The Glory of the Lord, Vol 1 by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Author:Hans Urs von Balthasar [Balthasar, Hans Urs von]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781586173210
Published: 2013-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

3. THE SPIRITUAL SENSES

a. Aporetic of the Spiritual Senses

The whole range of questions concerning the subjective evidence of revelation culminates in a final central area of discussion in which the ‘spiritual senses’ are to be found. Faith appeared as the token of a total human vision and, indeed, as its hidden beginning, in the sense that God’s human and sensory appearance in Christ could be reciprocated only by a hidden perception and response on the part of man. Furthermore, it was only in this way that the faith of the New Testament could fulfil that of the Old. Perception, as a fully human act of encounter, necessarily had not only to include the senses, but to emphasise them, for it is only through the senses and in them that man perceives and acquires a sensibility for the reality of the world and of Being. And, what is more, in Christianity God appears to man right in the midst of worldly reality. The centre of this act of encounter must, therefore, lie where the profane human senses, making possible the act of faith, become ‘spiritual’, and where faith becomes ‘sensory’ in order to be human. But is this not an impossibility or a play of words, since, on the one hand, sensibility cannot by definition perceive anything spiritual and since, on the other hand, when the object of faith is abandoned to the senses in this fashion, Christianity sinks to the level of a mythical religion? The archetypal experiences of the Biblical sphere (until now considered in themselves) prove the contrary, and their archetypal character simply demands the extension of their relevance to the Christian faith. Is it not, again, a sign of the weakness of this faith that it remains so bound to historical concreteness as not to be capable of the liberating rapture of spiritual, much less mystical abstraction? Here we must note that we should not speak simply of sensibility, but of ‘spiritual’ sensibility. Only thus does the paradox of the object of our inquiry emerge, a paradox which is especially evident when we speak of the Resurrection of Christ and of all flesh. In the Christian sphere, the death and the burial of God within this sensory world correspond to conceptual and mystical abstraction: man’s senses and his reason are equally affected by them, and ‘naked faith’ is in this respect a total death of natural man. But once the Christian has risen with Christ and ascended to the Father, then, with body and spirit, he has become a ‘spiritual man’ and henceforth—in so far as he is a believer—he has not only a spiritual intellect and will, but also a spiritual heart, a spiritual imagination and spiritual senses. It is obvious that we cannot treat this reality psychologically, but only theologically, since it is the subjective echo of the objective fact of faith, which as such is not subject to any worldly science. But it is just as obvious that, because it effects the real Christian

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