Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell by Alyssa Lyra Pitstick (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 161 Light in Darkness: Hans Urs van Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ's Descent into Hell. By ALYSSA LYRA PITSTICK. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007. Pp. 458. $55.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-08028 -0755-7. Alyssa Pitstick's Light in Darkness is the most recent in a spate of books and articles calling into question the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar from the more traditional and specifically Thomistic side of Catholic theology. What sets this book apart, however, is both the severity of the questioning and the significant publicity which it has received since its publication. Ostensibly the book is concerned with Balthasar's theology of Christ's descent into hell, clearly the most controversial aspect of his theology, but soon enough the reader realizes that Pitstick sees the descent as the tail that wags the theological dog of Balthasar's entire project. Furthermore, Pitstick maintains that Balthasar's rejection of the traditional theology of the descent is both knowing and intentional, thereby casting a shadow over his entire contribution to twentiethcentury Catholic theology. Light in Darkness is divided into three parts: the first presents the traditional theology of Christ's descent into hell; the second offers a thoroughgoing analysis of Balthasar's theology of the descent, especially as this comes to bear upon his Trinitarian theology; and the third raises some general conclusions concerning Balthasar's theology as a whole in the light of what has gone before. To restate the thesis with greater specificity: Balthasar's theology of descent is out of keeping and incompatible with that ofthe Catholic tradition insofar as it sees the descent, not so much in terms of a victory tour into the "limbo of the Fathers" after the triumph over sin accomplished on the cross, but as the final step of Christ's entering into the human condition in order to heal it from within. In the first part, Pitstick offers a reading of the traditional theology of the descent based on Scripture, the Eastern Fathers (and Eastern iconography), Augustine, Aquinas and, much more briefly, Nicholas of Cusa. Her contention is that the tradition understood "the harrowing of hell" in two ways, both of which are incompatible with the approach of Balthasar. First, in the traditional view, hell is already divided into areas so that, even before the death and resurrection of Christ, there is a "hell of the damned" and a "limbo of the [righteous] Fathers." Christ only descended into the limbo of the Fathers. Second, Christ's suffering for and victory over sin is accomplished already on Good Friday, so that the descent is simply an announcement of that victory-a victory that leads to rejoicing for the righteous and further shame for the damned. It is also important, according to Pitstick, that the descent is seen as glorious in the "face value" sense of that word. In all of these areas, it is concluded, Balthasar fails to uphold the traditional doctrine of the descent. The middle section of the book is much longer and involves a thorough reading of Balthasar on the descent, first in general, but then in terms of the role of each person of the Trinity. The Father, out of love for the world, sends his Son precisely in order to heal the human condition from within, including its 162 BOOK REVIEWS state of godforsakeness. In order to do this full justice, Balthasar must take the claim in the Second Letter to the Corinthians that "[God] made Him to be sin ..."more radically than the tradition has been typically willing to take it. The Father's role, in Pitstick's reading, is to place the sin of the world onto the Son so that he can overcome it through obedient love. The Son's role is willingly to consent to this mission, which extends even to the godforsakeness of those in hell. Because the Son's mission is rooted in his prior procession within the Trinity-to which he also must consent, in Balthasar's view-he is able to enter into the human condition in this radical way, without in any way jeopardizing the divine immutability or...