Balthasar Beyond European Modernity: Re‐Thinking Herrlichkeit Through Its Precursors

Abstract

AbstractThis article aims at understanding Balthasar in such a way that leads him beyond himself, especially when it comes to Balthasar’s grasp of the relationship of his work to Europe and to European modernity. The danger of Balthasar’s theological aesthetics is not that it ends up being “all too” Mediterranean but that it risks succumbing to Eurocentrism. This article posits that the Balthasarian standpoint is open—in its own terms, by its own logic—to a standpoint other than Europe. That Balthasar can be opened out into a confrontation with colonial modernity is demonstrated not by placing him in direct contact with post‐ or de‐colonial thought but by re‐examining his contention that the Christ‐form cannot be identified with any particular aesthetic form. That the Christ‐form is not identical with any particular aesthetic form leaves open the possibility of something other than Eurocentrism within a thoroughgoing theological aesthetic.