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The Ontological Status of Sin in the Theology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar Craig W

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The Ontological Status of Sin in the Theology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar Craig W La Salle University La Salle University Digital Commons Th.D. Dissertations Scholarship 2017 A Disease of Being: The Ontological Status of Sin in the Theology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar Craig W. Giandomenico ThD La Salle University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/religion_thd Recommended Citation Giandomenico, Craig W. ThD, "A Disease of Being: The Ontological Status of Sin in the Theology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar" (2017). Th.D. Dissertations. 8. https://digitalcommons.lasalle.edu/religion_thd/8 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Scholarship at La Salle University Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Th.D. Dissertations by an authorized administrator of La Salle University Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. LA SALLE UNIVERSITY A DISEASE OF BEING: THE ONTOLOGICAL STATUS OF SIN IN THE THEOLOGY OF HANS URS VON BALTHASAR A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE PROGRAM IN THEOLOGY AND MINSITRY IN CANIDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF THEOLOGY BY CRAIG W. GIANDOMENICO PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA November 2017 DISSERTATION READERS DR. JORDAN COPELAND, PhD (ADVISOR) X_____________________________ FR. FRANCIS BERNA, PhD X_____________________________ DR. ANTHONY PAUL SMITH, PhD X____________________________ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation, and the whole of the work done towards this degree, are inconceivable without the many loved ones, friends, mentors, and colleagues that provided me with both personal and academic support. First and foremost, I thank my wife, Autumn McClintock, for her constant encouragement in this endeavor and for the many acts of selfless, practical help, without which, neither this dissertation nor my sanity would remain intact. For being raised in a home of parents and siblings that encouraged theological discussion and academic pursuits, I am deeply thankful – especially for my mother, one of the finest theologians I’ve had the honor of studying under. Finally, a deep debt is happily acknowledged to my mentors, teachers, professors and colleagues in the La Salle University Department of Religion and Theology. You have all, in your individual ways, made this possible. In a special manner, I’d like to acknowledge the following: my advisor, Dr. Jordan Copeland, for his willingness to work with me over these past four years and to offer insightful direction at each step; Dr. Anthony Paul Smith, for introducing me to the work of several philosophers and theologians who have greatly influenced my understanding of the topic at hand; and, finally and most significantly, Fr. Francis Berna, PhD., who has been, both personally and professionally, an endless source of inspiration, encouragement, and wisdom. iii "It is uncertain how the Faun came to be in Wiltshire. Perhaps he came over with the Roman legionaries to live with his friends in camp, talking to them of Lucretilis, or Garganus or of the slopes of Etna; they in the joy of their recall forgot to take him on board, and he wept in exile; but at last he found that our hills also understood his sorrows, and rejoiced when he was happy. Or perhaps he came to be there because he had been there always.” “The Curate’s Friend”, E.M. Forester, 1911 iv CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii CHRONOLOGY OF BALTHASAR’S MAJOR WRITINGS ON SOTERIOLOGY vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1. THE CONTEXT OF BALTHASAR’S LIFE, WORK AND RECEPTION 10 CHAPTER 2. BALTHASAR AND THE PRIVATIVE TRADITION 34 CHAPTER 3. BALATHASAR AND THE INFLUENCE OF PAULINE “MYSTICAL REALISM” 59 CHAPTER 4. THE A PRIORI CONDITIONS OF POSSIBILITY FOR SUBSTANTIAL SIN’S EXISTENCE – PRIMORDIAL CHAOS AND BARTHIAN NOTHINGNESS 83 CHAPTER 5. THE A POSTERIORI MECHANISM OF SUBSTANTIAL SIN’S INSTANTIATION –SCHELLING’S FREEDOM AND BLONDEL’S ACTION 112 EPILOGUE 134 BIBLIOGRAPHY 141 v CHRONOLOGY OF BALTHASAR’S MAJOR WRITINGS ON SOTERIOLOGY English Language Title Original Publication Date/English-language Publication Date Spirit & Fire: Origen – A Thematic Anthology of His Writings 1938/1984 Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor 1941/1988 Presence & Thought: Essays on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa 1942/1995 The Grain of Wheat: Aphorisms 1943/1995 The Heart of the World 1945/1987 The Truth of the World (later to become Theo-Logic: Volume 1) 1947/2000 A Theology of History 1950/1994 The Theology of Karl Barth 1951/1992 Prayer 1955/1986 Explorations in Theology: Volume I – The Word Made Flesh 1960/1989 Explorations in Theology: Volume II – Spouse of the Word 1960/1991 The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics – Volume I: Seeing the Form 1961/1982 The Glory of the Lord: A Theological-Aesthetics – Volume II: Studies in Theological Style: Clerical 1962/1984 The Glory of the Lord: A Theological-Aesthetics – Volume III: Studies in Theological Style: Lay 1962/1986 Love Alone is Credible 1963/2004 The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics – Volume IV/V: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity/Modern World 1965/1991 The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics – Volume VI: Theology of the Old Covenant 1966/1989 Explorations in Theology: Volume III– Creator Spirit 1967/1993 vi The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics -Volume VII: Theology of the New Covenant 1969/1989 Mysterium Paschale 1969/2000 Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume I: Prolegomena 1973/1988 Explorations in Theology: Volume IV – Spirit and Institution 1974/1995 Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume II: Dramatis Personae – Man in God 1976/1990 To The Heart of the Mystery of Redemption 1977/2010 Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume III: Dramatis Personae – Persons in Christ 1978/1992 The Threefold Garland: The World’s Salvation in Mary’s Prayer 1978/1985 Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume IV: The Action 1980/1994 The Scandal of the Incarnation: Irenaeus Against the Heresies (Anthology) 1981/1990 You Crown the Year with Your Goodness: Sermons through The Liturgical Year 1982/1989 Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume V: The Last Act 1983/1998 Life out of Death: Meditations on the Easter Mystery 1985/2012 Theo-Logic: Volume II – The Truth of God 1985/2004 Explorations in Theology: Volume V – Man is Created 1986/2014 Dare We Hope “That All Men be Saved”? — With a Short Discourse on Hell 1986/1989 Theo-Logic: Volume III – The Spirit of Truth 1987/2005 Epilogue 1987/2004 Credo: Meditations on the Apostles’ Creed 1989/2000 vii INTRODUCTION The theological project of Hans Urs von Balthasar contains elements of speculation that give the contemporary theologian pause. This is no great secret. Mention of his name in a group of theologians will produce as many raised eyebrows as enthusiastic nods. Even in the very act of defending his orthodoxy, some of his most ardent expositors acknowledge that, much like one of his professed Patristic masters, Origen, Balthasar was raising issues within Catholic theology that had either gone unexplored or lain dormant for centuries, and in doing so, he was not concerned with proposing (imposing) any necessary systematic presentation of them.1 In fact, as will be outlined in the first chapter, his antipathy toward most attempts at “systematizing” the mysteries of the Faith is a well-documented aspect of his work, theological-style, and career. Instead of a system, the bulk of Balthasar’s work seeks to delineate and explore various theological themes mined and catalogued in an act of Ressourcement: There are any number of theses deserving of development which the Fathers initiated, and which, subsequently, as theology became systematized, were held unsuitable, unimportant, and so left in abeyance; a process of exclusion carried further, and with rapidity, in Scholasticism from the late Middle Ages to the present.2 1 “Were I to be asked which of my own books gives me the greatest joy […] the answer would be, without doubt, my Origen anthology. For in Origen I discovered that brilliant sense of what is Catholic which I myself would like to attain.” My Work in Retrospect. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 108- 109. The anthology to which he refers, Spirit and Fire – Origen: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings, begins with a fitting epigraph by the subject that could be applied just as well to some of Balthasar’s own work in speculative theology: “I want to be a man of the Church. I do not want to be called by the name of some founder of a heresy […] if I become a scandal to you, the Church, then may the whole Church, in unanimous resolve, cut me off and throw me away.” Origen: Spirit & Fire – A Thematic Anthology of His Writings. Translated by Brian Daly. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Ltd., 1984). 2 My Work in Retrospect. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993). 1 What is especially interesting to the scholar of these more speculative elements of his oeuvre is discovering one common thesis, picking up the thread, and following it on its course of winding development, through the varied lenses of his many volumes. I here submit that the subject of sin’s ontological weight, its substance, the very quiddity of the morally evil, is one such repeated motif in a theologian whose work is often dubbed “symphonic.” Whether in the abstract or the mundane, the issue of sin’s substantiality appears as clearly central to many of the speculative ideas Balthasar explored. These encompass themes as far reaching (but as deeply intertwined), as his theology of the Trinity, with his focus on the eternal “risk” involved in the Father’s act of allowing the existence of the “Other” (the Son), through to a soteriology, wherein the Incarnate Son assumes a substantially real burden of sin (abstracted from the sinner), and finally on, into his deeply divisive interpretation of the destruction of said sin by way of Christ’s removal of its whole during his descent into Hell.
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