God's Glory Appears: Love of Neighbor is Eucharistic

THE CHRISTIAN'S LOVE OF NEIGHBOR is eucharistic in nature. What this means for von Balthasar is that the love is radically self-giving to the other.  This love is imitative of the love of Jesus who prefers others to himself.  This eucharistic love of neighbor therefore mimics the eucharistic love of God.  However, von Balthasar does not fully equate the love of God with the love of neighbor.  While the love which expresses itself in self-giving is absolute when in reference to God, it is not similarly absolute when in reference to neighbor.  Even if not absolute, however, there is an radically-different aspect of love of neighbor that colors, indeed fundamentally affects, love of neighbor.

The Christian love of neighbor does not keep a balance sheet ("balanced settlement cease[s]," GL7.140).  It participates in the "pro nobis of Christ."  (Steck, 117, citing TD4.406)  This love, therefore, will have characteristics that might be viewed as "supererogatory," "and inversion of justice," and even "an unmerited burden."  Steck, 117.  Christian love of neighbor suffers, suffers if need be even unjustly. The love forgives wrongs.  This supererogatory, justice-inverting, unmerited, and forgiving love which is willing to suffer even unjustly is what it means to share in the cross of Christ.

Since Christian love of neighbor participates in the cross of Christ and exhibits the same sort of qualities as Christ's love for all men, it follows that the Christian love of neighbor participates in the mission of Christ.  It therefore betrays the qualities of "one who, in Christ, lives the mission of the Father and whose measure of love has its referent not in the quid pro quo of interpersonal fair play, but rather the Suffering Servant who laid down his life for him."  The entire paradigm is not one of justice, but one of self-giving love.

Love of neighbor in a sense "universalizes the Christ-event, like the Eucharist itself."  It therefore even shows itself to have liturgical qualities:

Borne by God's Spirit, the radical suffering love of the Christian makes Christ's own love visible in the broken bonds of human fellowship and his call to love audible to ears made deaf by sinful self-isolation. Christian love participates in the liturgical movement of the church's worship. Responding to God's Word, the gifts of the Christian are lifted up, so that they can be shared by the Father as eucharistic food for the neighbor.

Steck, 118.  In this regard, von Balthasar quotes Origen: "And thus every man is capable of becoming a pure food for his neighbor according to his worthiness and the purity of his intention. ... For these are mysteries of the Lord: every man has a certain food in himself."*  (Origen, Homily 7, in Lev.)

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*Quoted in von Balthasar's TD5.383, Homo Creatus Est, 21, and The God Questions and Modern Man, 151.

God's Glory Appears: Hope for Neighbor

A FOURTH HORIZONTAL COMPONENT of von Balthasar's Christian ethics is the Christological hope which moves the relationship with neighbor.  The "horizontal time" in which our relationship with neighbor exists has been incorporated into the "vertical time" of God and man.  God's love is found in the life of all men: from the love that is found in creation to the love that is displayed by Christ on the cross.  Especially in the triduum--the three days wherein Christ suffered his passion, his death, and his resurrection--we find the hope of humankind.  This three-day, hope-filled event changed the horizontal relationship that men have one with another because it becomes enveloped by it:

The new meaning of human history is revealed in the entire divine economy, but especially in the Christ of the Triduum.  The no of humanity has been answered and enveloped by the costly self-giving yes of Christ.  His love dissolves the objective burden of sin, but it hopes to do more--to win back sinful human hearts by his greater love.  This radical and daring hope of triune love which inspires God's work in Christ is the meaning that God has given horizontal history. 

Steck,116.  While Christ's victory is not fully completed in the existential present, there is a completion in future, eschatological hope.  Von Balthasar's seems to lean towards a doctrine of universal salvation, in that he advances the notion that this eschatalogical hope will be fulfilled, that God's love will win out so that hope will be fulfilled and every human will respond to God's love in the end.  This notion is caged in words of hope: ""Can we say . . . that there is anxiety and anguish in the heart of God producing not 'certainty of salvation,' but something far more, namely the flower of hope?"*  Steck, 196 n. 85 (quoting TD5.290)

 The Theological Virtue of Hope

By shifting the focus from "certainty of salvation" to "flower of hope" and saying that this "flower of hope" is "something far more" than "certainty of salvation," von Balthasar might be said to advocate an even more extreme form of salvation certainty.  This "flower of hope" is a super-certainty of salvation.

God's love for all men, a love which shows itself in hope, embraces all, even the most alienated.  In von Balthasar's view, there is no room for tragedy in Christian life.  Future hope prevents any possibility of eternal tragedy.  All Christian acts that relate to neighbor will be influenced by this hope that knows no bounds.

The theological hope of the Christian is ultimately directed toward the reconciliation of all persons with God. But while this hope goes "beyond this world," it does not "pass it by" (TD5.176). Von Balthasar cites approvingly Jürgen Motlmann's observation that there is an "other face" to our reconciliation with God that "has always been short-changed" in Christian history: "the realization of an eschatological hope for justice, the humanization of man, the socialization of humanity, peace for all creation.

Steck, 117.

This hope is to be awakened in the world.  The most hopeless, the most alienated are not to be considered outside of  hope.  This hope will show itself in the Christian response to the poor and oppressed, and will express itself in the creation of "such humane conditions as will actually allow the poor and oppressed to have hope."  The hope in eternal salvation must show itself in acts that will elicit from our neighbor this hope "by creating conditions" in this world "apt to promote it."  TD5.176.   Thus it is that the work in this world for "justice" is part of the moral endeavor which is brought into the Christian mission.  It is part of our effort to work towards the salvation of souls, to reconcile the world to God.

Again, in the real of hope there seems to be a conflation or collapse of the natural and supernatural so that all the natural is supernaturalized or the supernatural is naturalized.  Earthly justice becomes inextricably wrapped up and equated with eschatalogical hope.  Von Balthasar's rejection of the grace/nature or nature/supernature distinction seems to lead to some less-than-traditional, unsettling, even disturbing--dare we say temerarious if not outrightly heretical?--views.

Along with great beauty and heart-felt Christian sentiment, there is something not quite right in the von Balthsarian formulae.

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*Steck also refers to von Balthasar's controversial work Dare We Hope 'That All Men Be Saved?'  (D. Kipp and L.Krauth,trans.) (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988).

God's Glory Appears: Grateful Response to the Lord

THE CHRISTIAN RESPONDS TO the gift of God in Jesus Christ with a grateful answer of love. This response is a moral act, a moral act that distinguishes or particularizes the Christian moral response from any other.  Von Balthasar puts it simply:  "I have been 'addressed by a free loving Thou, I am both given an answer and called to give one in return.'"  There is something additional to just mere internal response: the giving implies a task.  "'[W]hat I have been given is to be transformed and freely given back.'"  Steck, 115 (quoting TD3.458).

This gratefulness extends itself to the entirety of one's life: the natural and the supernatural.  We respond to our benefactor--the Creator--by thanksgiving for the utterly gratuitous gift of being, of life.  "The complete 'why-lessness' of every creaturely form transforms its appearance into a moment of natural grace: something whose Origin and Giver life hidden has come to expression before me."  Steck, 115.

 Salvador Dali's Corpus Hypercubicus

For the Christian, the grateful response to God the Creator is multiplied by our grateful response to God the Redeemer.  "When we consider Jesus Christ, we see that God is not just personal Other [as he reveals himself in nature], but the one whose gift of forgiving love to us is absolute.":

This other, whose presence and agency lie beyond my own will, compounds his mystery by surrendering himself to me and by intentionally allowing his freedom to be tied to mine. Whatever response I will make,should it be appropriate (or aesthetically fitting), it will be enabled and guided by the gift I have received and my grateful recognition of it.

Steck, 115.   It is the absolute, self-giving, and totally depreciating (kenotic) love of God which is made manifest to us in all its hidden glory in Christ that drives from us our response, which motivates, enables, and shapes our "Yes" in response to God's "Yes."  The forgiveness which is proffered to us in Christ is the heart and center of our "Yes."  "We must learn 'what it means to be forgiven,' and respond from within that reality, not as some past accomplishment, but as an ongoing dimension of our daily existence."  Steck,116.  There is a constant "ite missa est" in the Christian response to Christ's self-giving sacrifice which purchased man's redemption and which effected our salvation, our forgiveness.

The response that this great act of love on the part elicits is not limited to the response between a man and his God.  It also colors the response of man to his fellow man.  Christ's solidarity with man should make a big difference in the manner in which I behold my fellows.  In an unusual expression of it, our neighbors' "words have been brought into the triune conversation through Christ's solidarity with them and enclosed into the one Word of God.  The neighbor's word now comes to us as a gift of God since everything 'in the created order, with the exception of sin, is enabled, through Christ, to be an expression of God.'"  Steck, 116 (quoting VB's "Characteristics of Christian," in the Word Made Flesh, vol. 1 of Explorations of Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989, 176).

It is difficult to distinguish nature and supernature in von Balthasar, and this would appear to be by design since he shuns the traditional Catholic way of thinking on this matter.  While there is a point to be made (nature has a "relic" of original grace, or perhaps better a "hole" which is a relic of the original grace, since God intended to have nature and grace together in man, as it was in Adam), one fears also a collapse, where everything is grace and everything is nature.  Is Christ's death on the Cross really nothing other than a re-expression of Creation?  It is difficult to see how "nature" is raised by "grace" in von Balthasar's thought since nature is already grace and grace nature.

These temporal and limited words of pain and joy, of praise and judgment,, of understanding and direction, become God's particular word to the believer because, in Christ, God has decided to make these words part of the eternal triune conversation.They are always heard and understood within the one Word of forgiveness and mercy spoken in Christ and addressed to me and to the other, but, so heard, they are genuinely graced addresses to which the Christian is called to respond. The neighbor then is not only the recipient of Christian love but also the means in which God calls forth the Christian's response.

Steck, 116.

God's Glory Appears: Loving God in Neighbor

VON BALTHASAR LINKS LOVE OF GOD and love of neighbor to such an extent that any love of neighbor is implicitly a love of God. This aspect of von Balthasar's thought seems to be another naturalization or Christian charity arising from his rejection of traditional formulae regarding nature/supernature and nature/grace. Von Balthasar "does not make an explicit vertical reference to God a necessary condition of every act of Christian love."  Steck, 114. Therefore, the love of neighbor is a form of worship of God.  One must suppose he thinks that service of neighbor is equivalent to the Mass.

This linkage between love of God and love of neighbor distinguishes Christian love from mere humanitarianism; however, the specific Christian contribution seems extrinsic inasmuch as it results from the Christian's awareness that there is such a link.  As we saw in our last posting, von Balthasar appears to believe that any "struggle against injustice and to bring about justice in the world"--which presumably includes an act of love of neighbor--is ipso facto linked with "the God of revelation and of love and grace, whether he knows it or not."

The love of neighbor almost takes a precedence over the love of God.  Like Karl Rahner, von Balthasar seems to immanentize the love of God by equalizing it with love of neighbor.  This equivalency results in a sort of confusion of genera.  Oppression of neighbor is equated with idolatry; they are "interchangeable terms."  GL6.316.  Though perhaps von Balthasars is less eager than Rahner to raise the love of neighbor to primacy, there is a sort of auto-religious link between love of neighbor and love of God.  There is therefore a "synthesis of the two commandments," the result of the "economy of salvation," something that has not "always and everywhere been the case," but something that is the result of Christ's mission.

"Christ has given 'endless value to the human 'Thou,'" and this assumption of humanity into the Son of God through the incarnation "makes it possible for Christians to love God in loving neighbor."  Steck, 114-15 (quoting GL7.441)

Relative to Rahner, von Balthasar appears to resist a wholesale conflation between love of God and love of neighbor.  "[T]his love for God for the neighbor occurs as Christians come to see in the neighbor the God whom they have met in Jesus Christ.  Thus, 'the reflective religious act' [of the love of God] cannot be secondary because it is this act that effects subjectively what God has accomplished objectively in Christ: the unity of love of God and neighbor."  Steck, 115.

God's Glory Appears: Christ is in my Neighbor

VON BALTHASAR STRUGGLES to reconcile the ethical validity of the created order with the Christian particularism that comes from the dramatic or aesthetic encounter with Christ. The effort is perhaps nowhere better seen than in the manner that he handles the issue of the love of neighbor.  In handling the issue of love of neighbor, von Balthasar has both the horizontal I-Thou relationship (man/man) and the vertical I-Thou (man/God) relationship working together.  Universalism may be found in the former; Christian particularism may be found in the latter.  The particular and the universal therefore work together.  "Because the interpersonal encounter among human persons is refashioned in Christ's light, it represents a boundary test case for the claim that creation preserves its relative autonomy within von Balthasar's Christian particularism."  Steck, 112.

In addressing the issue of love of neighbor, von Balthasar identifies six indicia (what Steck calls "aspects") of how love of neighbor ought to be reflected in the Christian.  These indicia or aspects define the "moral space" within which the Christian must act.  They appear analagous to the Barthian "formed refdrences."  Steck, 112.

We might enumerate them first, and then elaborate upon them:

1. In the new order that Christ ushers in, the neighbor is the mediator of God's call to us;
2. The love of neighbor to which the Christian is enjoined is at the same time a loving response to the person call of God;
3. Christian love is responsive: it is a grateful answer to what it has received.  The Christian response is therefore to be seen not as a naked moral act, but always  as answer to God's address;
4. Christian love is influenced or moved by christological hope for neighbor;
5. Christian love of neighbor is eucharistic love; and
6. Christian love seeks communion with one's neighbor.

These six features or aspects of Christian ethics as it relates to love of neighbor provide little guidance; but they might be seen as more of the spirit or animus that ought to drive the Christian in his day-to-day activities in his efforts to apply the love of God through love of neighbor.

For von Balthasar, the Christian encounters Christ in his neighbor.  This arises from the Word's assumption of human nature, an assumption which puts the Word in solidarity with mankind.  The solidarity is complete, total, without limit.  In a manner of speaking, since mankind has been assumed by the Word into the Godhead, our neighbor is in solidarity with God.  There is no man, woman, or child that remains unaffected by Christ's incarnation. 

We are therefore called to reject any sort of attitude or behavior which puts up walls, which isolates us from the other.  Anything that compromises solidarity might be seen as against God's will.  If the Lord Jesus is in solidarity with all mankind, how is it that we might act differently and be in solidarity with a portion of mankind?

There is definitely a two-way dynamic.  Christ's presents humanity in solidarity to the Godhead. Christ presents the Godhead in solidarity with humanity.  There is therefore a movement up and a movement down.  A de arriba and a de abajo.  We are called to see God as Jesus the God-Man saw God.  We are called to see man as Jesus the God-Man sees man.

 Are Saul Alinsky and Dorothy Day really doing the same thing?

The Incarnation is revolutionary, not only in terms of man's relationship to God, but also in terms of man's relationship with man:

[The incarnation] changes everything, for from now one, one's fellow man--whether friend or for--is the brother for whom Christ died . . . each individual who can be addressed humanly as "Thou" is raised to the status of a "Thou" for God, because God's true "Thou," his "chosen" and "beloved" "only Son" has borne the guilt of this human "Thou" and has died for him, and therefore can identify himself with every individual at the last judgment.

Steck, 113 (quoting GL7.439)  This is Christian particularism: how could it not be?  The Christian is given a vision of the love of God for man which is the impetus for the love of neighbor.  To reject the insight of the Incarnation in pursuit of a sort of universalism would be actually to work against the solidarity with all mankind.  An ethical universalism without Christ would be a seriously limiting vision of mankind's calling.  It would be a rejection of Christ and all he has wrought.

But something seems wrong in von Balthasar's formula.  He seems to have universalized the particular, to have naturalized the supernatural, to have conflated grace and nature, to have collapsed things when he says such things as: "whoever endeavors to struggle against injustice and to bring about justice in the world in a quite direct way with the God of revelation and of love and grace, whether he knows it or not."  (Steck, 114, quoting "Secular Piety?" in Creator Spirit, 360).  Or when he says things such as: "It follows that everything that human endeavour achieves in respect of the commission given at creation--the struggle against injustice, hunger, sickness, need and depravity, and the struggle for better conditions of life, education, wages, etc.--acquires a positive significance in view of what God has done in Christ and of the help of the Holy Spirit, and that nothing of this will be lost ultimately."  (GL7.519)

If all human effort at a better world is done "in Christ" willy nilly, then why preach Christ?  Is Mother Theresa really doing the same thing as Karl Marx?  Is Dorothy Day really doing the same thing as Saul Alinsky?  Is St. Katharine Drexel really doing the same thing as the Reverend Jesse Jackson?

No.  Despite some of the deeply satisfying portions of von Balthasar's thought, there are parts of it that simply seem dissatisfying.