The Achievement of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Introduction to His Trilogy by Matthew Levering

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Achievement of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Introduction to His Trilogy by Matthew Levering Angela Franks The Achievement of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Introduction to His Trilogy by Matthew Levering (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), xxii + 253 pp. Matthew Levering is tired of the fighting between Thomists and Balthasarians, and he is calling for a truce. As a performative enactment of peace, he has written a book about Hans Urs von Balthasar that says almost nothing bad about its subject. To do this, he has to steer clear of the meatier parts of Balthasar’s trilogy (the Glory of the Lord, the Theo-Drama, and the Theo-Logic), which contain ideas that he has previously critiqued and (he gives fair warning) will continue to do so. Nevertheless, this book is not a pablum of a thousand, blooming, theological flowers but rather a sympathetic treatment of how Balthasar grappled with key modern ideas. After the insightful foreword by Cyril O’Regan, Levering states his irenic goal in the introduction: He has written his book “for theologically educated readers who mistrust von Balthasar or who mistrust von Balthasar’s critics” (15). He proceeds by means of the inspired idea to focus on the first volume of each part of the trilogy. This allows Levering to zero in on the foundational ways Balthasar will treat the transcendentals of beauty, goodness, and truth respectively in each part. A further happy inspiration (perhaps suggested by Edward Oakes’s outstanding Pattern of Redemption) is to connect each part of the trilogy with three major modern thinkers with whom Balthasar is in dialogue: Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche respectively. Levering reads the Glory of the Lord as a “Kantian critique of Kant,” the Theo-Drama as a “Hegelian critique of Hegel,” and the Theo-Logic as a “Nietzschean critique of Nietzsche.” Here the book clearly states the limits of what it will accomplish and even, with an excess of modesty, denies being the important endeavor that it is. In the following three main chapters of the book, he provides an overview of the relevant modern thinker, followed by a summary of Balthasar’s introductory volume. While doing so, he calls attention in particular to the moments in which Balthasar agrees with or argues with his modern interlocutors. Levering praises Balthasar for his ability to listen to modern concerns while keeping a critical distance from the aspects of modern thought that are opposed to the Gospel. These summaries are for the most part accurate and deceptively simple; Levering has absorbed an enormous amount of material that he presents clearly in comparatively few pages. Occasionally the summaries feel a little too much like lists of bullet points rather than a coherent treatment of themes, but this approach has the advantage of thoroughness. [End Page 1403] In the first chapter, Levering tackles the theological aesthetics presented in Glory of the Lord, in contrast to Kant. It is well-known that Balthasar ordered his trilogy in opposition to Kant’s three critiques. Rather than begin with truth (more accurately, with the mind’s structures) as Kant did in the Critique of Pure Reason, Balthasar began with beauty. Levering uses a clue from Balthasar’s Epilogue, the one-volume conclusion to the trilogy, to the effect that Kant’s transcendental apperception provides a way to think about the unity of the experience of form (Gestalt) that is central to Balthasar’s aesthetics. Yet, as Levering demonstrates, Balthasar believes that “the unchanging ground that unites all appearances, all of nature, is divine triune self-surrendering love manifested in Christ,” rather than Kant’s synthetic unity of self-consciousness (79). In following through on this clue from the Epilogue, Levering makes an original contribution to understanding Balthasar’s relation to Kant. I was surprised, however, that Levering did not focus on the more relevant issue in Balthasar’s aesthetics, namely, the status of form (Gestalt). Balthasar alluded to this point of contention with Kant in a famous interview, when he stated, “[Karl] Rahner has chosen Kant, or if you will, Fichte, the transcendental approach. And I have chosen Goethe, my field being German literature.” At first...