The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Vol. 2: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical Styles by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Author:Hans Urs von Balthasar [Balthasar, Hans Urs von]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898700480
Published: 2013-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

2. THE RADIANCE OF FREEDOM

Anselm’s most important dogmatic treatises revolve round the problem of freedom: the early work, De veritate, points up the ethical element in truth, De libertate arbitrii sets out the basic principles of freedom, De casu diaboli their application to pure spiritual being, De conceptu virginali et de originali peccato their application to mankind; Cur Deus homo demythologizes the doctrine of redemption and grounds everything in the unforced freedom of the death of the Redeemer and the consequent liberation of the constrained freedom of men, and De concordia answers the objections against freedom drawn from the foreknowledge, predestination and grace of God. Freedom is the central concern of a Christian understanding of reality which (bracketing the historical-positive under revelation) contemplates the relationship of absolute and relative being in the light of the self-disclosure of the absolute. Anselm’s inquiry is, moreover, timely, for ‘in our times there are many who completely despair of the freedom of man.’186 From time immemorial, and in particular since the Augustinian doctrine of sin and predestination, freedom has been the playground for all short-sighted and corner-cutting philosophers.

Everything springs from an utterly simple vision of the analogy between God and the creature as an analogy of freedom. For the creature, freedom can only mean being allowed to enter into communion with the other (and thus participation in God’s independent personal being), something, however, which can only be perfected as, through grace, creaturely freedom is drawn ever more strongly into absolute freedom, to the point where the creature achieves its final freedom, when it is free with God and in God, and simply wills, in freedom and not through being overpowered, what God wills: ‘God’s will itself will no longer be different from yours, for as you will will what he wills, so will he will in all things what you wil . . . . you will almightily dispose of your willing, because the Almighty himself will in all things be in accord (concordantem habebis) with your will.’187 But because ‘perfect concordia will reign only where this unites to become an identitas and a unitas’, namely, in the divine triunity,188 the eschatological analogy of freedom between God and the creature can be realised in no other way than in grace as participation in the triune life, because ‘the Father has joined us to his almighty Son as his body and as coheirs with him, and made us who are called in his name to be gods. But God is the one who divinises; you on the contrary will be the one who is divinised.’189

It is this eschatological orientation which renders everything intelligible: the whole way that created freedom has to go before it can be realised and be freed for its own freedom. Looked at from this goal it may ‘not be part of the definition of freedom to be able to sin’, because such a definition would ‘lessen freedom, while its rejection would increase it’;190 at best the power (potestas) which originally constituted

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