Obstacles to Reading Scripture in Modernity: Von Balthasar’s Response

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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