The Beauty of the Cross: The Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar

2002 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 185-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond Gawronski
Keyword(s):  
Theological Aesthetics ◽  
Hans Urs Von Balthasar ◽  
The Cross

Hans Urs von Balthasar

2016 ◽  
pp. 717-738
Author(s):  
Kevin Mongrain
Keyword(s):  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Theological Aesthetics ◽  
Natural Form ◽  
Hans Urs Von Balthasar ◽  
Divine Grace ◽  
Natural Forms

This chapter considers the extensive corpus of Hans Urs von Balthasar by treating two architectonic themes in his thought: remembrance and beauty. In the first instance, Balthasar sees theology in modernity—especially in the form of neo-scholasticism—as marked by a failure to remember appropriately some essential principles of Christian tradition, most importantly the inseparability of theology and spirituality in an anti-Gnostic key. In the second instance, the theme of theological aesthetics is treated, initially by placing Balthasar’s conception of a true seeing of natural forms against the background of Goethe’s philosophy. The epiphanic nature of all created being, able to reveal to us the glory of God, and yet obscured from us by sin, lies at the heart of Balthasar’s theology. Ultimately, this theology is Christocentric: the crucified and risen Christ-form becomes a permanent sacramental vehicle of divine grace, restoring our sight of natural form and divine glory.

Book Review: The Theological Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar

Theology ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 91 (744) ◽  
pp. 515-517
Author(s):  
B. L. Horne
Keyword(s):  
Theological Aesthetics ◽  
Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Actualism and Beauty: Karl Barth's Insistence on the Auch in his Account of Divine Beauty

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 299-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
William T. Barnett
Keyword(s):  
Free Action ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Theological Aesthetics ◽  
Free Love ◽  
Church Dogmatics ◽  
Doctrine Of God ◽  
Hans Urs Von Balthasar ◽  
Experience Of God ◽  
Free Dynamic ◽  
Divine Beauty

AbstractHans Urs von Balthasar claimed that Barth's Church Dogmatics demonstrates a weakening of his distinctive actualism in order to make space for ‘the concept of authentic objective form’, a point illustrated by the discourse on divine beauty in CD II/1. There Barth treats the divine being as an objective form to be contemplated, a seeming departure from Barth's privileged conceptualisation of God as personal subject whose free action humbles our theoretical gaze and graciously provides the material content for proper speech about God. Bruce McCormack has challenged von Balthasar's general thesis, arguing that no weakening has in fact taken place in the Church Dogmatics. If this is the case, what then of Barth's discourse on divine beauty? Is it consistent with his actualistic doctrine of God? Is it possible to speak of God both as a free, dynamic event and an object of beauty? Can theological aesthetics find a home within Barth's actualism? This article answers in the affirmative by demonstrating the systematic integrity between Barth's claims about divine beauty and the actualism permeating CD II/1. First, the article examines the ambiguity of Barth's specific claims about divine beauty. Barth is both enthusiastic and hesitant in speaking about divine beauty, affirming the concept yet placing careful qualifications on its use. Next, the article illustrates how the nature of these claims is anticipated by the actualism of CD II/1, specifically by (1) Barth's clear rejection of divine formlessness, (2) his argument that God's act of self-revelation in Jesus Christ implies an objective triune form for God's being and, lastly, (3) how he grounds discourse on divine beauty in the event of God's dynamic, free love. The article finally contends that the key to Barth's puzzling position on divine beauty is in understanding the precise reason why he registers beauty as a necessary but insufficient theological concept. This qualification is rooted in an important content–form, spirit–nature distinction which frames all discussion about God's being-in-act. Throughout CD II/1, objective form is a necessary condition for divine self-expression, but objectivity is always grounded in the freedom of the Spirit. Thus, the freedom-to-love at the heart of God's triune existence is the ground of our experience of God as beautiful, not any continuity with our contemplation of created forms. As such, the creative freedom animating God's triune life provides the space for, but also the limit to, theological aesthetics by imbuing divine beauty in mystery.

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