400 - A Theological Anthropology

A Theological Anthropology
By Hans Urs von Balthasar
341 pp. New York, Sheed and Ward, 1967. $7.50.

The theme of this book is more sharply delineated in the title of the original, which is "The Whole in the Fragment," than in that of the English translation. It is the theology of man in history, and while this has far-reaching implications for the understanding of man, the author does not work these out in the comprehensive fashion which a title like "Theological Anthropology" might lead us to expect. Von Balthasar describes the book as an essay, and he promises no firm conclusions. But though the aim is modest, it is carried out with brilliance and a wealth of suggestiveness. The author explores the theme with immense erudition and with great openness to diverse viewpoints.

Though he is Catholic, von Balthasar exhibits a Protestant, almost a Barthian, concern for the methodical purity of theology, which is put to a severe test by this theme. How is it possible to construct a theology of history without making "secret sorties into the philosophy of history"? Theology is responsible to the Word of God. Philosophy of history, which emerged in the century of Vico and Voltaire, is a quest for the self-understanding of man in secular history, which it distinguished from salvation history. The distinction is not to be regretted; and the previous practice of constructing theological schematisms of world history with the materials of biblical apocalyptic is described as an encroachment. A responsible theology is not committed to these, nor may it be seduced by the charms of those constructions of idealist or biologistic monism which have been created from Hegel to Teilhard de Chardin. The latter are modern forms of gnosis and smack of hybris. But philosophy of history has raised a question which poses a challenge to theology-indeed its emergence as a distinct intellectual discipline is rooted in part in the failure of theology to answer the question: Has the development of the world a significance which is not only philosophical but theological?

The failure of theology at this point-a failure which has come to expression in some of the dilemmas of eschatology since the turn of the century-is connected with the fact that biblical salvation history is cyclical in shape. Von Balthasar challenges the view, made popular by Cullmann, that historical time in the Bible is linear in shape, in contrast to the cyclical view of pagan antiquity. The Bible, he maintains, shares will all religions a cyclical view of time as "duration from God to God"; history follows the course of egress from God and regress to God. On this view, which goes back to Irenaeus, the risen Christ, as the second Adam, marks the turning-point, indeed, the point of return; at this

401 - A Theological Anthropology

point, which is the fullness of time, redemptive wholeness is achieved for every man.

Von Balthasar restates this ancient view in terms of a fascinating thesis concerning man as the language of God, which he uses for the expression of redemptive wholeness. In the incarnation the Word of God took the shape of a human life, with its successive stages developing in time, each flowing into the next in one irreversible direction, except that in him each acquires the character of a revelation of eternity. "God, therefore, uses existence extended in time as the script in which to write for man and the world the sign of a supratemporal eternity. Hence the man Jesus, whose existence is this sign and word of God to the world, had to live out simultaneously the temporal, tragic separating distance and its conquest through (Augustinian) elective obedience to the choosing will of the Eternal Father, in order to realize mysteriously the essentially irrefrangible wholeness within the essentially incompletable fragmentary."

The crucial question is whether such a view of the perfectibility of man in history can be expanded to afford a view of history, which is peopled by successive generations of men, but which, as a whole, is surely more than the sum of all the parts. Attractive as it is, the scheme advanced by von Balthasar makes it difficult to account for the time after the resurrection. In church time, as he puts it, there is really no future to the resurrection, and certainly no third age of the Spirit (Joachim), but only a development in which the catholic church becomes ever more itself. Philosophies of the future depend on a spirit of open dialogue, which the Christian cannot enter without "bracketing" his faith. Thus the Christian sees the human spirit as leading, not to a universality of freedom and power, but to inevitable apocalyptic conflict with the Spirit of God.

The book will not appeal to those who see in the futurism of philosophical history a new model for theology. Here we are offered a future without novelty, a future of judgment rather than of hope. The book is untimely (perhaps in more senses than one); nevertheless it raises serious questions about current trends in eschatology.

George S. Hendry
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey