Obstacles to Reading Scripture in Modernity: Von Balthasar’s Response | Daniel M. Garland, Jr. | Homiletic & Pastoral Review
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics {are} a remedy for the breakdown in modern biblical exegesis and the groundwork of an approach to revelation that allows the glory of God to show forth in all of its splendor.
In the first book of the first part of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Trilogy, The Glory of the Lord: Seeing the Form, von Balthasar lays out his plan for a theological aesthetics. He envisions his project as a reversal of the ordering of the transcendentals in the works of Immanuel Kant. Kant began with his critique of pure reason (truth), then moved to a critique of practical reason (good), and finally a critique of judgment (beauty). Thus, von Balthasar begins where Kant ends and affirms that without beauty as the starting point, the other transcendentals are lost.
In a world without beauty—even if people cannot dispense with the word and constantly have it on the tip of their tongues in order to abuse it—in a world which is perhaps not wholly without beauty, but which can no longer see it or reckon with it: in such a world the good also loses its attractiveness, the self-evidence of why it must be carried out. Man stands before the good and asks himself why it must be done and not rather its alternative, evil. 1
This is precisely where we have arrived in modernity. Beauty has been tossed out of every sphere of modern society as evidenced by modern art, music, literature, and manner of dress. All types of vulgarities affront us when we turn on a television set, radio, or take a stroll down a city street. A perusal of the daily news headlines reveals that goodness is slipping away. As with the good, so also with the truth. Relativism is an imposing beast that no longer tries to conceal itself, but instead walks out in the open and produces more spawn than rabbits in mating season. Eventually, Being itself is questioned. Without beauty, nihilism is the final frontier. “The witness borne by Being becomes untrustworthy for the person who can no longer read the language of beauty.” 2 Thus, for von Balthasar, beauty must be restored to its fundamental place at the head of the transcendentals. Not only is this restoration needed for the survival of culture, it is likewise necessary for the renewal of modern biblical studies with its destructive approach to reading Sacred Scripture. In this article, I will present von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics as a remedy for the breakdown in modern biblical exegesis and the groundwork of an approach to revelation that allows the glory of God to show forth in all of its splendor.
The starting point of von Balthasar’s aesthetics comes from the Christmas preface of the Roman rite:
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