KOREA PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY Vol. 49 No. 3

Seeing the Self as Beautiful: on Beauty and the Divine Exegesis of the Self

PARK Shin-Young, Ph.D. Student, Systematic & Philosophical Theology Graduate Theological Union, USA

I. Introduction II. Seeing the Form (Gestalt) and the Divine Exegesis of the Self III. Seeing [the] Gestalt Christi, the Exegesis of God, and Redeeming Beauty IV. Seeing the Self through the Mother’s Loving Gaze V. Conclusion

Korea Presbyterian Journal of Theology Vol. 49 No. 3 (2017. 9), 215-235 DOI: 10.15757/kpjt.2017.49.3.009 216 KOREA PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY Vol. 49 No. 3

Abstract

This article is an aesthetic and theological inquiry into the self. The author draws on Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics to explore how one perceives oneself in seeing the form—or, more specifically, how the aesthetic experience of the formal archetype, the Christ form (Gestalt Christi) shapes the self-identity of the seer. The article argues that seeing the form is an act of knowing God and the self, for one awakens to consciousness by seeing God’s loving gaze viewing the self as beautiful, which is true self-knowledge. Balthasar’s notion of Gestalt played a key role in the theological aesthetics that he developed in the first volume of his trilogy The Glory of the Lord, and his work reveals in what sense seeing the form is receiving the divine exegesis of the self. The Gestalt Christi, the concrete analogia entis, offers a vision for perceiving the beauty of the self through Christ’s mission, and self-identity as known and revealed in Christ’s “I-Thou relation” to the Father. Finally, Balthasar’s use of the analogy of a mother smiling at her child in Love Alone Is Credible manifests how the truth of the very existence of the self is awakened and realized by the primordial experience of the mother’s love, which originates in God.

Keywords

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theological Aesthetics, Self-Exegesis, Mother’s Smile, Analogy Seeing the Self as Beautiful: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty and the Divine Exegesis of the Self DOI: 10.15757/kpjt.2017.49.3.009 217

Ⅰ. INTRODUCTION

The theological aesthetics of the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar triggered a revival of the appreciation of the beautiful in the theological inquiry.1 His notion of form, which is fused with Gestalt, is filtered through and Thomism, has Christ at the center, and addresses the epistemological and ontological condition of the self in relation to the world and ultimately to God. Christ, who is a concrete analogia entis, is at the heart of Balthasar’s theology of beauty, for Christ is both the archetype of creation and the Gestalt of God, the exegesis of the Father; Christ manifests the divine exegesis to the self when the self sees the Son. My interest in von Balthasar’s work lies in his notion of the form (Gestalt) and how one perceives oneself in seeing the form: to be more specific, how the aesthetic experience of the formal archetype, Christ form (Gestalt Christi), shapes self-identity of the seer. In this paper, I will attempt to show that seeing the form is an act of knowing of God and the self, for one awakens to consciousness by seeing God’s loving gaze seeing the self as beautiful, which is true self-knowledge. I will begin by exploring how Balthasar’s notion of Gestalt played a key role in the theological aesthetics that he developed in one of the volumes of his trilogy, The Glory of the Lord, in order to grasp in what sense seeing the form is receiving the divine exegesis of the self. Next, I will discuss how seeing the Gestalt Christi, the concrete analogia entis, offers a vision for perceiving the beauty of the self by exploring Christ’s mission and self- identity as known and revealed in his “I-Thou relation” to the Father. Finally, I will draw on Balthasar’s use of the analogy of a mother’s smile at her child in Love Alone Is Credible, in order to examine how the truth of the very existence of the self is awakened and realized by the

1 James Fodor, Theological Aesthetics After Von Balthasar (New York: Routledge, 2016), xiii. Balthasar’s retrieval of theological aesthetics derives from his diagnosis of the loss of beauty in the contemporary theological inquiry as Fodor claims, “aesthetics is damaging to both aesthetics and theology. Whereas disconnecting beauty from the true and the good means that aesthetics loses it roots as a philosophical discipline, banishing aesthetics from theology results in the loss of a vital area of human experience that has always been a way of connecting with the divine.” 218 KOREA PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY Vol. 49 No. 3 primordial experience of the mother’s love, which originates in God.

II. SEEING THE FORM (GESTALT) AND THE DIVINE EXEGESIS OF THE SELF

Two inseparable poles, namely, subjective faith (perception of the form) and objective revelation (content of the form), are grounded in Balthasar’s aesthetic inquiry. Following , Balthasar delineates the dual structure of two expressions: the discipline of the form (the root of the Latin formosa, meaning ‘beautiful,’ is forma) and of glory.2 For Balthasar, form (Gestalt) is fundamentally regarded as material and particular, for it is both “a sign and appearing of a depth and a fullness that, in themselves and in an abstract sense, remain beyond both our reach and our vision.”3 He further describes form as follows:

The form as it appears to us is beautiful only because the delight that it arouses in us is founded upon the fact that, in it, the truth and goodness of the depths of reality itself are manifested and bestowed, and this manifestation and bestowal reveal themselves to us as something infinitely and inexhaustibly valuable and fascinating. The appearance of the form, as revelation of the depths, is an indissoluble union of two things. It is the real presence of the depths, of the whole of reality, and it is a real pointing beyond itself to these depths.4

2 Oliver Davies, “The Theological Aesthetics,” in The Cambridge to Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. T. Oakes SJ and David Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 133. 3 Han Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics I: Seeing the Form (New York: T&T Clark, 1982), 1:115. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetic I is cited hereafter as CL followed by the page number. See also, Shin-Young Park, “‘Self- Love of Selfless Eternal Love’: Holy Narcissism in Balthasar’s Christological Aesthetics,” Korean Presbyterian Journal of Theology 47(2015), 138. Shin Young observes that “The inner reality of Gestalt, manifesting itself through an external medium, is central to Balthasar’s idea of beauty.” 4 Ibid. Seeing the Self as Beautiful: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty and the Divine Exegesis of the Self 219

This visible manifestation of nonappearing depths is the concrete structure of being, which reveals that God opens up Godself by rendering being as form and enables it to give off in turn its own glory.5 Although Balthasar begins with “a theory of vision” as an exercise in aesthetic perception in the Kantian sense, in the second category of the dual structure of the beautiful, the radiating glory, Balthasar moves beyond the subjective idealism of the Kantian tradition that considers the transcendental as a prior condition of possibilities for all knowledge and experience of the world.6 Instead, he places his notion of splendor within the classical tradition, from the Greeks to the Romantic revival. In this tradition, Being (the absolute) has an interior attractiveness or splendor that is particularly connected to the theme of eros as the active principle of longing.7 This reshapes his understanding of the ground of faith as a “movement” of the soul by locating it firmly in “the divine initiative.”8 As Balthasar notes, “Christian faith is not merely idealistic; it is rather, an enthusiasm which derives from and is appropriate to actual realistic Being.”9 This is because, for Balthasar, Christian eros and Christian beauty are revealed in the divine self-manifestation in the specific form of Christ, which is a higher plane where Plato’s idealistic and Aristotle’s causa et finis realism come together.10 The Christian eros of faith, as “a movement of the entire person, leading away from himself through the vision to the invisible God,” may employ the language of “opening” to the divine rather than “closing.”11 For Balthasar, Dante’s confessions when he meets with the destination of his love, Beatrice, in the earthly paradise is the aesthetic center of the commedia, similar to his own conviction that earthly beauty must be open to the divine glory to be saved.12 As Balthasar

5 Angelo Scola, Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Theological Style (Grand Rapids, MI: William b. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), 39. 6 D. C. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical investigation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 352. 7 Davies, “The Theological Aesthetics,” 134. 8 Ibid. 9 GL, 1:120. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid., 1:118. 12 Christopher D. Denny, A Generous Symphony: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Literary 220 KOREA PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY Vol. 49 No. 3 nicely puts in, “the thought of the eyes, smile and even laugh of Beatrice was enough to lead Dante to her; but the sight of her leads him to the vision of God.”13 Dante’s confessions allow him to be ready to experience a new intimacy with Beatrice through their journey to paradise and Beatrice’s heavenly joy, and finally her laugh (riso) lifts Dante “ever-closer to God.”14 Balthasar explains this intimacy in terms of freedom, not of slavery. He says, “The beloved does not imprison the poet within herself; on the contrary, she opens up for him the perception of all reality.”15 Thus, for Balthasar, the glory of revelation is not simply an object of aesthetic contemplation but a dramatic encounter with infinite freedom. Larry Chapp observes that “the aesthetic rapture that God’s glory engenders is not so much a passive awe in the face of an overwhelmingly beautiful ‘object,’ as it is the ecstatic joy of one who has encountered the ‘Thou’ at the heart of being.”16 In this encounter with the divine reality, Balthasar agrees with the aspect of Barth’s dialectical theology that insists on the impossibility of any final accommodation of God’s self-communication with our human nature.17 Knowledge of God is non-possessive, for there is no completion of understanding; rather, it is the event of realization that truth, which represents reason, is essentially ecstatic in this encounter.18 However, Balthasar speaks of the light within humanity, which is God allowing Godself to be known. He argues that

Revelations (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 120. 13 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, III: Studies in Theological Style: Lay Style (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 1986), 48. 14 Ibid., 62-63. 15 Ibid., 64. 16 Larry Chapp, “Revelation,” in The Cambridge to Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. E. T. Oakes SJ and David Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 15. 17 Davies, “The Theological Aesthetics,” 137. 18 D. C. Schindler, The Catholicity of Reason (Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2013), 111. Schindler notes, “Aquinas, too, accounts ecstasis as an effect, not only of the appetitive power, but also the ‘apprehensive power’ (ST 1–2.28.3). Perhaps the difference between Balthasar and Aquinas is one of emphasis here: for Balthasar, some form of ecstasis is part of the normal operation reason, while for Aquinas it is only when man is ‘placed outside the knowledge proper to him,’ as in prophetic inspiration.” Seeing the Self as Beautiful: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty and the Divine Exegesis of the Self 221

man is not merely addressed in a total mystery, as if he were compelled to accept obediently in blind and naked faith something hidden from him, but that something is offered to man by God, indeed offered in such a way that man can see it, understand it, make it his own, and live from it in keeping with his human nature.19

Divine knowledge revealed to humans in this aesthetic encounter with God actually becomes the true self-knowledge. In the second part of his trilogy, Theo-Drama, Balthasar notes, “Anyone who took seriously the encounter described in the aesthetics was obliged to see that the phenomenon presented to him was one in which he had always been involved.”20 Again, in this aesthetic vision, some hidden truth of the self is finally revealed and received. The glory of form the incarnation ultimately manifests is totally unheard of, so that humans feel not merely appreciated but also rather “overwhelmed by an unhoped-for l ov e .” 21 The simultaneity of the certain human response and the divine initiative in seeing the radiating glory of the form implies “the mutual- ity of vision” between God and the human.22 This implies a mutual otherness that causes not conflict but embracement. Drawing on Paul Claudel’s analysis of the spiritual senses, Balthasar notes a reciprocal influence of the vision, for in the vision “we not only look at how the world exists; by seeing it we ‘exist it’ and are awakened by it to the form of light and spirit, so that man can realise in his very founda- tions all those possibilities of differentiation that are the expression of his person.”23 God, however, is the “quintessential seer” who creates by rendering emergent before his sight and enabling the created eyes to return to the cause.24 In the Old Testament, whoever had an experience of theophany in the Temple had to be seen by God before

19 GL 1:118. 20 Scola, Hans Urs von Balthasar, 40. 21 Veronica Donnelly, Saving Beauty: Form as the Key to Balthasar’s Christology, vol. 34 of Religions and Discourse (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 22. 22 GL 1: 320. 23 Ibid., 394. 24 Ibid., 395. 222 KOREA PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY Vol. 49 No. 3 they could “see” God.25 Balthasar believes that seeing is an active mean- ing of “gazing” and that to come before the face of God means to come before God’s gaze. Everything that has form in its center has the gaze that responds to this creating gaze of God.26 Every being, therefore, has “a particular translation of His creative glance.”27 In this mutual gazing between God and humans, one becomes able to have the divine exegesis of the self. Therefore, what it means for me to see the form is to behold the glory of Being, which is mysterious divine self-knowledge that is endowed in the moment of God’s loving gaze at me. Balthasar argues that the most “fundamental order of dependence” is found in Christ, who “is the goal of the creation of the world, and hence the most fundamental reason for its aesthetic structure lies in him.”28 The whole structure of Christ’s relation to God represents the most exact measure possible of the relationship between God and human self.

Ⅲ. SEEING [THE] GESTALT CHRISTI, THE EXEGESIS OF GOD, AND REDEEMING BEAUTY

Balthasar writes, “As Karl Barth has rightly seen,” it is not possible to speak of God’s beauty “without a reference to the form and manner of appearing which he exhibits in salvation-history.”29 The glory of the loving gaze of God shines most brightly in the Christ-form (Gestalt Christi), for the “self-witnessing of God is the light by which we know the Son but also the light that itself shines in the Son since his triune intimacy.”30 The incarnation is not a limitation of God but a revelation of the archetype of all forms (Übergestalt) where “Christ has adopted

25 Ibid., 320. 26 Ibid., 320, 395. 27 Ibid., 395. 28 Stephen M. Garrett, God’s Beauty-in-Act: Participating in God’s Suffering Glory (Eugene, Ore: Pickwick Publications, 2013), 70. 29 GL, I: 121. 30 Davies, “The Theological Aesthetics,” 137. Seeing the Self as Beautiful: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty and the Divine Exegesis of the Self 223 a form from the world and completes/perfects it by extending it to the ultimate archetype, God’s triune nature.”31 Here, Balthasar demonstrates what Jesus’s archetypal experience of God means:

Through Jesus Christ, the Father hears, sees, and touches man: he does this by hearing man’s prayer, by seeing him in his distress, and by allowing him to lie on his breast. Through Jesus Christ, on the other hand, the true God is heard, seen, and touched as God’s voice rings out audibly, as his glory is seen, and as man rests on Jesus’ breast and can be in him.32

The Gestalt Christi is the locus of the encounter between God and the human self. John R. Betz argues that the event of Jesus entails both the incomprehensible and comprehensible nature of God, “for the one who is near (Phil. 4:5), who assumed flesh in Christ (John 1:14), who was ‘seen’ and ‘heard’ and ‘touched’ (1 John 1:1), in short the one who has revealed himself and made himself known (John 1:18), is the same who ‘dwells in unapproachable light’ (1Tim. 6:16).”33 It seems that the Jesus Christ whose nature is both divine and human, which are not dialectically opposed but rather united, analogically represents the mutual otherness within the relation between God and the human self. Balthasar quotes Hegel when he writes that tragedy displays “the divine, as it enters the world and individual action, yet neither losing its substantial character in this reality nor finding itself turned into its opposite.”34 Christ is “One and Unique” as the perfect “Image, the

31 GL, 1: 432, quoted in Stephen M. Garrett, God’s Beauty-In-Act: Participating in God’s Suffering Glory (Eugene, OR: PICKWICK Publications, 2013), 72. Garrett says, “For Balthasar, God freely reveals himself through the created order and most fully in the human form (Gestalt) of his Son as the Word made flesh. Yet, God is not constituted by his creation (See Balthasar, “Theology and Aesthetics,” 64-64). Christ is not an instance of some “general class” of Gestalt under which Balthasar subsumes the Incarnation. Rather, he employs an amalgam of concepts to explicate God’s divine revelation in Christ.” 32 GL, 1: 322. 33 John r. Betz, “Beyond the Sublime: The Aesthetics of the Analogy of Being (Part Two),” Modern Theology 22 (January, 2006), 33. 34 Kevin Taylor, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Question of Tragedy in the Novels of Thomas Hardy (New York: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), 21. 224 KOREA PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY Vol. 49 No. 3

Expression and the Exegesis of God,” yet his unique and incomparable personality is only to be understood through created beings.35 This is the divine mystery; we encounter this divine otherness at the core of our being, for Christ’s existence has taken shape in us (Gal. 4. 19), therefore shaping our existence in his image.36 Therefore, as Balthasar says, “the man Christ sees God as one who is seen (sent) by God and that, therefore, whoever sees him sees the Father—provided that one sees him as he must be seen and as he intends to be seen.”37 This ability to see what Christ is in reality is the vision granted to all humans, that everyone in Christ is “a word, an image, a representation of the Father” and thus understands what is seen in Christ. In this sense, I see the manifestation of both who Jesus is and who I am as having to be understood in relation to my total dependence on the Father. That is to say, by seeing Christ (the Gestalt Christi), by seeing who he is, I truly perceive who I am. By seeing what takes place in the Gestalt Christi, I come to uncover the truth and beauty of the self, which is the fulfillment of my personal identity. Then, I may question what the truth of the reality I am able to see and interiorly understand is in this vision. Christ’s identity and self-knowledge is both awakened and known by Christ and revealed by his obedience. Stephen M. Garrett observes that “if Christ is his own measure, then he measures himself by demonstrating the attunement between one aspect of himself with another.”38 This is exemplified, in Balthasar, in the consonance between Christ’s task and existence.39 This attunement “may be traced back

35 GL, 1: 29. See also, Hyung-Chul Park and Young-Bin Moon. “Hans Urs von Balthasarui sinjeok-dramaui gibanidoenun sege mudaee gwanhan yeongu: segye mudaewa jungangeui jackpum- dleul jungsimeuro” [A Study on the World Stage in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theo-Drama: focused on literary Works on the World Stage and the Middle-earth], Korea Presbyterian Journal of Theology 45-4 (November 2013), 174 (in Korean). Hyung-Chul Park argues that for Balthasar, human history is a theatrical process and life in the world is the locus where divine drama takes place, providing both the theological and existential exegesis of human life. 36 GL, 1: 218. 37 GL, 1: 319. 38 Garrett, God’s Beauty-In-Act, 73. 39 Ibid. Seeing the Self as Beautiful: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty and the Divine Exegesis of the Self 225 to the fact that he does not do his own will, but that of the Father, that he has not therefore given himself this work but rather accepted it in obedience.”40 In the chapter entitled “Christ’s State of Life,” in The Christian State of Life, Balthasar articulates two themes that are featured in his Christology: Jesus’s consciousness of the Father and the role of the Holy Spirit.41 For Balthasar, what distinguishes the Son from the Father is that “the Son eternally proceeds from the Father.”42 The identity of the Son (who he is) is given and constituted entirely in his relation to the One he calls ‘Abba.’43 At the center of the attunement between Christ’s task and existence lies his death and resurrection.44 It is no wonder that the question of whether anything beautiful can be found amidst Christ’s death and suffering on the cross is raised. In quoting Barth, “If we seek Christ’s beauty in a glory which is not that of the Crucified, we are doomed to seek in vain,” Balthasar claims the redemption of the beauty of all created beings. Anne M. Carpenter observes that Balthasar juxtaposes earthly beauty’s death with Christ’s and in that juxtaposition endows the earthly beauty with its final destination:

In the experience of the earthly beauty there is a moment of eternity (Au- genblick Ewigkeit): because the eternity-bearing form (ewigkeit-sahltige Gestalt) of the beautiful object tells the onlooker who experiences it something of its timelessness. Still enveloped in the beautiful form is a “sorrow of the gods.” I must die, and the state of blessed-engrossment (Selig-entrückten) includes a tragic contradiction. … In John there is no question of such “sorrow of the gods,” because the dying love indeed died for love, his death was no limit, but the powerful statement of his love.45

40 GL, 1: 469, quoted in Garrett, God’s Beauty-In-Act, 73. 41 Mark A. McIntosh, “Christology,” in The Cambridge to Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed. T. Oakes SJ and David Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 29. 42 Ibid., 28. 43 Ibid. 44 There is a particular passage where Isaiah declares that Christ has “no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isa. 53:2, NIV). 45 Anne M. Carpenter, Theo-Poetics: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Risk of Art and 226 KOREA PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY Vol. 49 No. 3

There is no “sorrow of the gods” in the glory of Christ, for earthly beauty’s death receives its redemption through the unique death of Christ on the cross, manifested in his loving surrender to the Father.46 The cross does not end with mourning as in a tragedy but paradoxically opens up hope for the redemption of the beauty of all created beings. Garrett also claims:

Balthasar understands the Ungestalt of the cross as further concealment of the Gestalt Christi in light of Christ’s previous claims to be the Übergestalt. Yet, God in his concealment reveals his love most fully in the Ungestalt Christi thereby manifesting the splendor of God’s triune love in the most repugnant form humanly imaginable.47

Balthasar argues that the Gestalt Christi integrates the broken form of Christ on the cross into the beauty of the triune love of God, therefore bringing hope to a “radically sinful existence” by reconnecting the deformed to the eschatological reality in order to give shape and value to the deformed through the reconciliation.48 By doing so, the Gestalt Christi reveals the radiating glory of God as Christ is perfectly attuned to God’s will through obeying the Father. In the incarnation, we can come closer to the “contemplation of Being in the beloved Thou, which is at once God and man and which is worthy of all possible believing and adoring love.”49 Although it is true that Christ, the Exegesis of God Himself, is not fully grasped, we can adore the perfection of our nature and our being by perceiving the love of the eminently personal God in Christ. I would argue that by seeing the beauty of Christ, I simultaneously encounter the divine gaze that perceives me as beautiful.

Being (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2015), 60. 46 Carpenter, Theo-Poetics, 61. 47 Garrett, God’s Beauty-In-Act, 73. 48 Ibid., 74. 49 Carpenter, Theo-Poetics, 69. Seeing the Self as Beautiful: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty and the Divine Exegesis of the Self 227

Ⅳ. SEEING THE SELF THROUGH THE MOTHER’S LOVING GAZE

Quoting 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ,” Balthasar notes, “In this face, the primal foundation of being smiles at us as a mother and as a father.”50 The interpersonal relation between the self and God through the Gestalt Christi is most vividly exemplified in his use of the image of the mother’s smile in Love Alone Is Credible. Anne M. Carpenter, in her analysis of Balthasar’s use of poetic language, finds Balthasar’s “epistemological-ontological position” governed by the role of love in his analogy of the mother’s smile. The mother smiles at her child first, and then the child learns to smile back at her, indicating that the image of mother functions as an example of “the primordial indicator” of the child’s reality of being loved.51 Balthasar’s analogy is, first, an epistemological statement that claims that all existence is founded on this “unconditional and prior love.”52 In Theo-Logic I, Balthasar recalls the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty:

Unless an object announces itself in the space of the subject’s receptivity, the subject is unable to transform its potential insights into real knowledge. The opened stage remains empty, the drama of knowledge is not played. Only when the stranger enters the space of the subject does it like Sleeping Beauty awaken from its slumber: both to the world and to itself.53

50 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible, trans. D.C. Schindler (San Fran- cisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 76. 51 Carpenter, Theo-Poetics, 133. 52 Ibid. 53 Balthasar Theologik: Erster Band: Wahrheit der Welt (Einsiedeln: Johanaes Verlag, 1985), 64, quoted in Carpenter, Theo-Poetics, 134. Author’s translation [Ohne ein im Raum seiner Rezeptivität sich anzeigendes Objekt bleibt das Subjekt unfähig, seine Erkenntnismöglichkeiten in wirkliche Erkenntnis überzuführen. Die aufgeschlagene Bühne bleibt leer; das Drama der Erkenntnis wird nicht gespielt. Erst wenn das Fremde in den Raum des Subjekts eintritt, erwacht es aus dem Dornröschenschlaf: zugleich zur 228 KOREA PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY Vol. 49 No. 3

Through this primordial awakener, we come to be a knowing subject aware of both the self as subject and of the world out there, “the contingent reality.”54 In the awakening of the self and the world by the loving smile, Balthasar views all knowing as the act of loving. “Only the creative image of love,” he says, “is able to measure the object with the measure, and hold before it the mirror, that contains its definite and, therefore, objective truth.”55 Balthasar’s epistemological-ontological statement about the reality of the self is more obviously demonstrated in Love Alone Is Credible:

After a mother has smiled at her child for many days and weeks, she finally receives her child’s smile in response. She has awakened love in the heart of her child, and as the child awakens to love, it also awakens to knowledge: the initially empty-sense impressions gather meaningfully around the core of the Thou. Knowledge (with its whole complex of intuition and concept) comes into play, because the play of love has already begun beforehand, initiated by the mother, the transcendent. God interprets himself to man as love in the same way: he radiates love, which kindles the light of love in the heart of man, and it is precisely this light that allows man to perceive this, the absolute Love. … In this face, the primal foundation of being smiles at us as a mother and as a father. Insofar as we are his creatures, the seed of love lies dormant within us as the image of God (imago). But just as no child can be awakened to love without being loved, so too no human heart can come to an understanding of God without the free gift of his grace—in the image of his son. 56

The interpersonal relation between I and Thou is founded in the analogy of the relation between God and humans.57 Drawing on the

Welt und zu sich selbst.] 54 Carpenter, Theo-Poetics, 134. 55 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Transcendentality and Gestalt,” Communion 11 (1984), 5. 56 Balthasar, Love Alone Is Credible, 76. 57 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic Volume II: The Truth of God, trans. Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 252. “The I and the Thou bear the trace of the Logos, of the expression of God, in themselves—and not only they, but everything Seeing the Self as Beautiful: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty and the Divine Exegesis of the Self 229 work of Gene Outka, Sung-Ho Lee also argues that the purpose of God’s unilateral love is grounded in an I-Thou relationship and personalism that transcend value judgments of the other.58 In concentrating on the mother’s smile, it is clear that there is always an intimate connection between knowing God and the experience of the self through the experience of the other. “The ‘I’ of a child ‘awakens in the experience of a ‘Thou’ in its mother’s smile, through which it learns that it is contained, affirmed and loved in a relationship which is incomprehensibly encompassing, already actual, sheltering and nourishing.”59 That is to say, we awaken to love only through the love of the other; the mother with her loving gaze is foreign to the child, but she does not frighten the child but instead awakens the child to respond to love. An interesting question may be asked here: if the mother’s smile is foreign, why is it not frightening? Perhaps, because it is beautiful, it manifests goodness and truth? In this experience of the loving gaze, the mother bears the image of her child, the image of love, and gives the child that image. And the child has no anxiety, no Cartesian skepticism (one cannot doubt without proving the existence of the self as doubting subject), for the child has a primordial knowing of love that comes before consciousness and that precedes all forms of doubt.60 In this vein, Balthasar would say that “I am known (I am loved), and therefore I am.” John R. Cihak, in his analysis of Balthasar’s The Christian and Anxiety, provides profound insight into the mother’s smile at her child. He argues that what Balthasar focuses on in this mother-child

that can be considered as being and that, therefore, itself possesses the power of expressio, the capacity to express itself.” 58 Chang-Ho Lee, “Hananim sarangkwa leewoot sarangui kwangesunge daehan shinhakjeok, yoonrijeok tamgu- Outak, Post, Moltman eul jungsimuro” [A Theological and Ethical Study on the Relationship between God’s Love/ Love for God and Neighbor- love/ Love for Neighbors: Focusing on Outka, Post and Moltmann], Korean Presbyterian Journal of Theology 48-1 (February 2016), 258 (in Korean). 59 , “The Other and the Fruitfulness of Personal Acting,” inLove Alone Is Credible: Hans Urs Von Balthasar as Interpreter of the Catholic Tradition, ed. David L. Schindler (Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 303. 60 Carolyn A. Chau, Solidarity with the World: Charles Taylor and Hans Urs von Balthasar on Faith, Modernity, and Catholic Mission (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Pub- lishers, 2016), 143. 230 KOREA PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY Vol. 49 No. 3 encounter is “how the ‘I’ becomes consciousness.”61 Cihak writes:

The unity-in-distinction of mother and infant continue from the womb to the breast and then the miraculous moment when for the first time, in contrast to Freud, ‘the child will recognize in its mother’s face her protective love and will reciprocate this love with a first smile.’62

Balthasar takes a radically different view of the child’s perception of the mother from Freud, who argues that the child considers the mother as the extension of the self, and therefore “the separation anxiety” of the child is caused by the separation from the mother or mother-like figure. 63 For Balthasar, the mother is not the object of the child’s drive but the “loving Thou,” the person who summons the child; the child is not the mother but the “I” who is the one loved by her. There is an identity-in- difference of the mother and the baby in their loving encounter, and the child “awakens to self-consciousness through being addressed by the love of his mother.”64 In other words, the awakening of the child’s “I” by the mother’s “Thou” makes the child aware of his or her self.65 Chiak argues that self-identity comes not from within the self but as “a gift from the other.” Prior love enables the child to experience his or her inferiority and dependence not as a threat but as a way to be loved.66 Balthasar argues that the mother through her smile does not awaken the child to just a personal relationship with her; rather, she invites the child further into the reality:

Since, however, the child in this process replies and responds to a directive that cannot in any way have come from within its own self—it

61 John R. Cihak, Balthasar and Anxiety (New York: T&T Clark, 2009), 99. 62 Ibid. Cihak says, for Balthasar, “the child’s awareness of the mother’s love is not the result of a discursive process, but an immediate intuition since the love is recognized as it appears.” 63 Ibid. See also, Paul C. Vitz, ’s Christian Unconscious (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), 24. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., 100. 66 Ibid., 101. Seeing the Self as Beautiful: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty and the Divine Exegesis of the Self 231

would never occur to the child that it itself had produced the mother’s smile—the entire paradise of reality that unfolds around the “I” stands there as an incomprehensible miracle: it is not thanks to the gracious favor of the “Thou.” And if the “I” is permitted to walk upon the ground of reality and to cross the distances to reach the other, this is due to an original favor bestowed on him, something for which, a priori, the “I” will never find the sufficient reason in himself.67

The loving smile of the mother is a crucial key to opening the child beyond the mother’s love to God. Through the horizontal relation to the mother, the child is invited into the vertical relation, into the love and truth of God. Ferdinand Ulrich finds that from the very beginning he has been himself with and in another; he can arrive at his consciousness, which is his experience of himself, only in response to another.68 In other words, he can reach the whole of himself, both physically and metaphysically, because he has been given it by another. In this vein, it is clear that love is realized and actualized only in reciprocity and in the loving mutuality of I and Thou. Not only that, the mother’s smile takes the child a step further. The reciprocally intrinsic relationship between the mother and the child, which is held in difference-in-unity, is grounded in a “third” that is distinctive from these two. The mother’s smile is not the ultimate origin; rather, it is the manifestation of the ground that the child’s consciousness lies in originally.69 In other words, self-knowledge originates in the knowledge of the Father, God. The mother’s smile is where this ground becomes manifest and concrete most vividly. In this vein, by seeing mother’s smile, what the one ultimately perceives is the self-image that is loved by God. That is to say, one can see that in this face of Christ that holds and perfects all forms of creation, one can have

67 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Movement Toward God,” 16, in Explorations in Theol- ogy, vol. 3: Creator Spirit (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 16, quoted in Schindler, The Catholicity of Reason, 46. 68 F. Ulrich, Gegenwart der Freiheit (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1974), 92f, quoted in Oster, “The Other and the Fruitfulness of Personal Acting,” 305. 69 D. C. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth: A Philosophical Investigation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 120. 232 KOREA PRESBYTERIAN JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY Vol. 49 No. 3 a self-identity that comes from within the being-loved image of the self that is shaped, borne, and granted by the loving gaze of the other, God.

Ⅴ. CONCLUSION

My enquiry into Balthasar’s theology of beauty in this article began with an examination of his notion of form (Gestalt). I discussed how the Gestalt Christi, which operates both horizontally and vertically, brings the unity and difference of God and the creation together and unfolds the primal form of the existence of the human self that originally lies in the Father. By seeing the Gestalt Christi, it is certain that one encounters the indicator of this prior love within the self, without Cartesian doubts nor Freudian fear of separation, as a gift, for self-identity is addressed and interpreted by this divine otherness revealing the radiating glory of divine love. In the loving reciprocity taking place in the Gestalt Christi, one sees God’s loving gaze that interprets the human self as beautiful. The true self-knowledge perceives our selves as beautiful, and this is primordial, for it has been there ever since we were called into existence, but it is also very new for it is hidden until we are awakened and respond to it. Seeing the Self as Beautiful: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty and the Divine Exegesis of the Self 233

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한글 초록

‘자기’에 대한 미학적 고찰 －한스 우르스 폰 발타살의 아름다움에 대한 이해와 신성한 자기 해석을 중심으로

박신영 Graduate Theological Union 박사과정, 조직신학

본 논문은 한스 우르스 폰 발타살이 자신의 신학적 미학 안에서 설명하고 있는 형 상(Gestalt) 개념을 중심으로 ‘자기(the self)’에 대한 미학적, 신학적 이해를 고찰하고자 한다. 본 논고에서는 타인의 형상, 구체적으로는 인간의 원형인 그리스도 형상(Gestalt Christi)의 아름다움을 보는 경험을 통해서 개인이 자신의 형상에 대해서는 어떤 이해와 해석을 갖게 되는지에 대해 질문한다. 이 질문에 대해 발타살은 그리스도 형상을 보는 경험 안에서 개인은 참된 자기이해와 지식을 갖게 된다고 제안하고 있다. 십자가 사건 과 하나님과의 친밀한 ‘나와 당신(I-Thou) 관계’를 통해 지상에서 구현된 그리스도 형상 의 아름다움은 인간이 하나님과 대면할 수 있는 만남과 참여의 장을 제공한다. 그리스 도 형상의 아름다움을 본다는 것은 자신을 향한 하나님의 사랑의 눈길을 경험한다는 것 을 나타내며, 이 사랑의 눈길을 마주한다는 것은 인간 자신을 아름답게 보는 하나님의 신성한 미학적 해석으로 받아들이고 이해한다는 것을 의미한다. 또한 발타살은 ‘엄마의 미소’라는 사랑의 유비를 통해서 엄마라는 사랑의 타자를 통해 아이가 자기의 존재의 근원적인 아름다움, 즉 진정한 자기 이해를 어떻게 깨닫게 되는지에 대한 새로운 시각 을 제공해 준다. 이같은 성찰을 통해 본 논문은 그리스도 형상의 아름다움을 보는 것과 자기 자신을 아름다운 존재로 해석하는 것, 이 둘 사이의 상관관계에 대한 미학적, 신학 적 이해를 제안하고자 한다.

주제어

한스 우르스 폰 발타살, 신학적 미학, 자기 해석, 엄마의 미소, 유추

Date submitted: June 30. 2017; date evaluated: July 20. 2017; date confirmed: July 31. 2017.