New Elucidations by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Author:Hans Urs von Balthasar [Balthasar, Hans Urs von]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898700411
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2012-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

THE CHRISTIAN REMAINDER

Generally speaking, the Christian remainder becomes evident in the fact that God’s historical self-revelation in salvation history, climaxing in Christ, can never be relativized, surpassed or bracketed in an individual’s encounter with God. In this self-revelation, God wanted to lay bare his inmost heart, for he loved the world so much that he gave bis only-begotten Son for it. The Christian is invited and drawn into this salvation history objectively, whether he is aware of it or not—for example, in a state of absorption. He is needed for this history. We shall consider three aspects of this remainder that belong intrinsically together.

a. As called into being by God, the creaturely, free “I” is definitively prized, desired and loved; for God, it is a Thou. This free Thou was created concrete enough to receive God, for he wants to become man in his Son. In the Son, the image and likeness of God that man is becomes completely transparent to the prototype: “He who sees me sees the Father.”20 Therefore, as we have already said, genuine Christian meditation is not only “categorical” but “transcendental”, or better—since here these categories are not adequately applicable—sacramental. In Jesus the Good Shepherd, we see God the Good Shepherd;21 Jesus is God’s authentic, unsurpassable “interpretation”.22 In his apparently finite acts, sufferings and sentiments, the ever-Greater of the infinite God becomes manifest. Here we can perceive the role of “negative theology” within Christianity. Its task is not to negate every statement predicated of God, because the concept is always specified in content, while the Absolute, on the contrary, can be only the perfect absence of any specification. Instead, the task of negative theology is to indicate the plenitude that is revealed and contained in the finite “sacrament” and surpasses all our notions, being always more than what I could ever comprehend even by transcending myself to the utmost. (A necessary reflection of this Christian negativity is present in the Christian I—Thou relationship between persons: in true love, the Thou is loved in himself, and this self in his freedom is always more than his manifestations and any notion I may entertain regarding him.) Furthermore, the incarnate Son is he who, in the most absolute manner, receives from the Father and owes him everything; as such he will eternally say: “The Father is greater than I.”23 It does not occur to him to want to identify himself with the Father just because he is prefigured in the Father as his origin and therefore could take possession of his “exemplary identity” in him. Hence, in the Incarnation of the Son we are shown not only the exemplary attitude of the creature toward God but a prototypical attitude in God himself: to receive and to be indebted is itself divine and thus definitive.

b. Like the Buddhist, the Christian ponders the monstrous burden of suffering in the world, behind which is the burden of guilt. But for the Christian, this burden cannot be eliminated by means of meditation (as

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