By Dominic Robinson, SJ.
The theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar is a key figure in the recent history of ecumenical dialogue. Balthasar’s life spanned the twentieth century and in itself represents an ecumenical journey which reflects his developing thinking on the relationship between Catholic and Reformation theology.
He was born in Lucerne, in 1905. From an early age he was steeped in religious culture which was distinctively Catholic. By the time of his entry into the Society of Jesus at the age of 24 he was already formed in the culture of the German-speaking Catholic world. In fact we might say that the young Balthasar was to an extent shielded from any other cultures, religious traditions and peoples. In one sense his formation as a Jesuit would continue to be very sheltered. His philosophy studies were in the fiercely traditional city of Munich, a city alive with art and music, steeped in cultural history, and very Catholic. He then continued with his theology studies in the Jesuit centre Lyon-Fourvière.
But this period of Balthasar’s formation as a theologian was one of great cultural change in the world and in theology. In the middle of all the beauty and cultural tradition the seeds of German devastation and European disintegration were being sown. The city where Balthasar spent a number of years as a Jesuit scholastic and young priest, Munich, had become one of the principal foci for Nazi rallies and propaganda. In the midst of beauty was ugliness. In the midst of worship of God was worship of human perfection and desire for supremacy. Whilst this new secular gospel of human supremacy was being proclaimed across the German-speaking world of the 1930s the young Balthasar was embarking on an important course in his theological journey. At Lyon-Fourvière Balthasar was thrust into a stimulating world of theological enquiry. Here he found that two of his French Jesuit teachers, Jean Daniélou and Henri de Lubac, were also searching for new ways to recover a sense of the absolute primacy of God’s power in human lives. With them he returned to a study of the Fathers of the Early Church, especially Augustine and Irenaeus.
Then came a critical period of Balthasar’s life through an ecumenical encounter which would have a huge impact on his thought. In the 1940s Balthasar moved to Basel. It was here that he met and began to appreciate the theology of the great Reformed theologian Karl Barth. Barth’s objection to any theological system which gave glory to human beings rather than gave the glory to God interested him greatly. In Barth’s vision Balthasar took to himself, refined and moulded into his own theological anthropology an understanding of the God-human relationship rooted in Reformation thought.
For Balthasar human identity is also clearly rooted in the person of Christ and his involvement in human lives. Balthasar’s theological anthropology is not working in the traditional Catholic framework of Trent, Aquinas and a more teleological interpretation of Augustine, all of which place great emphasis on our human striving for the beatific vision. Rather he is placing his emphasis on how our lives are transformed through the appearance of Christ on the human horizon as the revelation of God. Revelation is a human person Jesus, with real flesh and blood, who in the world here and now is immersed in our human condition. We are not so much sinners who need to turn to God. God comes to us in Christ as the beautiful immersed in the ugliness of our world. We cannot but respond to Christ as actors in this drama of the beautiful amidst the ugly.
So for Balthasar, as with Barth, all the glory is given to God. Any philosophy or anthropology which tries to find a way to God is to be rejected. Yet, at the same time, Balthasar’s multi-faceted view wants to allow for some kind of innate human quest for relationship with the infinite. There is a journey which the human being is on, from finitude back to infinity, to God himself. These latter themes are much more in keeping with the traditional Catholic understanding of grace co-operating with nature.
It is in the meeting of these strands to his thought that we find in Balthasar a distinctive new ecumenical contribution. In particular we find in his writings a new evaluation of the Reformed Tradition which enables him to appreciate the work of Barth and the Reformation within an ecumenical framework.