The action itself will reveal who each individual is; and it will not reveal, through successive unveilings, primarily who the individual always was, but rather who he is to become through the action, through his encounter with others and through the decisions he makes.600
§1THE OPENING MOVEMENT
Through the action of God humanity enters into the becoming of personhood. Our personhood is revealed through our performative reality; both our personhood and
performative reality are rooted in God‘s Being-in-act. From the performative reality of Christ we are opened up to the image of perfected humanity. In Christ humanity not only encounters the image and likeness of our perfected humanity, but we are drawn in to the becoming of the ideal into the real. This final chapter seeks to further the given proposal that through our participation in Christ our ideal becomes the real, thereby resulting in our faithful performances. The becoming of our performances is the reality of our own personhood in its becoming.
The chapter first discusses the recognition of the performative reality of life—a reality best understood and expressed in action. The performance of the Theo-drama summons a performative response from theology. Thus, the ensuing discussion concerns the on-going push of the dramatising of theology. What does it mean to dramatise theology? If, as so many have deduced, life and death are enveloped within the drama of everyday, then, might it be possible that, because all the world‘s a stage, life is best understood dramatically? If this is, theology should contend with the implications for its practices, which, as is being argued, are benefited most through a full embrace of the dramatising of theology. Section three first attests to the identity of the theologica dramaticas before moving into common mis-conceptions of the relationship between theology and the theatre. Section three is followed by a theological interlude that takes a brief look at the role and performance of the Spirit in Balthasar‘s Theo-Drama. Next, section four attempts to unveil some of the thoughts and influences that continue to mis- inform today‘s performances. The core of who we are comes into fullness through the performance of Christ. Theology needs to step into His action so as to unmask our own performance. Upon the unmasking, the chapter takes ‗the meaning of life is drama‘, and fleshes this out through a deepening understanding of humanity‘s own faithful
600
performances. Through the apprehension of performative truth, our theological
performances enter into the transformation of history, so as to participate faithfully in the eternal performance of Christ. The chapter concludes with the final sections looking into our theological performances that are Eucharistic and eschatological.
§2DRAMATIC MOVEMENT
Being or personhood is undoubtedly relational, but beyond this, the human is a thinking, spiritual, and performative being. Thus, there remains a tremendous need to acknowledge the breadth of meaning that comes from understanding the creation of the human, which, claims Barth, ‗sets the stage for the story of the covenant of grace. The story requires a stage corresponding to it; the existence of man and his whole world. Creation provides this.‘601
If theology is to apprehend the meaning of life and the call to participate in this ‗story of the covenant of grace‘, it needs to be faithful to its object, for it is the object that founds our understanding of the creature. Barth continues his thought, writing, ‗in the Christian concept of the creation of all things the question is concretely one of man and his whole universe as the theatre of the history of the covenant of grace; of the totality of earthly and heavenly things as they are to be comprehended in Christ (Eph 1.10).‘602
If Barth is correct, then, the movement of theology into the dramatic seems most natural, as through action (performance) the drama of life continues to be exposed.
§2.1 PERFORMANCE WITHIN THE THEOLOGICA DRAMATICAS
It is through God‘s action that humanity is confronted by the performance of grace and salvation thereby being exposed to the potentiality of life‘s meaning, its mission. The world is the place for God‘s salvific performance, it is His theatre, and as Barth maintains:
this theatre of the great acts of God in grace and salvation. . . . Even as God‘s creatures, and within the world of other creatures, caught up in the great drama of being, we are not in an empty or alien place. . . . If we take this seriously, our eyes are open to the fact that the created world including our own existence fulfils that purpose and constitutes that theatrum gloriae Dei.603
Through the richness of our performances, and ultimately through the performance of God in Christ through the Spirit, humanity comes to recognise not only its role upon the stage, but its mission. Balthasar continues to draw our attention to the fact that the mission of
601CD, III/1, 44. 602 Ibid.
603
humanity is not as much as an observer, an analyser, a theoriser, etc.—the tendency of a ‗rationalistic theology‘—but as a participant. Through its performative foundation, the movement of the stage resonates from the totality of the Church‘s history—a history, it is argued, that in allowing the narrative to become the drama, receives its fullness of
expression, thereby ensuring our faithful performances. This assurance is nothing more than the recognition that those coming before us did not simply attempt to tell or recount their own stories, but sought to encourage participation in the very drama of Jesus Christ. Balthasar writes:
What Paul and the other writers do in the Letters, the evangelists do in their own way: they do not recount stories in which they are not involved; in fact, they know that their only chance of being objective is by being profoundly involved in the event they are describing. They exercise objectivity by giving their witness before the Church and the world, handing on the drama of Jesus‘ life, the life of the incarnate Word of God, to the catechesis of the primitive Church, a catechesis designed to incorporate the lives of the young Christians into the mystery of Christ‘s life.604
Insofar as we act or recognise our performance, we recognise our humanity. In other words, instead of observing, analysing or describing one another‘s performances, we should intentionally seek to share in these performances. Through our sharing of particular
performances we come to a deepened realisation of our own meaning, our imago Trinitatis. This image comes to us through God‘s gracious covenant, His free gift of life granted to the entirety of the dramatis personae. Two things to note though: this image and potentiality of participation does originate from outside of God, and it is realised only through our analogia relationis. It is this relational reality that leads Barth to write ‗it is the true humanum and therefore the true creaturely image of God.‘605
The movement of God evokes a reciprocal movement on humanity‘s behalf. History demands participation, as it has not simply been entered into by the Son of God and left unchanged; history has been transformed, it has been re-humanised through the performance of Christ through the Spirit. Through Christ the ‗empty area between infinite and finite becomes a place ―inhabited by God‖.‘606
Through this dynamic closing and opening up of the space on the stage, humanity is enveloped in God‘s eternal action. Through this action
604TD II, 57-8. 605CD III/1, 186. 606
Balthasar writes, ‗The entire acting area is an atmosphere of reciprocal indwelling and interpenetration on the part of God and man/world, but it is not something static.‘607
Dramatising theology is not the attempt to commandeer a ‗new‘ linguistic system borrowed from the language of the theatre, but is the recognition of the dramatic essence of theology—the drama is the reality of God‘s interaction with His creation. Jesus did not simply speak of hearing the message ei=pen de. auvtw/| o` VIhsou/j\ poreu,ou kai. su. poi,ei o`moi,wjÅ (Jesus told him, ‗Go and do likewise.‘ – Lk 10.37). Jesus insisted –the verbs here are in the imperative (poreu,ou and poi,ei)—that His followers go and do likewise, thereby drawing upon the intimacy of one‘s faith and their actions. That their response to His words was and is manifested in performance – o[ti qe,atron evgenh,qhmen tw/| ko,smw| (spectacle unto the world – 1 Cor 4.9) is the message and expectation of the Christian faith.
Nothing stands outside of the performative reality of God‘s drama; as Balthasar maintains, ‗there is no standpoint external to theo-drama.‘608
Failure to realise this foundational understanding can lead towards a theology built solely on propositions and principles, rather than the fullness of performance and interaction, as embodied and encouraged through God‘s gracious acts of revelation, invitation and reconciliation. From the act (performance) of God, humanity is not only made witness to the relational reality of the real, but invited into and encouraged to become an active participant of the communio sanctorum. Theology should continue its move into faith thinking, as opposed to creating systems of thought intent on determining faith. In order to apprehend God‘s movement, it is being argued that it is beneficial for theology to avoid giving priority to a systematic
dissection of God‘s continual performance and interaction with humanity, in lieu of becoming attendant to the active reality of faith as it seeks to guide and encourage our theological endeavours. Balthasar writes:
We have tried to erect theology on the articles of faith (and not vice versa): on the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son, his Cross and Resurrection on our behalf, and his sending of the Spirit to us in the apostolic Church and in the communio sanctorum. It is only on the basis of such a theology, today and in the future, that men can give witness in their lives and in their deaths to that ―highest gift of God‖ which is ―irreversible and unsurpassable‖.609
Theology today does indeed recognise God‘s drama, through our recognition of such action as Christ‘s reconciliatory action, the ‗highest gift of God.‘ However, much of this recognition is only an acknowledgement of the principle of such action as opposed to the
607TD III, 54. 608TD II, 62 609
intentional sharing in, of Christ‘s action. That is, the incarnation, cross, resurrection and ascension are not merely to be observed, analysed or discussed, they are the life events of Christ that call for a response from the ones He came to save. It is through theological inquiries that move beyond the initial investigations, so as to encourage action from her theologians—participation in life—that the Church and society will come closer and closer to the truthfulness of Christ‘s performance, and are thus, opened to the event of truth.
It is in light of the event of truth that theology must continually seek to give
performance to truth, for in doing so it will participate in the continuous act of God. As was discussed in chapter one, truth is ‗always conceived as an event,‘ such an event rooted in God‘s Being-in-act. This event of truth is ‗always therefore in essence identical with God‘s being itself.‘610
The event of truth is an ontological reality that undergirds theology‘s faithful performance. By this it is understood that theology‘s performance is only faithful if its essence – its being – is in the truth of the Godhead as expressed through the Theo-drama and manifested through Christ‘s Eucharistic performance. Hunsinger writes that ‗a truth cannot be had in abstraction from an encounter with the person of the living God.‘611 Christ is the foundational truth of God‘s revelation to humanity. Theology can only be faithful to this truth if it seeks to participate—to share—by its word and deed in Christ through the Spirit.
A faithful performance insists on the Theo-praxis illumined through the action of God. It is then, through participation in this action as opposed to an attempted mirroring of such action that the Christian understands herself. The disciple or follower of Christ is actively to be en Christōi. Sharing in Christ‘s performance is the full recognition of our relational reality of being in Christ. Through our sharing in Christ‘s action—participation in His Being-in-act—the criterion of personhood is further revealed as its criterion of quality is in ‗both the act itself and the character of the agent.‘612
Who we are is ultimately found only in Christ. Bauckham maintains that it is this fact, Christ‘s concrete identification with each of the stage‘s participants, that ‗Jesus concretized God‘s solidarity with people not only in the common human conditions, but with people in all varieties of the human condition, people divided by all the differences. . . . Jesus intended God‘s loving solidarity with all people to create loving solidarity among all
610 Hunsinger, How To Read Karl Barth, 67. 611 Ibid.
612 Reinhard Hütter, Suffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans,
people.‘613
Thus, it is argued that the character of the saints is rooted in the action of the Godhead—such action that moves beyond the simple reading of the narrative, into its dramatic performance. In other words, by the narrative becoming the drama, the world‘s stage finds its strength and its character in the dramatic event and in-breaking of Christ. This action is exposed and illumined through the ‗plays‘ within The Play. In Christ through the Spirit, our lives participate in the dramatic act of God‘s sovereign initiative, and in so doing, we find and realise our own faithful performances.
§2.2 DRAMATISING THEOLOGY
The opening up of the Godhead, through revelation, invitation and reconciliation, establishes and encourages an interactional reality that allows our theological endeavours to be receptive to the regnum Christi which is continually manifested through the regnum gratiae. The power received through God‘s grace stems from the fact that, as Barth claims, ‗man is no longer left to himself but is given into the hand of God.‘614
Because of the concrete way in which Christ incorporates and transforms humanity through His
performance, there is left no ambiguity to God‘s interactive desire concerning His creature. In fact, the reception of such power is not an arbitrary encounter but the ‗transposing of man into a wholly new state of one who has accepted and appropriated the promise, so that irrespective of his attitude to it he no longer lives without this promise but with it.‘ The significance of such an understanding is that this new state is, as Barth continues, ‗the claim of the Word of God‘, which is not as such, ‗a wish or command which remains outside the hearer without impinging on his existence. It is the claiming and commandeering of man. . . man as a hearer of His Word now finds himself in the sphere of the divine claim; he is claimed by God.‘615
God‘s claim on humanity is elevated in its comprehension, through language and action that seeks to expose God‘s revelation through a dramatic reality. Such a reality—the dramatising of theology—opens humanity up to its participatory mission in the active knowledge of redemption and the reality of salvation. Drawing from Rowan Williams, Ben Quash maintains that the truth of the world is apprehended through a participatory mission upon life‘s stage. This occurs because, ‗knowledge is essentially participatory. . . (as recognition of a place within a network of relations), [that] it is
613 ‗CT,‘ 27-28. 614CD I/1, 150. 615
inseparable from history and praxis.‘616
Thus, the participation in life is participation in the act of becoming, an act that encompasses that whole of creation through its incorporation into the performance of Christ.
Incorporation into Christ‘s performance is the epitome of dramatising theology as it is the recognition of Him being pro me, that is, just for me. Through His relational
performance Christ reveals to me, the truth of being which answers ‗Who am I?‘ For in Christ through the Spirit, the realisation is exposed that I am the creation of the God of all creation; and not simply an insignificant creature, but His covenantal partner created in His image. It is the realisation that my very existence is taken up in the performance of Christ, thereby finding the essence of my performance and my personhood. Barth writes:
Jesus Christ is, in fact, just for me, that I myself am just the subject for whom He is. That is the point. That is the newness of being, the new creation, the new birth of the Christian. Everything else follows from this, especially the fact that, whatever may be the force of the basis and validity of the pro me, it can never be a pro me in the abstract, but includes in itself and is enclosed by the communal pro nobis and the even wider propter nos homines. . . . Without the pro me of the individual Christian there is no legitimate pro nobis of the faith of the Christian community and no legitimate propter nos homines of its representative faith for the non- believing world.617
Through revelation, God‘s claim, and interaction with creation, is made apparent; He desires our covenantal partnership. This action on humanity by God is an event able to be
recognised, when its dramatic essence is brought to life through theology‘s risk of stepping out from behind the observance wall and into the action. Again, such movement occurs through the dramatising of theology, a movement that recognises that all the world‘s a stage and we all participate together in the quest for an active, participatory knowledge of self.
Theology is inherently dramatic because of its object; and because, writes Balthasar, ‗life manifests a fundamental urge to observe itself as an action exhibiting both meaning and mystery,‘618
so too must theology. This is to say that it is through drama, and thus, the dramatising of theology, that humanity not only recognises but actively comprehends its performance and participation in life, thereby reminding that participation is essential not