Balthasar and the Theodramatic Enrichment of the Trinity

The Thomist 64 (2000): 499-519 BALTHASAR AND THE THEODRAMATIC ENRICHMENT OF THE TRINITY GUY MANSINI, 0.S.B. Saint Meinrad School ofTheology Saint Meinrad, Indiana The Theodrama of Hans Urs von Balthasar is the middle section of his theological trilogy. It is the section about the Good, following the one about the Beautiful and preceding the one about the True. The Glory of the Lord studies the form and splendor of revelation, its perception (aisthesis) in and across and beyond the forms and splendors of the world, its reduction to an inner-Trinitarian form and splendor. The Theologik studies the truth of this same revelation, leading it back to a truth within God. But the Theodrama studies how revelation is manifested, and how its truth is constituted, in action, in a dramatic encounter between God and man, an encounter also in its turn led back to a prior and inner-Trinitarian one.1 If we de-italicize the word, then, Theodrama is the drama between God and man reflecting the inner-Trinitarian drama of Father, Son, and Spirit. Is the drama between God and man also constitutive of the inner-Trinitarian drama? That is the aim of this essay-to think about Balthasar's affirmative but subtle answer to that question. 1 See "Dramatic Theory between Aesthetics and Logic," in Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 15-23. Theo-Drama vols. 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988, 1990, 1992, 1994, 1998), are hereafter ID 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, which correspond to Theo-Dramatik, Vol. I, Prolegomena; Vol. 11/1, Die Personen des Spiels: Der Mensch in Gott; Vol. 11/2, Die Personen in Christus; Vol. III: Die Handlung; and Vol IV: Das Endspiel (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1973, 1976, 1978, 1980). Hereafter, parenthetical references, with roman numerals for volume numbers, are to the German edition. 499 500 GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. He would have it not only that there can be no ·true drama between God and man if there is not an inner-Trinitarian drama to be manifested, but also that there can be no drama between God and man unless it really and truly can be said to constitute the inner-Trinitarian drama. In order to see the novel and, so far as I know, unique way Balthasar has discovered to express the way in which the world matters to God, we will compare him at a key point to St. Thomas, and in this way attempt to further the sort of inquiry into the relation of St. Thomas and Balthasar that James Buckley has called for, and the difficulties of which he has called attention to, in these pages.2 I. THE AIM OF THE TuEODRAMA The second edition of Mysterium Paschale contains a preface, written after the Theodrama, in which Balthasar offers a short statementofthe theological issue the much-largerwork addresses. He draws two positions into opposition, that of the "older dogmatics" and that of certain moderns. Moderns assert the pain of God (K. Kitamori), have God develop (process theology), or constitute the Trinity in dependence on the economy (Hegel and J. Moltmann).3 To the contrary, the older dogmatics affirms the immutability of God and relegates the effect of the kenosis of the Son of God to the human nature of Christ, "the divine nature remaining inaccessible to all becoming or change, and even to any real relationship with the world."4 In so doing, Balthasar tells us, it runs the risk, paradoxically enough, of both Nestorianism and monophysitism at once. By relegating suffering to Jesus, this dogmatics courts a Nestorianism in which an immutable Son of God must be distinct from the suffering Jesus. On the other hand, 2JamesJ. Buckley, "Balthasar's Use oftheTheology ofAquinas,"TheThomist 59 (1995): 517-45. 3 Mysterium Paschale (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1990), vii. Mysterium Paschale is the translation of chapter 9 of Mysterium Salutis, ed. J. Feiner and M. Lohrer, Vol. 111/2, Das Christusereignis (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1969). 4 Ibid., viii. BALTHASAR ON THE TRINITY 501 in restricting suffering to the lower faculties of Christ's soul, it suggests a monophysitism of the "higher...