God's Glory Appears: Missioning and Fulfillment

RESPONDING TO THE GLORY of the Lord as one beholds the theodrama of the Christ-event is to submit, in a person-to Person confrontation, to the command of the Lord. Yet this submission is not the sort of submission that destroys the personality of the person submitting to God. The submission to the command of God in a convenantual pledge which shows itself in participation in the mission of the Son of God, both in his human mission and in his inner Trinitarian relationship, is the height of human fulfillment.

For von Balthasar, human fulfillment consists not in our human knowing and willing Absolute Being, but rather . . . in a personal relationship with the personal Absolute. God is the absolute "Thou" of the human "I," and the unique and irrevocable name by which God calls each person is the seal of that person's dignity. God's missioning name is not something additional to one's identity. . . . In short, it is the perfect, irrevocable, and fulfilling address of the absolute Thou. The questions of personal identity which the tension between the ambivalence and flux of infinite existence and the longing for the absolute now provokes has its adequate answer: in the mission, one's personal name is written on the absolute.

Steck, 87.   Von Balthasar is, like most moderns, keen to preserve human autonomy.  Yet he does not model it in any kind of form independent of God.  Indeed, human autonomy is oxymoronically or perhaps better, paradoxically, found in a human being's personal participation in his unique mission which is attached to the mission of the Lord.  "This unique mission grants individuals their true autonomy."  Steck, 87.  Anything outside of it is, by definition, slavery or heteronomy.

 Gisele Bauche, The Great Commission

There is a "narrative teleology" in man, one that finds fulfillment in submission to the narrative of the Christ-event.  We "see" ourselves, our own drama, within the greater theodrama which the Lord allows us to "see."  Thus we participate in a unique and fulfilling way our own reality:

Christians [are allowed] to see the diverse particularities of their lives as part of the biblical drama: the occasions of their success and failure, their acts of minor heroism and those of unnoted mediocrity, their rebellion against God and their repentance. The story of Christ, the Christians' story, offers a horizon that illuminates the who that Christians are within these fragments of particularity and points them to an identity that they can embrace with all their energy. In embracing the name the Father has given to the Christian in Christ . . . the Christian is moved to do more than put on a costume and memorize a part. In following the currents of the divine will, Christians eagerly engage in the task at hand with all their love and intellect, their passion and creativity. . .
[T]he Christ-event has really become, through the Christians' incorporation in Christ, their story, not just epistemologically (i.e., the lens through which they interpret their lives), as it might seem in some works of narrative ethics, but ontologically, as the fruit of the Spirit's power to "liquefy" the Christ-form, to use von Balthasar's language, by stamping it onto the lives of their followers.

Steck, 88, 89.

It is this drama-within-the-Theodrama that constitutes our "missioning," and this "missioning" is what is at the heart of the Christian ethical life. "The name that God gives the individual is a missioning name; the individual is sent to further the divine plans and hopes for creation by participating in the mission of Christ."  Steck, 92. This mission is Christological. It is eucharistic. It is not self-dissipating, but rather a self-enlarging expansion of one's life into the very heart of Trinitarian love.  And while this missioning participates in Christ's greater mission, it is for that no less personal, unique, or particular.  "The lives of the saints teach us one thing: growth in Christ is not growth into ethical sameness."  Steck, 91.

Yet, by incorporating themselves into the mission of Christ, all the "fragments" of mankind are "harmonized in the light of the divine economy," and it gives them lasting meaning in that they participate in the eternal relationship within the Absolute.  Steck, 91.  "This mission is not an additional task to one's identity; it is the one's name and identity as viewed from a different vantage, that of the Father lovingly beholding creation through his Son."  Steck, 92.

God's Glory Appears: Living "in Christ"

VON BALTHASAR'S ETHICS ARE PAULINE. They heavily rely on the prevalent notion of St. Paul of living a life "in Christ," ἐν Χριστῷ. This phrase (or synonymous phrases such as "in the Lord" (ἐν κυρίῳ) or "in him") are peppered throughout St. Paul's letters, and they clearly envision an incorporation in Christ as do the related formula "with Christ" (σὺν Χριστῷ), "through Christ" (διὰ Χριστῷ), "of Christ" (Χριστοῦ), "for the Lord" (τῷ κυρίῳ) and the like which are also found in St. Paul's epistles. These might be called the "incorporationist formulae" of St. Paul and it is central feature of his moral theology.

The term is both indicative and imperative.  That is, it is used to both express an existing truth and a truth to which we must strive as an ideal.  Perhaps this notion is best encapsulated by the notion of "be what you are."   We are incorporated into Christ, so we ought to act as Christ. 

There are three aspects which may be gained from St. Paul's teaching and which prevail in von Balthasar's ethical theories.

First, the formula "in Christ" clearly envisions an intimate union between the individual Christian (and the Church) and  Christ. It is Christocentric.  This is a vital, symbiotic union, one which is of dynamic influence.  Indeed, St. Paul expresses this symbiosis, this dynamism in language that is reciprocal, where we ebb into Christ and he ebbs into us, to the point that there is a union of persons that can hardly be separated.  "Yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me," St. Paul says in Galatians 2:20.  Von Balthasar shares in this Pauline idea, and sees, moreover, like Paul, the Eucharist as being its highest expression.  (1 Cor. 10-11; TD3.24) (Steck, 47)

The second aspect is what effect incorporation into Christ causes the individual Christian.  It is Christomorphic.  Here we come into the notion that incorporation into Christ results in Christ's image being put in man.  The Christian becomes an image, an icon (εἰκών) of the risen Christ. We are "to be conformed to the image of the Son" (τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ).  (Rom. 8:29)  We are therefore to imitate Christ, his poverty, his obedience, his humility, his willingness to suffer for others.  Within this notion is comprehended the imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ.

 Ite, missa est.  

Go forth on your mission to bring the world to Christ!

Yet for von Balthasar, there is something more than incorporation and imitation in the Christian's ethical life.  A third aspect is complementary of the above two aspect.  Our incorporation into Christ, our efforts to become an image of Christ, both lead to the fact that were are to participate in the mission of Christ.  In von Balthasar's words: "For Paul [his being seized by God] means that he must respond to Christ's personal love by surrendering to him in faith and by devoting himself to his apostolic mission.  Thus en [i.e., 'in Christ'] becomes syn ['with Christ'], a participation in Christ's dying and rising and in his work (synergoi)."  Steck, 48 (quoting TD3.247)


Part of Christian living is "making Christ visible," and this task, this mission is part of all those who share in the one body of Christ, by incorporation, through the Eucharist, through conforming themselves to the Lord.


Ite missa est.  Go!  You are sent forth!