Balthasar's Theological Vacuoule, Part 2

CONTINUING FROM OUR LAST POSTING with Steve A. Long's critical analysis of the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar's misconstruction of nature and grace and their relationship in the latter's work The Theology of Karl Barth, we initially focus on a text that seems to have a grasps of the two different orders along traditional lines. In this context, Balthasar is speaking about St. Augustine's contribution to the nature-and-grace issue:

VON BALTHASAR

But he [St. Augustine] was quite well aware, as were all the Fathers, that this unity [between the natural life and supernatural life] that was the foundation of Adam's existence was itself no necessary synthesis but a de facto one. It belongs to the very essence of the creature that it must indeed be a creature, but not a creature who has been exalted to a new order by grace; by nature a creature is the "servant" but not the "friend" of God.

These sorts of comments are clearly within Catholic orthodoxy, and, though inconsistent with some of his other statements, indicate for Long Balthasar's "rectitude and orthodoxy of intention." Long, 61. There is no suggestion whatsoever that Balthasar sees that nature requires of God grace by the necessity of justice in such a manner that it would be unjust for God to have withheld sanctifying grace speculatively from man at his origin. In fact, elsewhere he touches upon the problem of such a concept. If nature without grace led to beatitude, "then we could conceive of a creature to whom God would have to be gracious. And that would mean that it would no longer be a creature." The "necessity" of grace to nature is a de facto and not de jure one, a "necessity" that God imposed upon himself by the sheer gratuity of supernatural life given to man above and beyond his natural life at his origins. Whatever fault with find with Balthasar's doctrine the area of nature and grace, that fault is unintentional.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Similar statements suggest the same conclusion. Witness, for example, the following unimpeachable understanding of the Thomistic concept:

VON BALTHASAR

God's real world order is the de facto unity of two materially distinguishable and distinct orders that can be differentiated in analysis but are still not separate in reality.

So it is clear that Balthasar sees sanctifying grace not as a natural endowment, but as a free gift of God to man. But the proposition that sanctifying grace is a gift of God and not a natural endowment does not quite reach the essential point in the relationship between nature and grace. This position could allow for grace and supernatural beatitude to be the only natural end of man. And therefore it does not exclude the implication that God may be under the necessity of justice to provide sanctifying grace and the beatific vision, a position that would appear to have been condemned by Pius V in his Bull Ex omnibus afflictionibus (1567) against Baius. The only way to assure that one does not fall into the condemned proposition that sanctifying grace is something owed us in strict justice and without which nature would be penalized is to maintain, in addition to the principles that grace is gratuitous and not a natural endowment, that nature has a end distinct from the end of supernatural grace. There must be a natural end and a supernatural end or else we would seem to lapse willy nilly into Baianism.

In the absence of the affirmation of the existence and intelligibility of a proportionate natural end distinct from supernatural beatitude, it appears that a necessity of justice comes to pertain to the need of man for grace, even if this derivative-implied consequence is not desired. And it is necessitation in justice, and not merely as contrary to free and personal act, that is rejected in the Church's anathematization of the error of Baius.

Long, 62. Though it is true that as God willed it, we are in fact created with nature and sanctifying grace jointly, and so unrepented sin leads to punishment in the form of loss of the beatific vision, this was not necessarily so, but so only because God determined at the inception of man's creation to join the two. Had God decided not to link sanctifying grace and the beatific vision in man at his creation, there would have been no punishment therein.

Unfortunately, Balthasar it seems disdains or is at least highly distrustful of any abstraction of pure nature from the "complex in which it will be found, and from its mode of existence." Long, 63.

VON BALTHASAR

Above all, it is quite obvious, and it is becoming ever more striking, that when we use this concept [of pure nature]--which expresses the essence of what it means to be a creature--it cannot be neutral in either its philosophical or theological usage.

It is true that "nature" understood theologically (in the light of revelation) will be understood in a manner differently than when understood philosophically (in the light of reason alone), and so we are not dealing with a "neutral" term "hovering" over both theology and philosophy. "There are," after all, "more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in . . . philosophy." No one in the orthodox Christian patrimony would have thought otherwise.

But this philosophical understanding of nature is not to be given short shrift. Indeed, the supernatural end of man cannot be known without the natural end of man. Why? Because the very distinction of supernatural presupposes knowledge of the natural. Something is "super" nature. "One cannot contrast two things where only one is to be found." It takes two to tango, and these two dancers in the life of man as God in fact created him, are his nature as known by reason (philosophy) and his "supernature," the sanctifying grace which will afford man beatific vision and the knowledge and union with God, as known by faith (theology). Nature, then is not "the theologian's posit; it is God's effect," which is to say, it is not something merely assumed, postulated, contrived, or figmental, but something altogether real, something with "ontological density." Long, 64.

It is a mistake of tremendous proportions to reject the notion of man's "pure nature" as being something real, albeit something that in God's dispensation, is ordered by gift to a supernatural destiny. The result is to define nature negatively, as "not grace." Nature is something more than "not grace."

It is also an error to use "Hegelian" dialectic to suggest through fuzzy reasoning that nature has not its own end separate, albeit subordinate to, man's supernatural end, but is in some way already on the way to the supernatural as if it is intrinsic to it. The fog in this sort of thinking is visible: nature is not grace, but nature is "not grace," and so we may define nature in relation to grace; consequently, we may say that nature is on the way to be grace. Cf. Long, 66. This dissolution of being and nature, which are substantive concepts, into relational terms is erroneous.

Nature as such is not on the way to grace save insofar as under the actual ordering causality of grace itself--which is true of man's creation in grace! But this does not negate but affirms the distinct and intelligible divine gift of nature.

Long, 66.

VON BALTHASAR

The positive definition of grace can only be given through grace itself. God must himself reveal what he is within himself. The creature cannot delimit itself in relation to this Unknown reality. Nor can the creature, as a theologically understood "pure" nature, ever know wherein it specifically is different from God. Only the light of revelation can draw this distinction and make this clear--not a philosophy that ascends from the world to God, or even (especially!) the mysticism of a Plotinus.

While it is true that "(sanctifying) grace can only be given through grace (of revelation) itself," Balthasar seems to elide the equally necessary truth that there is, in addition to the grace revealed by grace, an "aboriginal gift," namely, "created nature," a nature that has an ontological density, an intelligibility graspable by reason alone without although not to the exclusion of grace. In the order of creation, it is possible to "delimit" oneself in relation to God the unknown. We can obviously distinguish between creature and Creator, even though we may have no positive knowledge of the Creator as something other than that He is First Cause, pure Act, and we are not. This is a delimitation.

(continued)

Balthasar's Theological Vacuoule, Part 1

EVEN THE REDOUBTABLE Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar,* unquestionably one of the great Catholic theologians of the 20th century, shared in de Lubac's error on the distinction between nature and grace. De Lubac was not alone in his conflation of the orders of grace and of nature with the resulting deprecation of the order of nature. In his book Pura Natura, Steven A. Long shows convincingly that Balthasar's famous analysis of the Protestant theologian Karl Barth contains a deficient ("deeply flawed"), if at times, inconsistent notion of nature and grace, one that has abandoned the Thomist doctrine that accords both human nature and divine grace a separate, real order, with real separate ends, and attempts to reconcile them by subordinating, or perhaps better, superordinating, the natural to the supernatural. Steven A. Long's critique of Balthasar's work is respectful, even apologetic, but withering. It is perhaps this error in Balthasar's work, and the similar error in de Lubac's work, that explains, until rescued by John Paul II's encyclical Veritatas splendor, the weakness of Catholic moral theology over the last generation.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Long focuses on Balthasar's work The Theology of Karl Barth.** Since the Protestant theologian Karl Barth was so uniquely hostile to the doctrine of the natural law, Balthasar's treatment of Barth would be an opportune condition for investigating Balthasar's own viewpoint, particularly the second chapter of section three of that work, entitled "The Concept of Nature in Catholic Theology." Long calls it the "mother load of Balthasar's rich reflections on nature and grace." Long, 54. In Long's view, nature for Balthasar is merely a "postscript," indeed, maybe not so much as that, perhaps more like "the equivalent of a theological vacuoule or empty Newtonian space, a placeholder for grace." Long, 55.

The best approach for synopsizing Long's critique is to identify those portions of Balthasar's work that are criticized, identify those portions with which Long is critical by number, and then summarize Long's observations of those portions.

VON BALTHASAR

[A]s a created being of nature, man has no other goal than the supernatural vision of God. It is essential to realize that Thomas does not regard this as a hypothetical goal. Indeed he knows of a finis naturalis, meaning a fulfillment corresponding to the immanent structure of human powers. But he sees this fulfillment either as a goal for this life as opposed to the next, in the Aristotelian tradition, the ideal of the seeker after wisdom. Or he sees it as the cognition verpertina [evening knowledge] [sic] [should be vespertina] as opposed to a cognitio matutina [morning knowledge], in the Augustinian tradition where this distinction first arose. Or finally, he might have meant it in the sense of a distinction between the praemium essentiale [essential reward] and praemium accidentale [accidental reward] internal to a supernatural glory. But Thomas never entertains, even hypothetically, a final goal that could be unmoored from the supernatural vision of God. According to his medieval presuppositions, it would have been impossible for him even to make the conceptual distinction implied by this problem.

"But Thomas never entertains, even hypothetically, a final goal that could be unmoored from the supernatural vision of God." This, of course, is a conspicuous error. St. Thomas explicitly "entertains . . . hypothetically" precisely this. In his Quodlibetal questions (I, q. 4, a. 3, resp.), St. Thomas says in no uncertain terms: *** "But because it was possible for God to have made man in a state of pure nature, it is useful to consider how far natural love could be extended." There are other examples which Long cites to and quotes. Long, 57. On this "strategic point" it appears Balthasar has "accepted an erroneous reading" of St. Thomas. Long, 57.

More generally, the three various interpretations of what St. Thomas may have meant by positing a natural end of man do not do justice to the Thomistic teaching, though they are not inconsistent with it. They just do not seem to go far enough to touch what St. Thomas intended. St. Thomas plainly sees the natural order as have a final end that specifies who man is, and and end that is wholly valid, entire, ontologically thick, and integral in itself, even though, by God's free gift, it is raised into the supernatural life. This rich understanding of what St. Thomas envisioned for the nature of man, particularly its theonomic nature, seems to be lacking or at least not entirely embraced by Balthasar. There is already a discomfiture with a theonomic order in nature. Whatever ordering or end is in nature is immanent, which suggests no natural ordering with the transcendent without recourse to supernatural grace.

VON BALTHASAR

To pose such a hypothesis, to maintain that a graceless order of nature or creation is at least possible, only became urgent for theology when a heretic wanted to make the fluid bond between nature and the supernatural a forced and juridic one.(1) This happened when Baius chose to derive a de jure compulsory right to grace understood as a strict requirement (debitum) from nature based on the de facto configuration of both orders, which were linked because of free grace, not necessity.(2) This conclusion gave birth to 'natural theology' in the modern sense of the term, that is, to a theology of "natura pura."(1)

(1) If Balthasar suggests that the first time the hypothetical notion of nature prescinded from a supernatural order came in response to Baius in the 16th century, he is clearly wrong. As Long observes and prior postings on this subject have made amply clear, St. Thomas entertained the concept of pure nature, a natura pura, in distinguishing between the natural orders and the supernatural orders which, at his creation, were joined in man. Therefore, this hypothetical conception is at least as old as the 13th century.

(2) Having erred on the position of St. Thomas, Balthasar appears to suggest that the notion of a hypothetical possibility of a "graceless order of nature or creation" first came to pass in opposition to the heresy of the Franciscan theologian Baius or Michel de Bay (1513-1589), a heresy called Baianism. Some of Baius's false propositions were condemned in the papal bull issued by Pope St. Pius V, Ex omnibus afflictionibus (1567), which condemnation was reaffirmed by Pope Gregory XIII in his bull Provisionis nostrae (1579). Baianism, whose critical errors stem from the relationship between nature and grace within the contexts of man's Creation, Fall, and Redemption, seems to be a confused and unacceptable amalgam of unreconciled Pelagianism, Calvinism, Lutheranism, and Socinianism, which, of course is defining one ism with four isms and is not very helpful. But the topic of Baianism is for another day, since it is Balthasar we look at in this post.

Though Balthasar is correct enough when he states that grace cannot be considered a necessity of nature, but a free gift to nature, that may not be enough fully to quench the Baian flame. That the gift of grace may be free and not a necessity of nature, does not quite fully answer the question of, as Long puts it, "there is a necessity of justice that it [grace and supernatural life] be given." Long, 58. Is grace like oxygen, a free gift and yet an evident necessity to our nature? Withholding oxygen from a man would seem a punishment, perhaps even an injustice. Similarly, is withholding grace from man a punishment, or even an injustice? This would seem to be the conclusion if supernatural beatitude is man's natural end.

(continued)
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*I call Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) "redoubtable" because he is a formidable Catholic theologian and was deeply loyal to the Magisterium if at times, as may befit a speculative theologian, on edge, perhaps even with a foot over the boundary [I refer here to his controversial and "apocatastastical" Was dürfen wir hoffen (What Dare We Hope?) and Kleiner Diskurs über die Hölle (A Little Discourse on Hell)]. Balthasar was Swiss, having been born in Lucerne, and grew up in a Catholic family. He was a brilliant, cultured man, steeped in European classics, with a great love for music ("my youth was defined by music," he wrote), had a passion for Mozart, and had perfect musical pitch. (At one point in his life, he gave away his record player and entire works of Mozart because he had memorized the entire corpus and could picture both the scores and hear the music in his mind with completely fidelity.) He entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1928, and, dissatisfied with the state of Thomistic scholasticism ("languishing in the desert of neo-scholasticism," as he put it) ventured, through the influence of de Lubac, "beyond the scholastic stuff to the Fathers of the Church," and into the nouvelle théologie. Balthasar was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1936. His ventures in the at first distrusted nouvelle théologie, his support of the mystic Adriene von Speyr (for whom he was confessor), and his other activities found disfavor with his Jesuit superiors, and he postponed his annual vows to the Jesuits and later left the order in 1950. His post-Jesuit career met with practical difficulties which he eventually overcame. He devoted himself to teaching and to writing. His writings were prolific and immense in scope and in subject matter. Perhaps his greatest achievement was his fifteen-volume trilogy, Herrlichkeit: Eine theologische Ästhetik (The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics). He was a peritus for the second Vatican Council, was a member of the papal International Theological Commission from its establishment in 1969, and was the founder of the St. John's Community (Johannes Gemeinschaft) and its publishing house. He also was a founder of the international Catholic journal Communio. In 1988, Balthasar was chosen by John Paul II to be a cardinal, but, two days before his elevation, on June 26, 1988, he died.
**Karl Barth was inveterately hostile to the concept of natural law. We have written about this in our postings, Karl Barth's Response to Natural Law: Nein!, Karl Barth's Tin Ear: Notes, But No Melody (which drew the ire of Barthian George Hunsinger), and Karl Barth: Rubbing Out the Image of God in Man.
***Sed quia possibile fuit Deo ut hominem faceret in puris naturalibus, utile est considerare ad quantum se dilectio naturalis extendere possit. Quod., I, q. 4, a. 3, resp.