LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Engaging the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
12/2022
Engaging the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar
There is much that evangelicals can affirm with Balthasar. For example, evangelicals can
concur with Balthasar’s Christocentrism as a proper theological starting point for attending to
God’s divine revelation because Christ is the exegesis of the Father, for “no one has ever seen
God; it is only the Son, who is nearest to the Father’s heart who autos exegÄ?satÅ?” (John
1:18).54 Evangelicals can also echo Balthasar’s high regard for the biblical text: “Scripture is the
Word of God and not the word of the Church, but it is the Word which the Church, by her
meditation in faith, carries in her womb and really brings forth, giving it birth in the world.”
Moreover, Balthasar’s commitment to the Creator-creature distinction, the goodness of
creation, the ontological priority of the immanent Trinity, and Chalcedonian orthodoxy all
harmoniously resound within the halls of evangelicalism.
Critical Analysis
Evangelicals, however, should also have some reservations. To date, there is a lively and
ongoing debate regarding Balthasar’s understanding of Holy Saturday—Christ’s descent into
hell—where questions about Christ’s purpose in descending and whether Balthasar’s theology
of Holy Saturday is heterodoxy or a new development in theology are vigorously debated. Most
troubling, in my estimation, is Balthasar’s version of kenotic theology (which is at the heart of
this debate) that has divine eternal kenosis as its central tenet. This core element of his kenotic
theology seems to undermine God’s unity of action, misappropriate the biblical understanding
of Christ’s kenosis, blur the distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity, and
purport a synergistic understanding of salvation that precludes the evangelical notion of sola
gratia. Before elaborating on these concerns, we need to know in brief how Balthasar
explicates the relationship between divine and human freedom.
God’s Unity of Action
Balthasar’s notion of infinite difference within the eternal Godhead entails an infinite
mutual freedom—what he calls the Urdrama of the Trinity—so that the Father and the Son
have the freedom to be who they are. Human freedom within the world drama presupposes
and finds its basis in this Urdrama. In short, God is free necessarily while humans are free
contingently. Balthasar surmises: “Unlike God, the world, and finite freedom within it, will not
have its ground in itself, not even in an ‘idea’: its ground is exclusively in God’s freedom.” That
being the case, “being totally dependent on divine freedom, the world can receive its possibility
and reality nowhere else but in the eternal Son, who eternally owes his divine being to the
Father’s generosity.” In contrast to the solipsistic freedom found in modern Western societies
today, which understands freedom as freedom from some constraint or authority, Balthasar’s
notion of human freedom is contingent upon divine freedom and is best understood as
freedom for something or someone. Such a notion of freedom is commendable as human
freedom takes shape in the relational and personal, exhibiting its humble, servant orientation
as a gift from the triune God.59 Yet what shape does divine freedom take?
Balthasar’s notion of divine eternal kenosis, which is the basis for the possibility of creation
and human freedom, seems to undermine his trinitarian theology as he struggles to maintain
God’s unity of action (Deut 6:4–5). Recall Balthasar’s description of the Father’s freedom
whereby “the Father strips himself, without remainder, of his Godhead.”60 In doing so, the
Father divests himself of his “entire substance,” handing it over to the Son. This creates what
John Milbank calls a “suspended middle” such that “the personal character of the divine
essence. .. is forgotten when von Balthasar so reduces the Trinitarian persons to free centers of
being.” Consequently, Balthasar struggles to articulate “what it means to think of one act of
love throughout the dramatic processes he evokes,” moving toward “something a bit like
tritheism (the mutual worship of persons as Balthasar proposes)” thereby implicitly questioning
God’s divine simplicity. Moreover, this eternal and complete divestiture initiated by the Father,
received and responded to by the Son, creates an infinite difference between them held
together only by the bond of the Spirit. Such a notion not only borders on the precipice of
incomprehensibility but also further questions how the triune God can act as one.
Christ’s Kenosis and the Immanent/Economic Trinity
Turning to the relationship between the immanent and economic Trinity, Balthasar rightly
affirms the ontological priority of the immanent Trinity in his kenotic theology. In doing so, the
immanent Trinity, understood as “that eternal, absolute self-surrender whereby God is seen to
be, in himself, absolute love. .. explains his free self-giving to the world as love, without
suggesting that God ‘needed’ the world process and the Cross in order to become himself.”63
Such an assertion presumes Balthasar’s commitment to the distinction between the immanent
and the economic Trinity whereby “we know about the Father, Son, and Spirit as divine
‘Persons’ only through the form and disposition of Jesus Christ. Thus we can agree with the
principle, often enunciated today, that it is only on the basis of the economic Trinity that we
have knowledge of the immanent Trinity and dare to make statements about it.”
Balthasar surmises, though, that “a way must be found to see the immanent Trinity as the
ground of the world process (including the crucifixion) in such a way that it is neither a formal
process of self-communication in God, as in Rahner, nor entangled in the world process, as in
Moltmann,” if we are to retain our commitment to divine impassibility. His solution is the
aforementioned notion of divine eternal kenosis whereby “the Father’s self-utterance in the
generation of the Son is an initial ‘kenosis’ within the Godhead that underpins all subsequent
kenosis.”65 Yet his notion of divine eternal kenosis, drawn from Phil 2:5–8, seems to go beyond
the biblical witness that speaks only of the Son’s self-emptying and not the Father’s, thereby
equivocating on the meaning of kenosis and confusing the particularity of the Son with the
Father. What, though, might the apostle Paul mean by the Son’s self-emptying?
The meaning of the Son’s self-emptying is a rather contested notion where some interpret
Christ’s kenosis as a complete divestiture of his divinity while others see an abdication of only
some of his divine attributes. Gordon Fee contends, though, that Paul’s use of the term μορφή
in Phil 2:6–7 provides us with an important clue to understanding not only “the real act of the
Son,” as T. F. Torrance remarks,67 but also Christ’s self-emptying. The term μορφή, according
to Fee, does not denote “the external features by which something is recognized, but of those
characteristics and qualities that are essential to it. Hence it means that which truly
characterizes a given reality.”68 Paul’s use of the word in this context connotes metaphorically,
then, the reality or essential quality of the mind of Christ (2:5) both as God and as man. Thus,
Christ expresses in becoming a human being an essential quality of being God, namely, the
giving of himself for the sake of others.
The incarnate Son’s kenosis discloses the very identity of God, the fact that the triune God
is not selfish; and as such, we should emulate his humble attitude. God “as love. .. is pure
altruism, looking not on (or at) his own things, but at the things of others. From this point of
view, the idea of kenÅ?sis is revolutionary for our understanding of God.” Therefore, with
Balthasar, we can concur that God is self-giving love, but it seems best to demur from
attributing eternal kenotic moments to all the trinitarian Persons to delineate such love.
Otherwise, the economic Trinity, as the summary of the gospel, seems to be constitutive rather
than communicative of God’s eternal identity, calling into question Balthasar’s adherence to the
distinction between the immanent and economic Trinity.
Sin and Grace
Evangelicals should also demur from Balthasar’s doctrine of sin and understanding of
prevenient grace. Balthasar submits to traditional Catholic dogma, noting that though our “turn
toward God can have various levels, it always occurs praeveniente gratia [with God’s
prevenient grace]” as Vatican I affirms: “For the most merciful Lord stirs up and helps with his
grace those who are wandering astray, so that they may be able to come to a knowledge of the
Truth.” This notion of grace presumes that sin has brought spiritual sickness to humanity rather
than death as Paul says in Eph 2:1. Humanity, according to Balthasar, has the ability to
cooperate with God (i.e., synergism) or resist him, for “prevenient grace certainly is not lacking
to man even in a single moment of his life.”72 If God’s grace works in this way, to whom does
the apostle Paul refer when he speaks of being enslaved to sin in Rom 6:16–23?
Balthasar is correct in noting that the Fall does not erase or remove the image of God in
human beings. Natural acts of morality are possible; yet, as a consequence of the Fall, they
remain off the mark (i.e., in an Augustinian sense) because the depravity of humanity inhibits
such actions from reaching their supernatural end, namely, the glory of God (Gen 6:5; Ecc 9:3;
John 8:34; Rom 1:24; 2 Cor 4:4). Humanity, then, even with its natural faculties, is unable to
direct its faculties and actions to their created end such that no one is able to do anything to
please God—non posse non peccare—for sin deforms the very heart of human beings. It is
precisely at this point that the deleterious effects of sin contaminate our natural faculties,
causing us to twist and deny reality such that no amount of “natural” beauty, truth, or
goodness can satiate us. Sin distorts and contorts our limited understanding of God, ourselves,
and the world, for we see only a poor reflection and know in part what will be understood
wholly only in the eschaton when we see God face-to-face (1 Cor 13:9–12).73 What, then, of
our sinful condition?
Balthasar contends for a prevenient grace that enables humanity to cooperate with God,
leaving “room for all real events and phases that make up man’s way to God.”74 If prevenient
grace operates in the manner Balthasar suggests, allowing humanity a kind of autonomous
freedom to say yes or no to the light of God’s divine revelation, why do some reject God and
others do not? Is God’s glory not efficacious to transform the deformed heart of humanity such
that humanity responds in faith (Eph 2:8–10; Heb 11)? The crux of the matter, for Balthasar,
hinges on humanity, not God, for God has done his part and humanity has failed to do its. Such
notions subvert the evangelical commitment to sola gratia and diminish God’s freedom.
Nevertheless, Balthasar’s theology deserves a hearing among evangelicals as his symphonic
approach to theology invites readers to view old and current theological impasses in new ways.
Let us conclude, then, by suggesting several implications of Balthasar’s thought for evangelical
theology that might spur further engagement with Balthasar and perhaps enrich evangelical
theological discourse.
Balthasar has much to offer evangelicals. His theological aesthetics, which primarily
appropriates aspects of Goethe’s notion of form (Gestalt) for theology, emphasizes the
inseparable nature of form and content such that content is indiscernible without form and
form is indiscernible without content. In other words, the “how” or manner in which God
communicates himself becomes important for theology rather than simply the content or the
“what” of God’s self-revelation. Balthasar advocates such a notion primarily on the basis of the
Word taking on flesh, accentuating the trinitarian basis of his proposal, the freedom and wholly
otherness of God, and the goodness of creation. Numerous implications ensue from this
conclusion. For example, biblical genre becomes essential to discerning the meaning of a
biblical text; the manner in which we do theology (i.e., the intellectual virtues) says volumes
about our understanding of God; and present human existence, as devilish as it may seem at
times, is not to be discarded in an ascetic lifestyle in favor of some otherworldly disembodied
reality. Rather, human existence, with its tragic and idyllic moments, should be lived with joy in
relationship with others, all to the glory of God.
Balthasar’s emphasis on the sovereign freedom of God and humanity’s relative freedom
casts new light on the dramatic covenantal relationship between God and humanity. Typically,
God’s freedom is juxtaposed to humanity’s freedom, usually in an adversarial relationship.
Many theologians opt to frame the parameters of the discussion using the analytic
philosophical categories of determinism, libertarianism, and compatiblism. To an extent, these
categories allow theology to parse the relationship between divine and human freedom with a
measure of perspicuity. Yet these analytic categories inherently presume an Enlightenment
conception of the individual and a scientific notion of causality. Balthasar, on the other hand,
seeks to reframe the discussion with a dramatic metaphor such that the triadic relationships
between playwright-actor-director apply to the Trinity as Father-Son-Holy Spirit, respectively.
Such notions maintain the contingency of human freedom upon God that takes shape within
the relational and personal, exhibiting a humble servant-orientation to human freedom as a gift
from the triune God.
Balthasar’s dramatic metaphor also insinuates that our understanding of the truth, in part,
requires a performative element, which reveals an inherent connection between aesthetics and
ethics, thereby dissolving the dichotomy between theology and the Christian life. In his biblical
theology of the gloria Dei, Balthasar examines numerous theophanic manifestations of God’s
glory, concluding that God’s giving of himself in his self-showing precedes his speech. This self-
showing is the beauty of God that demands action, “for God’s revelation is not simply an object
to be looked at: it is his action in and upon the world, and the world can only respond, and
hence ‘understand,’ through action on its part.” Yet, within God’s self-showing of his glory,
“there appears [God’s] holiness and sinful man falls to the ground, only then does the
contradiction between light and darkness, holiness and sin, come into full view, and the drama
is begun.” No one can perform his or her part in God’s drama of redemption without knowing
this fact first. Therefore, God gives life within this dramatic covenantal moment such that our
participation in the living resurrected Christ by the Spirit transforms our understanding of God,
the world, and ourselves, tethering together theology and the Christian life.
Finally, Balthasar’s theology also brings other important questions into the purview of the
evangelical conscience that deserve further exploration. For example, how should evangelicals
construe the God-world relationship? How does God’s trinitarian nature shape our
understanding of his actions in the world and hence influence our conception of other doctrines
(e.g., the nature of Scripture, ecclesiology, etc.)? And, what are the implications of Balthasar’s
view of the atonement for the doctrine of justification? These kinds of questions can only
intimate at the potential fruitfulness of interacting with Balthasar’s thought. Thus, it is my hope
that they spur evangelicals to consider one of the most prominent Catholic theologians of the
twentieth century who can help evangelicals sharpen their theological discourse and perhaps
move beyond current impasses regarding the doctrine of God, the nature of Scripture, and the
doctrine of justification, to name a few.
