Von Balthasar as Transmodernist by D. Kearney

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/156852910X494466

Religion and the Arts 14 (2010) 332–340 brill.nl/rart

RELIGIONand the ARTS

Review Essay

Von Balthasar as Transmodernist: Recent Works on Theological Aesthetics

Dutton KearneyAquinas College

Bychkov, Oleg V., and James Fodor, eds. Theological Aesthetics after von Balthasar. Ashgate Studies in Theology, Imagination and the Arts, eds. Trevor Hart et al. Aldershot, England and Burlington VT: Ashgate Pub-lishing Company, 2008. Pp. xxxiv + 238 + 15 illustrations. $99.95 cloth.

Forte, Bruno. The Portal of Beauty: Towards a Theology of Aesthetics. Trans. David Glenday and Paul McPartlan. Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerd-mans Publishing Company, 2008. Pp. viii + 121. $30.00 paper.

Murphy, Michael P. A Theology of Criticism: Balthasar, Postmodernism, and the Catholic Imagination. American Academy of Religion Academy Series, ed. Kimberly Rae Connor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xiv + 210. $74.00 cloth.

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Hans Urs von Balthasar’s interdisciplinary trilogy—The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics—has been a watershed event in the

twentieth century for the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and aesthet-ics. Certainly we could mention other affected disciplines of study, but for the current task, these three will suffice. Von Balthasar’s work has now moved into its second stage of reception—the first stage being its transla-tion followed by introductory summaries—and more and more scholars seek to apply his theoretical framework to the actual task of doing theol-ogy, philosophy, or aesthetics. Although the third stage—criticism and

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correctives—is most probably several decades away, there are some antici-patory forays being developed. These three stages can serve as an organiz-ing principle for examining three recent works on aesthetics. In each, von Balthasar figures prominently either as an integral component to the development of a particular thesis, or, as a point of departure.

Archbishop Bruno Forte’s background in theology allows for an insight-ful commentary on aesthetics, and his The Portal of Beauty: Towards a The-ology of Aesthetics—which is part introduction, part application—establishes a firm and important groundwork for further reflection. The first six chapters cover individual thinkers (Augustine, Aquinas, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky, von Balthasar, and Evdokimov), with the final three chapters presenting reflections on music, cinema, and poetry. It is a solid introduc-tion to different approaches to beauty from a theological context, and as such, it does not discuss aesthetics in the abstract, nor does it discuss aes-thetics solely from the limited perspective of a particular discipline such as philosophy or literature. Although each chapter is about twelve pages, there is a surprising depth within them that many writers cannot attain in twice as many pages. Still, the text necessarily limits itself to a series of introductions, which accounts for its subtitle: it does indeed move toward a theology of aesthetics rather than toward an actual presentation of one in its fullness.

Forte’s stated purpose is “to examine the deep, even though not always obvious, contribution of theological thought to the understanding and experience of beauty” (viii). For him, beauty is like synecdoche: the whole is communicated via the part. For example, the whole of God’s love is communicated through the Cross; the infinite is revealed via the finite. Not intended to be a survey of theology or even of aesthetics, his brief but piercing chapters focus in on particular thinkers. While von Balthasar takes up but one chapter, his project of reinvigorating the relationship between theology and aesthetics animates much of Forte’s book. In his opening chapter, the latter looks at two thinkers who tower over medieval theology: Augustine and Aquinas. Forte reads Augustine as a theologian who spent his entire life pursuing the relationship between God and beauty, and taking up a very familiar passage from Augustine’s Confes-sions—“Sero te amavi, pulchritude tam antique et tam nova” (Bk. 10, Ch. 27) [“Late have I loved you, O beauty so ancient and so new”]—Forte explores the implications of defining God as beauty. If beauty attracts love, and God is love as well as beauty, then we can easily understand why we are attracted to beauty—our subjective response of pleasure is caused

334 D. Kearney / Religion and the Arts 14 (2010) 332–340

by the objective presence of beauty. In applying his schema of synecdo-che, Forte shows how Augustine describes the qualities of beauty in refer-ence to their source, God. Thus, a beautiful object is in harmony with itself, and in turn, in harmony with the Whole. In his chapter on Aqui-nas, Forte relies upon Jacques Maritain and Umberto Eco, as well as the tripartite description of integrity, proportion, and radiance that is so familiar to readers of this journal. Forte adds in Aquinas’ discussion of analogy and truth: when we respond to beauty, we take in the object as it is (as opposed to how we wish it would be) and the Whole is conveyed in the fragment via the act of ideation. Forte contrasts the personalism of Augustine with the rationalism of Aquinas, arriving at a common ground between the two thinkers.

Each of the first six chapters follows a similar trajectory. In his discus-sion of Dostoevsky, Forte identifies the various threats to beauty, the most pernicious being nihilism. In the novelist’s focus on Good Friday—images of violence in his work—Dostoevsky shows that the only path to God is through the Cross. Because beauty cannot be manifested in this world without a conscious choice, Dostoevsky’s characters are given the freedom to choose between nihilism and redemption as “the way of the cross will always remain the way to freedom and beauty” (51). Modernism’s loss of God has occurred through a loss of a sense of beauty. In the next chapter, Kierkegaard is described as a transitional figure leading to von Balthasar, who, inheriting this tradition of synecdoche, writes his trilogy on the idea that the whole is revealed through the part. Beauty, for von Balthasar, is the most important of the transcendentals because without it, truth and goodness disappear. The chapter on Paul Evdokimov examines the role of Eastern Christianity and beauty as revealed through icons, which, once again, is a form of divine synecdoche. The concluding three chapters of the book speculate about music, cinema, and poetry. Once again, because he writes in broad strokes, he brings readers only to the threshold of applying his thesis rather than actually putting it into practice. However, for a book subtitled Toward a Theology of Aesthetics, readers should not be dissatisfied with having been taken to the threshold and abandoned (e.g., the chapter on poetry provides a poem without commentary) but should instead see the book as an opportunity for further development. As a reflective introduction to theological aesthetics, it is a fine overview.

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The second stage of the reception of von Balthasar’s work lies in the appli-cation of his thesis, and one would be hard pressed to find a better critical theorist than Michael P. Murphy. His A Theology of Criticism: Balthasar, Postmodernism, and the Catholic Imagination represents a true develop-ment in applying theological aesthetics to literary criticism. There have been recent studies about the so-called “Catholic Imagination,” but very few of those works transcend their sociological context in order to present their findings systematically. Murphy’s book is a rich, interdisciplinary explication of the trilogy, placing von Balthasar’s thought not only within its historical and theological contexts, but also examining it in light of postmodernism. Murphy is in full control of the vocabulary of postmod-ern literary criticism, and what makes his work so powerful is his insis-tence upon applying the conceptual framework of postmodernism to von Balthasar, all the while respecting and generally upholding von Balthasar’s claims. It is an interesting conversation between a discipline that attacks the very existence of meaning and a theologian who claims that all mean-ing is mediated through the Cross. After establishing the historical and methodological contexts of his study, Murphy then applies von Balthasar’s approach to literature (Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation” and David Lodge’s Therapy) and to film (Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves). The result is a remarkable tour de force for theologians, literary critics, and postmodernists alike.

Murphy begins his study with finding the intersection between theol-ogy and literature—narrative. In his opening chapter (a convincing apolo-gia for religious criticism), he sets out to define the phrase “Catholic Imagination.” As one might expect from the title, he locates the most reli-able definition in the work of von Balthasar, making generous use of the fifteen volumes of the trilogy as well as many of von Balthasar’s other works. In addition, there is a thorough bibliography, and many secondary sources are annotated in the footnotes. The ensuing conversation among theologians, literary scholars, and philosophers consciously recreates von Balthasar’s own interdisciplinarity (“intellectual pluralism”), and because Murphy avoids literary jargon that obfuscates rather than reveals, his work can have a wide appeal. Murphy states that “the main purpose of this study, then, is to suggest creative and credible options for religious critics” (5). Although the definitions of postmodernism in the introduction are not comprehensive, Murphy does introduce more postmodern terms and methods throughout the book as he explicates texts.


Some readers might prefer that Murphy separate his chapters on theol-ogy and literary analysis rather than employ his technique of utilizing fre-quent section breaks, but the advantage to his methodology is that readers can see the continuous conversation among the various disciplines. To the extent that truth cannot contradict truth, Murphy seeks to find the com-mon ground between the theological claim that the Cross is the center and fulfillment of human history and the postmodern claims that all his-tory is a construct of one power structure dominating another. Because postmodernism (and here, Murphy uses Derrida) denies religious truth, Murphy decides to pursue postmodernism as a kind of negative theology. The methodology allows Murphy the luxury of placing the tropes of post-modernism at the service of the theological aesthetics of von Balthasar.

The second chapter provides biographical information on von Balthasar as well as a summary of the main points of his trilogy. Murphy locates von Balthasar’s use of interdisciplinarity in the Enlightenment, which, of course, parallels Murphy’s use of theology with postmodernism. He also makes the important point that Ignatian spirituality plays a vital role in his subject’s approach, not only because the Jesuits actively engaged mod-ernism, but also because the Spiritual Exercises aided von Balthasar’s intel-lectual vision of understanding the aesthetic significance of identifying and seeing the Cross as the center of human history. This chapter does not explain von Balthasar’s aesthetics (other works have already done the work of the first stage of reception), but it does present three themes that Murphy finds essential in von Balthasar’s work: concentricity (revisiting the same themes through different perspectives), music, and stylistic plu-ralism. What accounts for the uniqueness of Murphy’s approach is his insistence that he does theological exploration and aesthetics simultane-ously, and in his mind, the failure to do so has led to the many incom-plete works on the Catholic Imagination.

Chapter Three (titled “Sacred Arrangements”) contains a discussion of hierarchy and a theological reading of Flannery O’Connor’s short story “Revelation.” Postmodernism—either through nihilism or through rela-tivism—has overzealously collapsed all qualities of natural justice (the basis for hierarchies) into hegemonies created by the will to power. Mur-phy examines the transcendental of beauty in light of Maritain’s Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry and the tripartite division of beauty into integ-rity, proportion, and radiance, all the while weaving in interpretations of Pablo Neruda, Walker Percy, William Everson, and Flannery O’Connor.


He is quite successful at integrating the two disciplines of theology and literary criticism into his methodology, and readers are invited to visualize the process as something like a leader conducting an orchestra. His read-ing of O’Connor’s short story “Revelation” is perceptive, dovetailing with the theological discussion of Aquinas and von Balthasar.

Chapter Four examines theological aesthetics in cinema. Here, Murphy takes up the structure of von Balthasar’s five-volume Theo-Drama as a sure guide for interpreting the dramatic arts. In allowing ourselves to be moved by God on the stage of our lives, we participate in a dialectical drama with God. As this dialectic is fresh and new for each person—and yet the same God initiates it—there is an inter-subjectivity to Theo-Drama, as well as an indeterminacy because the Spirit responds differently to each person. Murphy rightly identifies “inter-subjectivity” and “indeterminacy” as pre-occupations in postmodernism, and he uses these terms in an effort to transform categories of literary criticism. In a sense, Murphy out-post-moderns the postmoderns in recontextualizing literary terms as categories for doing theological aesthetics, and he does so in a manner that recog-nizes the complexity and contribution of postmodernism. For example, postmodernists often speak about inscription: One is inscripted upon by an Other. Rather than reinforcing inscription as an expression of a power-seeking hegemony, Murphy points out the theologically obvious: in Theo-Drama, God, having inscripted His image upon us, calls us back to Himself. It is not a manipulation of power structures, but an expression of love.

The chapter concludes with an ingenious reading of the work of direc-tor Lars von Trier. In his discussion of von Trier, Murphy writes about the Catholic Imagination through the language of postmodernism. Breaking the Waves was not without controversy when it appeared. Set in Calvinist Scotland, the movie portrays a dialectic between Protestant and Catholic theological imaginations, and Murphy’s analysis is most penetrating when it examines the movie in this light, especially when he points out the defects in the Protestant theological imagination. The movie also allows for an extended discussion of the analogia entis, a major point of differ-ence between Catholics and Protestants. Taken as a whole, the chapter is insightful; however, the rhetorical strategy of interlacing theological back-ground with cinematic criticism does not work as well as it does for fic-tion—the interruptions detract readers from an understanding of the film. Perhaps if Murphy had given readers a more extended summary of


the movie, the organization of the subsections would be smoother, but he is to be commended for including it in his work.

The final chapter is an extended analysis of David Lodge’s Therapy. By now, readers are familiar with and comfortable with Murphy’s methodol-ogy. This chapter takes up the ways in which people choose to order their lives. Through René Girard, Judith Butler, Søren Kirkegaard (whom Lodge explicitly evokes in the novel), and Martin Buber, Murphy shows how Lodge’s character Laurence Passmore gives up on modern consumer-ist culture and embraces—or rather, “turns” toward—the transcendent. Throughout the chapter, Murphy interweaves theology, philosophy, and literary criticism, admirably fulfilling his earlier intention that von Bal-thasar’s simultaneous interdisciplinary approach ought to be imitated by all critics and theologians. This chapter is perhaps the most integrated of the five—after each digression on postmodernism, Murphy conscien-tiously applies that postmodern critique to the novel, albeit with a von Balthasarian telos. His insistence upon using postmodern terminology within a Christian framework is one of the main strengths of the work. Murphy refuses to reduce the arguments and tenets of postmodernism to mere straw: in his openness to truth, he allows what is good and true (and therefore beautiful as well) to work on him. One can hope that the pro-cess will be reciprocated by postmodernists themselves.

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The fullness of the third stage—the critical and corrective stage—of the reception of von Balthasar is still in the future, but there are anticipatory arguments present in Theological Aesthetics after von Balthasar, essays devel-oped from presentations at international conferences in 2004 and 2006. Edited by Oleg Bychkov and James Fodor, the collection suggests many correctives to von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics, most notably those involving his perceived misunderstanding of the Protestant theological and aesthetic traditions. In his introduction, Bychkov uses the language of philosophy to speak about aesthetics rather than theology like Forte, or postmodernism like Murphy. Because there are many different aesthetic traditions, there is a consequent pluralism—which the editors have encouraged—in this volume that is absent in Forte and Murphy. Such is the nature of academic conferences (though readers should note that this volume is not merely the proceedings from the conferences, but engaged


revisions of presentations). Because the book is a collection of essays, there is no one single narrative thread, and while each essay offers its own insights, there is a lack of the interconnectedness that one finds in a monograph. In addition, there is some overlap among the three books reviewed here: Aquinas and von Balthasar are the only thinkers who fig-ure prominently in each, and Alejandro Garcia-Rivera has an essay in Bychkov; Garcia-Rivera, is one of Murphy’s close readers and advisors.

Yet this volume is also more dialogic than the other two volumes, and certainly more critical of von Balthasar than either Forte or Murphy. For example, where von Balthasar parts ways with Protestant theological aes-thetics (as does Murphy in his discussion of von Trier’s Breaking the Waves), some essays in this collection seek a reconciliation between the two aesthetic traditions. Von Balthasar sees Protestantism’s reliance upon the Word over the analogia entis (the analogy of being) and with emotion over intellect as liabilities rather than as assets. Also, as one would expect with a stronger emphasis on Protestantism, the Catholic Imagination is less of a concern. The special attention given to Reformed, Lutheran, and Anglican traditions allows for extended discussions of figures not in Forte or Murphy, such as Barth and Tillich.

Most of the essays, however, can be said to be inspired by von Bal-thasar. For example, there is Ben Quash’s “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s ‘The-atre of the World’: The Aesthetic of a Dramatics,” which focuses on the theologian’s Ignatian spirituality. Another essay, such as Richard Vilande-sau’s “The Beauty of the Cross,” combines von Balthasar, Tillich, and illustrations as a means of pointing out the convergences between von Balthasar, preaching, and beauty. James Fodor’s “ ‘Alien Beauty’: Parabolic Judgment and the Witness of Faith” examines the parables of Jesus in light of Stanley Hauerwas, Iris Murdoch, Paul Ricoeur and various fol-lowers of von Balthasar. Bernadette Waterman Ward and James Kerr pres-ent two excellent essays on von Balthasar’s treatment of Hopkins; the former focuses upon Scotus in Hopkins, while the latter examines Hop-kins’s place in the canon of English poets. There are even some essays which do not mention von Balthasar at all, focusing upon the aesthetics of philosophers such as Aristotle or Duns Scotus. Other contributions, such as Lee Barrett’s “Von Balthasar and Protestant Aesthetics,” are con-cerned with pointing out deficiencies in von Balthasar’s understanding of Protestant aesthetics. The conversation amongst the essays is as interesting as it is complex.


The poet Charles Péguy once remarked that the water at the bottom of the well was newer than the water at the top of the well. Tradition, for Péguy as well as for von Balthasar, is a living entity, something that is to be addressed anew in every age. The impact of von Balthasar’s encyclope-dic oeuvre will be felt for many years to come. The application of his methodology to various disciplines is still to be done (one recalls the 1980’s when every literary work was subjected to a deconstructionist read-ing; the wish is for the same to be done through a von Balthasarian lens), and the task is exciting for the future of religious criticism. Critics who want to gain an understanding of the history of theological aesthetics would do well to read Forte, and those who are interested in doing so from the context of religious pluralism would do well to read Bychkov and Fodor. However, those who want do the work of literary criticism on their knees will find Murphy’s text to be the best preparation. There, the groundwork for von Balthazarian transmodernism has been laid.

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Von Balthasar as Transmodernist by D. Kearney