D. Stephen Long, forging his own recovery of metaphysics in the book Speaking of
God, explains the link between the Incarnation, truth, and language: “The incarnation is
true. Truth is the incarnation. These basic theological propositions offer insight into how we speak of God, relate faith and reason, pursue theology within a common and publically accessible language, and can recover truth, even the truth of politics.”2 Long’s project is a
helpful launching-‐point for a discussion of von Balthasar’s unique weaving of poetics and metaphysics, not merely because Long uses von Balthasar to contend that we cannot lose metaphysics, but also because Long perceives the vital connection between Christology, language, metaphysics, and ultimately politics.3 Long’s navigation of the relationship
between metaphysics and politics is accomplished through a careful linguistic assessment
2 D. Stephen Long, Speaking of God: Theology, Language, and Truth, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans, 2009). 2. Long’s claim here, as well as his development of it, closely resembles the essays on the Word to be found in Hans Urs von Balthasar, Explorations I: The Word Made Flesh, trans. A.V. Littledale with Alexander Dru (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989) especially “The Word, Scripture and Tradition,” 11-‐26; “The Word and History,” 27-‐46; “The Implications of the Word,” 47-‐68; “God Speaks as Man,” 69-‐94.
3 The claims that Matthew Levering makes in Scripture and Metaphysics, using Thomas Aquinas to place
metaphysical reality in a dynamic relationship to the language of Scripture, Long makes with respect to metaphysics and politics. See Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of
Trinitarian Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004). While Long is very positive about von Balthasar’s use in
of truth, guided by a theology of the Incarnation. How he makes this assessment opens the door for us to see how von Balthasar does it, and to see how a theo-‐poetic is an affirmation of metaphysical reality and not an avoidance of it.
Early in his book, Long seeks out the primary characteristics of both Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theologies to set the stage for his project. He adopts Barth’s distrust of theological thought that does not place the absolutely transcendent God at the center of all its affirmations and negations, and he adopts von Balthasar’s optimistic
evaluation of the analogy of being that gives human statements about God a weight without making them determinative of God. These two positions, which might be summarized as a Barthian affirmation of God’s transcendence and a Balthasarian affirmation of analogy, guide the contours of Long’s progress through the vexed arguments over truth.4 He is thus
able to avoid Feuerbach’s contention that “God” is simply a designation for what is in reality human – he is defending, in other words, God as God – and able to explain human language’s participation in the transcendent realities of which it speaks.
4 There are some, such as Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, who would see the two poles of Long’s thought as merely
one position, a Protestant one. That is, there are scholars who view von Balthasar and his voluminous insistences on God’s utter transcendence as a crypto-‐Protestantism. See Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, “More on Balthasar, Hell and Heresy” First Things 169 (2007): 16-‐19; Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, “Balthasar, Hell, and Heresy: An Exchange” First Things 168 (2006): 25-‐32; Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, “Development of Doctrine, or Denial? Balthasar’s Holy Saturday and Newman’s Essay” International Journal of Systematic Theology 11 no. 2 (2009): 129-‐145.
For his part, Long desires to avoid the prominent weaknesses of both Protestant and Catholic thought: “If postliberal (Protestant) theology is tempted to eschew metaphysics for biblical narrative and a kind of historicism, Roman Catholic theology is often tempted to divide metaphysics from theology too thoroughly and make the former the foundation for the latter” (Speaking of God, 65). Von Balthasar and Barth, operating together in Long’s book, form the ecumenical anchor by which Long is capable of adopting metaphysics without permitting it to “rule” God.
Long begins, first, with the fact that knowledge of God is given to us by God, and that this enables real speech about God using human reason.5 Because of the priority of this gift,
theology should not eschew metaphysics in favor of a “gift” that prescinds human reason, as if the gift-‐nature of theological language enabled it to avoid what is human. Theology should, rather, look to metaphysics and “recognize its legitimate role in theology,” as opposed to false views that either avoid it or reify it.6
To enable the proper placement of metaphysics in theology, Long engages with a broad range of modern philosophers and theologians, tracing their troubled relationship with metaphysical and theological language. Major modern interlocutors include Immanuel Kant, John Milbank, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Henri de Lubac, and others. He places these thinkers alongside traditional voices such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and asks whether metaphysics has disintegrated to irrelevance or retains its central place in theology. Long answers with an affirmation of metaphysics, which partially conceals his efforts to give due credit to modern concerns. He takes these seriously and considers them with care. After all, his final account of metaphysics works to show its political importance, a quite modern move that upholds metaphysics in an innovative fashion.7
Much of Long’s own position with respect to language turns on a unique interpretation of the work of Charles Taylor, who lays out the groundwork for an
expressive view of human language that overcomes the modern impasse with language and meaning. In Taylor’s account, there have been multiple linguistic turns, one of which in
5 Long, Speaking of God, 33: “Theology, grounded in faith, claims that the same modes of signifying that
reason uses can exceed the language used and give knowledge of God, because it always is a gift from God given in language.”
6 Long, Speaking of God, 215.
particular has been useful to modern thought: he calls it the “expressive”8 turn, or
alternately “expressive-‐constitutive.”9 By expressive-‐constitutive language, Taylor means
to describe a theory of language in which Heidegger plays a decisive role, and where
language “makes possible” new meaning.10 With care, Taylor opposes this linguistic turn to
what he calls a “designative” theory of language, where language is “conceived as an instrument.”11 Instead, an expressive theory of language accounts for how knowledge and
language are vitally linked, indeed to such a degree that language enables meaning. It also permits “language” to include things such as gestures and other symbolic
communications.12
For Taylor, the expressivist turn is closely allied with art. Figures such as Heidegger and his predecessor, Herder, develop an expressive concept of language alongside the development of Romantic art. With Romanticism, Taylor argues, “Art is now seen not as imitation, but as creative expression.”13 Indeed, art demands the plurality of expression
that expressive theories attempt to explain, and art presumes a complexity of human speech in a manner similar to expressive theories.14 Heidegger has a key role to play in the
emergence of these theories, and Taylor notes Heidegger’s concept of expression in
particular: here expression does not simply make meaning possible; it also completes it.15
8 Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language, Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (New York: Cambridge
University, 1985), 219.
9 Charles Taylor, “Heidegger on Language,” in A Companion to Heidegger, ed. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Mark
A. Wrathall (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 433.
10 Taylor, “Heidegger on Language,” 433-‐34. Cf. p 438: “The constitutive theory turns our attention
toward the creative dimension of expression, in which, to speak paradoxically, it makes possible its own content.”
11 Taylor, “Heidegger on Language,” 433. 12 Taylor, “Heidegger on Language,” 440. 13 Taylor, Human Agency and Language, 229. 14 Taylor, “Heidegger on Language,” 441. 15 Taylor, “Heidegger on Language,” 445.
For Heidegger and for Taylor, the fact that language enables and completes meaning does not render it a tool of sheer subjectivity, incapable of meaning discernable beyond the specific speaker. Language has a telos or end that, in Taylor’s words, “dictates a certain mode of expression, a way of formulating matters which can help to restore thingness,” in other words, to restore the vital knowledge of things – a major concern of Heidegger’s.16
Taylor’s concern is that meaning is not merely indicated, but embodied in the expression; this relates language and meaning more intimately.17
Long adopts Taylor’s account of expressivist language, and expands it along
theological lines. When discussing Taylor and the linguistic turns, Long explains how such a position can be expanded theologically: “A Marian theology will help us make sense of this; it requires a place for human participation and contribution even in the incarnation.”18 So, a
view of language that perceives language as expressive shows us how the human
contribution to truth has an authentic place. Saying that language is constitutive is not, in this respect, the same as saying that human beings create truth. It means that human language participates in and contributes to the manifestation of truth. To draw out the Marian qualities of such a statement: it must mean that human language is constitutive of truth’s expression, but only if it is first determined by the truth. Mary is, particularly in view of the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, always graced in preparation for her role in salvation. Grace enables her vital contribution and sustains it, not to the
detriment of her humanity but to her ultimate fulfillment. So Long argues that all human language operates in some analogy to Mary and the Incarnation: we really contribute to the
16 Taylor, “Heidegger on Language,” 451. 17 Taylor, Human Agency and Language, 219. 18 Long, Speaking of God, 239.
speaking of truth, yet in such a way that we are already sustained by it and drawn toward it. In other words, our relationship to truth and language is not merely horizontal – effected on the same plane – but also vertical, so that the truth governs us even as we contribute to its expression.19
This vertical relationship does not rob human language of its immanent reason, but rather enables it. Long summarizes such a position by saying, “Truth is the condition in which we live; it is not a tool we use. It conditions speech; speech does not condition it.”20
The Marian parallels thus continue, since she is conditioned by her Son. Von Balthasar describes such a prior conditioning when he explains Mary’s fiat: “She is not the Word but the adequate response awaited by God from the created sphere and produced in it by his grace through the Word.”21 Her word is in this way given a profound place in the
Incarnation, but always in a fashion secondary to the Word: she is graced response. Long argues that this is not only a Marian doctrine, but also a linguistic one.
Since the truth conditions speech – since we are constituted even as we constitute – this affirmation also opens the way for a thorough relationship between truth and love. That is, for a strong connection between metaphysics and morality. Long brings forward a Marian theology to once again direct his insight: “In saying yes to the Holy Spirit, Mary gives birth to God, and therefore of course – she makes truth appear. Truth invites a human contribution.” Here, Long has repeated what he has already explained with respect to
19 This way of describing truth and language is partially drawn from Bernard Lonergan. He discusses a
similar position at length in “The Notion of Transcendent Knowledge” in Insight: A Study of Human
Understanding, Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1992), 662-‐664.
Lonergan calls the relationship between knowledge and language a “genetic inpenetration” which nevertheless does not render the two identical (Insight, 578-‐79). Von Balthasar attempts a comparable differentiation in knowledge with the close of TL I, “Truth as Participation,” 227-‐272.
20 Long, Speaking of God, 280.
21 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Who is the Church?” in Explorations in Theology II: The Spouse of the Word
expressivist language. But he goes further: “…because truth emerges through Mary’s holiness, these two concepts – holiness and truth – must, like love and truth, be thought and performed together.”22 Holiness and love are not quite identifiable terms, but they are
intimately related. To posit the possibility of one as necessary to the expression of truth is immediately to posit the other.
In this way, Long, drawing from von Balthasar’s Mariology and his account of the transcendentals, gives language a central place in the theological discussion without letting it force the discussion into the impasse of relativism or agnosticism. Truth is placed firmly in the middle of theological discourse, and not truth without metaphysics – which would be, as far as Long is concerned, a contradiction – but a truth that affirms and locates
metaphysics. Long thus develops an account of truth whose contours are more thoroughly aesthetic and moral without surrendering metaphysics for the sake of either, as has been the case in the past. “Truth,” says Long, “emerges as the interplay between receiving the glory of God (aesthetics) and performing that glory in our own lives (dramatics).”23
If this is so, then Long has already made quite explicit the qualities of von Balthasar’s triptych that are necessary for a theo-‐poetic. That is, those qualities of von Balthasar’s theological project that make possible the theo-‐poetic he already employs throughout the trilogy.