Balthasar in Light of Early Confucianism by Joshua R. Brown

Author:Joshua R. Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
Published: 2020-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

Balthasar’s conception of Trinitarian kenosis is appreciably distinct. For Barth, Trinitarian kenosis involves an explicit theology of Trinitarian subordination, though glossed as “eternal” subordination to distinguish it from Arianism.46 Balthasar, however, identifies kenosis with self-giving, and he emphasizes that in God this self-giving is love. In TL 2, Balthasar writes, “What the Logos manifests visibly of the Father is . . . love in all its divine dimensions.” Hence, “if . . . we identify the Logos in God as the locus of the unfolding of a divine logic, this logic can only be called a logic of love.”47

In the theo-dramatics, Balthasar emphasizes the event-character of the Triune love. He contends that the Father’s begetting the Son is an act of love: in God, the Father “ is the movement of self-giving that holds nothing back.”48 Balthasar sees this as the Father giving himself away, in a protokenotic movement (Ur-kenosis).49 As he puts it, the Father “will not be God for himself alone” and “he lets go of his divinity” to the Son.50 This means that for the Son, his divine nature requires a mode of receptivity, the eternal thanksgiving for the Father’s gift of the Godhead.51

However, in order to avoid a sense of chronological development in God or ontological disparity between Father and Son, Balthasar posits an “active reception” within God: whereas the Father gives himself in the generation of the Son, the Son reciprocally assents to his own generation.52 Balthasar speaks of the Son’s active reception as an “all-embracing Yes,” which is “the refusal to participate in the autonomy with which the Son is endowed.”53 In this sense, the Son’s dignity as God is defined by not grasping divinity, but by answering yes to the Father. Hence, the Son’s very life is “making a fitting response to the Father’s total gift of himself by freely and thankfully allowing himself to be poured forth by the Father, a response that is made in absolute spontaneity and in absolute ‘obedience’ to the Father,” which is to say, “the readiness to respond and correspond to the Father.”54

This Trinitarian account is formative for Balthasar’s Christology. To Balthasar, the obedient form of Christ’s life first and foremost shows the Triune caritas. The incarnate Son’s obedience reveals the eternal Son’s Triune love, since he loves the Father in an eternal act of obedience. Consequently, the mission of the Incarnation involves the Son’s loving and obedient yes to the Father that is continuous with his eternal life of love. And, because within God’s life is a primal kenosis and obedient love in return, this opens an “infinite distance,” which is contained by love (the Spirit) and which can contain all other “distances,” including sin.55 For Balthasar, therefore, that Jesus knows himself as the “one sent” means he knows himself as the eternally loving and obedient Son, and knows his life in the Incarnation is a historical translation of his loving return to the Father.

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