Love Itself Is Understanding

Hans Urs von Balthasar's Theology of the Saints

Matthew A. Rothaus Moser, Matthew A. Rothaus Moser

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781451499599
• eBook ISBN: 9781506418995
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) sets out to reunite Truth and holiness by returning the saints to their proper place at the heart of philosophy, theology, and metaphysics. Love Itself is Understanding is one of the first systematic treatments of Balthasar's theology of the saints. Matthew Rothaus Moser presents Balthasar as an alternative to Idealist philosophy, a thinker who develops a religious metaphysics in which the saints' practices of prayer and contemplation are the chief mode of knowing that the Truth of Being is divine love. Love Itself is Understanding casts new light on dominant themes in Balthasar's thought and invites a renewed vision of the theological and metaphysical significance of the spiritual practices of prayer, obedience, and charity.

4

Truth as Love

The first volume of the Theo-Logic is Balthasar’s attempt at a constructive reinterpretation of truth that integrates scholastic concern over the nature of objective Being with the concern for the subjectivity of the knowing process, that was so prevalent in the philosophical circles of Balthasar’s day.^[1] Balthasar frames this integration as reconciling philosophical realism and idealism. Balthasar’s Theo-Logic pick this up from Hegel’s account of logic as an “enquiry into the real as found in knowing.”^[2] But Balthasar goes beyond Hegel’s logic by crafting theo-logic, in which his philosophical investigation into the nature of Being in the first volume opens up to theological completion in the later two volumes. In Theo-Logic 1, Balthasar only begins to unify realism and idealism. Such philosophical union must await its theological accomplishment in the dramatic person of Christ.

The present chapter accomplishes three things. First, I unpack Balthasar’s understanding of truth as the meeting point of metaphysics and epistemology. As a property of Being truth is a metaphysical category; but as something known, truth is also an epistemological concept. Truth belongs to both. Truth limited to epistemology results in titanic Idealism. But truth confined to metaphysics results in arid neo-scholasticism. To isolate truth to either one or the other is to mistake the nature of truth as a knowable property of Being.^[3]

Second, I argue that Balthasar interprets Being and knowledge as love—as the rhythm of gratuitous, free giving and receiving between subject and object. In his Theo-Logic, Balthasar does not supplant the rationalism of Thomas Aquinas by replacing it with fideism or affectivism; instead, he demonstrates the mutuality of knowledge and love. Knowledge comes not solely through an act of cognition; understanding is an act of the whole self in the expressive, creative, and receptive act of the loving intellect.^[4]

Third, I end the chapter by highlighting the way Balthasar frames the truth of God as both the beginning and the end (principium et finis) of the truth of the world. This helps us reconcile the natural world as open to divine. Balthasar’s way of parising this relationship between created and divine truth resonates with his Ignatian metaphysics outlined in chapter one. Indeed, the conclusion to Theo-Logic 1 lays the philosophical groundwork for finding God in all things, even in the structure of human understanding.^[5]

Truth as Metaphysical and Epistemological

Father Aidan Nichols often refers to the Theo-Logic as the “ontological trilogy” in which Balthasar considers the question of Being in itself.^[6] While it is not incorrect to identify metaphysical questions as one of the driving forces in the Theo-Logic, Balthasar is not only doing metaphysics. He is not asking the question of Being qua Being only, but also asking about how humanity can venture to speak truthfully of Being. The volumes of Theo-Logic are metaphysical explorations, yes, but they are also explorations of expression: of how Being expresses itself, how we come to know Being, and how we can express Being in finite language.

Recalling our earlier statement that the Theo-Logic brings together realism and idealism, we can understand the series as a direct response to (Hegelian) Idealism, as an account of reality as it is made known to us. Like Hegel’s own logic, Balthasar’s Theo-Logic takes up the challenge of truth when “thing becomes think.”^[7]

We must accept from the beginning that Balthasar is not skeptical about the human ability to know the truth of Being. He is optimistic that when humans know truth, they know the truth of Being itself. Such optimism is rooted in the nature of truth. But we should not confuse his optimism as a claim for the possibility of absolute knowledge. Balthasar wants to hold together knowledge and mystery. Because truth is a property of knowledge, we can really know. But knowledge is not necessarily co-extensive with comprehension. Because truth is also a property of all of Being, what is disclosed to our understanding exceeds our comprehension. Balthasar elevates truth’s mystery, rather than overcoming it. What holds knowledge and mystery together, for Balthasar, is love. Theo-Logic 1 supplants Idealism’s drive for absolute knowing with love that wills the perpetual mystery of truth.

***

Before going any further, we should offer a word of caution. Balthasar’s epistemology has been criticized in some quarters for failing to be sufficiently philosophical. Victoria Harrison, for example, though she sees a great deal of potential in Balthasar’s thought for developing a distinctly religious epistemology, notes that the Theo-Logic fails to develop a constructive, systematic rationality as a supplement to Balthasar’s critique of Kantianism.^[8] But developing a theory of rationality is not Balthasar’s task in the Theo-Logic. He sets out, rather, to develop a principle for understanding the ontological reality of Being when it is interpreted as love. Whatever system of rationality that we might derive from the Theo-Logic is incidental. Balthasar’s purpose is to inquire into the nature of truth itself.

Instead of a systematic rationality, Balthasar articulates an ontological and epistemic disposition of Being and of knowledge. This disposition is marked by receptivity. Balthasar identifies what he calls a dialogical rhythm in Being and knowledge. It is a back-and-forth rhythm of gift and receptivity, which Balthasar says is the rhythm of love. In this rhythm, Being freely gives from its objective depths. The subject receives it with fidelity and charity.

It is worth noting that Balthasar describes this epistemological disposition that corresponds to this rhythm as “adoration” [Anbetung]. This is clearly the language of spirituality and devotion, but Balthasar uses it to describe knowledge as an epistemic disposition of openness to Being’s revelation through the subject’s receptivity and creative participation. We can see even here at the outset of his philosophical study of truth that Balthasar is laying the groundwork for his portrayal of the saints as the ones who most perfectly realize the epistemic attitude of true knowledge.

Truth as a Transcendental Property of Being

Balthasar’s Theo-Logic begins with the unequivocal assertion that truth’s proper object is Being. Theo-Logic 1 resists the narrow subject-oriented epistemology of post-Kantian Idealism. Balthasar also distances himself from the legacy of the transcendental Thomists like Joseph Maréchal and Karl Rahner, opting instead to construe truth as a transcendental property of Being rather than as constructive power of human mind and will.^[9] Human knowing, Balthasar insists, is always responsive. Knowledge responds to the disclosure of the mystery of Being. The Theo-Logic reframes epistemological questions in such a way that truth refers first to the making known of Being (disclosure, revelation) and then, subsequently—responsively—knowledge of Being (trustworthy understanding). To do this, he relies on a traditional participatory understanding of truth (Aquinas’ Disputations on Truth is never far from his mind), developed through a phenomenological method. Balthasar considers the nature of truth through the way it appears in the world.^[10] Epistemology, as Balthasar conceives it, is never simply about the structures of the human act of knowing; it is also concerned with the knowledge of Being.^[11] From the very beginning, then, Balthasar insists on the connection between ontology and epistemology, Being and knowing.^[12]

“Consciousness” and Being

This ontological framing of truth has significant consequences for the entirety of the Theo-Logic and for Balthasar’s theology of the saints. As an ontological reality, truth is the expression (logos) of Being. The idea of the expressivity of Being (the “self-speaking of Being”)^[13] is important for both the intelligibility of the world and Balthasar’s later christological interpretation of truth. There, following Bonaventure, Balthasar defines the Logos as the “expression” of the Father. What the saints know when they know Christ is the expression of the Father, the source and the goal of all Being. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

Balthasar conceives truth as considering the appearance of Being in concrete forms in the world of phenomena that we inhabit. This immediately raises the issue of the relation between appearance and reality. For Balthasar, there cannot be a one-to-one correspondence between the two, but neither are the two only nominally related. He asserts that in human consciousness (Bewußtsein), Being invades concrete appearances.

Balthasar’s study of truth begins with a phenomenology of consciousness itself. He argues that the phenomenon of consciousness demonstrates the ontological nature of knowledge. He makes much of the word for “consciousness”: Bewußtsein. Balthasar interprets consciousness as meaning both “being conscious” (act) and “being conscious” or “conscious being” (Be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Balthasar, the Ignatian Theologian
• Balthasar on Mission
• Saints, Truth, and Theology
• Truth as Love
• “I am the Truth”
• Spirit of Truth, Spirit of Love
• Love Itself is Understanding
• Saintly Styles: A Case Study on Adrienne von Speyr
• Conclusion: Theology and the Saints
• Selected Bibliography
• Index