Von Balthasar and Thick Retrieval - Post-Chalcedonian Symphonic Theology - Cyric O'Regan

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Von Balthasar and Thick Retrieval: Post-Chalcedonian Symphonic Theology

Author(s): Cyril O'Regan
Source: Gregorianum, Vol. 77, No. 2 (1996), pp. 227-260
Published by: GBPress- Gregorian Biblical Press
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Gregorianum 77, 2 (1996) 227-260
Von Balthasar and Thick Retrieval:

Post-Chalcedonian Symphonic Theology
For resourcement theology the aim of retrieval is neither the antiquar

ian stockpiling of traces of the religious past in the museum of the present,
nor the honorific imitation of the great forms and virtues of the past that
stand out as heroic and are invested with a kind of monumentality. Rather
the aim is a retrieval in which the past not only speaks and persuades that it
is worthy of imitation, but also enriches the present by enlarging the vocab
ulary of religious and theological option and liberates a future by the criti
cai potential of its archive. If this is trae of resourcement theology in gener
al, it is especially trae in the case of Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose reach,
of course, extends far beyond interested retrieval into the constraction of a
vast system which provides a space for the play of tradition. Though
Balthasar is hardly untypical in his attempi to retrieve patristic sources, he
differs from his great teacher Henri de Lubac in that to a much more con
siderale extent he occupied himself with Greek sources. Moreover, unlike
others such as Daniélou, Balthasar ranged over the entire terrain of patris
tic Greek spirituality and thought. He traverses not only Alexandrian and
Cappadocian Christianity as does Daniélou, but a broad range of post
Chalcedonian thought. Even where scholars disagree with his methods and
take issue with some of his conclusions, no one will gainsay Balthasar's
success in saving thinkers and forms of spirituality and religious thought
from the collective amnesia of the West. Yet perhaps this is stili not to rec
ognize sufficiently the intent and the passion of the kind of "thick re
trieval" Balthasar undertook. On the surface of ali of Balthasar's retrievals
is an engagement with the contemporary situation in general, the contem
porary theological situation in particular, about which later, more academ
ic scholars complain. Why are Eckhart, Hegel and German Idealism, for
instance, so urgently brought to mind in Balthasar's text on Maximus?
Balthasarian-style resourcement almost always betrays itself as a kind of
intervention. And the fact that Balthasar consistently integrates these re
trievals into his later constractive work — most extensively and intensive
228 CYRIL O'REGAN
ly so in the case of Greek post-Chalcedonian theologians —- gives proof, if

proof is needed, of an engagé.
Balthasar's retrieval of Greek post-Chalcedonian thought is the fo
cus of the present paper. Even if Edward T. Oakes is correct in insisting
that it is a mistake to think of Balthasar as having an uncritical relation
ship with patristic material1, Balthasar's affirmation of Greek post-Chal
cedonian thought extends as far as a commendation of it as meeting a
contemporary theological need. But if the East is to speak to the West,
and the past to the present, in the interest of a richer and more viable reli
gious future, what precisely are the lessons to be learned from such a re
trieval? One such lesson is obviously an aesthetic style of theology
which braves a total vision of the dynamic interaction of God, world and
humanity, as focused in the christological event within the circumambi
ent horizon of the Trinity. And the lesson is a lesson in particular for
Catholic theology in the wake of the tragedy of neo-Scholasticism, on
the one hand, and the emerging hegemony of the anthropological refer
ence in theology and culture in general. This post-Chalcedonian theology
offers an alternative to both tendencies, each regarded by Balthasar as re
ductive. If this style is more capacious than conceptual pyrotechnics, it is
more objective than the anthropological-transcendental horizon that
carne to dominate Catholic theology by the mid-century. But this is not
to say that the kind of aesthetic theology represented by Greek post
Chalcedonian thought eschews connection with conceptual articulation
or explicitly doctrinal forms of thought. It is, indeed, Balthasar's second
lesson that it is in the context of the aesthetic holism of Greek post-Chal
cedonian thought that conceptual articulation finds its home and its real
opportunity. These two lessons essentially provide the frame for the first
two sections of the paper, with the first outlining Balthasar's retrieval of
Greek post-Chalcedonian thought in the full range of its aesthetic and
cosmic ambit, and the second focusing more narrowly on doctrinal re
trieval, specifically on post-Chalcedonian elaborations and extensions of
Chalcedon and the doctrine of the Trinity. In the second section we will
commence a criticai engagement of Balthasar with Rahner, an engagé
1 See Edward Τ. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar (New York: Continuum, 1994), pp. 102-130. Oakes points in particular to a lit
tle known essay "Patristik, Scholastik, und wir", in Theologie der Zeit 3 (1939): 65-109
for a less than eulogistic attitude to patristic thought. In order to make the point that
Balthasar is not a slavish antiquarian Oakes somewhat overstates the extent and depth of
Balthasar's criticisms of the patristic tradition.
VON BALTHASAR AND THICK RETRIEVAL 229
ment that spills over into a third section where the general issue is the
defensibility of the holistic impulse of Balthasarian thought in both its
aesthetic and dramatic — or theodramatic — postures.
In Balthasar's thick retrieval of Greek post-Chalcedonian thought
Maximus the Confessor is the figure who is truly centrai — a fact that
has hardly gone unnoticed by Balthasar scholars. Yet it is important not
to construe Balthasar as offering to contemporary attention the thought
of a lonely and isolated figure, for this is to legitimate one of modernity's
Romantic pieties. For Balthasar, Maximus belongs to a tradition and
completes it; and it is this tradition as a whole that one finds the maxi
mum of criticai potential. Thus the first section opens with a considera
tion of the stress in Balthasar's thought between uncoupling and cou
pling Maximus with his constitutionally problematic predecessor, Pseu
do-Dionysius, and Balthasar's defining decision in favor of the latter.
I. Post-Chalcedonian Greek Thought: From Pseudo-Dionysius or

Maximus to Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus1
While it is definitely the case that it is Maximus who receives the

bulk of Balthasar's interpretive attention, and arguably the case that
Maximus has an influence on the formation of Balthasar's constructive
theological position unrivalled by any patristic figure in the Greek tradi
tion3, not excluding the Aeropagite4, this is not to say that Pseudo-Diony
2 It should be noted that while Balthasar is aware, as any modera reader of the Are
opagite, that the author of the text is not Dionysius mentioned in Acts, he resists using the
prefix "pseudo". The issue is one perhaps of ecclesial sensibility. Throughout, however, I
will avail of the prefix to mark the pseudonymous authorship practiced by a Syrian monk
of the sixth century.
3 If one just attends to Balthasar's monographs on Greek thinkers, written in the for
ties there are a number of Greek thinkers that are as important as Maximus. These include
Origen and the Cappadocians in general, Gregory or Nyssa in particular. See Origen:
Spirit and Fire: A Thematic Anthology ofhis Writings, trans. Robert J. Daly, S.J. (Wash
ington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1984); Présence et pensée: essai sur la
philosophie religieuse de Grégoire de Nysse (Paris: Beauchesne, 1942); also Kosmische
Liturgie: Das Weltbild Maximus ' des Bekenners (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1961).
4 This is reflected in the secondary literature, where one encounters considerable discus
sion of the influence of Maximus on Balthasar but very little about the influence of Pseudo
Dionysius. Books on Balthasar by Georges de Schrijver and James Naduvilekut provide
good examples. Both books highlight Maximus; Pseudo-Dionysius meriting a couple of
pages in the case of the former, not quite even this much in the case of the latter. See, for exam
ple, Georges de Schrijver, Le merveilleux accord de l'homtne et de Dieu: étude de l'analo
gie de l'ètre chez Hans Urs von Balthasar (Leuven: Leuven University Press and Peeters,
1983), pp. 217-251; James Naduvilekut, Christus der Heilsweg: Soteriaals Theodrama im
Werk Hans Urs von Balthasar (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag Erzabtei, 1987), pp. 150-160.
230 CYRIL O'REGAN
sius is either interpretively invisible or wholly without consequence for

Balthasar's theological "on the way". The first thing to be noted, howev
er, is that Balthasar does not supply a single, consistent view of Pseudo
Dionysius, but rather two, quite different estimates of the Christian pro
file of the Aeropagite's thought and its trinitarian and christological con
centration. The first, and earlier, of the two estimates is offered in
Balthasar's Maximus text, Kosmische Liturgie (hereafter LC)\ where the
great apophatic theologian of the Greek Church is read with a view to
highlighting Maximus's far more capacious, far more ecclesially fruitful
synthesis of Neoplatonism and systemically Christian thought-patterns.
Though clearly the instrumentai role Pseudo-Dionysius plays in estab
lishing the case that Maximus has claims to genuine originality has some
effect on the way the Areopagite is read, this cannot be the whole story,
given the extent and the severity of the reservations expressed6. The sec
ond, later, and by far more positive estimate is offered in the first part of
Balthasar's great constructive theological work, i.e., his theological aes
thetics, The Glory of the Lord (GL). Balthasar's splendid essay on Pseu
do-Dionysius in the second volume of GL renders a religious thinker
who transparently is no longer in need of Maximan emendation, a figure
who, in fact, displays precisely those virtues Balthasar found more or
less uniquely instanced in Maximus in Kosmische Liturgie, virtues such
as a strong ecclesial sense, concentrated christological focus, a sense of
the ultimacy of the Trinity and the hypostatic vitality of the trinitarian
persons. This gross outline of the two contrasting readings deserves fur
ther elaboration.
As we have already suggested, Pseudo-Dionysius is not so much
read for himself in Kosmische Liturgie as for the light he throws on Max
imus. Allowing Pseudo-Dionysius to play both the role of precursor and
foil, Balthasar wishes to steer between overly positive and negative esti
mates, interpretations that, on the one hand, would so "maximize" Pseu
do-Dionysius as to jeopardize the claim of Maximus's originality7 and,
51 use the abbreviation LC rather than KL because ali page numbers are taken from
the French version of the text, Liturgie Cosmique: Maxime le Confesseur (Paris: Aubier,
1947).
6 In spite of Balthasar's reservations Pseudo-Dionysius is accorded a more favorable
reading than is usuai in modem Western interpretations.
7 Unfortunately, this pun on "maximized" is not my own. Credit must be given to
Jaroslav Pelikan. See his introduction to Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans.
Colm Luibheid; foreword, notes, and translation collaboration by Paul Rorem (New York:
Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 11-24, esp. 23.
on the other, that would deny either the basic fact of connection between
Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus or its theological importance. If qua
precursor, Pseudo-Dionysius is allowed to have some currency in Max
imus's theology, the dominant mode of relationship in this early
Balthasarian text is that of foil. The depiction is far from caricaturai.
Pseudo-Dionysius is not read systematically as Maximus's contrary, but
rather as a flawed Christian theologian in whom Neoplatonic elements
tend to assert their independent authority, thereby creating tension be
tween the Christian host and the would-be Neoplatonic graft. Balthasar
shows an unerring eye for the problem areas of the Dionysian synthesis.
These centrally include the undestanding of the nature of divine mystery;
the envisagement of the trinitarian persons and their status vis-à-vis the
superessential divine; the comprehension of the ontological status of the
material-temporal world; and the perception of the place occupied by
Christ in the cosmic scheme. More concretely, Balthasar is concerned
with an apophaticism which, if it does not absolutely cut itself loose
from kataphatic complement, is in danger of so doing (LC, 47, 52-4); a
trinitarianism which, perhaps, insufficiently emphasizes the hypostatic
dynamism of the trinitarian persons (LC, 21); a view of the relation be
tween the divine as self-manifesting and the world as manifestation that
does not sufficiently honor Christian assumptions about the ontological
distinction between the infinite and the finite (LC, 12, 51, 78) and the in
dependence and non-reductive concreteness of the finite (LC, 22, 26);
and, lastly, with the question as to whether the incarnation truly repre
sents the prime focus of Dionysian thought and is seen to be something
more than one episode among others within the macro-Proclean proo
dos-epistrophe schema. Pseudo-Dionysius's less than adequate ecclesial
currency is a function of this entire interlocking set of reservations. Here
we will focus on the two problem areas that gain most of Balthasar's at
tention in his discussion of the Areopagite, i.e., signs of a Neoplatonic
emanationist tendency, and what seems to look suspiciously like christo
logical marginalization.
Balthasar suggests that Pseudo-Dionysius fails fully to master the
emanationist thrust embedded in the Neoplatonic scheme of divine self
expression that is to provide the frame for non-negotiable Christian com
8 The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Volume 2. Studies in Theological

Style: Clerical Styles, trans. Andrew Louth, Francis McDonagh and Brian McNeil C.R.V.;
ed. John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), pp. 144-210.
232 CYRIL O'REGAN
mitments. While Balthasar admits that Pseudo-Dionysius amends Neo

platonic assumptions concerning the divine and its expression, and in
particular rehabilitates somewhat the status of matter (LC, 47), the fact is
that there are good grounds to presume that Pseudo-Dionysius's Neopla
tonic prioritizing of a spirit-matter distinction tends to get in the way of a
much more radicai distinction or division (chorismos), that is, the onto
logical distinction between the infinite and the finite, or to use
Balthasar's own language, the distinction between transcendence and im
manence. Coincident with what appears to be an internai systemic quar
rel between two different senses of chorismos is the problematic status of
the independence and individuality of the finite order (LC, 26-7). How
ever, in a real sense it is only the imperilling of independence that can be
fully blamed on the emanationist thrust in Pseudo-Dionysius, whereas
individuality in and of the material-temporal world is more nearly put in
jeopardy by a less than sufficient view of the hypostasis in general, the
hypostasis of Christ in particular. And again, this unmastered emanation
ist tendency undermines the truly Christian understanding of the relation
between that participated in and that participating (LC, 80), obviating the
need of salvation that is answered in Christ and the exegesis of theosis
that in the Christian scheme of things presupposes a naturai distinction
between the infinite and finite, the divine and the human. This brings us
to the second of our two problem areas.
Balthasar's christological reservations about Pseudo-Dionysius are
both fundamental and quite general. Pseudo-Dionysius causes concern
because it is neither clear that a christological optics regulates his vision,
nor that the narrative of divine self-expression is incarnationally saturat
eci. And Balthasar's interpretive presupposition seems to be that christo
logical optics and incarnational saturation are basic Christian principles
that cannot be reneged on. Balthasar is aware that the two areas of con
cern are intrinsically related, with an incarnational narrative debt being a
function of a blind-spot, or at least partial blind-spot, in christological
optics. Of course, decision as to the presence or absence of christological
optics and incarnational saturation is by no means easy to come to in ac
tual concrete cases. If determination of the former tends to be based less
on the quantity of christological passages than on an intuitive view of the
whole, determination of the latter is more easily textually verifiable: In
carnational saturation is deemed to be present when the entire history of
salvation not only finds in the incarnation its episodic center, but when in
a real sense this history, stretching from creation to eschaton, is con
densed in it. It is important to point out that these optical and narrative
reservations respecting Pseudo-Dionysius in Kosmische Liturgie pre

clude other kinds of christological reservation, for example, reservations
of a dogmatic-christological sort. It is not an ingredient of Balthasar's
reading to claim that the Areopagite supports a problematic monergism
that happily is corrected later by Maximus as dogmatic hero, for it seems
to be his view that Pseudo-Dionysius is not a dogmatic christological
thinker, indeed not a dogmatic thinker period.
Balthasar's essay on Pseudo-Dionysius in GL2 is profoundly more
positive8, and involves the withdrawal of most, if not ali, of the reserva
tions which beset his earlier reading of Pseudo-Dionysius as a foil to
Maximus. Pseudo-Dionysius now seems to be assigned pure precursor
status. Balthasar sets the stage for revision by denying that Pseudo
Dionysius is adequately understood as a Christian assimilator or chris
tianizer of Neoplatonism (GL2, 149). Granted the presence of Neopla
tonic elements, Plotinian and Proclean elements in particular (GL2,152),
it is the Christian element in Pseudo-Dionysius that is regulative (GL2,
142). Thus, if Balthasar had earlier denied to the Pseudo-Dionysian syn
thesis the encomium meted out to its Maximan counterpart, in GL2 this
synthesis is lauded as being ecclesially successful, because it is prosecut
ed on Christian terms. More specifically, it is prosecuted on christologi
cal terms. For Balthasar, this essentially means that the Areopagite now
instantiates two vital christological values earlier found conspicuous by
their absence: (1) Christ is really the point d'apergu of the Neoplatoni
cally envisaged rhythm of divine self-expression or "dance" (GL2, 172);
(2) The proodos-epistrophe narrative is incarnationally, and speaking
more generally, christologically saturated in that, on the one hand, cre
ation as well as eschaton is focused in "the stili point" of the incarnation
and, on the other, Christ truly reveals the form of God.
Christological rehabilitation is in turn responsible, either directly or
indirectly, for the toning down of other reservations, expressed in Kos
mische Liturgie, and arguably for their withdrawal. Since it is now
Balthasar's opinion that for Pseudo-Dionysius it is Christ who figures
the ineffable, who is in fact the model of the "ray of darkness" (sketous
aktis), ealier concern about the instability of the apophatic-kataphatic
synthesis is foresworn. But christological rehabilitation also has some,
perhaps, less immediate, effect on the way in which the relation between
the Godhead and the divine persons in Pseudo-Dionysius should be read
(■GL2, 184-5), the legitimacy of the emanationist construal of the Are
opagite (GL2, 158, 184, 191), and the problematization of Dionysian
theosis. Though Balthasar seems to be always aware of the reciprocai de
234 CYRIL O'REGAN
termination in Christian theology of trinitarian supposition and christo

logical perception — with perhaps ultimate explanatory priority being
awarded the former — in GL, which is centrally concerned with Christ
ian perception rather than dogma — the direction of argument is from
the ikon of Christ to its trinitarian supposition9. More specifically, the
person of Christ — Balthasar tends to avoid in this context the technical
language of hypostasis — seems to demand a personalist view of God
that blocks any Neoplatonic and specifically Proclean prioritizing of the
superessential Godhead (hyperousias thearchia) over the trinitarian per
sons. Similarly, the now manifest incarnational saturation, which sup
ports and at the same time is supported by a clear sense of the historical
character of the incarnational event, successfully resists emanationist in
filtration by inviting in a specifically Christian view of the ontological
distinction between the infinite and finite, the divine and the human
(GL2, 186). And respect for the ontological difference is now in
Balthasar's opinion the proximate condition for the authentically Christ
ian view of theosis discerned in the Divine Namesw. Indeed, the ontolog
ical difference is operative at an infrastructural level in Dionysian dis
course and determines that a formula such as "participation in the unpar
ticipatable" (amethekos ametaxoumena), while a Proclean retrieval,
ought not to be read in the originai Proclean sense". Whatever their ap
parent similarities, then, Dionysian and non-Christian Neoplatonic
methexis are ultimately contraries. The Dionysian view protects both the
real transcendence of the divine and the genuine integrity of the cosmic
in general, the human in particular.
Another value that seems to be christologically regulated, and this
time perhaps directly rather than indirectly, is one whose discovery
Balthasar had earlier suggested belongs elsewhere, i.e., individuality.
Given his reading of Pseudo-Dionysius as a non-dogmatic theologian, it
9 The symbol of the Trinity is not thematized in any full-blown way in GL. Through
out Balthasar's great trilogy, the symbol of the trinity becomes more and more important.
In the second part of his trilogy, his Theo-Drama, Balthasar begins the move from a rich
constructive christology to its trinitarian supposition, a move completed in Theologik, the
third part of the trilogy.
10 See Divine Names 2,7; 11,11; 12,12.
11 See also The Gloty ofthe Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Volume 6. Theology: The
Old Covenant, trans. Brian McNeil C.R.V. and Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis; ed. John Riches
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), p. 10. Andrew Louth seems to emphasize the re
trieval rather the criticai side of Balthasar's appeal to this trope from the Elements of The
ology. See his "The Place of The Heart of the World in the Theology of Hans Urs von
Balthasar". In TheAnalogy of Beauty: The Theology ofHans Urs von Balthasar, ed. John
Riches (Edinburgh: Τ. & T. Clark Ldt., 1986), pp. 147-163, esp. 153.
is not surprising that Balthasar does not suggest, as was the case earlier
with regard to Maximus, that the ultimate support for the view of indi
viduality, which must necessarily be a factor in the understanding of
theosis, is a developed understanding of the concepì of hypostasis. The
role played by the theological cipher hypostasis in Maximus is played in
Dionysius by a perception of the resurrection, though on Balthasar's in
terpretation, in Pseudo-Dionysius resurrection is related in the closest
possible way to incarnation. In any event, it is the newly perceived chris
tological saturation in Pseudo-Dionysius that is responsible for the disap
pearance of the charge of Neoplatonic "essentialism" made in Kosmische
Liturgie (LC, 22).
Balthasarian reflection on Dionysian theosis is more broad ranging,
however, than I have thus far been able to indicate. Though Balthasar ex
pressly denies in another text that the cross is focal for Pseudo
Dionysius12, in the second volume of GL he insists that the cross is not
totally ignored. There is, of course, no contradiction between the two as
sertions, and his proposai in the volume on clerical styles is in any case
quite modest. Without in any way suggesting that Pseudo-Dionysius's
fundamentally incarnational christological orientation is undermined by
them, Balthasar points to the surprising presence in Pseudo-Dionysius of
utterances which declare that theosis is explicitly dependent neither on
the incarnation, nor even on the resurrection, but directly on the divine
humiliation of Jesus who died on the cross. Chapter 4 of The Ecclesiasti
cai Hierarchies is particularly signaled out for attention (GL2, 200)13.
Far-fetched as Balthasar's suggestion may be on first look, the fact is
that the radicai kenotic emphasis that makes its most conspicuous ap
pearance in The Ecclesiastical Hierarchies finds reinforcement else
where in Pseudo-Dionysius, and especially in his letter to Demophilus,
where the emphasis is on Christ's unbounded love and mercy that
through sacrifice brings a prodigai humanity home14. In any event, this
kenotic emphasis has something to say with respect to the via of di
vinization. At the very least, it sets limits to the dominant contemplative
12 See The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Volume 4: The Realm of
Metaphysics in Antiquity, trans. Brian McNeil C.R.V., Andrew Louth, John Saward,
Rowan Williams and Oliver Davies; ed. John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1989), p. 320; also The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Volume 7: Theology:
The New Covenant, trans. Brian McNeil; ed. John Rjches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1989), p. 273.
13 Balthasar has particularly in mind Ecclesiastical Hierarchies, 4.3.10 (484 BC).
14 See letter to Demophilus in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, pp. 269-280.
236 CYRIL O'REGAN
accent and, arguably, helps in preventing contemplation's purely theoret

ical, spectator-like deformation. Contemplation does not exclude, and it
may very well include, what a modem writer has felicitously called "the
praxis of suffering"15. Though there are numerous other examples, here,
perhaps, more saliently than anywhere else, Balthasar closes the gap be
tween Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus he had in part argued for, part as
sumed, in Kosmische Liturgie.
In withdrawing his earlier objections to Pseudo-Dionysius
Balthasar finds himself essentially in the same camp as modem Eastem
orthodox theologians who, though acknowledging the greater ecclesial
usefulness of Maximus, do not see in Pseudo-Dionysius a pure interrup
tion of the ecclesial tradition16. But even in Pseudo-Dionysius's strongest
orthodox supporters, approvai does not take the form of an insistence
upon the ultimate christological center of the Areopagite's thought. It
more usually takes the form of arguing for a discrimen between the
Neoplatonic and Christian construal of the divine, the former ultimately
monadic, the latter, trinitarian through and through, and suggesting that
at his best Pseudo-Dionysius's contribution represents the genuine
Christian impulse, an impulse that articulates itself, however, in the
sphere of apophasis or theologia rather than the oikonomiaBalthasar
would not fail to support this defense, but would wonder whether it is
adequate, especially if there is too great an emphasis on apophasis and
too great a gap opens up between theologia and oikonomia. Obviously,
when Balthasar looks on Pseudo-Dionysius in a stream of tradition, he
is going to privilege the tradition of the West in a way not done by
Lossky and other Eastern orthodox theologians. The consequences of
Dionysian appropriation are mixed. Eriugena shows cause for concem;
Eckhart shows cause for alarm. Yet, in Balthasar's view, Christian
thinkers like Bonaventure and Aquinas are able to honor Dionysian
apophaticism in significant measure without loosing kataphatic and
christological mooring. They may be able to do so, not through their
15 Here I am evoking the title of Rebecca Chopp's hook. See her The Praxis ofSuf
fering: An Interpretation of Liberation and Politicai Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis,
1986).
16 Vladimir Lossky and John Meyendorff both hold this view. See especially Meyen
dorff's Christ in Eastern Thought (Washington and Clevland: Corpus Books, 1969), pp.
68-84.
" Lossky is fairly representative of the Greek East. See his In the Image and Like
ness ofGod, ed. John Η. Erikson and Thomas E. Bird (New York: St. Vladimir's Semi
nary Press, 1974), pp. 17,24-28.
own revisionary genius, but because they explicate a dimension of Pseu

do-Dionysius often covered over in the tradition.
Balthasar's re-reading of Pseudo-Dionysius in GL2 threatens to be
an overly benign misreading of the work of the Syrian monk and to un
dermine his own vigorously advanced claims of originality made on be
half of Maximus and never to my knowledge withdrawn. The two points
are obviously related, for one of the ways of understanding "benign mis
reading" is in fact "maximized reading". And yet from Balthasar's point
of view, he is not reinventing the sixth-century pseudonymous author so
much as correcting a skew consequent to the sheer power and fundamen
tal persuasiveness of his reading of Maximus in Kosmische Liturgie. De
spite, or perhaps even because of, its teleological perspective, Kosmische
Liturgie evidences real danger of both minimizing the theological contri
bution of Maximus's Eastern predecessors and, contra-intentionally,
truncating Maximus's potential criticai ratio by portraying him as so far
beyond the tradition or traditions that were placed at his disposai. For
even if there is no reason to challenge the view that Maximus represents
the high point of post-Chalcedonian Eastern theology, as a criticai re
source for the revitalization of Western theology Maximus can play a
much more significant role when he is more firmly rooted in a tradition
or set of traditions which in a fundamental sense exceed him. Yet, while
it is true that post-Chalcedonian Eastern theology can exceed Maximus,
nonetheless, no individuai figure does. Moreover, despite occasionally
succumbing to the temptation in GL2 of reading Pseudo-Dionysius in
such a fashion that no room is left for Maximan innovation, Balthasar re
mains perfectly clear that Maximus is without equal. Maximus does not
simply repeat; he fundamentally exceeds, both in the specific historical
domain of post-Chalcedonian theology, as well as in his potential as a
contemporary criticai resource. Even the most favorable reading of Pseu
do-Dionysius, then, is unable to erase the Maximan "more" which, read
ing between the lines, seems to involve (1) a judgment about Maximus's
keener grasp of how fundamental Christian assumptions regulate and
transform Neoplatonic modes of thought, and (2) a perception of the
dogmatic thrust at the heart of Maximus's theology. Both of these quite
general advantages obviously require exegesis. We treat here the first el
ement of Maximus's unchallengeable preeminence, postponing until the
next section the second.
Neither GL, nor for that matter any later Balthasarian text, implies a
fundamental rejection of the thesis that Maximus represents a superb in
stance of the post-Chalcedonian christologically regulated synthesis of
238 CYRIL O'REGAN
Neoplatonism and Christianity. Indeed, nothing in Balthasar's work sug

gests that Maximus is not the supreme Eastern instance and one of the tru
ly emblematic instances for the whole Christian tradition. If it can no
longer be implied that Maximan texts such as the Ambigua and The Cen
turies on Knowledge supply the only post-Chalcedonian Eastern in
stances, they can consistently be claimed to provide the norm as to how
"pulls" in the borrowed Neoplatonic modes of construal can be corrected
by appeal to Christian axioms and principles. Balthasar is convinced —
and as appeal both to the interpretive work of other scholars, as well as in
dependent textual assessment tends to corroborate — that Maximus suc
cessfully resists, for example, the Neoplatonic pulls (1) to overemphasize
the apophatic; (2) to sever the divine hypostases from the divine essence
(making the former either less than or derivative with respect to the lat
ter)18; (3) to insist on an ontological continuum between the cosmic and
the divine and the human and the divine19. Moreover, the Christian princi
ples and axioms that dictate these systematic corrections of Neoplatonic
pulls present in the proodos-epistrophe narrative — adopted by Christian
ity because of its power to insinuate a dynamic, self-manifesting divine20
— are themselves, suggests Balthasar, a function of a bedrock christocen
trism. Within the coordinates of this general christocentric viewpoint,
Christ, as the luminous ray of darkness, the sketous aktis TLC, 46, 58), is
the revelation of the personal face of the divine, the non-conceptualizable
mystery of the divine and the human, as well as the axis upon which histo
ry, which is nothing more nor less than the history of salvation, turns.
Now, while ali aspects of the Maximan "more" are worth discussing
in detail, given the fact that christological and trinitarian componente of
Maximus's thought will later come in for developed treatment, I will here
limit myself to discussing two. The first is Maximus's dehierarchizing of
the Neoplatonic scheme and its Christian consequence; the second is
18 For Maximus's resistance to the first two Neoplatonic pulls, see Steven Gersch,
From lamblichus to Eriugena: An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evolution of the
Pseudo-Dionysius Tradition (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978), pp. 155-157, esp. note 144, ρ. 157.
19 See Lars Thunberg, Man and Cosmos: The Vision of Maximus the Confessor
(New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985).
20 In Liturgie Cosmique, Balthasar successfully counters a rhetorical ploy of the an
ti-Dionysian tradition, that is, sheer incomprehension that Christianity could have seen
anything of value in Neoplatonism, anything worth adopting. Balthasar has no problem
imagining the appeal. The Neoplatonic narrative of exit-return is dynamic through and
through, as the images of fountain, life, play and rhythm suggest (pp. 12ff). This view is
corroborated in his treatment of Plotinus in GL4, where the Alexandrian is praised for his
view of a dynamic immanence that is not purchased at the cost of transcendence.
Maximus's far more ampie, and arguably more balanced view of the via of
theosis. However much Balthasar wishes to relink Pseudo-Dionysius and
Maximus, both from a historical and criticai point of view, this does not
take the jejune form of suggesting that each and every element of the
Maximan synthesis is virtually present in Pseudo-Dionysius. Some Maxi
man advantages remain unanticipated, and there are good reasons to sug
gest that Maximus's radicai simplification of the Neoplatonic hierarchical
model of divine manifestation is a particularly perspicuous, non-trivial ex
ample. In Kosmische Liturgie Balthasar attempts to balance suggestion of
commonality with suggestion of difference, by maintaining that while
both the Dionysian and Maximan schemes can be regarded as "liturgical"
in the sense that both point to the symbolic celebratory character of the
cosmos as divine manifestation and manifestation's dynamic quality,
Maximus's "unchaining" of the cosmos constitutes a fundamental divide
(LC, 48)21. The logicai corollary is that in his liturgical ascription
Balthasar must really have in mind two quite different inflections. Unfor
tunately, Balthasar does not explore this implication, and he contents him
self with the historical observation of the Maximan novum. Yet from the
perspective of Balthasar's later work, in particular his view of the funda
mental historical figurations of theology22, both the theological impor
tance of Maximus's dehierarchization and its intrinsic connection to Max
imus's avowal of movement and becoming in God — a Balthasarian dis
covery now validated by most Maximus scholars -23 become more clear.
Granting that the basic impulse in Pseudo-Dionysius is dynamic, its real
interest, the theophanic dance, nevertheless, neither in GL nor elsewhere,
does Balthasar really withdraw his earlier expressed reservation about the
complexity of the Dionysian hierarchical cosmological scheme. One plau
sible way in which to speak of the Dionysian problem is to say that in the
Areopagite's scheme one can witness the antinomy between the divine
movement, which is the object of theological representation, and the vehi
21 Simply put, Balthasar's view is that with Maximus Christianity essentially puts an
end to the Neoplatonic topography of "the great chain of being".
22 The clearest expression of historical figuration is to be found not in Balthasar's
trilogy, but in his smaller works. See Love Alone: The Way of Revelation (London and
Dublin: Sheed and Ward & Veritas Publications, 1968). Balthasar distinguishes three main
types or orientations in theology, and identifies these as the cosmological, the anthropo
logical and, what might be called, the agapaic. In this text he differentiates the agapaic po
sition, with which he himself associates, front the cosmological of which Dionysius and
Eriugena are instances. By contrast with the cosmological, the agapaic position is both
biblically normed and fundamentally christological.
23 See, for example, Thunberg, Man and Cosmos, p. 32.
240 CYRIL O'REGAN
eie for this movement, a cosmic architecture that in fact tends to freeze it.
If this is an accurate description, then it follows that an indelible element
of Maximus's achievement is the freeing of this movement, the liberation
of the cosmic dance from the retardations presented by hierarchical spa
tialization. And the freedom from has as its correlative a freedom for, to
evoke the shade of Isaiah Berlin's famous distinction. The freedom for is
nothing less than a particular sense of liturgy, a sense of liturgy in which
the accent is now on pure movement or dance, or to avail of our chosen
musical metaphor, pure symphony. Moreover, the dance, or the sympho
ny, always remains semantic because symbolic. What is limited is not so
much symbol as symbolic proliferation, which threatened to reduce both
the immediate and dramatic character of divine-human engagement. Stili,
it should be remembered that Balthasar is not anxious to issue or support
the stereotypical accusation of Dionysian stasis. If hierarchy sets limits to
dynamism, it cannot defeat it, and the vision of divine movement shows
through in the determinate order (taxis) and dignity (axia) of the divine.
Pseudo-Dionysius, therefore, can at least have limited currency in moder
nity, for the cosmological apparatus does not obscure in a fundamental
way the dynamism proper to the biblical God24. Yet it is Maximus's princi
pled transcendence of cosmological architecture that points to a kind of
theology that can successfully resist the dominant anthropological orien
tation of modemity and modem theology25.
If, according to Balthasar, it is Pseudo-Dionysius's christology that
is determinative in the last instance for the view of theosis, then a for
tiori this is the case with the Confessor. Chalcedonian christological dis
course, specifically discourse about the unconfused (asynchutos) natures
in the hypostatic union, actually proves regulative. This discourse sets
limits to what can be said about human beings even and especially when
the possibility of theosis is granted (LC 19 ff, 150-151, 171-172). And it
sets limits by specifying the gulf between the human and the divine that
is mysteriously and uniquely surpassed and retained in the hypostatic
union (LC, 152-153)26. For creatures, constitutionally unable to replicate
the hypostatic union, the difference between the human and the divine
24 This view seems to be suggested in GIÀ, 319-320.

25 Throughout GL, Balthasar hints that despite the aesthetic quality of the cosmo
logica! orientation in theology that is the heritage of the Greek East this form of theology
is not fully adequate to the challenges of modernity. See GL4,324; GL6,21; GL7, 282.
26 See Thunberg, Man and Cosmos, ρ. 53 for confirmation of the importance of this
point. The locus classicus for this view is Ambigua 7, PG 91,1073b.
remains absolute (LC, 20)27. Though Maximus is prepared to be as daring

as Eckhart — in whom one can stili see Maximan influence — in speak
ing of becoming God28, he understands such talk to be metaphorical.
Time and again he insists that the union of the divine and the human is a
union of grace. We are sons of God by adoption only29.
But Maximus does not simply go beyond Pseudo-Dionysius in hav
ing sharper and more ecclessially sanctioned christological tools. He is
also much clearer about the via of deification and the "locai" as well as
"global" contexts of the process. By "locai" I refer to the individual's
wayfaring toward the recovery of the divine image; by "global" I mean
to name the wayfaring of the human community as a whole from Adam
to eschaton. Yet before the specifics of these two contexts are addressed,
a few general points can be made about the via. Now, while it is trae to
say that for Maximus, as for Pseudo-Dionysius and the Cappadocians
before him, the goal of spiritual progress is a vision of the Trinity (LC,
60)30, moreover, a vision whose affective backdrop can only be apatheia
(.LC, 29), this does not exclude a strong emphasis on praxis in general,
the praxis of love in particular. Love of other is a religious-ethical imper
ative of the strongest kind. It is mandated by the praxis of Christ, where
the praxis did not despise suffering but embraced it31. For Maximus,
21 For this point, see also Lars Thunberg, Macrocosm and Mediator: The Theologi
cal Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Lund: G.W.K. Gleerup, 1965), pp. 54 ff.
Thunberg points to Opuscula Theologica et Polemica 20, PG 91, 233C and 236B for
stress on the difference (diaphora). Ambigua 7, PG 91, 1077C similarly stresses distinc
tion, this time with the even more dramatic word of "gulf" (chasma).
28 This language is especially to the fore in Christian Centuries 2, 21, 54. Thunberg
is eloquent on this point. See Man and Cosmos, p. 62. Balthasar is perhaps more exigent
in Kosmische Liturgie than he is later in Theodramatik, for instance, in distinguishing the
Maximan view of becoming God from the Eckhartian. See Theo-Drama: Theological
Dramatic Theory. Volume 2. The Dramatis Personae, trans. Graham Harrison (San Fran
cisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), p. 302.
29 Balthasar has plenty of evidence available to him. Avowals of the graced nature of
sonship outside the hypostatic union occur throughout the work of Maximus, the Cen
turies on Knowledge in particular. See CK1, 54, CK2, 21. Maximus is no less explicit in
his Commentary on OurLord's Prayer.
30 Thunberg confirms Balthasar on this point. See Thunberg, Man and Cosmos, pp.
35-40. Centuries on Love offers especially clear examples of the trinitarian orientation of
Maximus's thought. See especially CL1, 89,94; CL2,26,29.
31 That one is dealing in Maximus with nothing less than a fundamental explosion of
monastic sensibility is confirmed by a quick perusal of what might be regarded as a com
pilation of aphorisms on contemplation, that is, Centuries on Knowledge. See CK1, 57-65.
On Balthasar's account, Maximus seems to be unique in this respect, greatly surpassing
not only what was possible in the Origenist and the Evagrian traditions, but also surpass
ing what was realized in the Cappadocians, including Gregory of Nyssa, concerning
whom Balthasar has such a high opinion.
242 CYRIL O'REGAN
Christ is a Christ of suffering as well as a Christ of Glory, a Christ will

ing kenotically to enter the extremes out of love for a lost humanity.
Though Balthasar pointed to the awareness of the kenotic Christ even in
Pseudo-Dionysius, in an important later text, Mysterium Paschale32, he
singles out Maximus as proof that Eastern Christology is caricatured
when it is accused of being exclusively incarnational. Thus, at the very
least, one can say that there is a certain kind of pathos evinced in the imi
tation of Christ. Indeed, in a real sense "imitation" is perhaps not the
word that best captures the relation between archetype and human being.
One might more accurately speak of taking on the form of Christ, enter
ing more into the form, including the cruciform. Formation, Balthasar is
convinced, more nearly captures the dynamic intention really involved in
Maximus's rendering of image theology. Discussion about the "locai"
and "global" contexts of theosis, however, cannot be further delayed.
In the locai context the individuai moves toward "becoming God"
by stripping itself of passions and by extirpating the "self-love" (philau
tia) that is the root of ali evil. For the details of his descriptions of the
process of punging the self Maximus admittedly depends quite heavily
on the Cappadocian and Evagrian ascetic literature. Yet, as Balthasar has
seen, noticeably absent from the Maximan accounts is that profoundly
negative note found in Evagrius in particular that dictates that the naturai
is itself regarded as tinged with evil (LC, 28-29)33. Maximus escapes,
therefore, a malaise of theological anthropology that stalked the fifth and
sixth-century monastic traditions both West and East. Though Maximus
imagines the self s condition in terms every bit as dramatic as those
found in Evagrius, he continually insists on the principled goodness of
the naturai, while, at the same time, pointing to its factual deformation.
Nevertheless, it is trae that Maximus reproduces the Platonic dualism of
body and soul that is the common tradition of the Cappadocians and
Evagrius, if it is not the lingua franca of the Eastern tradition. It is im
portant to point out, however, the ways in which intrinsically Platonic
commitments are limited and offset. For in Maximus, the passions that
block the path to deification cannot be exclusively assigned to the body.
Indeed, the soul lacks an innocence that the body in itself possesses.
While he does not make the point in this way in Kosmische Liturgie,
32 Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery ofEaster, trans. Aidan Nichols OP (Edinburgh:

Τ & Τ Clark, 1990), pp. 21-22.
33 Balthasar finds confirmation for his viewpoint in Thunberg. See Man and
Cosmos, pp. 53, 60, 93 ff.
VON BALTHASAR AND THICK RETR1EVAL 243
from the point of view of Balthasar's later work, this makes Maximus
more Irenaean than Origenistic34, and arguably more biblical than Platon
ic. With regard to the ultimate conditions of deification it is evident that
Maximus's more or less synergistic view supposes the capability of hu
man will post-lapsumì5, as well as the enabling grace of the divine Trini
ty (LC, 60). Of particular moment to Maximus are the communication of
the Son and Spirit, for it seems to be Maximus's view that grace central
ly involves the self-communication of trinitarian persons, a view that has
once again found favor with contemporary Western theologians36.
As with the Cappadocians the locai context of the explication of
theosis is inserted within the global context of the Christian story that
has the community as a whole as its focus. In a position that seems to re
cali that put forward by Nyssa in De Hominis Opifìcio37, but which also
may find a precedent in Irenaeus38, Maximus suggests a narrative incre
ment of end over beginning. More concretely, he suggests that the salva
tion drama provides the human community with possibilities of intimacy
with the divine, and thus for Maximus, transformation, that were not ac
tual in the pre-lapsarian state. This "surplus" view is underwritten by the
important Maximan distinction between image and likeness39. If the for
mer is present aboriginally, and, indeed, is not fully covered over in hu
man beings' sinful situation, the latter is something that is only teleologi
cally and eschatologically available. Likeness is not something concern
ing which it makes sense to speak of its loss; unlike image, one can only
legitimately speak of gaining it. The teleological-eschatological spin put
on the Christian story most definitely gives the Maximan rendition an al
most evolutionary appearance. It is this appearance, however, that makes
it necessary to issue some demurrals. First, while Maximus does believe
that new and definitive deification possibilities are released into history
by Christ's redemptive act, he neither thinks that history as such bears
34 See GL2,61.
35 The synergistic commitment displayed by Balthasar in GL7, 310 is plausibly in
fluenced by Maximus.
36 Examples in the Catholic theology include Rahner, Kasper, and LaCugna.
37 Passages in The Glory ofthe Lord seem to be echoing Balthasar's earlier reco
gnition of the importance of this idea in Maximus. See especially GL6, 102-103; GL7,
296-297.
38 See GL2,65-66.
39 This is a key distinction recognized by Balthasar in Kosmische Liturgie and vali
dated by later researchers such as Thunberg. See Man and Cosmos, pp. 60-61. This dis
tinction is not without effect in Balthasar's own theological anthropology.
244 CYRIL O'REGAN
soteriological freight, nor that such a release provides a constitutional,

almost automatic advantage to those in end-time, as tend to be the wont
in the evolutionary-appearing modem Western accounts. Kosmische
Liturgie's affirmation of Maximan attitude can be read against the back
ground of the reservations expressed in Apokalypse der deutschen Seele
about the thoroughgoing eschatological drift of modem thought40, and is
a portent of Balthasar's later agreement with de Lubac about the specifi
cally Joachimite tendenz of modem religious thought and his engage
ment with Moltmann41.
Even if one temporarily leaves in parenthesis his christological and
trinitarian contributions, Maximus's positive significance for Balthasar's
own thought, of course, goes well beyond his dehierarchizing of the cos
mos and his Christian improvement and amplification of earlier Christ
ian Neoplatonic construals of theosis. We will have to at least make note
of these other Maximan pluses before we remove the brackets on the
christological and trinitarian contributions, but before we do it should be
noted how both these moves assist in bringing Christian theology more
in line with the biblical view of human being as being immediately be
fore God in a dialogue of incommensurable freedoms (LC, 154) and
showing how human nature and cosmos find their perfection in Christ.
But this biblical and christological restriction of the epiphanic universe
of Neoplatonic assumption does not entail its retraction. If the exercise
of these Maximan elements brings Balthasar dose to Barth, then it also
confirms their distance. The world, which is indeed God's creation, is yet
not without its own ontological density and beauty. Here Maximus and
Thomas join in supporting the analogy of being that Barth finds so offen
sive, though in the case of Maximus at least the analogia entìs is ordered
towards Christ42. Tuming now to those other Maximan pluses, it is clear
40 For this point, see Naduvilekut, Christus derHeilsweg, pp. 163-164.

41 For Balthasar La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore. 2. vols (Paris:
Lethielleux, 1979) is one of de Lubac's greatest works. While Balthasar's major en
gagement with Moltmann in Theo-Drama revolves around the latter's theology of the
cross, there is a less obvious engagement with his apocalyptic reading of Christianity. In
Theo-Drama 2, for instance, Balthasar does not so much deny the truth of unrealized es
chatology as question its absoluteness.
42 See LC, 17 for a clear statement of the independent reality of the world in Maxi
mus, the Aristotelianism that counteracts his Neoplatonism. The thrust of de Schrijver's
text Le merveilleux accord is also to place Maximus in the tradition of the analogy of be
ing, albeit where analogy has being deeply christologically specified. In The Theology of
Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), Balthasar
agrees with Barth concerning the need to protect God's sovereignty.
that in Kosmische Liturgie Balthasar's attention to the cosmic and an

thropological dimensions of salvation far exceed the elaboration of the
locai and even the global-historical dimensions of theosis, as thus far de
fined. The entire cosmic scheme of Maximus with its binary pairs of
man/woman, heaven/earth, paradise/earth, intelligible/sensible, God/cre
ation comes in for discussion. That Balthasar thinks that this scheme is
far from anachronistic is confirmed when this entire scheme with its bi
nary pairs makes an appearance in Balthasar's elaboration of his own
constructive proposal. In Theo-Drama 2 this reprise is more than purely
formai; Balthasar reprises many of the elements of Maximus's actual ar
ticulation. While the details of this reprise are eminently worthy of dis
cussion, fortunately they do not need to be gone into here. For the point
that needs to be highlighted — and the point of this rehearsal — is
Balthasarian recommendation of an aesthetic style in theology, thorough
ly holistic, yet not captive to its accompanying cosmologica! assumption
or compromised by its relation to Neoplatonic tropes. But, of course,
Balthasar wishes to say more. He desires to persuade that post-Chal
cedonian Greek thought, particularly in the shape of Maximus, achieves
a kind of emblematic rapprochement between the dogmatic and the vi
sionary in which conceptual demand is met without sacrifice to vision.
And Balthasar also desires to persuade that the forging of a visionary and
doctrinal alliance in post-Chalcedonian thought will necessarily involve
the reconfiguration of the entire conspectus of the aesthetic, essentially
its transformation into a dramatic key.
II. Maximus and Dogmatic-Dramatic Post-Chalcedonian Theology
No account of Maximus can afford to ignore the dogmatic interest

in his works, his special place in post-Chalcedonian dogmatic theology
in general and the elaboration of christology in particular. Balthasar in no
way challenges this consensus view. Indeed, in Kosmische Liturgie the
presence of this dogmatic interest itself constitutes a criterion of distinc
tion between Pseudo-Dionysius and Maximus. And if in his later works
there is a fundamental act of resistance against reducing Maximus to the
dogmatic43, Balthasar never questions either the basic necessity of dog
43 In Mysterium Paschale, for instance, Balthasar is clear that Maximus's mytho

poesis of the descent of Christ into hell is every bit as important as his more dogmatic for
mulations.
246 CYRIL O'REGAN
matic crystallization of the broader, more inchoate field of spiritual ap

prehension and symbol, or its actual exemplification in the work of the
Confessor. Moreover, Balthasar's doublé focus on Maximus's dogmatic
contribution, that is, the christological and the trinitarian, is fairly stan
dard, even if some scholars feel justified in complaining that one is em
phasized at the expense of the other44. Yet, at the same time, Balthasar
has posed the question whether these contributions are not fundamental
ly misread, if, on the one hand, Maximus's christological contribution is
understood as being exhausted by his role in the monothelite controversy
and, if, on the other, his trinitarian contribution is thought to consist in
his passing on of the Cappadocian trinitarian tradition.
On the christological front this means that Maximus is not simply a
post-Chalcedonian theologian; he is systemically a Chalcedonian theolo
gian in that his entire contribution is best regarded as a profound reflec
tion on the dogma of two natures in a single hypostasis (LC, 150 ff)43. And
Maximus is a Chalcedonian theologian not primarily in the sense of teas
ing out the logicai implications of Chalcedon's basic concepts. For Max
imus, though the Council offers to the Church a tmly regulative symbol, it
is a symbol nonetheless, and as such does not conceptually exhaust the
mystery of Christ. Thus, even if Maximus can be construed as resisting an
apophaticism that would totally undermine the givens of revelation, this is
not to say that the redemptive event as a whole, nor the incarnation in par
ticular, admits of a conceptual explanation whereby the finite intellect
gains control over the divine. Maximus insists on the radically mysterious
character of both incarnation and redemption (LC, 152), thereby insuring
that the Chalcedonian dogma does not consist of cognitively controllable
information. If the revelatory event par excellence restricts an apophati
cism that otherwise might get out of control, the overall apophatic hori
zon insures that revelation does not become knowledge.
The Chalcedonian dogma is, therefore, symbolic in an almost Ri
coeurian sense that it possesses a semantic density that far from closing
off investigation actually encourages it46. Constitutive of its semantic
44 Pierre Piret provides the best example of this kind of criticism. See his Le Christ
et la trinité selon Maxime le Confesseur (Paris: Beauchesne, 1983), pp. 21-25.
45 Thunberg regards this point as cruciai for Balthasar and draws attention to the
various places in Kosmische Liturgie (62 ff, 65,204). See his Microcosm and Mediator, pp.
21-22.
46 For the notion of Chalcedon as symbol, not concept, see The Theology of Karl
Barth, p. 115.
density are the Christian vision of the redemptive event at the center of
reality and the history of its interpretation. But the vision at dogma's
center never loses its area of shadow, that which is seen only as unseen.
Understood in a genuinely Maximan way, then, the Chalcedonian formu
la functions as a dense knot of implication, both visionary and interpre
ti ve, that demands unravelling. Maximus can, therefore, be read as work
ing simultaneously on two fronts which, though analytically separable,
in practice overlap. Or put in other words, the narrowly dogmatic ele
ment, that is, interpretive element, cannot be fully separated out from the
visionary, even in those cases where Maximus seems most clearly to be
operating on the logical-conceptual piane. An obvious corollary of this
position is that it would be reductive in the extreme, for instance, to re
gard the exigence behind Maximus's argument with Pyrrhus to be the
formai logicai one of the relation of will to nature47. More is at stake, and
especially if we are persuaded by Newman's bon mot to the effect that no
one ever died for a syllogism. The position can be illustrated by reflec
tion on the relationship of core Maximan categories such as perichoresis
and the communication of properties with the Chalcedonian insistence
on the unconfused (asynchutos) status of the natures in the hypostatic
union (LC, 19-20,171-172)48.
The cipher of perichoresis is an originai contribution to christologi
cal clarification that translates and balances the Chalcedonian concept of
asynchutos, for it suggests reciprocity between natures that otherwise
might be regarded as hermetically sealed from each other (LC, 20)49. But,
as Balthasar is aware, and other Maximus scholars have confirmed50,
perichoresis refers directly not to natures but their energies. Thus, inter
penetration is directly of energies which, nonetheless, maintain their in
tegrity. Notwithstanding this resolute opposition to monenergism, or pre
cisely because of it, Maximus sees no overriding reason why Pseudo
Dionysius's famous expression in Epistle 4 concerning the "new thean
dric energy" (he kaine theandrike energeia) in Christ should be interpret
ed in a monenergistic fashion51. It is part of Maximus's argument to point
to the phrasing and note the absence of a word of extension such as
47 Francois Marie Léthel advances an essentially Balthasarian position in Théologie

de l'agonie du Chrìst (Paris: Beauchesne, 1979).
48 See Thunberg's exemplary analysis in Microcosm and Mediator, pp. 21-36.
49 See also Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, pp. 24, 29.
50 See Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, np. 31-32.
51 Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediatoi, p. 35.
248 CYRIL O'REGAN
"one" connected with the word "new". It is also part of Maximus's argu
ment in Ambigua to resist any Apollinarian suggestion that the "new" ef
fectively means the "single", as the unit of combination, which would
connote the abolition and/or absorption of the erstwhile human energy.
The new energy is a synthesis of energies that neither reduces the divine
to the human, nor sublates the human into the divine. Qua synthesis, this
new energy, therefore, expresses the hypostasis as a whole. Or to evoke
the language of tropos hyparxeos, that is, mode of existence (LC, 157
64) — Balthasar's personal favorite in Kosmische Liturgie — one may
consider the hypostatic union to consist of a synthetic "mode of exis
tence" uniting two modes of existence (tropoi hyparxeos)52. In the con
text of this unity interpenetration involves a genuine communication of
energies or even modes of existence.
It is important for Balthasar that in his understanding of perichore
sis Maximus moves beyond a semantic interpretation of the notion of
communication of properties that was arguably one strain in the Cap
padocians53. Thus, while Maximus seems to be operating within the se
mantic horizon when, in the typically conditional language of this field,
he speaks of a Christian being able to speak of the divine acts of Christ
in a human mode (anthropiktos) and the human acts of Christ in a divine
mode (theikos), he has in fact gone beyond the semantic horizon proper
and is speaking ontologically. Despite its conditional appearance, the
language of communication is, in a real sense, therefore, quite uncondi
tional. Maximus's move here is not only significant in his own post
Chalcedonian christological field, and in the Greek theological field in
general, but for the history of theology as a whole. For Maximus goes
through with what is often only a gesture in a number of Western theolo
gies, a gesture which runs out of steam when the difficult issue of how
one can attribute the suffering of Christ to the divine is raised. Not dodg
ing this hugely important issue, Maximus clearly suggests that it is possi
ble, maybe even necessary, to speak "in some way" of the passibility of
God. Evidence for this can be found in Mystagogia where Maximus
speaks of God suffering mysticallf \ an assertion made in the context of
52 See Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, p. 36.

53 How important the ontological view of the communication of properties is for
Balthasar is addressed by Gerard O'Hanlon. See his The Immutability of God in the
Theology ofHans Urs von Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp.
42 ff, 133.
54 Mystagogia, 24, PG 91, 715b.
an interpretation of 2 Corinthians 8: 9, a passage of more than minimal

importance to Balthasar55. The word "mystical" points to the fact that
passibility cannot be attributed in anything like an unrestricted way to
the divine. One reason why such unrestricted attribution is impossible is
quite simply that, as a Chalcedonian theologian, Maximus will resist the
Theopaschite as much as the Nestorian. Maximus wishes simultaneously
to honor the apathetic axiom that God does not suffer, and yet say that
God suffers in the enhypostatic Christ56. It would be easy to say that
Maximus involved himself in an antimony, as it would be easy to say
that Maximus is simply expressing the wish, maybe even wish-fullfill
ment, to harmonize Gospel realism with Platonic metaphysics. But the
real situation is only bolderdized by such facile outs. Maximus is unwill
ing to trade the apathetic axiom not out of bad metaphysical habit, but
because it is the standard way of blocking the reduction of God to the
human level that not only compromises divine sovereignty but also puts
at risk the overcoming of suffering and imperfection. And yet, at the
same time, the axiom can and indeed often does its work ali too well,
such that to suggest that suffering impinges on God in any way seems to
be a contradiction in terms. Thus, if it is trae to say with Balthasar that
there is an unignorable theologia crucis component in the Greek tradi
tion and in Maximus in particular, this view will not issue in the theolo
gy of "the suffering God"57. The resistance to precisely such a possibility,
if Léthel is right58, could be read off from the monothelite debate, where
the key disputed texts, i.e., John 6:38 ("I have come down from heaven,
not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me") and Luke
22:42 ("Not my will, but thine de done") not insignificantly belong to
the passion narrative59. To insist, as Maximus does, that "my will" refers
to the human rather than the divine will is to locate the human as the fun
damental site of obedience and suffering, as would have seemed only
naturai for a Chalcedonian theologian. Yet, it does not preclude, as we
55 See TD2,181; also GL7,264, 304,428,429.

56 Balthasar seems to be suggesting this reading of Maximus in Mysterium Paschale,
pp. 22-23.
57 See especially TD2,9, 46-47, 62,125; MP, vii-viii.
58 LÉthel, Théologie de l'agonie du Christ, pp. 7-9.
59 For the importance of these passages in the monothelite controversy, see Jaroslav
Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. Volume 2.
The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600-1700) (Chicago and London: University of
Chicago Press, 1974), p. 68. For the importance of these passages in the work of
Balthasar, see GL7, 323; also MP, 72 for die Lukan passage, MP, 105 for the Johannine
passage.
250 CYRIL O'REGAN
have seen, an attempi in and through the ciphers of perichoresis, tropos

hyparxeos and communication of properties to suggest a view that more
nearly corresponds to biblical figuration, especially as this achieves its
fulfillment in the ontological claims that emerge in Paul and John60. The
basic problem, for Maximus, is not simply the lack of a truly explanatory
vocabulary in which to speak of suffering "in some way" — though this
is indeed a problem — but every bit as much the problem whether such
an explanatory vocabulary is either possible, or really advisable, given
systemic limits to our knowledge. That is, put another way, any set of ex
planatory concepts would infringe upon an ineluctable, i.e., the axiom of
mystery of the incarnation and the redemptive event. As we will see
quite shortly, Balthasar's own constructive theologia crucis position
bears a stunning resemblance to the Maximan attempi to steer between
the Scylla of the "classical" view, completely determined by the apathet
ic axiom — with Platonism usually being cited as the major culprit —
and the Charybdis of the "suffering God" view which Balthasar, like the
Church Fathers tends to identify with a "mythological" view61. More
over, Balthasar sticks as far as possible to an essentially Maximan frame
of explanation, employing most of the same notions, and yet at the same
time suggesting the constitutive inability of a conceptual language, in
deed any language, to render the divine mystery adequately.
Balthasar's own constructive attempi at a Maximus-like mediating
position definitely reflects his view that the history of theology witnesses
to two decidedly different but equally flawed views, the classical-philo
sophical view characteristic of the patristic and medieval periods, which
is underwritten by the axiom of divine immutability, and the modem,
more kenotic view that has its ultimate point of origin in Luther, but me
diated to the modem theological tradition via Hegel62. Nevertheless,
Balthasar is ultimately less exercised about determining historical trajec
tory than making an intervention that cuts against the grain of influential
contemporary theological positions. If, on one flank, Moltmann's theolo
60 See especially, TD2, 208-209.

61 By using the word "mythological", Balthasar means to suggest a number of con
nections. Perhaps first and foremost is the connection with the dying God motif that figu
res such as Bultmann diagnosed as a background for the Gospel of John. But it also means
any theogonic view of the divine, where "suffering" is assumed to be ingredient in the self
defmition of the divine. While Balthasar has in mind the Hegelian tradition, its proximate
ancestors and successore, he perhaps also has in mind patristic attacks on the theogonic
view of the divine, the most influential of which were the Augustinian and Irenaean.
62 MP, 51-52, 59-60.
gy of the crucified God represents one contemporary position disputed

by Balthasar, on another it is Rahner's support of the classical version of
the Deus impassibilis. While this second dispute was initiated by
Balthasar®, Rahner was provoked into criticizing Balthasar on two
counts: (1) Balthasar's theology represents a repristination of a peculiar
ly agonie neo-Chalcedonianism64; (2) Balthasar's theology lacks the kind
of epistemic humility typical of modem transcendental thought in gener
al, and transcendental Thomism in particular. Only Balthasar's resistance
to the first judgment will be dealt with in this section. His resistance to
the second of these judgments will come up for discussion in the third
and concluding section of the paper.
That Rahner makes the charge of neo-Chalcedonian repristination
does not oblige the interpreter to regard this as Rahner's considered
reading of Balthasar's position. First, though Rahner is aquainted with
some of Balthasar's writings, it is not evident that he has read the kind
of technical christological discussion Balthasar carries on in his Max
imus text and also in Theo-Drama. Second, and relatedly, it may very
well be the case that what provokes Rahner into labelling Balthasar a
"Neochalcedonian" is less Balthasar's reprise of the technical machin
ery of post-Chalcedonian christological thought than his reprise of the
mythologem of the Triduum mortis, which if it has biblical warrant,
achieves exemplary expression in Nyssa and finally in Maximus. Stili,
whatever the provocation, Rahner is concemed that Balthasar seems to
be entertaining a christological position that deviates from Chalcedon
and which in his view finds an expression in neo-Chalcedonianism.
And neo-Chalcedonian thought constitutes a regression from the Chal
cedonian synthesis in that it fails to maintain the separation of natures,
thereby foifeiting the integrity of both the human and the divine, and
their respective characteristics of passibility and impassibility. Though
Theo-Drama is thoroughly engaged in the refutation of the apathetic
axiom supported by Rahner, only indirect refutation of the neo-Chal
cedonian charge is available. In Theo-Drama 2-3 Balthasar makes it
63 The dispute opens in Cordula oder Ernstfall (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1966).
64 For discussion of this charge, see John Saward, The Mysteries of March: Hans Urs
von Balthasar on the Incarnation and Easter (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of
America Press, 1990), pp. 9-10; also O'Hanlon, The Immutability ofGod, pp. 48,133-135.
No more than Maximus does Balthasar accept a version of CyriTs mia physis formula that
is often used as a marker for neo-Chalcedonian thought. Against this view, Balthasar
always insists on two natures. The issue for Balthasar is whether reflection should solely
focus on nature and not on the personal locus of the natures.
252 CYRIL O'REGAN
clear that the post-Chalcedonian position of Maximus that is at the cen

ter of his enterprise (TD2, 208-209) is neither eccentric nor regressive
with respect to Chalcedon. Rather, it represents Chalcedon's realization
(TD2, 201)65. The implicit point here is one Balthasar made explicitly in
Kosmische Liturgie. The post-Chalcedonian thought of Maximus in par
ticular in fact signals the overcoming of the neo-Chalcedonian tendency
to conceive of the natures of Christ in unitive terms. The resolute
dyophysite tendency of Maximus's thought guarantees the kind of fi
delity to Chalcedon that Rahner enjoins. Moreover, such commitment
requires that the apathetic axiom cannot be wholly abandoned.
Balthasar's main point, however, is that this cannot be the last word,
and that Maximus's elaboration of the meaning of Chalcedon through
the constructs of perichoresis, tropos tes hyparxeos and communication
of properties is ecclesially warranted. The purpose of Chalcedon is far
from exhausted in the implied defense of divine impassibility and the
metaphysical God. Chalcedon is ultimately about the God of Jesus
Christ as focused in the passion narrative, and the function of the Maxi
man battery of constructs and symbols is to prevent Chalcedon from
losing its basis and/or alignment with the view articulated in the texts
of the New Testament. And for Balthasar these texts point to the skan
dalon of the cross. It is the ultimate centrality of the cross that allows
the theologian to make the portentous claim:
Ali 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
('TD2,120-121).
Of course, in making this point Balthasar is moving directly from

the christological to the trinitarian sphere, a move that many theologians,
both East and West, resist. Rahner is certainly to be found in their num
ber. This brings us to Balthasar's retrieval and development of post
Chalcedonian trinitarian thought.
Concerning Balthasar's explicit treatment of Maximus's trinitarian
thought in Kosmische Liturgie there have been a number of criticisms:
65 See also Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory. Volume 3: Dramatis

Personae: Persons in Christ, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1992), ρ. 215. Balthasar admits, however, that post-Chalcedonian thought also moves
beyond the formalism of Chalcedon. See pp. 157-158.
(1) The christological element is emphasized at the expense of the trini

tarian; (2) Within the trinitarian context tropos hyparxeos is emphasized
at the expense of the more important and more frequently occurring, hy
postasis; (3) There exists a systemic devaluation of the apophatic milieu
of the Trinity. It should be granted that there is some justice to each of
these criticisms. Yet Balthasar admits of a measure of exculpation. With
regard to the first criticism it should be said that it was never Balthasar's
point in Kosmische Liturgie to deny that for Maximus, as indeed for the
whole of Greek theology, the Trinity is both the ultimate mystery and
the ultimate explanatory horizon for ali other mysteries, including espe
cially the christological mystery or mysteries. Indeed, in the christologi
cal controversy that engaged his attention Maximus drew upon cate
gories that had the Trinity as their determining context. While the con
cepì of hypostasis was clearly the centrai one, it was not, as far as
Balthasar is concerned, the only one; nor was the view of the Trinity im
mune from being informed by the use of trinitarian concepts in the
christological horizon. A variety of conceptual feedback was in opera
tion. It is, perhaps, a fundamental Maximan lesson that the trinitarian
and christological horizons are not immunized from each other. More
over, it is a point with Balthasar to suggest that Maximus continues the
vitally important Cappadocian trinitarian tradition, while adding some
thing of his own. And for him, both emphases are equally important. In
stressing Maximus's continuity with the Cappadocians Balthasar wants
to stress the importance of the historical relation and to indicate that
Maximus represents the apical point of a larger tradition that it would
serve Western theology well not to ignore. Yet, for Balthasar, there is
genuine development, a development most clearly indicated in his ap
peal to the notion of tropos hyparxeos.
Though Piret66, for example, behaves as if Balthasar's focus on
this notion implies that he has not fully grasped the more centrai role
of hypostasis, the fact is that Balthasar does not really regard the for
mer notion as a substitution for the latter, but rather as its supplement.
Specifically, what the former notion does is supplement the definitive
Cappadocian move away from a static view of the Trinity, where, ei
ther overtly or covertly, ousia is primary, by bringing out not only the
individuality of the trinitarian hypostases but their dynamism and fun
6 Piret, pp. 21-25.
254 CYRIL O'REGAN
damental openness to each other. What Balthasar is essentially refer

ring to here is that, in his view, the excess of Maximus's view over
the Cappadocian consists in his envisioning of the perichoresis of the
trinitarian persons. And it is in and through his notion of tropos hy
parxeos that Maximus relays his perichoretic understanding. Though
Balthasar does not develop the point explicitly, he suggests that a ma
jor achievement of Maximus is to have seen clearly into the divine
communio. Balthasar explicitly states, however, that Maximan supple
mentation contributes toward seeing that the Trinity is not an object,
but rather the dynamic life par excellence that is the origin and goal
of Christian vision and life. With respect to this life Balthasar avows
with Maximus that the Trinity belongs to the horizon of "theology"
and, thus, does not admit of real comprehension. But it is precisely
not his intention to suggest that in Maximus there exists an ontologi
cal distinction between the orders of theology and the economy on the
one hand and the apophatic and the kataphatic on the other. After ali,
it is one of Balthasar's fundamental points that Maximus realizes the
perfect balance between the apophatic and kataphatic. Evidence of
breakdown of anything like a rigid distinction between theology and
economy is found, Balthasar believes, in Maximus's pointing to Christ
as the revelation of the mystery of the Trinity. And if Balthasar is
right in thinking that at the center of Maximan christological reflection
stands the cross, then it is the cross that opens up the nature of trini
tarian reality. Herein, for Balthasar lies the exemplarity of the post
Chalcedonian tradition and its challenge to contemporary theology
East and West. Yet the revelation of God as the God of excessive love
in the cross is not such as to become a matter of knowledge. If God
cannot remain in Christianity the unknown God, the revelation of God
in Christ ne ver ceases to be a mystery. In Theo-Drama 2 Balthasar of
fers the Maximan rendition of Dionysian apophaticism:
The cross emits what Dionysius calls "the brightest darkness of God"; his
light illuminates both too much and too little (TD2,63).
The "too little" is cruciai. Knowledge of the trinitarian God, even as

revealed through and in Christ, is always limited. But limitation is not
annihilation; the gestures of the economy cannot be rescinded. The Trini
ty is rendered in a perspicuous way on the cross. But perspicuity is no
guarantee of conceptual or linguistic control, for what is revealed ex
ceeds our power to grasp and communicate adequately.
III. Critiques ofSymphonic Theology
Needless to say, Balthasarian retrieval is not immune from criticism.

The range of criticism, actual and possible, is large: From shake-of-the
head surprise that Balthasar would believe that anything so traditional
and arcane is intrinsically and critically valuable to reaffirmation of the
cliché of Neoplatonic infiltration and corruption; from deep concern re
garding the quotient of epistemic reserve illustrated by post-Chalcedon
ian thought — even if the apophatic ratio were considerably higher than
Balthasar suggests it is — to objections against the totalizing tendency of
symphonic style. Here we will deal with just two objections, the argu
ment that the symphonic holism retrieved by Balthasar is of a Neoplaton
ically degenerate type, and the Rahnerian reservation that the recommen
dation of this kind of theology involves promoting an illicit end-run
around issues of epistemology that must be dealt with responsibly.
Everything in Balthasar's work suggests that his espousal of post
Chalcedonian theology influenced by Neoplatonism has the benefit of
interrogative distance. In each case a theologian is asked the question
whether theological construal is governed by something outside the ec
clesial rendering of tradition faithful to biblical witness. In effect, each
theologian is asked the question whether the appropriation of Neoplaton
ism is criticai or uncritical. The question is thus an empirical question,
admitting a yes or no answer. This being so, an interpreter can change his
or her mind, be persuaded, for instance, that an appropriation is in fact
criticai where once it was thought to be otherwise. We have just ob
served a case of such a change of mind in Balthasar's treatment of Pseu
do-Dionysius. It is, then, not only the results of Balthasar's actual read
ing of post-Chalcedonian theology, but his hermeneutic strategy, that
contests the view, popular in evangelical circles since the Reformation,
that any association of Christian with Neoplatonic thought represents a
corruption. Such a view, according to Balthasar, constitutes a prejudice
in the pejorative sense. For him no discussion, conducted on the level of
the a posteriori, will bring in the verdict that every species of Christian
Neoplatonism substitutes philosophy for Christianity, is pantheistic in
orientation, posits a monadic basis to reality while continuing to talk a
trinitarian language, and is, finally, thoroughly unchristological. This
constitutes the front line Balthasarian defense of Christian Neoplaton
ism. The second line of defense consists in reexamining Neoplatonism it
self. If it is important to understand that it is an empirical issue as to how
much deformation Christianity suffers in contact with Neoplatonism, it is
256 CYRIL O'REGAN
equally important that one understand the nature of the species of Neo
platonism that is gaining admittance. Here again a priori assumptions
will not do. Neoplatonism can have, and historically has had, a host of
negative effects. To construe it, however, as in principle inhospitable, as
if it can only do damage to Christianity, is to do it a disservice. While not
wishing to sanitize, Balthasar believes that Neoplatonism deserves a
measure of rehabilitation. In the fourth volume of The Glory of the Lord,
for example, Balthasar defends Plotinus against the charge of pantheism
and argues that Plotinus defends the transcendence of the One {GIÀ,
280-313). A similar argument can be made for Plato's to agathon (GL4,
177-180). Of course, as Balthasar knows well, the Neoplatonic One is
not the Christian Trinity, and Balthasar would likely agree with Lossky
about the nature and extent of the revision involved in the move from a
Neoplatonic to a Christian world-view. He would likely also agree with
Meyendorff that Neoplatonism as such cannot think the incarnation67,
and that if the incarnation is to regulate Neoplatonism, the latter has to
be reconfigured. Balthasar's criticai rehabilitation of Neoplatonism de
serves more space than we have available here. We need to say some
thing, however, about the second of our two objections before we bring
this paper to a dose.
In section two we dealt with the first prong of a two-prong Rahner
ian objection to Balthasar's enterprise. Here we deal with the second,
more epistemological prong, namely the viability and intelligibility of a
retrieval of a style of theology, fundamentally more visionary and cos
mological than anthropological in orientation. Within the Rahnerian field
of assumption, the visionary style of theology championed by Balthasar,
and recommended for retrieval, is judged to suffer from a form of episte
mological pride. Balthasar is read as proposing a kind of theognosia that
is acceptable neither on Thomist nor Kantian grounds, for such a pre
sumption of knowledge about things divine, in either the economy or in
the divine in itself, would be "pre-criticai" in the pejorative sense of the
term. Such aesthetic, or cosmological thinking, is doubly regressive: (1)
It is unable (and unwilling) to essay a rational justification of belief; (2)
and it irresponsibly ignores the turn to the self and the inquiry into the
conditions of the possibility of religious discourse that is the mark of ali
criticai thought. Balthasar can be understood to question both sides of
the Rahnerian objection. He replies to Rahner's transcendental demand
7 See Christ in Eastern Thought, p. 81.
by raising the question of the locus of theology, specifically, whether the

ology takes place between the church and the broader society with its in
dependent canons of explanation or within the church, that is, as a dis
tinct discipline, but ultimately one ecclesial activity among others. He
decides, of course, that the enterprise of theology is formally designated
by Anselm's fides quaerens intellectum, and that no transcendental enter
prise materially satisfies this designation. Theology is not and cannot be
identified with fundamental theology. Theology is a confessional enter
prise; moreover, one that does not eschew edification.
With regard to the positing of the anthropological turn Balthasarian
criticism is twofold. He questions both the necessity of the anthropologi
cal turn and its results. A major issue at the heart of his questioning the
necessity of the anthropological regime is the nature of the canons of jus
tification. Certainly, from Balthasar's point of view, no explicit or even
implicit historicist justification suffices. One can no more justify a theo
logical style by appealing to its currency than dismiss one because it has
fallen into desuetude. While Balthasar is convinced that problems arise
in the cosmological manifold of the post-Chalcedonian theology, these
problems are best addressed and assessed within the tradition. The sec
ond issue is simply whether the modem anthropological dispensation has
resulted in a rich theology. In Balthasar's judgment the results are disap
pointing. Not only is modem theology "thin" from an ecclesial point of
view, but it is also effectively cut off from its roots in worship and tradi
tion. For theology not to have the symphonic sweep, instanced in one ex
emplary way by post-Chalcedonian thought, is for it to exchange formai
for material coherence. Hand in hand with this goes the sacrifice of the
polyphony that is the inevitable accompaniment of the symphonic
modality which is always and everywhere intratextual. Again, modem
anthropological style insists on system as a heuristic goal and diagnoses
symphonic modes of thought as being loose and unsystematic. From a
Balthasarian perspective, however, it is the anthropological orientation
that has in fact surrendered the systematic point of view, for the vision
ary ground for connection having been lost, anthropological orientation
is not able to reconstitute the field in the rich and variegated way of the
premodem symphonic theology, nor presumably the postmodem sym
phonic version that Balthasar wishes to propose.
It is, of course, crucially important to insist on the postmodem
character of Balthasar's own construction and the relation between
his work and his retrieval of post-Chalcedonian thought. Balthasar
undestands his own work as surpassing the cosmological regime.
258 CYRIL O'REGAN
While he is supremely interested that his agapaic rendition of an in

clusive trinitarian reading of reality has the scope of the cosmological
regime and its accompanying aesthetic commitment, he is certain that
it leaves neither fully intact. The cosmological regime must be left be
hind, and not for the reason that after Copernicus such a picture is left
without scientific support. Rather, the grounds for rejection are intra
mural. The cosmological picture is inadequate on Christian grounds in
that it fails to promote the perception of a dynamic divine that in its
transcendence is immanent to the cosmos and where Christ is the
point of coincidence. Demythologization is, therefore, christianly pro
voked. And if Balthasar is correct about his reading of post-Chal
cedonian Greek thought, this demythologization is already at work in
the milieu of Christian Neoplatonism. Maximus's thought in particular
is eminently worthy of retrieval, for it shows clearly how critique can
be a moment of visionary thought as it adjusts itself to the givens of
revelation. Balthasar is persuaded that the marginalization of the aes
thetic thought of the patristic period in modernity by conceptualist and
anthropological orientations is theologically unjustified even in cases
where one can confirm Neoplatonic contamination. In contaminated
cases such as Origen, for instance, there may be much worth rescuing
from the oblivion of the past. Ali the more so this is the case with
post-Chalcedonian modes of thought where the reflexive moment of
criticism is in operation, in Maximus definitely, and, plausibly, in
Pseudo-Dionysius. Genuine retrieval, then, involves the making pre
sent of a criticai aesthetic mode of thought that shows a way beyond
the dominant modem strategies, and invites reconfiguration and Chris
tian radicalization.
But post-Chalcedonian thought is of interest to modem or post
modem theology because of a second emendation of Neoplatonic aes
thetics. In addition to the christological refocusing of aesthetics we out
lined in section one, Christian fidelity encourages post-Chalcedonian
thought to push beyond the boundaries of even theological aesthetics. If
within the fteld of post-Chalcedonian thought the cross comes again to
be definitional of Christ's saving purpose, as it does above ali in Max
imus, then aesthetics is on its way to dramatics. Moreover, the cross is
not dramatic simply in the Irenaean sense that it is there that is found
Christ's victory over the powers of sin and death. This is an ingredient
in the post-Chalcedonian frame of Maximus, but the mythologem of the
Cross is theologically exegeted in such a way that the Cross sums up
the mission of Jesus as this is displayed in his entire public ministry.
This mission is nothing less than the correspondence of his will to the
will of the Father, a vision that has to be seen as underwriting the more
dogmatic pronouncements of dyothelitism. Thus theodramatics of a
Maximan vein has two registers. One register is the dialogue between
God and God's other that is the condition of drama, the focus of which
drama is Jesus of Nazareth. The other register is the Cross as the real
ization of the relation of Jesus to the Father, a realization in which ali
traces of the glory of God in Christ disappear, where form gives way to
formlessness, and vision to blindness. This theodramatic conception is
recommended to modernity which fails the dramatic, as it fails the aes
thetic test. The criticism is especially pointed in the case of Rahner.
Without expressly making the point that Rahner's rendering of Chal
cedon is a corollary of his discovering that it categorially satisfies the
transcendental conditions of an absolute saviour, Balthasar responds to
Rahner's reading of Chalcedon as reductive: Chalcedon is read outside
its interpretive relation to the narrative of redemption. Post-Chalcedon
ian theology, therefore, supplies precisely that supplement necessary to
resist interpreting Chalcedon in a metaphysical fashion, that is, with the
exclusive interest of preserving the separation of natures that is the Pla
tonic legacy.
It goes without saying that post-Chalcedonian theology need not be
swallowed whole. Balthasar is always aware, especially in the key areas
of Christ and the Trinity, how post-Chalcedonian theology can be im
proved on. Even on the highly favorable account of Pseudo-Dionysius in
GL2, christological density and trinitarian clarity are in need of improve
ment. Historically speaking, Maximus represents just such a completion.
But Maximus himself is not unsurpassable. The Confessor might have
thought even more deeply about the mission of Christ and Christ's suf
fering than he did, and most certainly might have attained a higher de
gree of integration of christology and trinitarian doctrine. He does not
plumb the depths of the trinitarian presuppositions of the suffering of
God in Christ, pursue what might be called the analogy of suffering
avoided by the classical tradition and subverted by the identity tendency
that haunts modem theology under the influence of Hegel. Post-Chal
cedonian theology calls for supplementation, for its postmodem develop
ment. This means finally that a retrieval of this species of self-critical
theology will always be a criticai retrieval.
Yale University Cyril O'Regan

New Haven
260 CYRIL O'REGAN
RÉSUMÉ
L'essai étudie l'usage que fait von Balthasar de la pensée grecque post
chalcédonienne. Balthasar recommande à l'attention de la théologie occidentale
le style "symphonique" de la pensée grecque, sa concentration christologique et
son caractère trinitaire. Trois centres d'intérèt occupent la recherche. Le premier
est le problème de l'extension de l'usage de la pensée grecque post-Chalcédoni
enne: Balthasar se contente-t-il de recommander Maxime le Confesseur, ou
montre-t-il un intérèt similaire à la figure emblématique du Pseudo-Denys? On
montre ensuite que, si pour Balthasar le mérite de la théologie grecque post
Chalcédonienne tient à sa propension à l'esthétique, cela n'exclut pas une doc
trine christologique et trinitaire fouillée: dans le cas de Maxime par exemple
l'une méne à l'autre. Dans la troisième partie, contre différentes objections qui
ont été soulevées, entre autres par K. Rahner, on défend l'emploi critique que
Balthasar fait de ses sources: la pensée post-Chalcédonienne est traitée comme
point de départ de la réflexion, non comme une réponse théologique définitive.

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Von Balthasar and Thick Retrieval: Post-Chalcedonian Symphonic Theology

Von Balthasar and Thick Retrieval:

For resourcement theology the aim of retrieval is neither the antiquar

ly so in the case of Greek post-Chalcedonian theologians —- gives proof, if

I. Post-Chalcedonian Greek Thought: From Pseudo-Dionysius or

While it is definitely the case that it is Maximus who receives the

sius is either interpretively invisible or wholly without consequence for

8 The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Volume 2. Studies in Theological

mitments. While Balthasar admits that Pseudo-Dionysius amends Neo

reservations respecting Pseudo-Dionysius in Kosmische Liturgie pre

termination in Christian theology of trinitarian supposition and christo

accent and, arguably, helps in preventing contemplation's purely theoret

own revisionary genius, but because they explicate a dimension of Pseu

Neoplatonism and Christianity. Indeed, nothing in Balthasar's work sug

24 This view seems to be suggested in GIÀ, 319-320.

remains absolute (LC, 20)27. Though Maximus is prepared to be as daring

Christ is a Christ of suffering as well as a Christ of Glory, a Christ will

32 Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery ofEaster, trans. Aidan Nichols OP (Edinburgh:

soteriological freight, nor that such a release provides a constitutional,

40 For this point, see Naduvilekut, Christus derHeilsweg, pp. 163-164.

that in Kosmische Liturgie Balthasar's attention to the cosmic and an

II. Maximus and Dogmatic-Dramatic Post-Chalcedonian Theology

No account of Maximus can afford to ignore the dogmatic interest

43 In Mysterium Paschale, for instance, Balthasar is clear that Maximus's mytho

matic crystallization of the broader, more inchoate field of spiritual ap

47 Francois Marie Léthel advances an essentially Balthasarian position in Théologie

52 See Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator, p. 36.

an interpretation of 2 Corinthians 8: 9, a passage of more than minimal

55 See TD2,181; also GL7,264, 304,428,429.

have seen, an attempi in and through the ciphers of perichoresis, tropos

60 See especially, TD2, 208-209.

gy of the crucified God represents one contemporary position disputed

clear that the post-Chalcedonian position of Maximus that is at the cen

Of course, in making this point Balthasar is moving directly from

65 See also Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory. Volume 3: Dramatis

(1) The christological element is emphasized at the expense of the trini

6 Piret, pp. 21-25.

damental openness to each other. What Balthasar is essentially refer

The "too little" is cruciai. Knowledge of the trinitarian God, even as

III. Critiques ofSymphonic Theology

Needless to say, Balthasarian retrieval is not immune from criticism.

7 See Christ in Eastern Thought, p. 81.

by raising the question of the locus of theology, specifically, whether the

While he is supremely interested that his agapaic rendition of an in

Yale University Cyril O'Regan

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