Theo-Drama, Vol. 5：The Last Act

485 Pages·2003·2.95 MB·English

by  Hans Urs Von Balthasar

THEODRAMA
Volume V
THEODRAMA
Volumes of the Complete Work:
I: Prolegomena
II: The Dramatis Personae: Man in God
III: The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ
IV: The Action
V: The Last Act
HANS URS VON BALTHASAR
THEODRAMA
THEOLOGICAL
DRAMATIC THEORY
VOLUME V
THE LAST ACT
Translated by Graham Harrison
IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO
Title of the German original:
Theodramatik: Vierter Band: Die Endspiel
© 1983 Johannes Verlag, Einsiedeln
With ecclesiastical approval
Cover by Roxanne Mei Lum
© 1998 Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-89870-689-5
Library of Congress catalogue number 88-80725
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Note
Abbreviations
INTRODUCTION
A. The Idea of a Christian Eschatology
1. Christ the Governing Center
2. The Johannine Emphasis
3. The Synoptic Discourses on the “End” and the Johannine Emphasis
4. The Day of the Lord and the Judgment
5. Jewish and Pagan Ideas of the “End” Are Fulfilled and Transcended
B. The Subject Matter of This Volume
I. THE WORLD IS FROM GOD
A. The World Is from the Trinity
1. The Scholastic Axiom
2. Implications
a. Being—Event—Becoming
b. Positivity of the “Other”
c. Positivity of Letting Go
d. Positivity of Time and Space
e. The Absolute Quality of Prayer
3. The Idea of the World
a. Time is from Eternity and to Eternity
b. The Self-Transcendence of Essence and Nature
c. Relationship, Reciprocity, Exchange
B. Earth Moves Heavenward
1. Dimensions of the World
2. Fulfillment in Christ and the Church
a. Christ the Trinitarian Meaning of the World
b. The Church as Prolongation of Christ
3. The Shape of Christian Hope
a. The Vertical Dimension
b. Horizontal Hope?
α. Teilhard de Chardin
The Path to a Single Goal for the World
The Dimensions of Incarnation
Twilight Eschatology
β. Jürgen Moltmann
Salvaging Bloch
Integrating the Horizontal Dimension
c. God’s Hope
II. ASPECTS OF THE FINAL ACT
A. The Final Act as Tragedy
1. The Difficulty: Human Refusal versus the Trinitarian Embrace
2. Judgment in the New Testament
a. Judgment in Paul
b. Judgment in the Synoptics
c. Johannine Judgment
3. The Devil
4. The Pain of God
a. In the Biblical Realm
α. The Old Covenant and the Rabbis
β. The New Covenant
b. The Fathers
α. God Is Both Impassible and (in the Son) Passible
β. The Opposite of “Apatheia”
γ. “Pathos” in the Impassible God
δ. Conclusion
c. The Modern Period
α. Theological Approaches
β. Hegel’s Approach
γ. Theologies that Speak of Pain and Death in God’s Essence
Jürgen Moltmann’s Crucified (Trinitarian) God
Gerhard Koch’s Dying and Rising God
Kazoh Kitamori’s Theology of the Pain of God
δ. Outlines of Creation and Covenant Theology
Bertrand R. Brasnett: “The Suffering of the Impassible God”
Karl Barth: God’s Trinitarian Suffering in Christ
Jean Galot: The Question of the Pain of God
ε. A Basis in the Immanent Trinity
B. The Final Act: A Trinitarian Drama
1. The Descent of the Son
a. Existence in Time as a Representation of Eternal Life
b. Death Life; Sorrow Joy
c. Separation as a Mode of Union
d. A Darkness Reserved to God Himself
2. The Question of Universal Salvation
a. The Problem
b. From the Old Aeon to the New
c. A Comprehensive Redemption
d. The Serious Possibility of Refusal
3. The Judgment of Christ
a. Man Judges Himself
b. Approaching the Verdict
4. Approaching the Reality of Hell
a. The Absolute Good: Freedom
b. Analogies of Timelessness
c. Kinds of Forsakenness
d. The Unusable Residue
e. Can Hope Deceive?
C. Man in God’s Undergirding
1. Existence in the Life / Death of Christ
a. Death Underlies Everything
b. Living in Christ’s Death, Christ’s Life
c. Dying into Christ’s Life, Christ’s Death
2. The One Judgment
a. Judgment Universal and Personal
b. Resurrection and Exaltation
c. Holding Fast to the One Judgment
d. The One Judgment and the Purification
III. THE WORLD IN GOD
A. Embedded in God
1. He Ascends to Prepare a Place for Us
2. Recourse to the Idea
3. The Creature in God
4. Freedom, Vision and Creation
B. Reciprocity
1. Heaven to Earth
2. Earth to Heaven
C. In the Triune Life
1. Participation
a. Born of God and Endowed with the Spirit
b. Breathing with the Spirit: John of the Cross
c. “The Birth of the Son”: Rhenish-Flemish Mysticism
Eckhart
Tauler
Suso
Ruysbroeck
d. The Birth of the Logos and Mary (or the Church)
2. Meal and Marriage
a. The Dialectic of Images
b. The Body and Self-Surrender
c. Communio Sanctorum
D. “If You Comprehend It, It Is Not God”
1. A Faceless Drama?
2. “This Slight Momentary Affliction”?
3. What Does God Gain from the World?
Notes