percaritatem

sacra doctrina: news item

2008-03-29T09:33:00.000-07:00

New Blog Address

2007-07-28T20:17:00.000-07:00

I have moved my blog to Wordpress. Please up your links to: http://percaritatem.com/.

The Donative, Transformative and Incarnational Nature of Christocentric Friendship

2007-07-26T16:37:00.000-07:00

In my preparation for a paper that I will be presenting at Baylor this Fall on von Balthasar and Christocentric friendship, I have been thinking about the ways in which the claims of Christianity with regard to love and friendship go beyond the possibilities offered in classical philosophy, viz., the philosophy of Aristotle. Though my paper focuses on von Balthasar’s view of friendship, I mention in my introductory paragraph that whether we consult Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics or St. Augustine’s Confessions, we find the affirmation that human beings are social beings and that friendship plays a crucial role in shaping a person’s moral development. After discussing a number of topics in von Balthasar (e.g., the relation of originary, Trinitarian love to human love, being awakened to love by Love, etc.), my plan is to return in the concluding paragraph to briefly discuss the ways that Christian claims with regard to love and friendship in the broadest terms offer something beyond that which is possible in classical philosophy (again, primarily with Aristotle in mind). Below are a few of the ideas that I am tossing around, and about which, I would love your interaction (be it critical or positive).

In Aristotle’s Ethics, as he unfolds his account of the vicious or dissipated person, that is, the person who was deprived of a virtuous upbringing in which good beliefs were fashioned, and consequently, whose corrupt desires and opinions form a perfect harmony in which no resistance is present, it seems that such a person is in an utterly hopeless situation. In other words, a person in this condition is, as Aristotle says in book VII, paragraph 8, incurable.[1] The vicious person is doomed to his fate with no possibility of breaking free from destructive cycles which may have been part of his family line for generations. Having grown up in an injurious environment, a person in such circumstances has experienced and in turn acts out perverse versions of love and friendship. From this perspective, Aristotle’s view that the dissipated person acts with a kind of necessity rings true. Yet, when we bring the Christian tradition into the conversation, whether appealing to St. Augustine or Balthasar, we find that there is hope for the vicious person, as well as any person who has experienced being bound and fragmented by his or her own will. Turning briefly to St. Augustine, in book VIII of his Confessions, Augustine provides a kind of phenomenology of the will in which he vividly describes his own inability to choose the good, which was the result of many years of debauched living.[2] However, for Augustine, as is the case with Balthasar, the Trinitarian God via the Christ event can and does overcome the power of destructive habits and heals not only the will but the whole person. In his taking on of flesh and giving of His Spirit, Christ, so to speak, works from the inside, and thus, is able to effect a transformation that far exceeds any extrinsic solution or mere modification of one’s behavior.

This transformative healing of course comes at a great cost, and the cost was the life of the Son by way of the Cross in which His experience of utter abandonment has never been surpassed. The giving over of Himself to death and willingness to be forsaken by the Father, brings us to a second point of departure with Aristotle’s philosophy. Would, for example, Aristotle’s magnanimous man or his contemplative philosopher voluntarily relinquish a state of perfect bliss and give his life for his enemies? Would such an act be perceived as virtuous or foolish? Yet, this radical self-donation and self-surrender to the Father’s will are constitutive of the Christ event. Not only did He die for those who hated Him, but He offered (and still offers) His adversaries an unfathomable inheritance—i.e., He is willing to bestow upon them all that His Father has imparted to Him. As St. Paul says, perhaps one would die for a good person; however, Christ’s love exceedingly surpasses the possibility of dying for an upright person, which when said and done leaves us with little cognitive dissonance. Christ’s act, on the other hand, as far as the Greeks are concerned, is difficult understand as anything but the apex of foolishness.

Speaking more directly to the implications of Christ’s radical self-giving in relation to friendship, in John 15:12-16, Christ instructs his disciples to keep his commandments, and specifically highlights that they are to love one another as He self-sacrificially loved them. Furthermore, He says that his disciples are now called friends because they have been brought into the circle of intertrinitarian love (see John 15:5ff). Then in verse 16, in the exhortation to live fruitful lives, there is an implicit invitation to participate in Christ’s ongoing mission, a mission that is characterized by loving God and loving one’s neighbor. Here we see that in Christocentric friendship the vertical and the horizontal are inseparable with the latter flowing out of the former, and by implication, serve as a necessary conduit for the full actualization of the self. This Godward/manward nexus highlights the essentially communal and social nature of Christian philia—a philia that has been and continues to be transformed by divine agape. In other words, in Christocentric friendship, the “I” and the “thou” are seen neither as a threat to one another nor is the other instrumentalized (as is the case with some forms of modern and contemporary philosophy, e.g., Sartre). Rather, the relationship between the “I” and the “thou” is a dynamic, reciprocal encounter of love in which both are brought closer to the realization of the particular person that God desires them to be. Since both share a love for Christ and a common mission, they are aware of the fact that human love is a reflection of a more originary, perfect love shared among the members of the Trinity. This divine love, manifested to us in the Person of Jesus Christ, is itself not static, but dynamic because it is the love of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.[3] Or to use Balthasar’s words, “the archetypal identity which we discover in creatures within a clear separation of persons who are held together by love, is a creaturely imago trinitatis, veiled and yet not wholly visible.”[4] As Balthasar gathers together the stones of his mosaic of friendship, the final form takes on a distinctively Chirstocentric and hence Trinitarian shape in which the love held out to us in the Christ event is a gift—a gift that involves no less than an invitation to participate in the love of the Trinity, and in so partaking, one naturally engages in a vertical expression of love that is friendship.

Notes
[1] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, p. 133 [Sachs translation].
[2] Augustine, Confessions, p. 200 [Boulding translation].
[3] Bonnici, Person to Person, p. 36.
[4] Balthasar, Unless You Become Like this Child, pp. 17-18.

Part III: The Trinitarian Significance of Pentecost

2007-07-26T09:42:00.000-07:00

[As stated in part I, this series of posts was inspired as the result of a dialogue with my friend, Mike V. The substance of the posts is taken from several lectures given by Dr. Gaffin at WTS in a New Testament course focusing on Acts and selected epistles of St. Paul. Thus, the tenor of the posts is more conversational and less polished given that they are for the most part the notes that I took from Gaffin’s lectures].

***
In post II, we discussed Gaffin’s take on John 14:18-19, “I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you,” and his rejection of the interpretations that this refers to Christ’s second coming or to His post resurrection appearances. Instead, Gaffin argues that the situation in view pivots around Jesus going to the Father and correlatively the coming of the Holy Spirit. In other words, it is a situation determined by the resurrection/ascension at Pentecost. This is the setting in which we encounter the “I will not leave you orphans but come to you.” Hence, there is a dynamic between ascension and Pentecost, and the point of John 14:18 is that in the course of redemptive history, Christ must leave bodily in order that the Spirit may come. He must ascend to the Father and this is a personal/bodily ascension so that the Spirit may come. This bodily departure also indicates that He will return and share His life with believers. “Because I live you also will live” (John 14:19). Likewise, in John 14:28, we read, “You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I (ESV).” Also in 14:18 where the return of the Spirit is truly a return and presence of Christ as well. Likewise, in John 16:10 and 16:16, Jesus says, “Because I go to the Father you will see me no longer,” and “A little while, and you will see me no longer; and again a little while, and you will see me.” As was pointed out previously, these verses employ the present tense with a future meaning. The disciples were of course asking, “what is the ‘little while?’” Then in chapter 16 Jesus addresses this uncertainty and brings clarity to the situation. However, the point here is that for the Spirit to come is for Christ to come. The balance that we find coming to expression here is the balance between the bodily absence and the spiritual presence of Christ. That balance between bodily absence and Spiritual presence is what Reformed theology has tried to maintain in its view of the real presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper—it is not just a memorial.

The Father’s Involvement

Here we focus on the Father’s involvement in that Pentecost is the fulfillment of the Father’s promise. It is not simply a matter of promise but of the promise that is specifically connected to the Father. It comes from the Father (Luke 24:49; Acts 1:4; Acts 2:33); God as heavenly Father gives the Spirit. Identifying the Spirit as the promised one of the Father opens the widest possible perspectives on Pentecost. That is, this identification marks out Pentecost as the fulfillment of that promise which is at the core of the Old Covenant expectation—it is basic to the architecture of the Old Covenant promise that is at the foundation of covenantal history and that has shaped the course of this history from the beginning. In Gen 12:3, God tells Abraham that in him all nations of the earth will be blessed. Thus, to identify the promise of Pentecost as the promise of the Father is to bring into view the ultimate perspective on that promise. St. Paul expresses this in Gal 3:13-14, when he wrote, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith (ESV, emphasis added).

The hina clauses (“so that”) are correlative; they link the blessing of Abraham to the Gentiles, and what correlates that is that the New Covenant people of God, the Gentile as well as the Jew now receives the promise of the Spirit. This opens up the widest possible perspectives that Pentecost brings to God’s people in that the nexus of what we are seeing now is not only linked to Luke 3 or Joel 2 but is even more comprehensive as brings Genesis 12 and Acts 2 into conversation. Interestingly, Gen 12 follows the account of Babel in Gen 11 where we read of the confusion of language imposed as judgment. What happens at Pentecost with the universalizing of the Spirit is a reversal of Babel and a counter to the effects of that curse.

In John 14:26, we are told that the Father will send the Spirit in Jesus’ name. Jesus had earlier stated in 14:23 that He and the Father will come and make their home with the believer. Thus, what is effected at Pentecost is not only the presence of Christ in the Spirit but the Father’s presence as well. We ought not to see these two aspects (the Christological and the Pater-logical) in a simply parallel fashion. Rather, the Christological has a certain priority or mediatorial distinctiveness. That is, there is an instrumental indispensability of the Christological for the Pater-logical. Think of John 14:9 where Jesus says, “whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” The point being that this statement is not reversible. Thus, there is a mediatorial necessity or instrumental indispensability in John 14:9. Also, in John 14:20, “in that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” It is only as Jesus is indwelt by the Father that He indwells believers and the Father indwells believers.

In sum, Pentecost involves the (initial) fulfillment of the ultimate design and expectation of the covenant. And what is that ultimate expectation? That God Himself will dwell in the midst of his people in Triune fullness. Or put another way, Pentecost is the (initial) realization of the Emanuel principle on an eschatological scale—the Triune God is with us and has not left us as orphans.

Part II: The Trinitarian Significance of Pentecost

2007-07-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

[N.b. As stated in part I, this series of posts was inspired as the result of a dialogue with my friend, Mike V. The substance of the posts is taken from several lectures given by Dr. Gaffin at WTS in a New Testament course focusing on Acts and selected epistles of St. Paul. Thus, the tenor of the posts is more conversational and less polished given that they are for the most part the notes that I took from Gaffin’s lectures].

***

Though there is a central place of the Spirit at Pentecost, this should not cause us to overlook the important involvement of the Father and the Son. In other words, we must recognize Pentecost as a fully Trinitarian event. On the day of Pentecost, Peter preaches an exceedingly Christocentric sermon. He notes the remarkable events that have just happened and connects this to the promise of the Spirit, but this material functions as the introduction to the sermon, as the main theme is Christ and his resurrection and ascension/exaltation (Acts 2:24-33). In verse 33, we read of the outpouring of the Spirit and the intricate connection between this event and Christ’s exaltation—the outpouring of the Spirit is the inevitable result of the exaltation. Moreover, verse 33 indicates that Christ is the active one at Pentecost, particularly in his action with regard to the Holy Spirit. Though Christ Himself in His exaltation has just climactically received the promise of the Holy Spirit from the Father as the result of His ascension, Christ is the one who is doing the outpouring, the baptizing (with the Holy Spirit and fire), just as John the Baptist had proclaimed! Hence, from the sermon preached on day the of Pentecost we see that there is never to be a pneumatology independent from Christology. Christology and pneumatolgoy must be carried on together and cannot be separated. Turning again to verse 33, we read, “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing,” some that the first clause is a reference to Christ’s ascension, whereas the second clause looks back to the Jordan event. Gaffin, however, rejects this interpretation, arguing that what is in view is a reception of the Spirit by God’s people that is attendant on Christ’s ascension-reception of the Holy Spirit. In other words, what is expressed here is that idea that Christ has such a permanent and complete possession of the Spirit (as one of the climax points in the redemptive drama), and as a result, He has been so transformed and eschatologically indwelt by the Spirit, that St. Paul go so far as to say that Christ as the last Adam has become the Spirit. Before anyone shouts “heresy,” we must draw a distinction between an ontological identity and an economic identity. Gaffin’s claim is that the incarnate Christ and the Spirit are equated in their redemptive function (economic function). He reiterates that this has nothing to do with a confusion of the ontological status of Trinity. The Son and Spirit are equated functionally; there is an economic oneness—not an ontological oneness. By making this qualification, Gaffin is staving off any charges of a kind of modalism. Viewed from this perspective, when on the day of Pentecost Jesus baptizes we may say that He baptizes with Himself—He baptizes with His own indwelling presence. At Pentecost the exalted Jesus sends the promise of the Father in the presence of the Spirit by coming Himself in the demonstrable power and presence of the Spirit.

Gaffin goes on to make the following connection. In the closing sanction of the Great Commission in Matt 28:20 where we have the resurrected Jesus, who is on the verge of ascension, giving the promise, “I am with you always until the end of the age.” As Gaffin points out, this is a statement that is not merely to be understood in terms of referring to the divine omnipresence of Jesus, but rather it is an affirmation to be understood in terms of the power and activity of the Holy Spirit. There is a parousia aspect at Pentecost—a return of Christ at Pentecost. We can reinforce this if we look outside of the Luke/Acts material to other material (e.g., John 14:18-19, 28; also 16:7; here Jesus stresses the advantage for the disciples of His departure and the coming of the Spirit. So in giving this promise that the Spirit will come, the disciples are assured that they will not be left as orphans. With this said, Jesus adds, “I will come to you” (John 14:18). Then in verse 19, He says, “Yet a little while and the world will see (θεωρεῖ) me no more, but you will see (θεωρεῖτε) me.” Here the present tense is being used for an impending future which is reflected in the ESV translation above. The passage continues, "In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him." (John 14:20-23, ESV). So Jesus’ promises to be present with his disciples are tagged temporally, and this raises the question of how we are to understand the force of these adverbial expressions (“for a while,” “in that day” etc.). That is, how do we understand their temporal reference? We can say that what is not in view is a reference to the second coming. This is the case even though in 14:2-3, Jesus’ talk of preparing a place for his disciples does in fact refer to second coming. Why? Because in 14:19 we are told that the world is going to be excluded from beholding the coming of which Jesus is speaking. Elsewhere in the New Testament, the second coming is said to be visible and evident to all (Rev. 1:7). Nor do we have in mind the proposal of Jesus’ post resurrection appearances prior to ascension. For the problem then would be how can these temporal appearances be described in terms of the mutual indwelling of believers? Thus, Gaffin argues that what is in view here is not the second coming, but rather the resurrection, ascension and Pentecost complex.

Part I: The Trinitarian Significance of Pentecost

2007-07-24T09:28:00.000-07:00

This series of posts was inspired as the result of a dialogue with my friend, Mike V., regarding the relationship between Christ and the Holy Spirit in the unfolding plan of redemptive history. The substance of the posts is taken from several lectures given by Dr. Gaffin at WTS in a New Testament course focusing on Acts and selected epistles of St. Paul. Thus, the tenor of the posts is more conversational and less polished given that they are for the most part the notes that I took from Gaffin’s lectures. The content, however, is in my opinion quite good.

The Parallel Between Pentecost and Jesus’ Baptism at the Jordan

In a formulaic way, what the Jordan was to Jesus, Pentecost is to the Church. When we grasp this connection, then a specific aspect of the redemptive historical significance emerges. We can highlight the analogy between the Jordan/Christ event and Pentecost/Church event as follows. On the one hand, what took place at the Jordan was a confirmation of Jesus in his Messianic ministry—it was his endowment with the Holy Spirit for his unique kingdom task in ministry. So correlatively, we can say that Pentecost was the constitution of the Church as the Messianic community, and, as was the case for Christ at the Jordan, it was an empowerment for the Church’s kingdom task of gospel ministry. Thus, we note a pattern that cuts across this analogy: at the Jordan Jesus receives the Spirit for the fulfillment of the mission that is before him. In his resurrection and ascension (Acts 2:33), Jesus now receives the Spirit as a reward for the work completed. This Spirit is then poured out on the Church, for in the ascension Christ received the fulfillment of the Father’s promise of the Holy Spirit, and He now shares the Messianic reward of the Spirit with His people.

We can say then that in a redemptive historical sense the Church as the New Covenant community comes into existence on Pentecost. In Ephesians 2:22, St. Paul speaks of the Church as the dwelling place of God in the Spirit, the habitation of God in the Spirit. So Pentecost constitutes the Church as the dwelling place of God in the Spirit. By affirming that the Church in a special way comes into existence at Pentecost, we are not in any way denying that there is only one people of God saved by grace through faith and destined to walk in good works. There is a continuity in the people of God in both testaments, and we can talk about the church in the Old Testament. However, what takes place at Pentecost is something new, yet not disconnected with the past. It is a new community—the New Covenant Church is a matter of fulfillment.

In John 7:39, we read, “the Spirit had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified.” So in a sense, the Church is not yet because Jesus is not yet glorified. In a related manner, biblical metaphors speaking of church as a spiritual building in process can be connected to Jesus’ promise to Peter—“upon this rock I will build my church.” In other words, the immovable rock upon with Christ is building His Church is the foundation of Spirit. It is what the resurrected Christ poured on the day of Pentecost—a foundation that is firm and abiding. Thus, in Peter who is a central actor in the beginning of Acts, we encounter a person speaking with amazing boldness, and, consequently, we find this fulfillment of the Spirit’s power. In addition, the significance of Pentecost is not first of all experiential, yet there is a derivative experiential aspect. Rather, it is first of all significant in terms of redemptive history. In other words, it is not the model of a conversion plus an experience of the Spirit; it is a climactic event in redemptive history along with the resurrection, and is by no means of secondary significance. It is constitutive of the Church and so bears on the experience of all who are in the Church—all believers.

Regarding the questions, what exactly is the newness of Pentecost, and how are we to account for what is true because of Pentecost and not otherwise true without Pentecost? Two things above all else should be highlighted. First, what Pentecost means more than anything else, is that the Spirit is now present and at work among God’s people as a result of the finished work of Christ. Pentecost means that the Spirit present in Church is there because of the work of the exalted Christ is completed (John 7:39). Of course the Spirit is at work throughout the Old Covenant and works among the remnant/elect in Israel, but this was a work of the Spirit ahead of time. In other words, it was a proleptic work of the Spirit in terms of unfolding of redemptive history. Thus, the saving benefits that are given to God’s people in the Old Testament are based on what took place in the resurrection and ascension of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Hence, a Christological significance must always be in focus when we consider the redemption of God’s people in both Covenants. To say that the Spirit is now present as the result of the exalted Christ is to say that Spirit is now present and at work in an eschatological fashion, i.e., the newness of Pentecost is that the Spirit is now an eschatological Spirit. Second, the Spirit is now poured out in all flesh—all people. Pentecost brings into existence the people of God as a fellowship of the Spirit made up of Gentile as well as Jews. The circle of fellowship is broadened to include all believers from every nation, tribe and tongue. So the Spirit of Pentecost is a spirit of missions. In the matter of Pentecost, the watchword of the Church is not back to Pentecost, as this would involve us in a redemptive historical anachronism (i.e. the Church is not to be caught up in a back to Pentecost nostalgia in order to attempt to recapture the Pentecost experience of the 120 on the day of Pentecost). Rather, the watchword of Pentecost should be forward (not backward) from Pentecost until Christ returns.

Part III: Balthasar’s Biblical Hermeneutics

2007-07-22T20:55:00.000-07:00

The focus of this concluding post is Balthasar’s hermeneutical practice of interpreting the Bible as a Christocentric narrative. Here again Balthasar’s conviction regarding the canonical integrity of the Bible comes to the fore. For Balthasar, the Bible as a whole speaks of Christ, who is the climax of the one unfolding story from Genesis to Revelation. Stated slightly differently, both the Old and New Testaments must be read in light of the cosmic significance of the resurrection. As one would expect, Balthasar welcomed the ancient and medieval view of a fourfold sense of Scripture, but here too he stressed Christ as the hermeneutical center through which these four senses must ultimately pass. According to Balthasar, the literal or grammatical-historical sense is the basis for the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses. “But the literal sense is not a verbal shell above or behind which lie the so-called spiritual senses. Reading the Bible as though the literal and spiritual senses were thus related would, of course, sever the indissoluble bonds uniting its form and content.” Rather than construing Balthasar’s understanding of the relation between the literal and other senses of Scripture in spatial metaphors (though Balthasar did at times speak of layers of meaning), “it is more consistent to think of the relation, as he did, in terms of different applications or uses of a given text by the Spirit, who seeks thereby to bring humanity through Christ into the divine life” (p. 182).

Moreover, for Balthasar, the Bible is neither “a script, which the faithful must slavishly follow in order to secure their heavenly reward. Nor does it contain a fixed set of propositions or ‘fundamentals’ to be believed. And it is not the historical record of events now long past whose impact gradually attenuates with the passage of time. From Balthasar’s perspective, the Christological or spiritual sense of the Bible is neither static, nor time-bound. It mediates the resurrected Christ, who did not ascend into a timeless eternity, but is present in every time as a living event that is ‘always taking place in an ever-new “now”’ [TD2, 102; Balthasar’s emphasis] (p. 183). As one would expect, Balthasar rejected the idea presented by a number of modern biblical scholars and theologians that the goal of biblical hermeneutics is to find a “fixed, original meaning, which then is contrasted to a contemporary perspective [TD2,103]. It is not the transposition of one horizon to another that bothered him about this standard approach, for […] he believed such transpositions are necessary, but rather the presumption that the Bible is an inert object whose meaning can be laid hold of once for all” (p. 183). By this, Balthasar is in no way dismissing the importance of seeking to understand the original authorial intention. It is, however, to insist that the meaning of a text cannot be exhausted by human authorial intention. “Balthasar believed that at the time of a given biblical text’s composition and first reception, the Spirit was already at work opening up the text’s superabundant range of meanings” (p. 183). Relatedly, Balthasar was extremely critical of the idea that a text’s meaning can be summarized in brief formulas in which the summary is presented as articulating the text’s meaning more perspicuously than the text itself. “Once we step into that boat, […], we inevitably cut the mooring lines to the text and are sure to drift wherever our own culture’s winds happen to blow us. The standard approach, therefore, fails to appreciate the Bible’s surplus of meaning as it participates in the theodrama” (p. 183).

In light of the fact that Balthasar accepts multiple meanings in Scripture, does his position necessarily result in a kind of hermeneutical relativism? According to Dickens, (and I tend to agree), absolutely not. There are two constraints that limit the range of acceptable meanings: (1) authorial intent and (2) the regula fidei. Regarding the first, though Balthasar did not limit the meaning of a text to human authorial intent, he did view the human author’s (or redactor’s) intent as being a necessary but not sufficient condition for proper interpretation. “For Balthasar, trying to discern the human author’s intention is, in part, a straightforwardly historical-critical undertaking, involving the identification of the various conditions attending the creation and reception of the original text. Such investigations do not yield meanings, however, since […] tracing the genesis of a text [i.e., relying solely on the diachronic approach] is not the same as understanding it. But this research does limit the number of plausible authorial intentions” (p. 184). Secondly, part of understanding the human author’s intention involves what Balthasar calls seeking a “fellow-feeling” with the author. [I hear echoes of Gadamer here]. Because the goal of “sharing a fellow-feeling with the author is to apprehend more accurately the text’s subject matter, interpreters trying to cultivate this feeling must take their cues from the texts themselves. Putting the point differently, a reader must not allow his or her pre-understanding of love to control the way he or she interprets, say, John’s claims about God’s love for the world. Rather, the interpreter must let the evangelist’s (and redactor’s) uses of this term and its philological relatives guide the inquiry” (p. 184).

The second constraint that restricts the range of acceptable meanings is the regula fidei, which Balthasar understood as a “sense for the radiant integrity of the whole form of revelation as that is mediated by the Scriptures. This is a theological aesthetic sensibility, a capacity to hear when a proposed interpretation distorts the harmonies that Balthasar believed resonate throughout the Bible” (p. 184). Examples of such harmonies include the (consonant, yet in some instances paradoxical) relation between mercy and judgment, Christ’s humiliation and exaltation, the distance of the Father and the nearness of the Son, the dual nature of the one Person Jesus Christ and so on. “For Balthasar, the theological aesthetic fittingness of these relationships, and the beauty of the whole to which they belong, is objectively demonstrable to the eyes of faith. These demonstrations, however, are not based on a comprehensive overview of revelation in its finished totality, for such a vision would undermine the theodramatic quality of God’s dealings with creation. Rather, the rule of faith is a graced capacity to detect when one aspect of revelation’s dynamic relationships has been thrown out of balance by exaggerating or unduly minimizing its significance, or by omitting it altogether” (pp. 184-85).

Notes
Dickens’ essay is found in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs Von Balthasar. Eds by Edward T. Oakes, SJ and David Moss. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 175-186.

Part II: Balthasar’s Biblical Hermeneutics

2007-07-19T13:44:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in Part I, Balthasar desired to reintroduce into the biblical hermeneutical project of his day, a number of premodern practices so as to attempt a recovery of theologico-aesthetic sensibilities that had been lost with certain modernist interpretive currents. In this post, I shall focus primarily on the first of two premodern hermeneutical practices that Balthasar viewed as crucial, viz., (1) understanding the Bible as self-interpreting and self-glossing and (2) interpreting the Bible as a Christocentric narrative. In part III, I shall discuss (2).

As Dickens points out, Balthasar was somewhat critical of diachronic readings of the Bible, though at times his own readings seem to depend on diachronic analyses. Balthasar’s burden it seems was not to establish the intelligibility of the Bible on the basis of certain similarities to non-biblical forms of life, but rather to emphasize the ways in which the biblical authors transformed what they had taken from non-biblical worldviews to communicate God’s purposes (p. 178). Moreover, Balthasar rejected the idea that the interpreter should “assume that all biblical concepts and images are so time-and culture-bound as to be unintelligible to the modern reader. He recognized that interpretation requires transposing horizons, but refused to countenance any comprehensive, programmatic summary thereof” (p. 178). For Balthasar, events like the Virgin birth are particular, historical events “that God has invested with universal theological significance. Each is a ‘supertemporal expression of the living revelation’ [TD2, 98]. In such cases, it is not the biblical author’s view of creation, or of God’s identity and will, that must be transformed, but the interpreter’s” (p. 178). In other words, Balthasar took seriously the Bible’s claim on one’s life and its ability via the Spirit to radically change a person. Scripture, in other words, is not simply another fascinating subject to study, but is a medium through which we hear a call to follow Christ and die to self. “The Holy Spirit enables such dying and rising in Christ by shattering the interpreter’s anthropological and cosmological horizons of interpretation [TD2, 91]. Hence another implication of Balthasar’s claim that the Bible is self-interpreting is that the Spirit leads the faithful to understand the Bible as God would have them do. The hermeneutics that constitutes theology’s task is therefore sustained by God’s own hermeneutics. Wanting to be known and loved by creation, God provides the conditions that make this possible. The most important of these are the incarnation, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. This proves to the eyes of faith both that God is freely self-emptying trinitarian love, and that, as such, God communicates through creaturely forms without destroying them. Part of the Son’s self-emptying involves handing over to the Spirit the responsibility of interpreting the mutual love of Father and Son, which, according to Balthasar, the Spirit both is and exhibits [GL7, 255] (p. 178). In addition, according to Balthasar, the two most important ways in which the Spirit interprets the Son are “enabling the biblical authors to fashion a salvifically adequate image of the Spirit’s own vision of the event of Jesus Christ—and through him of the Father—and initiating the faithful into the triune love of God [GL1, 3; TD2, 106]. These two actions of the Holy Spirit imply each other. On Balthasar’s view, interpreting the Bible as God intends requires an in-spiration in the interpreter that analogously corresponds to the inspiration of the biblical authors” (pp. 178-79). In sum, Scripture is not merely an academic affair but lays a claim on the life of the interpreter. Thus, to interpret Scripture properly involves a noetic and existential transformation of the self that is accomplished by an active cooperation with and submission to Holy Spirit.[1]

Another dimension of Balthasar’s understanding of Scripture as self-interpreting is what we today speak of as intratextuality. The medievals used the term self-glossing to describe this same idea, viz. that the various parts of Scripture are interrelated and can be read as commenting and illumining each other in a polyphonic manner. For example, “Balthasar frequently used verses from the Gospel or epistles of John to solve interpretative riddles that he believed were evident in other texts. Sometimes the intratextual melodies that Balthasar heard were more complex, involving several different texts, from both Testaments. For instance, when discussing the identity of the Church, he used the Deutero-Pauline imagery of Christ being the Head of his Body, the Church, to interpret the ecclesiology of the Letter to the Hebrews, which itself, he maintained, provided a theological corrective to the Old Testament image of Israel as the people of God [GL7, 92]. By listening for such melodies, Balthasar did not mean necessarily to imply that a given biblical author or editor had read the texts with which Balthasar put him in conversation. Rather than making a historical claim about the likely reading list of various biblical authors, Balthasar was contending that contemporary interpreters are more likely to avoid interpretative pitfalls and dead ends if they are alert to the theological interaction among texts that the canon brings together. Otherwise, a certain note will be allowed to sound too loudly, distorting the symphony that he believed the Spirit performs by means of the whole Bible” (p. 181). Clearly, viewing the Bible as self-glossing presupposes its canonical integrity, which Balthasar of course firmly believed. Though the Bible was composed over hundreds of years by numerous authors and consists of diverse parts, Balthasar emphasized the received or final form of the canon as the standard for Christian life and thought (p. 178). Consequently, in interpretative endeavors one must keep the biblical drama in its entirety in mind when attempting to interpret any of its parts, just as one must keep the entire symphony in mind when analyzing one of its movements or smaller melodic fragments.

Notes
[1] Though I have not discussed this point here, for Balthasar, proper biblical interpretation is nourished through regular participation in the liturgy.

Medieval Help Desk

2007-07-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted anything funny, so I decided to post this. Enjoy! [N.b. You have to click the silver box twice to make it play].

Part I: Balthasar’s Biblical Hermeneutics

2007-07-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

W.T. Dickens in his essay, “Balthasar’s Biblical Hermeneutics,” notes that according to Balthasar the vast majority of modern theologians and biblical scholars (both Roman Catholic and Protestant) had thrown theological aesthetics to the wayside and as a result a distorted view of Scripture prevailed (e.g., seeing the Bible as a principally a set of propositional truths). This is not to say that Balthasar believed that modern biblical scholarship as a whole was a completely unfruitful project. Rather, for Balthasar, a recovery of certain premodern hermeneutical conventions was needed to reintroduce a lost theologico-aesthetic sensibility to the biblical hermeneutical project and such conventions were not incompatible with the positive discoveries of modern biblical scholarship. These premodern hermeneutical practices include “viewing the Bible as a self-glossing, christologically focused story, the proper interpretation of which is enabled by the Holy Spirit and nourished by regular liturgical worship” (p. 175).

As mentioned above, one of the problems arising when theological aesthetics is discarded is a tendency to view the Bible as primarily a set a propositional truths. Such a view presupposes a kind of dualism between sign and referent in which the sign becomes disposable once that which is signified is affirmed; hence, the mediation of revelation is rendered somewhat superfluous (p. 175). By reintroducing the medieval view of the transcendentals in which beauty, goodness, and oneness are understood as mutually dependent aspects of created being, not only can the sign/referent dualism be overcome, but one also gains a more integrated view of the relation between nature and grace. As Dickens explains,

“in redeeming creation, God does not destroy it in order to create it anew, but surpassingly fulfils it. From this perspective, creation’s unity, truth, goodness, and beauty are seen to be perfected in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Created being’s determinations are not identified with God; they are believed to participate in the divine beauty, truth, goodness, and unity.

When beauty is conceived as a transcendental attribute of being that participates in the glory of God, then the natural and historic forms it takes are regarded in significantly different ways from those followed by most modern theologians. Rather than merely pointing to or dissolving in a transcendent ground or depth, Balthasar claimed that beautiful forms embody and reveal this transcendence, while simultaneously veiling it (GL 1, 151). This is because they are indissolubly united with the transcendence they mediate. Although a form’s content transcends its mediation, it is available only in and through the form. It does not lie behind, above, or in front of it—regardless of whether those spatial metaphors are construed historically, morally, spiritually, or otherwise. Form and content, therefore, can be distinguished only provisionally. Breaking the bonds that unite a beautiful radiant form with its transcendent content destroys the one and renders the other inaccessible” (pp. 176-177).

Notes
Dickens’ essay is found in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs Von Balthasar. Eds by Edward T. Oakes, SJ and David Moss. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 175-186.