Hans Urs von Balthasar

THEO-DRAMA

THEOLOGICAL
DRAMATIC THEORY

VOLUME II
THE DRAMATIS PERSONAE:
MAN IN GOD

Translated by Graham Harrison

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Title of the German original:
Theodramatik: Zweiter Band: Die Personen des Spiels
Teil I: Der Mensch in Gott
© 1976 Johannes Verlag, Einsiedeln

Cover by Roxanne Mei Lum
With ecclesiastical approval

ISBN 978-0-89870-287-3
Library of Congress catalogue number 89-83257

Printed in the United States of America

Theological Dramatic Theory

Excerpts from Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Vol. II — The Dramatis Personae: Man in God (Ignatius Press), approx. pp. 115–132]

Page 116:
And God’s last word has not been said until the “word” “resurrection” has been developed and formulated in such a way that its whole range is made visible. God’s final word is so vast, however, that it makes room for us to hear his silence too, just as the stars reveal the night sky.

b. A Word That Is Both Attested and Generative

Page 117:
On the other hand, the testimony of Scripture is not external to the events, insofar as the latter are themselves understood, in biblical terms, as “words,” “utterances,” “judgments” of God. The unity of word and event is expressed both in the Old Testament dabar and in the New Testament rhēma. It can happen that the “utterance” precedes the “historical event,” so that, when the word “comes to pass,” Israel may acknowledge Yahweh’s might and infallibility (Is 42:9); but the utterance refers to the event, it does not remain “empty” or without result (Is 55:11): “I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it” (Ezek 17:24). The antecedent word is sovereign, but it also has a dialogue character: it is superior to Israel’s reaction to it, yet ultimately such a reaction is precisely what it is aiming at. Indeed, it is always proclaimed by a spokesman of God within Israel, someone who has understood it and affirms it. It is a word within the “Covenant,” that is, a word journeying toward incarnation. Hence it is a word that goes step by step with the people, although we cannot speak of continuous progress. It is hard to decide whether the particular step forward consists more in the initiative of the word of God or more in the response of Israel (and subsequently of the primitive Church) to God’s effectual word. Even if it is successful, Israel’s response must be ascribed to the deed character of the word: it is ascribed to the Spirit–ruach–of God.

In this category are the development and formulation of the chief commandment (the Shema, Dt 6:4ff.) on the basis of existing covenant law, or the step from the suffering of Job to that of the Suffering Servant. At the same time we must remember that, corresponding to the nature of God’s word, each step contains something ultimate within it, something that is not “superseded” by the next step. (Thus in the gospel the tables of the Ten Commandments are just as much in evidence as the Shema, and on the Cross the words of Job become real just as much as the silent sufferings of the Suffering Servant.) So what Scripture subsequently (and yet throughout its “journeying”) embraces as the word of God and puts into human words has an inner continuity with the word of God that is always active in history: at times it is the latter itself, at others it is its reflection.

As for this reflection, it too cannot be separated from the word itself with total clarity. Since God’s word [Wort] always involves dialogue and creates some kind of hearing faculty in its dialogue partner, it already contains an answer [Antwort] within it. Under certain circumstances, this can be a negative answer: the hard-hearted or stiff-necked reaction, the turning away; but this too, as the shape of the answer [Antwort], is inscribed within the word [Wort]. On the other hand, the answer which the word seeks to elicit always implies that the person answering has (in one way or another) heard, that is, it presupposes the word. And the more adequate the answer, the more it itself becomes a (dialogic) word. A psalm can be a meditation on the word or a hymn in praise of the God who speaks or a cry of entreaty to him: overshadowed by the Spirit, this answer is so adequate that it can be taken over by the word. The same is true of the Wisdom books as a whole and of the prophetical word (and here it does not matter whether this word is directly infused or has undergone a process of reflection in the prophet’s mind).

Thus we can understand the continuity between the answering believer and the hagiographer: the scriptural word that attests [bezeugend] is not external to the word of God that is attested [bezeugt] (or, to put it more profoundly, that “implants and generates itself” [sich einzeugend]), and, although the two are not simply identical, the generative [zeugend] word can make constant use of the attesting [bezeugend] word in order to make itself present, in the latter, for the individual believer. For although, in one respect, the written word as such can never contain the “breadth and length and height and depth” of the incarnate Word–as Scripture itself clearly testifies (Jn 20:30; 21:25)–this testimony, since it is inspired by the Spirit, is always more than itself: what seems on the surface to be a book is inwardly “spirit and life”; it is always ready to be used and interpreted by the living God according to his design, to be disclosed to the individual who loves him, or the group or the epoch, as a word that is new and ever new beyond all imagining.

The externally fragmentary and unsystematic character of the biblical books in itself provides a useful instrument for this purpose. Biblia is a collection of writings of every possible literary genre, including occasional writings (the apostolic letters), poems, prayers, proverbs, laws, chronicles, oracles, secret revelations, laments, sober instruction for the Christian life…. This apparent confusion is crisscrossed by threads, open and hidden, linking everything with everything else; thus a kind of vast net is created (with a coarse mesh or a fine one?) within which the attested and generative word of God can traverse unhindered. The net embraces the contents, and yet it does not hold them fast: it is so loose and broad that, in principle, it loses nothing of the contents, but it does not claim to be itself the whole content. On the other hand it is not vague, because the word always has a specific content–nothing is more specific than the infinite God–and, if Scripture “leaves things open,” it only does so in the sense that it makes room for the incarnate Word of God who attests himself in and through the same Scripture.

There is one more thing that we must not forget: Jesus knows that he is the Word uttered by and testifying to the Father, but at the same time he himself can refer to the Father as the one who speaks: “As I hear, I judge” (Jn 5:30), “What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has bidden me” (Jn 12:50), “I speak thus as the Father taught me” (Jn 8:28). But Jesus can also hear this infinitely specific word of the Father resounding from the iron finality of the Old Testament words of God: “It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve'” (Mt 4:10). For him, the fixed, written word radiates with all the fullness of divine power and decision; thus he replies to the Sadducees: “Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?” (Mk 12:24; Mt 22:29). But at the same time–in all the Gospels–he sees this fixed word moving toward himself: Moses wrote of him (Jn 5:46; cf. Lk 24:27), and the prophecy of salvation is fulfilled in him (Lk 4:21).

c. Gramma and Pneuma

All this is further confirmed by the stark opposition, frequently made by Paul, between “gramma” and “pneuma,” which, in view of the contexts (Rom 2:27f; 6:7; 2 Cor 3:6f., 14ff), can only be interpreted as an opposition between the “Old Covenant” (2 Cor 3:14) insofar as it is “fading away” (v. 11) and “obsolete” (Rom 7:6: palaiotēs grammatos: the obsolete written word), and the “new” Covenant prophesied by Jeremiah (31:33), in which God will put his law within them and will write it upon their hearts. At its core, this opposition is not between “the letter” and “the spirit”; “the letter” (“tablets of stone,” 2 Cor 3:3) refers to a merely external aspect; the negative side of the old “written word” (graphē), the side that must be transcended, is not the fact that it was written down: it lies in the “fleshly” character of the old Mosaic law. It is characteristic that, in Romans, “flesh” (together with “law,” “circumcision” and “letter”) is opposed to “heart” (Rom 2:25–29); but “heart” does not denote spiritual inwardness as contrasted with physical outwardness, otherwise Paul could not tell the Corinthians that they themselves were a letter of recommendation “written with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of the human heart” (2 Cor 3:3).

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To the transitory fleshly institution (“circumcision” as a sign of belonging to the “Old Covenant”) there corresponds a quite different, much more profound, incarnational fleshly reality in which, through the Holy Spirit, God’s law is inwardly “enfleshed” in the human heart. When Paul says, abruptly, that “the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6), he is thinking not so much of the Scripture which consists of written characters but of the “prescriptions of the law,” which must remain unfulfilled–with regard to God’s deepest purpose–until the coming of Christ and which thus emphasize the chasm between God’s requirement and human weakness and guilt.

For Paul, therefore, as for all the other New Testament writers, the ancient Scripture (graphē) remains most definitely inspired by the Holy Spirit of God, but this Spirit is already (covertly) the Spirit of Christ, as is said explicitly in 1 Peter 1:11. The view similarly found throughout the whole of the New Testament, that the entire Old Covenant (and hence the entire Old Testament) is “fulfilled” (plērōthēnai) and has “reached perfection” (teleiōthēnai) in Christ’s life, death and Resurrection, is simply another expression of the same thing. Objectively speaking, this could only be understood properly in a proleptic sense, and in the Old Covenant this was subjectively impossible; even less could there be a response to it in terms of deeds; this hiatus and deficiency result in “gramma,” unfulfillable prescription. All searching of the Scriptures is in vain if Christ is not sought and found there, for they speak of him (Jn 5:46). Insofar as “gramma” signifies deficiency, therefore, it simply cannot be fulfilled; it must “kill,” for only the incarnational Spirit can give life.

This shows us the ontologically different characters of Old and New Testament Scripture. Origen had a particularly fine sensitivity to this. Insofar as the ancient Scriptures are only journeying toward the Incarnation of the Word, there is something “abstract” about them, in spite of their proleptic intent and their accompanying forward movement. Scripture is a “pre-scription” in more than one sense: it is a written preliminary to what will be the concrete existence of the Word; it is a regulation or decree, anterior to the possibility of its fulfillment; to that extent it has a recognizable and circumscribed meaning which, in its fixed, written form, can only contain a small particle of the full reality, which–in the Incarnation of the Word of God–will flatten all the barriers of meaning, empowering us “to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth” of “the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:18f).

Whenever, in the New Testament, anything is said about this fullness–orally or in the written word–it is always an expression of the fullness itself. The christological paradox, that is, that “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” in the individual man, Christ (Col 2:9; cf. 1:19), also governs the shape of the new Scripture, with the result that it cannot be compared to any other book. This fact, that the New Testament is governed by Christology, moved Origen to designate Scripture as one mode of the enfleshing of the Logos (in addition to the enfleshing in his physical body and in his eucharistic-ecclesial Body). This way of speaking can be approved provided we keep in mind that one form of the Body is able to pass over into another, that is, if we maintain the integration of all aspects into the total incarnational form. The physical body would be inarticulate, and hence not the body of the Word, if this Word were not also enfleshed in human language (which is documented by so-called “Scripture”), and if this Word (both the physical and the uttered Word) did not give rise, in the believers who receive it, through Eucharist and preaching, to the Body of the Church.

Once we have seen this, we can regard the ancient Scripture (graphē) as part of this Incarnation event in the way the New Testament writers and subsequent tradition held it to be. The coming-into-being of the Incarnation is rooted in the faith of Abraham, who looked forward to the Day of Christ (Jn 8:56), in the faith of Moses, who “considered abuse suffered for the Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt” (Heb 11:26), and in the faith of the prophets who were inspired by the Spirit of Christ (1 Pet 1:11). All that is seen proleptically, however, is only incorporated in the fulfillment when the latter eventually arrives.

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The purpose of these remarks has been to refute the superficial idea that, in theo-drama, Scripture plays the part of a somehow uninvolved spectator and reporter who can “tell in advance who the murderer is.” In all its aspects, Scripture is something quite different: it is part of the drama itself, moving along with it. We have seen how rich it is in perspectives not only in the unimaginable wealth of its interrelated utterances but in the various layers found in each individual utterance, as modern exegesis is increasingly discovering. We have also seen that we cannot make an absolute distinction between the attesting (and generative) Word and the attested Word. We cannot say that Scripture is the Holy Spirit’s testimony [Bezeugung] to the fact that God’s Logos has borne witness to himself by his power of generation [sich zeugend bezeugt habel], …

[Text continues, moving toward page 129…]

A single proof concerning one aspect of revealed truth can only be conducted, therefore, if this aspect is evaluated on the basis of the totality and its place within it. This always presupposes that the totality can only come into view where there is acceptance of (that is, faith in) the One who is bearing witness to himself. This is because the God who, in the testimony, is bearing witness to himself–for he is the prime Witness–remains sovereignly free, even when revealing himself; but he is so free that he is able to create beings who are themselves free, whose freedom he can bring to perfection by his own free self-revelation and self-giving. Thus we can indeed express this totality in the words Soli Deo Gloria, provided we add that God’s grace glorifies itself in his creation and revelation (Eph 1:6, 12, 14), that “the God of love did not need man, but man needed the glory of God,” that it is “the glory of man to abide in the service of God,” because “the glory of man is God,” and for that very reason the “living man” who has been led to perfect freedom “is the glory of God.”

Thus the starting point for beholding this (ever-greater) totality is that primal relationship between God and the world (man) that leaves God, the Creator and Redeemer (through his self-communication), free to allow free, created beings to exist. They come into existence out of him, exist in his presence, they are in him and oriented toward him. We can speak of the “analogia entis” here, insofar as, on the one side, this relationship is distinguished from a pantheism or theopanism which dissolves God into the world or the world into God (and hence, dissolving the interplay of divine and created freedoms, abolishes theo-drama). On the other side, it must be distinguished from every form of pure dualism, which either isolates God’s divinity from the world and closes it in on itself (Deism) or isolates the world’s secularity from God (resulting in sin being seen as a fall from the divine realm, secularism, and the God-is-dead theology). The possibility of distinguishing between God–who “is all” (Sir 43:27) and thus needs nothing–and a world of finite beings who need God remains the fundamental mystery. It grounds everything that comes after, while not being deducible from anything. To it there is no “greater” alternative. It can only be illuminated by the infinite freedom of God, who shows himself, in (but not of necessity through) the existence of what is not God, to be “He-who-is-always-greater”: we can never catch up with him. We must keep the field free for this “ever-greater” God if we wish to guarantee the possibility of the theodramatic dimension: we must assert that unconditional (divine) freedom in no way threatens the existence of conditional (creaturely) freedom, at whatever historical stage the latter may find itself–whether it is close to the former, alienated from it, or coming back to its real self.

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A corollary follows from this: in the primal Creator/creature relationship, the Creator (who is “ever-greater”) remains superior to all attempts on the part of the creature to grasp him; all the same, he cannot be simply unknown to the creature, even if initially this only means that the creature knows of its creaturely, wholly conditional nature and can thus conclude that it must owe its origin to some primal ground. But even when God goes on to give his creature a new, deeper knowledge and participation, such revelation only causes the Revealer’s freedom to shine forth even more brightly; it makes it impossible for man to turn this gift he has received into a possession of his own, impossible for him to dissolve the faith which trusts (and the insight which he gains within such faith) into some kind of autonomous knowledge. There is nothing obscure or contradictory about the constant assertion of Christian theology and spirituality that, as our insight into God’s marvels increases and as our familiarity (familiaritas) with him grows, our reverence (timor filialis) is also heightened, as we can clearly see from Jesus’ own attitude toward his Father. The analogy of interpersonal drama can help our understanding here: where there is genuine personal love between two people, there is a simultaneous growth in intimacy and in respect for the other person’s freedom. So God cannot be simply the “Wholly Other” (and hence the Unknowable), but neither can the “revealed [geoffenbart] religion” become “religion unveiled” [offenbar], transmuted into some kind of absolute information about God.

This yields a second feature, namely, a fundamental realism vis-à-vis the world, which, with its bottomless suffering, its dubious aspect and its positive meaninglessness, resists all Idealism’s attempts to interpret it away. But it also resists every future-oriented utopianism on the part of Socialism. And, at a deeper level, it resists all mere “doctrine” and all the personal techniques designed to overcome suffering. Neither words nor techniques nor consolation drawn from the future can match up to the reality of suffering, which overtakes us all, every day. All these futile attempts had to be superseded by a deed that was able, from within, to reverse the value of suffering and endow it with meaning, a deed only God could perform. Here, taking us by surprise, a perspective is opened up on the central Christian synthesis that lies in the divinity of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. Biblical theology itself, and the patristic theology that continued it, saw the solution of the riddle of human existence in the possibility, in the God-man, of God sharing man’s suffering, indeed of his suffering for man. All meaning hangs on the fact that, in Jesus, the God who “cannot suffer” is able to experience death and futility, without ceasing to be himself. Every suggestion that underplays the genuine humanity of Christ (Gnosticism) and his genuine divinity (Arianism), as expressed by the formula of Chalcedon, threatens and actually destroys the full meaning of the “pro nobis” upon which all Christian theology depends. God alone can forgive sins, and so only he can “bear sins”; and the way in which he actually bears them cannot be discovered through speculation but must be presented, for our belief, in the mystery of the Cross–which is a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.

Third, from this central point, conclusions can be followed in two directions, toward God and toward man. Toward God, insofar as the realism of God’s suffering with the world in Jesus of Nazareth points in the direction of the mystery of the Trinity, in the direction of the distinction between the One who sends and the One sent, the One who utters and the One uttered, the One who surrenders and the One who is surrendered and (even) the One who forsakes and the One who is forsaken. However, this duality cannot be ultimate; it expresses a unity of the Spirit, of disposition, a unity which also emerges directly from the way Jesus and his witnesses understand God. This unity of the … [end of excerpts from this book]

[new book]

Prayer by Balthasar

quotes

Title of the German original:

Das Betrachtende Gebet

Einsiedeln, Switzerland

Cover by Victoria Hoke Lane

With ecclesiastical approval

1986 Ignatius Press, San Francisco

ISBN 978-0-89870-074-9 (PB)

ISBN 978-1-68149-384-8 (EB)

Library of Congress catalogue number 85-82172

have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness to me; yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” (Jn 5:39-40; 46-47). He gathers up all the words of God scattered throughout the world and concentrates them in himself, the intense focus of revelation. “Through whom also he created the world”, says Paul, indicating that he is not thinking only of the “many and various” words of the Old Covenant: there are also the words strewn throughout creation, stammered and whispered; the words of nature, in macrocosm and microcosm; the words uttered by the flowers and the animals; words of overpowering beauty and of debilitating terror; the words of human existence, in their confusing, myriad forms, laden with both promise and disappointment: all these belong to the one, eternal, living Word who became man for our sakes. They are totally and utterly his pos-

ment: all these belong to the one, eternal, living Word who became man for our sakes. They are totally and utterly his pos-

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ment: all these belong to the one, eternal, living Word who became man for our sakes. They are totally and utterly his pos-

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session, and so they are at his disposal, to be understood exclusively in his interpretation. All these words can only be heard and understood under his guidance; none of them can exist as an independent word, sundered from him, let alone be used in opposition to the unique Word. “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters.” In history’s headwaters it was possible to travel to meet him, the great river, on different streams. It was possible for the hearers to accept the “many and various” words of promise in so open and believing a manner that they were borne along toward the approaching unity. Now that the Son has appeared, the believer must apprehend the multiplicity from the standpoint of the unity. He must continually return to the center, to be sent thence to the periphery of history and nature with all its babel of languages. It is at the center that he learns what is decisive, namely, the truth about his life, what God wants and expects of him, what he should

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strive for and what he should avoid in the service of the divine Word. Thus he must become a hearer of the word.

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Let us go into this more deeply, this time from man’s side. “All things were made through him,” says John. “In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (Jn 1:3-4). The fact that, together with all other creatures, we are created in the Word implies not only that we are related to him as our origin, but also that we inhere in him, constantly and essentially. We see this relationship of inherence manifestly and visibly perfected in that God the Son “unites all things” in himself, the Word made man, “things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph 1:10), and incorporates all who are willing into his Mystical Body, infusing all the branches of the mystical vine with his blood. The “life” which is in the Word is not the fitful spark which the children of Adam nurture within themselves. It is genuine life, full-blown and definitive; “I give them

eternal life. . . . I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:28, 10). But he is not a mere channel for this life, he is life, bodily: “I am the life” (Jn 11:25; 14:6), i.e., not solely as the source of being, but in a personal, spiritual and free manner. It is in this free, sovereign way that he is “the light of men”. Men do not control this light, as perhaps they might if it were a mere life-principle, if it were some kind of sap, rising impartially and automatically from the roots of eternity and spreading throughout the ramifications of the individual souls, to acquire different characteristics according to the nature of these branches. Many persons think of divine grace as a species of impersonal, featureless life, which can be stored up and even “increased” by appropriate action, in the way a water-level can be raised by building a dam or as a fortune can be amassed through the exercise of thrift. But such a view leaves no room for the freedom of the light of grace, which never behaves like the Enlightenment’s

“light of reason” or “light of nature”. This light of nature is always there; it will shine in the heavens as long as human beings exist; it is utterly dependable. Pervading everything human, it has no real center. But the “true light” (Jn 1:9), without which this all-pervading light would be illusory, always shines forth in complete freedom. “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light” (Jn 12:35). Otherwise it would not be the Word, who is God, Person and Son, Lord of all those who are “created in him”. If we want to live in his light, we must listen to his word, which always addresses us personally, which is always new since it is always free. It is impossible to deduce this word from some prior word that we have already understood and put into store: clear and fresh, it pours forth from the wellspring of absolute, sovereign freedom. The word of God can require something of me today that it did not require yesterday; this means that, if I am to hear this challenge, I must be fundamentally

open and listening. It is true that no relationship is more intimate, more rooted in being than that between the recipient of grace and the grace-giving Lord, between the head and the body, the vine and the branches. But this fellowship at the level of being, preeminently mediated to us in the sacraments, can only persist if it is also at the level of spirit, i.e., if the word’s freedom is matched by a corresponding readiness on man’s side to hear, follow and accept. It is not only a matter of what is called “the moral life” or of living according to the “Christian precepts”: what is essential is that incandescent center which is the very heart and source of morality, and without which it would very swiftly grow cold and become twisted into pharisaism. The vital thing is the living encounter with the God who speaks to us in his Word, whose eyes pierce and purify us “like a flame of fire” (Rev 1:14), whose command summons us to new obedience, who each day instructs us as if until now we had learned nothing, whose

power sends us out anew into the world upon our mission.

Page 22

Unless he responds by such obedience to the free word of God in him, man is not living up to the idea which God the Father had of him at creation. Be what he may, in body and soul: if this most intimate, most personal relationship is not there, man is at best a physical body–and not even that, for though a physical body may lack this or that limb, what remains can be perfect in itself. Man, however, without the complement of this relationship, cannot be complete in any respect. Body and soul were created for the sake of this perfecting element; it is the origin of the aura of nobility which clings to human nature. Man was created to be a hearer of the word, and it is in responding to the word that he attains his true dignity. His innermost constitution has been designed for dialogue. His reason is equipped with as much light of its own as it needs to apprehend God speaking to it. His will is just that much superior to instinct and

power sends us out anew into the world upon our mission.

C. Freedom

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We have been speaking of the contemplative’s place in the vast context of the Word, of salvation history, of the Church’s worship. Now we are going on to speak of the way in which the individual can develop his personal prayer, and this is best done under the heading of “freedom”. The servant is under the law, but the child of God is free to speak to his Father as his heart dictates. He can accept advice; he can rely on the experience of others whose prayer is more free. But in all this, he himself is free. God’s Spirit is in his heart and prays within him, giving testimony of the love of the Father in the Son, who is the love of God which is poured out in him. This Spirit is freedom. Nothing should stifle, threaten or weaken this sense of Christian freedom in the believer. The word of God before which he kneels in adoration is God’s word to him; he has been summoned, called forward by this word; it belongs to him and he can

rightly take hold of it with both hands and press it to himself, feeling it pulsate mysteriously with the very heartbeat of God. No externally imposed rule can restrict his communion with the Beloved. Often he will be confused, like someone who has unexpectedly come into a great fortune and does not know what to do with it, and so he looks for advice from various people. From those who (surely) have a better understanding than he. Like a bride prior to her wedding, listening to older women or to her own mother. Soon afterward, however, she is on her own all the same, and she will pay less attention to the good advice than to what her own heart tells her of the bridegroom’s love.

A multitude of precepts is offered to the contemplative on his path, yet they can all be put into a nutshell. It is the same advice that is given to lovers–which is a very significant clue to the nature of contemplation. Nothing is as free as love; apart from love, all so-called freedom is no freedom at all. The person who begins

to love finds that his own, private world is exploding and slipping from under him; he must simply make sure, now that he is becoming free, that he does not fall into a new slavery. For example, without noticing it, he can be using love to seek his own ends, his own pleasure, making his partner into a mere means; he can be seeking his own advantage by enriching and heightening his own self with his partner’s intellectual and material goods. Then, one day, it becomes clear that love is dead. Covertly, he has always been looking after himself. That is why the simple warning signs (so often ignored) are set up along the paths of love: love makes us free if it is selfless, and it is selfless if it is ready to sacrifice pleasure, advantage and independence for the sake of the beloved. And since no earthly love is initially perfect, it must go through these purifications. Moments and times must come when love is tested through sacrifice, when it becomes clear whether the enthusiasm of the first encounter was love at

all, when the naive first love–if it really was love–is refined and deepened in the fire of renunciation.

The first group of precepts, therefore, quite simply concerns love. Love is the matter and goal of contemplation, so, from the outset, it should be directly aimed for and practiced. Love wants to be in the presence of the beloved, so the contemplative places himself in the presence of God, or rather, he realizes in his spirit the truth that God has long since placed him in his presence in a unique way. Nothing stands between him and Eternal Love: “An intermediary is not needed for one party acting alone, and God is one” (Gal 3:20 NEB). Everything that takes place in contemplation does so within the framework of God’s presence. Whatever I hear of the word of God, whatever insights I discover and whatever delights I experience (through God’s grace), whatever issues in God’s praise and my own benefit: it will all have its meaning in

love, as the fruit of this shared presence and indwelling.

Love desires to have the beloved before its eyes. Thus the contemplative will employ the powers of his soul to summon up the image of the Beloved, the powers of his “inner senses” and his imagination to call forth the image of the incarnate Word. He will contemplate Jesus as he dwelt bodily on the earth, the things he said, the sound of his voice, the way he treated people, his appearance when at prayer, at the Last Supper, in his Passion. This picture is not meant to be a realistic photograph, but love’s picture, solely concerned with love, the divine love of the Father, which is here manifested in the Son and in the concreteness of his whole earthly life. This is the only reason why, in prayer, we seek out the Lord’s earthly form. We do not use it as a crutch for our weakness because we are not yet ready to soar into the realm of pure spirit: we do so in order to seek for the love of God, to see, hear and touch it in the humble

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form in which it offers itself to man. In prayer, our love seeks love, divine love, through the earthly image (with which it cannot dispense). So it is continually drawn on by the historical Jesus to the Christ who died, descended into hell, rose again and ascended into heaven, who has put his whole self eucharistically into the Church, and to whose return in glory we look forward. He alone is the whole, living Christ over whom death has no power; he is the “Christ of faith” who gives and reveals himself to the believer who loves and prays, enabling him to share in his transfigured, eternal life (Rom 6; 2 Cor 5:15 f) This is he whom love seeks to embrace in his earthly form.

Love desires to dwell at peace in the presence of the beloved. So the contemplative is advised not to be restlessly searching, turning over new ideas and aspects, as if contemplation were a matter of achieving a specified quantity, or of reaching some kind of end result. It is rather a matter of lovingly dwelling upon the depth-

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dimension of each aspect as it presents itself. Every word of scripture goes directly, vertically, to the depths of God, i.e., to that deep center of fullness and unity where all the externally disparate words and aspects converge. And he, the Son of the Father, is this fullness. He alone is the Bread of Life for which our souls hunger; we need not go any further, looking for any other bread, for its spiritual satisfaction would; be illusory. He suffices. Of course, all this must take place in the context of truth; the praying believer must not depend oh: his own feelings: he must depend really and truly on the Lord. He must not be satisfied with a few trivial ideas he has stumbled on by chance, which–unbeknownst to him–merely flatter his complacent self; but he must rest in the sublime, ever-greater truth of the Lord. This he will be able to do if he genuinely has love; he will improve with practice, for it is only by loving that we learn how to love better.

notes:

The Ignatius Press translation (Graham Harrison) is usually around 250–260 pages total.

Pages 17–36: Balthasar discusses the foundation of Christian prayer as participation in the Son’s self-offering to the Father–strongly emphasizing the trinitarian dimension of prayer.
Pages 125–140: He circles back to explore how the believer’s personal relationship with God is embedded in the eternal exchange of love among Father, Son, and Spirit.
These sections do indeed address “God’s inner trinitarian life” and the believer’s entry into that relationship via prayer.