Love Alone: the marriage of Theology and Aesthetics
Sunday I'll be walking the parishoners of St. Marks' through some rudimentary tidbits of Balthasar's scheme, such as the analogia entis and his book Love Alone as a bitesized version of his Herrlichkeit, The Glory of the Lord. I photocopied a couple pages and the conclusion today in preparation for the class. As I did so, I was struck, as so often before, by the sheer volume of Balthasar's corpus, and briefly by the futility in presenting Balthasar's project in 45 minutes. But what I like in time and comprehensiveness, I believe I'll make up in ambition and excitement.
Love Alone itself is nicely structured and lends itself to a quick presentation; although, maybe not 45 minutes-quick... The layout is simple:
I. What is the core, essential aspect of Christianity? "What is specifically Christian about Christianity?"
A. Not its cosmology
B. Not its anthropology
C. Rather, "God's message is theological, or better theo-pragmatic. It is an act of God on man; an act done for and on behalf of man--and only then to man, and in him. It is of this act that we must say: it is credible only as love--and here we mean God's own love, the manifestation of which is the manifestation of the glory of God." (7-8) And so, Balthasar here inextricably links soteriology and aesthetics via Revelation....just as in love I encounter the other as the other in all his freedom, and am confronted by something which I cannot dominate in any sense, so in the aesthetic sphere, it is impossible to attribute the form which presents itself to a fiction of my imagination. In both cases the 'understanding' of that which reveals itself cannot be subsumed under categories of knowledge which imply control. Neither love in the freedom of its gratuitousness, nor beauty; since it is disinterested, are 'products'--least of all of some person's need. To reduce love to the level of a 'need' would be cynicism and egoism; only when the pure gratuity of love has been recognized can one speak of it in terms of fulfillment. To dissolve the magic of beauty into some 'truth' that lies behind or beyond the appearance, is to banish beauty altogether and simply shows that its specific quality has never been felt. (45)
...even in nature eros is the chosen place of beauty. The object we love--no matter how deeply or superficially--always appears wonderful and glorious to us; and objective glory attracts the beholder only by being some sort of eros--which can be appreciated deeply or only superficially. The two related poles were surpassed in Revelation where the divine Logos descended to manifest and interpret himself as love, as agape, and therein as the Glory.
9 comments:
Could you comment on the last sentence a bit?
Somehow the way he described 'truth' had a peculiar sense about it? Perhaps, some remark about 'cold reason'--i.e. a person who aims to know the truth and express it w/o also loving that of whom the truth indicates?
apologies for the odd syntax in the last sentence above.
It is always nice to meet another Balthasar fan. I am adding you to my blogroll.
Cheers,
Cynthia
"Cold truth" has been our own modern invention, hasn't it? At least for my medieval and renaissance writers (or for the Greeks) "truth" was a lady on a high hill, Beatrice, bearer of grace, and so self-validating (if true), like prophetic critique, by taking the top of our heads off, by remaking us as its "lover," by changing and transfiguring us into its friends. The sheer brilliance of H. U. von B in (re)connecting eros and glory with truth, through basically our depth experiences of esthetic beauty, just blows me away. Thanks so much for putting this on your blog, Dan. Encore! Encore!
Janet: There are counter-examples ... theologians can indeed do orthodox theology and not do it with love. There can be an objective correctness which may or may not co-occur with loving God. I say this out of experience; I work in the vast details of medieval trinitarian theology-- I may not always have my heart in it, and I may even be talking about the blessed Trinity without love in my heart at the time, and yet I may be saying some orthodox and even 'wise', though without a 'for me' voice. So, based on this experience, I think it possible for orthodox theology without love of God. I do however, think that there are strategies for the lover of God to employ when articulating this truth that literally performs 'more truth', or rather, wills the truth (rather than just knowing it) because it is good.
First off, thanks to everyone for sticking with us here. Scott, from our shared readings of Ricouer you might remember PR's use of the categories of manifestation and proclamation for religious events: proclamation is the verbal communication, whereas manifestation is preverbal. But I think what Balthasar is driving at here is not whether the theologian is "loving" (although I think he'd affirm that too), but that we have a choice about that which is the center of the theology, whether that be a cosmology, an anthropology, or the glorious self-revelation of God through the loving incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ his son.
Dan: I don't disagree with your conclusion, but I'm not clear (yet) on what precedes it. How should we take 'pre-verbal'? Does it mean something like 'mental language' (i.e. concepts which are a foundation for a natural language, e.g. English), or rather, an _act_ of intellect (i.e. an occurent thought), whether intuitive and abstractive? I think Scotus would say in general in this life the wayfarer can have abstractive knowledge based on natural and revealed knowledge, and unmediated intuitive knowledge in the beatific vision in the life to come.
No, Ricoeur's position, which is not really the topic of this post, is simply that there are events, instances on this side of heaven that happen to us that are unmediated, or not purely mediated by language. see Figuring the Sacred for his defense of this. But, let me leave it at this, if you don't adopt something like this, then the aesthetic will always be subordinated to the linguistic - a position held by most deconstructionists/post-structuralists as far as I can tell.
As far as your use of will/intellect/intuition - these aren't categories currently in popular employment - certainly not in this conversation with modern theologians. could you "translate" them for the benefit of our readers?
Ah, right. Yeah, I certainly have no problem agreeing with you re: 'pre(or non)verbal' events and 'verbal' events; it's something of a mystery how language maps onto what is not itself linguistic--though there are many theories which try to explain this. It's not surprising that although medieval Christians, working with Aristotle and his arabic commentators, that the 'agent intellect' of a person (i.e. the pre-conscious active feature of the intellect) converts what is sensed into something that is per se intelligible, which is a mental basis for concept formation. Anyways... 'intuitive cognition' [I.C.] is unmediated direct knowledge (i.e. unmediated by a sensible image in any of the 5 senses, or anything in the imagination, i.e. phantasms). I.C. is of/about the existence of whatever is known (i.e. immediate conscious awareness of some real thing); whereas abstractive cognition presupposes I.C. and considers what is known whether or not it is really existing. Also, A.C. 'starts' from a habit or inclination that results after the I.C. (as opposed to the extra-mental thing as with I.C.). So, in a loose sense, intuitive cognition is like a 1st order cognition (occurrent thought), and abstractive cognition is like a 2nd order cognition, with peculiar features regarding cognition of the existence of the known thing and a basis for the act of cognition (the extra-mental thing or a habit). I think there are perhaps modern variations on this distinction, but certainly this is something to consider ....
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