Hans Urs von Balthasar Reading Group

I received the following email over the weekend from Adam Janke, my friend and webmaster of Catechetics Online. He is hoping to form an online group to read and discuss Balthasar's great "Trilogy" of theological works on God and man. Here are the details:

We are now forming a group which will read and discuss the "Trilogy" (16 volumes) of the man who has been considered the greatest theologian since Karl Barth and the premier theologian of the 20th century. Since most of us are busy our reading plan will cover either 4 or 5 years. It will be conducted over the Internet on either a dedicated forum just for this purpose or through an email group. If you know anyone that might be interested in this reading group, please pass the word along and have them email me. We are hoping to get together at least 10 people who are interested in the reading group, and at least a couple of people who are familiar with Balthasar's thought and can help guide us. We want to start sometime in the next month.

For more information on what we will be reading, I have included a summary of each book:

Part I: The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics
Probably the most important sustained piece of theological writing to appear since Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics, von Balthasar's work restores aesthetics and contemplation to their rightful place in Christian theology. Armed with a remarkable knowledge of the theological and metaphysical traditions as well as of Western letters, von Balthasar shows how the Biblical vision of the divine glory, revealed in the crucified and risen Christ and reflected in the great theologies of the Christian tradition, fulfills and transcends the perception of Being in Western Metaphysics.

Volume I - Seeing The Form
The work opens with a critical review of developments in Protestant and Catholic Theology since the Reformation which have led to the steady neglect of aesthetics in Christian theology. From here, von Balthasar turns to the central theme of the volume: the question of theological knowledge. He re-examines the nature of Christian believing (here he draws widely on such theological figures as Anselm, Pascal, and Newman) which gives due place to the particular kind of 'knowing' which develops within the personal relationship of the believer to the God mediated through the revelation-form of Jesus Christ.

Volume II - Clerical Styles
What von Balthasar offers here is a typology of the relationship between beauty and revelation which shows that there neither has been nor could be any truly great and historically fruitful theology which was not expressly conceived and born under the constellation of beauty and grace. This volume specifically offers a series of studies of representative figures from the earlier period of Christian theology - Irenaeus, Augustine, Denys, Anselm and Bonaventure.

Volume III - Lay Styles
This volume specifically offers a series of representative figures from the later period of Christian theology - Dante, John of the Cross, Pascal, Hamann, Soloviev, Hopkins and Peguy.

Volume IV - The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity
This fourth volume considers the metaphysical tradition of the contemplation of Being. He provides major studies of Homer, the Greek Tragedians, Plato and Plotinus and the development of this tradition in the Middle Ages. He then explores the analogy between the metaphysical vision of Being and the Christian vision of the divine glory of the Trinity.

Volume V - The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age
This volume presents a series of studies of representative mystics, theologians, philosophers and poets and explores the three main streams of metaphysics which have developed since the catastrophe of Nominalism. the way of self-abandonment to the divine glory is traced through figures like Ekhart, Julian of Norwich, Ignatius, de Sales; the attempt to relocate theology and beauty through figures like Nicholas of Cusa, Holderlin, Goethe, Heidegger; the metaphysics of spirit through Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Idealists. The strengths and weaknesses of these ways are relentlessly exposed. This volume ends with the search for the Christian contribution to metaphysics.

Volume VI - Theology: The Old Covenant
This volume initiates von Balthasar's study of the biblical vision and understanding of God's glory. Starting with the theophanies of the Patriarchal period, it shows how such glory is most fully expressed in the graciousness of the Covenant relationship between God and Israel. But the breaking of that relationship by Israel means that in the later books of the Old testament, the divine glory is seen in God's willingness to bear with his people in the dark side of their history. There is no final version of God's glory in the Old Testament. In the 500 years before Christ the Covenant relation is more idea than reality. The vision of the transcendent glory of God which is developed in the later writings, is only fragmentary. It will find its strange and unexpected fulfillment in the new Covenant.

Volume VII - Theology: The New Covenant
In this final volume of part one, von Balthasar reflects on the New Testament vision of God's revelation of his glory in Christ. This divine 'appearing' is grounded in the self-emptying of the eternal logos in the incarnation, cross and descent into hell. Christ is the man who represents God and is also God; he is a symbol of the world and is also the world. He dies, but in dying rises into the eternal life of God. It is in Christ's incarnation and resurrection that the Christian vision is truly expressed and the joining of God and the world in the new and eternal covenant is realized.

Part II: Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory
Here it is "the good" which provides the key. Here being as splendid, to be contemplated (beauty) now appears as the goal of our striving (the good). Von Balthasar maintains that it is in the theatre that "man attempts a kind of transcendence endeavoring both to observe and to judge his own truth, in virtue of a transformation...by which he tries to gain clarity about himself". Von Balthasar sees the phenomenon of theatre, the sheer fact that there is such a thing as structured performance, as a virtually untapped source of fruitfulness for theological reflection. His aim will be "to show how theology underlies it all, how all the elements of the drama can be rendered fruitful for theology."

Volume I - Prolegomena
In this volume von Balthasar shows how many of the trends of modern theology point to an understanding of human and cosmic reality as divine drama. He will then consider objections to such theological dramatic theory and also the relationship between the Church and the theatre. This volume assembles the materials and the themes that will make it possible in subsequent volumes to develop this theological dramatic theory.

Volume II - Dramatis Personae: Man in God
Where the first volume surveyed the great world dramatists to gather concepts and ideas to apply to the real stage, which is the universe God has made and entered into himself as an actor. This volume describes the actors, the dramatis personae. This is his theological anthropology concerning man, his freedom and destiny in light of the biblical revelation. Von Balthasar is concerned here with the dramatic character of existence as a whole, approaching the topic through a consideration of the various conditions and situations of mankind as a drama that involves both the Creator and his creatures.

Volume III - Dramatis Personae: Persons in Christ
This is considered the most central book of the entire trilogy. It contains von Balthasar's synthetic treatment of the central mysteries of the Catholic Faith: Christ, Mary, the Church, man and the Trinity.

Volume IV - The Action
Von Balthasar now turns to the action of the divine drama itself. Here we find his soteriology, where time, freedom, history, power, sin, conflict are seen in the light of the Cross, the culmination of the action and passion of God and man.

"Here we discern the unity of 'glory' and the 'dramatic'. God's glory, as it appears in the world- supremely in Christ- is not something static that could be observed by a neutral investigator. It manifests itself only through the personal involvement whereby God himself comes forth to do battle and is both victor and vanquished. If this glory is to come within our range at all, an analogous initiative is called for on our part. Revelation is a battlefield. Those who do battle on it can only be believers and theologians, provided they have equipped themselves with the whole armor of God."

Volume V - The Last Act
This volume is trinitarian, focusing on the mystery of God. He draws heavily on scripture and many passages from the works of the mystic Adrienne von Spyer. Some of the topics covered include "A Christian Eschatology", "The World is from the Trinity", "Earth Moves Heavenward", "The Final Act: A Trinitarian Drama."

Part III: Theo-Logic
Theo-logic is the crowning part of the great trilogy of the masterwork of von Balthasar. Theo-logic is a variation in theology, is being about not so much what man says about God, but what God speaks about himself. Balthasar does not address the truth about God until he first reflects on the beauty of God (The Glory of the Lord). Then he follows with his reflections on the great drama of our salvation and the goodness and mercy of the God who saves us (Theo-Drama). Now, in this work, he is ready to reflect on the truth that God reveals about himself, which is not something abstract or theoretical, but rather concrete and mysterious richness of God's being as a personal and loving God.

Volume I - The Truth of the World
Explored in this volume are the topics:
--Truth as Nature
--Truth as Freedom
--Truth as Mystery
--Truth as Participation

Volume II - The Truth of God
--Topics include:
--Divine and Human Logic
--The Possibility of Christology
--Logos and Logic in God
--Kata-logical Aspects
--The Word Was Made Flesh

Volume III - The Spirit of Truth
Topics Include:
--The Holy Spirit as Person
--The Father's Two Hands
--The Role of the Spirit in the Work of Salvation
--The Spirit and the Church
--Spirit and World
--Upward and Onward to the Father!

Epilogue
A summary of the whole series divided into the following aptly named sections: Forecourt, Threshold, and Cathedral.

Adam also provided the following short bio on Balthasar:

About Hans Urs von Balthasar
Born in Lucerne in 1905, after studying at the universities of Vienna, Berlin and Zurich von Balthasar completed a Ph.d. at Zurich in 1929 and continued his theological and philosophical studies in Munich, Lyon and Basel. He has won several academic prizes and has been awarded honorary doctorates at Edinburgh, Munster and Fribourg universities and the Catholic University of America. A Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, he was also a Foreign Associate of the Institut de France. He died in July, 1988.

If you are interested in joining this group, email Adam at: adam4jmj [at] gmail [dot] com
Thanks to Nick who also posted this on his blog. (His doing it made me wonder why I didn't!)

Interior Castle Meditations: Part One

In fact, however acute our intellects may be, ... we can hardly form any conception of the soul's great dignity and beauty. ... As to what good qualities there may be in our souls, or who dwells within them, or how percious they are - those are things which we seldom consider and so we trouble little about carefully preserving the soul's beauty. All our interest ins centered in the rough setting of the diamond, and in the outer wall of the castle - that is to say, in these bodies of ours.

Because we are made in the image and likeness of God, it will be impossible for us, in this lifetime, to truly understand the immense beauty and value of our souls. It is a shame too! Beacuase we do not value them as they should be valued, we do not work to save them from the stain of sin as we should. When we brush off holiness, saying that our sins are not actually sins, we do this in thinking of the here and now - not the eternal. Perhaps because they seem so common and non-extraordinary to us, we do not think twice about the things we submit ourselves to. It is often times because of our great stupidity that our souls are in great danger. That is exactly why we should seek to know and understand, as much as is possible on eath, our Creator, in whose image and likeness we have have been created. As long as we divulge in things of the world and neglect the true discovery of self, we forever put out souls in jeopardy. That is not to say that God abandons us but that we willingly seperate ourselves from Him who is God.

It should be noted here that it is not the spring, or the brilliant sun which is in the centre of the soul, that loses its splendour and beauty, for they are always within it and nothing can take away their beauty. If a thick black cloth be placed over a crystal in the sunshine, however, it is clear that although the sun may be sining upon it, its brightness will have no effect upon the crystal.

We will, in essence, live outside of ourselves as long as we do this. If the castle is our soul and we live , as St. Teresa says, in the outer wall of the castle, we live not for the light and certainly not in the light which is the center and core of each us. But the point that I was trying to get at was this: Because our soul is created by God in His own image (and because we will never understand the things of God) we can never appreciate the greatness (and expansiveness) of our own soul. (What humility this thought can bring!) Even more important to stress, in my mind, is the thought that comes from this: If I value my soul above all things now and my understanding of its importance is so foolish and far from true understanding, how amazing is my soul! How much more faithfully should I guard it!

The soul of the righteous man is nothing but a paradise, in which , as God tells us, He takes His delight.

This thought is so great (so overwhelming) as it is, and to know that what I feel and understand about its significance is so far from the whole understanding and significance makes me wonder how any man could allow himself to sin - or to sin without severe personal punishment. I realize that, as humans, sin is 'a part of our nature'. I also realize that as God loves us, He also wishes for us to love ourselves and out of that love, forgive - not only oursevles, but others too. For if God, so powerful and mighty, so pure and holy, should forgive us (in His great mercy), who are we to withhold forgiveness, great sinners that we all are? So though I understand that punishment in this way is not holy or "righteous", it still begs the question: Why? Why do we care so little to (1) find out more about ourselves (and therefore our Creator - as we are made in His image) and (2) to prevent the near occassion of sin. Certainly we should wish to keep our souls pure and stainless - these souls that are more precious than our ability to understand.

Interior Castle Meditations

I'm on my fourth read of this book and the more I read it, the more meditative it becomes. Last night I was watching some kids and found very peaceful quiet time to read after they had gone to bed. It allowed for meditation and notes.. which I might share at the book club meeting. We'll see how it goes. If not, I'll probably share them here. Look for it sometime next week..