-St. Michael’s College) – “Hypostatic Motherhood and the Mother of God”

Pneumatology
David W. Congdon (The Fire and the Rose) – Pneumatology
Kyle Bennett (Fuller Seminary) – “The Coming of the Comforter: The Holy Spirit’s Role in the Parousia of Christ according to Sergius Bulgakov and Jurgen Moltmann”

Theurgy and Aesthetics
Joshua Delpech-Ramey (The Land of Unlikeness) – “Sophiology and Magic: Renaissance Precursors to Bulgakov”
Dan McClain (The Land of Unlikeness) – “Art & Politics”

Respondent: Janet Leslie Blumberg (Deep Grace of Theory)

Still to be boxed in by a theme.
Ben Boswell (Catholic University of America)
Brendan Sammon (The Well at the World’s End)

Like

Unlike

In a world where we are bombarded by seemingly endless amounts of information, I trust this conference will offer something distinct and interesting. While blogs have been disparaged (often rightly) by academics, I hope this experiment demonstrates that theo-blogging can be a place for academically rigorous and theologically sophisticated work. More importantly, in a conference examining the interrelation between theology and exegesis, I hope most of all that these essays provoke us to return to the text anew for a fresh hearing of God’s Word. May we gain a greater appreciation for what von Balthasar accomplished, and, following his example, learn to cultivate a faith that always seeks understanding.

My contribution will be posted tomorrow. In the meantime, definitely head on over and read the inaugural posts, here and here. Lois Miles has a great piece on von Balthasar’s reliance upon the contemplative mysticism of Adrienne von Speyr. The essay gives a nice biography of their relationship, including a bit on the creation of von Speyr’s commentaries on Scripture. Cynthia Nielsen, in her usual exemplary style, helps us understand Balthasar’s insight that aesthetics and hermeneutics can not be separated without comprising the wholeness of the Scripture – “a recovery of theologico-aesthetic sensibilities that had been lost with certain modernist interpretive currents.”

By all means, please engage these authors by commenting. I think this format of blog conference is a unique opportunity for scholars around the globe to extend the theological conversations that just aren’t (unfortunately) getting air time in places like AAR and the like. Additionally, the kind of interaction that has already begun exhibits a kind of charity that is as rare in the larger, more established venues. As David mentions, the blog medium hasn’t garnered the best reputation among the academic elite. Hopefully our fellowship will help change that perception.

Like

Unlike

Here at the Land of Unlikeness, we could think of no better way to break into Bulgakov’s Sophia thesis than to join forces with the rest of you and throw a Sergei Bulgakov Blog Conference to be held in September later this year. The details are still sketchy, but we already have a few participants and many others are pondering. More participation is welcome, both in the form of a 1500 word contribution or in the form of a response to a post. Please send your contribution ideas to editor at thelandofunlikeness.com, or simply reply to this thread. Stay tuned for more details in the very near future.

The (Tentative and Still Growing) Lineup

Matthew J. Aragon Bruce (Princeton Theological Seminary) – “The Preface on Apollinaris”
Ben Boswell (Catholic University of America)
David W. Congdon (The Fire and the Rose)
Cynthia Nielsen (Per Caritatem) – “An introduction to Bulgakov”
Halden Doerge (Inhabitatio Dei) – “Eucharist, Eschatology, and World in the Ecclesiology of Bulgakov”.
Respondent: Joshua Brockway (Catholic University of America)
Aron Dunlap (The Land of Unlikeness) – Sophiology
Maximus Daniel Greeson (Paideia) – “Vladimir Lossky’s Critique of Bulgakov’s Sophiology”
Dan McClain (The Land of Unlikeness)
Brendan Sammon (The Well at the World’s End)
Scott Sharman (University of Toronto-St. Michael’s College) – “Hypostatic Motherhood and the Mother of God”
Gregory Voiles (Catholic University of America) – “The Divine Humanity of the Church”

The birth of Jesus, in which that power which holds the universe together in coherence takes shape in history as a single human body and soul, is an event of cosmic importance. It announces that creation as a whole has found its purpose and meaning, and that the flowing together of all things for the joyful transfiguration of our humanity is at last made visible on earth.

Like

Unlike

Thanks,

Dan

Like

Unlike

Anyway, with that comment made, here’s portions of a transcript from an Oct. 5th interveiw with Rowan Williams on BBC radio.

Q: Help me understand Archbishop, why these Christians, these exiles from Iraq have been targeted?

A: Since the Iraq war, Christian communities in Iraq which have lived there for literally thousands of years have been seen as, in some sense, agents of the West. People described how the sort of notes that were pushed under their door, the messages and threats they received said ‘you are American agents’ or ‘you are Zionist agents and we’re going to have to get rid of you.’ So there’s a very clear link in people’s minds with the conflict.

…[W]hatever one says now about that, it’s quite clear that our governments have a very heavy responsibility to see what can be done for these people. To secure the status and the welfare of refugees and to work on what seems the almost impossible task of making a society that they can return to in Iraq. And of course when some people talk – as some do – about the possibility of a partition solution in Iraq, very often the Christians are left out of account in this.

I don’t say this out of a kind of Christian chauvinism – wanting to defend my corner, The presence of Christians in communities like Iraq and Syria is actually part of what you might call a pluralist, tolerant, co-existent tradition in Middle-Eastern Arab society which is itself under threat.

So it’s not just about Christians, what’s at stake is much more than just the future of just the Christian community. But everywhere you go in the Middle-East, Christian people will say ‘the main problem we face is the catastrophic drainage of Christians from this region’. So that what were once plural societies not exclusively or narrowly Muslim, are becoming more and more closed.

…

I don’t know what sort of calculations were made. I do think that two things are clear: that the effect on Christian communities in the region was gravely under estimated, and that the scale of the refugee problem was gravely underestimated. Now what we have at the moment is a refugee problem in the Middle East of almost unprecedented scale. We’ve already got the Palestinian refugee problem and I also visited some Palestinian refugees on the outskirts of Beirut; we now have on top of that another million and a half – and growing – number of Iraqi refugees and this is where, when people talk about further destablilising the region, when you read about some American political advisers speaking about action against Syria and Iran, I can only say that I regard that as criminal, ignorant and potentially murderous folly.

…

Q: Do you think there will ever be a time in the future when we look back at the invasion of Iraq and say yes actually that was for the best?

A: No.

Like

Unlike

Early in the film, Taymor appears to squarely pit social and militant activism and artistic creation against each other, and gives the impression that the infamous Love will side with the latter. It’s only an impression, and one that many on both sides mistakenly take to as the final word for better or ill. On one side, there’s the declaration of fealty to an ambiguous and numinous Love, the great fictional panacea. On the other, there’s the concession that Love is indeed ambiguous, impotent to effect change; the there’s an argument for the need for something else, something more jarring, even violent. And thus we have the polarization of the 60s set before us: the peaceful, inward, even insular arts culture on one side (Woodstock par excellance); and the boisterous and often violent activist movement concomitant and strangely akin to the oft harsh and violent government (Kent State/Vietnam). And then, in wake of this “revolution” there’s the late 70s and 80s, perceived by many, and certainly portrayed in the film, as the waning of Love and meaning – “You know, it’s gonna be alright, yeah”.

It’s clear to me that Taymor doesn’t settle on other side, but wants to re-present love. The films yearns to rise above the short-lived psychedelia and manufactured hysteria of the 60s. It’s not about a return to an earlier time: the ideal 50s suburban life is seen at the beginning as unsustainable and artificially limiting to human potential. And it doesn’t seem to be a trust in the future as beneficent: the characters are broken by the end of the film. Rather, if it’s a return to anything, its about seeking the source of the good, that which funds our actions and desires, that of which we continually fall short – “There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known / Nothing you can see that isn’t shown / Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.” We’re radically insufficient for the task. But all we need is Love. So, the question I was left with at the end of the movie was, “What is Love”. Now that we know we need it, all we need to do is figure out what it is.

Adrian Walker’s article “Love Alone: Hans Urs von Balthasar as a Master of Theological Renewal” helps us see Balthasar’s answer to this question pretty quickly. Love, throughout Balthasar’s corpus, is not only the object of reflection (Christ’s Love), but is the “source-architectonic” of all being, and as such it is the “intelligibility” of theology that not only explains the theological task, but is also “capable of illumining all of reality,” that which makes theology “universally relevant,” the principle that overcomes the static division between being and becoming. Balthasar’s answer to the two questions “What makes Christianity Christian” and “What makes Christianity credible” is

that the only ‘logos’, the only principle of intelligibility, which makes Jesus’ figure cohere into that single, compelling Gestalt whose luminous whole could captivate the entire existence of a Francis or a John Paul II – the only such logos is a love that comes uniquely from the trinitarian God… Jesus is the convincing Gestalt he is only because he is the appearing of trinitarian love in person, which means: only because he is himself the Logos of divine Love in the flesh.¹

In a footnote below that, Walker notes, “in light of other affirmation of Balthasar, that Christ is both the incarnation of God’s love for us and of our love for him – the covenant in person.”²

Some may fear that such elevation of Love above ratio somehow undermines rational discourse. Further, we may ask how this matrix of relation affects the nature of God’s attributes and our participation in them? If both Thomas and Augustine place the true over the good “in the manifestation of the intelligibility of being”, then is seems Balthasar is breaking ranks for the sake of novelty with grave consequences to both the way we understand Christ’s being the Word and “[Christ's] ability to communicate anything like a sacra doctrina that delivers to us the objective truth about God.”³

Walker argues that by “grounding truth in love” Balthasar has reclaimed for ratio entis its sense of “whylessness”. That is, the truth as characterized by the good, by gratuitousness.

The pulchrum … is the primordial appearing of love’s gratuity, which, as such, contains both the good (the beautiful is an appearing of gratuity) and the true (the beautiful is an appearing of gratuity, which therefore appeals to logos). For their part, the good and the true reciprocally ground each other as it were in the light of beauty: the good thematizes the gratuity that founds the logos-character of the true; the true emphasizes precisely this logos-character, without which gratuity would be irrational, and so could never be real gratuity at all. The oneness of the good and the true, already announced implicitly in the beautiful, then becomes thematic in the unum (which had always been present as the foundation of the other transcendentals)…⁴

Walker goes on to flesh out the rest of his proposal re: trinitarian relationships and the ramifications for a theology of nature that I may come back to at a later point. But, what I want to draw out here in closing is the robust essence of Balthasar’s concept of Love and its fecundity for reflection on Love as a theme or anti-theme in contemporary work. Love has lost its currency in modern work, whether because of its gradual decline in integrity as a concept, or its decline stature, matters little. If Balthasar is right that Love is the very soil in which the theological roots grow and then grow to reflect on, then it is certainly the responsibility of the theological program to reclaim and declare the universal relevance of love. What’s left is to discover how much such a recovery of Love would change the very face of the theological dialogue.

Like

Unlike

1. Adrian Walker, “Love Alone: Hans Urs von Balthasar as a Master of Theological Renewal,” Communio 32 (Fall 2005): 524.
2. Walker, 524.
3. Ibid., 531.
4. Ibid., 532, f. 28

Yet, while the debates over modernity and its theological consequences drew on, the distance between humanity and world stretched ever wider, matched only by modernity’s maw, engulfing the world quicker than Christianity could respond and, some would argue, in ways Christian scholars and clergy didn’t know how to respond to. Christian (sub)culture was born, an enclave of fear of and loathing for the secular, an a-theism which Christian subculture bore to life and gave authenticity and integrity to the more it removed itself form the world.

The frequently brutal dismissal of the Church’s authority also in worldly matters of politics, of the planning of the world, and above all in matters of the spirit and science, does indeed correspond in part to an increasing falling away of the educated and of the masses from the Christian faith, but in part also to a process (acknowledged and justified by the Church herself) in which the natural orders and areas of knowledge assume autonomy, as was demanded by the Vatican Council itself in clear distinction between the natural and supernatural orders: duplex ordo cognitionis, proprio objecto, propria methodo.

In the most recent Books & Culture, and his new book Resounding Truth, Jeremy Begbie argues that, while the Christian subculture removed itself from the world, the world is not so easily shaken off, as if it were an old coat or bad dream. In fact, at the heart of the Christian truth is the deep understanding of the world as a gratuitous and ex nihilo “expression of divine love.”² As such, interaction with this world, this given reality, is sacramental, inasmuch as it is a graced reality. For the arts, this demonstrates a truth that reformed thinkers in the Dutch tradition like Begbie and Wolterstorff have been declaring for nearly the past 3 decades, that the experiences of the arts and artistic making are fundamentally “ways we engage the physical world… physical things… [that] have ultimately arisen through the free initiative of God’s love- they are part of the ordo amoris.”

As the church shrunk back from the world, both Catholics and Protestants had difficulty articulating this Christian view on the arts and the world. Begbie points out that the retreat from the physical often took the form of looking for an underlying spiritual value or meaning: “Commonly, the thrust seems to be to look beyond the material sounds to the order or beauty they reflect or point to rather than to welcome them as valuable embodiments of God-given order and beauty in their own right, with their physical character intrinsic to that value.” Later, even the spiritual would lose cred, and the hermeneutic tendency would look for meaning in the individual’s psychological experience of art – think here of those like Clive Bell and Sylvia Plath.

As art become more abstract, so too artists and the public alike more often practiced abstraction in seeking the underlying essence of the artifact from its physical boundaries. Even theologians programmed this dichotomy of the physical from the meaningful and spiritual.³ Yet all of this misses or regrets what is most characteristic of art, that it plays with and in the physical realm, that it is transmitted to us not by spiritual means, but by and through creation: “[B]earing in mind the long-standing legacy of thinking about music … which has arguably suppressed a great deal of music and led to unnecessarily negative attitudes toward it (not least in the church), we might do well to regain a sense of music’s profound physicality – its embeddedness in God’s given material world.” Although Begbie is addressing music in particular here, his argument easily extends to the other arts.

Furthermore, re-situating our relationship to art as physical helps us relearn the physical world in general as well as the human body itself, the last act of the original creation: “Our own bodies… are intrinsically part of musical experience. To insist that Christians are to be spiritual is indeed quite proper, but to be spiritual is not to renounce the body per se.” The acceptance of the body as creation and thus necessarily and constitutively part of this thing we call art has a dual fecundity. First, as it emphasizes not only artistic creation, but rather experience in general as a physical act, it leads us to an intimacy with art we may have hitherto reserved for the artist herself. And second, it explodes the individual nature of art, emphasizing the communal aspect of physicality, the “koinonia” of the created order. Begbie draws on the thought of Bonhoeffer to explicate the image of the Christian community, one not of cheap harmony, but of polyphony, sometimes difficult to grasp, but always rewarding. The emphasis is relatedness being part of the overall aesthetic creation, rather than the Romantic image of the artist as sole-creator in defiance of the heavens and the masses. “True enough, the self is always and already a social product… and yet the self is centered when addressed and treated as a distinct you by another person or other persons… Such is the ecstatic love at the heart of the Triune God in which we are invited to share.”

I would add that it is not only the community of believers or simply humanity that we join when we participate in creation and acknowledge our place within the created order. For, if even the stones would cry out in praise should humanity fall silent (Luke 19), it seems only “natural” that they also welcome our joining in the polyphony of the worldly community. The elements of creation seem to be actively awaiting commune with the other members, a vision that the land artist Andy Goldworthy seems to have focused on with his lens. His work carries a sense not only of an order or form inherent to nature, to physicality, but also the yearning of the natural for the supernatural koinonia to which Begbie alludes. The question is if and how one might speak of stones and wood and leaves singing in the polyphony.

Like

Unlike

1. HUVB, “On the Task of Catholic Philosophy in Our Time,” Communio 20 (1993): 148; although von Balthasar was not the first or last to issue this warning.
2. B&C (September/October, 2007): 28-31.
3. Begbie cites P. T. Forsyth here.