5. PLAN DE GESTIÓN AMBIENTAL Y SOCIAL
5.2. PROGRAMAS DE GESTIÓN SOCIO-AMBIENTAL Y GESTIÓN SOCIAL67
A major development in the expression of von Balthasar’s metaphysics – a
theological metaphysics – is his book Theology of Karl Barth.58 Here von Balthasar places
himself in lengthy dialogue with the Protestant Barth, who explicitly rejected the analogy of being. In this work, von Balthasar insists that Catholic theology must by its nature remain “open,”59 and that “The Church as such cannot possess a rigid, enclosed metaphysics.”60 He
thus rejects what Barth desires to reject, which is a self-‐sufficing “principle” that governs theology in the place of Christ. But the openness of the Church, according to von Balthasar, does not eliminate metaphysics as Barth thought –replacing it with event – since “Vatican I defended the duplex ordo and therefore the totality of reality in God.”61 Metaphysics is still
necessary in theology.
58 I use the version published in 1952, translated in 1992: Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl
Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992). The
earlier edition has been heavily edited in the 1952 version, as censors prevented it from publication in the 1940s. Of this first version, two articles emerged: “Analogie und Dialektik” Divus Thomas 22 (1944): 171-‐216;
“Analogie und Natur” Divus Thomas 23 (1945): 3-‐56.
59 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 253.
60 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 254. It could even be said that a “closed” metaphysics, for von
Balthasar, is not a metaphysic at all, as it would have ceased to be characterized by one of its most important qualities.
61 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 264. Some – though by no means all -‐ Barth scholars, such as Bruce
Authors such as Steven A. Long have expressed suspicion toward von Balthasar’s interaction with Karl Barth, especially as it is depicted in von Balthasar’s explication of nature and analogy in Theology of Karl Barth. Long is concerned that von Balthasar is so focused on relating nature to grace that “nature becomes the equivalent of a theological vacuole or empty Newtonian space, a placeholder for grace.”62 Von Balthasar’s metaphysics
as a whole would also fall under this critique, at least inasmuch as von Balthasar
acknowledges its necessity but threatens to render that necessity into empty speech for a prelude to the Incarnation. A point-‐for-‐point response to Long’s exegesis of Theology of
Karl Barth has no room here, but already it should be clear from the wider context offered
in this chapter so far that von Balthasar’s concept of nature is more robust than Long imagines. Still, his concern is a healthy one and apropos to bring forward now as we delve more deeply into this book of von Balthasar’s in particular.
In Theology of Karl Barth, von Balthasar characterizes the argument over nature – and thus categories like being, natural theology, philosophy, and so forth – as a “Janus-‐ faced” question in the Catholic Church, one that always presses two almost dialectical possibilities.63 One “face” is the consistent insistence on the priority of grace, and on the
fact that grace perfects nature. The other “face” is the consistent insistence on nature’s integrity outside of grace. Von Balthasar weighs these two concerns by contending that “a natural order without grace is both meaningful and possible,”64 and that “everything
touched by grace retains its natural side: grace is always a grace in a nature and for a
McCormack, “Karl Barth’s Version of an ‘Analogy of Being’: A Dialectical No and Yes to Roman Catholicism” in
The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Antichrist or the Wisdom of God?, ed. Thomas Joseph White (Cambridge:
W.B. Eerdmans, 2011), 88-‐144, esp. 116.
62 Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace (New York: Fordham
University, 2010), 55.
63 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 267. 64 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 269.
nature.”65 This is a careful line to walk, one that von Balthasar admits remains a problem
even in Catholic theology. He further problematizes the question by suggesting that “our only option is to recognize a certain kind of analogy between the two uses of the concept of nature.”66 That is, depending on whether nature is being used in a philosophical context or
a theological one, its meaning analogously shifts. Theology never simply imports philosophical terms as if acquiring a new garment; the term itself, irradiated by grace, shifts to a new horizon of meaning. This irradiation includes the term “nature.”67
Von Balthasar’s insistence on an analogy between uses of “nature” is central to his argument, both against Karl Barth’s rejection of the analogia entis and against Thomist critics like Steven A. Long, although perhaps not to the complete satisfaction of either. Long does not take note of von Balthasar’s argument in this respect, and it would have soothed his concerns over von Balthasar’s eschewal of “abstraction.” As Long notes, “Balthasar argues that nature cannot be abstracted in its essential intelligibility from the complex in which it will be found, and from its mode of existence,” which means it cannot be
abstracted from salvation history and grace.68 What Long should also note, in view of von
Balthasar’s claims for analogous uses of the word “nature,” is the context of von Balthasar’s statements. Von Balthasar makes the argument against abstraction in the context of a dialogue with Karl Barth, a Protestant who is deeply disturbed at a Catholic imagination that seems capable of removing salvation history from its speculative landscape – a worry that von Balthasar is anxious to refute. He wants to show that Catholic theology is always
65 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 287.
66 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 273. He outlines his response in 277-‐8.
67 In Theology of Karl Barth, for example, von Balthasar insists that “the distance between subject and
object” has its “deepest foundation” in the distance between Persons in the Trinity, but at the same time that the created relationship between subject and object is not created by grace (292). Cf. the earlier “Analogie und Natur,” esp. 7 and 33-‐4.
also Christian theology, indebted to and concerned with Christ. This tilts his comments on nature in this book especially, and his reticence toward abstraction elsewhere occurs as well in a theological context. Von Balthasar’s use of “nature” shifts in more explicit
philosophical contexts, as in “On the Tasks of Catholic Philosophy in Our Time,” reviewed in the last chapter.69 Here von Balthasar shows himself to be more amenable to “abstraction”
in the way Long means it, which is to say to a point of view that theoretically brackets Christology for the sake of further understanding.70 As we have already observed above, in
in Theology of Karl Barth, von Balthasar desires to defend the necessity of nature outside of grace. It makes more sense, then, to understand von Balthasar’s position as one Long
himself suggests, yet appears to distrust: “If Balthasar meant only that, concretely speaking, there is no pure nature in the sense of a nature existentially unaffected by sin and grace, that is true.”71
In his dialogue with Karl Barth, von Balthasar rests his attention not only on preserving the concept of nature – and of the analogy of being – in the face of Barth’s critiques, but also on Barth’s more positive contributions to theology, particularly his profound Christocentrism. Von Balthasar argues that Christocentrism is also a feature of Catholic theology.72 He does not oppose the analogy of being and Christocentrism since the
69 Von Balthasar reiterates these sentiments again much later in his career. See Balthasar, “Regagner une
philosophie à partir de la théologie” Pour une philosophie chrétienne: Philosophie et théologie (Paris: Dessain et Tolra, 1983): 175-‐187.
70 So von Balthasar would agree with Long’s own statement: “But this is a far different thing from
supposing that created nature as such, simpliciter, is unknowable apart from grace. It is also quite different from holding that created nature cannot be distinguished in the given multiplex of nature and grace, for the essential adequation of intellect and nature remains…” Natura Pura, 67.
71 Long, Natura Pura, 80. He continues: “…and it is completely consistent with the abstract intelligibility of
nature and of its being distinct from that which affects it (nature is not sin; nature is not grace). The reason? Being and essential nature are really distinct.”
72 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 329, [Noting Guardini, after Przywara]: “…we cannot abstractly
define the ‘essence’ of Christianity, because the historical person of Jesus Christ is himself this essence from whom all general and abstract categories of the being of the world and of nature have their measure.” See also
analogy itself is, as he says in a passage on Przywara, “nothing other than the provisional and abstract expression for this ultimate truth [of the Incarnation].”73 Moreover, he argues,
“one of the presuppositions of the Incarnation is that there must be a true priority of nature and reason!”74 The analogy of being serves the Incarnation, not as a controlling idea, but
rather as the philosophical expression of that obedient openness by which God redeems all of creation. If von Balthasar finds in the Virgin Mary that “flesh” that utters its agreement to the Incarnation of the word by “letting it be done,” then in the analogia entis he finds that universal created reality that echoes the subjective, creaturely Fiat. What Barth wants – a theocentric, Christocentric universe – can only be achieved in fullness with the analogy of being, not without it. Even in the case of von Balthasar’s theological considerations, natural concepts must retain their integrity or else grace is no longer gratuitous.
Much of von Balthasar’s Christocentrism is rooted in his work on Maximus the Confessor, Cosmic Liturgy, originally published in 1941, before Wahrheit, with a
substantially revised version appearing in 1961.75 The book focuses on Maximus’s eloquent
defense of Christ’s human will, for which Maximus was exiled. In his introduction, Balthasar insists that Maximus’s position, while certainly serving as a defense of human freedom, in fact draws from a far-‐reaching view of the entire cosmos.76 Maximus’s comprehensive
theology is first of all the fruit of the Council of Chalcedon, which von Balthasar believes Ellero Babini, “Jesus Christ, form and norm of man according to Hans Urs von Balthasar,” tr. Thérèse M Bonin.
Communio, 16 (1989): 446-‐457.
73 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 362. 74 Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 363.
75 I use the latter published version, as it is nearer to his publication of the Trilogy and so reflects its ideas
more closely.
76 Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, trans. Brian Daley (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 37: “The man Jesus’s own active doing and willing – not a passive human nature dependent on the activity of a personal divine Logos, as the Monothelites imagined – was more than simply to be defended on the conceptual level; it had to be made plausible within the context of a
Maximus brings to its fullest theological consequences.77 The unconfused union between
Christ’s two natures, as expressed in Chalcedon, becomes for Maximus the rule for the unity between God and the entire cosmos accomplished in Christ. The free response of the human person to God’s self-‐revelation in Christ, which would become the theme of Theo-‐
Drama, is made possible by Christ and brought to fullness in Christ, and in Christ the
various internal divisions of the human being are brought into synthesis.78
Cosmic Liturgy displays frequent interactions with Thomas Aquinas, despite the fact
that little historical evidence links Maximus with Thomas. When critiquing Maximus, for example, von Balthasar recalls the vital importance of the real distinction between essence and existence as presented in Thomism,79 and compares Maximus and Thomas’s
presentations of a natural desire for God.80 One is presented with, as it were, a Thomist
Maximus. Brian Daley notes this as a problem in his retrospective introduction to the translation.81 Given how von Balthasar would later describe metaphysics in his trilogy,
however, the move is systematically fortuitous even if far from historically accurate. Maximus the Confessor describes the Incarnation as the synthesis of God and creation: the careful interweaving of every created distinction into a real unity that nevertheless does not destroy what is distinct. Chalcedon, through the eyes of Maximus, is in von Balthasar’s
77 See, for example, Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 66, 161, 207.
78 Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 314, and the section that follows: “The Synthesis in the Three Acts of
Worship,” pp. 314-‐330.
79 Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 248-‐49. Other mentions of Aquinas include 146, 164, and 175. 80 Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 72.
81 Brian Daley, “Translator’s Foreword” in Cosmic Liturgy, 17. “In 1941 and even in 1961, von Balthasar’s
concern was to find in the Catholic dogmatic tradition – in patristic thought, but also in the Thomist
tradition…” A caution ought to be added here with respect to Daley’s comments about von Balthasar and the transcendental Thomist Maréchal, with whom Daly associates von Balthasar. Von Balthasar bore great suspicion of transcendental Thomism, and in Fergus Kerr’s words, “Fairly or otherwise, he regarded it as unduly anthropocentric, focusing on the knowing and willing human person, rather than on the mystery of being.” Kerr, “Balthasar and Metaphysics,” 225. See also Angelo Campodonico, “Hans Urs von Balthasar ’s Interpretation of the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas,” 35.
eyes the guiding light for every subsequent theological construal of God and the world: “unconfused union.” Thomas Aquinas’s work reaches a similar graceful synthesis, and von Balthasar freely relates the two: Thomas’s scholasticism meets Maximus’s patristic
synthesis.82 The distance of history does not destroy the theological kinship of either figure
in von Balthasar’s mind. For the theologian to examine the analogy of being, Chalcedon must serve as the primary lens. Both Thomas and Maximus incorporate Chalcedon in their work to exemplary degrees, and become for von Balthasar his twin guiding lights for a Christological metaphysics.83
Von Balthasar must now retain the careful distinctions of both Maximus and Thomas, else he will fall into pantheism or panentheism. The Incarnation cannot be made identical with the analogy of being, or God and the world are collapsed into a single
horizon. Nor can the analogy of being serve as the necessary foundation for the Incarnation, or Barth was right all along: the analogy of being is really the single principle upon which Catholicism rests regardless of Christ. The Incarnation can fulfill the analogy of being, but again not in such a way that the Incarnation is made necessary to created being or created being made necessary to the Incarnation. We are left with von Balthasar’s answer, as expressed in his Epilogue to the trilogy: the analogia entis is “made present
(gegenwärtigende) in Christ.”84 In other words, the Incarnation makes explicit the analogy
82 Vincent Holzer calls von Balthasar’s Christological-‐Trinitarian synthesis of metaphysics “an enrichment
of the great scholastic tradition, but it extends the latter into unexpected developments.” Holzer, “Les Implications,” 308. See also page 309 : “If the analogia entis constitutes one of the most influential features of Balthasarian theology, then its Trinitarian and Christological source renew it.”
83 For a full review of von Balthasar’s use of the analogy of being in his theology, see Nicholas J. Healy,
“The Analogy of Being” in The Eschatology of Hans Urs von Balthasar: Being as Communion (New York: Oxford, 2005), 19-‐90.
84 Balthasar, Epilogue, 91. The German is from Epilog (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1987), 71: “Dabei ist
aber nicht zu übersehen, daß die in Christus sich gegenwärtigende analogia entis keineswegs zwischen der innerweltlichen Differenz von Sein und Wesen...und dem Sein Gottes und seinen freien Weisen des Sich-‐
of being with a clarity impossible to philosophy, yet without the analogia entis being made identical with the Incarnation. Thus, “the essential polarity of worldly Being, whose poles can only be understood through each other,” that is, the polarity that characterizes the analogy of being and every analogous relationship immanent to creation, “inevitably points to an identity as ground -‐ which however…cannot be constructed from the poles
themselves.”85 The Incarnation illuminates the analogy of being because the two are not the
same.
Here is where von Balthasar responds to Barth’s concerns while at the same time inverting them – insisting as he does on the integrity of the analogia entis even as he gives it a Christological light – and where it is possible to see how the two thinkers part ways in their concepts of transcendence. Barth, especially the early Barth, insists on a divine transcendence so absolute that, in Balthasar’s eyes, there threatens to be no
commensurability or comprehensibility between the creature and God. Von Balthasar worries over Barth’s destructive dialectic as early as Apokalypse, and repeats that concern in Theology of Karl Barth.86 Much as God’s transcendence – indeed, an absolute
transcendence – is necessary in theology and philosophy, von Balthasar prefers analogy to dialectic. The absolute difference between God and the world cannot be grasped without the similarity it supports. Here von Balthasar thinks he is being both more philosophically and theologically consistent than (at least the early) Barth. Christ speaks to us through our shared humanity, and this speaking presupposes not only his infinite superiority over Offenbarens...” The word, gegenwärtigende, is a participle, and difficult to translate with the same adjectival sensibility: literally, the analogia entis is “presenting“ or “actualizing” in Christ. I have sided with the English translation available for the sake of continuity.
85 Balthasar, Epilogue, 56
86 Cf. Balthasar, “Karl Barth” in Apokalypse III, 316-‐345;”The Centrality of Analogy” in Theology of Karl
creation, but also a likeness between Creator and created.87 Von Balthasar’s
Christocentrism is distinguishable from Barth’s inasmuch as the former’s is always concerned to protect the integrity of creation vis-‐à-‐vis the Creator, emphasizing their likeness amidst their greater difference. This, for von Balthasar, reinforces God’s transcendence because the likeness shared between creature and Creator allows us to recognize the difference between the two more radically: analogy is the expression (Ausdruck) of the difference.88
The Christocentrism expressed throughout the trilogy is for the most part drawn from the Christocentrism of Maximus the Confessor. Von Balthasar stresses Christ as the synthesis of the cosmos in his trilogy much as he does in Cosmic Liturgy. In language that resonates with Barth’s concerns, von Balthasar highlights the way Christ unites all of the various distinctions of creation, and finally the distinction between God and the world, in himself. The Incarnation is the key to the fulfillment of creation, a fulfillment achieved along the lines of Chalcedon’s proclamation: unconfused, undivided unity. The manner in which Christ’s humanity and divinity are united is, analogously, the manner in which all of creation is brought into unity with God. Przywara’s polarity is recognizable here as well, but greatly modified. Now even the openness of creation, which for Przywara the analogia
entis defends, is a Christological openness. The relationship between God and creation is
not determined by the analogical principle, but rather through Christ himself. Von Balthasar can then radicalize that basic relationship, positing a much greater level of
87 See esp. Balthasar, “Analogie und Dialektik,” 174-‐176, esp. 216: “When God creates, then the creature is
not per se nothing nor a second God. The creature is thus analogous to the being of God and therefore to God.”