Theo-Logic, Vol. 3: The Spirit of Truth by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Author:Hans Urs von Balthasar [von Balthasar, Hans Urs]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9780898707205
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2005-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

b. Withdrawal as a Precondition of the Gift of the Spirit

Nonetheless we must consider a feature that is clearly stressed twice in the Farewell Discourses. While it is true that the exalted Lord and the Holy Spirit are inseparable in their unity, it is also true that the earthly Jesus proclaims an indispensable distinction between his tangible form and his pneumatic mode of being: this is the precondition, if he is to send the Spirit and if he himself is to return in a spiritual manner. The gap between these two presences is essential so that the universality latent in the particularity of Jesus’ earthly existence can be made manifest.

“Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (Jn 16:7). This seems to imply that while Jesus remains on earth he cannot send the Spirit, since the disciples cannot have both his presence and that of the Spirit at the same time. This assertion has an absolute ring about it and seems not to take into account those other statements where Jesus says that, after having gone away, he will return during the Spirit’s reign (Jn 14:3; 14:28). This return, however, will be different in kind; it will be in the Spirit. Thus the Risen One who appears to the disciples will be a “pneuma zōopoioun” (1 Cor 15:45), able to appear and disappear, to go through closed doors—which are not characteristics of the mortal body. But even this risen Lord, who has authority to give the Spirit as he wishes (Jn 20:22), wishes to withdraw from visibility, as the Resurrection accounts, in different ways, make very plain. The scene with Magdalen at the tomb shows that it is wrong to grasp and hold on to Jesus’ bodily form, for the Risen One is about to ascend to the Father. The scene involving Thomas—the concluding scene in the first version of the end of John’s Gospel—gives a general application of the instruction, “Blessed are those who have not seen (and do not desire to touch) and yet believe.” The disciples cannot follow Jesus directly when he goes away. “Where I am going you cannot follow me now; but you shall follow afterward” (Jn 13:33, 36). When Jesus disappears before the eyes of the Emmaus disciples, leaving them with his Eucharist, he presents us with a kind of commentary on the promise, “It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail” (Jn 6:63). Thomas Aquinas rightly comments, in connection with a passage in Augustine: “Christ did not wish to give his disciples the Spirit during his lifetime because they were as yet unprepared; for, since the Holy Spirit is a spiritual love, it is opposed to fleshly love. The disciples clung with a certain fleshly love to Christ’s humanity and had not yet attained a spiritual love of his divinity.

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