Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Notion of PersonHans Urs von Balthasar on the Notion of Person 321 and grace. Earlier in his Commentary,6 Aquinas argued that philosophy is useful for

Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 2 (April–June 2019): 319–349

ISSN 2300–0066 (print)

ISSN 2577–0314 (online)

DOI: 10.26385/SG.080215

ARTICLE — Received: Jan. 23, 2019 ▪ Accepted: Apr. 17, 2019

Edward Ray*

Hans Urs von Balthasar on

the Notion of Person

“Person.” Few words have as many layers of meaning or under-

standing. It can just simply refer to any human being, any countable

individual. The classical definition from Boethius is known as persona

est rationalis naturae individua substantia.1 Is that definition still of

value in the 21st century? There are deeper senses of the word which

point to the uniqueness of the individual that cannot be interchangeable,

and therefore cannot be counted. The complexity of the word’s history

is almost impossible to unravel. “Person” can correspond to a multi-

plicity of meanings, and almost from the beginning this history reflects

the word’s various aspects of meaning that cannot be synthesized.2

This essay outlines how Hans Urs von Balthasar, via his inter-

pretations of both Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas, ap-

proaches the understanding of the word “person.” Hans Urs von Baltha-

sar believes that “the word ‘person’ . . . receives its special dignity in

history when it is illuminated by the unique theological meaning,”3 the

*Edward Ray — Holy Apostles College & Seminary, Cromwell, Conn., USA

e-mail: [email protected] ▪ ORCID: no data

1 A person is an individual substance of a rational nature. 2 Hans Urs von Balthasar, “On the Concept of Person,” Communio. International Cath-olic Review 13 (Spring, 1986): 18. 3 Ibid., 19.

Edward Ray 320

God-man Jesus Christ. The goal of this paper is to articulate that ap-

proach.

Incarnational Metaphysics

It is essential that metaphysics be discussed, especially in matters

related to Hans Urs von Balthasar’s notion of person. For Balthasar,

there can be no theologian who is not at the same time a metaphysician.

Balthasar states this more or less succinctly in his Theo-Logic:

Since the question about being as such is the basic question of

metaphysics, the theologian cannot get around it. For him, then,

there is only one conclusion: He cannot be a theologian ex

professo without at the same time being a metaphysician, just as,

conversely . . . a metaphysics that refused to be theology would

thereby misunderstand and repudiate its own object.4

This approach has much in common with that of another famous

theologian: Thomas Aquinas. In his Commentary on the De Trinitate of

Boethius, Aquinas states:

[T]here are two kinds of theology or divine science. [1] There is

one that treats of divine things, not as the subject of the science

but as the principles of the subject. This is the kind of theology

pursued by the philosophers and that is also called metaphysics. [2] There is another theology, however, that investigates divine

things for their own sakes as the subject of the science. This is

the theology taught in Sacred Scripture.5

Although metaphysics and sacred theology are distinct disciplines for

Aquinas, they are intimately related in a way that is analogous to nature

4 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, vol. 2: The Truth of God, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 173. 5 Thomas Aquinas, Super Boethium de Trinitate, q. 5, a. 4. For Questions 5–6, see: The Division and Methods of the Sciences: Questions V and VI of his Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius. Translated by Armand Maurer. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986. Available online—see the section References for details.

Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Notion of Person

321

and grace. Earlier in his Commentary,6 Aquinas argued that philosophy

is useful for sacred theology because it demonstrates the preambles of

the faith, because it helps to clarify our understanding of some aspects

of the faith, and because it helps to refute errors and heresies. Concern-

ing the preambles, metaphysics, as the study of being qua being, pro-

vides a philosophical demonstration of God. In this vein, Balthasar

notes that:

Thomas never fails to remember the way in which being points

critically to the eternal, hidden God nor the way in which reason points noetically to the possible revelation of that God, and con-

sequently he wants all metaphysics to be seen as oriented to-

wards theology.7

Here Balthasar is also drawing on Aquinas’s comments in Summa Con-

tra Gentiles that “almost all of philosophy is directed toward the

knowledge of God, and that is why metaphysics, which deals with di-

vine things, is the last part of philosophy to be learned.”8 However,

Balthasar goes beyond Aquinas by making Jesus Christ central to met-

aphysics.

In the thought of Balthasar, it is Jesus Christ that holds the prom-

inent place in the order of creation. This might sound strange, even con-

fusing, at first glance. Genesis 1–2 makes no direct reference to Christ;

only indirectly via Genesis 1:1 and its comparison to John 1:1. For Bal-

thasar, however, the midpoint or what classical metaphysics might call

first principles is exactly where Christ intersects man. This “midpoint”

6 Ibid., q. 2, a. 3. For Questions 1–4, see The Trinity and the Unicity of the Intellect, trans. Rose E. Brennan (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1946). Available online—see the section References for details. 7 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 4: The

Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity, trans. B. McNeil, C.R.V., et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 396. 8 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I, 4, trans. Anton C. Pegis. Available online—see the section References for details.

Edward Ray 322

or “center” is, for Balthasar, the correct spatial metaphor for describing

what communicates meaning to that ultimate metaphysical question,

why is there something rather than nothing? Balthasar places great im-

portance on the concept of mediation. Christ, as the one who is the

midpoint between God and humanity, not by being part human and part

divine but by being both WHOLLY human and WHOLLY divine, is

able to communicate (transmit) something significant between them.9 It

is the person of Christ that provides the answer to the ultimate meta-

physical question according to Balthasar:

By virtue of the hypostatic union, there is nothing in him [Christ]

which does not serve God’s self-revelation. As the center of the

world, Christ is the key to the interpretation not only of creation,

but of God himself.10

God’s revelation to us is participatory, and only that which is capable of

mediating between the human and divine realties is capable of creating

a space of participation. What is specifically unique in this approach

taken by Balthasar is the assumption that Christ is not only the mid-

point in the order of salvation, but also in the order of creation.11 This,

for Balthasar, is a revealed truth, and from this revealed truth it is not

possible to simply return to secular metaphysics and attempt to take the

remaining assumptions from there.12 Balthasar summarily dismisses

this approach most succinctly in his book A Theology of History:

There are three things we cannot do; we cannot carry on with

natural metaphysics, natural ethics, natural jurisprudence, natural

study of history, acting as though Christ were not, in the con-crete, the norm of everything. Nor can we lay down an unrelated

9 Junius C. Johnson, “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Bal-thasar” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2010), 9. 10 Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), 15. 11 Johnson, “Christ and Analogy,” 10. 12 Ibid.


323

“double truth,” with the secular scholar and scientist on the one hand and the theologian on the other studying the same object

without any encounter or intersection between their two methods.

Nor, finally, can we allow the secular disciplines to be absorbed by theology as though it alone were competent in all cases be-

cause Christ alone is the norm.13

For Balthasar, metaphysics is concerned with creation (i.e., with

created realities), and thus its primary reference is to Christ, the arche-

type of all creation. It is by virtue of this fact that Christ can occupy the

central role in Balthasar’s metaphysics. It is the person of Christ who

became flesh (took on created being) and is the archetype of creation

who stands at the center of creation. Christ is only distinguished from

the Father and the Holy Spirit by virtue of his person; in all else they

are both equal and identical. Therefore, if we are to assume (for the

purposes of this paper) that the midpoint of metaphysics is to be Christ

and not the Trinity, this infers that it can only be as person that Christ

occupies the central place.14 What “person” means for Balthasar here in

the sense of “personality,” as the “psychological center of man’s free

and reasonable acts, which would not be a center were it not so onto-

logically.”15 Thus, Balthasar seems to be both accepting the modernist

tendency to read “person” psychologically as well as grounding this in

a prior ontological reality. Personality is thus ontologically central, and

as such forms the center of the psychological faculties.

Person and Being

Balthasar’s starting point for understanding of person begins with

Christ and is heavily influenced by the thought of Maximus the Confes-

13 Balthasar, A Theology of History, 13–14. 14 Johnson, “Christ and Analogy,” 11. 15 Balthasar, A Theology of History, 15, n. 2.

Edward Ray 324

sor. In his Cosmic Liturgy,16 Balthasar reads Maximus as grasping in-

cipiently toward the Scholastic real distinction between essence and

existence. Balthasar emphasizes the “gift” character of both essence

and existence which leads, via metaphysical participation, to a God

who is Being, Freedom, and Love. With this approach, Balthasar stands

in opposition to what he believes to be an excessively intellectualistic

interpretation of Aquinas’s metaphysics that was in vogue at the com-

mencement of the twentieth century.17 At Maximus’s stage of reflection

on hypostatic being, hypostasis remains a liminal concept, referring on

one hand to the aspect of essence and on the other to the aspect of ex-

istence.18 Thus, there can be no “clean break” between essence and ex-

istence:

It is impossible, in the end, to carry through a clean distinction

between individualizing characteristics in the order of essence

and those in the order of person, because such a clean distinction simply cannot be drawn between the “order of being” and the

“order of existing.”19

However, Balthasar finds in Maximus’s notion of the synthetic hypos-

tasis of Christ an implicit move toward personal and dialogical catego-

ries.20 What begins to emerge is a vision of being as “the sphere in

which an intellectual substance is called into existence by immediate,

16 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the

Confessor, trans. Brian Daley, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003). 17 Angelo Campodonico, “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Interpretation of the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera (English edition) 8, no. 1 (2010): 52. One could argue here that a weakness in this approach is the neglect of the logical-Aristotelian dimensions of Aquinas’s thought. Balthasar, not known as a systematic thinker, tends to slip rather easily between philosophy and theology, natural and the supernatural, which

can cause a bit of consternation for traditional Thomists. 18 Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 248. 19 Ibid., 248–249. 20 Mark Leslie Yenson, “Existence as Prayer: The Consciousness of Christ in the The-ology of Hans Urs von Balthasar” (PhD diss., University of St. Michael’s College, 2010), 71.


325

personal intimacy with God, and invited to become a person.”21 Bal-

thasar’s meditation on this point is worth quoting:

It is, for that reason, the sphere in which—in the depths of the

mystery of God’s own freedom—the one who is called can also be, at some point in history, the one who himself calls: in which

the answer to the primeval Word calling us forth can, at some

point in history, be brought to a fulfillment beyond its own crea-turehood and become that primeval Word itself. This is only pos-

sible because the primeval Word is, within the trinitarian reality

of God, always an answer to the call of the Father and can there-fore—within the economy of salvation—include and bring to ful-

fillment all the personal reality of creatures as responses to that

call in his own primeval answer. . . .

[H]ypostasis would then no longer be useable simply as a general category of created being (as it was in the sixth century,

when every created essence had its hypostasis) but would have to

be limited first of all to human, intellectual persons; further, one would have to resist the temptation simply to subsume the hypos-

tasis of Christ univocally under a concept of person formed in

this way. One can and one must, however, assume a dynamic rela-

tionship between the Divine Person of Christ and his divine na-

ture, a relationship that is analogous to that between a human

person and his intellectual, human nature. And if this Divine Per-son should also enter into this kind of relationship to a human na-

ture, he can really be called a synthetic person—not in the sense

of being a passive product of two natures that have simply come together, but rather in that the divine Person realizes this unifica-

tion in and through himself, in the highest freedom, so that he is

called “synthetic” in the sense of being the cause of synthesis.22

This passage is more of a view of Maximus’s Christology viewed

through Balthasarian lenses, rather than a historical critical reading.

21 Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, 249. 22 Ibid., 249–250.

Edward Ray 326

One can see here in a nutshell the central motifs of Balthasar’s mission-

Christology: the identity of the one who calls and the one called, ex-

pressing the intra-Trinitarian call and response of the Father and the

Son, and the inclusion and fulfilment of creaturely personhood within

this Trinitarian dynamic. Balthasar’s understanding of his own Christo-

logically determined concept of person can therefore be asserted to be

in fundamental continuity with the neo-Chalcedonian development of

the concept of hypostasis. Balthasar’s concept of person is also simul-

taneously not a philosophical concept pressed into theological service,

but a theological concept, set in a context derived exclusively from rev-

elation, whose fullest meaning cannot be illuminated without the reve-

lation of the tri-personal God in Jesus Christ.23

Balthasar builds on this with the influence of Thomas Aquinas,

utilizing the “gift” character as discussed previously as well as what

Balthasar sees as the structurally “plural” character of finite beings par-

ticularly evident in the polarity of essence and existence.24 As a review,

we know an essence or nature by the act of simple apprehension, and

existence or the act of to be by the act of judgement. The act of simple

apprehension may be logically prior to the act of judgement, since from

a logical point of view we must apprehend a thing before we judge any-

thing about it, but the act of judgement is more perfect since it is totally

unified. Thus, the validity of our intellectual assessment of reality is

guaranteed by the unity of the existential judgement. Being, the funda-

mental transcendental and the first evidence of the intellect, constitutes,

insofar it is as actuated by the act of being, a gift, something which is

not owed. It reveals a fundamental dimension of gratuity, of love,

23 Yenson, “Existence as Prayer,” 72–73. 24 Campodonico, “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Interpretation of the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas,” 52: “Balthasar opposes both ‘essentialism’ and a certain excessive emphasis on the act of existence at the expense of essence.”


327

which Thomas Aquinas highlights,25 and has to do first of all with hu-

man beings themselves, those who pose the question about being. The

theme of being in Balthasar is intimately connected with that of love,26

of the person, of the Thou. In one of the last writings in which he pre-

sents his thought in a synthetic way, Balthasar points out in regard to

being that man

exists as a limited being in a limited world, but his reason is open

to the unlimited, to all of Being. The proof consists in the recog-nition of his finitude, of his contingence: I am, but I could also,

however, not be. Many things that do not exist could exist. Es-

sences are limited but Being is not. This division, the real distinc-tion of Aquinas, is the source of all the religious and philosophi-

cal thought of humanity.27

To an ontological consideration, in fact, each being is reducible to two

co-original fundamentals: the act of being (actus essendi or esse) and

essence (essentia). Balthasar notes:

25 Cf. S.Th., I, q. 21, a. 4: “The work of divine justice always presupposes the work of mercy; and is founded thereupon. For nothing is due to creatures, except for something preexisting in them, or foreknown. Again, if this is due to a creature, it must be due on account of something that precedes. Again, since we cannot go on to infinity, we must

come to something that only depends on the goodness of the divine will—which is the ultimate end.” Aquinas also argues in the S.Th., I, q. 20, a. 2, resp., that: “To every existing thing, then, God wills some good. Hence, since to love anything is nothing else than to will good to that thing, it is manifest that God loves everything that exists. Yet not as we love. Because since our will is not the cause of the goodness of things, but is moved by it as by its object, our love, whereby we will good to anything, is not the cause of its goodness; but conversely its goodness, whether real or imaginary, calls forth our love, by which we will that it should preserve the good it has, and receive

besides the good it has not, and to this end we direct our actions: whereas the love of God infuses and creates goodness” (emphases mine). The Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920). Available online—see the section References for details. 26 In regard to the theme of being (esse) as gift and love, cf. Balthasar, The Glory of the

Lord, vol. 4, 374; and ibid., vol. 5: The Realm of Metaphysics in Modern Ages, trans. O. Davies et al. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991), 440, 626, 636, 647. 27 Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 112.

Edward Ray 328

Every attempt at tidily dividing these two spheres [essence and

existence] is doomed to failure by their indivisible interrelation.

The intellectual model of “metaphysical” composition out of di-

verse parts and elements is inadequate to explain finite being. We can account for it, then, only by consistently invoking the phe-

nomenon of polarity. Polarity means that the poles, even as they

are in tension, exist strictly through each other. This is probably

nowhere more conspicuous than in the polarity between essence and existence in finite being. The two poles co-inhere in an inti-

mate unity that constitutes the irresolvable mystery of created be-

ing. Indeed, this unity is so intimate that it frustrates every at-tempt to define one pole as the seat of mystery and to lay hold of

the other as if it were devoid of it. . . . Each pole can in some re-

spect be grasped, but in being grasped it always immediately

points beyond itself to the other pole as what has not yet been

grasped.28

Although there is a primacy of the act of being over essence in each

being, since without this act the being would not exist, it is nevertheless

true that essence—as Balthasar emphasizes—is never reducible to the

act of being:

Let us take as our starting point the fundamental form that differ-

ence displays in the creaturely realm: there is a real (that is, ca-

pable of being gathered from the existent [Seiendes] itself) dif-

ference between esse, which signifies aliquid simplex et comple-tum sed non subsistens,29 and the finite essence in which it attains

28 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, vol. 1: The Truth of the World, trans. Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 105–106. It seems to me that the polarity of esse and essence that Balthasar mentions is related to the fact that, among creatures, neither esse nor essence ever exists without the other. “Essence is never a direct object of the [human] intellect as absolute. The intellect always sees it either in an individual or as intentionally existent in the mind. It never sees it without some existence. But it can reason that the same essence is found in all

those existences and so absolutely in itself it is bound to none of them” (Joseph Owens, “The Accidental and Essential Character of Being in the Doctrine of St. Thomas Aqui-nas,” Mediaeval Studies 20 [1958]: 34). 29 Cf. Aquinas, De potentia, q. 7, a. 2, ad 7: “[B]eing is not subsisting but inherent.”


329

subsistence. However, this difference must not be understood as the fitting together of two parts to form a whole. Neither aspect is

ever conceivable without the other. “The poles, even as they are

in tension, exist strictly through each other. This is probably no-where more conspicuous than in the polarity between essence

and existence.”30 We can lay hold of nonsubsistent being [Sein]

only in what factually exists (even if we were to imagine a purely

possible essence, in the same act we would have to conceive the possibility of its existence as well); a finite creature is such in

virtue of the fact that it subsists. “Strictly speaking, being cannot

be said to be. Only some thing that is in virtue of being can be said to be” (De divinis nominibus, ch. 8, lect. 1). And the whole

is said to be created (it is not as though the essence were a mere

idea of God that he then realized by adding being to it: Ipsa

quidditas creari dicitur (De potentia, q. 3, a. 5, ad 2). The fact that being pours itself out into the plurality of creatures as both

actual (simplex completum) and nonsubsistent and that it cannot

be apprehended (let alone solidified in a concept) except in this outpouring, reveals it to be the pure and free expression of the

divine bonitatis and liberalitatis.This goodness and liberality aim

at the necessary plurality and manifoldness of created essences, since nonsubsistent being could not attain to subsistence in one

essence without being God.31

The determinateness of being is not in fact implicit in the notion of the

act of being. Thus, both principles are originative, although they re-

quire, each in its turn, a common transcendent origin.

The actus essendi, that principle which gives existence to all be-

ings, is “in suspension” because it is transcendent (“other” than beings)

and, at the same time, immanent in respect to beings.32

30 Balthasar, Theo-Logic, vol. 1, 105. 31 Balthasar, Theo-Logic, vol. 2, 182. 32 Campodonico, “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Interpretation of the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas,” 44.

Edward Ray 330

[E]sse . . . is at once both total fullness and total nothingness:33

fullness because it is the most noble, the first and most proper ef-

fect of God, because “through being God causes all things” and

“being is prior to and more interior than all other effects.”34 But being is also nothingness since it does not exist as such, “for just

as one cannot say that running runs,” but rather that “the runner

runs,” so one cannot say that “existence exists.”35

Thus, esse presents something “disproportionate” in itself and so points

toward a Cause of being. Essence, however, points toward a Fullness of

perfection and of determinacy in a personalistic sense. Thus, the Abso-

lute must be thought as Subsisting Being,36 as Efficient Cause of esse,

33 Here the influence of Erich Przywara, S.J., in the thought of Balthasar is observed. Przywara built an open system on the notion of analogy, conceiving it as a Schwebe, a

hovering or oscillation, among the various polarities: God and world, objectivity and subjectivity, grace and nature, body and soul, particular and universal, male and female. Precisely because there is an intelligible structure that could not be reduced to a deterministic rationalism, room was left for the interplay of freedom between God and man. For more details, consult Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis. Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm, trans. John R. Betz and David Bentley Hart (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014). 34 Ibid. 35 Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, vol. 4, 404. 36 Cf. Balthasar, Theo-Logic, vol. 2, 134–135, n. 10: “J.-L. Marion seems in his two works L’idole et la distance (Paris: Grasset, 1979) and Dieu sans l’être (Paris: Fayard, 1982) to concede too much to the critique of Heidegger and others and to disregard the passages where Siewerth and even Thomas define bonum as the intrinsic ‘self-transcending’ of esse. This does not mean that we must leave esse (rightly understood) behind us as something penultimate—which, in any case, is an impossibility for thought. True, only the absolute goodness of God can make sense of something like a nonsubsistent act of being (for finite beings). Nevertheless, however much this act of

being is a ‘likeness of God’ in the world (Siewerth), it does not flow forth (emanate) from somewhere above the Divine Being, which, as we have sufficiently shown, is itself the abyss of all love.” Aquinas says something similar in De Ente et Essentia: “[S]omething can be multiplied only [1] by adding a difference . . ., [2] by the reception of a form in different parts of matter . . ., [3] by the distinction between what is separate and what is received in something. . . . Now, granted that there is a reality that is pure being, so that being itself is subsistent, this being would not receive the addition of a difference, because then it would not be being alone but being with the addition of a

form. Much less would it receive the addition of matter, because then it would not be


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and, simultaneously, as Infinite Essence, Highest Perfection, Origin of

all finite determinations. It must also be thought as creative Freedom,

thus in a personalistic sense, since this is the maximum perfection to be

found among creatures. In Balthasar’s view, the “limits” inherent in the

diverse determinations of beings (which must no longer be thought as

something negative37) and the “gift” of existence are only explicable in

light of the Absolute Freedom.

Angelo Campodonico sums up Balthasar’s interpretation of

Aquinas on the relation of person, being, and freedom as follows:

(a) In being present to myself, two things are discovered togeth-

er: the irreducibility or the absolute inparticipatability of my “I”

(which is rendered possible by the act of being which actuates

me as an individual) and the unlimited participatability of the act of being as such. The same experience of being reveals both of

these aspects.

(b) I am this singular and unrepeatable being, but only if I allow innumerable others to be singular and unrepeatable.

(c) I experience my freedom (the first pole of freedom as free

will) insofar as I am a both determinate and irreplaceable being

and I am open to being in all its plenitude. (d) As a finite being, I must adhere to being in order to actualize

myself (the other pole of freedom as libertas maior). Neverthe-

less, I cannot take possession of being but need that being so that I might be considered good. Only in this way can being fulfill

subsistent, but material, being. It follows that there can be only one reality that is iden-tical with its being. In everything else, then, its being must be other than its quiddity, nature, or form” (St. Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, trans. Armand Maurer [Toronto: PIMS, 1968], 55–56). 37 Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, vol. 4, 403–404: “[A]nd the essences of things must not appear as simply the fragmentation of reality in the negative sense but must be seen

positively as posited and determined by God’s omnipotent freedom and therefore are grounded in the unique love of God. . . . [I]t is precisely when the creature feels itself to be separate in being from God that it knows itself to be the most immediate object of God’s love and concern; and it is precisely when its essential finitude shows it to be something quite different from God, that it knows that, as a real being, it has had bestowed upon it that most extravagant gift—participation in the real being of God.”

Edward Ray 332

me. (e) That being which is the first of the transcendentals does not

satiate my desire but generates a spurious infinity.

(f) Through a human “I” that addresses itself to my “I” an Abso-lute “I” manifests itself. There is in being the promise of a dona-

tor (donatore). This donator would be free from the limits of es-

sence but would not need to be indeterminate since it is from the

richness of being that the determinateness of essences and the “I’s” of spiritual beings are derived.

(g) The self-possession of finite freedom contains a moment of

absoluteness, a “finite infinity,” which, however, is neither capa-ble of taking possession of its own origin (insofar as finite free-

dom exists as “given”) nor of reaching its telos, even though it

seek all the goods and values (whether personal or otherwise) of

the world. Because freedom is both autonomy and infinite movement toward its source in God, infinite freedom constitutes

the innermost essence of finite freedom. . . .

(h) My freedom can only be satiated by a subsistent and infinite being that contains all the riches of being in itself and is infinite

freedom. Only that which is at the same time absolute Being and

absolute Freedom can give space to my freedom.38

Differentiating Philosophical and Theological Personhood

In the essay, “On the Concept of Person,” Balthasar notes that

the nature-person problem appeared with the fourth- and fifth-century

Christological controversies, and that even the modern, secular concept

of person owes something to this origin in Christian revelation and the-

ology:

Historically, the word has vacillated between two very different

realms: that of common sense (where the everyday understanding

may be rendered more precise in moral theology, law, and phi-

38 Campodonico, “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Interpretation of the Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas,” 46, n. 50.


333

losophy) and that of Christian theology, in which the concept of person acquires a completely new sense first in trinitarian doc-

trine and then in Christology. Now in the Christian era, the gen-

eral (or philosophical) concept must already exist if it is to re-ceive its special theological content. Yet the unique trinitarian or

Christological content that the concept acquires in theology casts

its light back upon the general (or philosophical) understanding

. . .39

Balthasar thus undertakes a form of corrective ressourcement, namely,

to identify the original problematic of Christology, undergirded by

Trinitarian theology, and to show that the philosophical elaboration of

the concept of person was unable to offer a solution to the theological

issue of Christ’s person and natures.

In his Theo-Drama III, Balthasar argues that the great classical

Christological debates, between those who emphasized the divine “I” in

Jesus and those who emphasized a fully human consciousness, were

destined to stalemate, “because the available philosophical concepts

were drawn exclusively from the natural spectrum of the conscious

subject.”40 Balthasar states, “The Fathers did not get beyond describing

the person (not distinguished from the conscious subject) as that which

is ‘special,’ ‘indivisible,’ ‘incommunicable,’ ‘for itself’ or ‘in itself.’”41

Balthasar also charts the aporiae of patristic Christology introduced by

the application of Trinitarian concepts of nature and person to Christol-

ogy as well as the lack of terminological precision of the notion of per-

son. The Cappadocian determination of person as substance individual-

ized by general and specific qualities never reaches the order of the

personal.42 Balthasar also argues that Nestorius was “a prisoner of the

39 Balthasar, “On the Concept of Person,” 19. 40 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 3: The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), 209. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., 212.

Edward Ray 334

(Cappadocian) inability to distinguish individuality from person.”43 In

the Theo-Drama, Balthasar reviews the distinction between logos-

anthropos and logos-sarx that he had previously discussed in Cosmic

Liturgy, arriving at the questions that plagued the Church Fathers at the

Council of Chalcedon:

How, using persona, could the distinction be shown, in Christ,

between the divinity of the person and the humanity of his con-

scious nature—a nature that was whole and entire, not merely

“half,” that is, sarx? And how, using persona, was it possible ful-ly to do justice to Cyril’s central concern, namely, that this Per-

son was not an epiphenomenon coming to light in the wake of

the union of two hypostases or prosōpa, but the locus of God’s

saving design?44

Two tasks were required after Chalcedon, says Balthasar. The

first, to show how a human being endowed with reason and free will

can be God, which was most adequately attained by Maximus.45 The

second task was to find concepts to elucidate what was meant by “per-

son,” and Balthasar regards patristic Christology as having failed in this

task. The development in Leontius of Byzantium and Leontius of Jeru-

salem of the concept of enhypostaton is still limited by the general-

individual scheme of the Cappadocian definition and by univocity

across all levels of being.46

According to Balthasar, a general metaphysical notion of hypos-

tasis and a general inability to distinguish between the spiritual subject

and the person continue to plague Christological developments in the

Middle Ages. This blurring of the individual spiritual subject with per-

son is evident in Boethius’s famous definition, persona est naturae

43 Ibid., 213. 44 Ibid., 214–215. 45 Ibid., 215. 46 Ibid., 216–217.


335

rationalis individua substantia. Balthasar notes that this classical defi-

nition also makes it very difficult to apply the concept of person to God

without falling into tritheism.47 The deacon Rusticus defined person by

the ability of an individual rational nature to remain in itself, and under-

stood the human nature of Christ to be “the property of the subsistence

of the divine Logos;” but Balthasar asks, “How can an essentially self-

subsistent being, equipped with reason and freedom, be the ‘property’

of another? Surely the latter, by definition, must rob it of its self-

possession (substantia).”48

The problem identified by Balthasar is the univocal ascription of

personhood to the hypostasis of the divine Logos and to the human sub-

jects. Person is still a function of nature, and so the affirmation of only

one person in Christ, the divine person, renders the status of Christ’s

human nature problematic.49 Only by complex theories involving the

replacement of the created act of being or the positing of a second act

of being of the human nature can the absence of a human person in

Christ be explained. This is precisely the kind of univocity which leads

many to ascribe an exclusively human personhood to Christ. But the

denial of human personhood to Christ need not imply a denigration of

his human nature. Balthasar seeks to overcome this univocity by reserv-

ing “person” to an exclusively theological context, in contradistinction

to the conscious subject.

Person and Conscious Subject

Balthasar argues for a moratorium on the use of “person” within

a general metaphysical or anthropological framework, saying, “We can

47 Balthasar, “On the Concept of Person,” 22. 48 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 3, 218. 49 Yenson, “Existence as Prayer,” 75–76.

Edward Ray 336

do without the concept of ‘person’ much longer than we think.”50 The

general concept of “person” is more accurately expressed as “conscious

subject” or “spiritual subject.” At the level of all living beings, all indi-

viduals of a species share a specific nature, but each is also an incom-

municable individual, “for itself.” On the human level, “nature” is

marked by consciousness, “the inclusion of all conscious subjects

(equipped with self-consciousness) in human nature.”51 It is important

to recognize that Balthasar is not denying anything to individual human

beings that a general philosophical understanding of person ascribes,

whether on ontological or psychological planes, that is to say, incom-

municability, freedom and consciousness. He is simply renaming this

kind of “personhood” as conscious/spiritual subjectivity to highlight

that personhood in its theological sense exists only in nuce, as an initial

and imperfect image, within the natural order.52

While both classical and modern accounts of personhood are able

to shed light on particular dimensions of the person, such as incommu-

nicability, self-subsistence, consciousness and freedom, Balthasar ar-

gues that no guarantee of personal identity can be proffered by philoso-

phy or the human sciences, but only by revelation, by the synthetic per-

son of Jesus as the incarnate Son. Much of the first three volumes of the

Theo-Drama is an examination of how individual personal identity can

be secured, culminating in Balthasar’s treatment of Christological mis-

sion-personhood. At a phenomenological level, the individual experi-

ences himself as unique and incommunicable, and yet this experience is

not yet the experience of being a person: “The conscious subject knows

that he is such; he knows he is human in a unique and incommunicable

way. But does he also know who he is?”53 Balthasar thus recapitulates

50 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 3, 203. 51 Ibid., 204. 52 Yenson, “Existence as Prayer,” 77. 53 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 2, 204.


337

the question posed at the end of the Theo-Drama I, a question not of

essence but of personal identity: “The question that has to be asked is

not, ‘What kind of being is man?’ but ‘Who am I?’”54 What, Balthasar

asks, constitutes and secures the positivity of the concrete individual

qua individual, over and against definitions of common essence? Bal-

thasar surveys attempts to address this most fundamental question of

human existence, from ancient Stoicism to modern psychology, sociol-

ogy, and philosophy.55

Balthasar’s discussion of role as “acceptance of limitation” and

as “alienation” is too wide-ranging to discuss in this essay, but certain

relevant points may be highlighted that manifest Balthasar’s approach

to the concept of person.

First, Balthasar’s discussion of “role” as the intra-mundane ana-

logue to divine “mission” implies that the question of the individual’s

identity is the very condition of possibility for there being a “theo-

drama.”56 The world as a theatre of interaction among finite freedoms

and between finite and infinite freedoms requires that there be actors,

unique subjects who experience themselves as unique, incommunicable

and free, even if the question of the ultimate ground of individual iden-

tity remains obscured.

Second, in accord with neo-Chalcedonian Christological thought

and the direction of Maximus’s ontology, Balthasar insists on the per-

sonal as the highest determination of ontology, and rejects all claims

that “person” is subordinate to, or the passive product of, nature.57

Thus—to highlight just one example—in his examination of Meister

Eckhart’s approach to person and individual identity, Balthasar raises

54 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 1: Prolegomena, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 482. 55 Ibid., 493–589. 56 Yenson, “Existence as Prayer,” 78. 57 Ibid.

Edward Ray 338

the concern that Eckhart “regards the personal trinitarian process as

something penultimate in God” and that in Eckhart’s anthropology hu-

man nature is “already more interior to the ‘I’ than the ‘I’ itself.”58 For

Balthasar, there is nothing “behind” or “beyond” the personal.

Balthasar’s comments on Hegel’s notion of the “generalized in-

dividual” at the end of the Theo-Drama I, further exemplify Balthasar’s

commitment to the primacy of the order of person. Balthasar foreshad-

ows his understanding of Christ’s person as absolutely unique and uni-

versal by rejecting Hegel’s “one-sidedly” universalizing spirit by which

“no personalizing vocation is imparted to the individual.”59 For Hegel,

says Balthasar, “the ‘I’ as such is not sustained, in fact it declines to the

level of ‘an element of minimal significance.’”60 Hegel offers an ex-

treme example of philosophical attempts to secure the individual within

a vision of the whole, which never achieve their end because they can-

not attain to the level of “person” theologically conceived.

Person and Intersubjectivity

According to Balthasar, all attempts to define the conscious sub-

ject empirically as a unique “who” fail to secure personal identity, since

they offer no more than transitory and contingent characteristics based

on fortuitous historical circumstances: “This individual, under different

conditions, could have become quite a different subject.”61 The prob-

lems with modern empirical perspectives on personhood are similar to

those found with the Cappadocian definition of hypostasis as the sum of

the notae individuantes: it neither probes adequately the surplus of in-

communicability, on the one hand, or the primordial dimension of rela-

58 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 1, 554–555. 59 Ibid., 588. 60 Ibid. 61 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 3, 205.


339

tionality, on the other, which Balthasar sees as necessary to an elabora-

tion of personal identity.62 A more hopeful, but still unstable basis for

securing the identity of the individual conscious subject is an interper-

sonal approach. In the Theo-Drama I, Balthasar claims that modern

dialogical philosophers (in particular Martin Buber, Ferdinand Ebner

and Franz Rosenzweig) most nearly approach a Christian vision of the

person. Indeed, these philosophers appeal to Jewish and Christian scrip-

ture and tradition to develop their intersubjective theories of personal

identity: “Doubtless this means that the ‘discovery’ of the ‘dialogue

principle’ has something to do with reflection on the Bible of the Old

and New Covenants.”63 Balthasar considers these “dialogicians” to be

working at the very threshold of philosophy and theology: “The dia-

logicians . . . are philosophers who themselves need theology in order

to develop their thought to completion.”64

The value of the dialogical principle lies in its retrieval of the

primordial relational aspects of personhood. Instead of the post-Carte-

sian stress on individual self-consciousness as the basis for personhood,

the intersubjective path asserts that “existence as a person comes about

only in the relationship between the I and the Thou.”65 Balthasar him-

self frequently, and at pivotal moments, invokes the phenomenon of the

mother’s smile as an unsurpassable moment in the development of self-

consciousness and personhood. In The Glory of the Lord, the awaken-

ing of the child’s consciousness of its distinctive self by the mother’s

smile constitutes the first of four “differences” which lie at the heart of

Balthasar’s metaphysics:

[The child’s] “I” awakens in the experience of a “Thou:” in its

mother’s smile through which it learns that it is contained, af-

62 Yenson, “Existence as Prayer,” 79. 63 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 1, 627. 64 Balthasar, Theo-Logic, vol. 2, 49. 65 Balthasar, “On the Concept of Person,” 24.

Edward Ray 340

firmed and loved in a relationship which is incomprehensively encompassing, already actual, sheltering and nourishing. The

body which it snuggles into, a soft, warm and nourishing kiss, is

a kiss of love in which it can take shelter because it has been sheltered there a priori. The awakening of its consciousness is a

late occurrence, in comparison with this basic mystery of unfath-

omable depth. It finally sees only what always been, and can

therefore only confirm it.66

In this phenomenological approach, Balthasar attempts to transcend a

purely formal, ontological definition of person, whether as notae indi-

viduantes or as self-subsistence: the movement toward “personaliza-

tion” involves “awakening,” that is to say, involves the individual’s

growing consciousness, through the simultaneous experience of love

and alterity, of being unique and set over against other unique beings.67

In one sense, personhood thus construed is something “grown into” in

consciousness; in another sense, the awakening of this consciousness

bespeaks something prior to the individual in his self-subsistence: “The

experience of being granted entrance into a sheltering and encompass-

ing world is one which for all incipient, developing and mature con-

sciousness cannot be superseded.”68 This inchoate notion of oneself as

person, therefore, cannot be distilled into either purely a priori ontolog-

ical or purely a posteriori psychological categories.

Balthasar is thus highly sympathetic to the primacy of relationali-

ty as retrieved by modern dialogical philosophy. The dialogue principle

is limited, however, insofar as it draws only on the horizontal axis of

revelation, intersubjectivity at the human level, without explicit refer-

ence to the God-creature axis. On the horizontal plane, it is impossible

to secure the identity of the individual, since, first, the I-Thou encounter

66 Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, vol. 5, 616. 67 Yenson, “Existence as Prayer,” 81. 68 Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, vol. 5, 616.


341

is always subject to contingency and fortuitousness, and, second, one’s

identity is never constituted exclusively by any one encounter with an-

other, but by various encounters: “[I]n each of these, the I is endowed

with a new and different name and nature: Who am I, then, in the

end?”69 The markers of identity are thus caught in a web of contingency

in which the individual cannot be conferred with absolute meaning and

affirmed in his uniqueness. The contingency and instability of “who”

the individual is, whether defined empirically or interpersonally, means

that the individual is always in danger of being absorbed by a greater

whole.70

The Personalizing Address of God

The only sure foundation for personal identity, for the uniqueness

of the individual amidst other individuals, is to be found in the address

of God to each individual. The subject becomes a “person” when ad-

dressed by the Absolute Subject:

[I]t is unavoidably clear that a positive answer can only be ex-

pected from the vertical axis of biblical revelation only through the “name” that God uses to address the individual human being

is he validly and definitively distinct from every other human be-

ing; only thus is he no longer simply an individual of a species

but a unique person. Neither pre-Christian thought nor mysticism nor idealism; neither psychology nor sociology were equipped,

or even authorized, to give this answer.71

In the important section of the Theo-Drama II, “Infinite and Finite

Freedom,” Balthasar explains that Theo-drama is possible only when

“God” or someone representing God steps on to the stage as “a person”

69 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 1, 629. 70 Yenson, “Existence as Prayer,” 82. 71 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 1, 628.

Edward Ray 342

over against other characters.72 While philosophical approaches to God

would be reluctant to ascribe such personhood to God, in the high peri-

ods of religious drama, “God was able to appear on stage as a free

Someone over against free worldly beings.”73 Against static philosophi-

cal portrayals of the Absolute, Balthasar grounds the Theo-drama in the

freedom-bestowing freedom of God:

The “Absolute” has a sovereign ability, out of its own freedom,

to create and send forth finite but genuinely free beings (which is bound to cause the philosopher the greatest embarrassment) in

such a way that, without vitiating the infinite nature of God’s

freedom, a genuine opposition of freedoms can come about.74

While Balthasar’s use of “person” at this point in his Theo-Dra-

ma II still requires significant explication (which only Christology and

the doctrine of God can provide), it is clear that personhood from a

Theo-dramatic perspective cannot be extricated from the realm of free-

dom.75 Nor, again, can personhood be separated from self-presence and

consciousness, since, as was already apparent in the Theo-Drama I, the

bestowal of personhood is connected to the revelation of unique identi-

ty, the dawning of awareness that one is not merely a member of a spe-

cies or nature, but also a unique individual among others. Thus, Bal-

thasar says:

We are concentrating on the fundamental paradox that both

things are unveiled in my own presence-to-myself: namely, the

absolute incommunicability of my own being (as “I”) and the un-

limited communicability of being as such (which is not “used up” by the fullness of all the worldly existence in which it subsists).

It would be a mistake to attempt to clarify this duality by attrib-

uting unlimitedness one-sidedly to being as such, while regarding

72 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 2, 189. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid. 75 Yenson, “Existence as Prayer,” 83.


343

limitation as a characteristic of my “nature” (as one man among other men, as one individual of a species). For it is precisely in

the experience of being “I” (and no one else) that I pass beyond

all limiting knowledge of my nature and touch being (reality) in

its uniqueness.76

What is revealed to the subject is the real distinction between essence

and existence.

Once again, we are reminded that the foundation for Balthasar’s

understanding of person is the fourfold difference articulated in The

Glory of the Lord V: the second and third distinctions are the difference

between being and beings.77 One recognizes the inexhaustibility of the

act of being, which is not limited to the enumeration of actual existents.

Simultaneously, one experiences one’s own uniqueness in the midst of

countless other unique beings. Here, Balthasar reverts to language that

resonates with both Maximian and Thomistic thought: “In this primal

experience, while I can distinguish between my ‘mode of being’ (mo-

dus subsistentiae, tropos tēs hyparxeōs) and my grasp of (universal)

being, I cannot separate them.”78 This presence to oneself as a unique

“I” involves an openness to being, and therefore involves freedom, the

freedom to affirm being and beings: “Present to ourselves in the light of

being, we possess an inalienable core of freedom that cannot be split

open.”79 This finite freedom is both intellectual and volitive—

indivisibly, Balthasar says. But it is important to note that Balthasar

does not yet speak of the subject possessed of reason and free will as

“person.” Freedom, like self-subsistence, is constitutive of the person,

76 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 2, 208–209. 77 Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, vol. 5, 618–624. 78 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 2, 209. 79 Ibid., 210.

Edward Ray 344

but not sufficient, for personhood requires the free self-communication

of God to the individual subject.80

Not only is the conscious subject addressed or confronted by

God, but also called and commissioned. Finite freedom is thus invited

to share in divine freedom:

Something of the radiance of God’s freedom and uniqueness falls

on the essence and countenance of the chosen one, lifting him out

of the purely natural species. It sets him apart for a face-to-face

meeting with God; yet this does not transport him from the world but equips him to undertake a God-given task among his human

brethren.81

In Theo-Drama I, what Balthasar characterizes as naming, with exam-

ples from the Hebrew scriptures of God’s bestowal of name and identi-

ty,82 has the added dimension in Theo-Drama III of the bestowal of

mission:

It is when God addresses the conscious subject, tells him who he

is and what he means to the eternal God of truth and shows him

the purpose of his existence—that is, imparts a distinctive and

divinely authorized mission—that we can say of a conscious sub-

ject that he is a “person.”83

Mission, then, is not accidental to personal identity, even though in all

cases save one, Jesus Christ, mission is bestowed a posteriori and

through human freedom can be entirely or partially unfulfilled. Yet “in

the plan of God,” says Balthasar, “each conscious subject is created for

the sake of his mission—a mission that makes him a person.”84 Such

mission must be construed not as an act of personal autonomy, but ra-

80 Yenson, “Existence as Prayer,” 84. 81 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 2, 402. 82 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 1, 639, 645. 83 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 3, 207. 84 Ibid., 208.


345

ther as a participation in the archetypal personal—and personalizing—

mission of Christ.

Jesus Christ: The Archetypal Person

The archetypal narrative of the bestowal of personal identity,

transcending the naming of the prophets and other Old Testament fig-

ures, is the address of the Father at Jesus’s baptism, “You are my be-

loved Son.”85 Balthasar argues that while the mission of prophets gives

a glimpse of the possibility of the complete identity of a person with a

mission, such an identity in an absolute sense evades the categories of

anthropology: “And this utterly astounding and unforeseeable answer to

the question ‘from below’ (that is: Who is Jesus Christ?) is the answer

given by the New Testament.”86 Jesus is imparted a mission which is at

once universal and utterly unique:

Here, indeed, in the mission of Jesus, where an exact definition

of personal uniqueness coincides with its universal significance,

we have the irrefutable expression of his divinity. He receives

this divinity, for we are speaking of a mission that is imparted to

him.87

In Jesus, unlike all other persons, there is therefore no interval or dia-

stasis between his human conscious subjectivity and his divine person.

All the questions and various approaches to the question “Who am I?”

come to a head in the archetype of personhood, the person of Jesus

Christ. The unique a priori identity of Jesus’s person and mission is not

only the prime analogate but the very condition of possibility for a pos-

teriori personalization of all other conscious subjects. It is important to

note the weight that Balthasar places on the archetypal mission-

85 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 2, 286; Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 3, 207. 86 Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 3, 150. 87 Ibid., 207.

Edward Ray 346

personhood of Jesus: for Balthasar, this Christological centering of per-

sonhood is the only adequate response to the anthropological question

of individual identity. Simultaneously, theologically, it is the only ade-

quate approach to the person of Jesus himself, in whom created con-

sciousness and freedom do not give way to divinity but express, in

terms of mission, his divine person as proceeding from the Father.88

Conclusion

According to Balthasar, the modern conception of person based

on individual consciousness and freedom in large measure lacks atten-

tion to the intersubjective dimension of personhood, and even in its

dialogical manifestations requires the completion of divine-creaturely

relationality. An adequate definition of person must embrace both onto-

logical and psychological aspects, argues Balthasar, and can be found

only in an approach from revelation which sees Christ as the archetype

of all personhood, and all others constituted as persons in Christ.89 All

human individuals are first conscious subjects, before they grow into

personhood by responding to the address and mission of God in their

lives. In Christ, however, there is a complete identity between his mis-

sion and person. The distinction between person and conscious/spiritual

subject and the a priori determination of Christ’s person by mission

allow Balthasar to speak of Christ’s human particularity without posit-

ing a duality of persons, either in the classical ontological sense or in

the modern psychological sense.90

Balthasar claims the possibility of attributing to Christ’s human

nature more than the status of a property of his divine person, or a set of

attributes and faculties activated instrumentally by the Logos (a kind of

88 Yenson, “Existence as Prayer,” 86. 89 Ibid., 111. 90 Ibid., 112.


347

“ghost in the machine”). Nothing of the conscious intentionality and

freedom associated with the modern (philosophical) notion of person is

denied of Christ’s human existence. Christ is a fully human conscious

subject. In addition, as a particular conscious subject, Christ is, in the

economy, none other than the eternal Word and Son. He is never a con-

scious subject independent of his mission; his conscious subjectivity is

always, a priori, determined by his divine, universal mission. But this

complete assumption into his mission implies no ablation of what he

shares in common with all other particular, human conscious subjects.91


SUMMARY

The author outlines how Hans Urs von Balthasar, via his interpretations of Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas, approaches the understanding of the word “person.”

He notes that Balthasar believes that “the word ‘person’ . . . receives its special dignity in history when it is illuminated by the unique theological meaning,” the God-man Jesus Christ. The author then discusses Balthasar’s: (1) incarnational metaphysics, (2) distinction between person and being, (3) difference between philosophical and theo-logical personhood, (4) division between person and conscious subject, (5) correlation between person and intersubjectivity, (6) idea of the personalizing address of God, and (7) understanding of Jesus Christ as the archetypal Person.

KEYWORDS

Hans Urs von Balthasar, Maximus the Confessor, Thomas Aquinas, person, Jesus Christ, incarnational metaphysics, being, personhood, conscious subject, intersubjec-tivity, archetypal Person.

REFERENCES

Aquinas, St. Thomas. On Being and Essence. Translated by Armand Maurer. Toronto: PIMS, 1968.

91 Ibid.

Edward Ray 348

Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Contra Gentiles. Translated by Anton C. Pegis. Available online at: https://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles1.htm#4. Accessed Jan. 5, 2018.

Aquinas, Thomas. Super Boethium de Trinitate. Questions 1–4: The Trinity and the Unicity of the Intellect. Translated by Rose E. Brennan. St. Louis: B. Herder,

1946. Questions 5–6: The Division and Methods of the Sciences: Questions V and VI of his Commentary on the De Trinitate of Boethius. Translated by Ar-mand Maurer. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986. Availa-ble online at: www.logicmuseum.com/authors/aquinas/superboethium-index.htm. Accessed Jan. 5, 2018.

Balthasar, Hans Urs von. A Theology of History. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the

Confessor. Translated by Brian Daley, S.J. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. My Work: In Retrospect. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. “On the Concept of Person.” Communio. International Catho-

lic Review 13 (Spring, 1986): 18–26. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 4: The

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Balthasar, Hans Urs von. The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 5: The

Realm of Metaphysics in Modern Ages. Translated by O. Davies et al. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991.

Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Theo-Drama, vol. 1: Prolegomena. Translated by Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988.

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Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Theo-Drama, vol. 3: The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ. Translated by Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992.

Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, vol. 1: The Truth of

the World. Translated by Adrian J. Walker. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000. Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, vol. 2: The Truth of

God. Translated by Adrian Walker. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004. Campodonico, Angelo. “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Interpretation of the Philosophy of

Thomas Aquinas.” Nova et Vetera (English edition) 8, no. 1 (2010): 33–53. Johnson, Junius C. “Christ and Analogy: The Metaphysics of Hans Urs von Balthasar.”

PhD diss., Yale University, 2010. Owens, Joseph. “The Accidental and Essential Character of Being in the Doctrine of St.

Thomas Aquinas.” Mediaeval Studies 20 (1958): 1–40. Przywara, Erich. Analogia Entis. Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal

Rhythm. Translated by John R. Betz and David Bentley Hart. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014.

The Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas. Second and Revised Edition, 1920. Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Available online at: http://www.newadvent.org/summa/index.html. Accessed Jan. 5, 2018.


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Yenson, Mark Leslie. “Existence as Prayer: The Consciousness of Christ in the Theolo-gy of Hans Urs von Balthasar.” PhD diss., University of St. Michael’s College, 2010.

Documents

Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Notion of PersonHans Urs von Balthasar on the Notion of Person 321 and grace. Earlier in his Commentary,6 Aquinas argued that philosophy is useful for