The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics

The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics #5

by Fr. Hans Urs Von Balthasar

In this second volume on the metaphysical traditions of the West, von Balthasar presents a series of studies of representative mystics, theologians, philosophers and poets and explores the three main streams of metaphysics which have developed since the 'catastrophe' of Nominalism.

The way of self-abandonment to the divine glory is traced through figures like Eckhart, Julian of Norwich, Ignatius, de Sales; the attempt to relocate theology in a recovery of antiquity's sense of being and beauty through figures like Nicholas of Cusa, Holderlin, Goethe, Heidegger; the metaphysics of spirit through Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Idealists. The strengths and weaknesses of these ways are relentlessly exposed.

The volume ends with the search for the Christian contribution to metaphysics.

Genres: Theology, Religion, Catholic, Philosophy

668 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 1990

Reviews

[Joe]

Bonaventure Milton Francis de Sales Ignatius Picard Bernanos El Greco Abelard Klopstock Molina Duerer Goya Gilson Poussin Racine Rousseau Erasmus Mozart Herder Nietzsche Claude Lorrain Pascal Petavius More Speyr Shaftesbury Soloviev Spenser Eckhart Chantal Cicero Schiller Copernicus Melbranche Ruskin Spinoza de Lubac Kierkegaard Berlioz Hobbes Marx Bramante Angelus Silesius Rabelais Freud Hume Wolfram Livy Leibniz Teilhard Schopenhauer Croce Cavalcanti Cervantes Angela of Foligno Teresa Catherine of Siena Keats Homer Nyssa Humboldt Gerson Molien Dostoevsky Newton Hebbel Dickens Fechner Simmel Leopardi Leonardo Ulrich Tennyson Fichte Andrew the Fool Augustine Suarez Dilthey Maximus Madame Guyon Bloy Strindberg Mechthild Pindar Calderon Caussade Rilke Shakespeare Dante Pushkin Löwith Toland Rahner Jaspers Lucretius Lallemant Petrarch Berulle Kafka Lotze Plato Schelling Zola Burke Aristotle Hopkins Schleiermacher Bernini Winckelmann Ipsen Péguy Cassirer Newman Cusanus Laplace Origen Flaubert Descartes Goethe Rubens Bruni Sartre Scheler Coleridge Jean Paul Aesop Hesiod Molière Luther Suso Jacobi Trakl Plotinus Galileo Dionysius Bergson Bacon Claudel Novalis Titian Hamann Ockham Joachim John of the Cross Brémond Blondel Machiavelli Grosseteste Kleist Fénelon Erigena Montaigne Alberti Merswin Tiepolo Gontard Tchernyshevsky Epicurus Balzac Pico Thomas Mann Hegel Irenaeus Michelangelo Virgil Hartmann Horace Grimmelshausen Schlegel Wagner Plutarch Cudworth Camus Vasari Mendelssohn Baader Ficino Susette Gontard Thackeray Scotus Tolstoy Unamuno Bossuet Thomas Maimonides Julian of Norwich Chretien de Troyes Barth Locke Maréchal Baudelaire Botticelli Hölderlin Bergson Kant Siewerth Jacopone Rimbaud Heidegger Hofmannsthal Rousselot Rosmini Boccaccio Stendhal Lautréamont Voltaire Husserl Rosmini Chesterton Lukács Ruysbroeck Lessing

ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE BETTER WITH BALTHASAR

[Christopher McCaffery]

“Long, but worth it”, he said, the insistent way that is trying to not sound simply smug but is in fact and obviously proud of having finished such a long and difficult book that people use when they talk about Infinite Jest.

1/7; 2/16.

[Zeke Taylor]

Hard to get bored with Balthasar (assuming mostly-Western philosophical and theological figures are entertaining)

[Ephrem Arcement]

Staggering comprehension of the metaphysical tradition on full display, although not always articulated in an easily comprehendible manner.

[David Miller]

This book reviews the history of Western metaphysics in some detail. In the first half von Balthasar reviews the metaphysics of the saints: St. Ignatius, St. John of the Cross; here he talks about self-abandonment and indifference (indifference not in the sense of apathy, but in the sense of accepting God's will). He also reviews "holy folly": the worldly foolishness of Don Quixote and Prince Myshkin (Dostoevsky's "Idiot").

In the second half von Balthasar reviews what we normally think of as metaphysics: long-winded German philosopher types like Schiller and Hegel. This part was pretty heavy going as I am not too familiar with German idealism.

The last two chapters summarize this volume and all 4 previous volumes: after the heavy philosophy comes the most amazing two chapters of just about any theology or philosophy I ever read. The last two chapters will bear many re-readings.

von Balthasar says the key question of all metaphysics is just this: Why is there anything, instead of nothing at all? Why does anything exist? He says the German idealists avoided this question; instead they asked Why are things the way they are? Which is a much different question than "Why is there anything that exists at all?"

In the last two chapters, he boils down metaphysics to four "distinctions":

1. The primal experience of the child: "I exist! I am distinct from the world". Everything after this is just so much more detail. The original philosophical wonder is this: I exist, I see the world!
2. "Other beings also exist - I share the world with my other beings!" Not only do I exist, but many other things exist too.
3. "The distinct separate existence of everything that actually exists, is not quite the same as BEING/EXISTENCE itself". All distinct 'existents' take part in BEING, but BEING is not the same as everything that exists.

Much of modern metaphysics is to reduce the relationship of distinct beings with BEING, to a relationship of necessity, or necessary progress. That is a major problem: it withdraws freedom from the world; it denies free will and agency. I learned a long time ago to ignore any philosopher that denies human agency and free will.

4. "Both distinct beings and BEING are grounded in a transcendent divine being, a creator that is not a distinct being and not BEING, but the sovereign and free creator of all that is."

This fourth distinction is the key step to make sense of the world (BEING) and our place in it (distinct beings). When philosophy leaves out this step, it becomes twisted and deformed, and ends up removing both freedom and love from the world:

In the last chapter von Balthasar challenges modern Christian metaphysics: to restore this 4th distinction, to show the true meaning of the world, to bring love and glory (indeed, "The Glory of the Lord") back to a mechanized and impoverished world.

I noticed this book was first published in 1965, which is the very year that everything changed. The year of the closing of the 2nd Vatican council; the year the Church effectively decided to abandon Christian metaphysics; the year the Church decided to conform to the world; the year the Church jettisoned the organic transcendent vertical Mass of the Lord's Body and Blood, and instead adopted a closed-in circular horizontal Protestantized "service".

It is only 51 years since then, and many people think the Church, or some significant groups within the Church, are finding their way back to God. I certainly hope so.

If more people read von Balthasar, maybe this reconstruction of sanity will proceed just a little faster.