The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar An Introduction (Brendan McInerny) (z-lib.org)

The Trinitarian Theology of
Hans Urs von Balthasar
The Trinitarian Theology of
Hans Urs von Balthasar
An Introduction
B ren da n McI n ern y
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
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University of Notre Dame Press
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For Clarey, Eilish, and Frankie
To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to
become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of
the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
—Gospel of John
Trinity! Higher than any being, any divinity, any goodness! Guide of
Christians in the wisdom of heaven! Lead us up beyond unknowing
and light, up to the farthest, highest peak of mystic scripture, where the
mysteries of God’s Word lie simple, absolute and unchangeable in the
brilliant darkness of a hidden silence.
—Pseudo-Dionysius
Contents
List of Abbreviations
ix
Introduction
1
1 God Is Love: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology
of the Immanent Trinity
2 A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies: The Sources
3
15
of Balthasar’s Immanent Trinitarian Theology
45
Unless You Become Like This Child: Deification
as Trinitarian Adoption
85
4 A Blessed Wilderness: The Trinity and
Divine Incomprehensibility
125
Conclusion
157
Notes
Bibliography
Index
175
209
227
L i s t o f Abb r e v i a t i o n s
Works by Hans Urs von Balthasar
CL
ET 1–5
GL1–7
HW
KB
MP
MWR
P
PT
TD1–5
TL1–3
TS
Cosmic Liturgy
Explorations in Theology, vols. 1–5
The Glory of the Lord, vols. 1–7
Heart of the World
The Theology of Karl Barth
Mysterium Paschale
My Work: In Retrospect
Prayer
Presence and Thought
Theo-Drama, vols. 1–5
Theo-Logic, vols. 1–3
Two Sisters in the Spirit
Works by Others
CD1–4
DN
ST
TI 1–4
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vols. 1–4
Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, vols. 1–4
Introduction
God’s truth is, indeed, great enough to allow an infinity of approaches
and entryways.
—Hans Urs von Balthasar, Glory of the Lord
T h e C h a l l e n g e o f R e a d i n g B a lt h a s a r
Any interpretation of Balthasar’s theology must contend with the profoundly ambivalent reception of his thought in the church and academy,
an ambivalence caused in part by the peculiarities of Balthasar’s work
itself. Throughout his academic career, Balthasar avoided or resisted the
normative forms of theological writing. He began his intellectual career
with a dissertation on German literature and philosophy. After he entered
the Jesuits, his early theological studies were profoundly unsatisfying for
him. He found the then-standard neo-scholastic theology an affront to
the real glory of divine revelation.1 Significantly, Balthasar never did theology according to neo-scholastic form or method, and in many instances
he worked with a clear disregard for its categories.
In the first stage of his theological work (1929–45), he found himself transmitting primarily the thought and work of others through translation in both literature and theology. From his exposure to Henri de
1
2 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Lubac, Balthasar’s interest turned toward Greek patristic figures: Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor,
Evagrius, and Pseudo-Dionysius.2 This interest in Greek patristics led to
Balthasar’s first major theological monographs on Origen (1938), Gregory of Nyssa (1939), and Maximus the Confessor (1941). This association
with de Lubac and his rejection of neo-scholasticism placed Balthasar
outside then-normative Catholic theology.
His decision in 1940 to serve as a university chaplain in Basel, Switzerland, further isolated Balthasar and distinguished him from many of
the other great midcentury Catholic theologians, such as Karl Rahner
and Joseph Ratzinger. Unlike his peers, Balthasar never had students
under his direction. He never had “firsthand” scholarly interpreters of his
work, who in turn could form further generations of scholars. As such, by
and large there is no Balthasarian theological school because there is no
Balthasarian theological pedigree, even as his popularity has waxed and
waned in the past five decades.
The ecclesial-academic isolation of Balthasar continued when he left
the Society of Jesus in 1950, to help his close friend and mystic Adrienne
von Speyr run the Community of St. John. As a result, Balthasar could find
no bishop to incardinate him and was therefore “forbidden by canon law
to celebrate mass publicly, to preach or hear confessions.”3 The promulgation of Pius XII’s Humani Generis and its condemnation of nouvelle theologie also occurred in 1950. For Pius XII, “new theology” was suspect because
those associated with it “destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order, since
God, they say, cannot create intellectual beings without ordering and calling them to the beatific vision.”4 The solution to this error was a renewed
commitment to neo-Thomism.5 Balthasar was now an ecclesial pariah in
his native Switzerland and his theological association with nouvelle theologie, especially with de Lubac, put him under the suspicion of Rome.6
Despite being supported exclusively by von Speyr and her husband,
Balthasar continued to challenge the status quo. In 1951, he published
his book on Karl Barth, whose lectures in Basel he attended and whose
friendship he made. As director of Johannes Verlag, the newly founded
publishing house for the Community of St. John, Balthasar had an immediate outlet for an antiestablishment theological vision. Significantly, the
first books published were Hans Küng’s own work on Barth, Justification, and Rahner’s Free Speech in the Church.7 In 1952, he published his
Introduction 3
own clarion call for church reform, Razing the Bastions. He also published
works on Thérèse of Lisieux and Elizabeth of the Trinity in those years.
Though he collaborated and supported church reform before the Second Vatican Council, Balthasar was not a participant in it. In contrast
to Rahner, Congar, de Lubac, Ratzinger, and many of the other leading
names in Catholic theology at the time, he had no demonstrable impact
on one of the most theologically significant events of the past century.
Indeed, as a result of the preparation and work of the council, Balthasar’s
most significant and unique contribution to theology to date, the first
three volumes of The Glory of the Lord—and thus the start of his massive
trilogy—fell on otherwise preoccupied ears.8 As Fergus Kerr argues, “The
shock waves that [The Glory of the Lord] should have had in Roman Catho
lic theology were overtaken by unanticipated events” surrounding the work
of the council.9 Furthermore, by the time the council had ended, and other
theologians were becoming aware of the importance of this work, his
contributions therein were read in light of his 1966 polemical critique of
Rahner, and “liberal” theology in general, The Moment of Christian Witness.
Thus, Balthasar was perceived “as the leading adversary of trends in post-
conciliar Catholicism,” and perhaps even an enemy of the Second Vatican Council, despite the fact that in many respects the council’s vision of
reform matched his own.10 As early as 1967, Balthasar argued that what he
saw as “liberalism” in theology was actually obscuring “the greatness of [the
council’s] program” of renewal.11 But quickly thereafter, Balthasar became
for many a paragon of postconciliar theological conservatism.
For anglophone theologians, the tendency to read Balthasar as a whole
through his postconciliar polemics was exacerbated by the fact that, as of
1968, the only works in English translation were his books on Thérèse
and Elizabeth (1953 and 1956, respectively); Prayer (1961); Science, Religion and Christianity (1958); his work on Martin Buber (1961); A Theology of History (1963); two volumes of essays in theology (1964 and 1965);
Man in History (1967); the collection of essays on the church (1967); Love
Alone (1968); and The Moment of Christian Witness (1968).12 While these
are not necessarily insignificant works, they do create a skewed picture
of Balthasar and his theological impulses, one that depicts him first and
foremost as a reactive polemicist and writer of “spirituality,” as well as,
perhaps, not a worthy theologian in his own right. By the time his major
works, such as his book on Barth (1971, abridged) and the first volume of
4 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
The Glory of the Lord (1982), were translated into English, Balthasar was
perceived as little more than “a Barthian, a mystic, a papalist.”13
Even with access to Balthasar’s major works, the forms, style, and references of his writing serve to isolate him. As already indicated, Balthasar
presented his theology in a wide variety of literary genres. He wrote in
aphorisms, prose poetry, meditations, and polemical pieces; theological, historical, and literary studies of individual authors; essays and short
monographs; and massive multivolume scholarly works. The variety of literary genres, many of which provide Balthasar’s positions at best indirectly, encourage a disjointed reading of his thought. Moreover, even when
Balthasar was working out his own arguments, he rarely presented his
positions in a linear manner. His preference was rather to address something cyclically, contemplating a single theme again and again on new,
ever-deeper planes. In the description of Lucy Gardner and David Moss,
There can be little doubt that reading Balthasar’s work is to read
an intensely “compacted thinking,” which is to say that part of
the remarkable achievement of his great theological oeuvre is
precisely the repeated rehearsal of fundamental theological (and
metaphysical) commitments in ever new configurations which seek
to illuminate the same mystery. Thus, if one were to speak of the
“systematic impulse” in Balthasar’s work, we should recognize that
this does not reside in any riveting of “parts” on to an empty frame,
nor in any correlation of God to his creature, but rather in the “ever
more deeply plumbed repetition” yielding a formidable density of
the same mystery.14
In some instances, this cyclical movement is accomplished over many pages,
in which Balthasar approaches the topic at hand through a reading of a
profusion of earlier theological interpretations of the theme. One is thus
left with nonlinear and indirect argumentation, which often relies on an
extraordinary number of literary, philosophical, and theological references.
Perhaps most significant for the argument here, Balthasar tended to
avoid writing in a more typical systematic manner. As already noted above,
Balthasar eschewed the normative theological form in which he was educated. While he shared his rejection of neo-scholasticism with many of
his contemporaries, unlike many of his peers, Balthasar did not retain the
Introduction 5
neo-scholastic habit of doing theology according to distinct theological
themes. At no point did Balthasar write an essay or book or “tractate” on
standard doctrinal topics, such as Christology, the Eucharist, or the Trinity.
Even in his principal, most “systematic” work, his massive fifteen-volume
trilogy (sixteen including the Epilogue), Balthasar does not present his
thought through discrete theological loci but rather presents divine reve
lation through the platonic transcendental attributes of being: the Beau
tiful, the Good, and the True. Positively, this gives Balthasar’s theology the
feel of a “seamless garment,” in which no doctrine or position is isolated
from any other. On the other hand, traditional theological topics are thus
treated almost opportunistically as Balthasar encounters, or thinks of, them
in the course of his writing. Even the overarching structure of doing theology from the vantage of the transcendentals does not result in consistent
structures within and between his theological aesthetics, theo-dramatics,
and theologic. At least from first appearances, the trilogy would seem to be
not a single work in three parts but three independent works, were it not
for Balthasar’s clear indications that they constitute a whole. As we will see,
the unity is supplied not by the literary structure but by theological content.
Beyond the trilogy, the material becomes even more chaotic.
It is no wonder that the reception of Balthasar has been so varied. For
some, Balthasar’s work is a paramount example of contemporary, orthodox
thought, faithful to the long tradition of Christian theology yet creatively
a response to new challenges. He has been described as a new father of
the church.15 In his funeral homily for Balthasar, the future Pope Benedict
XVI said that, through Pope John Paul II’s elevation of Balthasar to the
cardinalate, “the Church itself, in its official responsibility, tells us that he is
right in what he teaches of the Faith, that he points the way to the sources
of living water.”16 Balthasar’s fierce polemics against Rahner and “liberal”
theology in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, his appointment to
the International Theological Commission in 1969, his cofounding of the
journal Communio, and his defense of controversial positions held by Paul
VI and John Paul II that were the prerogatives of the hierarchy have generally served to reinforce the impression of Balthasar’s stalwart “traditionalism,” in contrast to the theological innovation of his peers.
Despite the praise of Balthasar, less favorable readings of his thought
exist. Though the terms of the critiques vary, Balthasar’s thought has long
been suspect. Initially, these critiques resulted from the debate between
6 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
neo-scholasticism and the new theology already mentioned. Even after
the Second Vatican Council’s renewed embrace of theological diversity,
however, specific elements of Balthasar’s thought came under scrutiny
and have remained so. Beginning in the 1960s, and stretching through
the work of Alyssa Pitstick today, particular criticism has been leveled
against Balthasar’s theology of Christ’s descent into hell.17 Karl Rahner
associated his use of kenosis with Gnosticism.18 The radical orthodox
thinker John Milbank provided a litany of Balthasarian errors in his
short work on de Lubac, The Suspended Middle. According to Milbank,
Balthasar was a voluntarist, who disregarded the ontological difference
between Creator and creature, eliminated divine simplicity, confused person and consciousness, and gave creation too much “independent ontological space.”19 Balthasar has been criticized with equal vehemence from
other quarters. Feminist, liberationist, and political theologians have also
noted dangerous tendencies in Balthasar’s theological anthropology and
apparent disregard for the social, economic, and political demands of
the Gospel.20 Most recently, in Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction,
Karen Kilby has articulated what might be an unidentified and unspoken intuition for many who are apprehensive of Balthasar’s work. According to Kilby, Balthasar’s limitations as a theologian do not stem primarily
from any material position but rather from the fact that he “frequently
seems to presume . . . a God’s eye view,” which sets him “above his materials—above tradition, above Scripture, above history,” and against his own
desires to remain epistemologically humble.21
T h e T r i n i t y i n B a lt h a s a r ’ s Wo r k
Against this background of ambivalence, this book offers a critical
account of Balthasar’s trinitarian theology. Despite the variety among the
critical voices, many share a common concern that something is awry in
Balthasar’s doctrine of God. Whether these critics attribute it to epistemological hubris (Kilby, Rahner), a deficient understanding of the God-
creature relationship (Milbank, Beattie, Dalzell, Bauerschmidt), or a
faulty interpretation of the work of the economic Trinity (Pitstick), they
suggest the need to examine the content, sources, methods, and, most
importantly, the rationale of Balthasar’s trinitarian theology.
Introduction 7
A brief overview of the appearances of the Trinity in Balthasar’s
work suggests that coming to grips with this area of his thought provides
a key insight into Balthasar’s thought as a whole. Though he never wrote
a single treatise on it, the Trinity appears as a major theological topic
in work as early as Balthasar’s on the Greek fathers, especially Gregory
of Nyssa and Maximus the Confessor, in the 1930s and early 1940s. In
his work on Gregory, Balthasar evinces a definite interest in both the
nature of the personal difference of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as
well as in the relationship between the Trinity and deification.22 Indeed,
Balthasar’s articulation of these distinct but deeply related topics pre
sents the germ of his later thought, in which he articulates how Gregory
sees the necessity of God having an equally divine partner. As he writes,
drawing on Gregory’s Contra Eunomius, “There cannot be loneliness in
God. . . . ‘A glory without a radiance would be dark and blind, closed in
on itself.’ ”23 Moreover, it is precisely the distinction of the Father and
his image, the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, that enables the deification of men and women. By the Spirit, we are elevated “to the plane
of the uncreated Image” (the Son) and become the co-objects of the
Father’s love.24
Other seeds of Balthasar’s developed trinitarian theology appear in
his work on Maximus, originally published in 1941. There, one can find
foreshadowing of Balthasar’s understanding of the relationship between
the divine unity, threeness, negative theology, and revelation. Following Maximus, who himself was following Pseudo-Dionysius, Balthasar
places number under the negative edge of the analogy of being. He writes,
“Anything one could say about [the Trinity] would be based on number
and could never attain the absoluteness of the Divinity or its identity of
essence and being. . . . In the end we can only say with Pseudo-Dionysius,
‘He is neither trinity nor unity.’ ”25 However, the inapplicability of number, which is a category of created nature, nevertheless does not indicate
a complete lack of knowledge of God’s inner life. We are not left merely
speculating. Rather, “the Christian knows about God’s triune being from
divine revelation; it is not simply revealed as a ‘fact’ to be believed, but it is
revealed already in the ‘facts’ that the incarnate Christ is the revelation of
his Father and that the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from both, is given to
those who believe as the spirit who makes them holy and adopts them as
children.”26 Balthasar also makes a detailed study of Maximus’s technical
8 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
vocabulary (hypostasis, ousia, etc.) that will in large part undergird his
own later positions on both Christology and the Trinity.27
Despite the presence of these trinitarian seeds, this first stage of
Balthasar’s work on patristic figures lacks several key elements of Balthasar’s
thought. In particular, the themes of immanent trinitarian “distance” and
kenosis, or self-giving, are absent or rejected.28 In 1945, with the publication of the poetic Heart of the World, Balthasar provides the first small
but clear glimpse of the emerging importance of “distance” in the Trinity.
Within the final chapter, in which Balthasar depicts the immersion of the
creature in the “wilderness” of God’s love, Balthasar writes, “We step back
into distance. Love is found only in distance, unity only in difference. God
himself is unity of Spirit only in the distinction of Father and Son.”29
In 1951, in his book on Barth, Balthasar refers to “the intradivine
distance between the Persons in the Trinity” as the foundation of the distance between Creator and creature, and therefore the foundation of the
analogy of being and the whole of the God-world relationship.30 In the
same text, one can find references to the I-Thou relationships between
Father, Son, and Spirit, the divine and human obedience of Christ to the
Father, inner-trinitarian prayer and conversation, the immanent Trinity
and the analogy of being, and the manner in which the creature comes to
share in this life by grace.31
Balthasar’s works on Thérèse of Lisieux and Elizabeth of the Trinity
also include important commentary on the Trinity and an indication of
the trajectory of his own thought. In the case of Thérèse, the importance
of the Trinity comes through Balthasar’s negative evaluations of Thérèse’s
“subjective theology.” As he argues, Thérèse at times narrows the Gospel
and the Christian mystery by her focus on experiential theology, in which
doctrinal themes have importance for her only if they can be “lived.” This
focus on lived doctrine explains, according to Balthasar, Thérèse’s almost
complete silence about the immanent life of God.32 Even though she
speaks frequently about being a child of the Father, she fails to clearly
ground this in the eternal begetting of the Son from the Father. As
Balthasar then argues, this lacuna in Thérèse’s work is compensated for by
the complementarity of Elizabeth’s “objective,” mystical theology. Published in 1952, Balthasar’s work on Elizabeth revolves around what he
sees as the central idea of her theology, and what will become a central tenet of his own: our predestination in the Son to be children of
Introduction 9
the Father.33 As Balthasar makes clear, such adoption in the Son is not
a vague or metaphorical adoption, but a real participation in the eternal
processions of the Trinity itself.34
These references to the immanent Trinity and what I term trinitarian deification in his early work are not peripheral to Balthasar’s theological vision, indicating nothing but idle speculation on a matter of little real
concern. Rather, they indicate what occupies a central, or foundational,
topic in his theology as a whole. As he indicated in the foreword of a book
by Adrienne von Speyr in 1951, he held that the doctrine and theology of
the Trinity are the foundation of all Christian thought and practice: the
fundamental “perspective” grounding all Christological, ecclesiological,
and anthropological perspectives.35 However, despite holding this conviction that the Trinity ought to ground all other perspectives, Balthasar
later laments the lack of creative reflection on the theology of the Trinity
in his 1952 Razing the Bastions. He asks,
What place does the doctrine about the triune God have in
Christian existence? And what place does it have in theology, in
which the doctrine seems to have stood still, half-congealed and
dried up after Augustine’s psychological speculation?
There would be so many other paths besides that of Augustine,
perhaps ever better paths (for ultimately, the solitary structure of the
soul cannot supply the supreme image for the living exchange of love
in the eternal God). Why does no one seek these paths and follow
them out? Christian proclamation in the school, from the pulpit, and
in the lecture halls of the universities could be so much more alive, if
all the theological tractates were given a completely trinitarian form!36
Though, as noted above, he himself refrained from writing in the form
of theological tractates, this passage from this “programmatic little book”
articulates the direction Balthasar’s own thought would take.37 By 1955,
with the publication of Prayer, the components of that more mature trinitarian vision began to take form. Here, one finds those elements of trinitarian thought for which he has become especially well-known: kenosis,
self-giving, dialogue, and prayer.
Six years later, Balthasar published the first volume of The Glory of the
Lord, the beginning of his magnum opus: the multivolume trilogy made
10 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
up of The Glory of the Lord, Theo-Drama, and Theo-Logic. All the elements
of his trinitarian theology mentioned above appear throughout this work,
though they are more fully developed: the stress on the difference—even
“distance”—of the Persons; the presence of I-Thou relationships between
them, including dialogue, joy, and adoration; inner-trinitarian kenosis,
self-sacrifice, and self-giving; the basis of creation in the begetting of
the Son from the Father; and our eschatological goal, realized already in
this life, to participate in the Son’s relationship to the Father in the Holy
Spirit. The Trinity is, however, more than just one theme among others
in the trilogy. Indeed, as Balthasar claims in the general introduction to
the first volume of Theo-Logic, the focus of the trilogy as a whole is the
Trinity.38 The trilogy is neither a progressive argument, with each part
building on the last, nor a rough appropriation of the trinitarian persons
to a divine attribute, as Rahner thought.39 Rather, each part of the trilogy
approaches the one mystery of the Trinity in its self-manifestation (aesthetics), self-giving (dramatics), and self-uttering (logic) in created being
for the sake of the creature’s salvation and incorporation into the life of
God. Creaturely being, assumed by God in Christ, serves as a kind of
prism of the triune God, refracting the white divine light into the distinct colors of the “spectrum” of creation: the Beautiful, the Good, and the
True. The Trinity, and its appearance and saving work in Christ and Spirit,
gives the sprawling trilogy its deep unity.
His work on the trilogy continued almost to the end of his life, but
Balthasar did publish works, often collections of essays, outside the trilogy.
Despite their uneven tone—ranging from polemical and sarcastic to beautiful meditations—the Trinity appears again and again. Fittingly, one of
the final texts he produced, Unless You Become Like This Child, p
 resents in
brief this beating heart of his theology, which he held in some form virtually throughout his career: the manner in which we come to share in the
Son’s relationship with the Father in the Holy Spirit.40 “God the Father
empowers his Son to have us begotten or born together with him from
God.”41 Moreover, “to be a Child of the Father . . . holds primacy over the
whole drama of salvation.”42
Surprisingly, for a theologian who so habitually disregarded established theological forms and structures, and who so regularly engaged in
self-indulgent projects on such disparate topics, there is extraordinary consistency in Balthasar’s trinitarian theology. While there is development,
Introduction 11
this development is not a result of changes in his position or even of his
wrestling with possible ideas but rather of his filling out of a sketch already
in hand. At virtually all stages of Balthasar’s career, and across the wide
variety of literary genres in which he wrote, he maintained an immanent
trinitarian theology built around the dynamic love of the three divine persons for each other. As his career progressed, Balthasar depicts this love
in an increasingly vivid manner. This love depends on the absolute personal difference of the Father, Son, and Spirit, which Balthasar associates with “infinite distance”; it includes joy, adoration, and thanksgiving
but also self-giving, self-sacrifice, and kenosis. In the economic sphere, too,
Balthasar emphasizes the character of the personal interrelations between
the incarnate Son and the Father, through the mediation of the Holy
Spirit (what Balthasar terms the trinitarian inversion). The incarnate Lord
manifests his eternal relationship with the Father in the Spirit through
his human life. The cross is the climax of this economic manifestation of
the trinitarian life, as, through his obedience unto death, Christ reveals
the divine distance of the Father and the Son, as well as their invincible
unity in the Spirit. By descending into the hell of human sinfulness, Christ
reveals the trinitarian love of God, which is ever greater than the world’s
rebellion, and swallows and dissolves human sin in the abyss of divine love,
which thus becomes the new sphere of human existence.
As observed by Karen Kilby and suggested by many others, Balthasar’s
trinitarian theology is highly integrated with his theology as a whole.43
The Trinity weaves its way throughout Balthasar’s corpus, remaining
more or less consistent but hardly ever appearing in full. This integration
has made secondary scholarship on Balthasar’s trinitarian thought highly
focused or incidental to other concerns. One finds critique and commentary, for example, on the relationship between Balthasar’s theology of the
cross and that of the Trinity; on the use of gendered language in describing the inner life of God; and on the relationship between Balthasar’s
trinitarian theology and the question of divine immutability and divine
impassibility, or its relation to specific sources of his theology.44 As appropriate, I will refer to this literature throughout the book, especially those
instances in which my own argument diverges from my peers.
Despite the many contributions of this scholarship, questions remain
as to the content, methods, and rationale of Balthasar’s trinitarian theology as a whole. This book seeks to provide just such a comprehensive
12 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
overview of Balthasar’s trinitarian theology. It seeks to answer the question as to what the theological function of Balthasar’s trinitarian claims
is. For what reason did he claim that there is an I-Thou-We relationship
in the Godhead? To what end does he say the Son is turned toward the
Father in prayer and thanksgiving, even before the Incarnation? What
theological work does divine amazement or a council of the Trinity do?
More broadly, what is the purpose of speaking about the Trinity or trini
tarian doctrine? In other words, why does Balthasar say what he says about the
immanent Trinity? By addressing such questions, I hope to offer another
avenue for an internal critique of Balthasar, one that grapples with his
own deepest priorities.45 If nothing else, understanding Balthasar’s trinitarian theology helps us to better understand and critique Balthasar.
This book argues that Balthasar constructs his immanent trinitarian
theology in order to provide the ontological foundation for his vision of
the relationship between God and the world. For Balthasar, this relationship has its end in the adoption of men and women as sons and daughters
of the Father, in the Son, by the Holy Spirit. This adoption of grace is not
for Balthasar merely metaphorical, indicating nothing more than a newfound intimacy of the creature with God. Rather, by the work of the Holy
Spirit, men and women become by grace what Christ is by nature—the
sons and daughters of the Father. That is, we come to share in the Son’s
trinitarian relationship with the Father. God’s creation, redemption, and
eschatological glorification of us are but distinct episodes in this single
event, in which God calls forth creation and incorporates it into his trinitarian life.46
Because Balthasar sees the God-world relationship as ordered toward
our real participation in the triune life of God, immanent trinitarian discourse—the things we say about the triune God and the grammatical
rules of these claims—is not a luxury or a peripheral theological theme.
It is the needed means by which Christians give an account of how God
is outside his relationship with creatures, so that he might freely create,
save, and draw the world into communion with him. Immanent trini
tarian theology aims, like all theology, at manifesting in creaturely words
and concepts something of the “one, single, indivisible truth” of God: that
he is eternal love.47
In Balthasar’s thought, therefore, it is appropriate for immanent trinitarian theology to be vivid. “Minimalist” immanent trinitarian theologies,
Introduction 13
which speak of the divine hypostases as modes of divine being or immanent conditions for the possibility of God’s self-communication to creatures, fail to adequately disclose, manifest, or linguistically “represent” the
reality of the triune love in which we come to participate. While striving to maintain strictly analogical predication, as a result of the absolute
ontological difference between God and creature, Balthasar nevertheless
embellishes the basic structure of classical trinitarian theology with striking details. The dynamics of divine love, the “movement” of the divine
essence from the Father to the Son in his begetting, and to the Spirit in
his spiration, are depicted as events of inner-divine “kenotic” outpouring,
self-sacrifice, and self-giving occurring between infinitely different, even
“distant,” persons. Moreover, Balthasar characterizes this love further as
full of joy, wonder, gratitude—even praise and adoration.
This vividness is not the result of epistemological hubris. It is rather
the concrete means by which Balthasar shows God’s incomprehensibility.
The profusion of trinitarian claims one finds in Balthasar provides not
only a foundation, framework, or structure to his soteriology but also
the glimpse of the ever-greater difference of God from the world. In
Balthasar’s work, trinitarian discourse is often a jarring movement from
one way of looking at the Trinity to another. Though not purely anarchic, these countervailing claims, and the host of metaphors, oxymoronic
statements, and paradoxes that accompany them, preclude trinitarian theology from becoming a discourse of “prediction and control.”48 Instead,
the sheer wildness of Balthasar’s trinitarian representation is an apophatic
strategy manifesting the incomprehensibility of the divine life, an incomprehensibility fittingly characterized as a “wilderness.”49
My method throughout will be one of destructive synthesis. The
vision of Balthasar’s trinitarian theology I have suggested is not the
product of a focused reading of a single text or even an interpretation
of trinitarian theology within the trilogy alone. I have taken Balthasar’s
trinitarian speculations from their original settings throughout his corpus, including what are typically considered “minor” works, to present this
picture. What unifies these fragments is not their context but their thematic content. Though this approach will not necessarily illuminate any
particular text of Balthasar’s, it will nevertheless give greater insight into
Balthasar’s trinitarian thought as a whole. By doing so, it will also provide
greater insight into Balthasar as a thinker.
14 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
It must also be said that, though his trinitarian theology is of principal import for many theological themes, this book of necessity is selectively limited in its scope. I have tried to focus on what I consider the
central matters of the theology of the immanent Trinity, deification, and
apophaticism. This work unavoidably touches on a host of other issues,
which have animated various secondary interpreters but which I have
chosen not to pursue. For instance, at no point do I dedicate extended
analysis of Balthasar’s understanding of the analogy of being. The topic is
present throughout, as perceptive readers will see. Nevertheless, because
it exercises such a gravitational pull, treating it directly would have been
a distraction from the specifically trinitarian dimensions of Balthasar’s
thought. Most importantly, given my claims about what deification is
in Balthasar’s work, I largely refrain from examining the ecclesiological and personal dimensions of our participation in the triune life. The
Eucharist figures prominently in chapter 3, but I have left unaddressed
the visible structure of the church, holy orders, and Balthasar’s figuring
of the church’s Marian, Petrine, and Johannine dimensions. Moreover,
Balthasar’s understanding of the manner in which Christians live out
their divine adoption is a topic too vast for these few pages.
C h a pt e r 1
God Is Love
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of the Immanent Trinity
How should God, the One and Absolute, be eternal love, if he were
not triune?
—Balthasar, Convergences
As noted in the introduction, on regular occasions, and in a variety of
ways, Balthasar indicated that the Trinity is the center of his theological
program. To recognize that the Trinity holds a central place in Balthasar’s
theological vision does not, however, bring us closer to knowing what he
says regarding the immanent Trinity. This chapter explicates Balthasar’s
theology of the immanent Trinity and uncovers the reasoning behind
Balthasar’s peculiar depiction of it in immanent trinitarian terms—that
is, here we inquire into what internal trinitarian logic governs his claims.
As I will show, Balthasar’s depiction of the immanent Trinity is based
on his conviction that immanent trinitarian theology and doctrine give
an account of the mystery that God is love. Only because God is eternally Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can such a claim be made. Balthasar’s
immanent trinitarian theology is thus highly person centered, focusing
on the processions, relations, and distinctions between the three persons
15
16 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
as the form of divine love. Moreover, for Balthasar, “God is love” cannot
be a vague, amorphous idea. Rather, love implies certain concrete dispositions and active, reciprocal relationships, without which the term is
empty. As will be made clearer in chapter 2, this places Balthasar in a tradition of trinitarian theology that approaches the Trinity neither in terms
of intramental processions nor with the minimal goal of showing that
the doctrine of the Trinity is not irrational. How Balthasar can justify
such vividness epistemologically on the basis of the revelation of God in
Christ, while nevertheless still maintaining that God is utterly incomprehensible, will be the subject of chapter 4.
Before turning to Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian theology proper,
however, it is important to establish from the outset two principles of
Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian claims. The first concerns the relationship between his immanent trinitarian speculations and the economic
Trinity revealed in scripture. The second concerns the necessity of analogical speech. With regard to the relation between the economic and
immanent Trinity, Balthasar is clear that we come to know of the immanent Trinity only through its economic revelation and work. He writes,
There is, however, no access to the trinitarian mystery other than
its revelation in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. No claims about
the immanent Trinity can afford to lose their footing in the New
Testament. Otherwise, they will plunge into a void of abstractions
without pertinence to this history of salvation.
Only Jesus’ way of relating to his Father and to the Holy Spirit
can teach us anything about the intratrinitarian relations of life and
love in the one and only God.1
Similar passages abound in Balthasar’s writing. Three additional examples
will suffice to show the tenor of his thought. “Contemplation’s object is
God, and God is triune life. But as far as we are concerned, we only know
of this triune life from the Son’s incarnation.”2 And “A doctrine of God
and the Trinity really speaks to us only when and as long as the [theologia]
does not become detached from the [oikonomia], but rather lets its every
formulation and stage of reflection be accompanied and supported by the
latter’s vivid discernibility.”3 Finally, “It is in the unique form [of revelation in Christ], and only in it, that the mystery of the ‘super-form’ within
God Is Love 17
the Godhead, of the Trinity as absolute love and thereby as the ‘essence’ of
God, is made known.”4
Though Balthasar clearly wishes to ground immanent trinitarian
speculation exclusively in the economy of salvation, and in particular
in the revelation of Christ, his point is not to reduce the Trinity to its
economic manifestation. Therefore, while the human being requires the
revelation of God in Christ Jesus to disclose the truth of the immanent
Trinity, the event of God’s saving deeds and revelation depends on the
“background” or “inner presupposition” of the immanent Trinity in order
to be intelligible. As he explains, “It is not simply that the full doctrine
of the Trinity can be understood only on the basis of a theology of the
Cross . . . and is inseparable from it: rather, we must see the doctrine of
the Trinity as the ever-present, inner presupposition of the doctrine of the
Cross.”5 The cross, and by extension the whole economy, and immanent
Trinity are in a hermeneutical relationship: neither can be interpreted
without the light of the other.
The question is, given the intimacy of their relationship, how does
one know what can be said of God in se, and what can be said only of the
economy? Balthasar explains this relationship of the economic and immanent as an exercise in negative theology. We are bound to the data of the
economy, but we must deny that his relation with creatures exhausts God’s
being if we are to properly understand what is being revealed. He explains,
“There is only one way to approach the trinitarian life in God: on the basis
of what is manifest in God’s kenosis in the theology of the covenant—and
thence the theology of the Cross—we must feel our way back into the
mystery of the absolute, employing a negative theology that excludes from
God all intramundane experience and suffering.”6 The absolute transcendence of God, above all intramundane experience and suffering, shapes, in
turn, the rules of theological speech. God cannot be confined to the terms
of creaturely existence. Balthasar says, for instance, “It is only analogously
(where the similarity is overruled by a greater dissimilarity!) that we can
speak of persons in God, only analogously (where the similarity is overruled by a greater dissimilarity!) that we can speak of ‘begetting’ and ‘inspiration,’ only analogously (where the similarity is overruled by a greater
dissimilarity!) that we can speak of ‘three,’ for what ‘three’ means in relation
to the absolute is in any case something quite other than the inner-worldly
‘three’ of a sequence of numbers.”7 This analogical principle, by which the
18 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
similarity between God and creature is overruled by an ever-greater dissimilarity, applies to virtually everything Balthasar articulates about the
Trinity below. At times, Balthasar seems to presuppose this analogical rule
rather than demonstrate how it works. He does not regularly engage in the
“threefold motion of affirmation, negation, and eminence,” of terms that
characterize much analogical speech.8 Nevertheless, we need not conclude
that Balthasar is inconsistent with respect to analogy—claiming its necessity on the one hand and ignoring it on the other. For Balthasar, while
analogy is presupposed, it is not a neutral method of speech that enables
us to move from the world to God. Perhaps fittingly, Balthasar addressed
theological method in his early poetic work, Heart of the World:
The teachers said: the Ways of Knowledge are three. The Way of
the Yes, the Way of the No, and, more sublime than either, the Way
of the Ultimate Beyond. The first would have me find you in all
creatures, since each of them reflects as in a fragment a ray of your
light. The second would have me forsake all creatures, since their
hard contours cannot contain your infinitely flowing Being. The
third way would, finally, have me smash the shell of their perfections
and dilate them until they became the measureless measure of your
eternity. But I learned that these ways are no way at all. The Yes is a
dictum, and the No a contra-diction. They become entangled with
each other, and in the end they both lead to the abyss, while the
third way is but the impossibility of crossing it.9
Rather than being a human way to know God, analogical speech works
only insofar as it is grounded in the concrete form of the God-world
relationship: Christ, the concrete analogia entis. Any method, or “way of
knowledge,” that is not grounded in Christ himself fails.10 Christ, moreover, cannot be properly understood outside of his trinitarian relationship
with the Father in the Spirit.
We will return to these epistemological claims and their significance in chapter 4. What is important here is that analogical speech is not
the only means by which Balthasar seeks to preserve divine incompres
sibility. In addition, one finds in Balthasar a principle that guides not only
how to interpret specific claims but also the way to make claims in the
first place. Gerard O’Hanlon noted in his work on the doctrine of divine
God Is Love 19
immutability in Balthasar that “what is distinctive among theologians like
Balthasar is precisely the explicit attempt to combine the static with the
dynamic, to preserve the category of state while being open to that of event,
to avoid the rationalism of an essentialist ontology, not by giving priority
to the notion of ‘process’ but rather by retaining the ontological, without
denying the abiding truth of the notion of ‘becoming.’”11 What O’Hanlon
observes and describes in terms of the divine being applies as well to the
specifics of Balthasar’s trinitarian theology. This device is not accidental
but a deliberate strategy of doing trinitarian theology. In Balthasar’s estimation, such combinations of multiple perspectives prevent the theologian from limiting God in human terms, concepts, or models, even as such
terms, concepts, and models disclose something of God’s life. Balthasar is
especially critical of a kind of trinitarian propositionalism found in scholastic thought. Contrary to Kilby’s conclusion that Balthasar provides no
“breaks and safeguards against [the] presumption of a God’s eye view,”
Balthasar’s claims of “epistemological humility” are born out in the substance of his trinitarian theology.12 As we will see below, Balthasar applies
this method of paradoxical speech to many different aspects of the triune
life, not only with respect to the divine attributes, as O’Hanlon demonstrates, but also in relationship to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as both
distinct and interrelated persons. It is this method of making countervailing claims—claims built from the irreducible components of his various
paradoxes—that provides a key to both the general structure and the content of Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian theology.
T h e Fat h e r , S o n , a n d H o ly Sp i r i t
The Father and the Divine Essence
Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian theology begins not with the divine
essence but with God the Father.13 Balthasar rejects those approaches to
the Trinity that attempt to deduce the existence of the three persons on
the basis of God’s nature as spirit. In the first place, Balthasar rejects the
Anselmian position that the Father possesses absolute knowledge and
freedom by virtue of the divine essence but nevertheless produces the Son
and Spirit subsequently.14 As Anselm explains,
20 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
The Father is consciousness, the Son understanding, and the Spirit,
love. Yes. But it is necessary to understand that the Father does not
stand in want of the Son or the Spirit. It is not as if the Father, by
and through himself, can only be conscious, and needs the Son in
order to understand and the Spirit in order to love. And the same
goes, mutatis mutandis, for the Son and Spirit: none of them needs
the others in order to be conscious, understand and love. This is a
necessary truth because each of the three is, as an individual, the
supreme essence and wisdom, and each is the supreme essence
so perfectly that the supreme essence and wisdom is conscious,
understands and loves, through itself.15
In Balthasar’s reading, Anselm’s position fails to explain why the Father
generates the Son and breaths the Spirit. The Father is conscious, understands, and loves by virtue of his possession of the divine essence. His personhood is disjoined from his trinitarian relationship with the Son and
Spirit. Taken to its extreme, Anselm’s position would lead to Arianism.
Balthasar’s initial response is, therefore, to turn to Thomas’s approach
to the persons. In Thomas, the persons are known according to their unique
relation with one another. And, since there can be no accidents in the
divine life, these relations are subsistent, identical with the divine essence.
To be a divine person is to be in relation with the other divine persons.
However, these very relations are the product of the processions. The relations between the persons “signify only the bond between two termini,”
established by procession.16 In his loose adaptation of Thomas’s insights,
we can see here for the first time Balthasar’s use of two irreducible propositions: in this case, one that “expresses an act and terminus [procession]”
and another that expresses a “bond between two things [relation].”17 Put
otherwise, and following Balthasar’s own habit, procession denotes the
movement of the one divine life in begetting and spirating, whereas relation denotes the person in their “unrepeatable uniqueness.”18 Much of
Balthasar’s trinitarian speculation moves between these two countervailing and irreducible components. On the one hand, Balthasar speaks of the
persons in their identity with their act. On the other, Balthasar speaks of
the persons in their “objective” identity, as the subjects of their act.
This Thomas-
inspired approach to the Trinity through the personal relations of Father, Son, and Spirit avoids the near identification
God Is Love 21
of the Father with the divine essence as in Anselm. Nevertheless, despite
his impressive conceptual refinement on the topic, and accepting the
need for using two countervailing propositions, Balthasar distances himself from certain elements of Thomas’s position. In particular, Balthasar
rejects Thomas’s use of Augustine’s intramental analogy and adopts an
approach more similar to Richard of St. Victor. We will return to the
issue of Balthasar’s sources in the next chapter. What concerns us now
is Balthasar’s reasoning in rejecting the intramental analogy. If Anselm
seemed to err by providing no logic as to why the Father generates the
Son (and together with him breaths the Spirit), Thomas errs by locking
the Trinity into the supposedly necessary logic of the intramental analogy.
For Thomas, because God knows and wills himself, and these intramental acts cannot be accidents in God, God’s self-knowing and self-willing
must produce “subsistent relations,” identical to the essence but distinct
according to their relation and known in their relation of opposition to
one another. In this line of reasoning, the procession of Word and Spirit
are necessary if one is to hold that God knows and wills. Contra Anselm,
Balthasar believes like Thomas that there is a logic to the generation of the
Son and the breathing of the Spirit. However, contra Thomas, Balthasar
does not think this logic is that of necessary intramental activity. Thomas’s trinitarian logic fails to adequately show how intramental acts produce
distinct persons capable of reciprocal acts—a reciprocity required if God is
to be love. Moreover, however these processions occur, the divine essence
appears like a fourth thing, giving rise to the trinitarian persons (by virtue
of being mind), and yet reposing unmoved behind or above the persons.19
In order to avoid these difficulties, Balthasar argues that “there is
nothing fruitful in God other than the Father.”20 The one divine essence
is not the subject that produces the persons but is itself “in motion” in
the Father’s act of begetting the Son and in their breathing forth of the
Spirit.21 The divine essence is, as it were, that which is given in the processions themselves.22 Indeed, it is “identical” to the movements between the
persons.23 The being of God is an eternal event, an eternal “happening,”
which begins with the Father.24 He is the ground, the origin, and source
of the whole divinity.25 Furthermore, the Father does not produce the
Son and Spirit according to necessary intramental acts that would reduce
the Son to the Father’s self-knowledge and the Spirit to his self-willing.
Rather, the Son and Spirit both come forth, though in different ways, from
22 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
the single wellspring of the Father’s groundless, unfathomable love. Only
this approach dissolves “all suspicion of divine solipsism.”26 Balthasar does
not hesitate to call this unfathomable love “gratuitous,” because there is no
necessity or ground to this act other than itself.27 It is “why-less,” beyond
the worldly categories of freedom and necessity.28 God is “free to do what
he will with his own nature. That is, he can surrender himself.”29 Yet apart
from this self-surrender, the divine nature “would not be itself.”30 This gratuity of the divine processions from the Father is thus “the primal ground
of the mystery of God,” “behind which no thought can probe.”31 Everything, created and divine, comes forth “from the secret and mystery of the
Father.”32 The human question, “why?” can find no higher rationality than
the love of the Father, who begets a Son and who with him breathes forth
a Spirit. Necessity and freedom, being and gratuity, coincide in God.
The Father, however, cannot be thought as existing before or outside his primordial act of love. To do so in anything more than a notional
manner would be Arianism. Balthasar repeatedly asserts that the Father is
identical to his act of begetting: “[The Father] remains eternal Father only
insofar as he has eternally given over to the Son all that is his, including
the divinity.”33 The Father is “always already giving himself away.”34 “From
all eternity he ‘is’ Father by eternally giving his all.”35 Put most drastically,
The Father’s self-utterance in the generation of the Son is an initial
“kenosis” within the Godhead. . . . For the Father strips himself,
without remainder, of his Godhead and hands it over to the Son; he
“imparts” to the Son all that is his. “All that is mine” ( Jn 17:10). The
Father must not be thought to exist “prior” to this self-surrender (in
an Arian sense): he is this movement of self-giving that holds nothing
back. Inherent in the Father’s love is an absolute renunciation: he will
not be God for himself alone. He lets go of his divinity and, in this
sense, manifests a (divine) God-lessness (of love, of course).36
The Father’s act of kenosis—the act that makes the Father the Father—
is a real and complete giving over of the divine essence to the Son. The
Father does not retain something for himself.37 It involves the real “risk”
of loss.38 Nevertheless, this act does not mean the Father loses his divinity
in his act of generating the Son. There is no tragedy in the Father’s act
of begetting.39 Balthasar agrees with the position of the Fourth Lateran
God Is Love 23
Council: “For the Father, generating the Son from eternity, gave him his
substance . . . it cannot be said that he gave him a part of his substance and
retained a part for himself, since the substance of the Father is indivisible,
being entirely simple. Nor can it be said that in generating him the Father
transferred his substance to the Son, as though he gave it to the Son and
did not retain it himself, for if so he would have ceased to be substance.”40
In other words, “The Father, in uttering and surrendering himself without reserve, does not lose himself. He does not extinguish himself by self-
giving, just as he does not keep back anything of himself either.”41
Balthasar can hold these two apparently contradictory statements
(that the Father gives away his entire essence but does not lose his essence)
through the identification of the divine nature with the divine person, who
is himself identical to his act of procession. Because the divine essence is
“in motion” in the persons and their processions, the one essence is “determined by the unrepeatably unique participation of the Father, Son, and
Spirit in this event and so would never exist except as fatherly, sonly, or
spirit-ually.”42 In Balthasar’s eyes, and as will be treated in greater detail
below, the common element of fatherliness, sonliness, and spiritliness is
gratuitous self-giving love.
The only principle that could constitute the Divine Persons of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—at least if we wish to maintain
the divine unity—would seem to be pure love or selflessness. Since
this love must have existed from all eternity, it follows that the
Person of the Father is the mystery par excellence. . . . But then what
is left for the essence shared by the Divine Persons if not pure love?
God’s characteristic personal selflessness would not, of course, entail
any negation of the person, since it is the order governing the divine
processions that constitutes the Divine Being as absolute love.43
In other words, “God, from his very origin in the Father, is the miracle of
that love whereby he can be himself only in giving himself.”44
The Son and Trinitarian Personhood
While the trinitarian persons are constituted by self-giving love, it is not
the case that Balthasar imagines them as being like “something not too far
24 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
from persons in our ordinary sense,” or, “three centers of consciousness,
three ‘I’s’ with three wills which are, in principle at least, distinct.”45 As we
will see, in some respects Balthasar’s position can appear this way. However, Balthasar is clear that “person” is not a univocal concept, whether it
is used of either the trinitarian or human persons. He notes, for instance,
that “what the Fathers call tropos tes hyparxeos—the divine mode of ‘personal’ existence—is different and specific in the case of each divine Hypostasis, and so it is theologically impossible to define this ‘specificity.’ . . . Thus
the term tropos tes hyparxeos (and other terms such as idiotes, idioma) is
used to indicate three different modes of being God, but not in the sense
of a generic term that would subsume the various cases univocally.”46 And
again, “Let us not forget that in God there can be no genus to subsume
a univocal concept of person or that the application of ‘three’ to him has
nothing to do with what can be counted quantitatively.”47 It is not the
case, therefore, that person univocally means something like distinct center of consciousness, or Boethius’s individual substance of a rational nature
for Balthasar. Person is an apophatic term that can, at best, refer to an
incommunicable existence determined by the processions/relations of the
Trinity.48 This means that there can be no question of the I-like character
of the Father, Son, and Spirit being separated from their dynamic relations. The Son’s personal mode of existence, stemming from the Father’s
act of self-giving, therefore, is a “second way of participating in (and of
being) the identical Godhead” irreducible to the first.49 Those elements
that make the trinitarian persons appear as individual self-conscious subjects (including engaging in reciprocal acts of love) stem not from an a
priori definition of personhood but from Balthasar’s specific claims about
the persons and the Trinity as love. Love requires reciprocity and reciprocity requires difference.
This reciprocity from difference is made possible by the Father’s act
of begetting. But in contradistinction to the Thomist position, the Father
begets the Son in an act of “spontaneous love,” not out of necessary intellection.50 Rather than an act of the mind thinking itself, begetting is “life
that transcends itself, life that can no longer hold itself back but, rather,
lets itself go, becoming poor out of wealth and impotent out of potency.
Begetting is the manifestation of life’s power to die over into the life of
another.”51 “We must envisage [the Father] sharing his full divine freedom
with the Begotten, and sharing it ultimately, irrevocably and forever.”52
God Is Love 25
The Son is thus generated as the “‘Thou’ to whom [the Father] says, ‘Thou
art my beloved.’”53 Nevertheless, the Godhead is not irrational. Unlike
Anselm, who disconnected the generation of the Son from any clear logic,
Balthasar maintains that the logic in play is precisely the divine “logic of
love.”54 The Father begets because the Father is a wellspring, an unfathomable and inexhaustible ocean of love and out of this love he begets the consubstantial Son. This groundless act is the foundation of all truth.55
Because the Son is equally divine, he is the perfect representation, mirror, image, and expression of the Father’s essence and love. God is eternally
expressed and expressible in the Logos.56 Balthasar, following Bonaventure, emphasizes the “outward” movement of the Logos’s expression, rather
than Thomas’s insistence that the Logos is an internal, mental word of
God.57 As Balthasar acknowledges, both Thomas and Bonaventure connect the generation of the Word with the creation of the world. However, by conceiving the Word as an “outward” expression in the Trinity,
Balthasar sees in Bonaventure a better formulation of the Word’s expressive character in two ways. First, by being the Father’s perfect expression,
the Logos is the “unique expression of someone unique” and expresses this
person “in every respect.”58 The Word, therefore, is no mere mental image
or lifeless copy but expresses in his own unique person the Father’s unique
person and the Trinity as a whole.59 He is God as expressed and therefore,
he expresses “God’s inner, personal fruitfulness,” the Holy Spirit as well as
the Father.60
Second, by virtue of its expressing the Father and all he is, the Word is
also the archetypal expression of creation. It is in this light that Balthasar
identifies the Son as the divine locus of the transcendentals of worldly
being: “In God himself the total epiphany [beauty], self-surrender [goodness], and self-expression [truth] of God the Father is the Son, identical with him as God, in whom everything that is possible for God—is
expressed.”61 The world comes to be as a kind of echo of the Word’s eternal coming to be. As Balthasar sees it, with this emphasis, Bonaventure
overcomes Augustine’s “truly infelicitous” idea that any divine person
could become incarnate. Bonaventure has recognized, rather, that “the
Logos alone is incarnabilis [incarnable].”62
We will return to the connection of the Logos and creation in chapter 3. For now we must focus on the consequences of Balthasar’s claim
that the Logos images the Father’s person in his own unique person. This
26 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
movement from the Logos as outward expression of the Father to the
Logos’s “personality” is decisive for Balthasar’s trinitarian theology. For it
is in this movement that the dialogical elements of his thought emerge.
Indeed, in Balthasar’s (theo-)logic, the Son would not be the expression
of the Father if he were not also a unique “I.” Because the Father actively
loves, and the Logos is the perfect image and expression of the Father, the
Logos must actively love in turn. Balthasar writes, “The Son receives [the
Father’s love] as such, not ‘passively’ as the Beloved, but (since he receives
the Father’s substance, his Father’s love) actively as a Lover, returning
love, as one who responds to the totality of the Father’s love and is ready
to do everything in love.”63 True, the Son is God “in the mode of receptivity.”64 But because he really is God and really expresses the Father, the
Son is the Father’s eternal “beloved and glorified ‘thou,’” who “can do
nothing other than ‘turn back’ to the Father.”65 The Son’s response to the
“gift of the Godhead (of equal substance with the Father) can only be
eternal thanksgiving (eucharistia) to the Father, the Source—a thanksgiving as selfless and unreserved as the Father’s original self-surrender.”66
The Son, in his thanksgiving response to the Father, as his perfect expression, is obedient, “at the Father’s disposal,” even in the immanent Trinity.67
Paradoxically, however, because the event of the Son’s begetting is not
temporal, and he is equally as eternal and free as the Father, Balthasar
speaks of the Son giving “antecedent consent to be begotten.”68 “The eternal Child perpetually comes forth from the bosom of the Father, who
eternally begets him into freedom.”69 The Son is, therefore, not simply
the perfect image or product of the Father by virtue of their common
essence, but is “infinitely Other of the Father” in their personal distinction.70 The groundless love of the Father finds its expression in the mirror of the Son’s own groundless consent to, and thanksgiving for, being
begotten.71 Groundless love meets groundless love.
The Holy Spirit and the Excess of Love
Because the Son images the Father perfectly, and therefore “turns back” to
the Father in loving gratitude, the Son does not complete the trinitarian
processions. As the image of the Father’s outpouring love, the Son, too,
pours himself out to a further “totality that can only be described as absolute
God Is Love 27
love per se,” absolute love “beyond” word and expression.72 However, since
the wellspring of the Father is “absolute love per se,” this outpouring of the
Son can be conceived also as an outpouring back toward the Father. The
Spirit can thus be thought of as coming from the Father, through the Son,
and therefore positioned beyond the Son. Or the Spirit can be thought of as
coming from the Father and the Son, positioned between them.
Balthasar thus takes a distinct position on the issue of the filioque.73
While it is clear that he affirms the idea that the Holy Spirit proceeds from
the Father and the Son, he can accept the formula that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. Balthasar is critical, therefore, of
extreme positions in both Eastern and Western pneumatology. Balthasar’s
central critique is that both East and West fall into an untenable formalism.
In the case of the West (Augustine, Anselm, Thomas, Florence), the Spirit
proceeds from the Father and Son as though from one principle. Because
the divine nature is the only common element that could make the Father
and Son one principle, this position seems to make the Spirit a product of
the divine nature itself. The East (paradigmatically in Photius) rejects this
very construction for either confusing the Son and Father or making the
Spirit a cause of his own procession on the basis of the common nature.
In extreme forms, the East thus adopts a position whereby both Son and
Spirit proceed from the Father alone. Balthasar’s response is simple and
rests on two claims: “first, the impossibility . . . of using the concept ‘person’
univocally for the divine hypostases . . . and second, the name of ‘“Love,’”
given to God by John (I Jn 4:8, 16).”74 As Balthasar explains,
Each divine hypostasis retains its own, irreducible mystery: the
Father, in that he is able to be both utter self-giving (relatio) and
yet One who gives himself; the Son, the answering Word, in that,
while giving himself to the Father, he is able to share in the latter’s
originating power in such a way that, in union with this power, he
can not only be love, but produce it; and the Spirit, in that he is both
the highest divine, sovereign freedom and perfect self-lessness, only
existing for Father and Son.75
The Spirit proceeds, therefore, not from one source, whether conceived of
as the Father alone or the single principle of the Father-Son, but manifests
28 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
the “transcendental plurality” that makes divine love of the Father and the
Son not only dilectio, self-love, but caritas, love for another.76
Whether it is conceived, therefore, as between the Father and Son or
from the Father through and beyond the Son, the procession of the Spirit
is connected to the begetting of the Son. That is, the Spirit’s origin is “the
love between the Father and the Son.”77 However, the Spirit’s origin in
the love of the Father and the Son must be thought of in two countervailing senses. On the one hand, the Spirit is the “subjective” love of the
Father and the Son itself. On the other hand, the Spirit is the “objective”
witness and fruit of the love of the Father and the Son.78
Insofar as the Spirit is the “subjective” love of the Father and the
Son, he is their unity-in-distinction. Balthasar writes, “Proceeding from
both, as their subsistent ‘We,’ there breathes the ‘Spirit’ who is common to both: as the essence of love, he maintains the infinite difference between them, seals it and, since he is the one Spirit of them both,
bridges it.”79 The Spirit as the love of the Father and the Son itself
brings together a correspondence between the Father’s love and the
Son’s love.80 Drawing from Heribert Mühlen, we can say that the Spirit
joins the Father and Son together by being their common activity. He
makes the Father and the Son into a “We,” beyond the Father and Son’s
“I” and “Thou.”81 He is the “identity of the gift-as-given and the gift-
as-received in thanksgiving.”82 The Spirit, thus, “rounds out God’s entire
being as love.”83 This “subjective” character of the Spirit as the common
love of Father and Son is what gives the Spirit his peculiar anonymity
and “facelessness.”84 The Spirit, from the subjective point of view, does
not seem to have a distinct place of his own. He seems to dissolve into
the Father and the Son in their mutual love. In the economy, the Spirit
witnesses only to the Father and the Son, never to himself.85 It is perhaps for this reason that Kilby criticizes Balthasar’s pneumatology “as a
kind of afterthought” to the considerations of the Father and the Son.86
However, even in the “subjective” anonymity of the Spirit, he is vital to
Balthasar’s trinitarian thinking. As Balthasar explains in an important
essay, “The Unknown Lying Beyond the Word,” “the love that makes
the Father a Father as the one who begets and the love that makes the
Son a Son as the Word which expresses him are one single, concrete
Spirit-being.”87 Without the Spirit, in other words, God would not be
either One or Love.
God Is Love 29
In order to prevent a reduction of the Spirit to his “subjective” place
as the love of Father and Son, Balthasar shifts to the countervailing
“objective” character of the Spirit. The Spirit is not simply the “We” of
the Father and the Son, he is the third person of the Trinity. He “comes
forth from [the] fellowship [of the Father and the Son] as the miracle
of eternal fruitfulness.”88 The “interplay” of the Father and Son’s absolute love “that would seem self-sufficient . . . is characterized by such an
excess that, ‘incidentally’ (as it were), and precisely as excess it produces
another One.”89 He is thus not only the love of the Father and the Son;
in its excess, he is the unhoped-for fruit, gift, proof, and witness of this
love. At times Balthasar even compares the Spirit to human children,
who are the fruit and proof of the love between their parents.90 Indeed,
Balthasar considers the human family “the most eloquent imago Trinitatis that we find woven into the fabric of the creature. It not only transcends Augustine’s self-contained I, but also allows the ‘condilectus’ that
Richard’s model imports from the outside to spring from the intimacy
of love itself—precisely as fruitfulness—while avoiding the dangerous
tendency of the dialogicians [e.g., Martin Buber] to allow interpersonal
encounter to slide into a mere two-way monologue (with a religious
background, to be sure).”91 Nevertheless, this most eloquent image is
also limited. For, unlike the human child, the Spirit is “not begotten” by
the Father and the Son.92 The Son alone is begotten, alone is the divine
Child and archetype of all childhood.93
The procession of the Holy Spirit, as the excessive fruit of the love of
the Father and the Son for each other, finally accomplishes the miracle
of divine love that originates in the Father. He confirms that divine love
is absolute, infinite, free, and incomprehensible. Moreover, because the
Father and Son’s love pours out in the infinite expanse of the Spirit, God
is not only “ever-greater” for us but also for himself.94 Triune love “is the
eternal miracle that remains a miracle to itself in all eternity, because it
is logically incomprehensible that this ineffable element should continually put forth fresh blooms even higher than what seemed to be the highest point of fulfillment between lovers, and that the lovers in turn should
be prompted to new games and inventions by the unhoped-for quality of
their power, their achievement, their inner reward and crowning.”95 Even
as the love of the Father and the Son is infinite, this infinite love transcends itself by bearing infinite fruit in the person of the Holy Spirit. God
30 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
transcends God. With the procession of the Holy Spirit, and the confirmation that God is ever-greater for himself, Balthasar’s depiction of the
divine life does not stop at dialogue but includes surprise, wonder, prayer,
adoration, and glorification.
A n a ly s i s o f t h e C h a r act e r i s t i c s o f
B a lt h a s a r ’ s T r i n i ta r i a n D e p i ct i o n
Kenosis
Perhaps the most striking feature of Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian theology is his use of the notion of kenosis, self-emptying, in describing the
eternal processions and interrelations of the persons, beginning with the
Father’s kenotic begetting of the Son. Biblically, the term has its primary
use in Paul’s passage in Philippians 2:6–8:
Who, though he was in the form of God,
Did not regard equality with God
As something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
Taking the form of a slave,
Being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself,
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
The reference here is to the Incarnation, the descent of Christ into the
world and unto execution. Balthasar, too, sees kenosis as not only applying
to the Son in his incarnation, passion, and death but also as a possible, if
potentially problematic, term for God’s relation to creation.96
The question immediately arises, how does the Son’s kenosis into
the world of sin and death connect to the Father’s trinitarian kenosis?
Balthasar’s reasoning from the Incarnation to the Father rests on two
conceptual movements. First, Balthasar establishes that the Son is somehow obedient or kenotic in the immanent Trinity. Balthasar reasons back
God Is Love 31
from the “superstructure of the Incarnation” to expose the substructure of
“the eternal will of the Son within the Trinity to obedience.”97 This movement is, according to Balthasar, dangerous and should be understood as
an exercise of negative theology. He writes,
We cannot entertain any form of “process theology” that identifies
the world process (including God’s involvement in it, even to the
extent of the Cross) with the eternal and timeless “procession” of the
Hypostases in God. Accordingly, there is only one way to approach
the trinitarian life in God: on the basis of what is manifest in God’s
kenosis in the theology of the covenant—and thence in the mystery
of the Cross—we must feel our way back into the mystery of the
absolute, employing a negative theology that excludes from God
all intramundane experience and suffering, while at the same time
presupposing that the possibility of such experience and suffering—
up to and including its Christological and trinitarian implications—
is grounded in God.98
The self-emptying and obedience evident in the event of the Incarnation and death of the Son is therefore not added to the divine Son by the
human nature. Rather, the event of kenosis presupposes the continuity of
the divine subject, and, by emptying himself, the Son reveals he can empty
himself, that he can be obedient. Therefore, Balthasar argues, in his kenosis, Christ’s “self-abasement and self-emptying were no contradiction of
his own essence, but corresponded precisely to this essence, in a way that
could never have been thought.”99 The missio of the Son into the world is
an extension of and reveals his processio: “The Cross is not an alteration
of his filial attitude; rather, it is his assumption of the estranged world
into himself in order to be in that world the same person he always was
in God.”100 Self-emptying, though with no tragic dimensions and therefore by analogy, is present in the Trinity. Balthasar’s second move follows the reasoning about the Son’s relation to the Father laid out above
“in reverse.” If, as we saw, the kenosis of the Son in Incarnation-unto-
cross shows his intratrinitarian thanksgiving, self-surrender, and obedience within the conditions of a fallen world, and the Son is the perfect
image and expression of the Father, then the kenotic incarnation of the
Son indicates that the Father is the source of kenosis.
32 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Balthasar’s kenotic trinitarian theology, then, follows the taxis of the
divine persons but nevertheless allows for their equality.101 On the one
hand, it is the Father’s act of begetting that is the principium, the foundation, of the triune life. On the other, as an act of divine kenosis, in his
generation of the Son, the Father is not more divine, more loving than the
Son. Expanding on a passage already quoted above, we can see this paradox at work:
[The Father] cannot be God in any other way but in this “kenosis”
within the Godhead itself. (Yet what omnipotence is revealed here!
He brings forth a God who is of equal substance and therefore
uncreated, even if, in this self-surrender, he must go to the very
extreme of self-lessness.) It follows that the Son, for his part, cannot
be and possess the absolute nature of God except in the mode of
receptivity: he receives this unity of omnipotence and powerlessness
from the Father. This receptivity simultaneously includes the Son’s
self-givenness (which is the absolute presupposition for all the
different ways in which he is delivered up to the world) and his filial
thanksgiving (Eucharist) for the gift of consubstantial divinity. . . .
His thanksgiving is the eternal Yes to the gift of consubstantial
divinity (that is, a divinity that is equally absolute). It is a Yes to
the primal kenosis of the Father in the unity of omnipotence and
powerlessness.102
The Son is only because the Father gives. He is dependent on the Father.
Balthasar can even apply the words of the Incarnate Son, “The Father is
greater than I” ( John 14:28), to the immanent relations: “[The Father] is
irretrievably greater in so far as he is the origin of all things, even of the
Son, and the Son never thinks of trying to ‘catch up’ to this his Source:
by so doing he would only destroy himself. He knows himself to be sheer
Gift that is given to itself and which would not exist without the Giver
who is distinct from the Gift and who nonetheless gives himself within
it.”103 However, the Father’s kenosis is a total self-surrender, a “(divine)
God-lessness,” a “risk,” a “death,” a “super-death,” a “sacrifice,” though one
that entails no suffering whatsoever.104 And, because it is so total, because
the Father’s divinity is not merely lent to the Son, the Son’s response is
equally groundless and gratuitous; therefore, it is not “owed” at all.105
God Is Love 33
Secondary scholars have taken Balthasar’s argument that the Son
responds to the Father in self-giving love as an indication that to be a
(trinitarian) person is to engage in kenosis. According to this line of thinking, the Father initiates the trinitarian kenosis in the begetting of the Son,
who performs his own kenosis in his obedience, and, finally, the Spirit
also engages in his own kenosis through his anonymity. Edward Oakes
suggests such an interpretation of Balthasar in his Pattern of Redemption: “Another of Balthasar’s innovations is his willingness to speak of
the Spirit’s kenosis, as well as the Son’s. Indeed, it will be no surprise for
the reader who has followed the argument thus far to hear that Balthasar
holds the very ability of the Son to empty himself and take on the human
form of a slave is rooted and conditioned in the prior kenosis or emptying of each Person for the other.”106 Aristotle Papanikolaou and Matthew
Levering interpret Balthasar similarly. For Papanikolaou, Balthasar simply understands divine personhood as kenosis.107 In Levering’s analysis,
“every intra-divine relation involves mutual kenosis.”108
Oakes, Papanikolaou, and Levering are correct that intratrinitarian
self-giving is a vital component of Balthasar’s trinitarian theology. In a
number of passages throughout his work, Balthasar identifies how each
divine person engages in self-giving.109 However, these same interpreters overlook two peculiar elements of Balthasar’s discussion of intratrini
tarian kenosis. First, Balthasar never speaks of kenosis in the plural. There
is only a single intratrinitarian kenosis. Second, if to be a person means to
be kenotic, then Balthasar would be denying the personhood of the Spirit
when he claims, pace Oakes, that “there is no self-emptying in the case of
the Holy Spirit,” whether in the economic or immanent Trinity.110
A passage from Balthasar illustrates both points: “We spoke of a first
‘kenosis’ of the Father, expropriating himself by ‘generating’ the consubstantial Son. Almost automatically, this first kenosis expands to a kenosis
involving the whole Trinity. For the Son could not be consubstantial with
the Father except by self-expropriation; and their ‘We,’ that is, the Spirit,
must also be God as he is to be the ‘personal’ seal of that self-expropriation
that is identical in Father and Son.”111 The first kenosis expands to a kenosis involving the whole Trinity. The singularity of intratrinitarian kenosis
rests on the coincidence of the countervailing propositions of the being
and processing of the persons. Because the Son is and gives thanks in his
being begotten, and he is begotten in the kenosis of the Father, the Son
34 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
is and gives thanks in the kenosis of the Father. There is thus only “the kenosis (or selflessness) of the love of Father and Son,” not two distinct kenoses of the Father and the Son.112 The Son’s self-surrender in thanksgiving
and obedience is “kenotic,” but never is another kenosis symmetrical, as
it were, to the Father’s.113 The Holy Spirit, as the identity of the love of
the Father and Son, does not engage in another kenosis in turn. Rather,
according to his objective character, the Spirit witnesses to this one trinitarian kenosis that includes both the primary kenosis of the Father and
the responsive self-giving of the Son.114
Papanikolaou’s claim that “the divine persons are constituted in and
through movements of kenotic self-
giving and receiving” is accurate,
therefore, so long as we understand “kenotic self-giving and receiving” to
refer to the relations of the persons in the inviolable taxis.115 To be a (trinitarian) person is not to be kenotic but to be the incommunicable Father,
Son, or Holy Spirit, all of whom are by their active and passive interrelations. By speaking of a single trinitarian kenosis and explicitly denying a
kenosis of the Spirit, Balthasar rejects any attempt to reduce the trinitarian
persons to a common, generic category—even the category of kenosis. As
he summarizes, God’s essence is not “(univocally) ‘kenotic.’”116 The communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit remains, therefore, utterly mysterious. It cannot be adequately compared either to a community of human
persons or to a threefold self-emptying. For, “[T]his community is not
generic; it is what is most singular, but it is this precisely as community.”117
Speaking of Trinitarian Difference
In order to underscore the distinction of the divine persons from each
other, Balthasar utilizes a series of closely related and irreducible binaries,
derived, in principle, from creation, ranging from the traditional active/
passive to giving/receiving to the more novel masculine/feminine. In each
case, Balthasar exhibits his regular pattern of making paradoxical claims.
Active/Passive; Masculine/Feminine
As we have seen, Balthasar sees the divine life welling up out of the love
of the Father. He gives away his essence in the act of begetting the Son.
The Father begets. The Son is begotten. The Father is active. He gives. The
Son is passive. He receives. Nevertheless, the Son, in his response to the
God Is Love 35
Father’s complete gift of divinity, loves in reply, together with the Father
breathing forth the Spirit. The Father is active while the Son is primarily
passive and derivatively active in the responsive love.118 Translating these
categories into those of masculinity and femininity, which repeat the same
insight in a new key, Balthasar identifies the Father as “(super-) mas
culine.” The Son is “(super-) feminine,” with respect to his being begotten, but “(super-) masculine,” with respect to the breathing of the Spirit
with the Father. Finally, the Spirit appears as “(super-) feminine.”119 The
nature of the repetition of the active/passive categories into sexual difference reflects Balthasar’s “classical” understanding of the relationship of
men and women in sexual reproduction. Other than providing a possible
link between the personal distinctions of the trinitarian persons and fruitfulness, it is difficult to see what this repetition accomplishes in terms of
the immanent Trinity. Critics have noted the danger of the connection
between trinitarian supersexuality and the relationship between men and
women, which always seems to result in the secondary, derivative nature
of woman from man, despite Balthasar’s overtures to the essential equality
of men and women. We will return to this issue in the concluding chapter.
As soon as Balthasar uses these categories in describing the persons
and their interrelationships, however, he qualifies them. In his “active actio”
of begetting, the Father’s giving over of divinity is so total that the coeternal Son and Spirit determine the Father. They offer “antecedent consent,”
a “passive actio” that lets the Father be the origin of divine giving.120 This
means, therefore, that “there is even something (super-) feminine about
the Father too,” insofar as he passively accepts the consent of the Son and
Spirit.121 From these foundations, Balthasar can use human speech about
the Trinity and the divine attributes in often surprising and paradoxical
ways. God can be both omnipotent and powerless: omnipotent, “since he
can give all,” and powerless, “since nothing is as truly powerful as the gift.”122
God is also simultaneously rich and poor: “rich in no other way than by
dispossessing himself of all he has.”123 Giving is identical with having.124
What is antithetical in the created realm is “outstripped” in the Trinity.125
The approach to the divine persons by way of paradoxical speech is,
once again, an instance of Balthasar using countervailing, paradoxical
propositions to hold in tension what cannot be discarded or subsumed
one into the other. In this instance, only by speaking in such terms can
both the irreversible order of the trinitarian taxis and the absolute equality
36 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
and distinction of the persons be maintained. What prevents such speech
from falling into the irrational and the absurd, however, is its basis in the
kenosis of the Father.
Distance
In addition to conceptual binaries like active/passive and masculine/feminine, Balthasar also uses distance or space (though they are not typically
paired with nearness or closeness) to conceptualize the personal distinctions of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Balthasar’s use of distance, however,
is not a means to identify how the persons as persons are distinct from
the others. Rather, distance is for Balthasar an overarching concept that
denotes the quality of the difference of the persons itself.
Interestingly, we can detect a development in Balthasar’s thinking on
the use of this analogy. Early in his career, Balthasar seemed to rule out
the use of spatial concepts of distance in trinitarian theology. In his study
of Gregory of Nyssa, Balthasar writes, “In God all diastasis is excluded,
be it in the distinction between his Persons or in his nature as such.”126
And the “difference [between the trinitarian persons] radically excludes
that which forms the foundation of all distinction in the world: spacing.”127 However, in Heart of the World, the connection between distance,
distinction, and love appears, and in his monograph on Karl Barth, finally,
Balthasar refers several times to intratrinitarian “distance” of the Father
and the Son, which exists “for the sake of nearness” in the Holy Spirit.128
Intratrinitarian distance is a product of intratrinitarian kenosis. It
does not imply a physical separation.129 Balthasar writes, “This divine act
that brings forth the Son, that is, the second way of participating in (and
of being) the identical Godhead, involves the positing of an absolute, infinite ‘distance.’”130 Just as kenosis is most properly singular in the Trinity,
so too distance does not refer to any of the personal distinctions but specifically to the distinction between the Father and the Son. The Spirit
“maintains the infinite difference between them, seals it and, since he is
one Spirit of both, bridges it.”131 It is crucial to note that Balthasar does
not see the “eternal separation” of the Father and the Son as “tragic,” and
“the Spirit’s bridging of the distinction [as] the sublation of tragedy, that
is, ‘comedy.’ ”132 Moreover, Balthasar explains, “We should not see the ‘distance’ in opposition to, or in conflict with, the ‘closeness’ (of circumincessio
in the one divine nature).”133
God Is Love 37
What, then, is the purpose of speaking of distance at all? Rowan
Williams has stated that the term Balthasar often uses, Abstand, means
both “distance” and “difference.” Williams, therefore, translates the passage from Theo-Drama 4, 323 quoted above as “This divine act that brings
forth the Son . . . involves the positing of an absolute, infinite ‘difference.’ ”134 In her analysis, Karen Kilby follows Williams’s lead. I quote
Kilby at length:
Another way to come to see the precarious nature of this notion
is to turn to a slightly different question of what exactly it might
mean to talk of infinite distance in the eternal Trinity. . . . Rowan
Williams suggests that we might take the German here (Abstand)
as “difference,” so would we perhaps make more headway if we ask
what might be meant by the infinite, absolute difference between
the Father and Son? This too is, prima facie, difficult to grasp, given
that the Persons of the Trinity are consubstantial. That everything
the Father is, he gives to the Son, is a traditional claim, and one
also reaffirmed by Balthasar. The difference cannot lie in the “what”
that is given, then; the only place left to locate the difference would
seem to be in the fact that in one instance something is given,
in the other received. Can this difference, distance, separateness,
of which Balthasar speaks—the infinite and absolute difference,
distance, separateness—be a matter of the difference between total
gift and total reception? Perhaps. But there is still quite a lot of
room for questions.135
As Kilby recognizes, and as we have seen, Balthasar’s own understanding of what results from the total kenosis of the Father—the consubstantiality of the Son, who then gives himself in turn—seems to undermine
the difference between the two.136 In Kilby’s understanding, if distance/
difference refers to the difference between giving/receiving and the Father
and Son both give, then Balthasar’s position is not comprehensible. The
Father and the Son are not infinitely different/distant at all because both
give/receive.
Kilby’s line of reasoning, however, does not do justice to Balthasar’s
own for two reasons. First, Kilby ignores the importance of paradox
when considering the trinitarian persons. As we saw above, Balthasar
38 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
considers the Father, Son, and Spirit each according to their identities as
acts of procession, as well as in their unrepeatable personal uniqueness.
For Balthasar, these two contrary approaches are irreconcilable, but both
are necessary. When considering the place of difference and distance in
Balthasar’s theology, Kilby seems to forget the latter set of propositions.
Kilby demonstrates that she can identify the person with his procession:
“the eternal Son just is his processing from the Father.”137 However, she
struggles to see the person as the terminus and subject of the act of procession in this context. And, as Balthasar asserts, “God cannot be dissolved into mere relations.”138
Second, and on the basis of this first oversight, Kilby’s understanding of
difference according to giving/receiving is abstracted from Balthasar’s concrete trinitarian taxis. As we saw above, the Son’s self-giving to the Father
is responsive. There can be no equating of the self-giving of the Father in
generating the Son and the Son’s Eucharistic self-giving response. Even
where Balthasar speaks of “antecedent consent” to being begotten (or, for
the Spirit, breathed), it can never be said that the Father depends on the act
of the Son in order to be the Father. In other words, the Father, Son, and
Spirit “are not interchangeable.”139 The difference of Father and Son can,
from the point of view of procession, be identified as the difference between
divinity-as-given and divinity-as-received. But, insofar as the persons are
not simply acts but actors, their difference is not reducible to the difference
between giving and receiving.
If these two errors are kept in mind, it is not surprising that, when she
follows Williams’s misleading identification of distance and difference,
Kilby can make little sense of the claim that there is distance between
the Father and the Son and cannot see why Balthasar insists on speaking of it. Balthasar himself reveals his rationale, however. He sees two
(interconnected) reasons for speaking of intratrinitarian distance: “first,
in order to hold fast to the personal distinctness of each Person both in
being and acting; and second, in order to establish the basis within the
Trinity for what, in the economic Trinity, will be the possibility of a distance that goes as far as the Son’s abandonment on the Cross.”140 While
the two concepts are closely related, and at times can be substituted (as
Williams shows above), “distance” is not simply another way of saying
“difference.” The primary meaning of the word Abstand is not generic “difference” but “to stand apart from.” Abstand implies a spatial relationship.
God Is Love 39
For Balthasar, therefore, the distance of the Father and the Son refers to
the “letting be” and “making room” that result from trinitarian self-giving
and make possible “further” free expressions of love.141 Williams demonstrates his awareness of the connection between difference/distance and
freedom, though his close identification of the terms distance and difference remains misleading. Nevertheless, his summation helpfully explains
Balthasar’s thinking. He writes, “[Balthasar] argues that the infinite difference between Father and Son in the divine life necessarily entails infinite mutual freedom. The Father does not determine the Son, but rather
gives his Son infinite space to be who he is. And in this free being-who-
he-is, in free acceptance of the freedom the Father has given, the Son
gives infinite space to the Father to be who he is.”142
To give greater precision, distance makes possible the kind of difference that love requires. As Balthasar states, “The Father’s act of surrender calls for its own area of freedom; the Son’s act, whereby he receives
himself from and acknowledges his indebtedness to the Father, requires
its own area; and the act whereby the Spirit proceeds, illuminating the
most intimate love of Father and Son, testifying to it and fanning it into
flame, demands its area of freedom. Something like infinite ‘duration’ and
infinite ‘space’ must be attributed to the acts of reciprocal love so that the
life of communio, of fellowship, can develop.”143 According to Balthasar’s
reasoning, without this analogical distance that enables space and reciprocity, the Trinity would be, at best, the threefold repetition of the same
divine being. Without it, God would not be Love, which requires a consubstantial other, who “has space” to be himself.144 Balthasar claims, “Love
is found only in distance, unity only in difference. God himself is unity
of Spirit only in the distinction of Father and Son.”145 Balthasar sees this
intratrinitarian space as opening the possibility of divine “play,” especially
for the Son.146 Intratrinitarian distance also allows for the possibility of
intratrinitarian spontaneity, surprise, adoration, and worship. Balthasar
writes, “The Father’s begetting and the Son’s letting himself be begotten; the Father’s and Son’s spiration of the Pneuma and the Spirit’s letting
himself be spirated—all of this is both eternal act and eternally complete result, which can therefore never grow distant from the act itself.
This is why God’s eternity is eternally youthful and surprising, why it is
an abyss of newness.”147 As we will see, this has important consequences
for Balthasar’s understanding of creation. If the Father begets the Son,
40 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
who is not the Father, in love, then this “not,” this otherness, is “absolutely
good,” and, therefore, created otherness is not a fall from divine unity but
a reflection of triune glory and love.148
Dialogue
The question immediately arises, of what does reciprocal, trinitarian love
consist? Balthasar frequently refers to this love as “dialogue,” or “conversation” between the Father and the Son in the Spirit.149 The means by
which Balthasar reaches this conclusion is through an application of the
“doctrine of antecedence,” which we will examine in greater detail in the
next chapter. Put simply here, because human beings are called to become
dramatic dialogue partners with God, we must suppose that God already
includes dramatic dialogue in himself, lest we arrogate to ourselves a
divine necessity to be.150
Because the Godhead includes such a dialogue, moreover, when
God determines to do something, such as create the world, and when he
accepts all the consequences for that act, the Father, Son, and Spirit arrive
at this decision “through the mutual integration of the Persons’ ‘points of
view.’ ”151 Here, Balthasar’s reasoning hinges, once again, on the interplay
between the consubstantiality of the utterly distinct persons and the taxis.
We must on no account think that, because the Father is origin, he
“commands” the other two; the Son and the Spirit are not, so to say,
his obedient executors. The Son and Spirit have proceeded from
the Father coeternally with him. Therefore it retroactively affects
the origin itself without neutralizing the order of origination. The
Son’s and Spirit’s equality of rank with the Father gives them equal
share in the properties and modes of conduct of the one God; the
hypostases determine in their circumincessio what God is and wills
and does.152
Because the Father gives away his essence in the begetting of the Son
and their joint “spiration” of the Spirit, the Son and Spirit are both the
“two hands” of the Father, executing his will. But so too does the Father
“renounce” lordship over the Son and Spirit. The divine will, as well as
the other properties, is thus fully shared in the kenotic self-giving of the
God Is Love 41
Father. The Father does not hold something—in this case decision making—from the Son and Spirit, just as the begotten and breathed forth
do not oppose the Father. Balthasar describes this dialogue more vividly
as “the interplay of reciprocal wonder and worship, of infinite reciprocal
gratitude . . . and reciprocal entreaty.”153 The reciprocity of divine love is
therefore the reciprocity of divine worship, adoration, and prayer.
As with the other characteristics of the Trinity, Balthasar insists that
they can be reached from what is present in the economy. When we see
Jesus praying to the Father, we are not, says Balthasar, seeing only the
action of the human nature but rather the incarnate Son. He explains,
“And when Jesus addresses the Father as Thou, as in the High Priestly
Prayer, this ‘Thou’ is, to be sure, a human vocable, but it must also be the
expression of an eternal relation in God himself—a relation in which the
Son turns to the Father in knowledge, love, adoration, and readiness for
the Father’s very wish. And this in God himself.”154 The stance of Jesus to
the Father is thus the translation of his immanent relation to the Father
into the “language” of a human life.
This adoring, worshipping character of divine love is especially obvious in the case of the Son, whose reception of divinity results in his eternal
thanksgiving and obedience to the Father. It is a small move from thanksgiving and obedience to worship and adoration.155 Balthasar, however,
includes the Father in gratitude and worship. As we have already seen, the
Father does not simply beget the Son as a passive object, but paradoxically
receives antecedent consent from the Son to his begetting. The Father,
accordingly, is thankful to the Son for this antecedent consent.156
On a deeper level, this thanksgiving, mutual worship, and adoration result from the infinite otherness of the divine persons from each
other. When the Father and Son turn toward each other, they do not “see”
the common essence. Rather, they behold the incommunicable, utterly
unique divine person. Therefore, “when God stands before God,” adoration and worship are the result.157 Balthasar quotes Adrienne von Speyr at
length: “All worship has its primary basis in the other’s otherness. Where
there is mere oneness, worship is not possible. The Son does not worship
the Father because the Father is like him; that would mean that the Son
found himself worthy of worship and that he worshipped himself. Worship is the relation to a Thou, a relation so strong and pure that only the
42 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Thou is of any account.”158 In their personal distinction, the Father, Son,
and Spirit engage in a “ceaseless round of reciprocal glorification.”159 The
divine life, “begun” in the Father’s kenosis, culminates in the circumincessio/perichoresis of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which itself consists of
mutual divine adoration.
This reciprocal worship and adoration are the concrete form of God
being ever greater than himself: “The comparative is the linguistic form of
amazement.”160 Insofar as they are utterly distinct, incommunicable persons, who exist from and as the eternal, ever-new acts of procession, “wonder need not be banished from the realm of the Absolute.”161 Because the
Father truly risks all by giving away his essence to the Son, and the Son
gives all back to the Father, and the Spirit proceeds as the witness and gift
itself, each of the persons possesses the same groundless freedom as the
Father himself. Accordingly,
No one can predict, for instance, how the Son will “use” the one
and only divine freedom in order to invent ideas and acts of love;
since the Son and the Spirit are consubstantial with the Father, it is
equally their privilege, on the basis of the one divine freedom, to do
surprising and astounding things, as it is the privilege of the Father,
as original Source of all things. Only in the finite realm can the
fulfillment of an expectation denote a conclusion, something that
produces stagnation of life, boredom, satiety and surfeit (koros); in
eternal life this is never possible.162
The divine life is thus dramatic in the mutual love of Father, Son, and
Spirit; and, as dramatic, “contains and surpasses all possible drama
between God and a world.”163 Moreover, even as the trinitarian persons
are “perfectly transparent to one another” in this drama, “they possess a
kind of impenetrable ‘personal’ mystery.”164 It is for this reason that Paul
can say that the fully divine Spirit “searches the depths of God” (I Cor
2:10). In the Spirit, God himself is “occupied” by the “unimaginable mystery” of the groundless love of the Father and Son “for a whole eternity,”
the mystery of love that he himself is.165 The love of the triune God thus
includes, together with absolute knowledge, something like faith, because
“eternal life, in order to be life, transcends itself to infinity. There can be
no suggestion therefore that the divine life is somehow limited by either
God Is Love 43
blind faith or rigid certainty, for “any limitation would cause this life and
exchange of love to weaken and grow cold.”166 Mystery and being, and
mystery and truth, are thus not opposed but coincident. This insight will
be highly significant when we turn to Balthasar’s understanding of the
relationship between divine incomprehensibility and trinitarian theology
in chapter 4.
Balthasar’s trinitarian theology culminates in a picture of incredible dynamism and fluidity. Whether we consider his insistence that the divine
essence happens in the event of the processions, the coincidence of the
distinct persons and their actions, or the paradoxical assertion of the
Father’s monarchy and his equality with the Son and Spirit, Balthasar’s
depiction of the trinitarian life defies easy comprehension.
Balthasar explains, however, that this dynamism and fluidity are not
“formless” or “indefinite” but rather are positively determined in the Godhead.167 Trinitarian theology, therefore, is not lawless or irrational but
works in light of interconnected principles. The most fundamental principle for Balthasar is that God is love in himself. This claim that God is
love rests, in Balthasar’s thought, on kenosis. Kenosis in turn functions as
a “hinge” between the various counterclaims he makes. Kenosis, as the act
of the Father, establishes at once the hierarchical taxis of the persons as
well as their equality. Kenosis, as the outpouring without loss of the divine
essence, binds the trinitarian persons in the unity of the essence-poured-
out, as well as maintains their intradivine distance. It is this distance-in-
unity that makes possible the reciprocal dialogue that makes God love.
Intratrinitarian kenosis establishes intratrinitarian “distance,” which in
turn makes possible intratrinitarian, reciprocal dialogue, all within the
unity of the one Godhead. In the eternal kenosis of the triune God, therefore, “relation-to-self and relation-to-other, eternal repose-in-itself and
eternal striving and loving can be identical.”168
As we will see in subsequent chapters, these insights matter a great
deal for understanding the God-world relationship. On the one hand,
they preserve divine sovereignty. By being love in himself, God does not
require creation. Trinitarian speculation, even in Balthasar’s highly vivid
form, discloses not only the truth of divine being but the truth of the
world. Balthasar can thus affirm Thomas’s explanation for why knowledge
of the Trinity is necessary for us. Thomas argues,
44 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
The knowledge of the Divine Persons was necessary . . . for thinking
correctly about the creation of the universe. For by our saying that
God made all things by his Word, the error of those who assert that
God produced the universe out of necessity of nature is ruled out.
Moreover, by the fact that we affirm in him a procession of love, it is
shown that God did not produce creatures on account of some need,
or for the sake of any cause outside himself, but for the sake of the
love of his own goodness.169
In light of the Trinity, the world finds itself, from the outset, afloat on a
sea of divine gratuity. It need not be at all but only is because of the excess
of divine love.
On the other hand, the same insights establish the condition for the
possibility of a “positive” relation between God and creation, a relation
which, while maintaining the absolute difference between God and creation, achieves its goal in the communion of God and creation in Christ.
In Balthasar’s words, “The revelation of the Trinity throws an unexpected bridge across this (abiding) abyss. If, within God’s identity, there
is an Other, who at the same time is the image of the Father and thus
the archetype of all that can be created; if, within this identity, there is
a Spirit, who is free, superabundant love of the ‘One’ and of the ‘Other,’
then both the otherness of creation, which is modeled on the archetypal
otherness within God, and its sheer existence, which it owes to the intra
divine liberality, are brought into a positive relationship to God.”170 We
will return to the relation between the immanent Trinity, creation, and
deification in chapter 3. We turn now to a closer investigation of the
sources of Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian theology.
C h a pt e r 2
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies
The Sources of Balthasar’s Immanent Trinitarian Theology
Never will looking backward toward the sources and the basic elements
replace a looking forward that endeavors to grasp the synthesis that has
been effected, the irreducible novelty that has been attained. The fruit of
these labors, even though it is contained in the roots, is always something
new and unexpected.
—Balthasar, Presence and Thought
Critics of Balthasar have charged him with a disregard—unwitting or
otherwise—of the theological tradition. Put most succinctly by Karen
Kilby, Balthasar’s theology, including his trinitarian theology, is or appears
to be “unfettered.” This chapter will show that, to the contrary, Balthasar’s
immanent trinitarian thought builds on a wide range of voices other than
his own, even in its most idiosyncratic elements. Though Balthasar’s trinitarian vision is not simply the sum of his sources, it is only by recognizing
these influences that his theology can be adequately grasped.
Given the breadth of Balthasar’s scholarship, it should be unsurprising that earlier thinkers shaped the trinitarian vision described in the previous chapter. But in many respects, his engagement with theological and
45
46 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
philosophical tradition is among the most frustrating aspects of his the
ology. It is well established that Balthasar was influenced by such figures
as Karl Barth and Erich Przywara and sought to engage trends in modern
philosophy and literature, as well as to draw from patristic and medieval
thought.1 Among the most ambitious of these projects is Cyril O’Regan’s
two-volume work on Balthasar’s theology as a response to philosophical
modernity in the figures of Hegel and Heidegger.2 Because of the sheer
breadth of Balthasar’s scholarship, his indirect modes of argumentation,
and his fondness for reading the tradition as “symphonic,” identifying
the “real” sources of any given theological position is incredibly difficult.
Balthasar only occasionally specifies his resources, even in the midst of
extended commentary on other theologians, and often his assessments are
contradictory. Moreover, the sources employed do not all have equal stature in Balthasar’s work. At times, an influence seems all pervasive, with
correspondingly frequent references. At other times, however, Balthasar’s
thought reflects that of thinkers he engages briefly or in “minor” texts of
his theological corpus.
In this chapter, I proceed under the methodological assumption that
sources can and do exercise “subterranean” influence—that is, at times
Balthasar is not necessarily aware of his trinitarian sources. Because of
this, I employ a comparative method. Certain elements and concepts
within Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian theology will be compared with
those of figures we know he read, whose thought most clearly illuminates his own position and who, therefore, can reasonably be considered
sources for his own thought, whether Balthasar acknowledges the influence or not.
This chapter provides neither a chronological nor hierarchical reading of the influences on Balthasar’s theology. Balthasar gives little or no
indications that his trinitarian theology developed over time, and it is not
possible to determine his earliest exposure to particular thinkers. Moreover, because of the complexity of Balthasar’s trinitarian theology, ranking
his sources according to importance would result in a skewed impression.
No one thinker supplies the “essence” of Balthasar’s trinitarian theology.
The absence of such a singular influence is owing in part to Balthasar’s
understanding of the theological tradition. Early in his career, Balthasar
rejected the theological-historical narrative of Aeterni Patris, which promoted Thomas as the confluence of all earlier Catholic thought and the
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 47
“fountainhead” of the “purest streams of wisdom.”3 In contrast to the
linear narrative of neo-Thomism, Balthasar was struck by the irreducible
polyphony of the tradition. Balthasar writes,
In the new constellations of intellectual history there break out
from time to time from the midpoint which is beyond history new
and original perceptions which certainly, in the succession of the
ages, are related to one another, indeed often expressly measure
themselves one against another, and enrich the great tradition or
stand aside from it; but all this never consists in a mere further
weaving of threads that are already to hand, but rather in the
power of a total vision. . . . In this realm there is no more scope for
development as such, as there is or could be in mysticism, or in
philosophy. . . . This observation could place a gentle mute on any
enthusiasm for the development of theological doctrine.4
What binds disparate theologies together is their witness to the one reve
lation of God in Christ.5 This attitude gives Balthasar the freedom to
move about from thinker to thinker, synthesizing ideas from wildly different historical contexts. His trinitarian theology is no exception to this
pattern. As will become evident below, his immanent trinitarian theology,
especially in its most idiosyncratic elements, relies in particular on medieval and contemporary thought.6 In many instances, one could credibly
offer multiple figures as sources of single ideas (e.g., the existence of
immanent trinitarian dialogue) or a single figure providing the source for
a number of individual themes. This is especially the case with respect to
Adrienne von Speyr, whose thought closely parallels Balthasar’s in virtu
ally every particular. As a result of this difficulty, and in order to avoid
repetition, this chapter is divided by theme rather than figure.
T r i n i ta r i a n P e r s o n h o o d a n d P ro c e s s i o n
As established in the previous chapter, Balthasar regularly identifies the
trinitarian persons with their act of procession. This identification is
most obvious in the case of the Father. As quoted already, “[The Father]
remains eternal Father only insofar as he has eternally given over to the
48 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Son all that is his, including the divinity.”7 Similarly, and as a correlative
assertion, the Son is identical to his (passive) act of being begotten and
the Spirit as being breathed forth.
The question is whence Balthasar derives such claims. Recent scholarship, both laudatory and critical of Balthasar, has tended to read Balthasar
as drawing on—or at least intending to draw on—Thomas Aquinas’s theology, specifically Thomas’s understanding of the trinitarian persons as
relations. For instance, as Karen Kilby argues,
By going so far as actually to identify Jesus’ person with his mission,
Balthasar is, furthermore, offering a still more striking integration.
In an account such as one finds, for instance, in Thomas Aquinas,
not only are the relations of the Persons of the Trinity described in
terms of procession—the Son is generated by the Father, the Spirit
spirated from Father and Son—but the Persons simply are these
relations. This seems, normally, one of the more ungraspable aspects
of trinitarian thought, and I am not persuaded that Thomas himself
tries to present it in such a way that we can in fact get a grasp on it.
But in his Christology Balthasar offers quite concrete working out
of this: Jesus . . . simply is his mission. If one follows Balthasar to the
point of saying that Jesus is the one in whom Person and mission
are identical, then it will not perhaps seem such a conundrum to say
that the Son just is his processing from the Father.8
Katy Leamy has made Balthasar’s Thomist understanding of the trini
tarian persons a central argument of her recent monograph.9 Leamy is
correct about both Balthasar’s modification of Bulgakov and the importance of Thomas’s doctrine of the real ontological difference between a
creature’s essence and existence for Balthasar’s rejection of certain elements in Bulgakov. My own reading of Balthasar’s relation to Bulgakov as
discussed below is in substantial agreement with hers.
However, Leamy and Kilby have misidentified Balthasar’s intended
medieval source. From an early point in his career, Balthasar noted the rela
tive weakness of Augustine’s trinitarian approach. As Balthasar explains,
“The solitary structure of the soul cannot supply the supreme image
for the living exchange of love in the eternal God.”10 Thomas’s trini
tarian theology falls under the same critique. It should not be surprising,
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 49
therefore, that Balthasar nowhere adopts characteristically Thomist trini
tarian concepts. Though Thomas remains an important interlocutor,
Balthasar is more indebted to those sources depicting the Trinity in terms
of a “living exchange of love.”11 If we compare Balthasar’s identification
of the Father, Son, and Spirit with their act of processing to medieval
accounts of trinitarian personhood, Balthasar’s theological distance from
Thomas’s trinitarian account is evident. Balthasar is more fruitfully read
as occupying a place in a distinct, and distinctly non-Thomist, tradition of
trinitarian theology.
Two Medieval Accounts of Trinitarian Personhood
For medieval theologians, one of the central questions that trinitarian
theology was meant to answer was how to conceive each person as really
distinct from the other two while maintaining their essential unity.12
More specifically, this question centers on how to interpret the “personal
properties”—those specific markers that make the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit who they are.
Person and Relation of Opposition
Thomas offers one account whereby these personal properties are understood according to the Aristotelian category of relation. For Aristotle, relation is a category of accident that denotes not how a thing is in itself, but
how it is “toward another” (ad aliquid). Relation, unique among the other
categories of accidents, does not imply substantial composition. Drawing
on a theological commonplace since at least Augustine, Thomas identifies
the relations of the Trinity (paternity, filiation, active/passive spiration) as
“subsistent,” that is, identical when considered with respect to the essence
but distinct when considered with respect to another. Thomas explains,
“Relation’s particular characteristic is to refer to another. Thus, a relation
can be considered in two ways in the divine: either through comparison to
the essence, and in this way it is only rationally distinct; or through compari
son to what it refers to, and in this way the relation is really distinguished
from that [to which it refers] by the particular characteristic proper to relation. But the persons are distinguished through comparison of a relation to
its correlative opposite, and not through comparison of the relation to the
essence.”13 Put concretely, paternity (or filiation, or spiration) is identical
50 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
with the divine essence. It does not add anything nonessential and disappears when compared with the essence. However, when the relation is considered with respect to its correlative opposite relation, they indicate real
differences. Paternity implies filiation. Similarly, active spiration implies
passive spiration. These relations of opposition cannot be identical with
one another, though they are themselves identical with the divine essence.
It is through their real difference from one another that the relations of
opposition point toward the distinct trinitarian persons. Significantly, for
Thomas, and others following his approach, there can be no acts of procession without persons, and there cannot be distinct persons without these
relations of opposition. To be Father, Son, or Spirit is to be in a particular
relation of opposition to the others, and it is on the basis of these real distinctions that the processions occur.
Person and Procession
The alternative, “processional” account of trinitarian personhood understands the personal properties according to a specific type of Aristotelian relation, that between “producer” and “product,” which is grounded
“on action and passion, on acting and being acted upon.”14 For trinitarian
theologians of this school, “production is the reason for there being a relation in the first place, and hence in some logical, non-temporal sense, the
origination or the production of the Son from the Father must be ‘prior’
to the relations between them.”15 In light of this reasoning, the constituting principle of the trinitarian persons (their personal property) comes
to be understood according to the distinct manner in which they process
within the Godhead.
Richard of St. Victor and Bonaventure provide excellent examples of
the processional account of trinitarian personhood. For Richard, procession or emanation is part of the very definition of trinitarian personhood.
Developing beyond the then-common Boethian definition of person (“an
individual substance of a rational nature”), Richard defines “person” as
“incommunicable existence.”16 This new definition allows Richard to do
two things. First, it enables Richard to avoid the danger associated with
Boethius’s definition of seeing the divine nature as itself a fourth person,
insofar as it is technically an individual substance of a rational nature.17 By
seeing person as entailing incommunicability, the communicable divine
substance is ruled out and the distinction between nature (a what) and
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 51
person (a who) is maintained and strengthened. Second, through his etymological breakdown of “existence,” Richard identifies how the incommunicability of the divine persons stems from their being from someone
else (ex-sistere, “being from outside”).18 The divine persons are, and are
known, by virtue of their (incommunicable) personal property determined
by their relation to their origin (their ex-sistere). Bonaventure adopts a
similar approach. As he articulates in the Breviloquium, “Concerning the
plurality of Persons within the unity of nature, true faith bids us believe
that, in one nature, there are three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The First does not originate from any of the others; the Second originates
from the First alone through generation; and the Third, from both the
First and the Second through spiration or procession.”19 Here, the persons are “marked” by virtue of how they have their origin, not the logical
corollary relations. In the accounting of the persons, therefore, the act of
procession logically precedes person, which precedes relation. Put otherwise, there can be no relation without persons, and there are no persons if
they are not produced.
A Comparison of the Two “Schools”
For contemporary readers, such disagreements may seem esoteric or
inconsequential. After all, Thomas begins his trinitarian section in the
Summa with an account of the two processions, and Bonaventure’s processional account uses relations of opposition. More significantly, Thomas
argues, for example, that “real relations in God can be understood only
in regard to those actions according to which there are internal, and not
external, processions in God. . . . In respect of each of these processions
[of the intellect and the will] two opposite relations arise.”20 If Thomas
can argue that the relations of opposition arise from the two processions, is there an actual debate? Despite the similarities in argumentation
between advocates of the two approaches, they are, nevertheless, in “systematic disagreement . . . regarding the way in which we conceive of the
Trinity.”21 As Friedman shows, the disagreement is particularly manifest
in the respective treatments of God the Father and of the Holy Spirit.
In the twenty-seventh distinction of the first book of his Sentences,
Lombard asks whether the Father is Father because he generates the Son
or whether the Father generates because he is Father. Bonaventure argues
that the Father is Father because he generates. The Father is identical
52 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
with his act of begetting. In contrast, Thomas argues that the Father generates because he is Father. Thomas explains, contra-Bonaventure, “If it
were said that ‘it is through origin alone that the hypostasis is determinately brought about,’ one understands by ‘origin’ either relation of origin, and this is our view, or origin is signified as being an operation, and,
[understood in the latter way], origin does not at all make the hypostases distinct, indeed, [origin as a personal operation] comes from a distinct
individual. . . . And thus we say that in the divine there is no other source
of distinction except relation.”22 Thomas’s point here is that to identify the
trinitarian persons with their acts of procession, or their “operation,” creates a considerable logical lacuna: there would be no subjects to perform
these acts. Therefore, in the case of God the Father, he cannot be identified with his act of begetting but must first (logically) be established
according to his relation of opposition. “For Aquinas, then, the Father
generates because he is the Father, and he is the Father because of the
opposition of the relations paternity and filiation.”23 It is on this specific
point that Kilby and Leamy have misread Thomas. Both interpret Thomas’s “relation” in an “active” sense, as “to relate,” and therefore incorrectly
identify relation and procession by a kind of transitive property. Thomas
intends rather to distinguish between relation as a state of being and act.
As Bonaventure argues, however, such an approach appears reasonable
only in the case of the Father and makes no sense when approached from
the point of view of the Son. As Bonaventure explains, the Son has his
existence, and that he is the Son, by virtue of the Father’s begetting him.
Therefore, the Son, in order to relate by filiation to the Father, must “first”
be begotten, must first emanate from the Father. However, since trinitarian
relations are mutually determinative and simultaneous (that is, since fili
ation is the Son’s correlative relation to the Father’s paternity), the Father’s
paternity cannot conceptually precede his act of producing the Son. Therefore, one must say that the Father is Father because he generates.
The Processional Character of Balthasar’s Theology
Balthasar offers lengthy engagements with Thomas’s and Bonaventure’s
trinitarian thought in both Theo-Logic II and III. Balthasar initially seems
to accept Thomas’s position that “the relation that constitutes the producing person is logically prior to the procession: the paternity that founds
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 53
the Person of the Father is logically prior to his act of generating.”24
Balthasar sees in Thomas’s position the means to avoid a hidden subordinationism. However, despite the note of approval for Thomas, Balthasar
nevertheless adopts the very stance that Thomas does not. For Balthasar,
as for Bonaventure, “In the pure act of self-pouring-forth, God the Father
is his self, or, if one wishes, a ‘person’ (in a transcending way).”25 Unlike
Thomas, if Balthasar were to take up Peter Lombard’s question, he would
appear to answer that the Father is Father because he generates, not that
he generates because he is Father.
Examining his trinitarian depiction substantiates his kinship with
the processional approach to the Trinity, though Balthasar voices certain reservations. As already mentioned, Balthasar’s use of the distinction
between giving and receiving in the taxis is emblematic of the processional
account. Though this kind of distinction is not lacking in Bonaventure,
on this point Balthasar more clearly reflects the thought of Richard of
St. Victor. Richard explains the personal properties in terms of the modes
of true love. True love can be gratuitous, as “when someone gives gratuitously to someone else, from whom he receives no benefit,” or due, as
“when someone returns love to someone else, from whom he has received
it gratuitously.”26 The Father, then, because “he gives abundance of his
own fullness to those proceeding from him,” loves in complete gratuity.27
The Son possesses both gratuitous and due love. By virtue of receiving
everything from the Father, the Son loves the Father with due love, and,
by virtue of loving without receiving anything from the Spirit, the Son
loves gratuitously.28 The Spirit, finally, by virtue of “proceeding without
having any other person proceeding from him,” loves the Father and the
Son with due love.29 Richard summarizes his argument as follows:
At this point, now, we clearly know how to distinguish the single
[persons’] properties—according to these thoughts. In fact, we have
proven that in only one of the three we find supreme and solely
gratuitous love. In another one, we have supreme love but only of
a due kind. In the remaining one, lastly, we find a supreme love,
which is both due, on the one hand, and totally gratuitous, on the
other. This is the threefold distinction of properties in supreme love.
Nonetheless, in all [of the persons] there is only one and the same
love, the love [which is] supreme and truly eternal.30
54 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
In his essay “Summa Summorum,” Balthasar uses this language of “love
that owes itself ” to describe the Son.31 In one of his last works, however,
Balthasar determines, with explicit reference to Richard of St. Victor, that
such language fails to convey the consubstantiality of the Son.32 In his
later thought, Balthasar thus wishes to retain the language of gratuity but
discard the reduction of the persons to a schematic combination giving/
receiving love.
In addition to using language of giving and receiving, albeit in a
modified fashion, Balthasar shares the processional account’s emphasis
on the primacy of the Father. For processional accounts, such as that
of Bonaventure, the primacy of the Father is the “positive” aspect of his
property of innascibility or unbegottenness. Unlike Thomas, who sees
innascibility as a purely negative property, Bonaventure sees in it the
implication that the Father is the principium of everything that exists,
including the other trinitarian persons; therefore, he is the fecund, “fontal” source of everything. This position takes on a systematic necessity in
Bonaventure’s thought. After the debate between Thomas and Bonaventure on the logical order of concepts, Thomas points out that actions
require subjects and, therefore, without the logical priority of the relation
paternity, the Father cannot be known as a subject capable of generating. At least in the case of the Father, as a result, relation must have logical priority. In Bonaventure’s thought, the Father’s primacy/innascibility
serves as the means by which to mark the Father as a person logically
before his act of generating.33 To summarize Bonaventure’s logic, “The
Father is Father because he generates, and he generates because he is
God innascible.”34 To say the Father is the trinitarian person without
origin is thus to imply that he is the trinitarian person primed to generate others.35 Jan van Ruusbroec too speaks of the Father in these terms.
The Father is the “eternal beginning of the Persons,” whose fruitfulness
brings about the generation of the Son.36
A characteristic of processional accounts of trinitarian personhood
is therefore a divine “proto-Father,”—to use Friedman’s term—a figuring of the Father (nontemporally) before he generates. This proto-Father
is strictly notional but gives processional accounts a particular way of
speaking about the Godhead. Appropriately, Balthasar warns his audience that “the Father must not be thought to exist ‘prior’ to [his] self-
surrender (in an Arian sense): he is the movement of self-giving that
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 55
holds nothing back.”37 Nevertheless, Balthasar exhibits the same rhetorical habits as other processional accounts. The Father is the “ground and
source of the Godhead, who, by his immeasurable fullness, is able to bring
forth the ‘Word.’ ”38 He is the origin without origin of the “bottomless
spring” of the Godhead.39 Echoing von Speyr, who herself seems to echo
Bonaventure, Balthasar argues that “there is a primal beginning in which
the Father is ‘alone,’ even if he was never without the Son, for ultimately
it is he, unique and alone, who begets the Son.”40 As quoted in the previous chapter, Balthasar even understands Jesus’s assertion in John’s Gospel
that “the Father is greater than I” as indicative of the Father’s immanent
trinitarian primacy.41 In an excellent summary passage, Balthasar writes,
That he is Father we know in utmost fullness from Jesus Christ,
who constantly makes loving, thankful and reverent reference to him
as Origin. It is because he bears fruit out of himself and requires
no fructifying that he is called Father. . . . Jesus’ words indicate
that this fruitful self-surrender by the primal Origin has neither
beginning nor end: It is a perpetual occurrence in which essence
and activity coincide. Herein lies the most unfathomable Mystery
of God: that what is absolutely primal is no statically self-contained
and comprehensible reality, but one that exists solely in dispensing
itself: a flowing wellspring with no holding trough beneath it, an act
of procreation with no seminal vesicle, with no organism at all to
perform the act.42
This language of God the Father being origin, ground, source, wellspring,
fruitful, and immeasurable fullness all echo the processional account’s
themes of the Father’s primacy. They are also largely foreign to Thomas’s
trinitarian thought.
Balthasar’s dependence on processional accounts of trinitarian personhood can also be seen in his treatment of the nature of the Spirit’s procession. Friedman highlights the way in which processional accounts after
Bonaventure tend to treat the procession of the Son and Spirit according
to the mode of nature and that of will.43 Balthasar rejects this particular
subset of processional accounts.44 Balthasar does, however, use another
common “processional” way of speaking of the Holy Spirit as colove [condilectio] of Father and Son. This manner of understanding the Spirit’s
56 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
procession is first developed by Richard of St. Victor, but is also taken up
by Bonaventure and Jan van Ruusbroec.
Richard’s pneumatology rests upon the insight that God’s “greatest
goodness” implies “highest love.” “Yet,” argues Richard, “none is said to
possess charity-love in the truest sense of the word if he loves himself
exclusively. It is, thus, necessary that love be aimed at someone else in order
to be charity-love. If a multiplicity of persons is absent, there can be no
place for charity-love.”45 For Richard, insofar as goodness, which defines
God’s essence, includes the highest love, God must have an other to love.
Furthermore, as greatest goodness and love also imply greatest happiness
or blessedness, such love must be reciprocal, for “there can be no joyful love
that is not also reciprocal.”46 Richard determines that the plurality must
be such that God has another to love and who loves in reply.47 Finally,
this other must be the equal of God to be worthy and capable of supreme
love.48 We will return to this theme of trinitarian reciprocity below.
The turn Richard makes to a third person is probably the most noteworthy feature of his trinitarian reasoning. As God’s goodness, love, happiness, and glory all imply a second person, so too do they imply for
Richard a third. His reasoning is as follows:
Just as supreme charity-love cannot lack the highest greatness
[which leads to the conclusion that there is a second in the
Godhead], similarly, it cannot lack the greatest excellence. And in
authentic charity-love the greatest excellence seems to be this: to
will that someone else be loved just as we are. Actually, nothing is
more precious and more admirable in reciprocal, burning love than
one’s desire for someone else to be loved in the same fashion by
him who is supremely loved, and by whom one is supremely loved.
Therefore, the witness of perfect charity-love consists in desiring to
share [with someone else] that love of which one is the object.49
In other words, the Son enjoying being loved by the Father so much wishes
that there be a third (the Spirit), who can also be loved by the Father (and
so too the Father desires the Spirit to share in being loved by the Son). If
God is to be truly the greatest goodness, love, happiness, and glory, then
the first and second person will both desire a third to be an object of the
first and second’s love as well. The desire for a third, of course, produces a
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 57
third, and this third must also be equal to the first and second, following
the same logic as above (he must be supremely worthy and supremely satisfying in his response of love, and therefore equal). With this third, moreover, the reciprocal love of Father and Son expands and unifies in “colove”
(condilectio). Their love becomes “fused so to become only one, because of
the third flame of love.”50
This way of envisioning the place of the Spirit in the Trinity is in
clear contrast to Thomas’s. In the Thomist, relational account, the Spirit
is constituted not by the reciprocal love of Father and Son but by the
Spirit’s relation of opposition to the Father and Son as though from one
principle.51 While Thomas acknowledges a limited appropriateness of saying the Father and Son spirate as distinct persons, the logic of the relational account demands a single principle of spiration. For Thomas, this
is because the Godhead is one in everything except in their relations of
opposition. Since there is no relation of opposition between Father and
Son where it concerns the breathing of the Spirit, they must constitute a
single principle of spiration. Thomas’s trinitarian logic is thus composed of
two sets of oppositional relations. On the one hand, there is the paternity-
filiation opposition marking Father and Son. On the other hand, there is
the active spiration-passive spiration opposition marking Father/Son and
Spirit. In this scheme, the Spirit’s procession has no direct connection to
the mutual relationship of the Father and Son.
Richard, Bonaventure, and Ruusbroec’s pneumatology depends, in
contrast, on the Father and Son being “over and against” each other. As
Ruusbroec articulates, “From this mutual contemplation of Father and
Son flows an eternal pleasure, the Holy Spirit, the third Person, who flows
forth from the other two. For he is one will and one love flowing back in
into the nature of the Godhead.”52 Indeed, it is because the Father and
Son are distinct persons that the Holy Spirit proceeds.53 As the mutual
love of Father and Son, the Spirit actively rounds-out their distinction in
perichoretic unity.54 Ruusbroec can thus speak of the Trinity in incredibly
dynamic terms, as a circular movement from Father to Son and back
together in the Spirit. The Spirit is the means of the “flux and reflux”
between the Father and Son.55 The Trinity is a “fathomless whirlpool,”
“living and fruitful in eternity,” a “flowing and ebbing sea.”56
Without question, Balthasar’s own pneumatology, particularly in its
“subjective” aspect, follows these original insights of Richard, Bonaventure,
58 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
and Ruusbroec. As we have seen, for Balthasar, the Spirit proceeds from
Father and Son in their distinction as both the union and fruit of their
love. Originating in the love of Father for the Son and the Son’s love
for the Father, the Spirit “overtakes” this love in a “higher unity,” “fulfilling” their reciprocity.57 The Spirit is “the identity of the gift-as-given and
the gift-as-received in thanksgiving, which can only be such by attesting,
maintaining and fueling the infinite distinction between Father and Son.
Thus, within the distinction, the gift is not only the presupposition of an
unsurpassable love: it is also the realized union of this love.”58 The Father’s
self-giving in the generation of the Son “intends the ‘always more’” of “communio” in the Spirit.59 For Balthasar, like Ruusbroec, the Holy Spirit draws
the Father and Son back into the unity of their essence. In this sense, the
Spirit uniquely realizes the truth that God is love, and not only loving.
Despite following Richard, Bonaventure, and Ruusbroec in many
of his formulations, Balthasar does distance himself from the deductive
form of their trinitarian logic. In the case of Richard, echoing Anselm,
following the lead of faith, the human intellect can offer rational “proofs”
for the Trinity. Since God is known to exist necessarily, God’s existence
is open to “necessary reasoning”—that is, God must exist in the way that
God does because God must exist. It is this belief in necessary reasoning
that allows Richard to move seamlessly from the discussion of the divine
attributes in books 1 and 2 in On the Trinity to the demonstration of the
Trinity of persons in book 3. For Richard, the lynchpin is the deduction
of fullest love, which requires a plurality of persons, from God’s supreme
goodness. As he writes, “It is certain that God alone is supremely good;
so only God must be supremely loved. Therefore, a divine person could
not show supreme love towards another person lacking divinity. Besides,
fullness of divinity could not have been present without fullness of goodness. Fullness of goodness, on the other hand, could not have been present
without fullness of charity-love; and fullness of charity-love [could] not
[have existed] without plurality of divine beings.”60 Bonaventure synthesizes Richard’s deduction with Pseudo-Dionysius’s claim that the good is
self-diffusive. As the highest Good, God is most self-diffusive, and therefore diffuses his essence in the “highest degree”: the production of Son
and Spirit.61 This position can be found in Ruusbroec as well.62
Balthasar rejects any such deduction because it risks undermining
the mystery of the Trinity. The self-diffusion of the good is not a law
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 59
to which God is subject.63 Balthasar thus accentuates the “spontaneity,”
“the groundlessness,” of the Father’s initial act of generating. John Milbank has argued this emphasis on the monarchy of the Father suggests
Balthasar is voluntarist.64 It is accurate that Balthasar, following Gustav
Siewerth, sees divine love as “more comprehensive than being itself,” and
therefore that the good embraces more than being and the true.65 Nevertheless, Balthasar understands the transcendentals, insofar as they analogically apply to the Trinity, as identical: “God’s splendor [glory] is his
self-surrender [goodness], and this once more is his truth.”66 Even as the
good, as self-giving, “dominates as the central motif,” truth and beauty
are not left behind.67 Furthermore, the very emphasis on the freedom of
divine love removes any possibility of deducing that love from any transcendental, including the good. The good, the true, and the beautiful point
to God, and can be attributed to God by analogy, but divine love remains
beyond them and can be known only by revelation. Indeed, in Balthasar’s
theological (and philosophical) vision, it is only in the revelation of the
Trinity, only in the revelation that God is love, that the truth, goodness,
and beauty of creaturely being can be fully grasped.68 Following Barth,
Balthasar insists that the divine attributes must be understood on the
basis of the Trinity.69 Despite these dangers of deducing the Trinity from
the good, it is precisely the immanent trinitarian thought of Richard of
St. Victor, Bonaventure, and Ruusbroec that Balthasar retrieves in order
to accentuate the living exchange of love he believed was lacking in the
Augustinian-Thomist approach.
I n t r at r i n i ta r i a n K e n o s i s a n d
Avo i d i n g S o p h i o l o g i c a l Exc e s s
The place of essential, divine goodness in the trinitarian theology of Richard, Bonaventure, and Ruusbroec is occupied by intratrinitarian kenosis
in the thought of Balthasar. It is through intratrinitarian kenosis that
Balthasar links together the essential unity of the Godhead with trini
tarian consubstantiality. Even with the strong rhetorical parallels between
trinitarian theologies that use essential goodness and Balthasar’s kenotic
formulation, the two have distinct epistemological origins. For Richard,
Bonaventure, and Ruusbroec, God’s essential goodness is a postulate of
60 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
natural reason. God is known through rational means as greatest goodness by virtue of his necessary existence, which is itself known by way of
reason. For Balthasar, such a natural theology cannot disclose the Trinity.
Rather, it is only in the kenosis of the Son in Incarnation-unto-cross and
in his resurrection, that the Trinity is glimpsed by faith. Indeed, stated
even more strongly, we can say that it is the kenosis of the Son that reveals
that the Godhead itself is constituted by an inner kenosis and is, therefore, trinitarian.
The relationship between the kenosis of the Son in the economy
and that of the immanent Trinity is one of the most striking features of
Balthasar’s thought. In terms of his trinitarian theology, this relationship
has generated by far the most interest, both laudatory and critical, among
secondary scholars.70 By and large critics have focused on what is perceived
as a dangerous association between the suffering-unto-death of Christ in
the economy and intratrinitarian kenosis. Critics charge Balthasar with
undermining, or at least nearly undermining, divine impassibility. It seems,
in Balthasar’s thought, that suffering finds a place in the Trinity itself. The
joy and bliss of triune love seems to contain hidden within it the agony of
the cross.
While secondary scholarship has raised a crucial concern regarding
Balthasar’s theology of kenosis, this scholarship has regularly misunderstood Balthasar’s particular understanding of the concept. Until recently,
scholars have in particular overlooked the nature of Balthasar’s use and
modification of the trinitarian theology of Sergius Bulgakov.71 The oversight is significant, for in crucial passages on intratrinitarian kenosis it is
to Bulgakov alone that Balthasar refers.72 However, despite this dependence, Balthasar also notes a desire to “divest Bulgakov’s fundamental
conviction of its sophiological presuppositions” and “excesses.”73 Comparing Balthasar to Bulgakov on immanent trinitarian kenosis reveals the
particular use Balthasar makes of the concept while also showing that he
seeks to avoid Bulgakov’s blurring of divine and creaturely being.
Bulgakov and Balthasar on Intratrinitarian Kenosis
Bulgakov understands the Godhead as the dynamic “personal self-positing”
of love in another.74 This dynamic self-positing begins in the person of
the Father, who “acquires Himself as His nature, not in Himself and for
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 61
Himself, but in proceeding out of Himself and in begetting” the Son.75 The
act by which the Father begets the Son out of himself is an act of kenosis.
It is a “self-emptying . . . sacrificial ecstasy of all-consuming, jealous love for
the Other.”76 The Son, who receives himself from the Father “obediently,”
responds in turn through his own particular hypostatic and eternal kenosis. The Son “offers His personal selfhood in sacrifice to the Father,” thereby
becoming “the Father’s Word” and not a Word about himself.77 Terming
these kenoses sacrifice, Bulgakov provides the following summary:
The sacrifice of the Father’s love consists in self-renunciation and in
self-emptying in the begetting of the Son. The sacrifice of the Son’s
love consists in self-depletion in the begottenness from the Father,
in acceptance of birth as begottenness. . . . The sacrifice of love,
in reality, is pre-eternal suffering—not the suffering of limitation
(which is incompatible with the absoluteness of the divine life) but
the suffering of the authenticity of sacrifice and of its immensity.
This suffering of sacrifice not only does not contradict the Divine
all-blessedness but, on the contrary, is its foundation, for this all-
blessedness would be empty and unreal if it were not based on
authentic sacrifice, on the reality of suffering.78
The Trinity, however, is not limited to eternal self-sacrifice and suffering. Just as Bulgakov believes it is axiomatic that “there is no love without sacrifice,” so too “there is no love without joy and bliss.”79 Included
in the Trinity, therefore, is also the overcoming of love’s mode of suffering, through the triumph and joy of love’s bliss.80 Here, the Father’s
begetting of the Son, the pre-eternal act of self-sacrifice, is resolved in
the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father on the Son. The Holy
Spirit accomplishes this by resolving the dissonance of the tragedy of
the Father-Son relationship. The Holy Spirit pre-eternally comforts and
brings joy and bliss to the Father and the Son, bringing them together
as the triumph of their mutual Love.81 But as the triumph of the Father
and Son’s love, which is self-sacrificing, the Holy Spirit too exists for the
others in kenosis. The Holy Spirit “annuls” himself in order to reveal, not
himself, but only the Father and Son.82
Initially, the parallels between Balthasar and Bulgakov are obvious. Both Bulgakov and Balthasar see the Trinity in terms of mutual
62 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
reciprocity springing forth from the basis of the Father’s initial act of
begetting. This initial act is described jointly as “renunciation” and “positing” of a divine other.83 Moreover, “after” the Father begets in kenosis,
the Son “turns” back to the Father in selfless “obedience,” as the Father’s
Son and Word.84 The Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father and Son in
their personal distinction, unites and witnesses their love.85
Balthasar is explicit that it is precisely Bulgakov’s idea of intratrinitarian “selflessness” that he wishes to use “as the basis of everything.”86 What is noteworthy, however, is that even with this affirmation,
Balthasar’s terminology is subtly different. Whereas Bulgakov uses kenosis to refer to both the Father’s act of begetting and the Son’s obedient
response, and would possibly apply the term to the Spirit’s “anonymity,”
Balthasar restricts its intratrinitarian application to a singular act. In
Balthasar’s thought, intratrinitarian kenosis is “none other than God’s
‘self-expropriation’ in the act of handing over the entire divine being in
the processions.”87 But because this act begins in the person of the Father
and only “responsively” in the person of the Son, intratrinitarian kenosis refers specifically to the Father. His “initial ‘kenosis’ within the Godhead . . . underpins all subsequent kenosis,” but this “subsequent kenosis”
seems to be in reference to creation and incarnation, not to the Son and
Spirit in the immanent Trinity.88
These subtle terminological differences undergird more fundamental
theological ones as well. In Bulgakov, as just noted, the kenosis of the trinitarian persons includes some kind of “suffering” as a necessary component
of all love. For Bulgakov, love is not real or authentic without this note of
suffering, which is in turn conquered in bliss. In some respects, Balthasar
seems to echo Bulgakov’s claims, only he phrases them in terms of drama.
For Balthasar, it is sheer human arrogance to imagine that the divine life is
static or “safe” in itself and only acquires “dynamism” and risk in the relationship with creation. Rather, according to Balthasar, “it is the drama of
the ‘emptying’ of the Father’s heart, in the generation of the Son, that contains and surpasses all possible drama between God and a world. For any
world only has its place within the distinction between Father and Son
that is maintained and bridged by the Holy Spirit.”89 Balthasar goes further to argue that the distinction of the Father and the Son, “includes and
grounds every other separation,” the Trinity is thus not “the ‘play’ of absolute
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 63
‘blessedness’ that . . . lacks the ‘seriousness’ of separation and death.”90 Such
language has generated criticism from scholars of secondary works.91 It
seems that, following Bulgakov in an effort to connect the kenosis of Christ
on the cross to the immanent Trinity, Balthasar has inadvertently suggested
there is suffering, or something like it, in the Godhead itself.
Given Bulgakov’s own lack of clarity, it is difficult to determine
just how the creaturely “suffering of limitation” and trinitarian suffering relate in his conceptualization. What is clear, nevertheless, is that
Balthasar does not wish to ascribe creaturely suffering, understood in a
univocal sense, to the Godhead itself. His effort is to “walk on a knife
edge” between ascribing pain, suffering, and tragedy to the immanent
Godhead and the suggestion that God’s love becomes dramatic only as
a result of pain and suffering once creation is involved.92 By attempting to walk this knife edge, Balthasar both adapts Bulgakov’s kenotic
trinitarian impulse and denies those hints of trinitarian agonism in Bulgakov’s thought. The separation of the Father and the Son is thus not
“tragic,” and the Spirit’s procession is not the comedic “sublation of
tragedy.”93 For Balthasar, the kenotic drama of the Trinity is strictly the
drama of reciprocal, self-giving love between those who are distinct. This
love can “develop into suffering” in its incarnate encounter with sin but
contains no suffering in itself.94
Avoiding Sophiological Excess
Balthasar’s adaptation of Bulgakov’s intratrinitarian kenosis hints at a more
fundamental rejection of the sophiological excesses in Bulgakov’s thought.
As noted, when Balthasar refers to Bulgakov on the Trinity, there is no
explanation as to what dangers sophiology holds. The only clue is provided
in his work on Maximus the Confessor. As Balthasar explains, he sees in
Bulgakov’s Sophia the shadow of a Platonic/Gnostic/Eastern mistrust of
an autonomous and corporeal creation.95 What is lacking here, however, is
any reference to the Trinity. What then is the connection between Bulgakov’s immanent trinitarian theology, sophiology, and creation?
The key to this matrix of theological topics is Bulgakov’s understanding of the nature of spirit and its application to God. Bulgakov describes
spirit as personality, which is further defined as self-consciousness. The
64 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
spirit is an I, which is the subject of its life, which is in turn the spirit’s objective nature.96 Through this objective nature, the spirit has self-
consciousness, for it knows itself in its work of making itself into an object
of its own consciousness. The spirit is thus always a unity of the I (the subject) and its nature (the object of the I).97
According to Bulgakov, the objective nature of the spirit has two differing modes by which it can be understood. On the one hand, the spirit’s
nature is a kind of hidden depth, a potency, which becomes actual in the
work of the I. It is in this respect a content out of which the I lives and acts,
revealing itself to itself. It is in Bulgakov’s terms natura naturata, nature
as an accomplishment or an act of the spirit, as the subject’s “authentic
predicate.”98 On the other hand, in the act of self-revelation, the nature of
the subject takes on an objective reality in itself. The subject does not simply act out of its nature but is confronted by the fact of its nature (natura
naturans). The content of the subject’s nature has an objective quality over
and against the subject.99 The spirit lives between both of these poles.
The spirit or self-conscious I accordingly needs a “not I,” which Bulgakov
terms the “world of the spirit,” to be an object of the I’s consciousness,
and in which the I realizes and reveals itself—thereby becoming spiritual
self-consciousness.100 This world of the spirit includes “the psychological
world, external nature, and other living persons,” which all become the
“material” enabling the spirit to reveal itself to itself.101
It is this definition of spirit as personal self-consciousness that Bulgakov applies to all spirits: human, angelic, and the divine.102 An important difference, however, is that, whereas the created spirit does not have
its I outside of itself in other I’s, the Divine Spirit does. The one divine
subject is also “I, thou, he, we, and you,” whose I is also posited in other
I’s within the single Divine Spirit. The Divine Spirit is thus not limited
and unihypostatic, as are all created spirits, but is boundless and trihypostatic—“not three and not one, but triunity, Trinity.”103
With the “completion” of the Trinity, of the divine I, in the Holy
Spirit, Bulgakov can claim that “all giveness” in the Divine Spirit is overcome. There is no extrahypostatic nature that remains opaque to the
Divine Spirit. The divine subject completely knows the depths of its predi
cate, the divine object. All nature is fully hypostatized and all hypostases
are of equal nature.104 Nevertheless, the Divine Spirit, like all spirits, also
has a nature, which “exists by itself.”105
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 65
This Divine nature is, like the nature of other spirits, referred to by
Bulgakov as the “Divine world.”106 Unlike the world of created spirits,
however, the divine world is entirely transparent to the trinitarian subject.
The divine world is not a task or an over-and-against limitation for God,
which God must work to actualize as himself as the tri-hypostatic person.
The divine nature, the divine world, is instead the ousia and self-revelation
of God, the divine Sophia.107
Sophia, according to Bulgakov, is not the “Divine Personality,”
which corresponds to the threefold divine persons. She is divinity-in-
itself, who exists “not only in God, but also for God.”108 Sophia, as the
object/predicate of the triune divine subject, has an independence from
God and is the All that God reveals about himself. She is the “All-
unity,” “the Pleroma,” the “self-Icon of Divinity.”109 Moreover, containing within herself everything of the divine world, she contains the “ideas
of all, about all, and in all.” This unity of all is one particular form of
love within God and is proper to divine Sophia herself. This love is neither hypostatic nor hypostatized. It exists as the organizing and unifying
force binding the infinity of divine ideas into a “pan-organism,” a “spiri
tual body.”110 As a living, spiritual body, as the pan-organism of ideas
possessed by the Divine Spirit, Sophia is “the pre-eternal Humanity of
God.”111 Just as the human spirit possesses a body in which she reveals
herself, so too does the Divine Spirit possess a spiritual body, Sophia,
as his self-revelation.112 As the divine humanity, Sophia is the “proto-
image” and “foundation” of created humanity. By virtue of Sophia, the
divine humanity, there is a primordial “bridge of ontological identification between the Creator and creation.”113
For Bulgakov, Sophia establishes the needed connection between
God’s being and the being of the world, and thereby makes possible
divine-human communion. In Balthasar’s mind, it is this sense of “ontological identification” of God and creature that constitutes Bulgakov’s
“sophiological excess.” Balthasar’s concern is that such a conceptualization
both limits God’s freedom with respect to creation and makes creatures
into a function of the divine life. From Balthasar’s perspective, this actually undermines the authentic communion of God and creature through
a false identification. We will return to this issue in the following section
and the next chapter. As we will see, Balthasar attempts to avoid this conclusion on immanent trinitarian grounds.
66 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
T r i n i ta r i a n R e c i p r o c i t y, D i s ta n c e ,
a nd Di a logu e
Balthasar’s adaptation of Bulgakov’s notion of intratrinitarian kenosis
includes an understanding of kenosis as “making space” for the other. As
we saw in chapter 1, Balthasar’s use of concepts like “space” and “distance”
when speaking of the immanent Trinity is one of the most misunderstood aspects of his thought. One of the primary reasons for the misunderstanding is the apparent novelty of the claims. However, even in this
regard, Balthasar’s theology depends on antecedents and is closely connected to his understanding of the Trinity as entailing reciprocal love and
dialogue. We will begin with Balthasar’s use of Richard of St. Victor’s
understanding of trinitarian reciprocity and dialogue and conclude the
chapter with the source of his notion of intratrinitarian distance: Martin Buber.
Richard of St. Victor and Trinitarian Reciprocity
Contemporary discussions of trinitarian theology often begin by attempting to define trinitarian personhood formally. In other words, is “person”
or “hypostasis” in trinitarian theology to be understood more or less like
human personhood, or is it a technical term not to be confused with its
human understanding? Figures such as Karl Rahner have argued that
hypostasis/person, in trinitarian theology, refers to the three “distinct
manners of subsisting” of the one God. Rahner seeks in this interpretation
to avoid the almost inevitable assumption that the term “person” refers to
“three centers of consciousness and activity, which leads to a heretical
misunderstanding of dogma.”114 For Rahner, therefore, the formal “distinct manners of subsisting” leads to the material claim that “within the
Trinity there is no reciprocal ‘Thou.’ ”115 Those biblical texts that seem
to suggest I-Thou relations between Father and Son (e.g., Jn 17, 21) are
based in the Son’s human nature, not their immanent trinitarian relations. Rahner’s argument appears both intuitive and traditional. Because
the term stems from complex and distant philosophical and theological
debate, we can presume that the concept “person” in trinitarian theology
does not match our own prejudices. Moreover, insofar as Christians are
monotheists, we can conclude that self-consciousness and individuality,
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 67
and by extension reciprocity, must be ruled out as tritheism. Therefore,
whatever else it might mean, “hypostasis” or “person” has a different content when used in trinitarian discourse than in everyday usage.
Insofar as Balthasar does affirm I-Thou relations in the immanent
Trinity, he appears to be novel and possibly heterodox. He draws, however, from a lengthy tradition of trinitarian thought. The notion that the
Father and Son “face” or “turn toward” each other was an uncontroversial
claim already by the twelfth century. The monastic theologian William of
St. Thierry could write without argument, “Now there is a sort of ‘turning’
of the Father towards the Son and of the Son towards the Father; but first
of these is the Father’s turning towards the Son, for the Son is from the
Father, not the Father from the Son (though this primacy is not of time,
but of a certain kind of relation, that of father to son). And this ‘turning towards’ is in a kiss and embrace. The kiss is a mutual recognition, the
embrace a mutual love.”116 But it is once again Richard of St. Victor who
provides the basis of Balthasar’s claims.
Love and Plurality in Richard’s Trinitarian Theology
Richard’s central trinitarian accomplishment is his realization that divine
love requires a plurality of divine persons. The insight that love is central to understanding the Trinity has its roots far earlier in the Western
theological tradition. Augustine argued that love (caritas) was “the best of
all possible definitions for the Trinity.”117 However, Augustine’s imprecise
use of the term (as well as the similar terms amor and dilectio) included
a range of possible kinds of love, including self-love. It was Gregory the
Great who would adopt a more precise position. According to Gregory,
“Charity cannot exist between fewer than two. For no one can be said to
have charity for himself. Rather, love [dilectio] must tend toward the other
in order to be caritas.”118 The highest form of love is “transitive.”119
Richard makes the same argument in his shift from considerations of
the one divine essence to his considerations of the three divine persons:
The arguments discussed previously [books I and II in which
Richard shows that God is greatest goodness] made clear to us that
fullness and perfection of goodness reside in the supreme and totally
perfect good. After all, true and highest love cannot be absent where
fullness of all goodness is found, since nothing is better or more
68 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
perfect than charity-love. Yet, none is said to possess charity-love in
the truest sense of the word if he loves himself exclusively. It is, thus,
necessary that love be aimed at someone else in order to be charity-
love. If a multiplicity of persons is absent, there can be no place for
charity-love.120
For Richard, insofar as goodness, which defines God’s essence, includes
the highest love, God must have an other to love. For Richard, a plurality
or multiplicity of persons must exist in order for God to be God. Furthermore, as greatest goodness and love also implies greatest happiness
or blessedness, and such happiness comes about in reciprocal love, Richard determines that the plurality must be such that God has an other to
love and who loves in reply. Richard explains, “To want to be much loved
by him who is much loved is typical of love. If this is not possible, there
absolutely cannot be [love]. Therefore, there can be no joyful love that is
not also reciprocal. . . . Absolutely, both he who donates love and he who
returns it must be present in reciprocal love.”121 Finally, as greatest goodness, which implies greatest love and happiness, also implies that God has
fullness of glory, it would be unreasonable (and a denial of God’s existence) if God were incapable of sharing that fullness; therefore, as greatest
goodness, love, happiness, and glory, this other in God receives the fullness of God’s glory.122 The other of God must be fully divine in order for
the highest love to be real.
Balthasar on Richard’s Trinitarian Depiction
For Balthasar, Richard’s great trinitarian insight “bursts open the narrow confines of the self-enclosed subject.”123 Moreover, by extending love
beyond even the I-Thou relationship to embrace a third, Richard’s imago
trinitatis reaches “the full selflessness of Christian caritas and its perfection in God.”124 Yet despite this praise, Balthasar also sounds notes of
reservation with Richard’s trinitarian vision. According to Balthasar, precisely in his emphasis on interpersonal love, Richard “fail[s] to maintain
the unity of the divine substance.”125 Balthasar thus argues that Richard’s vision must be complemented by the (equally inadequate) counterimage provided by Augustine.126 Balthasar expresses himself on this point
almost harshly. He writes,
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 69
It is inappropriate, therefore, on the basis of the strictness of the
first schema [Augustine’s psychological analogy], where similarity
to God lies primarily in the unity of the Spirit, to ban all use of
the second schema, that is, to declare it impossible for the Persons
within the Godhead to say “Thou.” Conversely it is mistaken to
take a naïve construction of the divine mystery after the pattern of
human relationships (as Richard of St. Victor attempted by way
of a counterblast to Augustine) and make it absolute; for it fails
to take into account the crude anthropomorphism involved in a
plurality of beings. The creaturely image must be content to look in
the direction of the mystery of God from its two starting points at
the same time; the lines of perspective meet at an invisible point, in
eternity.127
According to Balthasar, neither Augustine’s nor Richard’s model provides “any but the faintest glimmer of an elucidation of the superabundant triune life that indwells the divine unity. We must look upward to
the incomprehensible archetype through the irreducible polarity of these
two intraworldly images.”128
In many respects, it seems as if Balthasar has once again signaled the
need to use countervailing or paradoxical images, because of the mystery of the Godhead. However, on this point Balthasar’s various claims
about Richard are contradictory. He notes, for instance, two pages after
asserting that Richard undermines divine unity, that Richard actually does
not “entertain the notion that God contains three Persons in the modern
sense of three centers of consciousness. Richard himself dedicated four
of his six books on the Trinity to the problem of the unity of God. For
him and his successors, the only relevant principle was the logic of caritas,
which requires in God the presence of the ‘other,’ that is, the beloved, and
of the ‘third,’ the common object of love, without prejudice to the unity of
the divine essence.”129 Balthasar also correctly describes Richard’s understanding of the trinitarian persons as the one and the same divine love
in its three modes of being.130 In light of these contrasting evaluations
and contradictory statements, it is important to keep in mind that on
the whole Augustine’s psychological model has little place in Balthasar’s
immanent trinitarian theology. It is precisely Richard’s emphasis on the
70 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
personal distinction of the Father, Son, and Spirit, their coming to be and
determination in an order of love, as well as their equality and reciprocity
in love, that shapes Balthasar’s own trinitarian vision.
Indeed, rather than “balancing” Richard’s view with that of Augustine’s psychological analogy, Balthasar in fact tends to modify and extend
Richard’s understanding of reciprocity and dialogue between the persons. For Balthasar, one real weakness of Richard’s concept of personhood
is that, while it does see the divine person in its relation from another
(relation to origin), Richard’s conceptualization hints only at the person’s
relation toward another.131 It is this relation toward, and not only from,
another that constitutes the person. This modification of the notion of person in turn allows Balthasar to recast Richard’s understanding of condilectio in terms of human sexual love. In the love of the man and woman for
each other, they give rise to a child. According to Balthasar, “The relationship described here . . . remains, in spite of all the obvious dissimilarities,
the most eloquent imago Trinitatis that we find woven into the fabric of
the creature. It not only transcends Augustine’s self-contained I, but also
allows the ‘condilectus’ that Richard’s model imports from the outside to
spring from the intimacy of love itself.”132 For Balthasar, because the Son is
constituted not only by his coming from the Father but also by his “turning toward” the Father, it is this mutual turning toward each other in love
that gives rise to a third, an infinite excess and fruit of love, the Holy Spirit.
The I-Thou of Martin Buber and Intratrinitarian Distance
Balthasar understands the notion that personhood is constituted as both
from and toward another as distinctly modern. Balthasar engages a number of thinkers on this point, including Franz Rosenzweig and Ferdinand Ebner. However, it is Martin Buber who is the clearest influence on
Balthasar’s trinitarian theology. Buber seems to have exercised a persistent fascination on Balthasar. In 1957, Balthasar wrote two essays, “Buber,
Kierkegaard, Moehler” and “Martin Buber und das Christentum,” the latter of which appears in translation in the English Library of Living Philosophers volume dedicated to Buber.133 In 1958, Balthasar expanded this
essay into a book-length “dialogue” with Buber on the relationship of his
thought with Christianity.134 Buber reappears in both Balthasar’s Theo-
Drama and Theo-Logic.135
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 71
Balthasar’s attitude toward Buber was one of genuine admiration.
Balthasar complimented him as “one of the great creative minds of our
age,” who “has represented the reality and essence of the Jew qua Jew.”136
He offers a “bold return to the unique, the distinctively Jewish.”137 Much
of Balthasar’s theological engagement with Buber is on the relationship
between Christianity and Judaism. However, for our purposes, the primary issue is Buber’s philosophy of dialogue.
Buber and the I-Thou
Buber sees a fundamental shift in philosophical anthropology in the
thought of Ludwig Feuerbach. Feuerbach ushered in a movement away
from abstract individualism while also avoiding an equally abstract collectivism. The human being exists communally. According to Feuerbach,
“The individual man for himself does not have man’s being in himself,
either as a moral being or a thinking being. Man’s being is contained
only in community, in the unity of man with man—a unity which rests,
however, only on the reality of the difference between I and Thou.”138
Though Feuerbach did not develop this thought, this “discovery of the
Thou” was a “decisive impetus” for Buber’s own thought.139 For Buber, the
discovery that human being “is contained only in community,” in a unity
in difference, leads to the focus on the dialogue of one with another.
Dialogue is the authentic encounter of I and Thou. It is the “solid-give-
and-take of talk,” in which the “full reality” of the other is present for
us.140 This encounter involves a mutual “turning” of the one toward the
other, and a mutual “outgoing.”141 Central to Buber’s understanding of
the authentic I-Thou relation is the recognition of “the immense otherness of the Other.”142 Buber understands this recognition as central to
the act of love:
For there I, the lover, turn to this other human being, the beloved,
in his otherness, his independence, his self-reality, and turn to him
with all the power of intention of my own heart. I certainly turn to
him as to one who is there turning to me, but in that very reality,
not comprehensible by me but rather comprehending me, in which
I am there turning to him. I do not assimilate into my own soul that
which lives and faces me, I vow it faithfully to myself and myself to
it, I vow, I have faith.143
72 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
There can be, therefore, no “silent unity” behind the supposedly relative
difference of the I and the Thou, nor can there be any attempt to master
the other.144
In order to preserve the irrevocable distinctness of the I and Thou
in dialogue, Buber introduces an additional concept of interpersonal distance. Distance is the precondition of any and all relation. The other must
be set at a distance, seen as an independent opposite logically prior to
any authentic relationship occurring.145 Distance in itself does not cause
relation, but it is necessary. “With the appearance of [distance], nothing
more than room for [relation] is given,” yet “[man] can accomplish the act
of relation in the acknowledgement of the fundamental actuality of the
distance.”146
According to Buber, distance and relation form the “twofold” principle of human existence and, in their interplay, distinguish the human
from all other life forms. Human beings alone among creatures set themselves at a distance from their environment to perceive a world, which
they then relate to for use and pleasure. In the relations of human beings
with each other, the principle of distance makes possible our being present to one another, which occurs paradigmatically in dialogue. Central
to this event of being present to another, however, is the awareness of
mutual distancing. Not only have I distanced the other in order to then
be present to him or her, but so too has the other distanced me in order
to be present to me: “Our fellow men, it is true, live round about us as
components of the independent world over and against us, but in so far
as we grasp each one as a human being he ceases to be a component and
is there in his self-being as I am: his being at a distance does not exist
merely for me, but it cannot be separated from the fact of my being at
a distance for him.”147 Moreover, this being present realizes the human
person as relation: “For the inmost growth of the self is not accomplished, as people like to suppose today, in man’s relation to himself,
but in the relation between the one and the other, between men, that
is, pre-eminently in the mutuality of making present—in the making
present of another self and in the knowledge that one is made present
in his own self by the other—together with the mutuality of acceptance,
or affirmation and confirmation.”148 The human person thus comes to
be in relation, which occurs between one and another, I and Thou. As
Buber expresses it, it is between I and Thou that dialogue occurs and the
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 73
human spirit is manifest.149 The spirit is the common life of the distinct
I and Thou.
Balthasar and the I-Thou
According to Balthasar, Buber’s discovery of the I-Thou shows “being
as relation,” being as occurring between one and another, is of particular importance. In so doing, “Buber attains, without realizing it, a unique
imago Trinitatis: spirit reigns between the I and the Thou, who are pure
relation to each other, but each one, incommunicable in his core (as Other),
nonetheless (and precisely for this reason) communicates all he has.”150
Balthasar’s depiction of the Trinity, thus, borrows heavily from Buber’s
interpersonal philosophy. Indeed, Balthasar seems simply to transpose
Buber’s anthropology into trinitarian theology. As we have seen, Balthasar
too uses the language of I-Thou and of dialogue when working out his
trinitarian vision. More importantly, however, Balthasar’s understanding of intratrinitarian distance is essentially Buberian. In light of Buber’s
influence, passages like the following, quoted in chapter 1, take on greater
clarity: “The Father’s act of surrender calls for its own area of freedom; the
Son’s act, whereby he receives himself from and acknowledges his indebtedness to the Father, requires its own area; and the act whereby the Spirit
proceeds, illuminating the most intimate love of Father and Son, testifying
to it and fanning it into flame, demands its area of freedom. Something
like infinite ‘duration’ and infinite ‘space’ must be attributed to the acts of
reciprocal love so that the life of communio, of fellowship, can develop.”151
As with Buber’s anthropology, “distance” and “space” in Balthasar’s theology refer to the recognition of the otherness of the other and serve as the
preconditions of a common life in spirit.
Balthasar does not, however, find in Buber’s I-Thou something to be
univocally applied to the Trinity “from below.” Rather, Balthasar takes
seriously Buber’s own progression from philosophical anthropology to the
philosophy of religion to theology. In Buber’s thought, the I-Thou relations of human beings point toward the human I’s relation with the Eternal Thou. The divine Shekinah dwells between the human I and Thou.152
The encounter with the human Thou is also a “real simile” of the encounter with the divine.153 The human other points toward the wholly other.
Unlike the human Thou, however, God responds to the human I, not with
discreet words, but with the whole of existence itself.154
74 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
God is thus not simply a mysterious entity behind or above human
dialogue but the “absolute Person” who “enters into direct relation with
us.”155 This absolute Person creates us, moreover, to be persons.156 We are
“willed for the life of communion” with our fellow men and women and
God.157 Buber’s personal God never admits, however, of the possibility
of objectification in religious institutions or dogma. Buber “denies that
revelation fundamentally has a content.”158 This claim is, for him, the
central division between Judaism and Christianity. Christians, in their
recollection of the incarnation, set temporal-spatial limits on God’s relation with human beings. Judaism accepts the inability to limit God’s
history to any particular occurrence. Rather, “Happening upon happening, situation upon situation, are enabled and empowered by the
personal speech of God to demand of the human person that he take
his stand and make his decision.”159 The distant God meets us moment
by moment, and demands our acceptance of that very distance so that
dialogue can ensue.
T h e D o ct r i n e o f A n t e c e d e n c e
a n d T r i n i ta r i a n M a x i m a l i s m
As Balthasar understands it, Buber’s position leaves human beings wondering why they exist, why God has called forth partners for dialogue with
no apparent prospect for a higher unity, why God has fashioned a world
at all. Buber’s thought leaves the human person asking “Job’s question
to God.”160 The distance between God and humans leaves God inscrutable and humans in a painful bewilderment. Balthasar sees Buber’s turn
toward kabbalistic mysticism as the means by which the tension of such
distance and unity can be resolved. For Balthasar, this turn toward a technique of union is inadequate. Rather, what overcomes the tension is the
revelation of the Trinity:
At this point the Christian can only offer an answer in silence and
recognize the mystery: the absolute God himself is the identity of
the three persons in the one divine being, persons who proceeding
one from another and being eternally other set forth the ultimate
law of spirit, knowledge and love, but whose “relationship” is not
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 75
something subsequent or in any sense secondary, but is just as
primary and essential as the unity of their being and personality.
That mystery alone can hope to still the question of the significance
of our creation and of the human spirit. And then the fact that the
world exists—and not God alone—becomes clear and endurable.161
It is here, then, at the open question of existence, that Balthasar sees the
analogy “from below” of the I-Thou being fulfilled “katalogically,” from
above. The unity in distance of the Father, Son, and Spirit, revealed in the
incarnate Son, seals and elevates Buber’s anthropological intuition. To be
a person is an event of communion, of dialogue, of primal distance from
the other, but this is so because God has fashioned us in his trinitarian
image.
Barth and the Doctrine of Antecedence
Though Balthasar claimed that the “Trinity . . . played no central role in
shaping the overarching structure of ” Barth’s theology, Balthasar’s shift
from anthropology to trinitarian theology, as well as his method of trinitarian discourse, reveals Barth’s influence.162 According to Barth, the purpose of God in creating the world and the human being is to give the
“external basis” for covenant partnership. The human being, especially in
the division of the sexes, is created “primed” for the covenant with God.163
Man thus has his nature in the I-Thou relationship with woman. According to Barth, it is in the human being’s status as partner—of other human
beings and of God—that the divine image is found. This is because of
God’s trinitarian nature. Barth writes, “In God’s own being and sphere
there is a counterpart: a genuine but harmonious self-encounter and self-
discovery; a free co-existence and co-operation; an open confrontation
and reciprocity. Man is the repetition of this divine form of life; its copy
and reflection. . . . Thus the tertium comparationis, the analogy between
God and man, is simply the existence of the I and the Thou in confrontation. This is first constitutive for God, and then for man created by God.
To remove it is tantamount to removing the divine from God as well as
the human from man.”164 As Balthasar inserts in his own citation of the
passage, the primary I-Thou of God in the Trinity has its clearest mirror
in the secondary I-Thou of man and woman.165
76 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
The Barthian influence is not limited to providing a precedent for
Balthasar’s connection of human sexual differentiation to the Trinity. More
importantly, Balthasar embraces the Barthian insight that the 
Trinity
“establishes both God’s full sovereignty and prevents one from relating divine personhood to a created consciousness.”166 As Barth argues in
Church Dogmatics, volume 4,
God did not need the otherness of the world and man. In order not
to be alone, single, enclosed within Himself, God did not need co-
existence with the creature. He does not will and posit the creature
necessarily, but in freedom, as the basic act of his grace. His whole
relationship to what is outside Himself—its basis and history from
first to last—rests on this fact. For everything that the creature
seems to offer Him—its otherness, its being in antithesis to Himself
and therefore His own existence in co-existence—He also has in
Himself as God, as the original and essential determination of His
being and life as God.167
Though Balthasar’s initial engagement with Barth preceded the publication of Church Dogmatics 4, Balthasar saw Barth’s connection of Trinity
and sovereignty already in Church Dogmatics 1.1. Barth regularly repeats
that God can be so for us in the economy, because he is so “antecedently
in himself.”168 Balthasar summarizes Barth’s position: in his trinitarian
revelation, God shows that he “is a Thou, but not in relation to any created Thou.”169 The doctrine of the immanent Trinity prevents the creature
from imagining herself as necessary for God to be God.
George Hunsinger has termed Barth’s principle “the doctrine of antecedence.” According to Hunsinger, for Barth “God was not essentially different in the economy than he was in himself to all eternity.”170 How God
reveals himself in the economy points toward the reality of his eternal life,
while not “adding” to that life. Balthasar adopts the same doctrine of antecedence. Often Balthasar’s trinitarian reasoning takes the form of “if God
is revealed thus in his relation to the world, he must be thus in himself,”
or “if God is to be able to do this, God must be like this in himself.” This
reasoning is perhaps most clearly displayed throughout Theo-Drama. As he
argues, “[God] does not become ‘love’ by having the world as his ‘thou’ and
his ‘partner’: in himself, in lofty transcendence far above the world, he ‘is
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 77
love’ already.”171 Rather, the drama of salvation reveals to us the more profound and eternal “drama” of the immanent Trinity.172 As with Barth, in
Balthasar’s thought, the immanent Trinity serves as the antecedent ground
of God’s self-revelation.
Von Speyr and Trinitarian Maximalism
We will return to the connection between the immanent Trinity and
creation in the next two chapters. For now, it is important to note that
the trinitarian methodology employed by Barth and Balthasar leads to
maximalism in immanent trinitarian detail. This is especially so when we
reflect on what is revealed in Christ. As Barth argues, “If, then, God is in
Christ, if what the man Jesus does is God’s own work, this aspect of the
self-emptying and self-humbling of Jesus Christ as an act of obedience
cannot be alien to God.”173 He continues,
We have not only not to deny but actually affirm and understand as
essential to the being of God the offensive fact that there is in God
Himself an above and below, a prius and a posterius, a superiority and
a subordination. And our present concern is with what is apparently
the most offensive fact of all, that there is a below, a posterius, a
subordination, that it belongs to the inner life of God that there
should take place within it obedience.
We have to reckon with such an event even in the being and life
of God Himself. It cannot be explained away either as an event in
some higher or supreme creaturely sphere or as a mere appearance
of God. Therefore, we have to state firmly that, far from preventing
this possibility, His divine unity consists in the fact that in Himself
He is both One who is obeyed and Another who obeys.174
Barth is clear that he is not here arguing that the one and another are
separate gods with their own “independent” consciousness and activity.
As Barth regularly argues, the trinitarian “persons” are not persons in the
modern sense.175 “Modes of being” rule out tritheism but do not rule out
reciprocity and mutuality between the trinitarian persons.
This mutuality is implicit in Barth’s assertion above that there is obedience in the relationship of Father and Son. It is affirmed more clearly
78 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
when Barth discusses the imago dei as described above. Indeed, this mutuality takes on the shape of conversation in the creation of the human being.
As Barth notes, in Genesis 1, the language about God’s creating shifts in
the creation of human beings: “When man was to be the subject, it had to
be said that the creative basis of his existence was and is a history to and
from a divine Other; a divine conversation and summons and a divine
correspondence to it. A genuine counterpart in God Himself leading to
unanimous decision is the secret prototype which is the basis of an obvious copy, a secret image and an obvious reflection in the co-existence of
God and man, and also of the existence of man himself.”176 When humans
are created, God no longer simply speaks the creature into existence but
instead “pauses” and consults another. Though it could be argued that the
language of Genesis 1 is simply a result of the mythic genre, the force of
Barth’s insight depends on the realism of the language of divine consultation. If the human imago dei consists in its status as partner of God and
partner of other human beings, then God cannot lack a partner in himself
and remain God. Something like trinitarian conversation, something like
trinitarian decision making ought to be said of God.
It is noteworthy that Barth’s use of vivid detail in speaking about
a trinitarian conversation is limited to God’s relationship with creation.
He does not speculate on the interaction of Father, Son, and Spirit in
the immanent Trinity itself. Such interaction can be inferred from his
references to intratrinitarian mutuality, reciprocity, and obedience, but
nowhere does he pursue that course. Earlier theologians, such as Anselm
of Canterbury and Julian of Norwich, similarly suggest trinitarian conversation and decision making when considering the creation and redemption of the world.177 Perhaps the most extraordinary representative of this
theological device is the thirteenth-century beguine Mechtild of Magdeburg. Unlike those other figures, Mechtild actually puts the trinitarian
conversation into the form of multiple dialogues between Father, Son,
and Spirit. The most remarkable feature of Mechtild’s vision is the manner in which she depicts the working out of the divine will. The trinitarian
persons entreat one another while always agreeing. In Mechtild’s account:
the Holy Spirit in his superabundance played for the Father,
plucking the Holy Trinity, and said to him: “Lord, dear Father, I
shall give you out of yourself generous advice. We no longer wish to
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 79
go on thus, not bearing fruit. We shall have a created kingdom and
you shall form angels in my image so that they are one spirit with
me. For, dear Father, that alone is true joy, that in great love and
infinite happiness one gather them in your sight.”
The Father said: “You are one spirit with me. What you suggest
and want is to my liking.”178
The same occurs after the fall.
Then another council convened in the Holy Trinity. The eternal
Father said: “I regret my work. I gave my Holy Trinity such an
admirable bride that the highest angels were to be her servants.
Indeed, if Lucifer had retained his honor, she would have been his
goddess, for to her alone was given the bridal bed. She decided not
to remain in my likeness. Now she is ugly and hideously deformed.
Who might accept this filth?”
But look! The eternal Son then knelt before his Father and
said: “Dear Father, I shall be the one. If you will give me your
blessing, I shall take bloody humanity upon myself. I shall anoint
man’s wounds with the blood of my innocence and shall bind all
man’s sores with the cloth of wretched disgrace until my end; and
I shall, dearest Father, atone to you for human guilt by means of a
human death.”
Then the Holy Spirit said to the Father: “O almighty God, we
shall form a splendid procession and shall go forth unchanged in
great glory down from these heights. I was formerly, after all, Mary’s
chamberlain.”
The Father then bowed to the wills of them both with great
love and said to the Holy Spirit: “You shall carry my light before
my dear Son into all hearts that he shall move with my words. And,
Son, you shall take up your cross. I shall traverse with you all your
paths and I shall give you a pure virgin as your mother so that you
might the more gloriously bear up under inglorious humanity.”179
In Mechtild’s vision, though there is never a time in which the Father,
Son, and Spirit are at odds with one another, the unity of the divine will
does not supersede the distinctions of the divine persons.
80 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Balthasar was quite familiar with this strain in trinitarian theology,
and it may form a background to the vivid character of his own trini
tarian claims regarding the “integration of the Persons’ ‘points of view’”
in the acts of creation and redemption.180 Significantly, he wrote an introductory essay, “Mechtilds kirchlicher Auftrag,” for the modern German
translation of Mechtild’s Flowing Light of the Godhead, and he references
her a number of times throughout the Trilogy.181 Nevertheless, the most
immediate influence, and the one openly acknowledged, on his “trini
tarian maximalism” is Adrienne von Speyr.
Given the relationship of Balthasar and von Speyr, it is difficult to
determine the precise nature, degree, and direction of theological influence. Balthasar was not only the editor and publisher of her theological
work, he was also her spiritual director and confessor, even taking down
dictation in von Speyr’s ecstatic experiences. Balthasar claimed that “On
the whole I received far more from her, theologically, than she from me,”
and that “I strove to bring [my] way of looking at Christian revelation
into conformity with hers.”182
Surprisingly, secondary interpreters of Balthasar have often dismissed
his own insistence that his work cannot be fully understood apart from
von Speyr’s.183 Kevin Mongrain, for instance, asserts that von Speyr is
“completely dispensable for theologically understanding [Balthasar].”184
Mongrain’s presumption reflects his own interest in reading Balthasar’s
theology as essentially an Irenaean articulation of de Lubac, whom Mongrain believes is the “general source” of Balthasar’s theology.185 There simply is little room for von Speyr in his argument. If, however, one shifts
focus away from regulative figures to regulative theological themes in
Balthasar’s thought, two things result. First, the specifics of Balthasar’s
speculative immanent trinitarian theology emerge as far more important
than Mongrain conceives.186 Second, von Speyr’s influence manifests itself
almost ubiquitously, despite the lack of explicit reference.
While von Speyr’s trinitarian mysticism as a whole serves as an important influence on Balthasar, I focus here on those notions of intratrinitarian
prayer, worship, and adoration.187 Von Speyr’s claim is that the “world” of
Christian prayer is God’s own life; as such, God’s own life includes something like what we call prayer, worship, adoration, and even faith, hope,
and surprise. Von Speyr’s depiction of the Trinity centers on the personal
encounter of Father and Son in the Spirit. “It is as though two figures stood
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 81
facing one another and the entire space between them were filled, a love
that leaves each person their being, their contours, their form and appearance.”188 In this “face to face” encounter, according to von Speyr, God sees
his divinity in the other. In the case of the Father, he beholds his own
divinity, not in himself or in an abstract essence, but in the Son, and the
Son sees his divinity in the Father, and so on. Moreover, when seeing each
other, the divine persons do not see the threefold repetition of the divine
essence but the irreducibly distinct divine persons.189 The result of the recognition of the divine other is worship, adoration. Von Speyr writes, “And
since God sees the other’s divine nature in truth, worship immediately flows
from this recognition. Worship is the expression of God’s encounter with
God in love. Only in worship can God encounter God, when he confronts
himself as Father, Son and Spirit.”190 It is as if, for von Speyr and Balthasar
following her, the divine persons stand in awe of one another.
This awe, grounded in the distinction of the persons, leads von Speyr
to speak of faith, hope, and surprise in the trinitarian life as well. The persons do not exhaustively “know” each other from the outset, for at root
the Father is not the Son and neither is the Spirit. Love lets the other be
other. According to von Speyr, “Despite his omniscience, God loves in
such a way that he always lets himself be surpassed and surprised by the
Beloved.”191 It is in this way that God is “ever greater than himself.”192
The mystery of intratrinitarian expectation and fulfillment, borne out of
the distance between the persons, describes not a static alienation, separation, or ignorance but rather the open space for the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit to play their “everlasting game.”193 As we saw in the previous chapter, Balthasar echoes these very sentiments. Indeed, as is especially apparent in Theo-Drama 5, there is little to no gap between Balthasar and von
Speyr on these claims.
It is tempting to dismiss von Speyr’s speculations as less-than-serious
theology, and their presence in Balthasar’s work as stemming from the
“distorting” influence of a charismatic figure. I would suggest, in contrast,
that what is at work in her and Balthasar’s joint claims is a consistent
application of the doctrine of antecedence. God’s life and love cannot be
thought of as less dynamic than human life and love. Therefore, Balthasar
argues, for instance, “if human love is enlivened by the element of surprise,
something analogous to it cannot be excluded from divine love.”194 So too
the other elements of human love find their ground in the immanent
82 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Trinity. Von Speyr and Balthasar couple this doctrine of antecedence with
a Christocentric realism that allows them to move from Christ to the
immanent Trinity.195 As von Speyr explains, because Christ is the incarnate Word of the Father, “we can thus make inferences from the words
to the speaker, from what is stated to what is described, from the Son to
the Father, from transient time to enduring eternity, and from the created
world to God’s heaven.”196 It is this Christocentric realism that suggests
for von Speyr and Balthasar that the whole range of elements determining Christ’s relationship with the Father in the economy of salvation
has some kind of basis in the immanent Trinity. In other words, because
Christ relates to the Father, for example, in dialogue, prayer and worship,
and because such prayer and worship cannot be “added” to Christ’s person
by his human nature, dialogue, prayer and worship can thus be ascribed
to the immanent Trinity. Christocentric realism also enables von Speyr
and Balthasar to ascribe kenosis and “death” to the Trinity on the basis of
Christ’s kenosis-unto-death.197
Von Speyr and Balthasar’s Christocentric realism is, however, strictly
analogical. The statements made on the basis of Christ have to be “purified,”
as it were, of improper connotations. Von Speyr’s statements about “death”
in the Godhead provide an excellent example of her analogical predication:
“Of course, one cannot say that death, as an end, is in any sense in God,
since his eternal life is unending. But if death is understood to mean the
sacrifice of life, then the original image of that sacrifice is in God as the gift
of life flowing between Father and Son in the Spirit. For the Father gives
his whole life to the Son, the Son gives it back to the Father, and the Spirit
is the outflowing gift of life.”198 Human language can make a genuine reference to a reality within the Trinity, but the speaker must make effort to
avoid univocal speech. In no sense, therefore, is the “death” in the Godhead
like the closing of a finite human existence. Even more dissimilar is God’s
trinitarian “dying” from the death of a sinner.199 It is this analogical sense
that determines both von Speyr’s and Balthasar’s range of trinitarian claims.
This chapter has shown the manner in which Balthasar’s trinitarian vision
bears the mark of his wide-ranging engagements in the theological tradition and modern thought. Indeed, absent acknowledgment of these
sources, many of Balthasar’s most characteristic claims cannot be adequately understood.
A Confluence of Diverse Tendencies 83
The analysis of the chapter has also confirmed Balthasar’s most basic
convictions and concerns about the immanent Trinity outlined in the
previous chapter. First, Balthasar’s preferred sources reflect his conviction that the immanent Trinity is a dynamic, communal reality. Whether
through his reliance on medieval, processional accounts of trinitarian personhood—Bulgakov’s kenoticism—or his forays into Buber’s personalism, for Balthasar the being of the Trinity is most adequately grasped
according to the self-giving acts of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Second,
Balthasar’s reading of Richard, Buber, Barth, and von Speyr emphasizes
the reciprocity and distinction of the triune persons. The Father, Son, and
Spirit are not three repetitions of the one essence. Rather, they are irre
ducibly distinct. Otherness, difference, distance are therefore constitutive
of the divine life. As one secondary interpreter has phrased it, Balthasar’s
is a theology of alterity.200 And as a result of this divine alterity, the Father,
Son, and Spirit face each other in divine wonder and adoration. God,
beholding his divinity in an other, offers divine worship.
This chapter has also foreshadowed how Balthasar views the God-
world relationship, as well as the manner in which immanent trinitarian
theology affects our understanding of that relationship. This foreshadowing is clear in Balthasar’s methodological critique of his medieval sources
and his concern regarding Bulgakov’s sophiology. In the case of the former,
Balthasar rejects the possibility that the immanent Trinity can be deduced
on the basis of a transcendental being. With the latter, Balthasar opposes
an ontological scheme that risks making creation a necessary outworking
of the divine life. In each instance, God’s trinitarian aseity has not been
fully recognized. For Balthasar, following Barth and von Speyr, because
God is triune, God creates in utter freedom. Creation is in no way necessary for God. And because there is no necessary ontological connection
between God and world (from God’s standpoint), there can be no necessary reasons that allow the human mind to deduce the Trinity on the basis
of God’s essential attributes or the existence of the world. The Trinity is
glimpsed only in its free self-revelation in Christ. I turn now to Balthasar’s
trinitarian theology of creation, redemption, and deification.
C h a pt e r 3
Unless You Become Like This Child
Deification as Trinitarian Adoption
Such is the first purpose of creation: our being children in the only Son,
that the Father and the children might reciprocally bless one another.
—Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child
In the last two chapters, we examined and analyzed Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian theology in terms of the method of its construction, its
“internal” patterns and consistency, as well as its reliance on the thought
of others. The overarching claim was that Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian theology serves to manifest the truth that “God is love in himself.” This statement, in turn, required the use of contrary propositions
about the Trinity as a whole, the divine persons, and the various ways in
which their relations of love can be understood. This work led Balthasar
to search out and synthesize those lines of thought that emphasized the
personal distinctions of Father, Son, and Spirit; the transitive dynamism
and drama of love; the paradox of hierarchy and equality; and the kenotic
character of trinitarian self-giving, which entails the active glorification,
adoration, prayer, and worship among the triune persons. The result was
a dizzying juxtaposition of paradoxical claims. Nevertheless, within this
85
86 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
apparent chaos, Balthasar consistently takes care to rule out any suggestion that God is somehow dependent on the world, by applying “the doctrine of antecedence,” in which the manner of God’s revelation in the
world reveals how God is antecedently in himself.
However, Balthasar’s trinitarian vision is not limited to such “immanent” considerations. As Balthasar asserts, “The doctrine of the Trinity
has a profoundly soteriological significance.”1 If this is the case, what precisely is the soteriological significance of this trinitarian theology? How
is this significance reflected in the account of salvation? And what soteri
ological “event” connects immanent trinitarian claims with the work of
God ad extra?
In this chapter, I contend that the primary soteriological significance of Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian claims is to provide the conceptual framework for an account of deification—that is, the ins and outs of
his immanent trinitarian theology not only describe the antecedent life
of God, who chooses to create, save, and elevate his creatures; they also
describe the cause and the goal of these acts. We are made, saved, and elevated by the triune God in order to participate in that very triune life.2 The
claims of immanent trinitarian theology thus affect, indeed make possible,
specific claims within the doctrine of creation, the interpretation of the
work of redemption, and the character of deification. Summed up as our
adoption in Christ, trinitarian deification is the telos of God’s entire work
ad extra, the fulfillment of creation, and the aim of redemption.3 And it
is here, in our adoption as sons and daughters of God, understood by
Balthasar as our full participation in the Son’s eternal, trinitarian relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, that the immanent life of the
Trinity becomes our own.
This reading of Balthasar contrasts with the tendency to reduce the
soteriological character of Balthasar’s trinitarian theology to its connection
with the cross. Though this connection is strong, and Balthasar informs
his readers of it habitually, it does not represent the whole, or even the primary element, of his trinitarian soteriology. Among other things, such a
reduction cannot account for the peculiar logic in his move from the “data”
of the economy to the description of the immanent Trinity.4 On the one
hand, Balthasar is clear that only the economy, and in particular the cross,
reveals the Trinity for us. On the other hand, he is also eager to distinguish
carefully the immanent Trinity from its economic manifestation. Balthasar
explains this relationship between the immanent and economic Trinity
Unless You Become Like This Child 87
most clearly in Theo-Drama IV: “It is not simply that the full doctrine of
the Trinity can be unfolded only on the basis of a theology of the Cross
(and here and in what follows, the ‘Cross’ is always used in the Pauline-
Johannine sense—which is also that of the Synoptics—that is, including
the Resurrection) and is inseparable from it: rather, we must see the doctrine of the Trinity as the ever-present, inner presupposition of the doctrine of the Cross.”5 Elsewhere, Balthasar explains, “While, according to
Christian faith, the economic Trinity assuredly appears as the interpretation of the immanent Trinity, it may not be identified with it, for the latter
grounds and supports the former. Otherwise the immanent, eternal Trinity
would threaten to dissolve into the economic; in other words, God would
be swallowed up in the world process—a necessary stage, in this view, if
he is to fully realize himself.”6 Methodologically, Balthasar’s cross-Trinity
nexus establishes a kind of hermeneutical circle from which one revolves
from the revelation of the Trinity in the cross to its immanent trinitarian
presupposition in the Godhead, which in turn leads us back to a better
interpretation of the data of the economy. Central to Balthasar’s understanding of this hermeneutical relationship, then, is the ontological priority
of the immanent Trinity over God’s relations with creation, including the
work of salvation, as well as the epistemological priority of the economic
over the immanent. One cannot leap into the hidden depths of God outside of his revelation, but neither can one recognize revelation for what it
is without the intuition of these depths.
This relationship of the immanent and the economic applies for two
reasons. First, this relationship is simply logically consistent: because of
the specific character of the immanent Trinity, whereby God does not
need to have any relation with creation in order to be God, the only way
in which we can come to know of God’s triune life is through his self-
revealing acts—most especially, the paschal mystery of the Incarnate
Word. The economy is the only means to know the eternal God, who
remains transcendentally free with respect to his self-manifestation. We
shall investigate this epistemological issue as it relates to divine incomprehensibility and trinitarian discourse in the next chapter. Second, this relationship also follows from Balthasar’s presupposition that the redemption
offered by the cross is not the end of God’s work in the world but a component of trinitarian adoption. As Balthasar explains in the context of
the Thomist-Scotist debate about the “cause” of the Incarnation, “Christ
came as Redeemer of men, but he did not merely remit their guilt; he
88 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
came to offer the fullness of all divine goods—summed up as our ‘adoption as sons’—which the Father gives (automatically, as it were) when
surrendering his only Son for our sake. Since he has done this, ‘will he
not also give us all things with him?’ (Rom 8:32), far beyond the grace
given to the first human beings?”7 The world comes from and returns to
the triune life. The epistemological, or hermeneutical, movement from
cross to immanent Trinity mirrors the ontological movement of creatures
from their estrangement from God in sin to the most intimate participation in his life. Reducing Balthasar to a “crucio-centric” thinker without
acknowledging this wider horizon of deification misses the lion’s share of
his theological outlook.
D e i f i c at i o n a s T r i n i ta r i a n A d o pt i o n
“Deification,” theosis, or “divinization” has become a popular theme in contemporary theology.8 Meaning in a general sense “to become (like) God,”
deification in Christian theology describes the goal and process by which
human beings become partakers in the divine nature. This theme is present from the outset of Christian theological thought, as it has precedent in
scripture. Genesis speaks of men and women being made in God’s image
and likeness (Gen 1:26–27), and the serpent’s temptation of Adam and
Eve is that eating the fruit of the tree will make them like gods (Gen
3:5). In the New Testament, Jesus enjoins his followers to “be perfect” as
the Father is perfect (Mt 5:48). In John ( Jn 10:34–35), when “the Jews”
accuse Christ of “making himself God,” Jesus quotes Psalm 82:6, “You are
gods,” in his defense. Second Corinthians speaks of our transformation
into the image of the Lord, from glory to glory (2 Cor 3:18). The first
chapter of the Second Letter of Peter argues, “[God’s] divine power has
bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion, through the
knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and power. Through
these, he has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that
through them you may come to share in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:3–4).
Though recent scholarship on the topic of deification has expanded far
beyond its initial confines of Eastern Christian theology, Balthasar is not
generally recognized as offering a theology of deification.9 This absence
is not without reason, for, at least in terms of vocabulary, Balthasar only
Unless You Become Like This Child 89
occasionally uses the term or those of similar meaning, such as theosis
or divinization. There are important exceptions to this absence, but it is
accurate to say that the term itself does not play a prominent role in his
theology.10 Why this is the case is not entirely clear. It may stem from
Balthasar’s desire to avoid the suggestion that the creature merges with the
Godhead, or what Balthasar at times calls “essential deification.”11 Alternatively, it may stem from the influence of Palamite theology, and in particular the distinction it makes between the divine essence and the divine
energies, on the topic.12 Balthasar was aware of Palamite theology and
argued that its basic distinction fails to provide a clear connection between
God’s self-communication in his energies and the economic Trinity.13 On
the one hand, Palamas seems only to echo traditional trinitarian theology,
stemming from Gregory Nazianzen, while on the other, the Trinity risks
becoming nothing more than the “face of God turned toward the world,”
behind which the unitary essence hides.14 For Balthasar, then, the essence/
energies distinction in fact fails to fully account for the truth of theosis, the
creatures’ real participation in the Godhead.15
Granting the general absence of the term, we can nevertheless see clear
indications that Balthasar possesses and privileges some kind of theology
of deification. This is evident in the ubiquity with which Balthasar uses the
language of participation, sharing, or partaking in the divine life. Grace
itself, according to Balthasar, is “God’s movement to us. It is heaven projected into our world. It is a participation in the divine nature.”16 Within
the trilogy, this grace takes the inflection of the various transcendentals.
Participation in divine glory is one of two central facets of his theological aesthetics, which include not only a “theory of vision” treating divine
revelation and our perception of it but also a “theory of rapture,” which
includes the “elevation of man to participate in [God’s] glory.” Indeed,
as he explains, the two aspects of his theological aesthetics are inseparable, for “in theology, there are no ‘bare facts’ which, in the name of an
alleged objectivity of detachment, disinterestedness and impartiality, one
could establish like other worldly facts, without oneself being (both objectively and subjectively) gripped so as to participate in the divine nature
(participatio divinae naturae). For the object with which we are concerned
is man’s participation in God which, from God’s perspective, is actualized as ‘revelation’ (culminating in Christ’s Godmanhood) and which,
from man’s perspective, is actualized as ‘faith’ (culminating in participation
90 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
in Christ’s Godmanhood).”17 As Balthasar’s theological aesthetics gives
way to an account of the action and drama of God’s work, so too does
Balthasar’s account of participation shift from sight and rapture to freedom and act. The theo-drama involves God’s acts “on” and “for” the human
being, but this action includes as a part of it “the involvement” of the
human and the participation of finite freedom in God’s infinite freedom.
This participation or involvement in the divine action does not cease with
the close of the economy but extends even into the eschaton, as creatures
participate in the doxology of the triune persons. His theo-logic, too, culminates in our “direct participation in the divine essence,” which enables
us to behold the triune God without comprehending what we behold.18
Outside the trilogy, the theme of our participation in the Godhead appears
already in his works on Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus.19 The prose poem
Heart of the World concludes with a meditation on our place within the
flow and flux of triune exchange, when God becomes all in all.20 These
interests and similar claims span Balthasar’s career and we find them again
at its end, in one of his final works, Unless You Become Like This Child.
If, therefore, it is accurate to claim that Balthasar is a theologian of
deification or theosis, what precisely does he mean by “participation in the
divine nature”? It is my contention that Balthasar means nothing less than
the participation of the creature in the trinitarian life of God. Even more
specifically, deification occurs by our being begotten with, or adoption
in, the Son as sons and daughters of the Father. “Grace,” Balthasar says,
“has not imparted some general, vague, ‘supernatural elevation’ to us, but
a participation in the personal existence of the eternal Word of God. . . .
The grace which the Father gives us is christoform: it assimilates us to the
Son without violating us as human beings—for the Son himself became a
human being.”21 Put otherwise, deification is our sharing in the Son’s eternal relation to the Father by the Holy Spirit, and this sharing relates to both
the foundation and goal of the world. This understanding of deification
follows from Balthasar’s understanding of the relationship between the
divine persons and the divine essence. Since the divine essence is not a
“fourth thing” among the Father, Son, and Spirit, but “identical” to the
trinitarian processions and relations (the very processions and relations
that constitute the persons), our deification, our participation in divinity
must occur in a sharing in the divine processions themselves through the
working of the divine persons in the economy of salvation.
Unless You Become Like This Child 91
Balthasar found already in the New Testament, particularly in the
Johannine and Pauline literature, a witness to this election for trini
tarian adoption. In Galatians, Paul explains our adoption in the Son as
the goal of redemption (Gal 4:4), the proof of which is that “God sent
the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’ So you
are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through
God” (Gal 4:5–6). Paul takes up this theme again in Romans. “For those
who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not
receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a sprit
of adoption, through which we cry, ‘Abba, Father!’ The Spirit itself bears
witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then
heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with
him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:14–17). It is
the “revelation of the children of God,” for which creation itself “awaits
with eager expectation” (8:19). Further, “For those [God] foreknew he
also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he
might be the firstborn among many brothers” (8:29). Perhaps the para
digmatic text of predestination for adoption is in the opening chapter
of the Letter to the Ephesians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual
blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundations of
the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the
favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted
us in the beloved” (Eph 1:3–5).
Balthasar interprets these passages and others from the Johannine
corpus ( Jn 1:12; 3:3; 1 Jn 3:2) thus,
God the Father chooses and calls us in the Son (in a grace of being
born together with him) to be sons and fellow heirs, by ‘‘sending
into our hearts” the Spirit of himself and of his Son (Gal 4:6). Since
this is decided upon and aimed at “before the foundations of the
world,” and creation is an episode in this event (with the Cross
and the exaltation of the Son, and our consequent justification and
sanctification, as later episodes), we are not outmaneuvered and
taken by surprise in all of this, but have our home from the outset in
the inmost depth of God.22
92 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Adoption in Christ refers not simply to a metaphorical adoption, a vague
closeness to God made possible in Christ. Rather, reading these through
the trinitarian theology outlined in the previous chapters, adoption as children of God means that we come to participate in the trinitarian processions themselves, to be begotten by the Father with the Son, the Divine
Child. “When the immanent Trinity becomes the economic Trinity,” what
occurs is “a communication to the creature of the relationality of the triune
life which affects the whole of being within the Godhead.”23 We are “given
access to God to the point of being born with the Son from the Father and
of participation in the Spirit of the Father and the Son.”24
By framing deification as a participation in the trinitarian processions, Balthasar deliberately parts ways with the doctrine of theosis present
in neo-Thomism.25 Though it does not use the term, this latter tradition understood theosis in two modes. First, in the life of the believer on
earth, the Trinity is present by its “indwelling” in the believer’s heart. Second, theosis also relates to the Thomistic doctrine of the beatific vision,
which entails a participation in the divine essence as a necessary condition of seeing the divine essence. Balthasar attempts, in some instances,
to embrace elements of these positions.26 However, as Balthasar makes
clear, “it is insufficient . . . to portray the life of grace in terms of a special
‘presence’ and ‘indwelling’ of the Persons of the Son and the Spirit (sent
by the Father) in the souls of the recipients of grace; the purpose of this
indwelling is to enable men to participate in the relations between the
Divine Persons; and relations are precisely what these Persons are, wholly
and entirely.”27 Noting once again Balthasar’s identification of the persons
with relations understood as acts of procession, I suggest he offers a similar critique of “what theology, all too abruptly, calls ‘visio beatifica.’ ”28 Here
too, the dominant language adopted by Catholic theology fails to present
the dynamism of partaking of the divine nature.
In contrast to the perceived poverty of modern neo-scholasticism,
Balthasar turns to the “mystical” theological tradition to aid in his own
constructive proposal. While these links were present already in the
fathers, especially in the Alexandrians, Balthasar saw in the “Rhineland-
Flemish mystics,” Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, and Ruusbroec, connections
between the Son’s eternal birth from the Father and our adoption in Jesus
Christ.29 For Eckhart, “God performs all his works so that we may be
the only begotten Son.”30 Balthasar disavows the pantheistic impulse in
Unless You Become Like This Child 93
Eckhart but finds in his immediate followers more helpful formulations.31
For Tauler, we “flow” in the divine life with the Son.32 In Suso, the trinitarian distinctions provide him the basic insight that “man can be both a
creature and united with God at the same time.”33 Ruusbroec serves as the
capstone of the whole Rhineland-Flemish impulse Balthasar wishes to
highlight. Balthasar summarizes Ruusbroec’s thought as follows: “If the
creature is to be able to participate in [the eternal event of the Godhead],
it can only be through the grace of God and through discipleship of the
Son. [Ruusbroec] is scornful of the attempts of free spirits to reach this
participation in the divine by sitting still and practicing self-absorption.
The creature never becomes God substantially, but in the Son’s Incarnation, in his pro nobis, in his Cross and dereliction, in his Eucharist, the
Incarnate One enfolds in his embrace, by the Holy Spirit, everything that
is striving toward the Father.”34 Perhaps the most remarkable influence on
Balthasar on this topic is Elizabeth of the Trinity. More clearly than the
medieval theologians, Elizabeth shows the inner connection between the
Pauline witness and trinitarian deification. Balthasar explains Elizabeth’s
doctrine thus:
[Elizabeth’s mysticism] takes seriously the foundation of all creation
in Christ the incarnate God, since from the beginning the creature
was created into a framework provided by the identity of one
person of two extremes: the glorified divine nature and the crucified,
rejected human nature. Elizabeth learned about this “mystery” from
Paul, about the Son as firstborn of all creatures, placing all others
in his shadow. The creature not only has its origin in God’s eternity
(according to Scriptures on both Christology and predestination)
but also finds in eternity—in God’s free will from eternity and for
all eternity—a participation in the eternal inner dynamic of the
triune God, in the eternal procession of the Persons.35
T h e T r i n i t y a n d C r e at i o n
A crucial question arises from deification thus understood: if God aims at
the incorporation of creation into the divine life “before the foundation of
the world,” what can be said of the character of the relationship of God
94 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
and creation as such? Does creation have some ultimate rationale? What
makes it possible?
Trinity, Creation, and Divine Freedom
According to Balthasar, the answers to these questions all depend on trini
tarian doctrine, properly understood. With respect to the first question,
the revelation of the trinitarian God in Christ alone gives us an a dequate,
if also mysterious, explanation for the existence of a contingent world.
In effect, early Christian debates over the relationship of Jesus and the
Spirit to God brought about a revolution in the conceptualization of the
relationship of God and the world, for, Balthasar argues, “Nicaea indicated that in his ‘personal relationships,’ God is eternal, absolute love,
something that could never have been thought of metaphysically. And it
is precisely this revelation of God that alone explains the possibility of the
world, viz. as a ‘creation out of love’: no system of emanations could ever
have explained the world thus.”36 The revelation of the immanent Trinity
thus not only reveals something of God’s inner life, it also sheds light
on the whole of created reality. The Trinity shows that the world is the
product of infinite love, while “the religious philosophies of h
 umanity,”
whether “western” or “eastern,” cannot find room for the world except
as shadows or even falls from divine unity. Even Judaism and Islam “are
incapable of giving a satisfactory answer to the question of why Yahweh,
why Allah, created the world of which he did not need in order to be
God. Only the fact is affirmed in the two religions, not the why.”37
However, even if the Trinity reveals that God is love and therefore
reveals that the world is not an accident of emanation or a tragic fall from
the Divine Absolute, the second question remains: does God’s essence
of love somehow necessitate creation? Balthasar answers in a firm negative and on trinitarian grounds. The specifics of his answer can be seen
most clearly in contrast with the positions of Jürgen Moltmann and Sergius Bulgakov, who argue in distinct ways that the essence of triune love
requires God to create.
Moltmann and Bulgakov on Creation and Divine Freedom
As in Balthasar’s thought, the epistemological point of departure of Moltmann’s trinitarian theology is the personal history of the Son, which begins
Unless You Become Like This Child 95
in the trinitarian life and culminates on the cross. The Trinity exists, for
Moltmann, as a community of equal persons in a manner loosely analo
gous to human society. He is thus explicitly advocating a social trinitarianism as opposed to trinitarian theologies that focus on a single substance
(Thomas) or an absolute subject (Barth).38 Moltmann is not denying,
however, the common essence of Father, Son, and Spirit; in fact, such
a common essence is a central component of his theology. Between the
Father and the Son exists a bond of love and knowledge, which excludes
those who do not possess the divine nature.39 As he argues, it is a love of
“like for like.”
This construal of divine love as a love of like for like serves as the
premise by which Moltmann moves from the Trinity to a necessary creation. Insofar as God is trinitarian love, his love remains “necessary,” and
thereby lacks the fullness of love, which requires a free response. In order
to fulfill this demand of love, God must create, for “like is not enough
for like,” and God cannot be “without the one who is his beloved [creation].”40 This beloved in turn must be unlike God in order for it to be
truly other, and therefore “enough” for divine love. In sum, God’s act of
creation must be at once utterly free (or else creation would be identical
to the divine essence) and a necessity (or else God would not be love).
God must freely create in order to be the God who is love. As we will see
below, Moltmann’s trinitarian account of creation also affects his account
of the economy—once again, in contrast to Balthasar’s.
The paradox or contradiction of a free necessity, or necessary-but-
free act of creation also appears in Bulgakov’s thought, though in a subtler and less insistent form. Whereas Moltmann’s position flows from a
desire to read the cross as both ontologically and epistemologically determinative for the doctrine of God, Bulgakov’s position emerges initially
out of a desire to avoid the Scylla and Charybdis of metaphysical dualism
and monism. Describing this argument in detail would distract from the
matter at hand. What can be said is that for Bulgakov, the world has no
ground of being except in the divine life but is distinct from God by virtue
of “creaturely nothingness,” which gives to creaturely being its potency.41
Thus, there is a contingency to creation in which it passes from
potential to actual. This contingency is entirely lacking in God. God is
self-sufficient and eternally self-actualizing in the Trinity. And because
of this trinitarian self-sufficiency, Bulgakov argues, God “does not need
96 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
the world for Himself.”42 Creation is therefore not a “hypostatic or natu
ral necessity” for his “self-completion.”43 God’s triune personal life and
nature are “exhaustive” of his self-definition.44 Creation is a work of God
out of nothing but his freedom.45
Nevertheless, the absence of either “hypostatic” or natural necessity to create does not preclude the necessity for God to create “in some
other sense.”46 Indeed, this act of creating too is “just as necessary a self-
determination of God as His being, though in another way. The notion . . .
that God, by virtue of this ‘freedom’ of His, could have refrained from
creating the world must be rejected as not appropriate to His essence. If
God created the world, this means that He could not have refrained from
creating it, although the Creator’s act belongs to the fullness of God’s
life and this act contains no external compulsion that would contradict
divine freedom.”47 Like Moltmann, Bulgakov too explains that when we
speak of God, the apparent dichotomy between freedom and necessity
is inapplicable. “In Him, all is equally necessary and equally free.”48 This
is because the nature of love itself is both entirely free and entirely necessary.49 And since the nature of love is to expand, God needs the world
“for the world itself.”50 Bulgakov explains this strange turn of phrase thus:
“God-Love needs the creation of the world in order to love, no longer only
in His own life, but also outside Himself, in creation. In the insatiability
of His love, which is divinely satiated in Him Himself, in His own life,
God goes out of Himself toward creation, in order to love, outside Himself, not-Himself. This extradivine being is precisely the world, or creation.”51 Since God is love and love is expansive, God, in a sense, needs
to create in order for God to love “beyond the confines” of divinity, which
would otherwise remain a limit.52 God cannot not create, lest he be confined to his own absoluteness.
Balthasar on Creation and Divine Freedom
Despite their considerable differences, both Moltmann’s and Bulgakov’s
accounts of creation adopt similar conclusions: that God must freely create the world because God’s love cannot be contained or confined to the
love of the triune persons alone. In either case, what has occurred for the
theology of deification is to make it a necessary consummation not of the
creature but of God himself. Balthasar is clear about this danger in Moltmann’s thought.53 It is possible that the already mentioned “sophiological
Unless You Become Like This Child 97
excess” of Bulgakov presents a similar risk. Whatever the case, it is clear
that Balthasar wishes to firmly ground creation in the absolute freedom
of God without any equivocation. And this is a specific soteriological significance of trinitarian theology. Balthasar says, with Thomas, that “the
knowledge of the Divine Persons was necessary . . . for thinking correctly
about the creation of the universe. For by saying that God made all things
by his Word, the error of those who assert that God produced the universe out of necessity of nature is ruled out. Moreover, by the fact that we
affirm in him a procession of love, it is shown that God did not produce
creatures out of some need, or for the sake of any cause outside of himself,
but for the sake of the love of his own goodness.”54 For Balthasar, it is only
if God is recognized as absolute “Love in Himself,” as Trinity, that he is
truly free to create, save, and elevate the creature into his life. The eternal
Trinity is the possibility of creation, salvation, and deification.
The principal means by which Balthasar establishes this freedom is
by eliminating any hint of “limits” or “confines” of trinitarian love through
his claims about infinite otherness and difference within the Trinity. The
self-surrender of the Father brings forth his “infinite other,” the Son.55
The Son, not creation, is the Father’s principal beloved. As we saw in
chapter 1, even as the Word and Image of the Father, the Son is not a
reproduction but expresses the Father’s personal uniqueness in his own
personal uniqueness.
Because the persons are irreducibly distinct from one another—
so much so that the very term person functions only analogously—and
the essence is not a “fourth thing” hovering behind, above, or “within”
the persons, the one divine essence cannot be thought of as somehow
“overruling” the trinitarian personal distinctions. In this respect, from
a Balthasarian perspective, it is erroneous to claim that the love of the
Father, Son, and Spirit is love of “like for like.” It is rather the infinite,
because divine, difference of the Father and Son that constitutes divine
love in the Spirit. And, because of the irreducibility of their divine, personal difference, the world adds nothing otherwise lacking in the infinite
love in the Godhead.
Unlike Moltmann and Bulgakov, therefore, Balthasar clearly locates
the absence of a dichotomy between freedom and necessity strictly in the
immanent Trinity. It is in the trinitarian life itself, and not in the relation of God to creatures, that “freedom and necessity coincide,” or, that
98 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
is, “beyond freedom and necessity.”56 The Father’s act of begetting is “not
determined in advance by any ‘nature’ in the eternal Father which would
‘make it necessary’ for him to beget the eternal Son.”57 Taking this line of
thought even further, Balthasar asserts,
He [God] does not even have a ‘nature,’ if by that we mean a prior
ontological foundation on which his freedom would stand as a
merely secondary attribute. His freedom penetrates down to the
ultimate ground of his being, he is from himself (a se), eternally and
enduringly who he wills to be. Of course, he is not the prisoner of
his freedom, as if he were incapable of willing or being anything
but his own divine essence. Together with his free self-affirmation,
he has an equally original power to possess his substance without
restricting it to himself alone. He can thus give the whole of it away
to the Son, who says to his eternal Father, ‘all that is yours is mine.’
Because the Son, who receives the gift of the divine essence, also
possesses its power of self-surrender, he can cause the procession of
the Spirit in union with the Father. The Spirit himself, moreover,
personifies God’s omnipotence: his freedom not only to “blow
where he wills” but also to be self-gift.58
These acts of divine self-giving are thus rightly named “groundless” and
“gratuitous” insofar as they have no higher rationale than the love of
God—the very love that they are. This is Balthasar’s “why-less” “logic of
love” in contrast to Moltmann and Bulgakov’s “law of love.”59 This logic
knows nothing higher than the fact of the trinitarian processions. As a
result, “nothing in the world [nor the world as a whole] is traceable back
to an ultimate necessity.”60
We can understand Balthasar’s claims as a thoroughgoing application of the Barthian doctrine of antecedence introduced in the last chapter.
If the God-world relationship is one of gratuitous love, the claims about
gratuity, otherness, and difference in the immanent Trinity make possible
the assertion that “God does not become ‘love’ by having the world as his
‘thou.’”61 From the perspective of the theology of creation, immanent trini
tarian propositions function as a kind of negative rule, preventing us from
making claims of necessity regarding God’s acts of and within creation.
Unless You Become Like This Child 99
Trinitarian Otherness and the Created Other
The very same trinitarian thinking that precludes positing creation as
somehow necessary to fulfill divine love also justifies God’s act of creation. In Balthasar’s hands, again following von Speyr, the doctrine of
antecedence also has a “positive” import, establishing a principle of trinitarian archetypicity. Put concretely, the claim that there is infinite, personal difference in the Godhead rules out a necessary creation, but it also
provides the world with a “positive” foundation in the Godhead. Drawing on both Thomas and Bonaventure, Balthasar asserts that the trini
tarian procession of the Son is the “cause” and necessary precondition of
the world’s procession.
In Balthasar’s reasoning, this argument is sound because without
God’s antecedent trinitarian otherness, the existence of the contingent
and finite world would stand in contradiction to the absolute. Instead,
because of the Trinity, the absolute is not numerically one incompatible
with the contingent many. Rather the unity of the absolute is the unity of
triune love, and love entails difference. Therefore, God can remain absolute, and the contingent many is not an absurdity. Because of the Trinity,
Balthasar can claim, “the fact that ‘the Other’ exists is absolutely good,”
both principally in the Trinity and derivatively in creation.62 Indeed, creation, as distinct from God, analogically mirrors the personal distinctions
of the trinitarian persons. Balthasar writes,
Whether we are aware of it or not, creation lives by the mystery
of this reciprocity in God. The very fact that creation exists is a
manifestation of this mystery: creation is “the other” over and
against God. It is good that there is this “other,” for it is eternally
good that there is “another” in God; and this “other” does not
separate but, in the Spirit, unites the two and fills them with life.
So we need not lament the fact that we are not God, that we are
eternally separated from him by the chasm of our creaturely nature;
for because we are “other” than he, we can be his image.63
The otherness of the created world, like the otherness within the Godhead, makes possible a union of love.
100 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Among those concepts associated with intratrinitarian difference that
are most important for his theology of creation is the notion of distance
or space. As we saw in chapters 1 and 2, trinitarian “distance” suggests the
qualitative notions of “letting be” and “making space.” When turning to
the question of creation, the infinite, inner-trinitarian “distance” between
Father and Son makes possible “surprise” within divine love; it also is
the location, or space, of creation. This means that the reason the distinct
creaturely being, including its finite freedom, can exist at all is because
there is a “space” of infinite freedom in the Godhead.64 This infinite freedom constituted by the “trinitarian ‘letting be’ of the hypostatic acts,” is
the “nothing-out-of-which” the world comes.65
In some respects, this infinite trinitarian space of freedom is the
Balthasarian analogue of Bulgakov’s Sophia: the divine reality that makes
nondivine being possible without positing strict dualism. Finite being,
and therefore finite freedom, exists through participation in the infinite
trinitarian being-f reedom.66 But how is it that infinite freedom is such
that it does not overwhelm the finite? Interestingly, Balthasar at times
rejects or critiques the use of the term kenosis to describe God’s granting
of free space to creatures.67 Elsewhere, he uses the term seemingly without protest.68 What is at work in this verbal inconsistency is a consistent
rejection of the idea that kenosis involves merely a “negative” restriction
of or retreat from freedom. Rather, kenosis understood in light of the
immanent trinitarian life is the “positive form of infinite love,” which is
free to let the other be.69 Put otherwise, in the Trinity, the kenotic love of
the Father that gives rise to the Son and Spirit and their own self-giving
does not indicate a limitation of divine power but rather its abundance.
The Father is free to generate the Son, to offer him the space to be distinct from him, and likewise the two together are free to breathe forth
the Spirit of their unity. There are “areas of infinite freedom” in the t riune
life.70 Love has its power in being given away. It is in this light that creation comes, from nothing other than God’s absolute and omnipotent
freedom-in-love, a freedom so great it lets the other be. God’s triune freedom thus gives space for creation to exercise its own finite freedom. In
the event of our salvation and communion with the divine life, our finite
freedom is not overruled but elevated.
The mode of God’s love for creation—the very love that in its omni
potence creates and sustains the world—is therefore “latent.” God “adopts
Unless You Become Like This Child 101
a kind of incognito,” withdrawing in order to keep open the paths of creaturely freedom, sustaining them all the while.71 It is through this latency
that the intratrinitarian distance within the Godhead “can contain and
embrace all the other distances that are possible within the world of finitude, including the distance of sin.”72 These created distances, moreover,
serve to manifest the distance of the triune persons.73
Despite Balthasar’s care in avoiding the suggestion of a necessary creation through immanent trinitarian means, the question arises whether
or not Balthasar has fallen into the trap that Moltmann and Bulgakov
sought to avoid: the introduction of arbitrariness in the Godhead. Creation might not be a fall from divine unity, or part of the process of the
divine unfolding, but amid the gratuity and exuberance of the life of God,
it seems like an unjustifiable accident.
However, it is precisely in his adopting the spatial metaphor of trini
tarian distance that Balthasar can, finally, offer a “motive” for God’s act.
Insofar as creation comes to be within the “space” of infinite, trinitarian
freedom, and this freedom is characterized as the ever-new, ever-living exchange of love and mutual glorification, creation comes to be as an additional intradivine gift—beyond the Godhead itself—offered in the round of
the Father, Son, and Spirit’s mutual doxology. “The world,” says Balthasar,
can be thought of as the gift of the Father (who is both Begetter
and Creator) to the Son, since the Father wishes to sum up all
things in heaven and earth in the Son, as head (Eph 1:10); thus the
Son takes this gift—just as he takes the gift of Godhead—as an
opportunity to thank and glorify the Father. Having brought the
world to its fulfillment, he will lay the entire kingdom at his feet, so
that God (the Father) may be all in all (I Cor 15:24, 28); as for the
Spirit, he is given the world by both: he is eternally the reciprocal
glorification of Father and Son, but now he can implement it in and
through the creation ( Jn 16:13–15).74
By grounding the creation of a nondivine world in the gratuitous acts of
intratrinitarian glorification, Balthasar has adapted the classical adage that
God created the world for the sake of his glory in such a manner that it
rules out the hint of divine egocentrism. Being triune, being constituted by
the self-giving acts of the Father, Son, and Spirit, means that when God
102 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
creates for the sake of his glory, it is the glory of the divine other that is the
goal. Far from being arbitrary and unrelated to God’s inner life, creation is
that unnecessary but “fitting” addition to the exuberance of divine love. As
we will see below, the trinitarian, doxological ground of creation has important consequences for Balthasar’s understanding of trinitarian deification.
A final point bears fleshing out: it is not simply the case that the
world fits within a neutral “space” amid the divine persons—an object
passively passed around as a gift. Rather, the “space” of creation is specifically “in” the person of the Son. Drawing on a long tradition of Christian
theology, beginning already in the Pauline corpus and stretching through
patristic, medieval, and modern theology, Balthasar sees a special relationship between creation and the Son: “The whole creation is formed in,
through and for the Son.”75 He is not only the Word and expression of
the Father, he is also the archetype, the idea, the ground, and the goal of
creation.76 Or, using Thomas’s language, the procession of the Son is the
cause or principium of the procession of creatures.77
Balthasar’s insistence on the kinship of the Son and creatures carries
important consequences. It means that the analogy of being between God
and the world is not simply trinitarian but specifically Christological. The
“otherness” of which the world is an analogy is not simply any trinitarian
otherness but specifically the Son’s difference from the Father. “There is
an analogy,” explains Balthasar, “between the Son’s being begotten and
the creatures’ being freely and sovereignly created by God.”78 The world’s
essential otherness from God mirrors or participates in the Son’s personal
otherness from the Father. This mirroring of otherness takes privileged
form in the God-human distinction, the basis of the human “image and
likeness” with God.79 Interpreting one instance of this theologoumenon
in Ruusbroec’s thought, Balthasar writes, “God the Father, the fecund
ground of divinity, utters a single Word in which he expresses himself and
all things. He generates this Word out of himself; in the One thus generated he sees and contemplates the Son’s personal Otherness, and in him
he sees and contemplates the creaturely otherness of the world of creation.”80 Going further, as Balthasar explains, this trinitarian otherness
of the Son makes possible his assumption of creaturely otherness, without thereby eliminating the creator/creature distinction.81 The analogy of
filial and creaturely otherness forms a kind of bridge for the inseparable
events of Incarnation and deification. Once this bridge is crossed, Christ
Unless You Become Like This Child 103
becomes the concrete analogia entis.82 As we will see in the next chapter,
this divine assumption of creaturely difference is also the means by which
God expresses his triune essence, and thereby also the basis of our theological expression.
Our kinship with the Son is, furthermore, not simply a formal characteristic of the God-world relationship but rather undergirds the predestination or election of creatures in the person of the Son. Balthasar
explains, “In the Son, the Father contemplates us from before all time,
and is well pleased. It is in the Son that the Father can predestine us
and choose us to be his children, fellow children with the one, eternal
Child, who, from the beginning of the world, intervenes as sponsor for his
alienated creatures.”83 That the Son intervenes for his creatures “from the
beginning of the world,” indicates already the destiny not only of creatures but also of the Son himself. The “Son” and idea in whom the world
is created is never simply the Logos asarkos but rather always already the
concrete, human Christ.84 The world’s telos is to be incorporated into this
cosmic person.
T r i n i ta r i a n A d o pt i o n a n d
t h e Ec o n o m y o f S a lvat i o n
The foregoing account of how important Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian
theology is for his theology of creation provides the architectural foundations for what follows. As we saw, Balthasar’s specific claims about the
immanent Trinity provide the means to avoid the pitfall of positing a necessary creation—a pitfall that Moltmann and Bulgakov apparently do not
avoid. The Trinity shows that God is utterly free in his relationships with
his creatures. It also suggests, for Balthasar, the manner in which God
is, is such that his freedom is not solely the negative indication that the
world cannot claim to be necessary. It is also the basis, at the very root
of creaturely being, of its “positive” relation to God. That God includes
within himself a divine other means that the otherness of creation (and
within creation) is not a sign of its fallenness but of its kinship with God,
most especially its kinship with the person of the Son.
In what follows, this suggested kinship of the world with the Son
is fully realized in the economic work of the triune God, who aims at
104 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
nothing less than the adoption of the world into the Son. As Balthasar
asserts, “Everything concerning the form of the redemption . . . belongs to
the road leading to this goal, and is a means to the end. And only because
Christ is above all the eternal Son can he achieve the deed of salvation and,
through it, make us sons.”85 This work encompasses that of both the Son
and the Spirit. As the finite world comes to be in the person of the Son,
the entire triune God, but especially the Son in whose image the world is,
accepts responsibility for all of the possibilities finite freedom possesses,
including the possibility of the rejection of God. This is how and why
the lamb is slain from the very foundations of the world (Rev 13:8). The
economy and the sacrifice of Christ, though fully realized only in time,
are already foreshadowed in the moment of creation, because creation is
destined for adoption in Jesus. But this work also includes the Spirit, who
is not only present in the work of the Incarnate Son but who draws the
world across time and space into the Incarnate Lord. It is he who fills us
with the Spirit of sonship and enables us to actively share in divine love
itself. As we will see, the immanent trinitarian claims described in chapters 1 and 2 reappear in new form throughout Balthasar’s theology of the
economy. There is truly a trinitarian substructure to Balthasar’s theology
of salvation.
The Work of the Son
Procession, Mission, and Kenosis
One of the central claims Balthasar makes about the work of the Son in
the world is that his mission “is the economic form of his eternal procession.”86 Thomas makes the same point, but in Balthasar it takes on greater
importance. The claim is not simply that there is a fitting correspondence
between the Son’s coming forth from the Father in eternity and his going
forth into the world in time and space. Rather, it indicates the personal
unity of the Son in both his divine and human natures and, with this
unity, the assumption of his humanity into his eternal procession.87 As we
saw in chapter 1, the Son’s procession from the Father entails two countervailing elements. First, it occurs by virtue of the Father’s generative
kenosis. The act by which the Father “pours out” the divine essence, the
act by which the Father is, is also the act by which the Son comes to be,
Unless You Become Like This Child 105
the act by which the Son is. Second, as a distinct divine person, the Son
too engages in his own act of self-surrender, obedience, and thanksgiving
for the Father’s letting him come into being.
These two points have important consequences for Balthasar’s understanding of the work of the economic Trinity. First, it is the Son’s place
within the intratrinitarian kenosis of the Father that allows Balthasar to
see the kenosis of the Son in the economy as the act and expression of the
Father’s love. Christ “does not exposit himself in his humanity. Rather, he
exposits the Father in the Holy Spirit.”88 If from one perspective the divine
persons just are their act of procession, and the Son therefore just is the
Father’s loving surrender of love, and his mission is a mode of this procession, then his mission is the Father’s surrender of love to the world. The
point echoes the Johannine claim that it is through God the Father’s sending of the Son into the world (1 Jn 4:9) as expiation of our sins (1 Jn 4:10)
that God reveals his love and what love itself is.89 The act of sending the Son
into the world and unto the cross is the revelation of God the Father’s love.90
But this interpretation of the mission of the Son as the love of the
Father for the world meets the countervailing movement of the Son’s love
for the Father. It is not the case that Jesus is simply a passive instrument
of the Father in the economy; rather, he is one who “turns to the Father”
and loves in response. The Son is not therefore merely the outpouring of
the Father’s love for the world but the one who pours himself out for the
Father’s glory and the sake of the world. The Son is at work in the world
on behalf of the Father, and “His obedient working is just as original and
divine as the Father’s.”91
Throughout the economy of salvation, therefore, the “filial attitude”
of the Son, the “attitude” he possesses by virtue of who he is in eternity, the attitude of obedience, thanksgiving, adoration, and even “joy,”
never alters. He freely assumes “the estranged world into himself in order
to be in that world the same person he always was in God.”92 When we
meet the man Jesus, therefore, and witness his relationship with God the
Father, we are not witnessing a merely human relationship with God.
Rather, we are witnessing in this man a translation of divine sonship into
the world of creatures. We are hearing the trinitarian dialogue in “human
vocable.”93 In Jesus’s human prayer, we are coming to know that “God
himself can pray to God.”94
106 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Incarnation and Created Nature
What occurs, therefore, in the Son’s Incarnation is not an alteration of
his person and his personal relationship with the Father. His filiation,
and even “filial attitude” remain the same, only they are now under a new
mode. What changes is created nature, which has come to participate in
the trinitarian relations in and through the person of the Son. This change
in created being would not be possible without the hypostatic union of
created being with divinity in the Son.95 Echoing the Greek Fathers in
particular, Balthasar argues that the ascent of the creature to deification can occur only with the descent of the Son.96 The Son must himself
become human if humans are to become children of God.
The question is, however, how one can articulate this change in
created nature without undermining its real distinction from God.
Balthasar’s notion of distance—both in the immanent Trinity and
“between” God and world—is especially important. As we saw above,
when analyzing Balthasar’s theology of creation, and later the kinship
of Son and world, Balthasar puts the trinitarian Son and the world into
an analogous relation of difference. There is an analogy between the
Son’s difference from the Father and the world’s difference from God.
The movement of the Son into the world makes use of and “concretizes”
that analogy. The difference between God and the world is taken up by
the Son to reveal the difference of Father and Son in the unity of the
divine nature.
“Distance” evokes an even more precise quality to the Son’s Incarnation. As we saw above, distance is that character of difference that gives
the space of freedom to the other, the needed precondition for any true
unity. When the Son becomes flesh, therefore, he not only adopts the
difference of God and creature to show the inner-trinitarian difference,
he adopts the “distance” of the creature from God as well. And by doing
so, he uses this creaturely distance from God to show the infinite, divine
distance of the Father and Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit.97 And
through this act, the creature’s infinite distance from God “is transfigured into the infinite distance between the Divine Persons in the identity of the divine nature. We are already permitted to see enough of this
intradivine distance in Jesus’ relationship to his Father; in the transfigu
ration just mentioned we will participate in it more intimately still.”98
By taking up and transfiguring the creature’s distance from God in the
Unless You Become Like This Child 107
intratrinitarian distance, the Son deifies the creature and its freedom
“from within”—not dissolving it into divinity but bringing it into the
sphere of the eternal, triune life.99
Cross and Hell
Creaturely distance, however, is no neutral state but includes the distance
traversed in human sin. It is because of this infernal distance that the
work of adoption also takes the form of redemption. In addition, it is for
this reason that the means of manifesting the triune distance of Father
and Son is not only a vague “distance of the creature from God” but is
the specific distance of “God-abandonment” on the cross and the descent
into hell. The Son’s assumption of human nature cannot work around the
sinful state of that nature. The “No” of creaturely sin can be defeated only
by the “Yes” of trinitarian love “from within.”100 The divine Son must take
up his place within the rebellious world for the rebellious world.
Thus, it is precisely by stepping into the fallen world that the Son
reveals the trinitarian persons, and he does so paradigmatically on the
cross. As Balthasar insists, the cross and the immanent Trinity are mutually illuminating. He explains,
In virtue of this distinction [of the trinitarian persons], which entails
relations within the Trinity and hence facilitates that “laying up” [of
Son’s divine prerogatives], the Cross can become the “revelation of
the innermost being of God.” It reveals both the distinction of the
Persons (clearest in the dereliction) and the unity of their Being,
which becomes visible in the unity of the plan of redemption. Only
a God-man, through his distinction-in-relation vis-à-vis the Father,
can expiate and banish that alienation from God that characterizes
the world’s sin, both in totality for all and in totality for each
individual.101
But if the dereliction of the Son of God on the cross is the paradigmatic instance of the immanent Trinity’s revelation in the economy, has
Balthasar not come dangerously close to asserting that God suffers, or
that suffering and death take place within the eternal Godhead? Or, as
Alyssa Pitstick argues, if “the economic Trinity, especially in the Descent
event, is the expression and revelation of the inner life of the immanent
108 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Trinity,” then “the real divine suffering of the economic Trinity is the divine
joy of the immanent Trinity.”102
In some measure, Balthasar seems to confirm this argument. As we
saw in the previous chapter, Balthasar readily embraced Adrienne von
Speyr’s claims that there is a kind of distance, “death” and “sacrifice,” that
occurs among the persons of the Godhead.103 However, as he attempts to
explain, by making such claims he is “only establishing negative limits, so
to speak,” against the “extremes” of, on the one hand, an impassive deity,
and, on the other, process theology, such as Hegel’s or Moltmann’s.104 He
explains, “If Jesus can be forsaken by the Father, the conditions for this
‘forsaking’ must lie within the Trinity, in the absolute distance/distinction
between the Hypostasis who surrenders the Godhead and the Hypostasis who receives it. And while the distance/distinction between these
two is eternally confirmed and maintained (‘kept open’) by the Hypostasis who proceeds from them, it is transcended in the Godhead that is the
absolute gift they have in common.”105 As a “negative limit,” these claims
do not to give us “inside” information about how God is, or what the triune persons “feel,” irrespective of the relation to creation. Rather, they are
indications that, having come forth, and destined to be “within” the triune
life, the redemption of the world occurs nowhere else but within this very
life.106 As we are destined for trinitarian childhood, so must the means of
our salvation reflect this destiny. The event of salvation has a “trinitarian
substructure.”107
The cross and descent of the Son into Hell show this substructure not only because it suggests the distinction of the divine persons
but also because it does so through the paradox of trinitarian power-in-
powerlessness. As we saw in chapter 1, the kenotic character of Balthasar’s
trinitarian vision, and his use of countervailing propositions, led him to
conclude that divine omnipotence was justifiably articulated as powerlessness. This paradox is most obvious in the persons of the Son and Spirit
from the series of propositions related to their processions. The Son is only
God because he has received divinity from the Father, and so too the Spirit
is only God because he receives himself from the Father and the Son.
Their share in divine omnipotence occurs in their mode of passivity, recep
tivity, powerlessness. But, as Balthasar insists, this power-in-powerlessness
also applies, though in a different way, to the Father. He awaits “permission” from the equi-divine Son and Spirit to “let them be”; without this
Unless You Become Like This Child 109
antecedent consent, he, the source of the Godhead, would not be. In sum,
“the triune love of God has power only in the form of surrender (and
in the vulnerability and powerlessness that is part of the essence of that
surrender).”108
The drama of salvation manifests this immanent trinitarian paradox,
for the Son in the economy does not appear as a conqueror but as the
Man of Sorrows. The Son’s obedience, his taking up of the form of a slave,
“confirms” his omnipotence because it shows that he even has the power
of self-emptying.109 His divinity is proven by his humility. His power and
powerlessness, his death and life, even his joy and sorrow, all mysteriously
coincide in the economy, because antecedently the inner-trinitarian life is
already defined by complete and eternal self-giving love. “Highest power
shows itself in the highest self-surrender,” both immanently and economi
cally.110 The economy is not the external sign, or “metaphor,” of this love
but its symbol, participating in and making present that which it symbolizes. Or better, the economy is this eternal love in the medium of a fallen
creation and history.111 As Balthasar puts it, “The omnipotent powerlessness of God’s love shines forth in the mystery of darkness and alienation
between God and the sin-bearing Son.”112 This is why the contemplation
of the Trinity cannot be divorced from the contemplation of the life and
paschal mystery of Christ.113
Contrary to the critique of Alyssa Pitstick, then, Balthasar is not
offering an equivalence of the suffering of the economic with the bliss of
the immanent Trinity.114 At the minimum, Balthasar is arguing the former
paradoxically reveals the latter but cannot be ontologically identified with
it. One cannot simply equate immanent bliss with economic suffering for
two reasons. First, as has been shown, for Balthasar the triune God is love
in himself, and because of this his relationship with creation is a function of his freedom in all aspects. Balthasar is clear that there is nothing
tragic in triune Love itself.115 Any and all tragedy within history “is played
out” in the “all-embracing reality” of eternal love and blessedness.116 As
a result, there can be no real question of the Son univocally suffering like
us. His suffering is always a sign of his divine assent to undergo suffering
and, therefore, a sign of his freedom, power, and even glory. Second, and
deeper, because the immanent Trinity cannot be thought of apart from the
mutual, divine acts of self-surrendering love, the acts the triune persons
both do and are; and because the divine self-surrender is identical to divine
110 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
glory, power, for example, its revelation on the cross is not a moment in
a dialectic, sublimated in the next moment by the “true glory” of the resurrection. Because “the glory of God is the glory of his eternal love,” the
cross, because it is an act of that love, is the manifestation of God’s glory,
power, and love in the fallen world.117 The real “being dead” of the Incarnate Son is therefore not a negation of glory sub contrario but its utmost
expression—even as it seemingly “hides” in death. It is for this consistency of divine glory that the paradox of power in powerlessness, of glory
in dereliction, “timelessly” persists in the resurrected Lord, who bears the
wounds of his Crucifixion still.118 And it persists because it reflects, in the
medium of created nature, the paradoxes of the triune life itself.
Without this paradoxical power-in-powerlessness, a paradox Pitstick
implicitly denies, one is left with a confusing picture of the work on the
cross and descent. Pitstick’s paschal mystery plays out in fragmented shifts
of Christ’s state, moving from the dereliction of the cross into a glorious
living descent and resurrection. The reality of Jesus’s being dead aside, one
wonders how Pitstick determines the content and appearance of divine
glory. It seems crudely limited to a univocal identification with worldly
power and might. For Pitstick, God and Christ are only glorious when
dominating, at the minimum, the sinner or the devil. Balthasar’s position
is more subtle, recognizing that God “is above the need to dominate, let
alone use violence.”119 And this power-in-powerlessness is confirmed by
virtue of God’s use of cross and death to accomplish the salvation of the
world and his self-revelation.
But Balthasar’s paradox of trinitarian “omnipotent powerlessness”
as archetype of Christ’s economic work also allows Balthasar to avoid
the danger of Moltmann’s view of the cross, despite the often similar-
sounding claims the two make. As we saw above, Moltmann envisioned
the God-world relationship as freely necessary from the divine perspective. In order to be divine love, God must freely love an other. This introduces passibility into the Godhead. God’s positing of a wholly other
in creation entails God’s self-limitation and therefore his suffering.120
In order to have free love, God must humiliate himself through self-
limitation and suffer the freedom of the creature. As Moltmann stresses,
“Freedom can only be made possible by suffering love.”121
As Moltmann perceives it, this suffering love, which makes freedom possible, reaches its zenith on the cross. Here, as nowhere else, the
Unless You Become Like This Child 111
willingness of God to suffer with and for his creatures is most manifest.
However, this act entails the self-differentiation of God and his standing
against himself as he identifies with his creatures. The Son, who is sent
into the world, so thoroughly embraces the creature’s freedom from God
that God (the Father) inflicts suffering on the Son.122 In the Crucifixion,
the Son is delivered up, abandoned, and, we may say, killed by the Father
“in his love for forsaken man.”123
The abandonment of the Son by the Father does not leave the Father
unaffected, however. The event that transpires on the cross is transposed
into the Trinity so that,
the Father suffers the death of the Son. So the pain of the Father
corresponds to the death of the Son. And when in this descent into
hell the Son loses the Father, then in this judgment the Father also
loses the Son. Here the innermost life of the Trinity is at stake. Here
the communicating love of the Father turns into infinite pain over
the sacrifice of the Son. Here the responding love of the Son becomes
infinite suffering over his repulsion and rejection by the Father. What
happens on Golgotha reaches into the innermost depths of the
Godhead, putting its impress on the trinitarian life in eternity.124
As an inner-trinitarian event, the historical cross can be said to act “retroactively” on the divine life.125 On the cross then, God acts on himself
and undergoes the corresponding “passions” within himself. Moltmann
goes so far as to say God “overcomes himself ” and “passes judgment on
himself.” Ultimately, the cross “reveals a change in God, a stasis within the
Godhead: ‘God is other.’”126 The event of the cross, as an event “within”
the Trinity, is the event by which God fully realizes his identity as love.
From Balthasar’s perspective, such a position fails to give due justice to
the truth of trinitarian theology. The Father, Son, and Spirit, being utterly
personally distinct, in such manner that the very word person applies only
analogously between them, are in themselves wholly love. The economy,
including the cross, does not act on God, somehow changing the makeup of the divine life. When “the immanent Trinity [is] understood to be
that eternal, absolute self-surrender whereby God is seen to be, in himself,
absolute love,” then God’s surrender of self in the economy can be real
without suggesting God needs and changes with his economic activity.127
112 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
The changing statuses of the Son in his economic work—from the
status exinationis to the status exaltationis—are real events through which
he passes, but what persists is his character as the Son, manifested in his
obedience. Balthasar writes, “Within the Son’s absolute, loving obedience
(which persists in the realm of the immanent Trinity), according to which
he walks into an utter forsakenness that surpasses the sinner’s isolation,
we find the most radical change from eternal death to eternal life, from
the absolute night of the Spirit to the Spirit’s absolute light, from total
alienation and remoteness to an unimaginable closeness. That is why John
sees both as one and the same ‘glory’ and ‘exaltation.’”128 The pairing of
immutable loving obedience and mutable states suggests a paradox: in the
economy, the Son “truly and not just in seeming becomes that which as
God he already and always is.”129 We can rephrase Balthasar and say that
through the economy and in particular the paschal mystery, the Incarnate
Son is making his created nature share in that which as God he already is:
the Son of the Father. It is the humanity of Christ, assumed by the divine
Son, that progressively conforms to his divine personhood in the work of
the economy.
The Son accomplishes this conformity of created nature to his trinitarian personhood through the expulsion of that which does not and cannot conform to divine love: sin. For Balthasar, “The Son’s obedience even
in death, even in hell, is his perfect identity in all contradiction. By the
same token, it is also the vanquishing of the ultimate contradiction [of sin]
through this identity, which infiltrates it, and all else, from below. Christologically speaking, this obedience is nothing other than the expression
of the Son’s trinitarian love.”130 On the Cross, the trinitarian Son shoulders the burden of the sins of the world, taking them mysteriously into
his relationship with the Father. He experiences the “wrath” of the Father
toward sin. After his death, in his descent into hell, the Son travels the
utmost distance this sin takes the creature from God. But through it all,
the Son’s ever-greater, trinitarian obedience shines forth.
Furthermore, because of this obedience, because of the consistency of
his trinitarian personhood, his state of dereliction and abandonment are
at the very same time his victories. He explores hell in his descent.131 This
descent is just as much the “opposite of Hell” as Hell itself or “its ultimate
heightening.”132 He expels the “foreign element” of sin from the world.133
In his solitary descent, therefore, Christ beholds not a populated hell, but
Unless You Become Like This Child 113
the “pure substantiality of Hell which is sin in itself.”134 This is a vision of
“triumph,” according to Balthasar, for Christ sees sin “abstracted” from
human beings as a result of his victory.135 As von Speyr says, “The Father
shows him conquered sin.”136
Those things that from an anthropological perspective seem utterly
contrary realities, blend and merge in the Trinity’s work. The Son’s trini
tarian “death” defeats the death of sin. Divine love proves that it “has more
staying power and can hold its breath longer than the counterpowers
can.”137 The “infinite distances” of the Trinity prove greater than the distance of sin from God. The cross is raised at the furthest border of hell.138
Sin and evil finally appear in their contradictoriness as “eternally” self-
consuming, forever burning as an “unquenchable fire,” as a burning trash
heap.139 Through the paschal mystery, the triune God reveals sin and evil are
“finite and must come to an end in the love that envelops it.”140 The entire
economy of salvation is one great proof of the glory of God’s omnipotent,
powerless love. God proves “that this love can still be itself, unchanged in
its true nature, and yet be in what is foreign to it, in the darkness of nonlove, in the hate of the world.”141 It is as if God “wins a wager with himself ” in doing the seemingly impossible.142 As Balthasar has Christ declare
in Heart of the World: “I have filled the world from heaven down to hell,
and every knee must bend before me, and all tongues must confess me.
Now I am all in all, and this is why the death which poured me out is
my victory. My descent, my vertiginous collapse, my going under (under
myself ) and into everything that was foreign and contrary to God—down
into the underworld: this was the ascent of this world into me, into God.
My victory.”143 The greatest defeat, the execution of God in the world, is
his great victory. The cross and death of Christ wrest creation from sin and
death, opening the whole of creation to triune love.
The Resurrection and Ascension
As the triumph of divine love over its opposite, the cross and the descent
of Christ inwardly lead to the resurrection. However difficult it is to
imagine, there is a fundamental continuity between Good Friday, Holy
Saturday, and Easter. The resurrection is, for Balthasar, the proof of the
omnipotence of this divine powerlessness, not the negation of powerlessness in newfound power. As Balthasar explains, “The resurrection of Christ and of all who are saved by him can be seen as the inner
114 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
consequence of his experience on Holy Saturday. There is no ‘renascent’
after the descent; the way of love ‘to the end’ ( Jn 13:1) is itself love’s self-
glorification.”144 Put otherwise, the resurrection of Christ, his return to
the Father, “is nothing other than the transparency of this modality of
alienation in what it already is in truth: the eternal intimacy of divine
love.”145 Though Christ undergoes his Passion, he dies, and he is raised
to new life, he remains one and the same Christ. Balthasar explains, “The
change that takes place at Easter is as abrupt as it is organic. The extreme
distance between Father and Son, which is endured as a result of the Son’s
taking on of sin, changes into the most profound intimacy; but it always
was such because the distance was a work of trinitarian, loving obedience,
and in this obedience Father and Son were always one in a reciprocal
relationship in the Spirit.”146 The intimacy-in-distance of the trinitarian
Father and Son in their common Spirit remains the substructure for the
change that occurs in the distance of creation from God. No longer is
“distance” marked by the estrangement of creature from God in sin but
instead by the positive distance of love.
The earthly work of the Son concludes in his ascension, which in
some measure summarizes the economic work in its entirety. For in his
ascension the Son carries human nature with him into heaven. “But,” as
Albert the Great argued, and Balthasar notes, “there is no place beyond all
the heavens, unless we speak metaphorically of the heaven of the Trinity
as a ‘place.’ ”147 The Son’s return to the Father “draws” his human nature,
and through it creation as a whole, into the infinite “space” of the Trinity.
Or, put otherwise, as the world cannot exist except within the triune
sphere, what has now changed is the mode of the world’s existence.148 It is
now deified. Now the world fits within the “all-embracing frame” of trinitarian distance, finding for itself endless space for freedom.149
The Work of the Holy Spirit
The Bond of Love
The previous section focused on the work of the Son in the economy to
the virtual neglect of the Spirit. However, as Balthasar avers, the economy
is the work of both of the Father’s “two hands.”150 This “dyadic” operation
is present in both the earthly life and paschal mystery of the Incarnate
Son, as well as after the Son’s ascension.
Unless You Become Like This Child 115
That the economy is the work of both Son and Spirit is crucial for
understanding Balthasar’s notion of a “trinitarian inversion” occurring in
the economy of salvation. This “inversion” refers to the manner in which
the immanent trinitarian taxis of Father, Son, and Spirit seems to alter
in the economy. In the immanent Trinity, the Spirit is distinctly third,
proceeding from Father and Son. However, in economy we find that the
Father sends the Spirit to bring about the Incarnation at the Annunciation to Mary. The Spirit drives Christ into the desert. The Spirit seems to
proceed from the Father to the Son.
According to John Milbank this “inversion” is especially damaging
for trinitarian theology. He explains:
The supersession of polytheism and the unity of the Trinitarian
action ad extra is forgotten when von Balthasar speaks of the
Spirit in the economic realm (treated as if ontically “other” to the
immanent Trinity) as deciding skittishly to jump into a middle
position in order to transmit the hypostasis of the Logos to Jesus’
humanity and later to “remind” the Father and the Son of the
shadow of possible rupture that has always hovered over them. For
von Balthasar, this mythicized Spirit then intimates that now the
rupture and paternal rejection must be cashed out if Father and
Son wish dialectically to sustain their eternal love and yet redeem
mankind.151
Even a cursory glance at Balthasar’s own presentation of the concept, however, reveals that Milbank significantly misrepresents or misunderstands
Balthasar. In the first place, and perhaps most importantly, Balthasar in
no way entertains that the Spirit somehow “jumps” into a new position
when the immanent Trinity enters the world, much less that the immanent and economic Trinity are ontically “other.” As we saw in chapters 1
and 2, the Spirit’s “position” in the trinitarian life is not simply the third
and final member of a series. While the taxis of Father, Son, and Spirit
holds for Balthasar, this taxis serves only to indicate the hierarchical order
of processions, not the “character” of the triune life “after” the processions.
Because the Son is not only the objective Word of the Father, but also the
Son who “turns back” to the Father in his own act of groundless love and
thanksgiving, the Spirit’s procession occurs decidedly between the two.
116 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Indeed, it is the Spirit as the bond and fruit of their love that mysteriously
makes the two loves of Father and Son into one, divine love.
This middle position of the Spirit does not alter when the Son
becomes incarnate. The Spirit remains the bond and fruit of the Father
and Son’s mutual love. What has changed, however, is that the Son is now
in the state of his kenosis. The Spirit, as bond of their love, ties the human
Jesus in his obedience to his Father’s will.152 It is the unifying character of
the Spirit that unites obedience with command. Balthasar explains this
dual quality of the Spirit’s economic work with reference to immanent
trinitarian countervailing propositions: “The Spirit has a twofold face from
all eternity: he is breathed forth from the one love of Father and Son as the
expression of their united freedom—he is, as it were, the objective form of
their subjectivity; but, at the same time, he is the objective witness to their
difference-in-unity or unity-in-difference.”153
Contrary to Milbank’s implication that Balthasar has abandoned the
filioque in the inversion, Balthasar is clear that the inversion does not
“interrupt” the joint spiration of Father and Son.154 The inversion, in fact,
“is the economic form of the filioque.”155 Just as the Son’s trinitarian relation to the Father does not itself change when he becomes human, neither does the Spirit’s trinitarian relation to Father and Son change. What
alone changes in both instances, for they are two aspects of the one work
of the Trinity ad extra, is the mode of the Son’s relation to the Father and
therefore the Spirit.
The consistency in Balthasar’s trinitarian substructure gives lie to Milbank’s other claim—that during the paschal mystery the Spirit is some
entity driving a dialectic from the separation of Father and Son on the
cross to their reunification on Easter. Once again, the decisive issue is the
Son’s changing states through the economy—states that are changed not
because his trinitarian position alters but because the world he is saving
alters.156 The immanent trinitarian relations thus prove consistent through
the economic “inversion.” The changes we witness center on the changing
states of the Incarnate Son, who becomes through the economy who he
always was. In his status exinanitionis, the Son does not for a time “experience” the Spirit as the subjective bond of his love with the Father. Rather,
he knows the Spirit as objectively mediating the Father’s will, at times
so strongly as to be a driving rule.157 But, when his own economic work
is complete with the cross and descent, when sin and death have been
Unless You Become Like This Child 117
swallowed up by trinitarian love, the subjective awareness of the Spirit as
bond of love returns. “The exalted Lord is given manifest power, even in
his humanity, to breathe forth the Spirit” into the church and world.158
The Spirit of Sonship
The breathing forth of the Spirit by the exalted Christ is, once again, not
simply another event in the economy after the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ but the proper outcome of these events. This is because of
the personal characteristics of the Spirit in the Trinity. The Spirit is the
bond and fruit of the Father and Son’s love. If, through his life and paschal mystery, Christ has progressively expelled sin from the world, then
the outpouring of the Spirit on the cross and Pentecost is the fullest reali
zation of Christ’s work. In this outpouring, the bond of love of the Father
and Son—the Spirit—becomes the new milieu in which the world has
its being. The Spirit’s outpouring is the world’s entry “into God’s inner-
space,” the “sphere” of divine love itself.159 In the Spirit we are given “free,
immediate, and fearless access” to God as his children.160
But it is not the case that this dwelling in the Spirit, the sphere of triune love, is a simple figure of speech or a vague indication of some change
in our being otherwise unknown to us. Rather, the Spirit is the Spirit
of Divine Sonship. The Spirit eternally comes forth not only from the
Father but also from the Son. As a result, the Spirit is eternally stamped,
imprinted, by the Son’s own procession. This association of the Spirit with
the Son has two important consequences for Balthasar’s theology of deification. First, the Pentecostal, pneumatological climax of salvation history
leads back to the Son. The Spirit gains an “inner experience” of the Son’s
economic work.161 Therefore, when the Spirit is poured out in the world,
the Spirit works to conform us to the Incarnate Son. The Spirit teaches
us the imitation of Christ, the man who lived in humble obedience, who
took up the cross, not an ahistorical, fleshless ideal. Our own deification
does not occur through an ascent away from history and the flesh but
within them.162
But going further, Balthasar argues that our conformity to the Divine
Son entails that just as we “share in the Son’s generation from the Father,”
we also thereby share in “their mutual breathing of the Spirit.”163 As noted
above, the notion that our adoption in the Son went so far as to include
our participation in his eternal birth has biblical roots and was developed
118 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
especially by Eckhart, Tauler, Suso, and Ruusbroec. The latter claim that
we also breathe the Spirit with the Son is also not unique to Balthasar.
It appears most prominently in the thought of John of the Cross. Commenting on the 39th stanza of The Spiritual Canticle,
This breathing of air is an ability which the soul states God will give
her there in the communication of the Holy Spirit. By his divine
breath-like spiration, the Holy Spirit elevates the soul sublimely and
informs her and makes her capable of breathing in God the same
spiration of love that the Father breathes in the Son and the Son
in the Father, which is the Holy Spirit Himself. . . . One should not
think it impossible that the soul be capable of so sublime an activity
as this breathing in God through participation as God breathes
in her. For, granted that God favors her by union with the Most
Blessed Trinity, in which she becomes deiform and God through
participation, how could it be incredible that she also understand,
know, and love—or better that this be done in her—in the Trinity,
together with it, as does the Trinity itself! Yet God accomplishes this
in the soul through communication and participation.164
God “loves us with supreme humility and esteem and makes us his equal”
through deification.165 Elizabeth of the Trinity, too, is familiar with this
theme. For John and Elizabeth, and Balthasar following them, this breathing of the Spirit is a condition of our full transformation into a deified life.
Balthasar envisions deification as a realization of an impossible equality of
love between the fully deified creature and God. According to Balthasar,
When the Father gives the world the gift of the Son whom he
has begotten, when the Holy Spirit, spirated by the Son as he is
by the Father, is bequeathed to the world, God’s ultimate secret
is given away—as an abiding mystery. . . . God’s triunity is not
some penultimate principle behind which lies an abyssal “essence”
inaccessible to every creature. Rather, in generating the Son and
in giving him up to the world, the Father has “given everything”
(Rom 8:32) without remainder, so that he has nothing left to offer
when all is refused. . . . It is, of course, correct that in the immanent
Trinity the Father gives the Son everything except his paternity.
Unless You Become Like This Child 119
Nevertheless, this does not imply that the Father holds back
something for himself. It is equally false to say that the triune God
holds back something for himself when he lets creatures “participate
in the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4) without their becoming themselves
the divine giver. We thus encounter one last time the axiom of the
positivity of the other.166
Because God holds nothing of himself back in his self-offer, our participation in the Trinity is so profound that we love God with his own love.
We breathe with his own divine breath.
What this means is that, when we participate in the trinitarian processions, when we are conformed to the divine Son, and breathe forth the
Spirit, we actively cooperate with the very acts of the Trinity. As Balthasar
argues, summarizing Elizabeth’s teaching, “Man is not an alien spectator watching events as they unfold before him; rather, through the lumen
gloriae that inhabits him and that is itself divine, he is able to participate
in the eternal event of eternal processions, that is, in self-occurring love
itself.”167 That triune adoption includes cooperation between the deified
creature and God is an especially important element of Balthasar’s the
ology. For what occurs in deification is not the diminishment of human
will or freedom but rather its elevation by grace. The deified creature finds
in the Godhead not constricting hegemony but the wide horizons of trinitarian freedom.168 Even as Balthasar stresses the passivity or receptivity of the creature to God, we are never mere recipients. Through the gift
given, we also earn a place of honor in the Son.169
The Eucharistic Body
If, as has been said, deification occurs in history and in the flesh, and
includes our cooperation, the question is where our deification as trini
tarian sons and daughters can be glimpsed, at least according to Balthasar’s
thought. To answer this question adequately would require a thoroughgoing account of his theology of sanctity and mission, which would lead
us far from our immediate concerns here. Nevertheless, we can identify
at least the “objective” inner heart of trinitarian childhood, a heart that
determines the wide variety of “subjective” forms of Christian sanctity:
the Eucharist.
120 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
The Eucharist is the heart of deified existence, because it is both the
object by which God’s life is given over to be ours and the act by which
we participate in God’s own reciprocal worship. With respect to the former “object dimension of the sacrament, Balthasar, drawing on the patristic theological tradition of both East and West, sees the Eucharist as the
bodily means by which we are grafted on to Christ’s person and share in
his divinity.170 The Eucharist is thus “the goal” of the Son’s work, the final
form that his gift of self takes.171
Importantly, this final form perpetuates the fragmenting, the breaking of his body initiated in the Passion. Once again, the consistency of the
Incarnate Son’s self-giving, the consistency of his trinitarian personhood,
is paramount. In this respect, the Eucharist is intimately tied to Christ’s
Resurrection and Ascension. As noted above, Balthasar rejects the idea
that these moments of triumph are contrary to the moment of defeat on
the cross. Rather, because the Son remains himself, and persists in his self-
giving, the resurrected and ascended Christ does not cease giving himself
for the life of the world. It simply takes on a new form in the Eucharist:
“When the divine Child’s freedom to love moves him to take a servants’
form, he always remains faithful to this ‘descent.’ His final gesture, then, is
not to reverse his downward movement through an ‘ascending’ reabsorption of his self-gift. Rather, he remains eucharistically surrendered, and this
surrender is itself the form of his glory.”172 The multiplication of his presence, the breaking and rebreaking of his body, the pouring out of his blood
again and again, only confirms his trinitarian status. Balthasar writes,
This man [Christ] is fanned into countless sparks by the fire of God
(non confractus, non divisus), he is in a state of such abandonment to
God that God can distribute him indefinitely, inexhaustibly through
time and space. For it is God the Father who distributes to us his
eucharistic Son, and it is God the Spirit who again and again brings
about the unutterable multiplication of the unique into that which
is universal. But, above all, he who was once given, slain on the
Cross, poured out, pierced, will never again take back his gift, his
gift of himself.173
The Father, Son, and Spirit continue the work of the economy in the
Eucharist, or, better, make the work of the economy present in the
Unless You Become Like This Child 121
Eucharist.174 It is “this Body through which the life of the Trinity comes
down from heaven and penetrates the earth.”175 By the Holy Spirit, Christ
is “liquefied” in order to “invade” the world.176
This invasion of the world by the divine-human, eucharistic Body of
Christ is also the incorporation of the world into that very same body. “The
Eucharist,” explains Balthasar, “is the marvelous means of freeing Christ’s
historical humanity from the confines of space and time, of multiplying
mysteriously its presence without forfeiting its unity and, since it is given to
each Christian as his indispensable nourishment ( Jn 6:53–58), of incorporating all into the body of Christ, making them in Christ one body through
which courses the divine life.”177 The Balthasarian conception of the deified
as occupying “space” within the Trinity takes on flesh in the Eucharist. Figuratively, Balthasar finds this capacious space of the Trinity in Christ’s open
wounds. More concretely, it is through “the infinite distribution of his flesh
and shedding of his blood that men can share in the substantial infinitude
of his Divine Person.”178 Though broken and distributed, this food actually
gathers together those who consume it. In so doing, with baptism and all
the sacramental mysteries, it “draws them into [Christ’s] destiny,” enabling
“them to participate in his proceeding from the Father.”179 This food, in fact,
draws the whole world into itself, making it the “‘body’ of God’” in Christ.180
But the Eucharist is not only an object given. It entails the whole set
of acts of thanksgiving. We can see the connection of the two aspects of
the Eucharist in the following quotation:
[Eucharist is] an act whereby [Christ] fills his friends with his
own substance—body and soul, divinity and humanity. . . . In this
surrender of himself the Son is the substantiated love of God given
to the world, a love which in this handing over of self becomes
“glorified” and “gives thanks” to itself (is eucharist): the Father to
the Son and, in visible and audible form ( Jn 17), the Son to the
Father. . . . In the Eucharistic surrender of Jesus’ humanity the point
is reached where, through this flesh, the triune God has been put at
man’s disposal in this final readiness on God’s part to be taken and
incorporated into men.181
The Son offers himself so fully to the worlding, including it in his own
procession from the Father, that at his farthest reach he incorporates the
122 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
world into his thanksgiving to the Father. Just as the Son in the immanent
Trinity is at once the outward Word and Expression of the Father and
the Son, ever facing the Father in divine eucharistia, so too in the Eucharist, the Son is not only the Gift of the Father to the world but also the
Giver of Thanks to the Father. He is the “supreme,” or “divine” worshiper.182
“Thanksgiving . . . is the quintessence of Jesus’ stance toward the Father.”183
And because Christians are incorporated into his person, the Christian life
is “a life of thanksgiving: eucharistia.”184 Our incorporation into the Body
of Christ, into his relationship with the Father, that is, our deification, is
not passive. It includes our cooperation in his dialogue, prayer, and eucharistia to the Father. To receive the Eucharist, to receive the divine life, is to
be implicated in this active stance of thanksgiving. One must, by receiving,
give in and with Christ in turn.185
But what is it that we give to God? The most immediate answer is
that we offer ourselves to God in mission. Certainly, Balthasar’s various
writings on the Christian states of life, the ethical demands of being a
Christian, and the forms of Christian sanctity confirm this immediate
response. As Balthasar argues,
The final point of the outpouring of God’s love is not at all the
point furthest from the primordial source (as in Plotinus), so as to
necessitate a “turning round” and “reverse movement” back to the
centre; the final point is no “end” at all, but is in itself endless and
infinite. It is the dawning of the divine love in what is not God
and in what is opposed to God, the dawning of eternal life (as
“resurrection”) in utter death: not the dawning of the divine “I” in
the non-divine “Thou,” but the dawning of the divine I-Thou-We in
the worldly, creaturely I-Thou-We of human fellowship.186
The “vertical” gift of triune life in Christ in the Eucharist carries over
into the “horizontal” gift of Christian discipleship in all the spheres of
human life. The whole world becomes irradiated by the glory of triune
self-surrender.
But there is another dimension: the giving in which we are implicated is the very same giving and receiving that defines the triune life: the
giving and receiving of divine glory. Our horizontal discipleship occurs
within the greater frame of “vertical,” trinitarian giving. Put otherwise,
Unless You Become Like This Child 123
the reciprocal glorification of the triune persons in the Godhead is what
the member of Christ’s body experiences in the celebration of the Eucharist. Or, more accurately, in the Eucharist, the earthly worshipper is
actively caught up into the inner, divine self-giving of Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit.187 To be deified means, therefore, to give back to God the
very gift of divine life once received. As Balthasar puts it in one of his
aphorisms, “God gives us everything in order that we may give everything
back to him. Thus, our all is his all—and we have nothing. He desires to
empty himself in order that we might receive something. Now we have
something, precisely our nothingness, and it is this that he is seeking. And
yet we are robbed even of our nothingness, and we no longer have a right
to consider it non-divine. Both things are now true: that we can truly
choose to give him something, and that we cannot possibly hold anything
back from him.”188 Once again, Balthasar reflects the influence of Carmelite mystical theology. As John of the Cross claims, in its participation
in divinity “[the soul] is conscious there that God is indeed its own and
that it possesses Him by inheritance, with the right of ownership, as His
adopted son, through the grace of His gift of Himself. Having Him for its
own, it can give Him and communicate Him to whomever it wishes. Thus
it gives Him to its Beloved, who is the very God who gave Himself to it.
By this donation it repays God for all it owes Him, since it willingly gives
as much as it receives from Him.”189 We find in this theology of deifi
cation a resolution, or the highest fulfillment of the doxological ground
of creation. As noted above, Balthasar sees creation as coming to be as a
kind of trinitarian gift in the mutual doxology of Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Through its creation, election, and elevation to divine sonship, the
world takes an active place in the reciprocal round of the Trinity’s own
glorification. As the Father, Son, and Spirit worship each other in the recognition of the others’ divinity, so we are elevated by the Holy Spirit to
worship the Father in a divine manner in and with the Son. The world
truly gives something to God: “What does God gain from the world? An
additional gift, given to the Son by the Father, and by the Spirit to both.
It is a gift because, through the distinct operations of each of the three
persons, the world acquires an inward share in the divine exchange of life;
as a result the world is able to take the divine things it has received from
God, together with the gift of being created, and return them to God as a
divine gift.”190 The world, elevated to divine childhood, gains a real share
124 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
in the round of reciprocal glorification. In no wise can this “enrichment”
of God by creation be considered a necessity, for it shares in the “groundless,” “whyless” love of the triune persons themselves.191
The foregoing analysis has highlighted the manner in which Balthasar’s
immanent trinitarian claims have a soteriological “pay-off ” by providing
the framework for a doctrine of deification. Summarized as “trinitarian
adoption,” Balthasar’s doctrine of deification is specifically trinitarian in
character. Deification is not understood as a participation in the divine
energies, the indwelling of the Trinity in the heart of the believer, or a
conformity to the divine essence in the beatific vision. Instead, deification
is the active sharing of the believer in the Son’s trinitarian relationship to
Father and Spirit. This goal is “theologically foreshadowed” in Balthasar’s
theology of creation, informs the terms and nature of his account of the
economy of salvation, and culminates in the celebration of the Eucharist.
Though it is beyond the scope of this work, one could follow this “objective” account of deification with a corresponding “subjective” account, for
the reason that the trinitarian participation determines the life of the
believer.192 The final topic to investigate here, however, will be the possibility of divine incomprehensibility after trinitarian deification. Has
Balthasar constructed a theological program that leaves too little unsaid?
Is God comprehended by virtue of our deification?
C h a pt e r 4
A Blessed Wilderness
The Trinity and Divine Incomprehensibility
O Blessed Wilderness that is your love!
No one will ever be able to subdue you, no one explore you.
—Balthasar, Heart of the World
In the previous chapter, we followed the movement of Balthasar’s theology of creation and soteriology to their climax in the creature’s participation in the triune life. Indeed, as Balthasar argues, creation and the
economy of salvation are but moments in the more encompassing event
of the deification of creatures. Moreover, as we have seen, Balthasar’s conceptualization of the creation-salvation-deification triad aims at our participation in the very life of the Trinity. We are predestined to become
sons and daughters in the Son, children of God the Father.
In this chapter, I examine how Balthasar understands the relationship between immanent trinitarian theology and divine incomprehensibility. Turning to Balthasar’s understanding of theology is necessary for
two reasons. First, as shown in chapter 1, Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian
theology is characterized by an extraordinary vividness, and this vividness
has raised questions from critics. According to Rahner, certain elements
125
126 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
of Balthasar’s theology are “rather Gnostic.”1 Karen Kilby, too, has questioned whether or not Balthasar fully respects proper epistemological
boundaries when speaking of the immanent Trinity. Phrased differently,
we can say that it might be that Balthasar abandons Christian apophaticism in favor of an excessive cataphatic fancy. In some measure, this critique is substantiated by Balthasar’s own negative evaluations of negative
theology and might rest on his particular vision of trinitarian deification
as examined in the previous chapter. Balthasar does imagine an incredible
degree of intimacy of the creature with the triune God, so much so that
the creature is said to breathe the Spirit with the Son, give God a divine
gift, and otherwise share in the eternal relation of the Son. It is pos
sible that precisely these formulations of deification presume or lead to an
improper familiarity with the inner workings of the Godhead. However,
and this is the second reason to turn to Balthasar’s understanding of cataphatic and apophatic theology, Balthasar also claims that it is precisely his
highly vivid trinitarian account that preserves divine incomprehensibility,
properly understood.
The question is, therefore, whether Balthasar’s own self-assessment—
that his trinitarian theology is entirely apophatic—is accurate, or if his
critics are correct. I argue that Balthasar’s vivid trinitarian theology
accords with Christian apophaticism. Indeed, examining the Christian
apophatic tradition reveals that his cataphatic excess can be understood
as a particular apophatic strategy. Balthasar subverts human speech about
God through an excess of sometimes-contradictory cataphatic details.
For Balthasar, this strategy preserves the realism of human speech about
God, grounded in the Incarnation and our deification, while not reducing
God to our human concepts. God proves himself to be incomprehensible
in the midst of revelation and trinitarian deification.
C h r i s t i a n Ap o p h at i c i s m a n d C o n t e mp o r a r y
T r i n i ta r i a n T h e o l o g y
Before we turn to Balthasar’s understanding of divine incomprehensibility and apophaticism, an examination of the basic principles and elements of “classical” Christian apophaticism, together with an examination
of Rahner’s work on divine mystery and its relationship to trinitarian
A Blessed Wilderness 127
theology, provides a helpful point of comparison with Balthasar’s formulations. We will turn to the latter in subsequent sections.
Classical Christian Apophaticism
Among recent scholarship on apophaticism, Denys Turner’s work on premodern, Neoplatonic, apophatic theology is especially helpful. The central
theme of Turner’s work is the manner in which language functions apophatically. This question is derived from the very etymology of the term
apophatic theology itself. For, as he explains, apophasis, the breakdown of
speech, stems from the essential incomprehensibility of God.2 Because
God is incomprehensible, “we can have very little idea of what all [the]
things said of God mean.”3 But theology means language about God, or
“divine discourse.”4 Apophatic theology is then a paradoxical “speech
about God which is the failure of speech.”5
Turner’s description of apophatic theology grounds his critique of the
modern prejudice that imagines apophatic theology as entailing an exclusive or predominant use of “negative language,” whether in image (e.g.,
“silence,” “darkness”) or proposition (e.g., “infinite,” “immaterial,” “nonbeing”). At times, negative language forms a portion of apophatic theology.
Nevertheless, apophatic theology entails far more than negative language.
As Turner explains, drawing on Pseudo-Dionysius, “The apophatic is the
linguistic strategy of somehow showing by means of language that which
lies beyond language. It is not done, and it cannot be done, by means of
negative utterances alone which are no less bits of ordinarily intelligible
human discourse than are affirmations. Our negations, therefore, fail of
God as much as do our affirmations.”6 For Pseudo-Dionysius, and the
apophatic tradition following him, God is “beyond assertion and denial.”7
We must, in other words, also negate the negation, in an effort to reach
true apophatic silence. Our theological speech must be “self-subverting.”
The negation of the negation is necessary because of the specific logic
of negation itself. According to Aristotle, “to know an affirmation is to
know its negation”; or, as Aquinas phrased it, “one and the same is the
knowledge of contraries.”8 This technical point of logic is, in fact, of an
extraordinarily quotidian nature. Turner gives an example: “If we can know
what it is to say that there is a cat on the mat then thereby we know what
it is to say that the cat is not on the mat.”9 Whether I deny or affirm the
128 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
cat being on the mat, the knowledge is identical and must be so; otherwise
the statements would be nonsense. I would be in a position to both affirm
and deny the cat being on the mat at the same time. In short, I would violate the law of noncontradiction. In terms of apophatic theology, “one and
the same is the knowledge of contraries” means that referring to God simply according to negative images or propositions is just as indicative of
knowledge as affirmative images or propositions. In other words, I claim
the same knowledge of God if I say “God is darkness” as I do if I say “God
is light.”
“Negating the negation” helps to avoid this trap, in which God is rendered comprehensible in the negative and facilitates the mind’s ascent
up the hierarchy of being and toward God. The strategy of negating the
negation, however, varies depending on the nature of the utterance. In
the case of metaphorical utterances, which are recognizable for being literal falsehoods, the negation occurs by means of another metaphor. For
example, the metaphor “God is light” is negated by the metaphor “God
is dark.” Negating the negation is the paradoxical metaphor “God is a
brilliant darkness,” which conveys “something of the failure of both meta
phors to convey what God is.”10 It is in this failure that the mind is propelled further up the Dionysian hierarchy of being.
But metaphor is not the only way of speaking about God. One can
also predicate literal truths about God. In this category are found the
essential divine attributes (e.g., wisdom), as well as the transcendentals of
being (being/existence, oneness, truth, goodness, beauty).11 To say God
exists, for example, cannot be a metaphor, because “only nothing does
not exist,” which is the same as to say that existence can be predicated
metaphorically of nothing whatsoever.12 The strategy for affirmation and
denial is straightforward in this instance: “God is being” is negated by
“God is not being.” But what of the negation of the negation? Here the
matter becomes much more subtle and involves a shift from “first order”
speech about God to “second order” descriptions of the logic of theological negation.
This shift can be observed in the concluding chapter of Pseudo-
Dionysius’s Mystical Theology. He writes,
Again, as we climb higher we say this. It is not soul or mind, nor
does it possess imagination, conviction, speech, or understanding.
A Blessed Wilderness 129
Nor is it speech per se, understanding per se. It cannot be spoken
of and it cannot be grasped by understanding. It is not number
or order, greatness or smallness, equality or inequality, similarity
or dissimilarity. It is not immovable, moving, or at rest. It has no
power, it is not power, nor is it light. It does not live nor is it life.
It is not a substance, nor is it eternity or time. It cannot be grasped
by the understanding since it is neither knowledge nor truth. It is
not kingship. It is not wisdom. It is neither one nor ones, divinity
nor goodness. Nor is it spirit, in the sense in which we understand
that term. It is not sonship or fatherhood and it is nothing known
to us or to any other being. It falls neither within the predicate of
nonbeing nor of being. Existing beings do not know it as it actually
is and it does not know them as they are. There is no speaking of
it, nor name nor knowledge of it. Darkness and light, error and
truth—it is none of these. It is beyond assertion and denial. We
make assertions and denials of what is next to it, but never of it, for
it is both beyond every assertion, being the perfect and unique cause
of all things, and, by virtue of its preeminently simple and absolute
nature, free of every limitation, beyond every limitation; it is also
beyond every denial.13
This list is bewildering for two reasons. First, there is no apparent order
to the terms he is denying. In chapter 3 of the same work, the Areopa
gite describes the process of denial in mystical theology as the reverse of
the order of affirmation described in The Divine Names and The Celestial Hierarchy. As he describes, we affirm things of God beginning with
what is most similar to God and proceed “downward” in the hierarchy of
being, eventually reaching the most “dissimilar similarities” of God with
basic inanimate beings.14 But here, when he has reached the high point
of denying all things of God, the hierarchy disappears. We are left with
a confusion of predicates, some of which are derived from conditions of
creation (darkness/light, sonship/fatherhood) and others which refer to
the transcendentals of being, such as truth and goodness.
The second reason the list is confusing is because Pseudo-Dionysius
also includes within it properties like equality/inequality and similarity/
dissimilarity. Now as Turner notes, unlike the others, these properties are
relational. It is nonsense to say, “God is similarity/dissimilarity,” or “God is
130 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
equality/inequality.” Turner, however, sees in their inclusion a shift, unbeknownst to Pseudo-Dionysius, into second order speech about our logic
of denial.15 That is, these terms denote the manner in which our speech
about God fails utterly, not only to describe God, but also to describe how
utterly our speech fails. As Turner explains, as we make Pseudo-Dionysius’s
apophatic ascent, we are denying the manner in which God is similar
to creatures, including the universal aspects of all creatures (being, truth,
goodness, beauty). But in the very same process, we are also losing our
grip on our ability to say how God is different than creatures because difference presumes some similarity. The phrase “God is infinitely different
than creatures” or “every similarity between God and creature is overruled
by a greater dissimilarity” summarizes this loss of grip. For we are not
simply saying that God is not like creatures. We are also saying that we
have no means of measuring this difference whatsoever. At that point—
difference without measure or ever-greater difference—the very language
and logic of similarity and difference cease to function.16
Such a negation of the logic of difference and similarity marks the high
point of apophatic theology. If we do not entertain this kind of negation of
negation, we once again render God negatively comprehensible. Because
the knowledge of contraries is one and the same, to say God is unlike all
things is as much a claim to comprehend God as to say God is like all things.
Apophasis occurs, therefore, not in denying certain things, or even everything, of God, but in the silence on the far side of meaningful language.
Contemporary Apophaticism: Rahner on Divine Mystery
Though there are considerable differences, Karl Rahner’s work on divine
mystery and its relation to categorical objects and speech reflects some
influence of “classical” apophaticism. Rahner retrieves the doctrine of
God’s incomprehensibility and the apophatic imperative in his critique
of neo-scholasticism. According to Rahner, neo-scholastic theology treats
mystery as a property of statements made about God and not as the
essential character of God’s very self. But as Rahner argues, this neo-
scholastic approach to mystery overlooks “the doctrine of God’s abiding
incomprehensibility even in the visio beatifica.”17 This doctrine indicates
for Rahner that God’s incomprehensibility is “the very substance of our
vision and the very object of our blissful love.”18
A Blessed Wilderness 131
Because our vision of God in the eschaton is of his incomprehensi
bility, that is, the knowledge of God is of his mystery, Rahner rejects the
rationalist presumption that truth and mystery are at odds with each
other. Rather, as Rahner attempts to articulate in his theory of knowledge, mystery is the very condition of the possibility of our knowledge of
finite things as such. It is not, as rationalism maintains, simply the area of
the unknown. Instead, mystery provides the “horizon,” or the “the situation,”
for all categorical knowledge. It is transcendentally experienced whenever
we know something as this or that, or will to do this or that. This means
that mystery can never be defined and cannot be progressively “shrunk” as
knowledge advances. He explains, “For since it is the condition of possi
bility for all categorized distinctions and divisions, it cannot itself be distinguished from other things by the same modes of distinction. The horizon
cannot be comprised within the horizon, the whither of transcendence
cannot really, as such, be brought within range of transcendence itself to
be distinguished from other things. The ultimate measure cannot be measured; the boundary which delimits all things cannot itself be bounded by
a still more distant limit.”19 Rahner’s epistemology can be compared to a
photographer’s studio. The knowing subject is something like the camera,
taking in finite objects of knowledge including mental concepts. Mystery
is the backdrop, without which the object photographed could not be seen.
In Rahner’s epistemology, therefore, mystery, which he identifies
with God, is mediated less by the things themselves than in our knowing
of finite things. This inflection helps account for Rahner’s particular way
of speaking about the nature of theological language. As he explains, “the
meaning of all explicit knowledge of God in religion and in metaphysics
is intelligible and can really be understood only when all the words we use
there point to the unthematic experience of our orientation towards the ineffable mystery.”20 Theology is the putting into speech of our transcendental
experience of God, which occurs within categorical knowing. It follows
that apophatic denial of theological speech must occur lest we confuse
God and finite things. In no sense can theological concepts, which are by
definition in the realm of the categorical, adequately pertain to the transcendental experience of mystery or the mystery itself. He writes,
All conceptual expressions about God, necessary though they are,
always stem from the unobjectivated experience of transcendence
132 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
as such: the concept from the pre-conception, the name from
the experience of the nameless. The pre-conception given in
transcendence is directed to the nameless: the condition which makes
names of God possible must itself be essentially unnamed. We could
call him (if we wished to give a title to what is meant) the nameless,
that which is other than all finite things, the infinite: but we should
not have thereby given him a name, merely said that he has none.21
As these passages make clear, Rahner’s apophaticism is not identical to those in Turner’s study. Rahner has largely shed the Neoplatonic
hierarchy of being as an organizing principle for apophatic denial. He has
also shifted focus toward the experience of the subject in keeping with
his post-Kantian engagement with Thomas. What is important, however,
is that even with these differences, we can still hear an echo of Neoplatonic Christian apophaticism in Rahner. Most importantly, we find an
articulation not only of God’s incomprehensibility, his unlikeness from
creatures, but also of the breakdown of language of difference and similarity. For Rahner, God is not simply “the nameless” because God is unlike
all finite things. Rather, he is “the nameless” because, as the horizon of
transcendence, his likeness/unlikeness with finite things cannot be adequately articulated. The nameless can be neither compared nor contrasted
with the named. This is entailed in Rahner’s axiom that “God establishes
and is the difference of the world from himself.”22 Rahner’s ultimate
state of theological knowing is therefore almost identical with Pseudo-
Dionysius’s: the learned unknowing of apophatic silence.
Rahner’s theory of knowledge and account of divine incomprehensibility provide a clear rationale for apophaticism. What is less clear is how
this apophaticism relates to cataphatic theology in general and trinitarian
doctrine and theology in particular. We can say that for Rahner, because
thematic or categorical knowledge of God as articulated in theology deals
with our experience of God’s self-communication in Word and Spirit,
language about God “in himself ” is possible but limited. Because God
communicates himself by two modes, these two modes must be of God
himself and therefore there must be real distinctions of these modes of
self-communication in the immanent Godhead.23 Nevertheless, because
our language is of our experience of God’s self-communication, immanent
trinitarian theology has nothing to speak about other than the God-ward
A Blessed Wilderness 133
aspect of this experience.24 We do not leap into the Godhead, leaving
experience behind, when we begin immanent trinitarian theologizing. Our
language about processions, relations, persons, and so on is therefore the
inadequate conceptual means by which we point toward the immanent
condition for the possibility of the one God’s twofold self-communication.
God remains the holy mystery encountered in every act of knowing and
willing, only now he is experienced in “absolute proximity” in his self-
communication.25 It is for this reason, perhaps, that Rahner rejects the
claim that there is reciprocity in the immanent Trinity.26 The reciprocal
relationship of Jesus to the Father in the economy is always and exclusively grounded in the human nature of the Incarnate Word.
B a lt h a s a r a n d t h e P o s s i b i l i t i e s
o f C ata p h at i c T h e o l o g y
It is in part because of the tensions in Rahner’s account that Balthasar
adopts a different approach to the relationship of divine mystery and doctrinal theology. His fear, in contrast to Rahner’s, is the dissolution of the
revelatory power of the Incarnation and cataphatic claims. We can see this
concern at work behind many of Balthasar’s critical appraisals of Rahner’s
positions on a variety of subjects, but especially of his transcendental
Christology and the theory of the anonymous Christian.27 As Balthasar
summarizes in an interview, the issue lies with the general outlook of the
transcendental method. He writes,
My main argument—not only against Rahner but against the
entire transcendental school which already existed before him and
spread alongside him—is this: It might be true that from the very
beginning man was created to be disposed toward God’s revelation,
so that with God’s grace even the sinner can accept all revelation.
Gratia supponit naturam. But when God sends his own living Word
to his creatures, he does so, not to instruct them about the mysteries
of the world, nor primarily to fulfill their deepest yearnings. Rather
he communicates and actively demonstrates such unheard-of things
that man feels not satisfied but awestruck by a love which he never
could have hoped to experience. For who would have dared describe
134 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
God as love, without having first received the revelation of the Trinity in
the acceptance of the cross by the Son?28
Balthasar sees in Rahner a minimization of the particular form and event
of revelation in Christ in order to emphasize the a priori human openness
toward the divine. But precisely in so doing, Balthasar sees the particular
form of revelation functioning as little more than a categorical occasion
for our transcendental knowledge of God, the Absolute Mystery. Christ
becomes merely a “sign” and “pointer” “to something mysterious which
lies behind [him] and which must be believed.”29 Balthasar wishes instead
to emphasize the concrete particularity of the form of revelation as the
exclusive means by which we glimpse the incomprehensible God.30 As he
rhetorically asks Rahner in his most polemical work, “Do I see in the broken heart of the crucified Christ the love of the triune God—or don’t I?”31
Balthasar’s particular critique of Rahner reflects his more general
concern about what he variously names “negative theology” or “negative philosophy” and its relationship with revelation and cataphatic theology. What he means by those terms are philosophies and theologies “in
which God’s Being remains infinitely hidden and unfathomable over and
beyond all analogous utterances about him,”32 or “a theology that tries to
express God’s limitlessness by denying him all the names and characteristics of finite being.”33 Balthasar associates this form of apophatic theology
with non-Christian philosophical and religious thought, though it has
often been appropriated to serve Christian theology.34 The danger of this
approach, according to Balthasar, is that by progressively “unsaying” the
finite terms we use for God, it is actually “unbodying” the revelation of
God in Christ and in Christian life.35 In the realm of trinitarian theology,
this kind of negation makes the Father, Son, and Spirit into nothing but
“the face of God turned toward the world, behind which the unknowable
abyss of God’s unity remains hidden.”36
Balthasar opposes this kind of negative theology by claiming that
revelation shows that God “wants to be recognized; he must be known.”37
Cataphatic theology is grounded not in the general relationship of creaturely being to God but in God’s use of human nature for his divine self-
exposition. Cataphatic theology is ultimately borne out of the trinitarian
character of the Incarnation. From a trinitarian perspective, God is able to
express himself authentically in the economy because he already expresses
A Blessed Wilderness 135
himself immanently. “Since God has in himself the eternal Word that
expresses him eternally, he is most certainly expressible.”38 Balthasar’s position is specifically Bonaventurean: the Word in the immanent Trinity is
best thought of not as an inner, mental Word, as Thomas holds, but as the
divine expression, who is also the archetype of the expression that is creation.39 The expressive archetypicity of the Word in the Godhead is also
what prevents Balthasar from holding the Augustinian position that any
of the divine persons could have been incarnate. The Word “alone,” in his
character as expression and archetype, is “incarnable.”40
On the other hand, the self-exposition of God to creation requires
the created medium of human nature in order to be understood.41 In
Balthasar’s thought, through the Incarnation the Word assumes the
“continuum” of human nature “that extends upward from pure matter,
through its variously ordered spheres of life, to spirit,” and with this continuum, the whole range of human, “fleshly language,” which extends
from the most basic expressive character of material existence to “the free
word.”42 Balthasar goes so far as to say that “there is nothing human [in
Christ] that is not the utterance and expression of the divine, and likewise
there is nothing divine that is not communicated and revealed to us in
human terms.”43 This communication is, moreover, a “perfect coincidence”
and “transposition” of infinite divine content into finite human form.44
Through his human nature, the “linguistic structure” of the whole cosmos
is taken up into the Word.45
The form of God’s self-expression in Christ, however, requires further mediation. This is the work of the Holy Spirit, who fashions mediating forms of Christ’s form: scripture, interpreted and clarified in dogma,
and the church herself, particularly in her eucharistic nature but also in
her structure.46 Theology is a derivative but integral part of these mediating forms. It is an “expression of an expression.”47 It is, therefore, dependent on the mediating form of scripture and the dogma of the church.
It has no independent existence. However, one of its functions is to
“harmonize” these into “an interrelated system which is as coherent as
possible.”48 Both scripture and dogma require theology in order to be
understood. One can imagine Balthasar’s theology of cataphatic speech
as a series of concentric circles representing scripture, the church, dogma,
theology, the cosmos, radiating out from, but also participating in, the
Incarnate Word.
136 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Because Balthasar sees it as God’s intention to be known by men and
women, to be God truly for us, we “no longer have the authority” to remain
silent about God.49 We are tasked to use human speech in order to preach
that God has made himself known in Christ. But as the foundation of
our theology, the Incarnate Word exercises a normative role for theological speech, including, especially, trinitarian discourse. Our human theological speech must, therefore, be subordinate to God’s own. As Balthasar
asserts, “It is only on the basis of Jesus Christ’s own behavior and attitude
that we can distinguish . . . plurality in God. Only in him is the Trinity
opened up and made accessible. . . . We know about the Father, Son and
Spirit as divine “Persons” only through the figure and disposition of Jesus
Christ. Thus we can agree with the principle, often enunciated today, that
it is only on the basis of the economic Trinity that we can have knowledge
of the immanent Trinity and dare to make statements about it.”50 At first
glance, Balthasar’s claim seems to be rather self-explanatory: any and all
cataphatic theological claims must be based on the record of Jesus’s relation to God the Father as recorded in scripture. As Karen Kilby has noted,
however, there is a possible discrepancy between Balthasar’s claim that
he grounds his theology in scripture and the content of his trinitarian
theology. Take, for instance, Balthasar’s claims about intratrinitarian “distance.” Kilby writes,
It is not the case that one has only to look at the Passion narratives
to come to the conclusion that there must, in eternity, be an infinite
distance between Father and Son. Certainly this is not something
that most of the tradition has in fact learned from these narratives,
nor is it, I suspect, something that most Christians today learn from
reading them. At least two things are required in order to learn
of distance in the Trinity from the Cross. The first is a particular
construal of the Cross itself; the second is a more speculative move
from the Cross (thus construed) to what one could call the eternal
conditions of its possibility.51
Balthasar’s stated method of basing all theology in the New Testament
seems to run aground on unstated hermeneutical and methodological
assumptions. David Coffey also includes this line of argument in his own
larger critique of Balthasar.52
A Blessed Wilderness 137
It is beyond the scope of this work to examine the exegetical details
or legitimacy of Balthasar’s interpretation of the cross. What is important
here is the warrant for Balthasar’s “second move” as described by Kilby.
We saw in the last chapter how Balthasar’s theology of the cross can be
interpreted as an application of the doctrine of antecedence. Balthasar
moves from the economic manifestation of the Godhead to its immanent presuppositions in order to preserve divine impassibility. But for
Balthasar, this epistemological movement from economic-to immanent-
trinitarian claims is not simply a principle of theological method. It is
also an element of deification. Christ provides not only the entry of God
into the realm of creation, he also brings about the entry of creation into
the Godhead. The resurrection and ascension of Christ “implies the inner
transfiguration and eternalization of all the moments that are the essential temporal expressive forms of God’s relationship.”53 The creaturely
medium of God’s revelation is elevated in the act of revelation to participate in the divine eternally. With Rahner, Balthasar maintains the eternal
significance of Jesus’s humanity—encompassing his human history up to
and including the cross—in our knowledge of God.54
The eternalization of the creaturely medium of God’s revelation has
implications for human knowledge of, and speech about, God. Balthasar
explains,
The freedom, however that appears in Christ is that of the God
whom nothing can compel, who is absolute and sufficient in himself,
but who nonetheless, of his free graciousness, binds himself to his
creature in the hypostatic union forever and indissolubly, with the
purpose of making his appearance and offering himself to view
in the creature. The God whom we know now and for all eternity
is Emmanuel, God with us and for us, the God who shows and
bestows himself: because he shows and bestows himself, we can
know this God not only “economically” from the outside, but may
also possess him “theologically” from within and just as he is.55
For Balthasar, Christ does not simply show us something of the divine
life; rather, through Christ we are invited into that very life. The Holy
Spirit, moreover, discloses for us the truth of God’s revelation in Christ.56
Deification in Son and Spirit affects human knowledge, and this is what
138 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Balthasar understands as “faith.” He writes, “Faith constitutes the conscious side of grace in so far as grace is the ontological assimilation to
God’s being. Faith knows in its own way because of a connaturalitas, an
essential kinship, which Thomas himself and, even more emphatically,
Eckhart portray as the gracious insertion of the creature into the trini
tarian act of begetting and giving birth (‘con-naissance’ with the Son from
the Father).”57 “God can be known only by God,” says Balthasar, but in
faith we know God because of the “infused divine life in us.”58
I have argued elsewhere that the manner in which Balthasar formulates his theological aesthetics entails the coincidence of revelation and
deification.59 To see and know God in the Christ form is to also to participate in God’s own life and, by extension, self-knowledge. The coincidence of revelation and deification, however, extends beyond Balthasar’s
theological aesthetics to his other work as well. It gives Balthasar some
warrant for the expansively vivid character of his trinitarian theology. If,
as Balthasar has argued, God has expressed himself perfectly in human
nature, and if in faith we know God connaturally, then it seems that there
are no a priori epistemological limits on immanent trinitarian theology.
By virtue of being drawn into the Godhead, we are not able to articulate the
borderline between what we know about God on the basis of the economy and
what we do not know about God’s immanent life.
C o n c r e t e D i v i n e I n c o mp r e h e n s i b i l i t y
a n d C ata p h at i c Ap o p h at i c i s m
The absence of limits on trinitarian theology does not indicate that
Balthasar intends to abandon apophatic theology. On the contrary,
Balthasar argues, “A God who could be expressed to the end in finite
words (and deeds!) would no longer be God but an idol.”60 Balthasar
rejects those theological impulses that imagine or suggest that God’s truth
is somehow contained in theological formulae, including church doctrine.
Such a view of doctrine is evident in the neo-
scholasticism of
Garrigou-Lagrange. According to Garrigou-Lagrange, commenting on
Thomas’s treatise on the Trinity in the Summa, the knowledge of God
derived from revelation and articulated in immanent trinitarian doctrine
according to a strict Thomist manner is “an anticipation of eternal life.”61
A Blessed Wilderness 139
The term mystery abounds throughout the commentary, but it denotes
the “supernatural” character and source of the knowledge summarized
in doctrine, not the nature of God himself. This is not to suggest that
Garrigou-Lagrange and other scholastic theologians denied God’s incomprehensibility. They accepted the traditional position summarized by
Lateran IV and defended by Thomas that God is incomprehensible in
himself, and even the blessed who see the divine essence immediately do
not comprehend God as if they see the whole of God. God is infinitely
knowable, and so cannot be exhaustively known by the created intellect,
even in the beatific vision.62 Nevertheless, the doctrines of the Trinity and
divine incomprehensibility seem to have no connection. This oversight is
evident in the detail and precision of scholastic distinctions.63
Balthasar circumvents scholastic errors through a complex rereading of the relationship between revelation and doctrine, faith and knowledge, and the embrace of sources not “traditionally” held to be theological.
First, with respect to the theology of revelation, Balthasar argues, “There
is no possibility of distinguishing between God’s act of revelation and the
content of this revelation, for this revelation is inseparably both the interior life of God and the form of Jesus Christ.”64 One error of scholastic
propositionalism is that it suggests such a separation. Christ appears to
be the occasion to learn certain propositional claims about God. But for
Balthasar, Christ reveals to us in the I-Thou relationship of God and man
the I-Thou, trinitarian relationship of the Father and Son in the Spirit.
This is the truth of God and the propositional claims of theology are quali
tatively different from, and dependent on, this truth.65 Doctrinal formulations can mediate the mystery of the Trinity, “but the divine mystery, being
the glory of God, at the same time is majestically exalted above” them.66
On a second level of revision, moreover, Balthasar argues that the
trinitarian mystery is exalted above theological formulae because even
the blessed in heaven do not exhaust divine truth. Balthasar’s argument
builds on the traditional claims about God’s abiding incomprehensibility
mentioned above. But, unlike Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomas, and others,
Balthasar argues that the blessed have faith in heaven. Balthasar sees precedence for his position in Matthew of Aquasparta. According to Matthew, “Because the blessed do not grasp God exhaustively, although they
see him, they therefore come to appreciate God ever more as the One
who is ever greater than what they see, so that they cannot exhaust him.
140 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
And in this sense it would not be inappropriate to say that the blessed
believe something because they do not know everything.”67 The emphasis on the incomprehensibility of God in heaven results in two important
shifts. First, if God’s truth is not exhausted in immediate vision, then,
a fortiori, it cannot be summarized in doctrinal formulae, however precise. Second, the definition of earthly faith as obscure knowledge does not
indicate the weakness of faith but its strength. Faith knows here and now,
as well as in the beatific vision, the essential, trinitarian incomprehensibility of God.
Finally, as has been highlighted recently by Jennifer Newsome Martin and Anne Carpenter, Balthasar’s use of artistic literary forms in his
theology is a deliberate effort to break apart the rigidity of various theo
logical rationalisms.68 The revelation of God in Christ proves too superabundant to be fully and finally translated into the strict distinctions of
rationalist thought. Rather, “The rich substance—the inner sanctum of
theology, so to speak—lies rather on the side of rhapsody than on the
form of discourse which externalizes itself in distinctions and definitions.”69 The sometimes disorderly human utterances of poetry, literature,
homilies, hagiography, and prayer serve better than the most painstakingly constructed systematic theology in manifesting the mystery of God
revealed in Christ. The mystery of God is glimpsed in the frayed edges of
human discourse.
Balthasar’s apophatic efforts aim, therefore, to link truth and mystery,
divine revelation and incomprehensibility indissolubly together. In his
approach, God’s incomprehensibility is not hidden behind revelation or
the condition for the possibility of knowing categorical revelation. Rather,
divine incomprehensibility is precisely what is manifest in revelation. It is
worth quoting Balthasar at length to see the full scope of his claims:
The basic form of “ever-greater dissimilarity however great the
similarity” is irrevocable; but it can vary from being a philosophical
“negative theology”—in which God’s Being remains infinitely
hidden and unfathomable over and beyond all analogous utterances
about him—all the way to being a “negative theology” within
the theology of revelation, in which God “appears” unreservedly
and, therefore, even in his ever-greater incomprehensibility
really comes into the foreground and into the form that appears.
A Blessed Wilderness 141
God’s incomprehensibility is now no longer a mere deficiency in
knowledge, but the positive manner in which God determines the
knowledge of faith: this is the overpowering and overwhelming
inconceivability of the fact that God has loved us so much that he
surrendered his only Son for us, the fact that the God of plenitude
has poured himself out, not only into creation, but emptied himself
into the modalities of an existence determined by sin, corrupted by
death and alienated from God. This is the concealment that appears
in his self-revelation; this is the ungraspability of God, which
becomes graspable because it is grasped.
We must note carefully that this characteristic of the God
who shows his incomprehensibility in his self-revelation belongs
to the objective evidence of the form of revelation, which means it
is above all not conditioned by the darkness of earthly faith. Thus,
this characteristic will not be lost to the form of revelation even
in the vision of God face to face; on the contrary, it is precisely in
the beatific vision that God’s ever-greater incomprehensibility will
necessarily have to constitute the supreme content of the vision,
despite the real grasp of God which will be bestowed. . . . And
it is precisely in this light that the kenosis will emerge to view as
what it is in reality: not as God’s “self-alienation” (as if God who is
comprehensible in himself were doing something incomprehensible
and thereby himself became incomprehensible—or vice-versa), but
as the appearance, conditioned by the world’s guilt, of the God who
in himself is incomprehensible in his love for the world.70
This lengthy passage provides what might be the heart of Balthasar’s trini
tarian apophaticism. In revelation, in the kenosis of the Son into the sinful world, God shows his incomprehensibility to us. Divine revelation is
not a denial of mystery but its heightening for the creature.71 As such, in
Christ, God’s mystery is not “abstract, purely negative” but rather “concrete and positive.”72 For it is here in Christ, his Passion, and the Eucharist—and only here—that God’s “limitlessness invades finitude.”73 It is
here that the incomprehensible, “why-less” love of God for the world is
manifest. Moreover, this incomprehensibility is not the result of a deficiency on our part but is, rather, the very character of God’s love, which
is identical with his truth. That is what is incomprehensible, that is what
142 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
is revealed in Christ, and that is what remains incomprehensible in the
eschaton.
Because he understands divine incomprehensibility as being manifest in divine revelation, Balthasar adopts a very particular understanding
of the relationship between cataphatic and apophatic theology. Because
theology participates in the revelation of God, and this revelation is of his
incomprehensibility, it is one of the purposes of theology to show God’s
incomprehensibility through language. As he argues, the church and her
theologians must “put it into intelligible words and concepts and even, in
certain circumstances, to translate it into broadly descriptive formulae in
order to protect his overwhelming greatness, to frustrate men’s attempts
to master it with their reason and to fit it into their own forms of thought
or to frustrate their attempts to bring it down to their philosophies of
life.”74 We can say that for Balthasar, one of the functions of immanent
trinitarian discourse is to provide the conceptual apparatus that preserves
and manifests the incomprehensibility of God’s love revealed in Christ by
frustrating our attempts to fully comprehend it. This is what Balthasar
means when he claims, “The doctrine of God’s triune life . . . is an entirely
new and purely Christian form of negative theology.”75 Theological speech
and doctrinal formulae must be uttered so that “like the cherubim with
their fiery swords, they surround the folly of the love of God.”76
Returning to Turner’s work shows that Balthasar’s approach is comparatively unique in modern theology but not at all aberrant in the theological tradition. As summarized above, Turner offers a substantive critique
of the modern prejudice to interpret as apophatic only those theologies
that use negative language. But further, he also shows that the relationship
between apophatic and cataphatic theology is more complex than it first
appear. As he describes it, cataphatic theology is the “verbose element in
theology, it is the Christian mind deploying all the resources of language in
the effort to express something about God, and in that straining to speak,
theology uses as many voices as it can.” He continues,
It is the cataphatic in theology which causes its metaphor-ridden
character, causes it to borrow vocabularies by analogy from many
another discourse, whether of science, literature, art, sex, politics, the
law, the economy, family life, warfare, play, teaching, physiology, or
A Blessed Wilderness 143
whatever. It is the cataphatic tendencies which account for the sheer
heaviness of theological language, its character of being linguistically
overburdened; it is the cataphatic which accounts for that fine
nimietas of image which we may observe in the best theologies, for
example in Julian of Norwich or Bernard of Clairvaux. For in its
cataphatic mode, theology is, we might say, a kind of verbal riot, an
anarchy of discourse in which anything goes.77
If apophatic theology is the “speech about God which is the failure of
speech” or the “linguistic strategy to show what lies beyond language,”
then it includes within itself at the minimum a cataphatic moment, a
moment when speech about God is uttered before its denial. The two
theologies, cataphatic and apophatic, are not and can never be wholly
opposed.
Going further still, cataphatic speech in certain circumstances can
be the very means of apophasis. This occurs, for instance, in the work
of Bonaventure and Julian of Norwich. These theologians manifest
divine incomprehensibility through excess and superabundance of language, “which bursts its own bounds in a kind of self-negating pro
lixity.”78 Bonaventure often compares revelation and scripture to the
“virgin forest,” the abundance of which makes it appear “uncertain, with
no order.”79 In fact, the scriptural forest is “supremely orderly,” only simi
lar to the order of “nature in the development of vegetation on earth,”
rather than to the order of discursive reason.80 As a wilderness, revelation provides an infinite scope for theological interpretation and thereby
utterance. Once again, Bonaventure uses a botanical metaphor: “Who can
know the infinity of seeds, when in a single one are contained forests
of forests and thence seeds in infinite number? Likewise, out of Scriptures may be drawn an infinite number of interpretations which none but
God can comprehend. For as new seeds come forth from plants, so also
from Scriptures come forth new interpretations and new meanings.”81
Julian, too, sheds any kind of “apophatic caution” with respect to speaking
about God. She speaks confidently of the Trinity in traditional and novel
terms: Father, Son, Spirit, Mother, Spouse, Brother, Savior, Lord.82 But,
as Turner explains, summarizing his argument for the existence of a cataphatic apophatic strategy,
144 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Her cataphatic confidence is in itself an apophatic strategy, as if it is by
means of, not despite, the proliferations of Trinitarian vocabulary that
she achieves the goal of placing God beyond all possible words. . . .
Theological vocabulary for Julian is not a particular discourse, a
“religious language,” a restricted range of “properly” theological
talk, bound by its object’s range. God is not an object of a particular
kind of talk in the way that a number is the object of mathematical
discourse, for God is not an object. And since all talk is about objects,
all language fails of God. So you can either just stop “prattling about
God” altogether, as Eckhart advises, or else do the opposite and make
sure that you do not cull back the variety of talk about God to some
restricted, pious, or “appropriate” domain. It is the same apophaticism
either way, for if by way of speech nothing goes, everything does.83
The Christian apophatic tradition is, therefore, made up of at least
two broad literary strategies. The first is that exemplified by Pseudo-
Dionysius, Meister Eckhart, and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing, which possibly finds a modern echo in Rahner. In this approach, the
greater weight is given to the moment of denial, the negative imagery, the
failure of finite terms to apply to the infinite God. In the second approach,
which I here term cataphatic apophaticism, it is the excess of affirmation
that brings the human mind to the point of silence. Language breaks
down and becomes self-subverting by sheer superabundance of imagery
and description. For Turner, recognizing the importance of the second
approach is vital if we are to truly accept the terms of apophatic theology.
As he explains, “The inadequacy of theological language can therefore
occur at two levels. For it is true that whatever we say about God, and that
however vividly, and with however much variety of image we name God,
all our language fails of God, infinitely and in principle. But it is also true
that, should we arbitrarily restrict the names with which we name God,
we will fall short of that point of verbal profusion at which we encounter
the collapse of language as such.”84 Remaining at the first level of linguistic inadequacy without acknowledging the second is as much a failure of
apophasis as the converse. Loquaciousness does not necessarily mean an
absence of apophaticism or an arrogant claim to comprehend the incomprehensible. Rather, a ceaseless human babble is what ensues in the face
of the superabundant, “virgin forest” of revelation.
A Blessed Wilderness 145
T r i n i ta r i a n Ap o p h a s i s
We can understand Balthasar, and his trinitarian theology in particular,
as a contemporary example of Turner’s second apophatic strategy. Like
Bonaventure and Julian, Balthasar pushes us to the “embarrassed” silence
of apophasis by means of speech. We can observe this cataphatic apophati
cism on multiple levels of his trinitarian theology.
Intraworldly Truth and Mystery
First, the coincidence of truth and mystery, and of prolixity and ineffability,
determines his understanding of intraworldly truth as well as divine.85
Balthasar shared Rahner’s desire to avoid the traps of rationalism within
philosophy as well as within theology. However, Balthasar’s reading of the
relationships of mystery, truth, and being is different than Rahner’s. As we
saw above, Rahner’s transcendental epistemology centered on the apprehension of the limitless horizon of being through the subject’s act of knowing a particular object. The act of knowing any categorical being involves
the transcendence of the knower’s own finiteness. The knower experiences
in every act of knowing an unthematic openness to a limitless “horizon of
possible objects that is of infinite breadth.”86 As human beings, as spirits
in the world, our knowledge of the things of this world is made possible
by this “pre-apprehension (Vorgriff ) of ‘being’ as such.”87 The unthematic
experience of the mystery Being is the condition of the possibility of all
of our categorical knowledge. This experience of Being is, however, only
possible through our categorical knowledge. The horizon can never be an
immediate object of our consciousness.
Three elements distinguish Balthasar’s epistemology from Rahner’s.
First, as a general rule, Balthasar’s approach is more object-centered than
Rahner’s. As is evident in a number of works, Balthasar resisted when
possible the modern philosophical turn to the subject.88 This very turn
informs Rahner’s transcendental method.89 Balthasar’s concern with the
object known, moreover, is at once a concern with the appearing of the
object to the subject and the ontological basis of this and all appearing.
Object-centered epistemology entails an object-centered ontology.90
It is perhaps Balthasar’s greater focus on the object that leads to
the second and third points of difference with Rahner. Rahner’s subject
146 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
experiences Being primarily as “unlimited possibility,” in contrast to the
fixed limits of finite objects. Indeterminacy is a critical component of
Rahner’s horizon of Being. In Balthasar’s case, in contrast, the mystery
of Being is experienced in the plenitude of its appearances in worldly
forms.91 For Balthasar, Being is not glimpsed as the mysterious horizon of
categorical objects but rather appears through them.
As Rowan Williams explains, this means that for Balthasar “the fundamental cognitive moment is the apprehension of participation, the participation of beings in being,” a participation that suggests Being itself is
dependent on particular beings.92 This mutual dependence of Being and
beings is the third important distinction between Balthasar and Rahner’s
epistemologies. Being is “non-substantial” in itself and only “attains actuality in the existent,” just as the existent only becomes “actual through
participation in the act of Being.”93 This means, finally, that Balthasar’s
“Being” is clearly not identical with God.94
For Balthasar, this participation of beings in the plenitude of being
gives each object a “mysterious ‘more’” that we can never exhaust in discursive knowledge and that belongs to their very ontological structure.95
As Balthasar describes it, beings are not static entities, but exist in the
dynamic relationships between various polarities: that between existence and essence, between essence and appearance, between essence and
image, and, finally, between person and word. As thought plays in these
polarities, it grasps the paradox of being in which its truth is not simply
the unveiling of Being in beings. It is an “unveiled veiling” of Being in
its appearance, and Being in beings.96 Because the two elements are not
identical, the manifested element is hidden in its very manifestation. This
unveiled veiling is most evident in the relationship of word and person in
which the “nonappearing” depths of the free person are manifest in the
appearing utterance “by not appearing.”97 Each utterance is the unveiling
of the veiled “holy mystery of being, whose sheer interiority protects it
from absolute alienation and objectification.”98
Because of this coincidence of unveiling and veiling, truth is always
a source of “amazement and admiration, of astonishment, of stupefaction,
of joy and gratitude,” and of wonder for the knower.99 These poles make
knowledge not an act of conquest but rather of contemplation, love, and
humility. Balthasar writes,
A Blessed Wilderness 147
The circling movement that thought is constrained to perform
here implies anything but a gradual, linear conquest of the mystery.
The mystery resists any attempt to “work it out” by means of a
progressive dialectic. It equally resists any monism of concepts and
definitions that would naively or even subtly paste over the polarity
of true differences. Just as the gap between essence and existence
can never be closed by thought, there is no way ever to bridge in
any real sense the gaps between essence and appearance, universality
and particularity. To observe their existence and to circle in an
eternal movement around the mystery that they reveal—this is
what thought must do. This mystery is not unintelligible; it is sense-
laden and harmonious; like an inexhaustible well of knowledge
and contemplation, it satisfies again and again our very desire for
understanding.100
As he puts it elsewhere, even in the intraworldly realm, one has “to bend
the knee in order to receive the gift of truth.”101
This last description of thought and intraworldly mystery fittingly
summarizes Balthasar’s understanding of thought and divine mystery as
well. Here, too, the form of revelation resists any and all attempts to master it or fit it into fixed concepts, definitions, and, we might add, models.
Thought, ever-circling around the mystery, never ceases. Nevertheless,
as intelligible, thought does grasp the mystery and can articulate something of it, but it can do so only in an abundance of claims, which never
attain finality.
Negative Images, Metaphors, and Paradoxes
Like other theologians, and often echoing them, Balthasar uses evocative, “negative” metaphors and images for God. Balthasar often uses metaphors that connote God’s infinity, limitlessness, and unfathomability. God
is an “abyss,” “ocean,” “sea,” “whirlpool,” or “wilderness.”102 It is no great
exaggeration on Erasmo Leiva’s part to assert that “the abyss of God’s
love” is the “constant theme of Balthasar’s theology.”103
We can also observe in Balthasar’s theology of God instances of paradox. As we saw in chapter 1, Balthasar constantly plays with paradoxical
148 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
pairings of Being and event, activity and passivity, masculinity and femininity, power and powerlessness, giving and receiving, and poverty and
wealth. In some instances, these paradoxes take the form of self-subverting
metaphors, as when Balthasar writes of the Father’s “womb.”104 Though
Turner does not refer to Balthasar, the language of the Father’s womb
perfectly illustrates “the collapse of ordinary language” before the transcendence of God through the “ascribing of incompatible attributes.”105
In his choice and use of metaphors and images, Balthasar often reflects
earlier theologians, so much, indeed, that Balthasar’s favored images often
come to his readers through citation rather than original statements. His
uniqueness initially appears most clearly in his use of paradox with respect
to the very structure of trinitarian theology, which we first examined in
chapter 1. As we saw there, Balthasar understands the trinitarian persons
according to both their identity with their procession and as subjects of
those processions. This dual approach raises the ascribing of incompatible
attributes from the level of suggestive images and metaphors to a comprehensive, apophatic, trinitarian method. This method enables Balthasar
to work with considerable conceptual detail and precision. He can enter
into existing debates and discussions on trinitarian topics: for instance, the
meaning of the term person in trinitarian theology. Nevertheless, the irreducibility of the paradoxical claims ultimately resists theological hubris.
Divine incomprehensibility is thereby concretized in the very doing of
trinitarian theology.
Critics of Balthasar, such as Kilby and Coffey, have not noted the
importance of this paradoxical method in Balthasar’s thought. This
oversight is owing, perhaps, to the fact that Balthasar never settles on
stable terminology to describe what he is doing. However, Balthasar
gives ample evidence of this practice—both in terms of content and
method—including within the Trilogy.106 For his part, Coffey recognizes that Balthasar uses at least two approaches to the Trinity. Coffey’s
own commitment to reducing trinitarian theologies to single models
leads him to conclude erroneously that Balthasar tries to incorporate
countervailing claims under a single, deficient “procession model” of
the Trinity.107 Coffey’s claim is especially confusing given the admitted similarities between his own “return model” and Balthasar’s position.108 As I have argued, however, Balthasar deliberately constructs his
A Blessed Wilderness 149
trinitarian theology in order to avoid reducing the Trinity to any single
model that comprehensively explains “both the origins of the Son and
Spirit and the manner of operation of the Trinity in the economy.”109
Such a reduction is patently impossible in Balthasar’s estimation, and
any attempt to do so undermines divine incomprehensibility. Recognizing that Balthasar aims to preserve divine incomprehensibility through
countervailing propositions and images also puts into question Kilby’s
claims that Balthasar offers no “breaks and safeguards against [the] presumption of a God’s eye view.”110
The Collapse of Language and Trinitarian “Otherness”
Thus far we have seen how Balthasar’s metaphors, images, and method
work to stress or concretize divine incomprehensibility. God’s otherness
from creatures precludes the terms, images, and metaphors necessarily
derived from creation from ever describing God. Because of this, Balthasar
engages in the ascription of incompatible attributes, which takes its broadest form in his countervailing propositions. In so doing, Balthasar shows
rather than tells us the inadequacy of our speech to say things about God.
As Turner suggests, though, this concrete manifestation of the inade
quacy of theological language is not the whole of apophasis. There remains
the deeper issue of our inability to know how far our language about God
fails. In other words, not only must we demonstrate the collapse of our
language about God in the face of his total otherness from creatures, we
must also show how our language of otherness, difference, and similarity
itself collapses.
Balthasar addresses this through two means. First, he employs the
classical language of analogy as articulated by the Fourth Lateran Council and Aquinas, and interpreted further by Erich Przywara, in which any
similarity between God and creatures is overruled by an ever-greater dissimilarity. In his trinitarian theology, the doctrine of analogy qualifies
every term used to speak of the triune God. Balthasar writes,
The statement therefore that God is “triune,” all this is and remains
discourse about incomprehensible mystery. It is only analogously
(where similarity is overruled by a greater dissimilarity!) that we
150 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
can speak of persons in God; only analogously (where similarity is
overruled by a greater dissimilarity!) that we can speak of “begetting”
and either “spiration” or “breathing forth”; only analogously (where
similarity is overruled by a greater dissimilarity!) that we can speak
of “three,” for what “three” means in relation to the absolute is in
any case something quite other than the inner worldly “three” of a
sequence of numbers.111
The analogical language of “greater dissimilarity” is a key component
of apophasis. The open-ended comparative leaves no possibility for the
human intellect to know the proportion of God’s similarity/dissimilarity
to the creature.
Balthasar’s real apophatic innovation, however, is in the manner by
which the qualification of “greater dissimilarity” is enacted in the specifics of his trinitarian theology. Put otherwise, Balthasar both says that our
terms infinitely fail in the face of God’s mystery and gets his trinitarian
terms to fail, “so that [their] failure says the same thing.”112 We saw in the
last chapter how Balthasar’s claim that the Son is “infinitely Other of the
Father” and his use of the notions of distance and drama serve to underscore the aseity and freedom of God with respect to creation. God is not
in a position to need the world in order to be love, and God is able by virtue of being triune to traverse the whole distance the sinful world is from
God. There is no comprehensible answer to why God creates and why
God saves because God is trinitarian.
The ontological relationship of God and world, summarized as the
analogia entis, underscores a corresponding epistemological one. The central aspect under consideration here is how the irreducible distinction of
the trinitarian persons affects analogical predication. At stake here is the
“location” of the proportion of otherness. The obvious terms for theological analogy are created and uncreated nature—that is, between created
and uncreated nature is a proportion of difference that serves as the foundation and negation of all theological speech. While Balthasar clearly
affirms this infinite proportion of difference between creature and creator, he nevertheless rejects it as the proportion of theological analogy.
For Balthasar, as we have seen, the Father and Son relate to one another
as totally other, and indeed meet each other only in the Holy Spirit, who
bridges an infinite “distance” between them.
A Blessed Wilderness 151
Among secondary interpreters of Balthasar, no theologian has recognized the significance of the theme of otherness in Balthasar’s trinitarian
theology more than Rowan Williams.113 Williams correctly explains that
Balthasar’s use of the major dissimilitudo (greater dissimilarity) and Nicolas of Cusa’s term “non aliud” (nonother) means that “God is never ‘other’
in the sense of a member of a series or a class to be counted along with
comparable instances.”114 As Balthasar writes, “Analogia entis means that
the absolute, infinite God cannot be compared with the finite creature
who is entirely dependent upon him. The creature can find no external vantage point from which to compare itself with God; it can only
look up to God in a relationship of total dependency.”115 Williams misses,
however, the manner in which Balthasar’s trinitarian application of dissimilarity/difference/otherness strips away the very meaningfulness of the
language of otherness, difference, and similarity itself. The otherness that
marks the relation between creature and creator is always already supplanted or exceeded by the otherness present within the trinitarian life.
Using the terms of analogical speech, it is not simply that the similarity
between our terms and God’s life must be negated by their greater dissimilarity. Dissimilarity too is negated by the ever-greater dissimilarity
in the divine life itself. By shifting the proportion of otherness into the
divine life, Balthasar has thereby pushed theological language to its limits. And with the assumption of creaturely being-language in the person
of the Son, the limits are transcended. Balthasar writes in commentary on the thought of Elizabeth of the Trinity that “the otherness and
the infinite distance between the creature and the Creator reveal themselves more and more in self-revelation and self-communication. Yet the
yawning gulf is also being covered over and forgotten as the Son of God
clothes himself with it, deifies it, makes it the expression of the Trinity’s
inner distinction of Persons in a unity of essence. Precisely that which
distinguishes the creature from God now becomes that within which the
creature is like God: otherness in unity.”116 The otherness of Father and
Son to each other in the unity of the Holy Spirit, manifest to us through
the medium of our very creaturely difference from God, makes us unable
to articulate both how we are like and unlike God. Our words, our logic,
our theological precisions fail. Balthasar thus achieves, by way of his theology of intratrinitarian otherness, the apophatic transcending of “the last
differentiation of all: the difference between similarity and difference.”117
152 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
The Apophasis of the Word of God
This transcending of the last differentiation of all is not Balthasar’s final
moment of trinitarian apophasis, however. Until now, we have been considering theological speech about God “from the outside.” But as we saw
in the last chapter and above, Balthasar does not see theology as occurring
apart from both God’s revelation and our participation in his life. Apopha
sis must, therefore, be manifest in Christ and be an element of our participation in the triune life.
As we have had occasion to see, for Balthasar, Christ is the measure and norm of theological speech. The Word’s union with human
nature makes it a medium of divine self-exposition. But he is also, therefore, the medium of the exposition of God’s incomprehensibility. Apophatic silence is not ultimately found at the end of hierarchical denial,
but in the Word itself.118 As Balthasar understands, the silences of Christ
in his life are intimations that he is “the divine super-word,” that “prodi
gal, lavish gift of self that transcends the formulated, indeed, the formulable word.”119 The coincidence of truth and mystery, of manifestation
in hiddenness, once again appears within the form of God’s revelation.
Balthasar writes,
In order to assure oneself that the revelation is indeed hidden, one
need only cast a glance at the form of the revealer himself: not only
at the hiddenness of his virginal conception and birth (to which
Ignatius [of Antioch] alludes) but also at the thirty years’ silent
existence of the one “who stands among you, but whom you do not
know” ( Jn 1:26); at his pregnant, indeed, judging silence during his
public years—in the scene with the adultress, in the episodes of the
Passion before Caiaphas, Herod, Pilate; at his final cry, with which
he sinks into the silence of the underworld (Nicholas of Cusa sees
this cry as the apex of his word); at his striking numerous absences;
at the situations where he is sought or his presence is desired; at his
return into the silent bosom of the Father; at his mute eucharistic
presence in the midst of the Church.120
It is especially the silence of the cross and death of Christ that serves as
the manifestation of divine incomprehensibility for it is here, in Balthasar’s
A Blessed Wilderness 153
thought, that God’s incomprehensible love for the world is laid bare in
paradox: “In this silence beyond all human posturing God reveals who
and what God is. Our all too easy talk of the incomprehensibility of
God will, if we catch sight at the deed of God [on the cross], be brought
up sharp and reduced to silence in front of this irrefutable proof which
God himself offers. There is absolutely no reply which we can make.”121
Balthasar explicitly ties the silence of the cross to theological method:
The new covenant bunches everything into the shortest space of
time, in the midpoint of which stands the breakdown-point which
can be delimited in external chronology as the “Triduum Mortis,”
but which internally means that time has come to an end and that
there is a new beginning such that all temporal categories of “end,”
“midpoint,” and “beginning” are shattered; and this means that not
only the main subject (the theological content of the fate of Jesus),
but also the position of existentially involved observer (the Christian
who seeks to understand his faith, in order to live it), slip away at
the very point where they ought to be made secure. But it is not our
concern to get a secure place to stand, but rather to get sight of what
cannot be securely grasped, and this must remain the event of Jesus
Christ; woe to the Christian who would not stand daily speechless
before this event! If this event truly is what the church believes, then
it can be mastered through no methodology.122
It is the revelation of God’s own apophasis in Christ’s death that casts
us into apophatic silence. And it is because this “silence” of the triduum
occupies the midpoint of revelation and faith that there is ultimately
no comprehensive theological method except “following” the Incarnate
Word and trusting in his own “seamless” logic.123
We can hear in these claims echoes of earlier theologians, such as
Bonaventure and John of the Cross. Like Bonaventure, Balthasar conceives of Christ as the concrete analogia entis summarizing and making possible the affirmations of God according to creaturely being. But,
Turner highlights, Bonaventure also sees Christ as “our only access to the
unknowability of God.”124 Christ offers this point of access, moreover, not
in a cosmic or mystical sense but precisely as Christ crucified.125 Turner
summarizes,
154 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
For in that catastrophe of destruction, in which the humanity
of Christ is brought low, is all the affirmative capacity of speech
subverted. Thus it is that, through the drama of Christ’s life on the
one hand and death on the other, through the recapitulation of the
symbolic weight and density of creation in his human nature on
the one hand and its destruction on the other, the complex interplay
of affirmative and negative is fused and concretely realized. In
Christ, therefore, there is not only the visibility of the Godhead, but
also the invisibility: if Christ is the Way, Christ is, in short, our way
to the unknowability of God, not so as ultimately to comprehend it,
but so as to be brought into participation with the Deus absconditus
precisely as unknown.126
The crucified Christ thus provides the measure and transition between
the prolixity of cataphatic speech and silence of apophasis. As Bonaventure writes, “The depth of God-made-man, his humility, is so great that
reason founders on it.”127
The exhaustive revelation of God in Christ is a central theme of John
of the Cross’s theology as well. In The Ascent of Mount Carmel, God the
Father informs the soul, “I have already told you everything in my Word,
who is my Son. I have nothing more to reveal, no further answer to give
you, there is nothing to add to him. Fasten your eyes on him alone, because
in him I have spoken and revealed everything. Ipsum audite.”128 But, as John
makes clear, this revelation culminates on the cross. It is Jesus Christ crucified in whom is hidden all the treasures and wisdom of God.129 Balthasar
summarizes, “The authentic image of God in the world is crucified love—
nothing else.”130 And because it is precisely the crucified Christ who is
raised from the grave and ascends into heaven, the apophasis of the Word
on the cross is the eternal medium of our knowledge of God.
The Wilderness of Triune Worship
Just as the cataphatic possibilities of theology stem from the concurrence
of God’s revelation in the world and our participation in the divine life, so
too is trinitarian apophasis a concurrence of the kenosis of the Son into
the world and our elevation into his divine status. Apophasis is not only a
A Blessed Wilderness 155
function of kenotic Christology in Balthasar’s thought but also an aspect
of the triune life itself.
In this matter Balthasar’s emphasis on intratrinitarian difference, distance, and dialogue is critical. The Father, Son, and Spirit are irreducibly
distinct. Their personal differences are not superseded by the unity of
essence, but mysteriously coincide with it.131 As we have seen, Balthasar
argues that because God is trinitarian he is ever greater than himself. The
phrasing indicates yet another instance in which Balthasar is linguistically
attempting to transcend the difference between similarity and dissimi
larity. The divine semper major is not only an open comparative between
God and world but between God and God. But furthermore, as we saw
in both chapters 1 and 2, following Adrienne von Speyr, Balthasar argues
that the ever-greater difference of the trinitarian persons leads to their
mutual amazement, wonder, thanksgiving, worship, glorification, and adoration.132 According to von Speyr, “Worship is the expression of God’s
encounter with God in love. Only in worship can God encounter God,
when he confronts himself as Father, Son and Spirit. . . . When the incarnate Son manifests his love to the Father in the form of worship, he is
doing nothing new. He is doing what he has done from all eternity.”133
The intratrinitarian distance of Father and Son indicates “not only a
divine-human but also a divine reverence” of Christ for the Father.134 The
intratrinitarian worship, reverence, and adoration occur as a result of the
groundlessness of the Father’s love. For the groundless love of the Father
is so poured out as to beget the equally groundless love of the Son. God
himself cannot exhaust the inexhaustible love that he himself is. “The
Spirit searches the depths of this love but does not discover in it any
‘ground’ that would give us a key for our conceptualizing of it.”135
As we see and participate in the groundless love of Father and
Son in the Spirit, we not only come to see the ever-greater difference
of God from the world but also to participate in the divine wonder at
the Father’s wellspring of love.136 It is precisely as deified creatures, gods
by grace, that we recognize the Trinity’s wild incomprehensibility. Our
theological “silence,” including the silence of theological verbosity,
is an echo, reflection, participation, and offering of the superword of
the Son before the Father. “Here,” concludes Balthasar, “‘negative the
ology’ finally becomes the locus of perfect encounter, not in a dialogical
156 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
equality of dignity, but in the transformation of the whole creature into
an ecce ancilla for the all-filling mystery of the ungraspable love of the
self-emptying God.”137
If the above argument is accurate, it cannot be said that Balthasar’s trinitarian theology implies a loss of divine incomprehensibility. Rather, we
should see in Balthasar a subtle strategy for realizing the coincidence of
cataphasis and apophasis. This strategy is realized moreover in the very
prolixity of his trinitarian claims. Through these claims Balthasar pushes
us to and past the very limits of meaningful speech and into a paradoxical
apophasis that is at once a kind of silence of inner-trinitarian adoration
and a doxological babbling of deified creatures.
Reading Balthasar against the classical apophatic tradition as summarized by Turner reveals Balthasar’s innovative apophaticism. Even as
he reflects and draws on other theologians, Balthasar is unique in dealing
with divine incomprehensibility in specifically trinitarian terms. Indeed,
by consistently recasting the “highest” claims of apophatic theology, the
breakdown of the language of similarity and difference, into trinitarian
terms, Balthasar radicalizes Christian apophaticism. The breakdown of
speech, the ineffable mysteriousness of God, is not determined by the
relation of God to the world but by God’s trinitarian relations, in which
the world participates through Christ.
Balthasar’s trinitarian apophaticism is all the more remarkable for
the manner in which it reformulates a number of classical theological
themes in a new synthesis. His trinitarian claims do not stand separate
from other theological loci but in fact relate to a wide range of others.
The theology of revelation, faith, the cross, deification, epistemology, and
even liturgy are all bound together in his trinitarian framework. The lack
of clear, systematic structure in his thought should not lead us to overlook his accomplishments as a systematic theologian. Indeed, if we take
Balthasar’s claims seriously, the very lack of clear structure to his thought
may itself be a reflection of his deepest convictions about the mystery
revealed in Christ and recounted in theology.
Conclusion
The Father’s Child who proceeds from him eternally also returns to him
eternally and in every moment of time. And this is the game that we,
God’s other children, are invited to play as well.
—Balthasar, “The Eternal Child”
This book began by asking why Balthasar says what he says about the
immanent Trinity. It has offered in the course of its chapters a progressively more detailed account of what Balthasar does in fact say and why
he says it. In chapter 1, we saw how Balthasar’s vision of the immanent
Trinity unfolds. Beginning in the primordial Father, who kenotically is
by pouring out his essence in the generation of the Son, continuing in
the responsive love of the Son, and culminating in the unity and fruit of
their love, the Holy Spirit, immanent trinitarian theology reveals the eternal dynamism, the movement and flow, of eternal, interpersonal love. We
also saw, however, the manner in which Balthasar’s trinitarian vision often
moved along paradoxical lines of thought, with respect to the trinitarian
persons, to the being and event of the Trinity, and even to the divine attributes. This method resulted in a multiplication of perspectives that could
not be reduced or synthesized into a single claim or model.
157
158 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
In the second chapter, this basic framework was filled out and clarified in light of crucial sources for Balthasar’s trinitarian thought. Of central import was the claim that Balthasar’s medieval debts could be traced
most fruitfully back to a specifically non-Augustinian/Thomist trinitarian
theology, exemplified in figures such as Richard of St. Victor, Bonaventure, and Jan van Ruusbroec. The adoption of this pedigree accounts for
Balthasar’s characteristically active interpretation of trinitarian “relations,”
his manner of “beginning” the Trinity in an ur-Father before his act of
begetting (while always maintaining that the Father is never without the
Son and Spirit), and the resulting dynamic metaphors and images he uses
to speak of the Trinity. We also saw how Balthasar sought to avoid the
danger of deducing the Trinity on the basis of a particular divine attribute,
a danger latent in this same tradition. After examining these medieval
roots, we turned to Balthasar’s modern interlocutors. First, we highlighted the manner in which Balthasar’s notion of inner-trinitarian kenosis adopts and adapts the thought of Sergius Bulgakov. Second, we saw
how Balthasar’s “personalism” in trinitarian theology can be traced back,
once again, to the medieval Richard of St. Victor, but also to the Jewish
philosopher Martin Buber. It is Buber, in particular, that offers the immediate source of Balthasar’s concept of “distance” not as a spatial category
but as a personal one: the condition of the possibility for I-Thou relations.
Following Buber, for Balthasar, inner-trinitarian distance is a function of
self-giving love, a love that gives to the other and lets the other be. Finally,
we turned to Balthasar’s Swiss peers, the Protestant Barth and the visionary von Speyr. It was these figures who provided Balthasar with the “maxi
malism” of his trinitarian vision, lifting from God’s revelation insights
about the “antecedent” life of God.
The conclusion of chapter 2 provided the natural transition into the
themes of chapters 3 and 4. In chapter 3, we turned from Balthasar’s
immanent trinitarian theology in itself to its soteriological import. Arguing against the tendency to reduce Balthasar’s trinitarian soteriology to
his theology of the cross and hell, this chapter argued that the significance
of his trinitarian claims lay in the manner in which they frame or undergird a theology of deification, summarized in the notion of trinitarian
adoption. This adoption, understood as the participation of creatures in
the Son’s eternal relation to the Father, is the goal of creation and all the
work of the economy, including that of the cross and descent and the
Conclusion 159
work of the Spirit. Immanent trinitarian claims do not indicate bare “conditions of the possibility” of God’s self-communication to us but rather
the very substance of the life into which we are elevated through Christ
and the Holy Spirit, and which is realized in the Eucharist. As a result,
the various concepts Balthasar employs for the immanent Trinity shape
his conceptualization of the God-world relationship as a whole.
The final chapter presented the epistemological significance of trini
tarian deification. The specific question was whether or not Balthasar
successfully maintains divine incomprehensibility. This question of epistemological impropriety seems to have accompanied Balthasar throughout his career. The chapter showed, on the one hand, how Balthasar’s
characteristic vividness depended on deification. Our knowledge of God,
Balthasar argued, is not the product of speculation about some distant
unrevealed deity, but is, in Christ and Spirit, “connatural” with God’s own
self-knowledge, mediated through creaturely terms and concepts. What
this means at its most basic is that there is no articulable boundary at
which human claims about God must halt. On the other hand, this chapter also showed that Balthasar’s claim to connatural knowledge of God
was not a rejection of divine incomprehensibility. Though he maintained
a certain reticence for some negative or apophatic theology, Balthasar
also argued that his own position—and specifically his immanent trini
tarian theology—presented true, or “concrete,” divine incomprehensibility.
Through an engagement with Denys Turner, chapter 4 showed that the
Christian apophatic tradition was not limited to the way of hierarchical
denial but also embraced ways of excessive verbosity. The chapter concluded by reading Balthasar’s trinitarianism as a representative of such
a verbose, vivid apophaticism. Caught up in the paradox of the infinite
God’s revelation in the finitude of Christ, and in particular his death on
the cross, theology approached the “silence” of apophatic denial in a profusion of speech, proceeding by metaphor, countervailing claims, and
analogy. Most remarkably of all, this “hymnic,” doxological apophaticism
is itself undergirded by Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian claims regarding the wonder and doxology of the triune persons themselves. In light of
these conclusions, we may restate our initial thesis: Balthasar’s trinitarian
theology is constructed to give an account of how God is incomprehensible love
in himself, and able to freely create and deify creatures by giving them an active
share in his triune life.
160 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
L i m i t s a n d Opp o r tu n i t i e s
As indicated in its introduction, this work sought to provide the grounding for an “internal critique” of Balthasar’s theology, a critique built in
sympathy with his own work. I identify two areas in which this internal
critique can advance on the basis of the theology of the Trinity: the connection of trinitarian theology to the theology of sexual difference and
marriage and the absence of political theology. In both instances, these
weaknesses stem from a failure to give full life to the apophatic and deifying dimensions of his trinitarian theology.
The Trinity and Sexual Difference
Balthasar’s trinitarian theology touches rather closely on his theology of
the sexes, which in turn has been readily embraced among some of his
followers. One finds this enthusiasm especially prevalent among clerical devotees: Angelo Scola and Marc Ouellet.1 At its best, this scholarship has advanced a relational theological anthropology, and one rooted
in human bodies. The sacrament of marriage, especially in its fruitfulness in reproduction, is one site of our being in the image and likeness of
the ever-f ruitful triune God. Balthasar suggests this profound connection
between sexual difference, marriage, Incarnation, and the Trinity. As the
descent of Christ into the world reveals the praise, reverence, and service
within the Trinity, so it is
with this descent [of God to serve man] that the humanum comes
to light as it was created to be: praise of, rejoicing in, the never-to-
be-captured otherness of the other (“male and female he created
them”); reverence for this otherness precisely at the point where
human beings live out their mutual love in the sexual embrace (the
other is never a means to an end but is always to be reverenced in
an attitude of responsibility); finally, service, which gives religious
consummation to the everyday necessity of mutual service in some
sort of profession within society.2
The personal otherness of the triune persons and their relationships of love
(or “praise, reverence, and service”) make up the archetype of the personal
Conclusion 161
otherness of human persons in general but most especially in the bodily
concretion that includes the sexual difference of man and woman, husband
and wife. More fundamentally, as Ouellet argues, the human relationship
of husband and wife does not only mirror the Trinity, but in fact the relationship participates in “intra-Trinitarian love.”3 It is not as isolated individuals that we are deified—so too are our human relationships.
Unfortunately, this theology too often suffers from hypercomplementarity: arguing beyond the limited claim that men and women complement each other in marriage to a maximal account of how men and
women possess, by reason of their sex, distinct virtues, roles, and fixed hierarchical positions. This procedure is all the more confusing when Balthasar
and those who draw on his thought turn to trinitarian theology to support
sexual hierarchy. In his essay “The Dignity of Women,” for instance, readers will find the now familiar self-subverting claims regarding trinitarian
activity and passivity/receptivity, masculinity and femininity, equality and
taxis. The Father, Son, and Spirit are each in their unique manner both
active and receptive and, therefore, in Balthasar’s thinking, each is both
masculine and feminine.4 In his attempt to ground his theology of the sexes
in the immanent Trinity, Balthasar hints at this trinitarian self-subversion
and paradox. A simultaneous taxis and equality seems to be operative in the
sexes. On the one hand, Balthasar asserts, “It is the primacy of the Father
over all, and of the Son over Church and creation, that justifies Genesis
and Paul in ascribing an analogous, but derivative, primacy to the man.”5
On the other hand, “Women possess an equal dignity both in the order of
the Church and in the order of creation.”6 However, since the analogous-
but-derivative primacy of man over woman justifies investing man with
both social and ecclesial power, while the “equal dignity” of the woman has
no evident effects, it seems that Balthasar pulls back from self-subversion
at the crucial moment.
In some respects, my critique of Balthasar on this point accords with
that of Linn Tonstad. In God and Difference, Tonstad criticizes Balthasar’s
efforts to both distinguish and associate intratrinitarian and sexual difference and the tendency to “slip” into an idolatrous series of hierarchical analogies: The Father is to Son as Christ is to Church as Man
is to Woman.7 However, Tonstad does not recognize the possibility that
Balthasar’s habitual use of paradox in his trinitarian theology is itself in
harmony with her own “purgative strategy” of “over-literalization,” which
162 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
“picks up the interplay between cataphasis and apophasis to produce
complex forms of assertion and destabilization. Such over-literalizing
theological language and imagery, in its very impropriety, serves as a cata
phatic theological apophasis.”8 If my interpretation is correct and we can
read Balthasar as employing a similar apophatic strategy with respect to
the Trinity, then Balthasar can be read against the grain of his own stated
theology of the sexes and into a more thoroughly apophatic anthro
pology. This anthropology is no doubt different than Tonstad’s own. Unlike
Tonstad, here, the incarnation of the Word puts the entire language of
creatures to use for possible divine utterance. Insofar as human sexual difference is bound up with the human being in the image and likeness of
God, sexual difference proves to be a privileged manifestation of the triune God and one elevated by the Word, especially in sacramental marriage. But to make this last claim is not to accept the reduction of men
and women to hierarchical roles. Rather, what needs discovering is the
apophatic edge of Balthasar’s trinitarianism. In such retrieval, what is
paramount in sexual difference is the “never-to-be-captured otherness” of
man and woman as image of trinitarian otherness. Just as the trinitarian
otherness of Father and Son in the unity of the Holy Spirit must be represented in speech through oxymoron, paradox, and countervailing and
self-subverting claims, so too must we represent the relationship of man
and woman, especially in marriage.
Importantly, the constructive response to Balthasar, in keeping with
his own strengths, is not to deny hierarchy in favor of equality, or reject
immanent trinitarian theology as hopelessly speculative and inconsequential for theological anthropology. Both approaches effectively deny
divine incomprehensibility by reducing the triune God to human knowledge—whether either the “positive” knowledge that triune relations are
straightforwardly of “equals” or the “negative” knowledge that we can
say only certain limited things of God in himself. What is required is
a particular form of anthropology that sees sexual difference as eliciting
apophasis. Tina Beattie’s deconstruction of Balthasar and the Catholic
“new feminists” offers a theoretical direction for such a course. Taking
up the question of the persistence of sex in the eschaton, affirmed by
Western theology and denied among some Eastern Orthodox theologians, Beattie argues that these contradicting conclusions themselves signal that sexuality is “part of the mystery, part of the excess, so that we
Conclusion 163
encounter something of the otherness of God in the strange uncanniness
of our bodily encounters with otherness and difference.”9 Sexual difference shows itself prone to paradoxical assertions in the light of God. The
American poet Wendell Berry suggests how such claims might figure in
the most domestic circumstances:
Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don’t know what its
limits are–
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on
discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the
unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown
is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a
blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the
light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen time and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.10
Finally, though she hardly touches on Balthasar’s work, Sarah Coakley in
her God, Sexuality, and the Self offers a glimpse into the ascetic dimension
of such a theological anthropology inflected by trinitarian apophaticism.
In Coakley’s vision of anthropology, “The contemplative encounter with
divine mystery will include the possibility of upsetting the ‘normal’ vision
of the sexes and gender altogether; but it will also include an often painful
164 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
submission to other demanding tests of ascetic transformation—through
fidelity to divine desire, and thence through fidelity to those whom we
love in this world.”11
Beattie, Berry, and Coakley are better than Balthasar at capturing the
manner in which a teeming wilderness meets us in the embodied difference of the other, even in the midst of the most stable domesticity. In the
life of husband and wife, but also in all human relationships, the known
and unknown mix and blend in a lived apophatic negation of the negation. On the topic of Christian sanctity, Balthasar argues that God takes
from his saints the “spirit of calculation.”12 If this is so, and it is in keeping with his trinitarian theology and the theology of deification outlined
here, then we can also say that in the sanctity of Christian marriage the
calculated equipoise of “sexual complementarity” as understood by many
of its proponents must topple. Just as the Trinity is a wild mystery in the
exchange of love, so too will Christian marriage thwart attempts to tame
it. Husband and wife do not meet each other as simply known, determined by role, but rather always lead to the unknown, to surprise, to mystery. Their sexual and personal difference ought “never to be captured” in
stereotype and formulae. And in this, they mirror God in a kind of non-
schema: “Woe to the lover who, by whatever means, seeks to tear from his
loved one his final secret! Not only is such an attempt impossible, but also
by it he destroys the life of love.”13
The Trinity and Politics
Thomas Dalzell has highlighted another area in which Balthasar’s theology displays limits: the absence of a fully social, political dimension.14
Dalzell’s fundamental thesis is that this absence has its root cause in
Balthasar’s immanent trinitarian theology. Because Balthasar lacks a fully
developed immanent pneumatology, his immanent trinitarian “model” is
interpersonal but not fully social. The Spirit’s distinctiveness, Dalzell contends, dissolves in his identity as the subjective bond of Father and Son.
As a result, human freedom, and its participation in divine freedom, is
limited to its individual dimension. What is required to amend this shortcoming is to advance a more developed social model of the Trinity, which
will then serve as a catalyst for a true social-political theology.
Conclusion 165
As I have argued, Balthasar’s trinitarianism is considerably more complex than Dalzell shows. In the case of the Spirit, though his role as the
“subjective” bond of love between Father and Son is a prominent theme
in Balthasar’s theology—especially in the theological dramatics—so too
is his “objective” role as the “fruit” and excess of the Father and Son’s love.
The analogy Balthasar supplies, that of a family, is undeniably social. More
importantly, however, Dalzell’s presupposition that the Trinity supplies a
model for human social-political behavior deserves scrutiny. Once again,
the question arises as to whether such models acknowledge the ever-
greater incomprehensibility of the triune God. Balthasar’s trinitarian wisdom, a wisdom not fully realized in his theology of sex and gender, is to
resist the temptation of fixed, reductive schemas. Given the interweaving
of Christian theology and militarism, imperialism, and totalitarianism in
Balthasar’s lifetime, the reticence to directly tie God to human political
arrangements is understandable.
This is not to deny Dalzell’s larger point: that Balthasar’s thought
underestimates the importance of the social and political dimensions of
the Christian confession. Whereas Dalzell wishes to make this connection on explicitly immanent trinitarian terms, I would advocate that any
kind of social-political development of Balthasar’s theology must proceed
from his theology of deification. That is, it must stem from an examination
of the theology of creation, metaphysics, the human person, and the relation of those topics to political philosophy. It is therefore only indirectly
addressed at the level of immanent trinitarian thought.15 It is in light of
the free creature’s elevation into the trinitarian relations that Balthasar
displays a clear failure of imagination, for he fails to acknowledge the
consequences of his vision for human society. It is not inconsequential for
politics that the world itself and in its entirety is first and foremost a gift
from God, elevated by grace into God’s life. If, as Balthasar insists, the
reality of that new, deified existence obtains here and now, it must also be
felt in the political. The questions moving forward, beyond Balthasar, are:
What does the politics of the deified creature look like? How do the sons
and daughters of God exercise justice and use their political power in the
world when their deification consists in a participation in the “omnipotent powerlessness” of triune love? And how does the uncalculated love of
the triune God find an adequate reflection in a world of limits?16
166 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
B a lt h a s a r w i t h i n t h e T r i n i ta r i a n R e n e wa l
Despite these limitations, Balthasar’s trinitarian theology deserves wider
attention, as he is an impressive figure within the “trinitarian renewal”
of the last century. Indeed, as argued here, he is both a champion and
critic of its basic claims and insights. As champion, Balthasar’s trinitarian
thought picks up and builds on the original concern of Barth and Rahner
that trinitarian theology is of crucial importance in Christian theology as
a whole and in Christian life. Few theologians can claim to have worked
out the degree to which trinitarian theology is intimately tied to soteri
ology, even in its immanent dimension.
Indeed, Balthasar’s insistence on this principle is especially emphatic,
both in terms of content, as we have seen, and in terms of theological
method—that is, for Balthasar, the intellectual content of trinitarian theology does not simply inform theology in other disciplines in an “external”
manner. The Trinity is theology’s primary subject matter, the all-embracing
frame of every other theological topic.17 But further, we can argue that the
Trinity’s work of deifying creatures is the formal principle of theology, as
well as in Balthasar’s understanding. It is by the Holy Spirit that we are
enabled to share in the Son’s own vision and knowledge.18 It is from this
participation that theology flows. We might say that for Balthasar theology
is the speech of those on the course of deification. As Balthasar never tires
of reminding us, only God can reveal or testify to God. It is by God’s grace
that we are empowered to do theology.
The confidence Balthasar has in the possibility of speaking of God
thus stems from his confidence in the work God has done in drawing us
into his life. There is no question that for Balthasar, God has fully revealed
himself in Christ, leaving nothing hidden behind revelation. Nevertheless, Balthasar also challenges certain tendencies in trinitarian thought in
the last several decades. As Karen Kilby has argued in a series of articles
over the last several years, trinitarian theology has been characterized by
“robustness,” “a confidence and enthusiasm” in asserting the importance
of the doctrine as the “vital heart” of Christian theology.19 According to
Kilby, such confidence has robbed trinitarian theology of its awareness
of the apophatic demands of Christian faith. We have limited God by
our conceptual positivism, idolatrously projecting our preferred concepts
onto God. Provocatively, Karen Kilby suggests that immanent trinitarian
Conclusion 167
theology ought to aim not at greater clarity but at heightened mystery.
Indicating the thrust of her proposal, she asks,
Is it possible to suppose that reflection on the doctrine of the Trinity
might intensify rather than diminish our sense of the unknowability
of God? Is it possible to accept that it presents us with a pattern
which we cannot understand, rather than giving us some new
understanding of God? What if we were to suppose that how the
three are one, how to relate divine persons to the divine substance,
what the inner relations between the persons are, are all questions
which are quite simply beyond us? On such an account, the doctrine
of the Trinity would confront us with these questions, in some sense
force them upon us, but leave us without any resources with which
to answer them. What answers we may appear to have—answers
drawing on notions of processions, relations, perichoresis—would be
acknowledged as in fact no more than technical ways of articulating
our inability to know.20
Despite her own association of Balthasar with the overly confident
trinitarianism she is critiquing, Balthasar is, in fact, sympathetic with her
argument. Trinitarian theology is not sound when premised on conceptual clarity or the adequacy of models (whether social or psychological).
But it is also clear that Balthasar presents us with a radically different
form of “apophatic trinitarianism,” and one that avoids the flaws in Kilby’s
own proposal. For Kilby, it seems obvious that if trinitarian doctrine and
accompanying theological elaboration are “no more than technical ways
of articulating our inability to know” God, then doctrine, “as a doctrine,
gives us no depiction of God, no insight into God’s inner nature, God’s
inner life.”21 And further, because of the “excess and transcendence” of the
triune God beyond all our conceptualizations of him, “there ought properly be . . . a resistance to, a fundamental reticence and reserve surrounding, speculation on the Trinity.”22 Apophatic trinitarianism for Kilby is
about “theology reaching its limits, in terms, to put it very bluntly, of the
dead-ends of theology.”23
Balthasar’s trinitarian robustness challenges the implication of Kilby’s
proposal that speech and mystery are at odds, that the limits and dead
ends of theological understanding can be recognized, and that immanent
168 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
trinitarian theology is uniquely mysterious, and therefore uniquely among
other theological topics, requires our reticence and reserve. For Balthasar,
theology is incomprehensible through and through because all of it is
concerned with the groundless love of God revealed in Christ. There is
no neat division between those theological topics that are subject to our
comprehension and those that are beyond it. That Kilby suggests otherwise, and her “solution” to this problem, risks a subtle idolatry in which
we reduce our language about God to a small set of pious technicalities.
Balthasar shocks us out of such comforts and invites us into a risky theological venture of speaking of that which is beyond speech.
B a lt h a s a r a n d t h e P l ay o f T h e o l o g y
It has been argued by admirers and critics that Balthasar’s theology, both
its content and form, remains too transgressive or too idiosyncratic to
serve as any kind of a basis for the future of theology.24 In large measure, this assessment is correct. Balthasar leaves his would-be students
with a limited framework for advancing a “Balthasarian” school of theology, even as his popularity swells on the contemporary scene. There is no
overarching theological method to his thought, no consistent theological
form or structure. He is not a systematic theologian in any conventional
sense of the term. Nevertheless, the absences of clear method, system,
and structure are not necessarily indications of inherent weaknesses in
Balthasar’s thought. Rather, they negatively indicate a distinct theological
paradigm—though one blessedly subversive of rigidity—ordered around
plurality, poetics, and prayer. It is this paradigm that is perhaps Balthasar’s
most important contribution to theology today, as it leads us to roads
beyond Balthasar himself.
The Plurality of Theology
The mystery of God, revealed to us in Christ, is never exhausted; therefore, rather than producing hesitant silence or conceptual minimalism,
it offers itself to endless theological articulation. It is one of the important features of Balthasar’s thought that he considers theology irreducibly
pluralistic. In Balthasar’s telling, the theological tradition resembles the
Conclusion 169
star-strewn sky: disparate points of light generated by “new and original
perceptions” of “the midpoint beyond history,” Christ.25 Even in the New
Testament, we are left only with fragments of a possible theology. However, it is precisely this fragmentary character of theology and its written
sources that opens up the possibility of theological creativity.
We realize that the fragmentary theology of the New Testament
reverberates with the rushing of a mighty wind that sweeps the
believer out into the ever-wider horizons of an ever-greater truth.
Indeed, the fragments we have been given suddenly begin to look
much more valuable than any “closed” system, which only a limited
mind could find appealing. Systema means standing together: think
of the shining points, separated by swatches of darkness, that form
a constellation in the night sky. And yet, since every point can refer
to thousands of others, it also gives us the freedom for endless
combination.26
The fragmented character of the original testimony to God’s revelation,
the persistence of this fragmentation in the manifold theological luminaries, and thus the possibility of endless systema, are the signs of the
invasion of the infinite, incomprehensible God into finite intellects and
categories. The multiplicity of theology attests to the divine fullness of
Jesus Christ.27
The theologian is never presented with a final form of theology. All
“towering theological buildings” are “no more than a start, an attempt,
an approximation.”28 The divine super-Word, revealed in the un-Word of
death, precludes both theological closure and any linear development of
theology.29 But it also means that our theologies can share in the character
of Balthasar’s own: “fundamentally daring and experimental, structurally
hospitable to expressly nontheological categories, noncanonical sources,
and modes of speculative thinking that probe . . . but do not exceed the
elastic boundaries of tradition.”30 And when we do study that tradition,
the collective “consciousness” or “memory” of the Body of Christ, “our
attention . . . cannot really be backward-looking: rather it must be a conversation with thinkers and men of prayer in the ever-present communion of saints. For it is the communion of saints, gathered together above
time in the Holy Spirit, which is immersed in the mystery of God in
170 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Jesus Christ—which is of all times.”31 It is not primarily the limitations of
earthly vision that make reaching anything like consensus or solutions to
our problems seem impossible. Rather, it is because of the real but not yet
clear vision we have of the infinite God revealed in Christ. “The human
life in which God’s Word was flesh must be capable of being interpreted
to an extent that is immeasurable, indeed infinite.”32 Even the eschaton
will be filled, therefore, in unending creativity, creativity that will then be
entirely theological.33 “The one miracle,” of the infinite God’s revelation
in finitude and the elevation of finitude into the infinite, will always spur
“new and different” attestations, which, “even in eternity, will not together
form a surveyable system.”34 As Cyril O’Regan has argued, the endlessness of the theological task is an important marker indicating Balthasar’s
thorough anti-Gnosticism, including the modern Gnosticism of Hegel
and his followers. For Balthasar, the limits of human knowing plunged
into the “excess of the infinite divine,” preclude any final, “epic” metanarrative, in which God and the whole of human history (individual and
collective) can be summarized.35 Even as Balthasar’s trinitarian vividness
has led to the charges of Gnosticism, this very feature of his thought as
analyzed here is the ultimate site of an ever-greater mystery, a mystery
that rebounds and inflects our life in the world as well. It is no accident
that, despite the charge that Balthasar adopts various God’s-eye views, he
refuses a God’s-eye view of the destiny of human persons.
Theology and Prayer
The plurality inherent in theology does not indicate theological anarchism, but does shift the burden of unity away from the content and
form of various theologies to the unity of theology’s object, Christ, and
the underlying theological “method,” prayer. Put otherwise, the higher
harmony of theology is not attained in ever-more refined propositions, or
ever more expansive systems, but in the ascetic discipline of prayer. It is
prayer that opens the theologian to the truth of God revealed in Christ,
and therefore theology is measured by and oriented to prayer.36 Theology
ought to be “kneeling,” and the “flame” of prayer “must burn through the
dispassionateness of speculation.”37 Even the most rationally rigorous
forms of theology are only preliminaries for “praying theology.”38 This is
because theology takes place in the Church’s prayerful “dialogue” with
Conclusion 171
Christ. Balthasar explains that “[theology] must . . . be seen as a meditative act of homage to the Lord of the Church, precisely to the extent that
theology does not allow itself to be restricted to a merely practical function aimed at producing certain results. . . . The attainment of the greatest
possible clarity in its conceptual distinctions as well as the greatest possible depth of intuition is for theology an end in itself, beyond any practical intentions and obligations relating to the Church’s proclamation; it
is an act of adoration before Christ in the name of the Bride-Church.”39
Theology is, therefore, the adoration of God in the intellect. Andrew Prevot
has recently argued that this “Balthasarian” vision of theology as “thinking
prayer,” when appropriately critiqued, opens wide avenues for responding to the various crises of modernity—secularity, nihilist metaphysics,
and structural violence.40 Far from suggesting a purely insular dimension
of Christian praxis, embracing prayer offers new life for Christian theory
and praxis in a world reeling from the perceived absence of God. Prayer
not only inspires Christian thought but affords a foundation for social,
political, and economic action as well.
If this book has anything to add to Prevot’s argument, it is only to
show that the grounding of theology in prayer is a product of its status as
the speech of the deified. It is, in other words, “thinking prayer,” or “the
adoration, the doxology, of God in the intellect,” by virtue of the trinitarian
claim that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit engage in intratrinitarian
prayer, adoration, and doxology, and it is this primal reality in which the
theologian participates through the Son and Spirit’s joint work. “Kneeling theology” is therefore the fitting product not of the human supplicant,
who cannot possibly comprehend the infinite God, but of the child of the
Father: both the only-begotten, incarnate Son and the adopted believer.
As Balthasar argues, “Like everything else that comes to man through
God’s self-revelation in Christ . . . prayer is ultimately rooted in God
himself and in his triune exchange of life. Beyond all purely creaturely
motives and needs, Christian prayer is a participation in the inner life
and prayer of the Divinity, which is revealed, prepared and accomplished
in the world by Jesus Christ our Lord and by him made available to us to
take part in it.”41 Prayer provides for us a share in the “subjective relationship of the incarnate Son with his heavenly Father in the Holy Spirit.”42
Christian prayer, worship, and adoration thus make possible the “connatu
rality” with God from which theology can “seek understanding.” But, as
172 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Balthasar reminds us, this deified understanding is of the ever-greater
mystery of the divine persons. Our elevation as sons and daughters does
not lead to a final static vision but to the endless learned ignorance within
triune glorification.
This description has several important consequences for the practical work of doing theology. First and foremost, it requires the theologian
to be more firmly rooted in the liturgical life of the church.43 Narrowly,
this liturgical rootedness is the concrete means by which prayer measures
theology. Whether an idea or reality is appropriate for the public liturgy
of the church determines whether it is suitable material for theological
reflection. That is not to suggest that the liturgy stands above theological criticism, but it does suggest that the theologian cannot see herself
as somehow standing apart from the assembly. More broadly, Balthasar
argues that, since all theology ought to become the theology of prayer, the
liturgy is in fact a privileged site of theologizing. The prayers and hymns
of liturgy are theological works.44 Indeed, as a part of “man’s response to
God’s total revelation,” which “seeks to go beyond a verbal theology, to
the widest possible realm of comprehensive glorification,” theology has
porous boundaries with all the arts.45 Poetry, literature, visual art, and
architecture are all possible material of theological criticism and expression. It is for this reason that Balthasar’s own theology so often trembles
at the edge of prayer and poetry.46 Moreover, these possible expressions
of glorification also include the lives of holy men and women. As Spirit-
filled interpreters of revelation in life itself, “their sheer existence proves to
be a theological manifestation that contains the most fruitful and opportune doctrine.”47 In a “Balthasarian” theological paradigm, prayer, art,
hagiography, and speculative, “scholastic” theology all interpenetrate.48
The Play of Theology
This is not to suggest that no “rules” determine theology. Balthasar is clear
that doctrine remains as an important guidepost, protecting the mystery
of God from prying minds. Rather, it is to suggest that because “the subject of theology is the absolute trinitarian love of God, which discloses
itself and offers itself in Jesus Christ, which disarms by its humility and
simplicity every ‘stronghold’ of would-be mastering thought that ‘rises up’
(2 Cor 10:5),” theology must accept its senselessness.49 “Jesus opposes the
Conclusion 173
despised child to that which thought attempts to devise as the ‘greatest’
(Mk 9:34), and the way that leads to Jesus and to God who sends him
is the acceptance of this ‘least one’ ‘in my name.’ Thus the simplicity of
God ‘judges’ all human thoughts that strive upward above themselves to
attain the utmost, and requires of them something that they can accomplish only in self-denial: ‘to know the love of Christ which surpasses all
knowledge’ (Eph 3:19).”50 In the very doing of theology our “would-be
mastery” of God, our pursuit of certainties or conclusive formulae comes
to naught, it is ultimately “senseless,” “useless,” “futile” from the perspective of the world. But it is so because it participates in what Balthasar
describes as “the uselessness and futility, the uncalculating and incalculable (hence ‘unprofitable’) nature of eternal love in Christ.”51 Theology’s
senseless attempt to speak of the ineffable triune God, “to know the love
which surpasses all knowledge,” mirrors and is made possible by the senselessness of the Eucharist; the extravagance of the Incarnation, death, and
resurrection of Christ; and the groundlessness of triune love. Mirroring,
participating in the love of God, theology is not a discourse of mastery
and control, but of powerlessness. It is precisely in its apparent weakness
and “failures” that theology displays its divine root.
To say that theology is senseless is not, therefore, to assign it to obscurity. Whatever the impressions, Balthasar’s case is not simply a naïve preference for spirituality, poetry, or vague pluralism in contrast to rigorous
metaphysical or analytic thought that aims at solid conclusions.52 As has
been demonstrated, at least in trinitarian theology, Balthasar’s theology is
carefully, purposefully, and comprehensively constructed, even as it carefully, purposefully, and comprehensively defies a final, unified depiction
of the Trinity. Moreover, as Rowan Williams’s work in theology and linguistics shows, language itself is marked by “a huge amount of apparently
superfluous untidiness and eccentricity. Instead of moving calmly toward
a maximally clear and economical depiction of the environment, our language produces wild and strange symbolisms, formal and ritual ways of
talking (not just in religion), a passion for exploring new perspectives
through metaphor and so on.”53 This tendency of even the most commonplace communication indicates, for Williams, a practice of linguistic
shock, of signaling that reality is not just as we might think, that we are
not just as we might imagine.54 The poetic, plurastic impulse displayed
in Balthasar’s verbose theology; its use of metaphor and paradox; and its
174 The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
carefully constructed reasoning through concepts of being, relation, or
person that eventually only pull the carpet out from under the reader in
a whole new line of thought all indicate this “‘extremity’ in language,” or
“excessive speech.” The linguistic “natural theology” of Williams is elevated in Balthasar’s confession of the ever-greater strangeness of God,
a strangeness so infinite that even the terms of difference and similarity
cease to mean. Our often tired trinitarian discourse, our arrangement of
models and types, our surveys of this and that trinitarian thinker are all
shocked into the awareness that here we speak of that which we do not,
and cannot, comprehend. This shock can then reverberate into other
theological disciplines. And because this strange God is “him in whom
we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), we can be shocked
out of our other complacencies in the world as well.
But what then can be said about the work of theology? By denying the possibility in this life or the next of its cessation, by denying the
possibility of a single, perfect theological perspective, by tying theology
to prayer and poetry, and relishing its unconquerable plurality, Balthasar
forces us to reconsider the kind of activity theology is. Theology, Balthasar
says, is the following of the Word Incarnate.55 But, the Word leads us to
a wilderness our theological work cannot and will never master. What
is it if it produces no clear conclusions, no certainties, but rather ever-
greater incomprehensibility? Perhaps theology is nothing but the intellectual playing of the children of God, to his ever-greater glory.
Notes
I n t r o d uct i o n
1. Edward T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar (New York: Continuum, 1994), 2. See Oakes’s introduction for an excellent summary of Balthasar’s early intellectual development and sense of isolation.
2. Hans Urs von Balthasar, “An Introduction: Hans Urs von Balthasar; 1945,”
in MWR, 11.
3. Oakes, Pattern, 4.
4. Pius XII, Humani Generis, 26, http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en
/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis.html.
5. Pius XII, Humani Generis, 18, 32.
6. De Lubac notes that Balthasar was under suspicion for doctrinal error at
least as early as 1946. He writes, “The offprint of this article [a review of de Lubac’s
Corpus Mysticum] reached me in Rome (sent on from Lyons) on September 29,
1946. The same day, I learned that a formal denunciation had been made against
Fathers de Montchueil, Fessard and Danielou; a visitor, Father Lang S.J., came to
complain to me about the doctrinal errors of Father von Balthasar.” Henri de Lubac,
At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circumstances That Occasioned His Writings (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 194, appendix 2.
7. Fergus Kerr, Twentieth-Century Catholic Theologians: From Neo-scholasticism
to Nuptial Mystery (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 122. As indicated by Kerr, Balthasar’s
relationship with Rahner extended at least as far back as the late-1930s, when the
two produced an outline of a revised treatise on Catholic dogmatic theology. Karl
Rahner, “A Scheme for a Treatise of Dogmatic Theology” in TI1. Though it was published under Rahner’s name, according to Kerr, Rahner held that “it was no longer
possible to distinguish his part from Balthasar’s.”
8. The first three German volumes correspond to the first five volumes in
English translation.
9. Fergus Kerr, “Foreword: Assessing This ‘Giddy Synthesis,’” in Balthasar at
the End of Modernity, ed. Lucy Gardner, David Moss, Ben Quash, and Graham
Ward (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 1999), 3.
175
176 Notes to Pages 3–7
10. Kerr, “Foreword,” 3.
11. Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Council of the Holy Spirit,” in Creator Spirit,
vol. 3 of ET, 264.
12. Many of these texts have subsequently been retranslated and published
under different titles. For information on Balthasar’s bibliography up to 1990, see
his Bibliographie: 1925–1990 (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1990). Notably, Razing
the Bastions did not appear in English until 1993.
13. Thomas O’Meara, “Of Art and Theology: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Systems,” Theological Studies 42, no. 2 ( June 1981): 272.
14. Lucy Gardner and David Moss, “Something like Time; Something like
the Sexes—An Essay in Reception,” in Balthasar at the End of Modernity, ed. Lucy
Gardner, David Moss, Ben Quash, and Graham Ward (Edinburgh: T and T Clark,
1999), 71–72.
15. Henri de Lubac, Theology in History (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996),
596–97.
16. Joseph Ratzinger, “Homily at the Funeral Liturgy of Hans Urs von
Balthasar,” in Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, ed. David L. Schindler (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 295.
17. See Pitstick’s Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic
Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2007);
and Christ’s Descent into Hell: John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger, and Hans Urs von
Balthasar on Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2016). For the
early critiques of Balthasar’s position and his response, see Hans Urs von Balthasar,
Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”?: With A Short Discourse on Hell (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 16.
18. Karl Rahner, “Zugange zum theologischen Denken,” in Im Gespach, vol.
1, ed. Paul Imhof and Hubert Biallowons (Munich: Kosel, 1982), 245f. Quoted in
Encounters with Karl Rahner: Remembrances of Rahner by Those Who Knew Him, ed.
and trans. Andreas R. Batlogg and Melvin E. Michalski, with Barbara G. Turner
(Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009).
19. John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005), 62–78.
20. See Thomas Dalzell, The Dramatic Encounter of Divine and Human Freedom
in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997); Frederick Bauerschmidt, “Theo-Drama and Political Theology,” Communio: International Catholic
Review 25, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 532–52; and Tina Beattie, New Catholic Feminism: Theology and Theory (London: Routledge, 2006).
21. Karen Kilby, Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), 13.
22. PT, especially 163–69.
23. PT, 165. Quotation from Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eumomius, 2, II 514 A.
24. PT, 168–69.
Notes to Pages 7–11 177
25. CL, 114. Balthasar is quoting from DN, in Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works. The Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. Colm Luibheid (Mahwah, NJ:
Paulist Press, 1987), 13.
26. CL, 99.
27. CL, 216–27.
28. PT, 28.
29. HW, 217.
30. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 286–87, 292.
31. Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 87, 194, 236, 286, 292.
32. TS, 300.
33. TS, 386.
34. TS, 477.
35. Hans Urs von Balthasar, foreword to Adrienne von Speyr, The World of
Prayer, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 9–10. He
repeats this claim over thirty years later in the preface to the second edition of von
Speyr’s Letter to the Ephesians (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983).
36. Razing the Bastions (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 29. Italics in
original.
37. “In Retrospect,” in MWR, 51.
38. TL1, 20.
39. See Karl Rahner, “Der dreifaltige Gott als tranzendenter Urgrund der
Heilsgeschichte,” in Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, ed.
Johannes Feiner and Magnus Löhrer, vol. 2, Die Heilsgeschicht vor Christus (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1967), 378, cited and translated in TL1, 20.
40. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1991). The original, German edition was published in 1988.
41. Balthasar, Unless, 38.
42. Balthasar, Unless, 64.
43. See Kilby, Balthasar, 94–123; and “Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Trinity,”
in The Cambridge Companion to the Trinity, ed. Peter Phan (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2011), 214–20. This is also observed by Cyril O’Regan in his telling of Balthasar’s response to Hegel. See Cyril O’Regan, The Anatomy of Misremembering: Von Balthasar’s Response to Philosophical Modernity, vol. 1, Hegel (New York:
Herder and Herder, 2014), 205–21, 347–66.
44. See Silvia Cichon-Brandmaier, Ökonomische und Immanente Trinität: Ein
Verleich der Konzeptionen Karl Rahners und Hans Urs von Balthasars (Regensburg,
Germany: Friedrich Pustet, 2008); Dalzell, Dramatic Encounter; Jacob H. Friesen
hahn, The Trinity and Theodicy: The Trinitarian Theology of von Balthasar and the
Problem of Evil (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011); Lucy Gardner, David Moss, Ben
Quash, and Graham Ward, ed. Balthasar at the End of Modernity (Edinburgh: T and
T Clark, 1999); Michael Greiner, Drama der Freiheit: Eine Denkformanalyse zu Hans
178 Notes to Pages 12–17
Urs von Balthasars Trinitarischer Soteriologie (Münster: Lit, 2000); Nicholas Healy,
The Eschatology of Hans Urs von Balthasar: Being as Communion (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005); Vincent Holtzer, Le Dieu Trinité dans l’Histoire: Le Différend
Théologique Balthasar-Rahner (Paris: Cerf, 1995); Anne Hunt, The Trinity and the
Paschal Mystery: A Development in Recent Catholic Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997), 57–89; Kilby, “Hans Urs von Balthasar”; Kilby, Balthasar, 94–122;
Thomas Rudolf Krenski, Passio Caritatis: Trinitische Passiologie im Werk Hans Urs von
Balthasars (Einsiedeln, Germany: Johannes Verlag, 1990); Hans Otmar Meuffels,
Einbergung des Menschen in das Mysterium der Dreieinigen Liebe: Eine Trinitarische
Anthropologie nach Hans Urs von Balthasar (Würzburg, Germany: Echter, 1991);
Milbank, Suspended Middle, 74–75; Glenn Morrison, A Theology of Alterity: Levinas, von Balthasar, and Trinitarian Praxis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press,
2013); Gerard F. O’Hanlon, The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Robert A. Pesarchick,
“The Trinitarian Foundation of Human Sexuality as Revealed by Christ According to Hans Urs von Balthasar: The Revelatory Significance of the Male Christ and
the Male Priesthood” (PhD diss., Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, 2000); Pitstick,
Light in Darkness, 115–243; Margaret Turek, Towards a Theology of God the Father:
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theodramatic Approach (New York: Peter Lang, 2001); and
Rowan Williams, “Balthasar and the Trinity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans
Urs von Balthasar, ed. Edward T. Oakes and David Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004).
45. See Kevin Mongrain, The Systematic Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An
Irenaean Retrieval (New York: Crossroad, 2002), 17.
46. Balthasar, GL, 396.
47. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Convergences: To the Source of Christian Mystery,
trans. E. A. Nelson (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 13.
48. See Rowan Williams, The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language
(London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 23.
49. See Balthasar, “Love—A Wilderness,” chapter 13 of HW.
C h a pt e r 1
1. TL2, 125.
2. P, 193.
3. GL1, 122.
4. GL7, 17. See also P, 271; GL7, 15, 107; TD3, 508–9; TD5, 121; and “Truth
and Life,” in ET 3, 270, for some of the many additional examples.
5. TD4, 318–19. See also, The God Question and Modern Man (New York: Seabury Press, 1967), 98–99; P, 271; “Death Is Swallowed Up by Life,” in ET 5, 232.
6. TD4, 324.
Notes to Pages 17–22 179
7. “The Unknown God,” in Elucidations, trans. John Riches (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1998), 43.
8. This is how contemporary North American feminist theologian Elizabeth
Johnson aptly describes analogical speech in She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 2007), 113.
9. HW, 205–7.
10. HW, 207.
11. Gerard F. O’Hanlon, The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs
von Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 112.
12. Kilby, Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans, 2012), 162.
13. As already noted in the introduction, the term begins is here being used in
an ontological, not epistemological, sense. As we will see, for Balthasar, knowledge
of the immanent Trinity begins with Christ and the Spirit.
14. TL2, 131.
15. Anselm of Cantebury, Monologion, in The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies
and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 60.
16. TL2, 133.
17. TL2, 132, 133.
18. TL2, 133.
19. TL2, 136; Epilogue, trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
2004), 92–93.
20. TL2, 131. Balthasar references Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 39, a. 5: “the
essence does not generate.”
21. TL2, 136.
22. TL2, 135.
23. TD5, 66.
24. TD5, 66–67.
25. TL2, 151. See also TL3, 441.
26. TD5, 507.
27. TL2, 140.
28. GL7, 17; TD5, 407; TL3, 163; “Young until Death,” in ET 5, 224; “Divine
Omnipotence,” in ET 5, 241. See also GL5, 613–28, for the importance of “why-
lessness” in the constitution of the human persons, the cosmos, and metaphysics.
29. TD2, 256.
30. TD2, 256.
31. TL2, 140.
32. TL2, 137. See also “The Word and Silence,” in ET 1, 131: “The word of
Jesus sounds from a place of silence for it to be a word at all. That place is, firstly, the
silence of the Father.” The connection between the “whyless” gratuity of trinitarian
love and divine incomprehensibility will be taken up in chapter five.
33. TL2, 136.
180 Notes to Pages 22–26
34. TL2, 137.
35. TL3, 158.
36. TD4, 323–24.
37. TL2, 148.
38. TD4, 327; TD5, 245.
39. TD4, 327.
40. Quoted in TL3, 158.
41. TD4, 325.
42. TL2, 137.
43. “On the Concept of the Person,” in ET 5, 123–24.
44. TL3, 159. See also, “The Unknown Lying Beyond the Word,” in ET 3, 105:
“In his innermost principle, God is a bottomless spring that is, in that it gives.”
45. Kilby, Balthasar, 104, 105n31.
46. TL3, 120–21. See also 138.
47. TL2, 148.
48. See TD2, 208.
49. TD4, 323.
50. TL2, 135: “But the Father possesses [the Godhead] insofar as he begets
before thinking about it [unvordenklich].” See also TL2, 144; “God’s Speech,” in
ET 5, 361.
51. “Tradition,” in ET 5, 360.
52. TD5, 83.
53. “Tradition,” in ET 5, 361.
54. TL2, 152.
55. TL2, 155.
56. “The Word, Scripture and Tradition,” in ET 1, 19.
57. TL2, 166. See also TD5, 61–65; and “God’s Speech,” in ET 5, 328.
58. TL2, 168.
59. TL2, 168.
60. TD5, 65. See Bonaventure, The Works of Bonaventure: Cardinal, Seraphic
Doctor, and Saint, vol. 5, Collations on the Six Days, III, trans. Jose de Vinck (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1970), 7.
61. Balthasar, Epilogue, 89–90.
62. TL2, 169.
63. TL3, 158.
64. TD4, 326.
65. Balthasar, “Unknown Lying Beyond,” 106. See also Balthasar, Unless You
Become Like This Child (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 44.
66. TD4, 324.
67. TL2, 168. See also TD4, 326; and GL7, 215.
68. TD5, 86.
69. Balthasar, “Young until Death,” 224.
Notes to Pages 26–29 181
70. TD4, 325.
71. The Father, moreover, is grateful for the Son’s consent. See TD5, 87.
72. TL2, 153.
73. For Balthasar’s reading of the filioque controversy, see “On the Filioque,” in
TL3, 207–18. Matthew Sutton includes a discussion of Balthasar’s presentation of
trinitarian taxis in the context of ecumenical discussions in “A Compelling Trinitarian Taxonomy: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of the Trinitarian Inversion and
Reversion,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 14, no. 2 (April 2012): 161–
76. Sutton’s interest is primarily the supposed shifts that occur in the trinitarian relations as a result of the economic kenosis and exaltation of the Son.
74. TL3, 217.
75. TL3, 218.
76. TL3, 217.
77. TL3, 161.
78. TL3, 140–41, 160.
79. TD4, 324.
80. TD4, 326.
81. “The Holy Spirit as Love,” in ET 3, 126. Despite the reference to Mühlen, Balthasar nevertheless makes clear that he is not advancing Mühlen’s thesis
that the Spirit is “a Person in two Persons” and a “we-thou” relation. It might be said
that Balthasar rejects Mühlen’s position because it attempts to synthesize the two
irreducible aspects of the Spirit. What is important for understanding Balthasar’s
trinitarian method is that he rejects Mühlen’s notion that the Spirit is a we-thou
relation, because the Son does not have an I-thou relationship with him in the economy. The Son speaks of the Spirit but never to the Spirit. The Son’s thou is always the
Father. See TL3, 155, 174, and 288.
82. TD4, 326. Emphasis added. “The mystery that is disclosed to the world
signifies in its core that the absolute Being is in itself love: creative love (Father), love
that owes itself (Son), exchange of love (Spirit)” (ET 3, 372).
83. TL3, 162.
84. TL3, 115. See also Balthasar, “Holy Spirit as Love,” 127.
85. TL3, 31.
86. Kilby, Balthasar, 104n30.
87. “Unknown Lying Beyond,” ET 3, 106–7.
88. “Unknown Lying Beyond,” 107.
89. TL3, 159.
90. TL3, 159.
91. TL2, 62.
92. “Unknown Lying Beyond,” ET 3, 107.
93. See TS, 145; Balthasar, Unless You Become.
94. TL3, 159–60; TD5, 78, 82.
95. “Unknown Lying Beyond,” 107.
182 Notes to Pages 30–34
96. See GL7, 214; and MP, viii.
97. GL7, 231.
98. TD4, 324.
99. GL7, 215.
100. Balthasar, “God’s Speech,” 333.
101. TL2, 148.
102. TD4, 325–26.
103. Balthasar, Unless You Become, 44.
104. TD4, 324, 327; TD5, 84, 245, 251. Going back all the way to his work on
Maximus, Balthasar rejected the “speciously deep thought” “that love without pain
and guilt remains simply a joke, a game” (CL, 130). Compared to the Passion of the
Son, Balthasar claims, “it is just as certain that God does not suffer in himself in eternal life” (“Unknown Lying Beyond,” 115). In Theo-Drama, Balthasar makes a similar
point that we cannot say there is suffering in God, but “there is something that can
develop into suffering” in the economy to save a sinful world (TD4, 327–28).
105. TL3, 441.
106. Edward T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar (New York: Continuum, 1994), 290. Oakes is quoting from Balthasar,
“Spirit and Institution,” in ET, 232.
107. Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Person, Kenosis and Abuse: Hans Urs von
Balthasar and Feminist Theologies in Conversation,” Modern Theology 19, no. 1
(2003): 46–48.
108. Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of
Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 123.
109. See TD2, 256; and TL2, 137.
110. TL3, 227. See also TL3, 294, 300. Balthasar specifically rejects Mühlen’s assertion that “the Spirit’s descent into man’s sinful will is even more profound
than the kenosis of the Son,” but the claim is not limited to this alone. See Heri
bert Mühlen, Una Mystica Persona: Die Kirche als das Mysterium der Identität des
Heiligen Geistes in Christus und den Christen; Eine Person in vielen Personen (Munich:
F. Schöning, 1964), 406.
111. TD4, 331.
112. TL3, 300. Emphasis added.
113. Balthasar, Epilogue, 90.
114. Papanikolaou (“Person, Kenosis and Abuse,” 47), in particular, approaches
this insight: “Kenosis refers to this double movement within the life of God that constitutes the reciprocal relations between the persons of the Trinity. Each of the persons
of the Trinity is constituted through the free self-giving of the one toward the other.”
A single trinitarian kenosis also makes comprehensible Balthasar’s insistence that the
economic kenosis of the Son manifests the intratrinitarian kenosis of the Father.
115. Papanikolaou, “Person, Kenosis and Abuse,” 47.
116. MP, 29.
Notes to Pages 34–39 183
117. “Characteristics of Christianity,” in ET 1, 171.
118. “The Dignity of Women,” in ET 5, 172; TD5, 85–87.
119. TD5, 91.
120. TD5, 86.
121. TD5, 91.
122. TD4, 326. See also TD4, 330–31; and “Divine Omnipotence,” in ET 5.
123. “The ‘Beatitudes’ and Human Rights,” in ET 5, 448. See also TD2, 256–
57; and TL2, 141.
124. TD2, 256–57.
125. TL2, 141.
126. PT, 28
127. PT, 166. It is possible that Balthasar is being merely descriptive of
Gregory’s position and does not himself hold such a view. However, Balthasar gives
no indication that he disagrees with Gregory, or that he even has some reservations
about Gregory ruling out the use of a spatial analogy.
128. KB, 126, 286, 292.
129. TD5, 94.
130. TD4, 323.
131. TD4, 324.
132. TD4, 327. This denial sets Balthasar apart from Sergius Bulgakov, who
otherwise is the principal source for the concept of intratrinitarian kenosis. We will
return to this in the next chapter.
133. TD5, 94. See also TL3, 137: “We can only speak of this infinite distance
between them if at the same time we observe the correlative absolute closeness they
enjoy in their essence.”
134. Rowan Williams, “Balthasar and the Trinity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. Edward T. Oakes and David Moss (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 41.
135. Kilby, Balthasar, 109–10.
136. Kilby, Balthasar, 110.
137. Kilby, Balthasar, 98.
138. TL3, 150.
139. TD2, 258.
140. TD5, 94.
141. TD5, 91–94.
142. Williams, “Balthasar and the Trinity,” 41.
143. TD2, 257; see also TD5, 93–94.
144. GL3, 142: “The distance of person in God in the womb of substantial
unity is the presupposition of all love, both eternal and created.”
145. HW, 217.
146. Balthasar, Unless You Become, 35–36. See also “The Eternal Child,” in
ET 5, 216; and “Young until Death,” in ET 5, 224.
184 Notes to Pages 39–46
147. Balthasar, “Young until Death,” 222.
148. TD5, 81–82. See also TL2, 82; and TD2, 261.
149. “Immediacy to God,” in ET 3, 345; GL1, 142; GL7, 248; Balthasar,
“Characteristics of Christianity,” in ET 1, 168–69.
150. Balthasar, “Truth and Life,” 310–11.
151. TD5, 95.
152. TL2, 147–48.
153. TL3, 159. See also “Distinctively Christian Prayer,” in ET 5, 302: “Prayer
within the triune God partakes of the whole fullness of the intra-trinitarian relations. It includes the incomprehensible, supereminent archetypes not only of petition but also of adoration, praise, and thanks.”
154. TL2, 125–26. See also GL1, 316; and “Distinctively Christian Prayer,” in
ET 5, 301.
155. TL2, 125–26; see also TL3, 75.
156. TL3, 159.
157. TD5, 96.
158. Adrienne von Speyr, The World of Prayer, trans. Graham Harrison (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 209. Quoted in TD5, 96.
159. TL3, 127. The reference is to Gregory of Nyssa’s Against the Macedonians
(Balthasar is citing Patrologia Graeca 45, 1329b, in PT ).
160. Balthasar, Unless You Become, 46.
161. TD2, 258. Emphasis added.
162. TD2, 258–59.
163. TD4, 327.
164. TD2, 258.
165. TL3, 441.
166. “Characteristics of Christianity,” in ET 1, 169.
167. TD5, 98; “The Place of Theology,” in ET 1, 155.
168. GL1, 592.
169. ST I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 3. Quoted in TL2, 186.
170. TL2, 180–81.
C h a pt e r 2
1. See Stephen D. Wigley, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Critical Engagement (London: T and T Clark, 2007); Dominic Robinson, Understanding the “ Imago Dei”: The Thought of Barth, von Balthasar and Moltmann (Burlington,
VT: Ashgate, 2011), 98–119; D. Stephen Long, Saving Karl Barth: Hans Urs von
Balthasar’s Preoccupation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014); Edward T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York: Continuum,
1994), 15–132; Alois M. Haas, “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s ‘Apocalypse of the German Soul’: At the Intersection of German Literature, Philosophy, and Theology,” in
Notes to Pages 46–50 185
Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, ed. David L. Schindler (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1991); Charles Kannengiesser, “Listening to the Fathers,” in Hans
Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, ed. David L. Schindler (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991); and Jacques Servais, “Balthasar as Interpreter of the Catholic Tradition,” in Love Alone Is Credible: Hans Urs von Balthasar as Interpreter of the Catholic
Tradition, ed. David L. Schindler (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2008).
2. Cyril O’Regan, The Anatomy of Misremembering: Von Balthasar’s Response
to Philosophical Modernity, vol. 1, Hegel (New York: Crossroad, 2014). Volume 2 on
Heidegger is forthcoming.
3. Leo XIII, “Aeternis Patris: Encyclical on the Restoration of Christian Philosophy,” The Holy See, 26, http://w2.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docu
ments/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris.html. Balthasar (KB, 262) understood
his rejection of neo-scholastic form and narrative to be validated by the very popes
who had promoted Thomas: “When recent popes expressly recommended [Thomas]
as the dux studiorum, they were not canonizing his theological system or holding it
up as the only valid theology for the Church in its every detail. Even Pope Leo XIII
bestowed on numberless Greek Fathers the sobriquet ‘Doctor of the Church’—which
surely must mean something for theology.”
4. GL2, 20.
5. See “Tradition” and “The Plurality of Theology,” in ET 5; Balthasar, Truth
Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987); and
“Another Ten Years,” in MWR, 105.
6. For an alternative and complementary study of the genealogy of Balthasar’s
concept of distance, see Christopher Hadley, “The All-Embracing Frame: Distance
in the Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar” (PhD diss, Marquette University, 2015).
7. TL2, 136. See also, “Characteristics of Christianity,” in ET 1, 168–69; and
Balthasar, Credo: Meditations on the Apostles’ Creed, trans. David Kipp (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2000), 30–31.
8. Karen Kilby, Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), 98.
9. Katy Leamy, The Holy Trinity: Hans Urs von Balthasar and His Sources
(Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2015). Leamy’s thesis is that Balthasar’s trinitarian theology modifies the kenotic theology of Sergius Bulgakov in light of Thomas Aquinas.
10. Balthasar, Razing the Bastions (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 29.
11. Balthasar, Razing the Bastions, 29.
12. Russell Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought from Aquinas to Ockham
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 6–7.
13. Thomas Aquinas, I Sent. d. 2, q.1, a.5. Quoted in Friedman, Medieval Trini
tarian Thought, 13.
14. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, 16. Friedman describes this
approach as “emanational,” but I have chosen to use the term processional because it
more clearly reflects Balthasar’s vocabulary.
186 Notes to Pages 50–55
15. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, 16.
16. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, trans. Ruben Angelici (Eugene, OR:
Cascade Books, 2011), IV.22.
17. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, IV.21.
18. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, IV.12.
19. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, trans. Jose de Vinck, in The Works of Bonaventure, vol. 2 (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1962), I.2, ii.
20. ST I, q. 28. a. 4.
21. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, 19.
22. Thomas Aquinas, I Sent d. 26, q. 2, a. 2, solutio. As translated in Friedman,
Medieval Trinitarian Thought, 22.
23. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, 22.
24. Thomas Aquinas, De Potentiae, q. 10, a 3. Quoted in Balthasar, TL2, 130.
This passage demonstrates Thomas’s fully developed response to the “Bonaventurean”
critique. Thomas continues: “On the other hand, the relation that constitutes the person produced, even insofar as it constitutes the person, is logically posterior to the
procession: sonship is logically posterior to being born, and this is because the proceeding person is the goal at which the procession aims.” See also TL3, 161.
25. Balthasar, Credo, 30–31. See also TL2, 136; “The Unknown Lying Beyond
the Word,” in ET 3, 105; and GL2, 348.
26. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, V.16.
27. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, V.17.
28. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, V.19.
29. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, V.18.
30. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, V.19.
31. Balthasar, “Summa Summarum,” in ET 3, 372–73.
32. TL3, 441.
33. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, 26–27.
34. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, 29.
35. Bonaventure, Breviloquium, 3.7; Bonaventure, The Works of St. Bonaventure,
vol. 8, Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, trans. Zachary Hayes (St.
Bonaventure: St. Bonaventure University Press, 2000), 8.
36. Jan van Ruusbroec, Vanden XII Beghinen, 2a, 568–612, trans. and quoted by
Rik van Nieuwenhove, in Jan van Ruusbroec, Mystical Theologian of the Trinity (Notre
Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), 83. See Balthasar, TD5, 458.
37. TD4, 323. See also TL2, 131.
38. TL2, 151–52.
39. “Unknown Lying Beyond,” in ET 3, 105.
40. Von Speyr, The World of Prayer, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1985), 66. See TD5, 94.
41. Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1991), 44.
42. Balthasar, Credo, 30.
Notes to Pages 55–59 187
43. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Thought, 40–45.
44. TL3, 163.
45. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, III.2.
46. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, III.3.
47. Richard establishes that the other must be divine in On the Trinity, III.6–7.
48. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, III.2, III.7.
49. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, III.11.
50. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, III.19.
51. Aquinas, ST I.34.
52. Jan van Ruusbroec, Vanden XII Beghinen, 2a 568–612, trans. and quoted by
Nieuwenhove, in Jan van Ruusbroec, 83.
53. Jan van Ruusbroec, Werken, vol. 1, Dat Rijcke der Ghelieven: Die Gheestelike
Brulocht, ed. J. B. Puockens and L. Reypens, 2nd ed. (Mechelen, Belgium: Het Kompas, 1932; Tielt, Belgium: Lannoo, 1944), I.60. Citations refer to the Lannoo edition.
54. Nieuwenhove, Jan van Ruusbroec, 84.
55. Ruusbroec, Vanden XII Beghinen, 2b, 39–58, in Nieuwenhove, Jan van
Ruusbroec, 95.
56. See Nieuwenhove, Jan van Ruusbroec, 82, 84.
57. Balthasar, “God Is ‘Being With,’” in You Crown the Year with Your Goodness: Radio Sermons (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 143. See also TL3, 161.
Balthasar refers to the reciprocal love of Father and Son as a “relationis opposition”
in TL2, 140.
58. TD4, 326.
59. TL3, 160–61.
60. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, III.2.
61. Bonaventure, The Soul’s Journey into God. Classics of Western Spirituality
(New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 6.2. See also Zachary Hayes, introduction to Disputed Questions on the Mystery of the Trinity, by Bonaventure, vol. 3 of The Works of
St. Bonaventure, trans. Zachary Hayes (St. Bonaventure: St. Bonaventure University
Press, 2000), 34–35.
62. Nieuwenhove, Jan van Ruusbroec, 84.
63. TD2, 126.
64. John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005), 70, 74.
65. TL2, 176–77. See Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas
and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 124.
66. Balthasar, Epilogue, trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
2004), 85.
67. Balthasar, Epilogue, 93.
68. This impulse is evident in the conclusion to Balthasar’s two volumes on
metaphysics, GL5, 613–56. See also Balthasar, Epilogue, 47–50; and TL2, 178: “Love
can thus be considered the supreme mode, and therein the ‘truth,’ of being, without,
for all that, having to be transported beyond truth and being. By the same token,
188 Notes to Pages 59–61
whether we think philosophically in terms of worldly being or theologically in terms
of the divine being, there is one thing we cannot do: ascribe the transcendentals simply to a divine being devoid of distinction. On the contrary, we have no choice but to
anchor them in the process of the hypostases.”
69. TL2, 138–49. Balthasar draws this priority of the Trinity over the divine
attributes from Barth’s CD2,1. Barth commented that he recalls Balthasar carrying
this volume around “like a cat carrying a kitten.” See Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His
Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1976), 302.
70. See Anne Hunt, The Trinity and the Paschal Mystery: A Development in
Recent Catholic Theology (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1997); Kilby, Balthasar,
99–104, 115–22; Leamy, Holy Trinity; Alyssa Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs
von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans, 2007); Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Person, Kenosis and Abuse:
Hans Urs von Balthasar and Feminist Theologies in Conversation,” Modern Theology
19, no 1 (2003): 41–65.
71. The already-noted work by Katy Leamy is an exception. For an excellent
study on Balthasar’s relationship to Russian thinkers, including but not limited to
Bulgakov, see also Jennifer Newsome Martin, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought (Notre Dame, IN: The University of
Notre Dame Press, 2015).
72. GL7, 213–14; TD2, 264n27; TD4, 323; TL2, 177; MP, 35.
73. MP, 35; GL7, 213. Antoine Arjakovsky has argued that Balthasar knew
Bulgakov only secondhand and that this was the likely source of his prejudice
regarding sophiology. However, a careful examination of Balthasar’s references to
Bulgakov shows clearly that he was familiar with, at a minimum, Bulgakov’s Lamb of
God, The Comforter, and The Orthodox Church. Antoine Arjakovsky, “The Sophiology
of Father Sergius Bulgakov and Contemporary Western Theology,” St. Vladimir’s
Theological Quarterly 49, nos. 1–2 (2005): 228n24.
74. Sergius Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans, 2008), 97.
75. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 98.
76. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 98.
77. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 99.
78. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 99.
79. Bulgakov, The Comforter, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans, 2004), 65–66.
80. Bulgakov, Comforter, 65–66.
81. Bulgakov, Comforter, 66. Bulgakov is explicit that it is St. Augustine’s formula of the Trinity as Lover, Beloved, and Love Itself that is the inspiration for his
own conceptualization. See also Lamb of God, 99–100.
82. Bulgakov, Comforter, 67. Bulgakov does not directly refer to the Spirit’s
intratrinitarian kenosis but rather uses the term to refer to his role in the economy.
Notes to Pages 62–66 189
However, given the rhetorical consistency between Bulgakov’s language about the
Spirit in comparison with that used about the Father and Son’s kenoses, it is reasonable to conclude that one can speak of an immanent trinitarian kenosis of the Spirit.
83. TD4, 323–24.
84. TD4, 324–25.
85. On the nature of the Spirit’s procession from both Father and Son in
their distinctiveness, see Bulgakov, Comforter, 120–51, especially 125.
86. GL7, 213–14. See also MP, 35.
87. TL2, 177–78.
88. TD4, 323.
89. TD4, 327.
90. TD4, 325.
91. See Kilby, Balthasar, 119–21; and Pitstick, Light in Darkness.
92. TD4, 324.
93. TD4, 327.
94. TD4, 328.
95. CL, 190.
96. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 89.
97. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 89.
98. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 90.
99. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 90.
100. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 90.
101. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 91.
102. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 89.
103. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 94. See also Comforter, 54: “The trinitarity of
the hypostases in the Divine Person results, first of all, from the nature of personal self-consciousness, which is not fully manifested in the self-enclosed, singular I, but postulates thou, he, we, you, i.e., not uni-
hypostatizedness, but
multi-hypostatizedness.”
104. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 94–95.
105. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 101.
106. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 101.
107. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 102.
108. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 103.
109. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 103.
110. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 107. Emphasis added.
111. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 113. Emphasis in text. See also Comforter, 186.
112. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 117: “She is the body of God (or the ‘garment’ of
Divinity).”
113. Bulgakov, Lamb of God, 112.
114. Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad,
2010), 57. See also 109–18.
190 Notes to Pages 66–70
115. Trinity, 76n30. Rahner refers in his argument to Karl Barth’s similar
interpretation of hypostasis/person as “mode of being” (110). As we will see in the
next section, despite their having similar vocabularies, Barth differs from Rahner in
that his immanent trinitarian vision proceeds in a fundamentally different direction.
116. See William of St. Thierry, Song of Songs, 12, trans. Denys Turner, in Eros
and Allegory: Medieval Exegesis of the Song of Songs, by Denys Turner (Kalamazoo,
MI: Cistercian, 1995).
117. Ruben Angelici, introduction and commentary to On the Trinity, by
Richard of St. Victor, 43. See Augustine, De Trinitate, book 8, chap. 5.
118. Quoted in TL2, 40. See also Angelici, introduction and commentary, 43.
119. TD5, 82.
120. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, III.2.
121. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, III.3.
122. Richard of St. Victor, On the Trinity, III.4.
123. TL2, 40. See also “Truth and Life,” in ET 3, 310–11.
124. TL2, 41–42. See also Balthasar, “Einleitung,” in Die Dreieinigkeit (Ein
siedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1980), 21.
125. TL2, 40.
126. TL2, 42.
127. TD3, 526–27.
128. TL2, 42.
129. TL2, 42. See also TD5: “In presenting this approach, Richard is rightly at
pains to exclude all suspicion of tritheism; four of his six books are devoted to the
unity of God’s essence, and the Persons are only ‘modes of procession’ within this
unity.”
130. Balthasar, “Einleitung,” 19–20. On this point, Balthasar earlier describes
Richard as bringing about a kind of synthesis of theological genius of east (in its
emphasis on the divine persons) and west (in its emphasis on the one substance).
131. TL3, 149. This determination of the person as being both from and toward
another should not be confused with Thomas’s understanding of knowing the trinitarian relations as ad aliquid (toward another). Balthasar is here referring to the constitution of the person, while Thomas is referring to the notion of a relation. For Thomas,
the relation can be considered in two ways: in comparison to the divine essence, with
which the relation is identical (i.e., there is nothing distinct between paternity and
divinity, filiation and divinity, or passive spiration and divinity), or in comparison with
another relation. While there is no distinction between the relations and the essence,
in comparison with other relations, they are irreducibly distinct and mutually implicative (paternity is not the same as filiation, and they imply each other).
132. TL2, 62.
133. Balthasar, “Buber, Kierkegaard, Moehler,” Aus der Werkstatt Jakob Hegner
(Köln: Hegner, 1957), 3, 4–5; “Martin Buber und das Christentum,” Wort und Wahrheit 12 (Wien: Herder, 1957), 653–65.
Notes to Pages 70–75 191
134. Balthasar, Martin Buber and Christianity: A Dialogue between Israel and the
Church, trans. Alexander Dru (London: Harvill Press, 1961).
135. TD1, 632–36; TL2, 53–55.
136. Balthasar, “Martin Buber and Christianity,” in The Philosophy of Martin
Buber, ed. Paul Martin Schilpp and Maurice Friedman, Library of Living Philosophers 12 (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967), 341.
137. Balthasar, “Martin Buber and Christianity,” 341.
138. Ludwig Feuerbach, Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, trans. Manfred H. Vogel (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966), 59. Quoted by Martin Buber, in
“What Is Man?,” in Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1947), 147–48. See also Balthasar, “On the Concept of the Person,”
in ET 5, 121–22.
139. Buber, “What is Man?,” 148.
140. Buber, I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, 2nd ed. (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 103.
141. Martin Buber, “Dialogue,” Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor
Smith (Boston: Beacon Press, 1947), 21–22.
142. Buber, “Dialogue,” 23.
143. Buber, “Dialogue,” 29.
144. Buber, “Dialogue,” 24.
145. Buber, “Distance and Relation,” in The Knowledge of Man (London: Allen
and Unwin, 1965), 62.
146. Buber, “Distance and Relation,” 64.
147. Buber, “Distance and Relation,” 70–71.
148. Buber, “Distance and Relation,” 71.
149. Buber, I and Thou, 39.
150. TL2, 54–55.
151. TD2, 257.
152. Buber, “Dialogue,” 30.
153. Buber, I and Thou, 103. See also 75.
154. Buber, I and Thou, 103.
155. Buber, “Postscript,” in I and Thou, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, 2nd ed.
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 136.
156. Buber, “Postscript,” 136.
157. Buber, “Dialogue,” 14.
158. TD1, 633.
159. Buber, “Postscript,” 136–37.
160. Balthasar, “Martin Buber and Christianity,” 357. See also Balthasar,
Martin Buber and Christianity, 114.
161. Balthasar, Martin Buber and Christianity, 114.
162. KB, 260.
163. CD3, pt. 1, 290.
192 Notes to Pages 75–80
164. CD3, pt. 1, 185.
165. See KB, 125–26.
166. KB, 87.
167. CD4, pt. 1, 201.
168. See CD1, pt. 1, 384, 416, 428, 470.
169. KB, 87.
170. George Hunsinger, “Scheiermacher and Barth,” in Evangelical, Catholic,
and Reformed: Doctrinal Essays on Barth and Related Themes (Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans, 2015), 154. In the same volume, see also “Karl Barth on the Trinity,” “The
Trinity after Barth: Moltmann, Pannenberg, Jungel, and Torrance,” and “Election
and Trinity: Twenty-Five Theses on the Theology of Karl Barth (Revised),” as well
as Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutical Proposal (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015). Hunsinger’s Princeton colleague Bruce McCormack reads Barth in a
different manner. According to McCormack, Barth’s theology suggests rather that
God is e ternally determined by his election to create. Bruce McCormack, “Grace and
Being: The Role of God’s Gracious Election in Karl Barth’s Theological Ontology,” in
The Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), 92–110. This is not the place to enter into debates on the
interpretation of Barth. What is clear, regardless of the better reading of Barth, is that
Balthasar reads Barth and appropriates him in a manner in line with Hunsinger.
171. TD3, 509.
172. TD4, 317–28.
173. CD4, pt. 1, 193.
174. CD4, pt. 1, 200–201.
175. See CD4, pt. 1, 204–5.
176. CD3, pt. 1, 183.
177. See, for instance, Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo I.9–10, in The
Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008); and Julian of Norwich, Showings (long text), Classics of Western Spirituality, trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978),
chaps. 53 and 58.
178. Mechtild of Magdeburg, The Flowing Light of the Godhead, Classics of
Western Spirituality, trans. Frank Tobin (New York: Paulist Press, 1998), bk. 3.9.
179. Mechtild of Magdeburg, Flowing Light, bk. 3.9.
180. TD5, 95.
181. “Mechtilds kirchlicher Auftrag,” in Mechtild von Magdeburg, Das Fliessende Licht der Gottheit, Menschen der Kirche 3 (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1955); GL4,
391–92. Balthasar was also involved in the publication of the German translation of
Julian of Norwich’s Showings. See MWR, 68.
182. Balthasar, A First Glance at Adrienne von Speyr (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1981), 13. See also MWR, 19.
183. “In Retrospect,” in MWR, 89.
Notes to Pages 80–88 193
184. Kevin Mongrain, The Systematic Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Irenaean Retrieval (New York: Crossroad, 2002), 12.
185. Mongrain, Systematic Thought, 16.
186. This is not to suggest that Mongrain neglects Balthasar’s trinitarian theology, only that his basic thesis cannot account for either the details of Balthasar’s
immanent trinitarian theology or Balthasar’s career-spanning interest in immanent
trinitarian speculation.
187. For an excellent introduction to von Speyr’s thought, see Matthew Sutton, Heaven Opens: The Trinitarian Mysticism of Adrienne von Speyr (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2014).
188. Adrienne von Speyr, The Word Becomes Flesh: Meditations on John 1–5 (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 25.
189. Von Speyr, World of Prayer, 73, 209.
190. Von Speyr, World of Prayer, 51–52.
191. Von Speyr, World of Prayer, 42. See also Balthasar, TD5, 79.
192. See Balthasar, TD5, 78.
193. Von Speyr, World of Prayer, 39.
194. TD5, 79.
195. Barth is similarly realistic. See George Hunsinger, How to Read Karl
Barth: The Shape of His Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 43–49.
196. Adrienne von Speyr, The Countenance of the Father, trans. David Kipp.
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 13.
197. TD5, 250–56.
198. Von Speyr, Word Becomes Flesh, 42–43; Balthasar, TD5, 251.
199. Von Speyr, Word Becomes Flesh, 43.
200. Glenn Morrison, A Theology of Alterity: Levinas, von Balthasar, and Trinitarian Praxis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2013).
C h a pt e r 3
1. TD3, 508.
2. For the relationship of this claim to Balthasar’s eschatology and the thought
of Thomas Aquinas, see the excellent work by Nicholas Healy, The Eschatology of Hans
Urs von Balthasar: Being as Communion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
3. TD3, 254.
4. For a critique of such circularity, see Kilby, Balthasar, 105–7.
5. TD4, 319.
6. TD3, 508.
7. TD3, 254.
8. For a very limited sense of the now-massive field, see Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung, eds., Partakers of the Divine Nature: The History and
194 Notes to Pages 88–93
Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 2007); Stephen Finlan and Vladimir Kharlamov, ed., Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology, vol. 1 (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2006).
9. Healy’s Eschatology is a notable exception. See note 3 above.
10. One such exception is the historical-theological treatment of the themes of
divinization and incorporation in TL3, 185–90.
11. See GL5, 68.
12. For such a (neo-)Palamite account of theosis, see Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1976). Jeffrey Finch, “Neo-Palamism, Divinizing Grace, and the Breach between
East and West,” in Partakers of Divine Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions, ed. Michael Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung
(Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2007), 242.
13. TL3, 128–29.
14. TL3, 129.
15. TL3, 130.
16. “Characteristics of Christianity,” in ET 1, 162.
17. GL1, 122.
18. TL3, 448.
19. See PT, 163–69; and CL, 99.
20. HW, 214–19.
21. Balthasar, Prayer, 58.
22. GL7, 396.
23. GL7, 311.
24. GL7, 311. See also Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 38; “Young until Death,” in ET 5, 222.
25. For a helpful study of deification in Catholic theology before the Second
Vatican Council, through the representative thinkers Garrigou-Lagrange, Rahner,
and De Lubac, see Adam Cooper, Naturally Human, Supernaturally God: Deification
in Pre-conciliar Catholicism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), especially the first
part on Garrigou-Lagrange.
26. See, for instance, TL3, 448, for Balthasar’s use of Thomas’s position on the
beatific vision.
27. TD5, 428. Balthasar refers to a prominent neo-scholastic treatise on the
indwelling Trinity: Paul Gaultier, De SS: Trinitate in se et in nobis (Rome: Gregoriana,
1953).
28. TD5, 470.
29. See TD5, 433–61; GL5, 69.
30. Quoted in TD5, 439.
31. TD5, 441.
32. TD5, 450.
33. TD5, 455.
Notes to Pages 93–100 195
34. TD5, 459.
35. TS, 476–77.
36. GL7, 106.
37. MWR, 118.
38. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans.
Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 19.
39. Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom, 68. In this context, Moltmann is
speaking specifically of the relation of the Father and the Son. The role of the Holy
Spirit in this common love is left unexplained.
40. Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom, 58–59.
41. For Bulgakov’s full account, see “The Creator and Creation,” in The Bride
of the Lamb, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), 3–123.
42. The Lamb of God, trans. Boris Jakim (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans,
2008), 119.
43. Lamb of God, 119.
44. Lamb of God, 119.
45. Lamb of God, 119.
46. Lamb of God, 120.
47. Bulgakov, Bride of the Lamb, 31.
48. Bride of the Lamb, 31.
49. Bride of the Lamb, 40.
50. Bride of the Lamb, 120.
51. Bride of the Lamb, 120.
52. Bride of the Lamb, 120.
53. See TD4, 321–23.
54. ST I q. 32, a. 1, ad 3. Quoted in TL2, 186.
55. TD4, 326.
56. TD5, 83, 407. See also TD2, 256; and Balthasar, Epilogue, trans. Edward T.
Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 85.
57. GL7, 17.
58. “Divine Omnipotence,” in ET 5, 241.
59. See TD5, 407.
60. TD2, 251.
61. TD3, 509.
62. TD5, 81.
63. Balthasar, “God Is ‘Being With,’” in You Crown the Year with Your Goodness:
Radio Sermons (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 143. See also TL2, 180–81.
64. TD2, 276. The entire section of TD2 titled “Infinite and Finite Freedom”
is on this theme.
65. TD2, 266.
66. TD2, 272.
67. TD2, 262. See also “God’s Speech,” in ET 5, 319.
196 Notes to Pages 100–106
68. See TD4, 331: “This primal kenosis [of the Father in the Trinity] makes
possible all other kenotic movements of God into the world; they are simply its consequences. The first ‘self-limitation’ of the Triune God arises through endowing his
creatures with freedom.”
69. TD2, 262.
70. TD2, 257.
71. TD2, 273.
72. TD4, 323.
73. See TD3, 530.
74. TD2, 262.
75. “The Word, Scripture and Tradition,” in ET 1, 22.
76. See “The Unknown Lying Beyond the Word,” in ET 3, 108; CL, esp. 115–
36; TD2, 266–71; and TL2, 166–67.
77. TD5, 62.
78. TD3, 229n68.
79. “Homo Creatus Est,” in ET 5, 22–23.
80. TD5, 457–58.
81. TD3, 229n68. See also Balthasar, Epilogue, 35.
82. See TD3, 220–29; and “Characteristics of Christianity,” in ET 1, 177–80.
This topic has generated a large and growing body of secondary literature, especially
as it touches on Balthasar’s dialogue with Barth. See Junius C. Johnson, Christ and
Analogy: The Christocentric Metaphysic of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013); George Hunsinger, Reading Barth with Charity: A Hermeneutical
Proposal (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 175–80; Peter Casarella, “Hans
Urs von Balthasar, Erich Przywara’s Analogia Entis, and the Problem of a Catholic
Denkform,” in The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Antichrist or the Wisdom of God?,
ed. Thomas Joseph White (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2011).
83. P, 51.
84. TD3, 256–57.
85. Balthasar, Unless You Become, 60.
86. TD3, 201.
87. “Serenity of the Surrendered Self,” in ET 5, 45.
88. TL2, 312. See also P, 185–86.
89. See GL7, 454–55.
90. TD3, 518–19.
91. TD3, 519.
92. “God’s Speech,” in ET 5, 333.
93. TL2, 125–26.
94. “Distinctively Christian Prayer,” in ET 5, 301.
95. “Characteristics of Christianity,” in ET 1, 164–65.
96. See TD4, 380–81.
97. GL1, 320.
Notes to Pages 106–113 197
98. TL2, 315–16.
99. TD2, 254.
100. “God’s Speech,” in ET 5, 334.
101. TD5, 259–60. Balthasar here references von Speyr’s work, especially her
commentaries on the Gospel of John.
102. Alyssa Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2007),
340. Emphasis in text.
103. See TD5, 250–56.
104. TD4, 333.
105. TD4, 333.
106. TD4, 333.
107. TD4, 332.
108. “Eschatology in Outline,” in ET4, 435.
109. “Divine Omnipotence,” in ET 5, 250.
110. “Divine Omnipotence,” in ET 5, 250.
111. P, 184.
112. TD4, 335.
113. P, 193.
114. Pitstick, Light in Darkness, 340.
115. TD2, 49; TD4, 327, 331.
116. TD5, 246.
117. “The Faith of the Simple Ones,” in ET 3, 74.
118. TD4, 336–37.
119. TD4, 331.
120. Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom, 59.
121. Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom, 60.
122. Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom, 76.
123. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation
and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 192.
124. Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom, 81.
125. Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom, 160.
126. Moltmann, Crucified God, 193.
127. TD4, 323.
128. TD4, 362.
129. MP, 208.
130. TL2, 354.
131. MP, 175.
132. TD4, 336.
133. TD5, 268; MP, 175.
134. MP, 173. See also TD5, 267–68.
198 Notes to Pages 113–120
135. MP, 173–74. See also TD5, 267.
136. Quoted in TD5, 267.
137. “Eschatology in Outline,” in ET4, 436.
138. TD4, 495.
139. TD5, 315.
140. TD5, 283.
141. “Eschatology in Outline,” in ET4, 434.
142. “Kenosis of the Church?,” in ET 4, 138.
143. HW, 180–81.
144. “The Descent into Hell,” in ET 4, 413.
145. “Eschatology in Outline,” in ET4, 436.
146. TD4, 361–62.
147. De Resurrectione, tr 2, q 9, a 3. Quoted in TD5, 377–78.
148. TD5, 395.
149. TD5, 395, 423.
150. See TL3, 165–219.
151. John Milbank, The Suspended Middle: Henri de Lubac and the Debate concerning the Supernatural (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005), 75.
152. TD3, 187.
153. TD3, 187.
154. TD3, 187.
155. TD3, 521.
156. TD3, 522.
157. TD3, 522. See also TD3, 188.
158. TD3, 189.
159. Balthasar, “God Is Open to Us,” in You Crown the Year, 138. “The Holy
Spirit as Love,” in ET 3, 131.
160. “Eschatology in Outline,” in ET4, 437.
161. TL3, 175–76, 204.
162. Balthasar, Prayer, 263.
163. Balthasar, Prayer, 70. See also “Unknown Lying Beyond,” in ET 3, 111.
164. John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle, 39:3–4, in The Collected Works of
St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington,
DC: ICS Publications Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1979). See TD5, 432; and
GL3, 142.
165. John of the Cross, The Living Flame of Love, 3:6. See GL3, 143.
166. TL2, 148–49.
167. TS, 477.
168. “The Plurality of Theology,” in ET 5, 385; TD2, 230.
169. TD5, 380.
170. See TL3, 187–89.
171. TL3, 188. See TD5, 416.
172. “Plurality of Theology,” in ET 5, 385.
Notes to Pages 120–127 199
173. “Holy of Holies,” in Balthasar, Elucidations, trans. John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 183.
174. TD4, 391.
175. TD5, 417.
176. Balthasar, “Flesh Becomes Word,” in You Crown the Year, 150.
177. “Word, Scripture, and Tradition,” in ET 1, 15.
178. TD4, 363.
179. TD4, 366.
180. GL1, 659; Balthasar, You Crown the Year, 154–55.
181. GL1, 555.
182. “Holy of Holies,” 182. See also TS, 460–61.
183. Balthasar, Unless You Become, 47.
184. “Characteristics of Christianity,” in ET 1, 167.
185. The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church, trans. Andree Emery
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 288–89; Balthasar, Unless You Become, 48; GL7,
389–431.
186. GL7, 432.
187. “Homo Creatus Est,” in ET 5, 23.
188. Balthasar, The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 4.
189. Living Flame of Love, 3:78.
190. TD5, 521.
191. On this question of the enrichment of God by creation, see Thomas Dalzell, “The Enrichment of God in Balthasar’s Trinitarian Eschatology,” Irish Theological Quarterly 66, no. 1 (March 2001), 3–18.
192. For a work that builds in this direction, see Mark A. McIntosh, Christology from Within: Spirituality and the Incarnation in Hans Urs von Balthasar (Notre
Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press, 1996).
C h a pt e r 4
1. Karl Rahner, “Zugange zum theologischen Denken,” in Im Gespach, ed.
Paul Imhof and Hubert Biallowons (Munich: Kosel, 1982), 1:245. Quoted in
Andreas R. Batlogg and Melvin E. Michalski, eds., Encounters with Karl Rahner:
Remembrances of Rahner by Those Who Knew Him, trans. Andreas R. Batlogg and
Melvin E. Michalski, with Barbara G. Turner (Milwaukee: Marquette University
Press, 2009).
2. Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 20.
3. Turner, Darkness of God, 20.
4. Turner, Darkness of God, 20.
5. Turner, Darkness of God, 20.
200 Notes to Pages 127–134
6. Turner, Darkness of God, 34–35.
7. Pseudo-Dionysius, The Mystical Theology, V, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Paul Rorem (New York: Paulist Press, 1987).
8. Aristotle, Peri Hermeneias, 17a, 31–33; Thomas Aquinas, Quaestio Dis
putata de Veritate, q. 2, a. 15, corp. Quoted in Turner, Darkness of God, 36.
9. Turner, Darkness of God, 36.
10. Turner, Darkness of God, 38.
11. Turner, Darkness of God, 41.
12. Turner, Darkness of God, 41.
13. Pseudo-Dionysius, Mystical Theology, V.
14. See Celestial Hierarchy, II, 3–4, in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works. As
Turner notes, Pseudo-Dionysius uses the term dissimilar similarities to describe the
use of material symbols for the orders of angels, but the argument applies just as well
to God. See Turner, Darkness of God, 24.
15. Turner, Darkness of God, 42.
16. Turner, Darkness of God, 43.
17. Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology,” in Theological
Investigations, vol. 4, More Recent Writings, trans. Kevin Smyth (Baltimore: Helicon
Press, 1966), 41.
18. Rahner, “Concept of Mystery,” in TI4, 41.
19. Rahner, “Concept of Mystery,” in TI4, 51.
20. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad, 2007), 53.
21. Rahner, “Concept of Mystery,” in TI4, 50–51.
22. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 62.
23. Rahner, The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad, 2010),
99–100; Rahner, “Concept of Mystery,” in TI4, 69.
24. Rahner, “Concept of Mystery,” in TI4, 71.
25. Rahner, “Concept of Mystery,” in TI4, 67.
26. Rahner, Trinity, 76.
27. See, for instance, GL7, 159–60; TD3, 410–14; TL2, 242–44.
28. Balthasar, “Current Trends in Theology and the Responsibility of the
Christian,” Communio 5, no. 1 (1978): 79.
29. GL1, 146. Though Rahner is not mentioned, he seems to be subject to the
critique Balthasar levels at, among others, Blondel, Marechal, and Rousselot, as well
as neo-scholastic theology. See GL1, 143–46.
30. Balthasar is aware of and sympathetic to Rahner’s argument in “The Eternal Significance of the Humanity of Jesus for Our Relationship with God,” in TI3,
35–46. See TD5, 383–84n36.
31. Balthasar, The Moment of Christian Witness, trans. Richard Beckley (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 110.
32. GL1, 449.
33. TS, 431.
Notes to Pages 134–138 201
34. TL2, 90–95. See GL1, 536.
35. TL2, 110.
36. TL3, 129.
37. GL1, 128.
38. “Word, Scripture and Tradition,” in ET 1, 19. See also GL1, 29; TL2, 73–81.
39. TL2, 166–68.
40. TL2, 169.
41. “Word, Scripture and Tradition,” in ET 1, 19.
42. TL2, 248–56. As we saw in the previous chapter, Balthasar understands
creation as being already expressive by being created in the Word.
43. “The Implications of the Word,” in ET 1, 57.
44. TL2, 279.
45. See “Characteristics of Christianity,” in ET 1, 176–77. On this point
Balthasar once again reflects the thought of Bonaventure. See Turner, Darkness of
God, 129–33.
46. See “The Mediation of the Form,” in GL1.
47. GL2, 28.
48. GL1, 539.
49. Balthasar, “The Unknown God,” in Elucidations, trans. John Riches (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 43.
50. TD3, 508. See also TL2, 125, 281.
51. Kilby, Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans, 2012), 107.
52. David Coffey, Deus Trinitas: The Doctrine of the Triune God (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1999), 145–46.
53. “Fides Christi,” in ET 2, 66.
54. “Fides Christi,” in ET 2, 75.
55. GL1, 149.
56. See TL3, especially 63–104.
57. GL1, 157. See also Balthasar, “God Is Open to Us,” in You Crown the Year
with Your Goodness: Radio Sermons, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1989), 138–39; and “Fides Christi,” in ET 2, 58.
58. GL1, 174. See also, “Characteristics of Christianity,” in ET 1, 173: “In theology the divine content is not expanded and explored on the level of the human
mind, but rather the human mind is raised up and carried along in the mysterious
dimension of God’s own self-revelation.”
59. Brendan McInerny, “Sharing in Triune Glory: Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics and Deification,” Cithara: Essays in the Judaeo-Christian Tradition 52, no. 1
(2012): 50–64.
60. TL2, 279–80.
61. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Trinity and God the Creator: A Commentary on St. Thomas’ Theological Summa, Ia, q. 27–119, trans. Frederic Eckhoff (St.
Louis, MO: B. Herder Book, 1952), 10.
202 Notes to Pages 139–145
62. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The One God: A Commentary on the First
Part of St. Thomas’ Theological Summa, trans. Bede Rose (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder
Book, 1943), 374.
63. TL2, 161.
64. GL1, 176.
65. GL1, 131.
66. GL1, 136.
67. Quoted by Balthasar, “Fides Christi,” in ET 2, 69.
68. Jennifer Newsome Martin, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought (Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame
Press, 2015), 4–6, 33–34; Anne M. Carpenter, Theo-Poetics: Hans Urs von Balthasar and
the Risk of Art and Being (Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2015).
69. GL1, 75.
70. GL1, 449–50.
71. See GL1, 181–82, 592–93, 632; and Balthasar, “Unknown God,” 42.
72. TD3, 530.
73. TS, 432.
74. Balthasar, “Unknown God,” 40.
75. TD5, 329.
76. Balthasar, “Unknown God,” 42.
77. Turner, Darkness of God, 20. Emphasis in text. Turner also includes the
nonverbal language of liturgy, music, art and architecture, and gesture in cataphatic
expression.
78. Turner, Darkness of God, 257.
79. Bonaventure, prologue to Breviloquium, vol. 9 of The Works of St. Bonaventure (St. Bonaventure, NY: St. Bonaventure University Press, 2005), 6. See GL2, 266.
80. Bonaventure, Hexameron, 14, 5. Quoted by Balthasar in GL2, 266.
81. Bonaventure, Hexameron, 13, 2.
82. Denys Turner, Julian of Norwich, Theologian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 24.
83. Turner, Julian of Norwich, 25.
84. Turner, Darkness of God, 25.
85. For the philosophical implications of this theme, see David C. Schindler,
Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004).
86. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 20.
87. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 33.
88. See Balthasar, “The Anthropological Reduction,” in Love Alone Is Credible,
trans. D. C. Schindler (San Francesco: Ignatius Press, 2004).
89. Thomas Sheehan, “Rahner’s Transcendental Project,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Karl Rahner, ed. Declan Marmion and Mary E. Hines (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 29–33.
Notes to Pages 145–151 203
90. Aidan Nichols, “The Theo-Logic,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans
Urs von Balthasar, ed. Edward T. Oakes and David Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004), 159.
91. Rowan Williams, “Balthasar, Rahner and the Apprehension of Being,” in
Wrestling with Angels (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2007), 92.
92. Williams, Balthasar, 92.
93. GL5, 619.
94. GL5, 619–25.
95. TL1, 142–43.
96. TL1, 207.
97. TL1, 208.
98. TL1, 208. See also “Seeing, Hearing, and Reading,” in ET 2, 474–75.
99. TL1.
100. TL1, 157–58.
101. TL1, 214.
102. For instance, for Abyss, see “God Speaks as Man,” in ET 1, 85; “Characteristics of Christianity,” in ET 1, 177; “Young until Death,” in ET 5, 222; HW, 37,
108, 112, 219; GL1, 154, 536; TD3, 531; TD5, 407; TL2, 135n10, 140; TL3, 444,
447, 448; Balthasar, Prayer, 158; KB, 377; Balthasar, Credo, 29; and Balthasar, Grain
of Wheat, 15 (Francis de Sales). For Sea/Ocean, see KB, 171 (Barth, 7, 121–22);
Prayer, 43; HW, 49, 52; Balthasar, Grain of Wheat, 15 (Francis de Sales); GL1, 621
(Goethe); and TL2, 101 (Gregory Nazianzus, John of Damascus, Thomas). For Wilderness, see HW, 204; and “Liturgy and Awe,” in ET 2, 469. For Whirlpool, see the
section on Ruusbroec in GL5, 67–78.
103. Erasmo Leiva, translator’s note, in HW, 7.
104. TD3, 518; “Mary and the Holy Spirit,” in ET 5, 176; “The Eternal Child,”
in ET 5, 215; Balthasar, “God’s Simplicity,” in You Crown the Year with Your Goodness:
Radio Sermons, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 175.
105. Turner, Darkness of God, 26.
106. See, for instance, GL1, 592–93; GL7, 18, 103, 107–8; TD4, 323–24; TD5,
67; and “The Plurality of Theology,” in ET 5, 383.
107. Coffey, Deus Trinitas, 140. See Balthasar, TL2, 42.
108. Coffey, Deus Trinitas, 140.
109. Coffey, Deus Trinitas, 5.
110. Kilby, Balthasar, 162.
111. “Unknown God,” 43.
112. The insight into this distinction comes from Turner’s comparison of
Thomas and Eckhart in Faith, Reason and the Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 105–6.
113. See Rowan Williams, “Balthasar and the Trinity,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. Edward T. Oakes and David Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
204 Notes to Pages 151–160
114. Williams, “Balthasar and the Trinity,” 44. For Balthasar’s reading of this
term from Nicolas of Cusa, see GL5, 222–38, 262; TD2, 193, 230; Balthasar, Prayer, 67.
115. TD3, 222.
116. TS, 476.
117. Turner, Darkness of God, 45. Emphasis in text.
118. TL2, 111.
119. TL2, 118.
120. TL2, 118.
121. Balthasar, “Trinity and Future,” in Elucidations, trans. John Riches (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 83–84. Balthasar articulates a similar claim elsewhere: “What we see in Christ’s foresakenness on the cross, in ultimate creaturely
negativity, is the revelation of the highest positivity of trinitarian love” (TD5, 517).
122. GL7, 10.
123. TL2, 363.
124. Turner, Darkness of God, 132.
125. Bonaventure, Itinerarium, VII.6, in The Soul’s Journey into God; The Tree
of Life; The Life of St. Francis, trans. Ewert Cousins, Classics of Western Spirituality
(Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978).
126. Turner, Faith, 53.
127. Bonaventure, Hexaemeron, 8, 5. Quoted in Balthasar, GL2, 329.
128. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, ii, 22, 5. Quoted in Balthasar,
GL3, 162–63; see also GL7, 398. For an account of John of the Cross’s trinitarian
apophaticism, see Rowan Williams, “The Deflections of Desire: Negative Theology
in Trinitarian Discourse,” in Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation,
ed. Oliver Davies and Denys Turner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
129. John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, ii, 22, 6. Quoted in Balthasar,
GL3, 163.
130. GL5, 164.
131. GL1, 592–93, 596.
132. TD5, 95–98.
133. Von Speyr, The World of Prayer, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1985), 51–52.
134. “Liturgy and Awe,” in ET 2, 461.
135. TL3, 441–42.
136. TL3, 441–42.
137. TL2, 122.
Conclusion
1. Marc Ouellet, Divine Likeness: Toward a Trinitarian Anthropology of the
Family (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2006), esp. 5–6, 16–19, 30–34; Angelo
Cardinal Scola, The Nuptial Mystery (William B. Eerdmans, 2005).
Notes to Pages 161–166 205
2. “Homo Creatus Est,” in ET 5, 24.
3. Ouellet, Divine Likeness, 18.
4. “The Dignity of Women,” in ET 5, 172–73.
5. “The Dignity of Women,” in ET 5, 174.
6. “The Dignity of Women,” in ET 5, 175.
7. Linn Tonstad, God and Difference: The Trinity, Sexuality, and the Transformation of Finitude (New York: Routledge, 2016), 4.
8. Tonstad, God and Difference, 6.
9. Tina Beattie, New Catholic Feminism: Theology and Theory (London: Routledge, 2006), 310.
10. Wendell Berry, “The Country of Marriage,” in The Country of Marriage:
Poems (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2013), 6; for the importance of wilderness in
domesticity in general, see Berry, The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture
(San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977), 179.
11. Sarah Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 310.
12. “An Apology for Contemplatives,” in Balthasar, Elucidations, trans. John
Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 200.
13. “The Unknown God,” in Elucidations, trans. John Riches (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1998), 44.
14. Thomas Dalzell, The Dramatic Encounter of Divine and Human Freedom
in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997); Dalzell, “Lack
of Social Drama in Balthasar’s Theological Dramatics,” Theological Studies 60, no. 3
(September 1999), 457–75.
15. See Andrew Prevot, Thinking Prayer: Theology and Spirituality amid the
Crises of Modernity (Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2015);
and Todd Walatka, “The Opening of the Political: Grounding Political Action in
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theodramatic Christology through an Engagement with
the Christology of Jon Sobrino” (PhD diss., University of Notre Dame, 2011) for
just such examinations. In a different vein, see Stratford Caldecott, Not as the World
Gives: The Way of Creative Justice (Kettering, MI: Angelico Press, 2014), for an incorporation of Balthasar’s theology into Catholic social thought.
16. For indications that Balthasar was sensitive to these kinds of questions
later in his career, see “Peace in Theology,” in ET 5, 396: “How, for example, does
political and social freedom relate to the freedom from sin purchased by Christ,
and how will the Holy Spirit shape the interconnection between freedom in the
order of redemption and freedom in the order of creation? Or how does the power
of the state, which is indispensible in the concrete order of nature, relate (in the
Holy Spirit) to the nonviolence demanded by Jesus? Such problems concerning freedom and force will never be amenable to an entirely conflict-f ree earthly
solution.”
17. GL7, 15.
18. “Theology and Sanctity,” in ET 1, 203.
206 Notes to Pages 166–172
19. Karen Kilby, “Is Apophatic Trinitarianism Possible?,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 12, no. 1 ( January 2010): 65. See also Kilby, “Perichoresis
and Projection: Problems with Social Doctrine of the Trinity,” New Blackfriars 81,
no. 956 (October 2000): 432–45; and Kilby, “Aquinas, the Trinity and the Limits of
Understanding,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7, no. 4 (October 2005):
414–27.
20. Kilby, “Is Apophatic Trinitarianism Possible?,” 67.
21. Kilby, “Is Apophatic Trinitarianism Possible?,” 68.
22. Kilby, “Is Apophatic Trinitarianism Possible?,” 72.
23. Kilby, “Aquinas,” 414.
24. R. R. Reno, “Theology after the Revolution,” First Things, no. 173 (May
2007): 15–21; Kilby, Balthasar: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2012), 167.
25. GL2, 20.
26. “Plurality of Theology,” in ET 5, 385–86.
27. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Truth Is Symphonic: Aspects of Christian Pluralism
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 15.
28. Balthasar, “Unknown God,” 44.
29. GL7, 202; GL2, 20.
30. Jennifer Newsome Martin, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Critical Appropriation of Russian Religious Thought (Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre
Dame Press, 2015), 3.
31. TL3, 367. See MWR, 15; and PT, 11.
32. GL7, 144.
33. TD5, 404.
34. MWR, 82.
35. See Cyril O’Regan, The Anatomy of Misremembering: Von Balthasar’s Response
to Philosophical Modernity, vol. 1, Hegel (New York: Crossroad, 2014), esp. 522.
36. “The Place of Theology,” in ET 1, 152; TL3, 365.
37. “The Place of Theology,” in ET 1, 152.
38. TL3, 365.
39. GL1, 540.
40. Andrew Prevot, Thinking Prayer.
41. Balthasar, forward to The World of Prayer, by Adrienne von Speyr, trans.
Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 10.
42. Balthasar, Prayer, 178.
43. TL3, 366.
44. TL3, 366.
45. TL3, 366.
46. For an analysis of Balthasar’s poetic impulse and his opening to a “theo-
poetics,” see Anne M. Carpenter, Theo-Poetics: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Risk of
Art and Being (Notre Dame, IN: The University of Notre Dame Press, 2015).
Notes to Pages 172–174 207
47. TS, 25. For more on this connection, see also “Theology and Sanctity,”
in ET 1.
48. TS, 26.
49. GL7, 15.
50. GL7, 15–16.
51. MWR, 52.
52. See Carpenter, Theo-Poetics, esp. chaps. 3 and 4.
53. Rowan Williams, The Edge of Words: God and the Habits of Language (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), x.
54. See “Excessive Speech: Language in Extreme Situations,” chapter 5 of
Williams, Edge of Words.
55. TL2, 363.
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Index
Acts 17:28, 174
Albert the Great, 114
analogical speech, 16, 17–19, 82, 150,
151
analogy of being/analogia entis, 8, 14,
149–51
Christ as, 18, 102–3, 153
Annunciation to Mary, 115
Anselm of Canterbury, St., 27, 78
vs. Balthasar, 19–21, 25, 59
apophaticism, 14, 143–56, 163, 164,
166
cataphatic apophaticism, 142–44,
145, 156, 159, 162
classical Christian apophaticism,
126–30, 143–44
contemporary apophaticism, 130–33
and God’s incomprehensibility,
13, 126, 134, 140, 142, 143, 148,
149–50, 152–53, 167–68
paradoxes in, 127, 128, 156
and trinitarian personhood, 24
Turner on, 127–28, 129–30, 132,
142–44, 145, 148, 149, 153–54,
156, 159
See also negative theology
Aquinas, Thomas
vs. Balthasar, 20–21, 24, 43–44,
46–47, 48–49, 52–53, 54, 55, 59,
92, 99, 104, 135, 139, 149, 158,
185n.9, 190n.131
on creation, 97, 102
on divine essence, 20, 21, 190n.131
on faith, 138
on God’s incomprehensibility, 139
on the Incarnation, 87
on intramental analogy, 21
on knowledge of contraries,
127–28
on the Logos, 25
on procession, 20–21, 51, 52, 54,
102, 186n.24
vs. Rahner, 132
on relations of opposition, 49–50,
51–53, 54, 57
on relations of the Trinity, 20–
21, 48, 49–50, 51–53, 54, 57,
186n.24, 190n.131
on trinitarian personhood, 48,
49–50, 52–53, 186n.24
on the Trinity, 20–21, 24, 27, 43–44,
48, 49–50, 51–53, 54, 57, 92, 95,
97, 138–39, 186n.24, 190n.131
on the Word, 135
Arianism, 20, 22
Aristotle, 49, 50, 127
Arjakovsky, Antoine, 188n.73
Augustine, St., 9, 27, 29
vs. Balthasar, 21, 48–49, 59, 67–70,
135, 158
on incarnation, 25, 135
on intramental analogy, 21
227
228 Index
Augustine, St. (continued)
on the Trinity and love, 67, 68–70,
188n.81
Balthasar, Hans Urs von
vs. Anselm, 19–21, 25, 59
vs. Aquinas, 20–21, 24, 43–44,
46–47, 48–50, 52–53, 54, 55, 59,
92, 99, 104, 135, 139, 149, 158,
185n.9, 190n.131
vs. Augustine, 21, 48–49, 59, 67–70,
135, 158
vs. Barth, 3–4, 46, 59, 75–78, 83, 98,
158, 166, 188n.69, 192n.170
in Basel, 2
vs. Bonaventure, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57–
58, 59–60, 99, 135, 145, 153, 158
vs. Buber, 70–74, 83, 158
vs. Bulgakov, 48, 60–65, 83, 97, 98,
101, 103, 158, 183n.132, 185n.9,
188n.73
at Community of St. John, 2–3
and de Lubac, 1–2, 80
epistemology of, 6, 12–13, 16–18,
125–26, 138, 145–47, 156, 159,
170, 179n.13
vs. Fourth Lateran Council, 22–23
vs. Garrigou-Lagrange, 138–39
God’s eye view criticism of, 6, 19,
149, 170
and Greek patristics, 2, 7–8, 106
and International Theological
Commission, 5
as Jesuit, 1–2
vs. Julian of Norwich, 145
vs. Kilby, 166–68
vs. Mechtild of Magdeburg, 80
vs. Milbank, 6, 115, 116
vs. Moltmann, 94–95, 96–97, 98,
101, 103, 108, 110–12
and neo-scholastic theology, 1, 2,
4–5, 200n.29
paradoxes used by, 13, 19, 26, 34–38,
43, 69, 85–86, 108–10, 112, 146,
147–49, 156, 157, 159, 161–62,
173–74
on plurality of theology, 168–70
on procession, 20–21, 23, 38, 40, 42,
43, 47–49, 52–59, 62, 90, 92, 98,
99, 104–5, 108, 115, 118–19, 148,
157, 185n.14
vs. Rahner, 3, 5, 126–27, 133–34,
137, 145–46, 166, 200n.29
relationship with Rahner, 2, 175n.7
relationship with von Speyr, 2, 9, 80
on relations of the Trinity, 20–21,
24, 38, 90, 158
vs. Richard of St. Victor, 21, 29,
53–54, 56, 57–58, 59–60, 68–70,
83, 158
vs. Ruusbroec, 54, 56, 57–58, 59–60,
93, 102, 158
and Second Vatican Council, 3, 5–6
and theological innovation, 5–6,
175n.6
on theology as senseless, 172–74
vs. Turner, 142–44, 145, 148, 149
vs. von Speyr, 41–42, 47, 55, 80–82,
99, 108, 113, 155, 158
vs. Rowan Williams, 172–73
Balthasar’s works
“Buber, Kierkegaard, Moehler,” 70
challenge of reading, 1–6
Convergences, 15
“The Dignity of Women,” 161
“The Eternal Child,” 157
The Glory of the Lord, 1, 3–4, 5, 9–10,
89, 90, 148
Heart of the World, 8, 18, 36, 90, 113,
125
Love Alone, 3
Man in History, 3
“Martin Buber und das
Christentum,” 70
Index 229
“Mechtilds kirchlicher Auftrag” for
Mechtild’s Flowing Light of the
Godhead, 80
The Moment of Christian Witness, 3
On the Trinity, 58
Prayer, 3, 9
Presence and Thought, 45
Razing the Bastions, 3, 9
Science, Religion and Christianity, 3
“Summa Summarum,” 54
Theo-Drama, 10, 37, 70, 76, 81, 87
Theo-Logic, 10, 52, 70
A Theology of History, 3
The Theology of Karl Barth, 3, 8, 36
“The Unknown Lying Beyond the
Word,” 28
Unless You Become Like This Child,
10, 85, 90
“The Word and Silence,” 179n.32
Barth, Karl, 2, 95, 190n.115
vs. Balthasar, 3–4, 46, 59, 75–78, 83,
98, 158, 166, 188n.69, 192n.170
Church Dogmatics, 76, 188n.69
and doctrine of antecedence, 75–77,
98, 158
Bauerschmidt, Frederick Christian, 6
beatific vision, 2, 92, 124, 130–31,
139–40, 141
Beattie, Tina, 6, 162–63, 164
Being and beings, 145–46
Bernard of Clairvaux, 143
Berry, Wendell, 163, 164
Boethius, 24, 50
Bonaventure, St.
apophaticism of, 143, 145
vs. Balthasar, 52, 53, 54, 55, 57–58,
59–60, 99, 135, 145, 153, 158
Breviloquium, 51
on the Father, 51–52, 54
on God’s goodness, 59–60
on God’s incomprehensibility, 143,
153
on Jesus Christ, 153, 154
on procession, 52, 54
on the Son, 52
on the Spirit, 55–56, 57–58
on trinitarian personhood, 50,
51–52, 54, 186n.24
on the Word and incarnation, 25
Buber, Martin, 3, 29, 66, 70–74, 83, 158
Bulgakov, Sergius
vs. Balthasar, 48, 60–65, 83, 97, 98,
101, 103, 158, 183n.132, 185n.9,
188n.73
on divine love, 61, 94, 95–97,
188n.81
on God and creation, 94, 95–97,
100, 101, 103
on kenosis, 60–63, 66, 83, 158,
183n.127, 185n.9
on Sophia, 60–65, 96–97, 100,
188n.73
on spirit as personality and selfconsciousness, 63–65, 189n.103
Carpenter, Anne, 140
cataphatic theology, 126, 132, 133–44,
154, 162
cataphatic apophaticism, 142–44,
145, 156, 159
Clement, 2
Cloud of Unknowing, The, 144
Coakley, Sarah
God, Sexuality, and the Self, 163–64
Coffey, David, 136, 148–49
communion of saints, 169–70
Community of St. John, 2–3
1 Corinthians
2:10, 42
15:24, 101
15:28, 101
2 Corinthians
3:18, 88
10:5, 172
230 Index
Council of Florence, 27
Council of Nicaea, 94
creation
Creator-creature relationship, 6, 8,
10, 12–13, 30, 39–40, 43–44, 62,
65, 73–77, 78–80, 83, 85, 86, 87,
93–103, 105, 106, 109, 110–11,
113, 114, 117, 119, 122–24, 135,
149–50, 156, 192n.170, 196n.68,
201n.42, 204n.121, 205n.16
human beings created in image and
likeness of God, 30, 75, 78, 88,
91, 99, 102, 160, 162
relationship to deification, 10, 93–
103, 114, 125, 137, 158
relationship to divine freedom, 12,
22, 65, 76, 83, 94–98, 100–101,
103, 110–11, 137, 150, 159
relationship to divine love, 43–44,
94–97, 99, 100–101, 109, 110–11,
113, 159
relationship to Father’s begetting of
Son, 10, 25, 39–40, 62, 86, 93, 97,
102–3
Dalzell, Thomas, 6, 164–65
deification, 44, 83, 97, 117–24,
155–56, 164
as adoption in the Son, 8–9, 12,
14, 85, 86, 87–93, 104, 106, 107,
117–18, 125, 126, 154, 158–59,
166, 171–72
and the Eucharist, 119–24
as participation in trinitarian life,
88, 89–92, 106–7, 119, 120, 121,
123, 124, 125, 126, 152, 158, 159,
165, 166, 171–72
relationship to creation, 10, 93–103,
114, 125, 137, 158
relationship to epistemological
vividness, 126, 138, 159
relationship to faith, 137–38
relationship to politics, 165
relationship to revelation, 137–38
relationship to salvation, 103–14,
124, 125, 158–59
and the Spirit, 7, 12, 117–18,
137–38, 159, 166, 171
de Lubac, Henri, 1–2, 6, 80, 175n.6
divine amazement, 12, 155
doctrine of analogy, 149–50
doctrine of antecedence, 40, 75–77,
81–82, 86, 98, 99, 137, 158
Eastern Christian theology, 88, 89,
162
Ebner, Ferdinand, 70
Eckhart, Meister, 92–93, 118, 138, 144
economic Trinity
relationship to immanent Trinity,
11, 16–17, 28, 33, 38, 41, 60,
76–77, 78, 82, 83, 86–88, 89–90,
92, 95, 107–8, 109, 115–17, 133,
134–35, 136–38, 149, 158–59
work of the Son, 104–15, 116–17,
120, 171
work of the Spirit, 114–17, 135,
159, 171
See also Eucharist, the; Jesus Christ;
salvation
Elizabeth of the Trinity, 3, 8–9, 93,
118, 119, 151
Ephesians
1:3–5, 91
1:10, 101
3:19, 173
equality
in immanent Trinity, 31–32, 35–36,
40, 43, 70, 85, 129–30, 161, 162
Pseudo-Dionysius on, 129–30
between sexes, 35, 161
Eucharist, the, 14, 119–24, 141, 173
Evagrius, 2
faith, 137–38, 139–40, 141, 153, 156,
166
Index 231
Father, the
as begetting the Son, 8, 10, 20, 21–
23, 24–25, 26, 29, 30, 31–35, 38,
39–40, 41, 47–48, 50–53, 54–55,
58, 60–62, 67, 70, 73, 82, 97, 98,
99, 100, 101, 102, 104–5, 108, 117,
118–19, 121, 141, 157, 158, 171
as breathing forth the Spirit, 7, 13,
20, 21–22, 27–30, 35, 39, 48, 51,
58, 98, 100, 101, 108, 115, 117–
18, 157
distance between Son and, 36–37,
38–39
and divine essence, 13, 19–23, 25,
34–35, 42, 43, 49–50, 58, 80–81,
90, 95, 155, 183n.133
and divine love, 7, 20, 21–23, 24–25,
26–30, 34–35, 39–40, 43, 53, 55–
57, 58, 59, 60–61, 70, 73, 80–81,
95, 97, 100, 105, 111, 115–16,
119, 155, 157, 164, 165, 181n.82
and the Eucharist, 120–21
kenosis of, 22–23, 30–34, 36, 37,
40–41, 42, 43, 62, 100, 104–5,
157, 182n.114, 188n.82, 196n.68
primacy of, 43, 54–55, 67, 158
See also God; God’s love
Feuerbach, Ludwig, 71
filioque, 27, 116
Fourth Lateran Council, 22–23, 139,
149
Friedman, Russell, 51, 54, 55, 185n.14
Galatians
4:4, 91
4:5–6, 91
Gardner, Lucy, 4
Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald, 138–39
gender
equality between sexes, 35, 161
as I-Thou relationship, 75
in language, 11
marriage, 160, 161, 162, 164
masculine/feminine in immanent
Trinity, 35–36, 148, 161
sexual difference, 160–64, 165
Genesis
1:26–27, 88
3:5, 88
Gnosticism, 6, 63, 126, 170
God
Creator-creature relationship, 6,
8, 10, 12–13, 30, 39–40, 43–44,
62, 65, 73–77, 78–80, 83, 85, 86,
87, 93–103, 105, 106, 109, 110–
11, 114, 117, 119, 122–24, 135,
149–50, 156, 192n.170, 196n.68,
201n.42, 204n.121, 205n.16
energies of, 89, 124
essence of, 13, 19–23, 25, 34–35, 42,
43, 58, 59–60, 67–68, 69, 80–81,
83, 89, 90, 92, 95, 96, 97–98, 118,
124, 128, 130, 139, 151, 155, 157
existence of, 58
goodness of, 58–60, 67–68
grace of, 8, 12, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93,
119, 123, 133, 155, 166
as immutable, 11
as incomprehensible, 13, 16, 18, 43,
87, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130–
32, 134, 138–44, 148, 149–50,
152–53, 155–56, 159, 162, 167–
68, 172–74, 179n.32
as mysterious, 22, 34, 55, 58–59, 69,
74–75, 109, 118, 130–33, 134,
139, 141, 147, 149–50, 152, 155,
156, 164, 166–68, 172, 181n.82
as omnipotent, 32, 35, 98, 108–9,
110, 113
as omniscient, 81, 169–70
revelation from, 7, 11, 16–17, 18,
77, 83, 86–87, 89, 94, 126, 133–
39, 140–42, 152–55, 156, 158,
166, 168–70, 172–73, 201n.58
simplicity of, 6
truth of, 1, 12
232 Index
God (continued)
unity of, 7, 8, 11, 28, 39, 43, 49, 58,
68–69, 77, 89, 99, 106, 107, 116,
134, 151, 155
will of, 40–41
See also economic Trinity; immanent
Trinity
God’s love, 8, 17, 60, 114, 147,
187n.68
as dialogue, 40–44
as groundless/why-less, 22, 25,
26, 42, 59, 98, 115–16, 124,
141–42, 150, 155, 159, 168,
172–73, 179n.32
and reciprocity, 16, 21, 24, 39,
40–42, 43, 55–56, 58, 63, 66,
68, 70, 73, 187n.57
relationship to creation, 43–44,
94–97, 99, 100–101, 109, 110–11,
113, 159
relationship to immanent Trinity, 11,
12, 13, 15–16, 21–23, 34–35, 39,
48–49, 58–59, 67–68, 85, 94, 95,
96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 109, 155, 161
relationship to kenosis, 43
revelation of, 133–34, 172–73,
204n.121
as self-giving, 22–23, 98, 111, 122,
158
See also Father, the; Son, the; Spirit,
the
Greek Fathers, 2, 7–8, 106, 185n.3
Gregory Nazianzen, 89
Gregory of Nyssa, 2, 7, 36, 90,
183n.127
Gregory the Great, 67
Hegel, G. W. F., 46, 108, 170
Heidegger, Martin, 46
human beings
as created in image and likeness of
God, 75, 78, 88, 91, 99, 102, 160,
162
gender among, 11, 35, 75–76, 148,
160–64
human family, 29
sexual difference, 160–64
Hunsinger, George, 76, 192n.170
Ignatius of Antioch, 152
immanent Trinity
active/passive in, 34–36, 41, 148
dialogue within, 8, 9, 30, 40–44, 47,
66, 73, 78–80, 105, 155
divine worship, 39, 41–42, 80, 81,
82, 83, 85, 122, 123, 155, 158
as dynamic, 11, 13, 24, 57, 60–61,
81, 83, 85, 157, 158
equality in, 31–32, 35–36, 40, 43,
70, 85, 129–30, 161, 162
freedom in, 12, 19, 22, 24, 26, 27,
39, 42, 59, 73, 83, 87, 90, 93, 94–
98, 100–101, 103, 106, 109, 110–
11, 116, 120, 137, 150, 159
glory of, 101–2, 110, 122–23, 139,
172
I-Thou relationships in, 8, 10, 12,
28, 66, 67, 68–69, 73–74, 75, 158
masculine/feminine in, 35–36, 148,
161
relationship to divine love, 11, 12,
13, 15–16, 21–23, 34–35, 39, 48–
49, 58–59, 67–68, 85, 94, 95, 96,
97, 98, 99, 100, 109, 155, 161
relationship to economic Trinity,
11, 16–17, 28, 33, 38, 41, 60,
76–77, 78, 82, 83, 86–88, 89–90,
92, 95, 107–8, 109, 112, 115–
17, 133, 134–35, 136–38, 149,
158–59
relationship to salvation, 17, 77, 82,
86, 90, 97, 103–4, 166
relationship to sexual difference,
160–64
suffering in, 32, 60, 61, 62–63,
107–8, 109, 110–11, 182n.104
Index 233
See also inversion, trinitarian;
I-Thou relationships; kenosis;
personhood, trinitarian;
procession; reciprocity, trinitarian
inversion, trinitarian, 11, 115, 116
Irenaeus, 2, 80
Islam, 94
I-Thou relationships, 122, 139,
181n.81
Buber on, 70–74, 158
in immanent Trinity, 8, 10, 12, 28,
66, 67, 68–69, 73–74, 75, 158
and trinitarian distance, 73–74, 158
Jesus Christ
as analogia entis, 18, 102–3, 153
ascension of, 114, 117, 120, 138
crucifixion of, 11, 17, 30, 31, 38, 63,
82, 86–88, 93, 105, 107–11, 112–
13, 114, 116, 120, 133–34, 136–
37, 141, 152–55, 156, 158–59,
173, 182n.104, 204n.121
descent into hell, 6, 11, 108–9, 110,
111, 112–13, 116, 152, 158–59
on the Father as greater, 55
humility of, 109, 117, 154, 172
imitation of, 117
as Incarnation, 7, 11, 16, 25, 30–31,
32, 41, 60, 82, 87–88, 93, 133,
134, 135, 137, 138, 153, 160, 173
and plurality of theology, 169–70
and prayer, 41, 170–71
as praying to the Father, 41
resurrection of, 60, 87, 110, 113–14,
117, 120, 137, 173
revelation of, 11, 16–17, 18, 133–
34, 139, 141–42, 170, 172–73,
204n.121
See also economic Trinity; Son, the
John
1:12, 91
1:26, 152
3:3, 91
6:53–58, 121
10:34–35, 88
13:1, 114
14:28, 32
16:13–15, 101
17:10, 22
1 John
3:2, 91
4:8, 27
4:9, 105
4:16, 27
John of the Cross, 123, 153
The Ascent of Mount Carmel, 154
The Spiritual Canticle/39th stanza,
118
John Paul II, 5
Judaism, 74, 94
Julian of Norwich, 78, 143–44, 145
kenosis, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 17, 59–63, 85
of the Father, 22–23, 30–34, 36,
37, 40–41, 42, 43, 62, 100,
104–5, 157, 182n.114, 188n.82,
196n.68
relationship to divine love, 43
of the Son, 60, 61, 63, 82, 116, 141,
154–55, 181n.73, 182n.110,
188n.82
of the Spirit, 13, 33, 34, 61, 62,
188n.82
See also self-giving
Kerr, Fergus, 3, 175n.7
Kilby, Karen, 45, 126, 137, 148
Balthasar: A (Very) Critical
Introduction, 6
on Balthasar’s pneumatology, 28
God’s eye view criticism of
Balthasar, 11, 19, 149
on immanent trinitarian theology
and mystery, 166–68
on trinitarian distance, 37–38, 136
on trinitarian persons, 37–38, 48, 52
Küng, Hans, Justification, 2
234 Index
Lateran IV, 22–23, 139, 149
Leamy, Katy, 52, 185n.9, 188n.71
Leiva-Merikakis, Erasmo, 147
Leo XIII
Aeterni Patris, 46–47, 185n.3
Levering, Matthew, 33
liturgy of the church, 172
Lombard, Peter, on the Father, 51, 53
Mark 9:34, 173
marriage, 160, 161, 162, 164
Martin, Jennifer Newsome, 140
Matthew 5:48, 88
Matthew of Aquasparta, 139
Maximus the Confessor, 2, 7–8, 90,
182n.104
McCormack, Bruce, 192n.170
Mechtild of Magdeburg
The Flowing Light of the Godhead, 80
on trinitarian dialogue, 78–80
metaphors, 13, 101, 114, 128, 142–43,
147, 148, 149, 159, 173
Milbank, John
vs. Balthasar, 6, 115, 116
The Suspended Middle, 6
on trinitarian inversion, 115, 116
Moltmann, Jürgen, 195n.39
vs. Balthasar, 94–95, 96–97, 98, 101,
103, 108, 110–12
on divine love and creation, 94–95,
96–97
Mongrain, Kevin, 80, 193n.186
Moss, David, 4
Mühlen, Heribert, 28, 181n.81,
182n.110
negation of the negation, 127–30, 164
negative images, 147, 148, 149
negative language, 127, 142
negative theology, 7, 14, 17, 31, 126,
134–35, 140–41, 155–56, 159
Neoplatonism, 127, 132
neo-scholasticism, 1, 2, 4–5, 6, 92, 130,
138–39, 185n.3, 200n.29
neo-Thomism, 2, 46–47, 92
new theology, 2, 5–6, 175n.6
Nicholas of Cusa, 151, 152
Oakes, Edward
Pattern of Redemption, 33
O’Hanlon, Gerard, 18–19
O’Regan, Cyril, 46, 170
Origen, 2
Ouellet, Marc, 160, 161
Palamite theology, 89
Papanikolaou, Aristotle, 33, 34,
182n.114
paradoxes
in apophaticism, 127, 128, 156
Balthasar’s use of, 13, 19, 26, 34–38,
43, 69, 85–86, 108–10, 112, 146,
147–49, 156, 157, 159, 161–62,
173–74
free necessity, 95
power-in-powerlessness, 32, 35,
108–9, 110, 113, 148, 165
Paul, St., 93
on adoption in the Son, 91
on kenosis, 30
on the Spirit, 42
Paul VI, 5
Pentecost, 117
personhood, trinitarian, 34, 77, 78–79,
112
Aquinas on, 48, 49–50, 52–53,
186n.24, 190n.131
Bonaventure on, 50, 51–52, 54,
186n.24
difference between persons, 7, 10,
11, 24, 27–28, 34–40, 43, 83, 97–
98, 99, 100, 102–3, 106, 111, 155
distance/space between persons, 8,
10, 11, 13, 36–40, 43, 66, 70–74,
Index 235
83, 100–101, 102, 106–7, 108,
114, 136, 150, 155, 158, 183n.133
equality of divine persons, 30, 31–
32, 35–36, 40, 43, 70, 85, 161, 162
otherness in, 40, 41, 44, 83, 97, 98,
99–103, 151, 160–61, 162
Rahner on, 66–67, 190n.115
relationship to procession, 23, 24,
47–49, 50–52, 92, 148
relationship to relation of
opposition, 49–50, 51–52
Richard of St. Victor on, 50–51,
53–54, 67–70, 83, 190nn.129–30
and the Son, 23–26, 120
See also Father, the; procession;
reciprocity, trinitarian; Son, the;
Spirit, the
2 Peter 1:3–4, 88
Philippians 2:6–8, 30
Photius, 27
Pitstick, Alyssa, 6, 107–8, 109, 110
Pius XII
Humani Generis, 2
on nouvelle theologie, 2
Plotinus, 122
plurality of theology, 168–70, 173–74
politics and theology, 164–65, 205n.16
power-in-powerlessness, 32, 35, 108–
9, 110, 113, 148, 165
prayer, 8, 9
and Christ, 41, 170–71
relationship to theology, 9, 170–72,
174
Prevot, Andrew, 171
procession
Aquinas on, 20–21, 51, 52, 54, 102,
186n.24
Balthasar on, 20–21, 23, 38, 40, 42,
43, 47–49, 52–59, 62, 90, 92, 98,
99, 104–5, 108, 115, 118–19, 148,
157, 185n.14
Bonaventure on, 52, 54
relationship to trinitarian
personhood, 23, 24, 47–49,
50–52, 92, 148
Przywara, Erich, 46, 149
Psalm 82:6, 88
Pseudo-Dionysius, 2, 7, 58
apophaticism of, 127, 128–30, 132,
144, 200n.14
The Celestial Hierarchy, 129
The Divine Names, 129
Mystical Theology, 128–30
Rahner, Karl, 10, 125
apophaticism of, 130–33, 144
vs. Balthasar, 3, 5, 126–27, 133–34,
137, 145–46, 166, 200n.29
on Balthasar’s use of kenosis, 6
on Being and beings, 145–46
on divine mystery, 130–33
Free Speech in the Church, 2
relationship with Balthasar, 2, 175n.7
transcendental method of, 133–34,
145–46
on trinitarian personhood, 66–67,
190n.115
rationalism in theology, 19, 58, 60,
131, 140, 145, 170–71
Ratzinger, Joseph, 2, 5
reciprocity, trinitarian, 61–62, 66–70,
77, 78, 83, 114, 120, 133
in divine dialogue, 43
of divine glorification, 42, 101,
123–24
in divine love, 16, 21, 24, 39, 40–42,
43, 55–56, 58, 63, 66, 68, 70, 73,
187n.57
in divine self-giving, 40–41,
182n.114
in divine worship and adoration,
41–42
relationship to trinitarian difference,
24, 39
236 Index
relations of opposition, 49–50, 51–53,
54, 57
Revelation 13:8, 104
Richard of St. Victor
vs. Balthasar, 21, 29, 53–54, 56,
57–58, 59–60, 68–70, 83, 158
on divine love, 67–70
on Spirit, 55–58
on trinitarian personhood,
50–51, 53–54, 67–70, 83,
190nn.129–30
Romans
8:14–17, 91
8:19, 91
8:29, 91
8:32, 88, 118
Rosenzweig, Franz, 70
Ruusbroec, Jan van, 92, 118
vs. Balthasar, 54, 56, 57–58, 59–60,
93, 102, 158
on Spirit, 57–58
salvation, 10, 13, 100
Christ as Redeemer, 87–88, 104
relationship to deification, 103–14,
124, 125, 158–59
relationship to immanent Trinity,
17, 77, 82, 86, 90, 97, 103–4, 166
and trinitarian inversion, 115
Scola, Angelo, 160
Scotus, John Duns, 87
self-giving, 8, 9
divine love as, 22–23, 98, 111, 122,
158
of the Father, 22–23, 24, 26, 27, 32–
34, 40–41, 54–55, 58, 59, 98, 100,
101–2, 104, 109–10, 118–19, 123,
182n.114
as self-sacrifice, 10, 11, 13, 32, 61,
108, 111
of the Son, 26, 27, 32–34, 98, 100,
101–2, 105, 109–10, 120, 123,
182n.114
of Spirit, 98, 100, 101–2, 109–11,
123, 182n.114
See also kenosis
Siewerth, Gustav, 59
similarity and difference, 17–18, 51,
129–30, 140, 149–50, 151, 155,
156, 200n.14
sin, 11, 101, 107, 112–13, 114, 116–17,
141, 205n.16
Son, the
as breathing forth the Spirit, 7, 21,
27–30, 35, 40, 48, 51, 58, 100,
108, 115–16, 117–18, 157
deification as adoption in the Son,
8–9, 12, 14, 85, 86, 88–93, 104,
106, 107, 117–18, 125, 126, 154,
158–59, 166, 171–72
distance between Father and, 36–
37, 38–39
and divine essence, 13, 58, 80–81,
90, 155, 183n.133
and divine love, 26–27, 28, 29–30,
34–35, 39, 41, 53, 54, 55–57,
58, 70, 73, 80–81, 95, 97, 100,
105, 111, 115–16, 133–34, 155,
157, 164, 165, 172–73, 181n.82,
204n.121
Father’s begetting of, 8, 10, 20, 21–
23, 24–25, 26, 29, 30, 31–35, 38,
39–40, 41, 47–48, 50–53, 54–55,
58, 60–62, 67, 70, 73, 82, 97, 98,
99, 100, 101, 102, 104–5, 108,
117, 118–19, 121, 141, 157, 158,
171
human nature of, 31, 41, 66, 82, 93,
104, 107, 114, 133, 134, 135, 138,
152, 154
as incarnation, 7, 11, 16, 30–31, 32,
41, 60, 82, 87–88, 93, 133, 134,
135, 137, 138, 153, 160, 173
incarnation of, 25, 30–31, 60, 62, 74,
102–3, 104, 106–7, 110, 112, 115,
117, 120, 126, 162, 171, 174
Index 237
kenosis of, 60, 61, 63, 82, 116, 141,
154–55, 181n.73, 182n.110,
188n.82
obedience of, 8, 11, 26, 30–31, 33,
34, 41, 61, 62, 77, 105, 112, 114,
116, 117
as perfect image of the Father, 7,
25–27, 31, 44, 97, 154
relationship to creation, 10, 25,
39–40, 62, 86, 93, 97, 102–3,
106–7, 151
thanks given to Father by, 12, 26,
28, 31, 32–34, 41, 58, 105, 122
and trinitarian personhood, 23–26,
120
as Word, 25–26, 27, 28, 44, 55, 61,
62, 82, 87, 90, 97, 102, 115, 122,
133–34, 135–36, 152–54, 162,
169–70, 174, 201n.42
work in the world, 104–15, 116–17,
120, 171
See also Jesus Christ
Spirit, the, 10, 11, 16, 18, 25, 82, 93,
99, 106, 151, 182n.110, 205n.16
as bond of love between Father and
Son, 114–17, 164, 165
and deification, 7, 12, 117–18,
137–38, 159, 166, 171
and divine essence, 90, 95, 155
and divine love, 26–30, 34–35, 53,
58, 65, 70, 73, 80–81, 97, 104,
111, 115–17, 118, 164, 165,
181n.82, 195n.39
and the Eucharist, 120–21
Father as breathing forth, 7, 13,
20, 21–22, 27–30, 35, 38, 39, 40,
55–56, 58, 98, 100, 101, 115–16,
117–18, 157
and filioque, 27, 116
kenosis of, 13, 33, 34, 61, 62,
188n.82
as mediating forms of Christ’s form,
135
and salvation, 104
Son as breathing forth, 7, 27–30, 35,
40, 55–56, 58, 115, 116, 117–18,
157
work in the world, 114–17, 135,
159, 171
Suso, Heinrich, 92, 93, 118
Sutton, Matthew, 181n.73
Tauler, John, 92, 93, 118
theological aesthetics, 89–90, 138
Thérèse of Lisieux, 3, 8
threeness, 7, 149–50
Tonstad, Linn
God and Difference, 161, 162
transcendentals of being, 59, 128, 129,
187n.68
trinitarian archetypicity, principle of, 99
truth, intraworldly, 145–47, 152
Turner, Denys
on apophatic theology, 127–28,
129–30, 132, 142–44, 145, 148,
149, 153–54, 156, 159, 200n.14
vs. Balthasar, 142–44, 145, 148, 149
on cataphatic apophaticism, 142–
44, 145, 159
on Jesus Christ, 153–54
Vatican Council, Second, 3, 5–6
vividness, epistemological, 12–13, 16,
125–26, 138, 159, 170
Von Speyr, Adrienne
vs. Balthasar, 41–42, 47, 55, 80–82,
99, 108, 113, 155, 158
relationship with Balthasar, 2, 9, 90
William of St. Thierry, 67
Williams, Rowan, 37, 38, 39, 146, 151,
173–74
B r en da n M c I n er n y
teaches theology at Holy Family Catholic
High School in Victoria, Minnesota. He has published
and lectured widely on the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar.