The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age (Glory of the ... (ISBN 089870247X)

The first book in the first part of an important theology:
The late Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar was, without a doubt, one of the most important Catholic systematic theologians of the 20th century. This is the first book (of seven) of the first part of his "trilogy" which outlines and describes his systematic theology. As an introduction to his systematics, it is an essential read. To those not familiar with von Balthasar, it's a wonderful place to start. Unsatisfied with Rahner's "transcendental Thomism" and his method of "doing theology from below", von Balthasar begins with the revelation of God. The entire systematic theology is structured around the ancient philosophical transcendentals "Beauty, Truth, and Goodness". In this first volume (and throughout the first part of the trilogy) von Balthasar discusses the Revelation of God to humanity through form and beauty. Truly a remarkable book, and a good introduction to a remarkable man.

A masterpiece on Beauty:
Hans Urs von Balthasar was one of the most preeminent XXth century catholic theologians, and this is, in my opinion, his most important work - by this I mean the whole trilogy (Glory, Theodrammatica, Theologica). This first volume of Glory, Seeing the Form (Schau der Gestalt) seems to be really fundamental for a serious understanding of the guidelines of his thought. At the fantastic Introduction, after a superb hymn to the Beauty, he presents us with an accurate analysis of the elimination of this universal (Beauty) from both Catholic and Protestant theology, besides a review on the possibilities of a Protestant Aesthetics. He tries, then, to make it clear the difference between an Aesthetic Theology from a Theological Aesthetics. The task and structure of the latter is then explored. There's no way to go on in such detailness through the whole book, because there are too many points to look at, and this is not the place to do it. But it's worth to say that the main objective of the author, as he goes on working on the 'subjective evidence' through the 'light' and 'experience' of faith (the second part of the book), and at the third part, the 'objective evidence', the main objective, as I was saying, is to precise a 'form', to state the main difference of Christianity from all other world religions, which is exactly the visible and historical form of the God made flesh. After 'seeing' the form of revelation which came from the Old Covenant, we have in Christ the centre of its form, that is, the centre of God's revelation form. I strongly recommend this book to everyone who is seriously wanting to deep his theological studies, or to anyone who wants to learn more about the actual situation of the Church, and Christianity as a whole.

Beautiful Philosophy:
Any Christian who likes to express his or her faith in aesthetic terminology should read this book. Any educated person with a classical philosophic vocabulary should read it too. Beautiful work.

The Perceptual Basis of Faith:
SEEING {...and, as, is...} BELIEVING The Relationship between Perception and Faith in Hans Urs von Balthasar's The Glory of The Lord Notwithstanding von Balthasar's stated objective of developing "a theory of beauty from the data of revelation itself with genuinely theological methods," the dynamic that emerges between the fields of theology and aesthetics in The Glory of the Lord seems to be one of mutual critique and enrichment more so than strictly unidirectional influence. After all, von Balthasar's own survey of the state of these disciplines at the denouement of modernity pronounces them rather diminished in scope and aspirations. Before they can engage in any meaningful dialogue, theology and aesthetics must be drawn out of their insular guilds by the memory of a once shared object and language. Von Balthasar's assessment of prevailing approaches to revelation in modern theology (including atomistic strains of biblical studies) evinces their alarming resemblance to scientific dissection, a mode of inquiry he judges to be at odds with both the form and content of revelation. In von Balthasar's view, preoccupation with fragmentary analysis compromises not only the classical definition of revelation as God's self-presentation to the world, but also the classical definition of theology as contemplation of and participation in this divine-creaturely encounter. Much modern theology seems distracted by historical and textual "particles" to such a degree, that it is no longer capable of perceiving the greater whole these pertain to, a whole that is not simply a reconstructed historical or textual entity, but the dawning reality of creation's participation in the life of God. Von Balthasar senses that without this "mystical" element modern theological method remains a misleading confusion of the greater whole with a mere collage of parts. However, the beatific vision itself stands in need of careful disentanglement from its distortions in the imageless interiority of fideism (undergirded by the principle of absconditas Dei sub contrario) and the privileged gnosis of syncretistic theosophy. In the wake of its "liberation" from metaphysics, ethics, and conceptuality by paradoxically allied currents of Kantian and Romantic epistemologies, aesthetics has severely limited its vision as well. On the one hand, it has dutifully spun out intricate patterns, surgically precise compositions, and impassive juxtapositions of characters in deference to free (that is, concept-free and affection-free) play of corresponding mental faculties. On the other hand, its more ambitious attempts to rekindle the extinguished transcendent light have produced chimaeras of the World Spirit or World Soul permeating nature and humanity, zealously burning "illusory" differences in quasi-monist, quasi-pantheist conflagrations. From Herder to Hegel, the latter alternative has accepted the price of "insulating the aesthetic from logic and ethics (as opposed to its total integration (with) the true, and the good in the Greeks and in earlier theology)" for the sake of preserving beauty, albeit of a very particular variety. However majestic and sublime, Romantic beauty may open up, but struggles to transcend, the "infinity" and "divinity" of the human soul (or the World Soul in its depths). The outward-bound impulse of Romantic beauty and grandeur thus seems a deeply introspective journey into a universe circumscribed by the Self, whether human or cosmic. In displacing transcendent-immanent divinity with a purely immanent World Spirit, the Romantic solution hardly does justice to the respective potentials of aesthetics and theology. However, neither does the Kantian solution, which divests beauty of its revelatory core, and faith - of its perceptual imperative. The task set before von Balthasar, then, seems twofold: 1) to recover models of aesthetic and theological thought that preserve a nuanced distinction between the natural (immanent) and supernatural (transcendent) realms while maintaining a resilient continuity (or communion) among them; 2) to amalgamate these models in such a way as to bring the aesthetic dyad of form and perception into a mutually illuminating relationship with the theological dyad of revelation and faith. When these pairs are discovered to be two sides of the same coin, so to speak, the coin's greater whole - the human experience of union with God - can begin to emerge. Von Balthasar identifies the ancient-medieval period, in which beauty still constituted an immediate concern of religion, and divinity - of art theory, as the quintessential precedent and promising resource for his anticipated formulation. In the realm of theology, for instance, patristic and scholastic thought (especially in its first bloom) had embraced and venerated beauty as a transcendental property of Being (still conceived as more or less continuous with divine essence rather than hermetically sealed off as a neutral, purely creaturely potentiality). Despite surging countercurrents (including the Augustinian motif of the "hiddenness of God" and the docetic, ascetic, and pietistic strands of iconoclasm), this understanding of beauty infused theological discourse with a longing for a profoundly perceptual experience of God (and/or divine glory or splendour). "Whatever the particular aspects each Father may select and whatever the method he may follow, they are all at one in the explicit recognition and emphasis they give to the aesthetic moment within contemplation, a contemplation indeed that is attentive to just this moment," observes von Balthasar. The "aesthetic moment" he has in mind, however, entails a broader range of perceptual experience than a typically imagined inward ascent into unapproachable light. For Fathers like Origen, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Hilary, Leo the Great, and Evagrius, among others, the beauty of God "radiat(es) objectively through the veiled form" - whether through the literal sense of scripture, the narrative of salvation-history, the liturgical constitution of the Church, or the transfigured life of the believer. In the realm of ancient and early medieval philosophy, the prospect of accessing the divine sphere through inspiration and its transport constitutes a key presupposition and impetus of aesthetics and artistic practice, as its agents and artifacts aspire to mediate and bear witness to this experience. Here, union with the divine emerges as the highest objective and fruit of authentic perception. Such perception corresponds to an apparition of the divine through beautiful form and its invasion of the soul with a view to wooing it beyond the boundaries of the self. The beautiful form renders the divine intelligible and attractive to the soul and sets the latter on a quest for an ongoing existential relation with it. The trace divine visitation leaves in the soul is a recollected clarity of vision that fuels a yearning to recapture the transitory union by sifting veils of appearances. Lest the object of this yearning be interpreted in strictly informative terms, the animating principle of the entire aesthetic enterprise should be reiterated as the passage from intelligibility to desire to union - a metaphysical, but also an irreducibly affective, union. In earlier treatises on poetic inspiration, flashes of insight tend to descend upon the soul in extraordinary, bewildering episodes and, in a sense, constitute foreign intrusions. However, in Neoplatonic schemes - the "aesthetic metaphysics" par excellence - the revelation of the divine is identified as the fundamental dynamic of all reality, and desire for the divine - as the central axis of every animate and inanimate entity. And while this "natural" accessibility of the divine eventually comes under sharp criticism from Protestant as well as certain Catholic quarters, its particular commitment to perceptually mediated union remains an inspiring model for aesthetic incorporation of the divine and theological incorporation of form, perception, and desire. In light of the ancient-medieval pattern of holding religious and artistic concerns in creative tension, it is not surprising that the three moderately successful attempts at the integration of theology and aesthetics identified by von Balthasar heavily draw on patristic and medieval motifs. Hamann, Barth, and Scheeben ultimately circle back to classical notions of beauty, inspiration, and eros in order to recover connecting links between revelation and form, faith and perception - links that have either been severed by deistic and fideistic methodologies or mistaken as indicating monist identities by idealist and Romantic alternatives. For Hamann and Barth, the route leading back to these sources is considerably more circuitous than for Scheeben (in light of the former pair's entrenched commitment to the principle of absconditas Dei sub contrario). Nevertheless, each of their syntheses highlights crucial insights that become cornerstones in von Balthasar's own edifice. In contrast to the course taken by most of his German idealist contemporaries, Johann Georg Hamann "finds a secret way back to the Patristic theology of the nuptial relation between God and the world." In taking the world onto himself, God overcomes its alienation while preserving its meaningful distinction (the latter being frequently lost on Hamann's colleagues, including Herder). The Creator's "wedding" (or joining) of the world and humanity to himself simultaneously fulfills and surpasses the "total aspiration of worldly and pagan beauty" - its pining for the perception of the divine and elevation into its sphere. In Christian revelation, however, the Crucifixion represents God in a way that brings the self-sacrificial dimension of beauty and eros into high relief. The intelligibility and appeal of this love stem less from its orderly, formal beauty (stasis, proportion, and balance) than from the extremity of its kenotic embrace. The God who discloses himself through the form of the Cross engenders perception and desire that are simultaneously "native" to the soul (as innate impulse towards the divine is in Neoplatonic schemes) and "imparted" - in the sense that they are refocused by this form. And while the crucified form subverts the classical ideal of divine apatheia in obvious ways, for Hamann, the establishment of its perceptibility as form is triumph enough: the locus classicus of the absconditas Dei sub contrario can be interpreted as hosting a profoundly perceptual experience of God. The manifestation of divine love in the Crucifixion stirs the observers on both cognitive and affective levels and conveys them into its depths - into the Trinitarian circle of mutual deference and adoration. The strokes Karl Barth contributes to the picture derive from his eventual recourse to pre-Reformation theology, and through it - to classical theory of beauty. In von Balthasar's view, the fundamental insight regarding reciprocity of perception and faith dawns on Barth as the initially combative spirit of his Dogmatics gives way to a more measured contemplation of the scriptural motif of divine glory. This formative arc leads Barth "at the conclusion of his treatment of the doctrine of the divine perfections to restore to God the attribute of `beauty' for the first time in the history of Protestant theology." Apart from the question of beauty's soteriological value in the scheme of natural theology, Barth discovers its indispensable role as intelligibility and appeal that germinate faith. Referencing Augustine's Confessions and especially the Corpus Dionysiacum, Barth writes of God's beauty as "the manner in which he asserts himself as the one who arouses pleasure (Wohlgefallen), creates desire (Begehren) for himself, and rewards with delight (Genuss)...the one who as God is both lovely and loveworthy.'6" For von Balthasar, this concession indicates Barth's escalating uneasiness regarding the sharp dichotomy between faith and understanding enshrined in the Protestant principle of sola fidei. Once alerted to the dramatically overstated nature of this distinction, Barth turns to the ancient-medieval model that posits beauty as a transcendental property of God, on the one hand, and links intelligibility with desire and mystical union, on the other: "...if the form of (God's) glory is determined precisely by his ability to transport us to joy, and further determined by that joyous rapture itself': how could we then possibly dispense with the concept of the beautiful?" While Matthias Scheeben begins his conjecture by demarcating natural from supernatural beauty, his eventual purpose in doing so (apart from reigning in Romantic flights of fancy) seems to be to demonstrate the heightened profundity of their encounter in Christian revelation. In the spirit of the Fathers, Scheeben retains supernatural beauty as a predicate of the very essence of God; natural beauty, however, is in turn a predicate of supernatural beauty - its outpouring in God's act of creation. Although for Scheeben supernatural and natural beauty are, without question, ontologically distinct, the latter is by no means abandoned to its own devices. Rather, it is transfigured by supernatural beauty and restored to its originating sphere in a further unfolding of the creation dynamic within redemption. In Christ, supernatural beauty "penetrates and elevates all depths of reality," becoming perceptible through them as if through veils. Scheeben elaborates on this transfiguration in terms of the already familiar nuptial metaphor - supernatural form is "begotten" by God within natural form through the Incarnation. Before supernatural form can be discerned through natural veils, however, a similar transformation must quicken in the perceiving subject - an "inspiration of the affections and of the whole interior disposition...on the analogy of the fructifying seed or of the enkindling spark." Thus, in Scheeben's account, perception of divine revelation consists in a simultaneous elevation (rapture, transport) of natural form and human vision into the divine sphere. By elucidating this essentially poetic nature of the perceptual experience of God (in the classical sense of the term), Scheeben reveals its compelling continuity with the experience of faith. If both perception and faith can be rendered in terms of inspiration, intelligibility, and transport, faith can finally be understood as enlightened vision rather than blind assent. This inchoate insight flickers in all three previously reviewed attempts at the integration of theology and aesthetics. In von Balthasar's conception, however, the intuited mutuality of perception and faith becomes an overarching vision, in reaching towards which he recovers the originally common object and language of these disciplines. He identifies their common object as the experience of communion with God, and their common language - as the poetic lexicon of form, beauty, desire, inspiration, and rapture. When the classical heritage of perception and faith reveals them to be complementary expressions of a single core - human experience of the divine - the phrase "seeing the form" begins to read rather as "believing the revelation" or "encountering the divine." Having established this analogy at the heart of his enterprise, von Balthasar proceeds to extrapolate its implications for both disciplines, beginning with expanded definitions of their shared terms en route to outlining their shared task. Augmented to reflect classical concerns of aesthetics and theology, von Balthasar's definition of the term form spans a great range of referents. On the grandest scale, it signifies nothing less than the relational shape of ultimate reality - the communion of God, humanity, and the world. This layer of meaning additionally contains the historical unfolding of this communion - its inception at the creation of the world, its deterioration as a result of the Fall, its resuscitation by means of the Incarnation, and its impending consummation at the end of time. On a more ontological level, the term form indicates the essentially God-oriented constitution of creaturely existence, traditionally associated with the concept of Imago Dei. In reference to human nature, it specifically denotes a "totality of spirit and body" akin to their archetypal configuration in Christ. The greater whole of the human being, however, is but one (even if a most potent) instantiation of the "primal phenomenon" of the Word-made-Flesh, whose perfect reciprocity between appearance and essence both originates and recapitulates the deep logic of all reality. The appearance of natural and artistic forms that embody this logic is truly a revelation of their depths. Such appearance is "the real presence of the depths...and...a real pointing beyond itself to these depths" in the manner of the real presence of Christ's divinity in His humanity and the latter's simultaneous pointing beyond itself to the Trinitarian life. By virtue of this sacramental logic par excellence, conventional form (whether nature, art, or human life) can indeed refract the sublime form of the eschatological connubium between God and the world. Although von Balthasar's often-synonymous usage of the terms form and beauty makes their definitions somewhat difficult to disentangle, the latter ultimately seems to function as a predicate of the former. If von Balthasar's form can be thought of as equivalent to B/being or existence, beauty can be justifiably predicated of form (B/being) as its intelligibility and appeal without diminishing its status as a transcendental. The following passage (however tortuous in itself) may help bring the relationship between the two terms into focus: "The form as it appears to us is beautiful only because the delight that it arouses in us is founded upon the fact that, in it, the truth and goodness of the depths of reality itself are manifested and bestowed; and this manifestation and bestowal reveal themselves to us as being something infinitely and inexhaustibly valuable and fascinating." While Von Balthasar's subtle differentiation of beauty from ethical/logical value seeks to remedy their conflation in Romantic aesthetics, his insistent correlation of beauty with fascination/delight contrives to broaden the Kantian horizon of formalist disinterestedness. Once delivered from these hazards, beauty can once more modify not only Being, but also God, as their intelligibility and appeal. In the particular context of Christian revelation, beauty can be predicated of Christ Himself insofar as He renders God's identity and relationship to the world increasingly intelligible and worthy of affection. As von Balthasar puts it, "...we ought never to speak of God's beauty without reference to the form and manner of appearing which he exhibits in salvation-history" with Christ at its pinnacle. As a counterpart of form and beauty in their expanded senses, perception certainly includes, but is by no means exhausted by, the notion of physiological process. The nature of its object - beautiful form in all of its vastness - is such that its authentic engagement implies not only a recognition of its most sublime depths (the divine life) in and through its variegated appearances, but also an indwelling of these depths - an "immigration" and "naturalization" into the Trinitarian space. Contra Kantian disinterestedness, such perception is "the opposite of distanced consideration of an image...(rather,) it is the metamorphosis of the beholder into the image he beholds." In this sense, recognition itself facilitates a re-connection of perceiver-believers to the greater whole of fellowship with God - and mystical union can once again be understood in profoundly perceptual terms. The simultaneity of recognition and transport in the acts of perception and faith reflects an organic synergy of volition and divine power (or grace) properly characterizing both. In the classical poetic and theological pairing of inspiration and rapture, the former alludes to a divine amplification of cognitive and affective capacities, and the latter - to the cooperation of such amplified vision with the current that transports it ever further into the depths of communion with God (without washing away the bridges of appearance). In this manner, both perception and faith span recognition, desire, and union. When belief is understood as "a theological act of perception," furthermore, "man is (no longer) merely addressed in total mystery, as if he were compelled to accept obediently in blind and naked faith something hidden from him, but...something is `offered' to man by God...in such a way that man can see it, understand it, make it his own, and live from it in keeping with his human nature." This exploratory survey of the common roots of theological and aesthetic language naturally entails an expansion of their respective disciplinary tasks - an expansion that ultimately aligns them around the common object of participation in divine life. For modern renditions of theology and aesthetics, such expansion implies a number of fundamental methodological shifts. For theology, these include: 1) a reintegration of historico-psychological analysis into the greater context of participation in the believing community, 2) a recovery of the classical definition of revelation as God's self-presentation and of faith as transformative response, 3) a conscious resistance to the extremes of moralizing fideism and totalizing gnosis. For aesthetics, these include: 1) a recovery of the transcendent depth and revelatory potential of beauty, 2) a restoration of the visionary and prophetic dimension of aesthetic experience, and 3) a reconnection of beauty to truth and goodness. As Hans Urs von Balthasar's The Glory of the Lord identifies and implements these amendments in its own formulation, it emerges as a major critical and creative frame of reference for any future attempts along the trajectory of recovering form and perception for theology, as well as divinity and faith for aesthetics.