Review of Current Religious Thought: April 13, 1962

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, along with men like Jean Danielou, Henri de Lubac and others, is one of the more prominent representatives of the “new theology” wing of the Roman Catholic Church. He is famous for a great number of publications, not the least of which is his important work on Karl Barth, to say nothing of a more recent book about Martin Buber, George Bermanos and Karl Barth. Von Balthasar leaves no doubt about his love and respect for the Roman Catholic Church. But there is also no doubt that his sober and even critical views of Roman tradition stem from his profound study of the Bible and his contact with Reformed theology and his fellow Baselian Dr. Barth.

Like other figures in the “new theology” movement, he feels that the development of Roman theology, especially since Trent, has been crippled by an attitude of reaction. This reactionary stance has, in Von Balthasar’s thinking kept Roman theology from seeing the fullness of the Catholic faith. He seeks, in his own way, to develop a consistent Christocentric theological viewpoint. It is this that has kept the door open for a rich personal and theological dialogue between Von Balthasar and Barth.

Barth, as everyone knows, has kept up a steady criticism of the Roman church, particularly for its serious sympathy with the natural man, natural theology, natural law, etc. But Von Balthasar wants to show that at heart Rome is not concerned with natural man and natural law as things in themselves, but from a basically Christological concern. We may say that when one genuinely seeks to do this, as in the case of Von Balthasar, he is bound to view any static theological tradition in a critical light and is equally bound to bring everything into a clearer evangelical perspective.

Recently Von Balthasar published the first volume of a triology on Beauty, beauty in the theological sense. This volume is on Glory. He seeks to show that the Beauty of God is diminished by theology whenever theology becomes a neat package of true propositions and practical statements. The quality of amazement is choked out of theology when theology becomes a system in which one has the truth in his complete control. In this respect, too, Von Balthasar manifests his sympathy with Barth. For Barth likewise has had a great deal to say about theologies which have lost the sense of the beauty of God, a loss which too long has empoverished both the church and its theology.

Theological reflection has indeed to do with “the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God” (Rom. 11:33), with the riches of Christ’s wisdom which, “if they could be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written” (John 21:25). I have thought about an expression in Psalm 50 as I read Von Balthasar’s book, the phrase which goes, “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.”

Von Balthasar’s book is unapologetically Roman Catholic. But it is a great work of a brilliant theologian warning us against superficiality, against rationalistic theology, against every temptation to reduce the mystery of God to a human vision.

Back in 1917 Rudolph Otto wrote his famous book, The Idea of the Holy, in which he too called attention to the element of mystery in man’s apprehension of God. Now, about 40 years later, Von Balthasar’s work appears, also seeking, without Otto’s mysticism, to lay full emphasis on the “mystery of godliness,” God manifest in the flesh, and the truth that in Christ “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). In spite of much decisive difference between it and Reformed theology, we have in this book a witness to the glory of God that is of great significance not only for theology but for preachers of the Gospel as well.

Von Balthasar sets before us the question whether we are, in our preaching, facing men with the “Glory of God” and the great deeds of God, with the love of Christ “which passeth knowledge,” the love of him who “can do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Eph. 3:19, 20). Against all the horrible superficiality of rationalism, a thing which can invade Christian theology, it is wonderful to be reminded once again of the glory of the Gospel. Before the judgment of human thought, the Gospel remains foolishness. Before the judgment of pure aesthetics, such as that of the Greeks, the Cross is ugly. But “the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:25). The theology of our century depends on whether we have understood anything of this or whether we still depend for the glory of the truth of God upon our own rational predications.

We must watch out that we do not attempt to lock up the truth in our little systems. We must open the windows and keep them open so that we are always reminded that our talking and thinking must have something of Job in them. Recall Job saying of God that “he hangeth the world upon nothing” and adding, “Lo, these are parts of his ways, but how little a portion is heard of him but the thunder of his power who can understand?” (Job 26:14).

Job was speaking of the power of God, but the same thought is relevant for what Paul calls the “weakness” of God. Church and theology must always remember that they are not talking about important truths and practical wisdom of men. They are talking about the mysteries of Godliness. The men of both the chancel and the academy must capture something of the demeanor of the disciples of our Lord on their way to the city. “And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went before them and they were amazed” (Mark 10:32).

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