The Ethical Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar by Christopher Steck, S.J. (review)

494 BOOK REVIEWS The Ethical Thought ofHans Urs von Balthasar. By CHRISTOPHER STECK, S.J. New York: Crossroad, 2001. Pp. 217. $35.00 (paper). ISBN 0-82451915 -9. Christopher Steck's book is interesting in a number of ways. It is interesting in itself-clearly and engagingly written as well as full of insights-but it is also interesting for what it indicates about the place of Balthasar in contemporary Catholic theology. This book in some ways signals the long-deferred "mainstreaming" of Balthasar among English-speaking Catholic theologians, his liberation from the ghetto of "antimodernism" or "conservatism" where some writers had interred him. As such, it offers hope that Catholic theology is moving beyond the misleading categories of "liberal" and "conservative." Steck has written a book that might serve as an introduction to Balthasar for ethicists, but could equally well serve as an introduction for a more general audience. Though Steck focuses on issues that might be of particular concern to those in the guild of ethics, such as questions of human agency, virtues, and natural law, he also recognizes that part of the importance of Balthasar is his refusal to separate theology and ethics. One cannot understand Balthasar's ethical thought without having a grasp of his entire theological vision. Thus, one must become familiar with what he says about Trinity andCliiistology before one can even begin to approach what he has to say about human agency. Much of the book is devoted to topics that many theological ethicists have not thought about (in a professional way) since seminary. Steck gives such lucid exposition of Balthasar's Trinitarian thought and his notion of "mission" that even those ethicists whose theological tools are a bit rusty will be able to follow the considerable complexities of Balthasar's thought. At the same time, Steck is more than simply an expositor of Balthasar; he presents and argues for a specific synthesis of Balthasar's thought with regard to its use in Christian ethical reflection. On his account, Balthasar presents us with a variation on "divine command ethics," a form of ethics that, Steck notes, has been "traditionally viewed as antithetical to Catholic moral commitments" (1). This approach, which he plausibly attributes to the influence of Barth on Balthasar, stresses "obedience" rather than "fulfillment," and thus seems to run counter to the teleological approach found in either the virtue-based ethics of Thomism or the maximizing of goods of proportionalism. Yet Steck argues that Balthasar effects a transformation of divine command ethics-what he calls an "Ignatian reconfiguration" (152)-that brings together the poles of obedience and fulfillment. This involves a "contemplation of the world in light of the gospel," which is "afundamental practice ofIgnatius' Spiritual Exercises" (ibid.). In other words, the divine command is mediated to use through worldly structures, which must be subjected to the discerning contemplation that seeks to know ultimate human fulfillment. We might think of Balthasar as seeking to reconcile two contrasting pairs: the "vertical" and "horizontal" and the "universal" and "particular." In both cases, Christ is the key to the reconciliation. In him, the vertical and the horizontal BOOK REVIEWS 495 meet, and we contemplate the universal in the particular. The divine command that comes to us calls us to the human fulfillment that we contemplate in Christ as the appearing of divine glory. As Steck puts it, Balthasar makes "the bipolarity between human agency and earthly goods participate in and mediate vibrantly the encounter between the human person and God who approaches us in Christ" (153). Steck recognizes that Balthasar is part of the revolution in Catholic theology flowing from de Lubac and others, which sought a closer integration of nature and grace, and which has had a considerable impact in the field of ethics. But he also recognizes that many Catholic ethicists offer "only a truncated form of de Lubac's theory of grace" (98). By this he means that they, like de Lubac, see human beings always already oriented to life with God, but fail to stress, as de Lubac always did, that such orientation only finds fulfillment through Christ. In other words, recent Catholic ethics has tended to stress the horizontal and...