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Hans Urs Von Balthasar's Christology As Resource for A Unity in Difference: Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s Christology as Resource for a Mennonite Theology of Peace by Layton Boyd Friesen A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Wycliffe College and the Graduate Centre for Theological Studies of the Toronto School of Theology. In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theology awarded by the University of St. Michael's College. © Copyright by Layton Boyd Friesen 2017 Unity in Difference: Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s Christology as Resource for a Mennonite Theology of Peace Layton Boyd Friesen Doctor of Philosophy in Theology University of St. Michael’s College 2017 Abstract This thesis exposes a deep tension within the historical understanding and practice of pacifism in the Mennonite tradition. Beginning with early Anabaptist understandings of the union of the believer with Christ I show that the Martyrs Mirror is a transposition of this union-with-Christ tradition into post-martyrdom settings. However, alongside this spiritual understanding of pacifism there has always also been the reality that pacifism is a form of civility. Anabaptist practices of pacifism partially fit with emerging early-modern concerns about ordering the masses, laicizing the faith, ending barbarity, and constructing secure, productive societies. Secularity, as Charles Taylor has shown, takes over aspects of the church’s gospel of peace and re-deploys them as instrumentalist techniques to further this- worldly human flourishing. In the twentieth-century this creates a continuity between the secular trajectory and forms of Mennonite peacemaking that seem not to depend on the church’s confession of faith. I discuss James Reimer’s concern with the worldliness of contemporary Mennonite theological ethics and show how he used Paul Tillich’s Protestant principle to envision a trinitarian pacifist ethic that was both immanent and transcendent. I discuss the limitations of Reimer’s use of principle to solve problems in Mennonite peace theology. ii I then go on to show how Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s Chalcedonian Christology provides a dogmatic momentum for pacifism in a secular age. By the active contemplation of the descent of God into the world the church mingles spiritually and ethically in Christ’s on- going and Scripturally revealed overcoming of evil in the world. The church assumes a Christic unity in difference in the world that is nonresistant both to the Father and to the human community even in its evil manifestation. It takes to itself Christ’s embrace of the human and offers it as a return of thanks to God. Believers absorb the collision of a world that kicks back against the goads, refusing the incarnation’s synthesis of its deep fissures. The solidarity of Christ with his enemies is the soul of the church, issuing in peaceful judgement of the world. iii The entire futility and decay of earthly existence can, as such, be transformed into fruitfulness, if it understands itself as the ‘pangs’ of the new aeon and as a sharing in Christ’s sufferings. It follows that everything that human endeavour achieves in respect of the commission given at creation—the struggle against injustice, hunger, sickness, need and depravity, and the struggle for better conditions of life, education, wages, etc.—acquires a positive significance in view of what God has done in Christ and of the help of the Holy Spirit, and that nothing of this will be lost ultimately. God assumes that his creature will be at work, even when he reserves to his own sovereign synthesis to determine how the contributions of his creature are applied. The convergence of human achievement and the coming of God as the omega is absolutely incalculable…but this does not make it any less certain.1 1 Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: The New Covenant, ed. John Riches, trans. Brian McNeil C.R.V., vol. 7 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 519. iv Acknowledgments I acknowledge and thank Joseph Mangina, my supervisor, for his gentle ability to keep me on track and walking forward in what often seemed a never-ending project. I was often amazed at his ability to cut through frothy argument and quickly perceive the central nerve that needed crisp expression. John Rempel, a friend, pastor and member of the thesis committee provided many valuable suggestions and fruitful avenues of research, especially in the two chapters on Mennonite theology. For me, his life is a living example of the unity of prayer and sanctity this thesis works for. Paul Doerksen has been an invaluable friend in these years of writing. Caffeinated advice, vigorous conversation and wit were gratefully received. All these began as academic relations and became friends, a tribute to the way each in their own way unite learning and love. Thanks to the two beloved congregations (Kings Community Church in Oakville, ON, and Fort Garry Evangelical Mennonite Church in Winnipeg, MB) that grounded me in worship (and softball) in the last five years. Thanks to Wycliffe College in Toronto for their kindness, teaching and financial encouragement. Thanks to Mary Reynolds at Regis College Library and Jennifer Kroeker at the CMU library for their help. Thanks to Chuck Harris for his keen copy-editing. Thanks to my aunt Ann Friesen who generously lent out a room that became an idyllic study in which to read Balthasar and watch blue jays and squirrels along the Red River. My family (Glenda, Carmen and Marcus) have lived costly love while I wrote about it. Glenda, my wife, walked me out of the slough of despair on too many occasions to number. Her glad friendship and love have been simply heroic. My children selflessly packed v their things and moved from friends and family to the strange land of Oakville because, as they insisted, “Dad needs to do his PhD”. I love you three to the moon and back. I dedicate this thesis to the memory of Harry Friesen (1942-2010); father, preacher, theologian, farmer, and nonresistant Christian. I have no doubt that what attracts me to Hans Urs Von Balthasar has much to do with how he returns me to the faith of my father. vi Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments......................................................................................................... v Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. United with Christ or Just Civil Folk? Mennonite Pacifism in Secularity 31 1.1 Early Anabaptist Views on Christ and Nonresistance .................................... 32 1.2 Martyrs Mirror and the Translation of Anabaptism into Daily Gelassenheit . 42 1.3 The Troubled Defense of Defenselessness in the Twentieth Century ............ 53 1.4 The Relation of Anabaptism and Secularity ................................................... 59 1.5 Responses to Unity in Diversity of Mennonites in Secularity ........................ 76 1.6 Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 90 Chapter 2. Recovering the Mystery of Creedal Ethics: A. James Reimer .................. 93 2.1 Mennonite Theology Within Modernity ......................................................... 96 2.2 Paul Tillich and a Form of Resistance within Modernity ............................. 102 2.3 Theological Ethics and the Trinity ................................................................ 115 2.4 Is God a Mennonite Pacifist? ........................................................................ 122 2.5 Does Yoder’s Critique of H. Richard Niebuhr Apply to Reimer? ................ 125 2.6 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 132 Chapter 3. A Bi-Directional Nonresistance from Maximus to Balthasar ................. 137 3.1 Back to Nonresistance................................................................................... 137 3.2 Balthasar and Maximus the Confessor ......................................................... 141 3.3 The Un-Guessable Improvisation on a Nature .............................................. 145 3.4 The Transposition of Eternal Sonship........................................................... 149 3.5 The Dyothelite Nonresistance of Christ to the Human Condition ................ 155 3.6 Nonresistance as Patience in A Theology of History ................................... 172 3.7 Conclusion .................................................................................................... 180 Chapter 4. The Lamb’s Provocation of Violence ..................................................... 191 4.1 Mennonite Interpretation of Revelation ........................................................ 196 4.2 The Apocalypse as Divine and Human Rhetoric .......................................... 200 vii 4.3 Liturgy and Slaughter ................................................................................... 205 4.4 The Pathos of Humankind in Its Incarnational Form.................................... 213 4.5 The Violent Rejection of the Incarnation...................................................... 221 4.6 The Church and Provocation ........................................................................ 227 4.7 Balthasar and Yoder: A Useful Comparison ................................................ 231 4.8 Conclusion: Violence as Post-Christian Dis-incarnation .............................
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