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This penetrating study makes a case for the centrality of the concept of representation (Stellvertretung) in Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological project. How is it possible for Christ to act in the place of humanity? In Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of Representation, Jacob Lett broaches this perplexing soteriological question and offers the first book-length analysis of Balthasar’s theology of representation (Stellvertretung). Lett’s study shows how Balthasar rehabilitates the category of representation by developing it in relationship to the central mysteries of the Christian faith: concerned by the lack of metaphysical and theological foundations for understanding the question above, Balthasar ultimately grounds representation in the trinitarian life of God, making “action in the place of the other” central to divine and creaturely being. Lett not only articulates the centrality of representation to Balthasar’s theological project but also demonstrates that Balthasar’s theology of representation has the potential to reshape discussions in the fields of soteriology, Christology, trinitarian theology, anthropology, and ecclesiology. This work covers a wide range of themes in Balthasar’s theology, including placial and spatial metaphors, a post-Chalcedonian Christology of Christ’s two wills, and theories of drama. This book is also a text of significant comparative range: Lett considers Balthasar’s key interlocutors (Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus, Aquinas, Przywara, Ulrich, Barth) and expands this base to include voices beyond those typically found in Balthasarian scholarship, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dorothee Sölle. The overall result is a deeply probing presentation of one of Balthasar’s most significant contributions to contemporary theology.
Notes -- Selected Bibliography -- Index
Although scholarship has long recognized the centrality of the Trinity in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, no sustained treatment of this theme has been published until now. In this insightful new book, The Trinitarian Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Brendan McInerny fills this gap, situating Balthasar's trinitarian theology in conversation with both the wider Christian theological tradition and his non-Christian intellectual contemporaries. Drawing from across Balthasar's extensive body of works, McInerny argues that Balthasar's vivid description of the immanent Trinity provides a way to speak of how "God is love" in himself, beyond his relationship to creatures. He then shows how Balthasar's speculation into the immanent Trinity serves as the substructure of his theology of deification. For Balthasar, what we say about the inner life of God matters because we are called to share in that very life through Christ and the Holy Spirit, to the glory of God the Father. Finally, responding to the criticisms that Balthasar's speculations into the inner life of God are without warrant, McInerny argues that Balthasar's bold trinitarian claims are actually a vehicle for apophatic theology. Balthasar's vivid description of the triune God does not transgress the boundaries of theological discourse. Rather, it manifests God's ever-greater incomprehensibility through verbal excess, oxymoron, and paradox.
This study presents Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theology of the Eucharist and shows its significance for contemporary sacramental theology. Anyone who seeks to offer a systematic account of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theology of the Eucharist and the liturgy is confronted with at least two obstacles. First, his reflections on the Eucharist are scattered throughout an immense and complex corpus of writings. Second, the most distinctive feature of his theology of the Eucharist is the inseparability of his sacramental theology from his speculative account of the central mysteries of the Christian faith. In The Eucharistic Form of God, the first book-length study to explore Balthasar’s eucharistic theology in English, Jonathan Martin Ciraulo brings together the fields of liturgical studies, sacramental theology, and systematic theology to examine both how the Eucharist functions in Balthasar’s theology in general and how it is in fact generative of his most unique and consequential theological positions. He demonstrates that Balthasar is a eucharistic theologian of the highest caliber, and that his contributions to sacramental theology, although little acknowledged today, have enormous potential to reshape many discussions in the field. The chapters cover a range of themes not often included in sacramental theology, including the doctrine of the Trinity, the Incarnation, and soteriology. In addition to treating Balthasar’s own sources—Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Pascal, Catherine of Siena, and Bernanos—Ciraulo brings Balthasar into conversation with contemporary Catholic sacramental theology, including the work of Louis-Marie Chauvet and Jean-Yves Lacoste. The overall result is a demanding but satisfying presentation of Balthasar’s contribution to sacramental theology. The audience for this volume is students and scholars who are interested in Balthasar’s thought as well as theologians who are working in the area of sacramental and liturgical theology.
Von Balthasar presents one of the few serious studies available on the thought of one of the most important, and yet most neglected Fathers of the Church, Gregory of Nyssa. He was the most profound Greek philosopher of the Christian era, a mystic and an incomparable poet whom St. Maximus designated as the "Universal Doctor" and the Second Council of Nicaea declared him "Father of Fathers." Less prolific than Origen, less cultivated than Gregory Nazianzen, less practical than Basil, Gregory of Nyssa nonetheless outstrips them all in the profundity of his thought, for he knew better than anyone how to transpose ideas inwardly from the spiritual heritage of ancient Greece into a Christian mode.
In this original study, Joshua Brown seeks to demonstrate the fruitfulness of Chinese philosophy for Christian theology by using Confucianism to reread, reassess, and ultimately expand the Christology of the twentieth-century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. Taking up the critically important Confucian idea of xiao (filial piety), Brown argues that this concept can be used to engage anew Balthasar’s treatment of the doctrine of Christ’s filial obedience, thus leading us to new Christological insights. To this end, Brown first offers in-depth studies of the early Confucian idea of xiao and of Balthasar’s Christology on their own terms and in their own contexts. He then proposes that Confucianism affirms certain aspects of Balthasar’s insights into Christ’s filial obedience. Brown also shows how the Confucian understanding of xiao provides reasons to criticize some of Balthasar’s controversial claims, such as his account of intra-Trinitarian obedience. Ultimately, by rereading Balthasar’s Christology through the lens of xiao, Balthasar in Light of Early Confucianism employs Confucian and Balthasarian resources to push the Christological conversation forward. Students and scholars of systematic theology, theologically educated readers interested in the encounter between Christianity and Chinese culture, and comparative theologians will all want to read this exceptional book.
All too often, the Christian understanding of salvation has been one-dimensional, reducing all that God has done for us to a single conception or idea. Tom Greggs, one of today's leading theologians, offers a brief, accessibly written, but theologically substantive treatment of the doctrine of salvation. Drawing on the broad tradition of the church and the Christian faith in explaining the Christian understandings of salvation, Greggs challenges the contemporary church to be captured afresh by the immeasurable height, depth, and breadth of God's saving actions.
In this fourth volume of his magnnum opus, von Balthasar considers the metaphysical tradition of the contemplation of Being. He provides major studies of Homer, the Greek Tragedians, Plato and Plotinus and the development of this tradition in the Middle Ages. He then explores the analogy between the metaphysical vision of the Being and the Christian vision of the divine glory of the Trinity. The book is a remarkable attempt to rediscover the ancient vision of Being in all its awesomeness as the context within which the specifically Christian vision, rooted in God's gracious self-revelation, took form and was expressed.
Hans Urs von Balthasar places Origen of Alexandria “in rank . . . beside Augustine and Thomas” in “importance for the history of Christian thought,” explaining that his “brilliance” has captivated theologians throughout history (Spirit and Fire, 1984, 1). This brilliance shines forth in his nine extant homilies on Isaiah, in which he employs his theology of the Trinity and Christ to exhort his audience to play their crucial role in salvation history. Origen reads Isaiah’s vision of the Lord and two seraphim in Isaiah 6 allegorically as representing the Trinity, and this theme runs throughout the nine homilies. His representation of the seraphim as the Son and Holy Spirit around the throne of the Father brought early accusations that Origen was a proto-Arian subordinationist, followed by a pointed condemnation by Emperor Justinian in 553. These homilies, originally delivered between 245 and 248, are extant only in a fourth-century Latin translation. Though St. Jerome, likely because of these controversies, does not identify himself as the Latin translator, the evidence overwhelmingly points to his pen, and his reliability in conveying Origen’s authentic meaning is well documented. If one sets aside the questionable charges of subordinationism, these homilies, expounding on passages from Judges 6-10, come alive with Origen’s legacy of presenting Christ as the central figure of the soul’s ascent to God. Reading allegorically the two seraphim to be Jesus and the Holy Spirit around the Father’s throne, Origen draws a picture of the Trinity as a tightly knit whole in which the Son and the Holy Spirit eternally sing the Trisagion (“Holy, holy, holy”) to each other and the Father about the divine truths of God’s nature, allowing the part of their song that conveys the “middle things” of salvation history to be heard by creation. The “second seraph” is the Son, or Jesus, who descends holding a hot coal, or Scripture, from the altar of the throne, with which he cleanses Isaiah’s lips, or the believer’s soul. Origen employs his signature exegetical method of allegory and typology through the lens of the threefold meaning of Scripture to emphasize to his hearers that Christ is the deliverer, the content, and the reward of the healing Word. He repeatedly assures them that those who submit to Scripture will enter into salvation history’s cycle of cleansing from sin, growth in virtue, and ever-deepening knowledge of God. As a result, they will become like Christ and thus will be prepared to join the Trinity for all eternity at the heavenly wedding feast.