Balthasar, Hell, and Heresy: An Exchange (is it compatable with the Catholic faith?)

Hans Urs von Balthasar once keenly observed what makes someone an ecclesial theologian: "It is quite clear that anyone who practices theology as a member of the Church must profess the Church's Creed (and the theology implicit in it), both formally and materially. This profession is made formally, by positing the ecclesial act of faith; materially, by accepting the ecclesial contents of the faith."

In other words, what ecclesial theologians say should reflect the beliefs they hold and those beliefs are to be the ones held by the ecclesial community. In virtue of their common profession, the theologian bears a name in common with the preexisting community of faith. This ecclesial relation suggests why the community can correct and even censure members who reject its common doctrine. Both formal and material professions serve as a lamp to guide and correct the work of the ecclesial theologian with the light of faith — and to enlighten any adequate evaluation of that work. For Catholics (like Balthasar), the definitive profession is expressed in Scripture, tradition, and the Church's Magisterium as these are inseparably united.

What then are we to think when Balthasar himself radically reinterprets a perennial doctrine of his ecclesial community, the doctrine of Christ's descent into hell? When he retains the form in its general expression but changes the content to the point of contradicting the original?

Balthasar is counted among the most influential theologians of the past century, being widely read and respected. Only his unexpected death, three days before the ceremony, prevented him from being made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II. By reputation, he is generally considered a conservative theologian. He wrote a book about how important it was to him to be Catholic. Of all people, one might reasonably expect Balthasar to qualify as an ecclesial theologian. But does he meet his own criteria?

It is a question asked reluctantly; however, the doctrine in question is by no means marginal to Christian faith: The mystery of Holy Saturday stands with Good Friday and Easter Sunday at the center of Christ's redemptive work. What one believes of Christ's descent into hell necessarily affects what one believes about Christ and salvation through him. The contrast between Balthasar's theology of Holy Saturday and the traditional Catholic doctrine confronts us with the grave but necessary question whether the work of a theologian so reputably Catholic is in fact compatible with the Catholic faith.

Traditionally, Christ's descent has been seen as the beginning of the manifestation of his triumph over death and the first application of the fruits of redemption. Gloriously descending to the souls of the holy men and women who had died before him, Christ bestowed on them the glory of heaven and the fullness of freedom. He did not suffer in hell; rather, in virtue of his redemptive death on the cross, he opened to the holy souls the gates of heaven that had been closed due to sin. Notable for its ancient origin and the unusual consistency of its profession, this doctrine of a triumphal descent is part of the heritage of all Christians. It was held universally in both Christian East and West until the Protestant Reformation; the Catholic Church and the Orthodox have continued to profess it without interruption.

Balthasar argues, however, that this doctrine does not do justice to the depths to which Christ went for man's redemption or, consequently, to his love. Rather, Christ must have suffered after death the full force of what would have awaited sinful mankind without a redeemer: complete rejection by the Father without hope of mercy or reconciliation. By descending into this utter abandonment, Christ bore the punishment humanity deserved, thereby manifesting the extreme extent of God's love. Balthasar agrees that Christ's descent should be called glorious, but in the sense that Christ's crucifixion, rather than his resurrection, is said to be his glory. Balthasar thus retains the form of the profession of faith but with a content other than the traditional one of his ecclesial community. Like the Catholic Church, Balthasar professes Christ descended into hell, but he means something radically different.

Balthasar had acknowledged the act of faith as normative in both its formal and material aspects. How then could he, a man of such Catholic repute and enormous intellectual gifts, have set forth the material content of the verbal profession so differently?

Certainly the definitive answer is known only by God, who sees the heart. But four possible explanations of a more general and accessible character suggest themselves: (1) Balthasar was ignorant of the content of the Church's profession, (2) he knew it but did not think it was normative, (3) he knew it was normative and saw his own as a development of it, or (4) he knew it was normative but nonetheless proposed something else in its place. We may legitimately ask which explanation is most fitting in order to consider whether Balthasar's doctrine is a product of ecclesial theology.

The first possibility is untenable: Balthasar's biographers compete for superlatives to describe his intelligence and extensive reading in literature and theology, and Balthasar himself discusses or alludes to the traditional Catholic doctrine in several places.

The second possible explanation, that Balthasar did not think the material profession was normative, also seems unsustainable. Balthasar knew what the traditional doctrine was, while his biographers and those who knew him personally stress his lifelong concern to be an ecclesial thinker. An original thinker, yes, but a maverick or dissenter, no. His observation that the allegiance of faith pertains both to its form and its content was written in the final years of his life and does not appear to reflect a change in his consciousness of the theologian's responsibility.

Might it be, then, that Balthasar knew that the Church's explication was normative but saw his own as a development of it? Surely it does the most justice to Balthasar as a noted scholar and a professed Catholic to examine his work based on this assumption. Let us look then at the doctrine and Balthasar's proposed development in more detail.

The traditional doctrine of Christ's descent into hell can be summarized by four points:

Although this traditional doctrine of Christ's descent has not been defined by an ecumenical council in resolution of controversy or proclaimed in an extraordinary manner by papal authority, it has consistently been held as an authentic and authoritative doctrine of Catholic faith. To doubt that would be to doubt not only the testimony of history but also the authority of tradition itself and of the Church's ordinary Magisterium. The doctrine is expressed in Scripture; in papal statements, conciliar documents, and other forms of magisterial teaching such as official catechisms; in the creeds; in the diverse eastern and western liturgies; in the consensus of the Church Fathers, the doctors of the Church, and the saints; and in the sensus fidelium expressed in sacred art. The elements of the doctrine go back to apostolic and patristic times, attain particular systematic integrity in the scholastic period, are reaffirmed as Catholic doctrine in response to the challenge of the new Protestant doctrines of the Reformation, and are reiterated in the present day in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Balthasar proposes notable changes to this doctrine. He rejects the idea of the limbo of the fathers, holding instead that Christ descended to the place (or state) of eternal punishment. Balthasar prefers to call this abode Sheol rather than hell, in part because he holds that Sheol is something worse than hell. There, Christ suffers the fate of unredeemed mankind: complete rejection by the Father. The Father's rejection is just, since Christ is "literally 'made sin'" in Sheol. Balthasar thinks that sin is something like a substantial reality due to the energy invested in it by the sinner. This idea has been criticized elsewhere for philosophical reasons, but merely to illustrate it here we might say that, by sinning, a person not only forfeits the good he might otherwise have become but also perverts that potentially positive part of his reality into something negative. Existing as a sort of immaterial reality, sins can be separated from sinners and actually transferred to Christ during his passion. Thus, he logically must suffer their full punishment if they are to be expiated.

The full significance of this burden is apprehended in Sheol. In place of the visio Dei, Christ has a visio mortis as he contemplates the repulsive horror and self-isolation of sin's selfishness. Balthasar stresses that Sheol is not a place, however, but a condition and thus an intimate spiritual reality. Hence, just as a soul is united to God through the beatific vision (the visio Dei), so likewise Christ, in virtue of his visio mortis, does not merely "see" sin objectively outside himself but is subjectively united and conformed to it: He is "literally 'made sin.'" Or, what is the same, sin becomes embodied (technically, enhypostasized) in the Son. The Father's rejection of sin thus takes the form of his abandonment of the Son in Sheol beneath the crushing weight of divine wrath against evil. Hence, Christ's agony does not cease after his death but rather increases as he suffers the pain of eternal punishment. Despite the limited time his body lay in the tomb, Christ experiences the Father's abandonment as eternal, both because such timelessness is essential to the punishment of unredeemed sin and because his suffering must embrace all time if it is to atone for the sins of all time.

As the Son of God, however, Jesus had a unique intimacy with the Father. Consequently, the Father's rejection is far worse for Christ than for other men. It is, Balthasar says, proportional to the divine love between the Father and the Son. Christ's agony in Sheol thus is immeasurably greater than the punishment of hell for any and all other sinners: Through the visio mortis, he is conformed to what is contrary to himself, the anti-divine reality of sin; he is rejected by the Father in proportion to his filial intimacy; and he undergoes this wrath on behalf of all sinners, suffering for each and every one of their sins.

Christ can undergo all this only because he is divine. As he is conformed to all sin, his human nature is "shattered" in Sheol by "a certain 'stretching apart' . . . which remains physiologically indescribable." Just as Balthasar thinks that, in order to become human, the Son actually left behind with the Father divine attributes such as omniscience, so even this attenuated humanity of Christ's will ultimately be stripped away. His descent thus is a conflict between the substantial love of God and the substantial selfishness of sin:

In this way — and only in this way, Balthasar insists — is redemption possible: For sin is brought inside the Son when he is literally made sin in Sheol; thus it is brought into the relationship between the Son and the Father; and thus it is finally brought into the love between them, the Holy Spirit. Despite the sin and wrath they experience, each divine person continues to give himself to the other two out of love. In this way, the trinitarian love engulfs sin, thereby destroying it. Christ's descent into hell is glorious because God's invincible (or "ever greater") love is revealed in the very conditions that present the greatest resistance to it.

Balthasar's doctrine differs so strikingly from the Catholic tradition's on so many essential points one wonders what elements are retained that might qualify it as a development. True, Christ descends to hell — though not exactly the Christ of Catholic tradition, for, according to Balthasar, Christ descends not so much in his human soul united to his divine person but ultimately in his divinity alone: Christ's humanity is "stretched" until "the whole superstructure of the Incarnation" is stripped away. The Son descends to hell — though not to the abode for holy souls, but rather to Balthasar's Sheol. The Son's descent is glorious — though not as the tradition has it, with Christ's sinless human soul manifesting itself in a glory like that of his imminent resurrection and conferring the beatific vision on the holy dead but rather with the "glory" of the divine love persisting despite its internal embrace of sin. Christ's power and authority are manifested in the realm of the dead and a way to heaven is made open — though not in the way these things were understood to have been done from the time of the early Church.

The disparity between the two doctrines is manifest also in their different soteriological roles. In Balthasar's theology, Christ's descent is expiatory rather than being the first application of the fruit of salvation. Also, the passivity of Christ's suffering in Sheol differs from the authoritative action traditionally ascribed to him. Moreover, the received Catholic theological tradition holds that Christ's death on the cross was satisfactory in virtue of the preeminent qualities of his person, that is, his divine excellence and his perfect charity. In contrast, Balthasar's soteriology of Christ's descent depends on quantitative penal substitution: In the place of all sinners, Christ suffers the punishment for all sins. Humanity is redeemed by Christ's cross insofar as the guilt of all sins is actually transferred to him there, but these sins remain to be expiated in Sheol through his suffering their punishment in place of the sinners who deserved it.

In short, it is difficult to see Balthasar's theology of Christ's descent as a development of the traditional Catholic doctrine. He retains the formula Christ gloriously descended into hell but invests it with a radically different meaning, maintaining the formal profession while replacing the material profession. Thus, contrary to all expectation, it seems we are left with no choice but the fourth possible: Balthasar knew the traditional material profession as normative but nonetheless proposed something else in its place.

In fact, examination of Balthasar's theology reveals that his doctrine is largely original to him. Although he generally attempts to present it as a rereading of historical sources, one finds he ignores or rejects the most widespread and authoritative of such. His selected pre-Reformation sources generally are ambiguous, open to readings consistent with the tradition, not authoritative, or used not only out of context but also against their context. The source with most telling influence on Balthasar is Adrienne von Speyr, a woman under his spiritual direction and a convert from Protestantism, while the seminal idea that Christ suffered in some way during his descent may be traced back to Nicholas of Cusa and the doctrinal heirs of his proposal, Martin Luther and especially John Calvin.

The unity of faith and the nexus mysteriorum are just two ways to describe the fact that the mysteries of Christ's life, death, and resurrection are all knit together. The work of God in Christ is a seamless garment. To change the profession, formal or material, of one mystery will ultimately have a ripple effect through all. Balthasar's essentially new doctrine of Christ's descent raises the question whether one can still believe in the Christ professed by one's ecclesial community if one consciously rejects the descent it professes, just as the same question would be raised if one rejected Christ's resurrection, his incarnation, the Trinity, or any other article of the creed. In fact, we have seen that the Christ whom Balthasar proposes descended into Sheol is not the same Christ whom the pre-Reformation and Catholic tradition professes descended to the limbo of the fathers.

Also at issue is the authority of the tradition that specifies the material contents of the formal act of faith. This matter is brought to the fore in theologies of Christ's descent, because the descent occurred beyond the reach of any eye and hence can be approached only on the basis of faith and its submission to revealed truth. The most explicit scriptural testimony is obscure, however, while the invocation of other passages to clarify those texts is already dependent on a tradition of interpretation and belief. Hence, necessarily, either one relies on Christian tradition as a sure guide to God's revelation — or one rejects such tradition in whole or in part.

The consequences of rejection give pause. If tradition is necessary, then without it theology becomes subjected to fallen reason's fancy — and unaided reason ultimately cannot fail to err in a subject matter so beyond its capabilities. Like all the mysteries of faith, Christ's descent into hell is an endlessly rich source for theological reflection. Nonetheless, its character as a mystery does not preclude certain things being affirmed as true and others being denied as false. Though the fullness of the mysteries of faith transcends human reasoning, God revealed these mysteries not to confound the human intellect but that we might know the truth about him in order to love and serve him as his holy people.

Then, too, as Balthasar had said, the ecclesial theologian adheres to the creed's implicit theology, that is, to the community's reasoned understanding of its belief as this consensus has been transmitted through history. The Church's tradition is implicit in her formal profession of faith; since tradition specifies what the words have meant to the believing community, it is the material content. If the verbal formula exists for the sake of conveying its content, then the words alone are insufficient for ecclesial communion. In other words, since words are significant for their meaning, to reject the material content of profession is identical to rejecting the belief the community has handed down, which is to reject the community formed by common belief and consequently to separate oneself from that community — even if, all the while, one retains the verbal formula.

Unfortunately, regardless of the openness with which one reads Balthasar's works or the sympathy one may have for him personally, it is undeniable that his theology of Christ's descent entails a de facto, and sometimes even conscious, rejection of Catholic tradition. Thus, Balthasar's work fails to adhere to an essential element of Catholic ecclesial theology and its standard of truth. Indeed, he contradicts it on a matter central to the gospel of redemption and to Christian faith. Confronted with this curious circumstance of an admired theologian whose work stands in opposition to the faith of his professed ecclesial community, even the most respectful inquiry would have to conclude, however reluctantly, that something went gravely awry in Balthasar's execution of the task of ecclesial theologian.

Hans Urs von Balthasar is a disturbing theologian. Even among some of his most vocal enthusiasts, he seems "not quite right." Nor has this diffidence been much assuaged by John Paul II's evident admiration for the theologian, shown most incontrovertibly when the pontiff named him a cardinal in 1988. Nor are the anxiously orthodox much allayed by Pope Benedict XVI's praise of him in October 2005, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth. And surely the central reason for that uneasiness is — despite his self-proclaimed orthodoxy — Balthasar's claim that Christ descended into the depths of hell in order to rescue, at least potentially, all those "spirits in prison who disobeyed God long ago" (1 Pet. 3:20).

Alyssa Pitstick claims that this thesis directly contradicts the limpid and always consistent teaching of the Magisterium on the mystery of Holy Saturday, which perhaps finds its clearest and most univocal formulation in this sentence from the recently promulgated Catechism of the Catholic Church: "Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned, nor to destroy the hell of damnation, but to free the just who had gone before him."

To be sure, this version of the Catechism was published after Balthasar died, and so he cannot be blamed for dissenting from that particular sentence, at least as formally taught. But that is not much of a defense, for the sentence was evidently formulated with him in mind. We know this because Christoph Cardinal Schonborn (archbishop of Vienna and chairman of the drafting committee of the Catechism) said so: "The brief paragraph on Jesus' descent into hell keeps to what is the common property of the Church's exegetical tradition. Newer interpretations, such as that of Hans Urs von Balthasar (on the contemplation of Holy Saturday), however profound and helpful they may be, have not yet experienced that reception which would justify their inclusion in the Catechism."

Admittedly, Schonborn does provide here a certain amount of room for discussing Balthasar's apparently revolutionary theology of Holy Saturday, and he even leaves open the possibility that it might later become part of the Church's orthodox teaching. This is a prospect that the Catechism itself seems to point to, for it asserts that "the Church prays that no one should be lost . . . If it is true that no one can save himself, it is also true that God 'desires all men to be saved' (1 Tim. 2:4) and that for God 'all things are possible' (Matt. 19:26)." With that passage, Balthasar would certainly agree, only adding that it is both a logical and a psychological impossibility to pray for something for which there is antecedently no hope — a hope that for him can be justified only in the love of Christ that is victorious even over hell.

I do not know if Pitstick holds with St. Augustine that hope for universal redemption is antecedently impossible, but she certainly insists that Balthasar's own way of providing theological grounds for that hope contradicts Church teaching. In her reading, the Church has recognized only a glorious entrance by Christ into hell, and since glory is antithetical to darkness, Christ therefore did not — or rather could not — suffer in true hell, the place of the damned, where only darkness reigns. Thus Christ descended into hell solely to redeem those located in the so-called limbo of the fathers.

Frankly, I dispute her tendentious reading of the tradition. Back in his days as Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict wrote a book called Eschatology, where he faced this issue directly:

The parallels with Balthasar's theology here are more than obvious, which Ratzinger makes even more explicit in the afterword to the English edition, written in 1987 during his tenure as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In this afterword, he praises Balthasar's trilogy as a "great triptych" and singles out for special laudation the last volume of TheoDrama (the one specifically devoted to this theme) for "its profound analysis of the essence of Christian hope, the pain of God, judgment and consummation." Indeed, he goes further and raises the large claim that this final volume "makes a foundational contribution to a deepening of the theme of eschatology."

I am not trying to give retroactive infallibility to these lines simply because they happen to have been written by a future pope. But they certainly do show that Balthasar's theology of Christ's descent into hell has entered into the thinking of the highest reaches of the Church's Magisterium. Pitstick, however, labors under the impression that Balthasar's views are so outré and bizarre that they even call into question the honesty of his professed desire to be regarded as an orthodox Catholic theologian.

Of course, his views are not right just because they have more theological warrant than Pitstick wants to grant. Balthasar's theology is not without problems. When one of Ludwig Wittgenstein's graduate students allowed how much he regretted the Church's condemnation of Origen's doctrine that God would eventually abolish hell and redeem the whole world (including the devils), the philosopher shot back: "Of course it was rejected. It would make nonsense of everything else. If what we do now is to make no difference in the end, then all the seriousness of life is done away with." And in his book A Rumor of Angels, the sociologist and Lutheran writer Peter Berger insists that "the argument from damnation" points to a world beyond this one: We all feel, Berger argues, that certain crimes are so wanton that no punishment, not even execution or life in prison, could suffice for justice to be done. In other words, there can be no theodicy without hell, no genuinely transcendent justice without eternal damnation. If the drama of salvation is to be a divine comedy, and not just a hollow, sick, and empty existentialist joke, it has to include an inferno.

But such objections, worries, and demurrals are one thing; Alyssa Pitstick's full-bore attacks on Balthasar quite another. To start with, her reading of the tradition insists that Sheol (the vaguely conceived underworld of the Hebrew imagination) was pre-differentiated, so to speak, into various regions. Ancient views of the underworld, whether from the Old Testament, Homer, or other pre-Christian sources, were undoubtedly vague. But that vagueness for her was due to the darkness of minds that had not yet received the fullness of revelation.

That, however, is an epistemological point. The various regions had already been divided up into impermeable sections, however unbeknownst to pre-Christians. In her view, before the coming of Christ on earth, the underworld already consisted of (1) a hell of the damned, to which Christ did not go; and (2) a limbo of the just ones, where Christ went to free these antecedently just souls from their (presumably unjust?) captivity. Indeed, in her forthcoming book, though not in her article here, she actually goes so far as to identify this pre-Christian limbo with the Catholic concept of purgatory — a strange innovation on the tradition coming from such an uber-traditionalist as herself. (With the exception of Cato the Younger, all the denizens of Dante's Purgatorio are baptized Christians, and even Cato is placed in what Dante called "ante-purgatory," from which he never ascends into purgatory proper.)

Because Pitstick's reading of the tradition is so monochromatic, she is forced to trace the provenance of Balthasar's apparently recherché views not to the Bible, and certainly not to tradition, but to such figures as German cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. Because she seems to regard that genealogy as probative merely by mentioning it, I gather she disapproves of Protestant influence on Catholic theologians — and we have already learned that a theologian's status as a cardinal clearly cuts no ice with her. But in response to her implied accusations of Lutheran and Calvinist influence, I will up the Protestant ante even further. In my reading, the strongest Protestant influence on Balthasar was not Luther or Calvin but Karl Barth, who gets no mention in either Pitstick's article or her new book.

In Balthasar's view, Barth was the first theologian in the history of Christian thought who found a way of reconciling St. Paul's theology of the atonement with Luther's and Calvin's (and Augustine's) theory of predestination. He did this by showing that the entirety of God's foreordained decree for the human race — whether to save or to damn — came to focus first and above all on his Son, who submitted himself to God's reprobation. And since reprobation is what brought hell into being in the first place, Barth is led to this conclusion:

Pitstick would no doubt regard this passage as equally dubious — and certainly at least as much in conflict with previous Church tradition — as anything that Balthasar might have written. To which I think he would respond: If one is going to object to Barth here, one is not so much objecting to the Reformers as to St. Paul. As anyone who has read his influential book on Barth knows, Balthasar did not subscribe to Luther's notion of a merely forensic justification, whereby we gain access to heaven by faith alone, a faith which tells us we have been acquitted in God's courtroom, as it were, by a kind of legal fiction, even while we continue to stay stuck in the same mire of sin as before. But for Balthasar, even if the Reformers went awry here, at least they took St. Paul seriously, and ecumenical discussion will go — nowhere in his view unless both sides return to a serious reexamination of Paul on his own terms.

In other words, the whole point of Balthasar's book on Barth was not to make Luther or Calvin canonical authorities for Catholic theology (nor, of course, to rule them out of bounds either, in the manner of Pitstick, just for being Protestant). Rather, he wanted to bring Paul's doctrine of atonement back into the center of Catholic debate, especially these verses: "For our sake God made him [Christ] to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21), and "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by being cursed in our stead" (Gal. 3:13).

I think I can explain Balthasar's interpretation of these passages by citing a remark from St. Anselm, the medieval Benedictine who became the archbishop of Canterbury in the twelfth century. He shocked his fellow monks at a colloquy one day when he told them that he would rather God condemn him to hell, even if he had committed no sins, than that he be allowed into heaven with the soil of sin still staining his soul. No doubt Anselm was speaking here, as was his wont, of what God "has to be" by definition: that is, the All-Holy, who by nature cannot admit sin into his presence. But, however unawares, he alas also making a christological point. For could the persons of the Trinity be less willing to follow such a logic than was a medieval monk? Has not Anselm inadvertently expressed the Trinity's own reasons for the incarnation? Do we not now see why a merely forensic view of justification will ultimately break down logically?

In the face of this logic, and above all in her studied refusal to come to terms with Paul's theology (even quite independently of Reformation theology), Pitstick has only one option left, and she takes it: In her book, she says quite openly that "tradition" (meaning of course her tradition) trumps all of Scripture, and not just St. Paul:

This procedure is an example, I believe, of what is called the argument from desperation. For one thing, it contradicts Church teaching. Vatican II's decree on revelation, Dei Verbum, explicitly asserts that the "teaching office of the Church is not above the word of God, but serves it," and Pius XII solemnly taught that the inspired meaning of the sacred text is located in the original intent of each author, which can be determined only by looking at each author's unique historical context.

One is left to wonder if Pitstick has preselected her passages because she suspects other passages of their unorthodoxy. Granted, some passages in the Bible might lack clarity — but orthodoxy too? She avoids Paul's Letter to the Romans as if it were radioactive — and no wonder, because nearly every line of that epistle can be brought in to refute her thesis of a pre-Christian purgatory. For it is precisely Paul's point in Romans that no one is just in the sight of God after the first sin of Adam.

Presumably the denizens of the Pitstickian purgatory would be Jews who obeyed the Mosaic law or pagans who kept the natural law — or, if they failed in their legal duties, somehow managed to repent before death, though they would had to have done so without benefit of knowing the cross of Christ by which those sins would have been known as sins. But for Paul, obedience to either law is irrelevant, since Jew and pagan are equally guilty, and precisely because their knowledge of obeying the law brings knowledge of their true sinfulness: "All men, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin . . . For no human being will be justified in God's sight by works of the law, since through the law comes knowledge of sin" (Rom. 3:9b, 20).

As to Pitstick's odd notion of a pre-Christian purgatory, one must recall Thomas Aquinas' insistence that mortal and venial sins are not two different species of the genus "sin" the way birch and beech trees are equally trees. For St. Thomas, only mortal sin is sin in the true sense. This means that if Christ went down solely to purgatory (where only venial sins are purged, along with the lingering effects of forgiven mortal sins), then his atonement for sin — real sin — has been "emptied of its power" (1 Cor. 1:17). If I might put the matter in John Milton's mythological terms, what could prove more pleasing to Satan than to hear reports of a newfangled theology that claims his realm has been left intact, not invaded or broken into by the ruler of the universe? As Lucifer says of his new abode in the dungeons of Tartarus in book 1 of Paradise Lost:

My chief worry about Pitstick's position is not her totalizing attack on Balthasar. We are, after all, dealing with Christian theology's most crucial issue: God's intentions for the world. What worries me instead is that she seems to have an alternative vision of the gospel that would, in time, turn Good News into bad, hope into despair, trust into anxiety, and love into fear — and this despite John's admonition that "there is no fear in love, for perfect love drives out fear" (1 John 4:18).

The Beloved Disciple is obviously not encouraging sentimentality or moral laxity here, for two chapters earlier (at 2:1-2) he grounds that fear-expelling love not in wishy-washy liberalism or an avuncular indulgence of sin but in the entirely objective fact of universal redemption: "My little children, I am writing this to you so that you do not sin; but if any one does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Just One. He is the expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world."

MORE ON BALTHASAR, HELL AND HERESY
[A follow-up in the January 2007 issue of First Things]

In his reply in last month’s issue of FIRST THINGS to my investigations of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Fr. Edward Oakes says his "chief worry" is that, in the traditional doctrine of Christ’s descent into hell, I have offered "an alternative vision of the gospel," in which Christ has not atoned for mortal sin. Oakes argues that if justification is not to be merely forensic, Christ needed to suffer hell, the punishment for sin. Oakes thinks this logic is the proper interpretation of St. Paul, implicit in St. Anselm and explicit in Karl Barth, and he considers the Catechism open to it.

If Oakes is right, Christ’s death on the cross was insufficient for redemption. All doctrine linked to the cross as the locus of redemption is then also nonsense. Why then does St. Paul glory in Christ crucified, rather than Christ in hell? Did Christ establish a Church to preach his Word, only to have her preach falsely for most of her history?

Oakes’ first argument lacks the force of necessity. One may hold forensic justification to be false without having to hold that Christ suffered the hell of eternal punishment, as any number of patristic, medieval, and Catholic Reformation soteriologies prove-and without a resultant futile gospel or neglect of St. Paul.

Meanwhile, Oakes’ second argument proceeds from authority: As evidence for Balthasar’s "theological warrant," he cites the admiration of John Paul II and Cardinal Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI. But surely it is fallacious to suggest that appreciation for aspects of a person and his work means approbation of all, much less a nihil obstat. Take the most extreme case: Even those regarded as heresiarchs in the great controversies might be commended for holding fast to what they retained of the communion of faith; still, it did not take the rejection of all common beliefs to sunder that communion-only one. Add the fact that papal utterances have varying degrees of authority, and some nuance emerges. So what did our two authorities think of Balthasar’s doctrine of Christ’s descent? Despite some differences, Ratzinger’s descensus theology more often resembles Balthasar’s than it recalls the Catholic tradition’s. Nonetheless, Ratzinger has deliberately refused to venture what exactly occurred in Christ’s descent. He was - partly hindered by his methodology but perhaps also by an unresolved tension between his friend’s proposal and what he knows of Catholic doctrine: In The Sabbath of History, Ratzinger reveals strong hesitations about Balthasar’s views. Now, unless one mistakenly ascribes retroactive infallibility to Ratzinger’s work, Ratzinger’s theology remains his private theological opinion. It thus bears authority only insofar as it communicates the Church’s faith. So, until time proves a theologian has expressed that faith better than the apostolic tradition, tradition trumps the theologian.

The popes’ situation is different, since their duty is to confirm the faith. Then it matters not how many in highest office Balthasar has influenced but only what they teach authoritatively, as, for example, the explicit reiteration of the traditional doctrine by John Paul II in his promulgation of the Catechism and in his January 11, 1989, catechesis: His nomination of Balthasar as cardinal did not stop him from clearly affirming a doctrine antithetical to Balthasar’s. As for Benedict XVI, let us wait and see. His address to the Balthasar symposium said nothing with sufficient specificity or dogmatic authority to justify much anxiety or rejoicing. Oakes’ final argument is to call into doubt the traditional doctrine by implying that I misrepresented it. Thus the contrast between Balthasar’s doctrine and the tradition’s is merely my reading and my tradition. In fact, it is the consensus of historians of descensus theologies. My understanding of the tradition is purportedly "monochromatic." Yet the sources of Catholic theology consistently paint the same picture. My inadequate reading of the tradition allegedly "forces" me to hunt for influences on Balthasar outside the tradition and not to grant him due "theological warrant." In fact, the man himself forces me to this search, since his claims to support within the Catholic tradition do not bear up under scrutiny. Oakes does my work for me by highlighting the proximate influence of Barth, a man who neither regarded himself as a Catholic ecclesial theologian nor has been assimilated as such.

Additionally, owing to certain misreadings, Oakes ascribes to me untenable positions that taint the traditional doctrine by association. He claims, for instance, that I identify the limbo of the fathers with purgatory. Rather, in my book I say it is reasonable to think purgatory was preparatory for the limbo of the fathers so long as heaven was closed. With this erroneous identification in mind, Oakes argues that a descent by Christ into purgatory, where only venial sins are purged, would not atone for mortal sin. Neither the Catholic tradition nor I hold that Christ went to purgatory to expiate sin. Instead, I believe what the tradition reiterates: that after atoning for all sin through his death upon the cross, Christ descended in his soul to the limbo of the fathers to confer heaven on the holy souls there, who were other than those in purgatory.

Oakes is also concerned that the existence of any holy souls prior to Christ’s descent implies that some were justified without Christ, which contradicts the Letter to the Romans. I hold that some were justified before Christ, though only by virtue of him who was to come. This doctrine of prevenient grace accounts for the Old Testament’s calling some the friends of God-no one in a state of mortal sin is such-and for St. Paul saying, also in Romans, that Abraham was justified by his faith. No Catholic who believes in the sinlessness of Christ’s mother can deny this doctrine. Both Oakes and Balthasar draw an ontological conclusion from an epistemological premise: If pre-Christian descriptions of the afterlife lacked structure, the afterlife itself must have lacked structure. This cornerstone of Balthasarian theology also rests on an overly selective use of Scripture, as I argue elsewhere. The basis in revelation for a differentiated afterlife cannot here be demonstrated.

Meanwhile, of my use of Scripture, Oakes suggests I am negligent of St. Paul, the Magisterium’s duty to Scripture, and the inspired human authors. He adduces the Barth-Balthasar-Oakes interpretation of Romans and one quotation from my dissertation. Let us provide some context to that quotation. In brief, as my dissertation is not a work of historical-critical exegesis, I properly used the methods appropriate to other forms of theology. In one chapter, I examine how those who believed in the traditional doctrine saw it grounded in Scripture; thus, my search for "clarity and orthodoxy" concerned non-scriptural writers. The historical-critical approach is not the only way to interpret Scripture or even the most influential in the history of exegesis. Consequently, above all I found typological interpretations-a form of exegesis employed also by the inspired authors themselves. While not inattentive to questions of linguistics and anthropology, this approach focuses on discerning the Divine Author’s intention more than that of the human authors-first, because these latter are of interest only insofar as the Divine Author is speaking through his Word; and, second, because God alone is the author of typology through his creative power and providence.

In using this and other exegetical methods, the tradition does not trump Scripture but draws out its salvific significance and embodies it in Christian life, even as Scripture originated within an already living tradition. By authoritatively interpreting Scripture and guiding tradition, the Magisterium thus serves both Scripture and tradition-which in their mutual interdependence, and not one without the other, are acknowledged as God’s revelation by Vatican II’s Decree on Revelation. Oakes follows Balthasar in setting tradition against Scripture. Likewise, both begin by acknowledging what the traditional Catholic doctrine is but end by holding it to be erroneous.

Then, too, Oakes claims I dismiss Luther and Calvin "just for being Protestant" and that I consider the genealogy from Nicholas of Cusa to Balthasar via these two "probative merely by mentioning" it. I highlighted this lineage first to indicate that the doctrine of Christ suffering in hell has relatively recent origins; from its beginnings to the Reformation, the Church believed quite the opposite. But this genealogy is also important to the question of Balthasar’s status as a Catholic ecclesial theologian: The Catholic tradition rejected Nicholas’ proposal, while the idea was deliberately developed against the Catholic doctrine in the Protestant ambience. If Balthasar takes up what Catholics rejected and what Protestants used to distinguish themselves, one may legitimately question Balthasar’s Catholicity on these grounds-for it is not what we share that separates us but precisely our differences. It is fallacious for Oakes to suggest I think non-Catholics speak no truth simply because I argue that some of them are mistaken on one point.

Perhaps Oakes might now address my original difficulties: Can one doctrine truly be the development of another if the two are contradictory? Does the tradition’s material profession (the content of belief) have as much authority as the formal profession? And since Balthasar’s theology of Christ’s descent entails a de facto rejection of Catholic tradition and its authority, what must we conclude about Balthasar’s service as a Catholic ecclesial theologian? Perhaps in the end we must say, however reluctantly, that after Luther, Calvin, and Barth, Balthasar has made a real contribution to Protestant ecclesial theology.

I too wish to express my gratitude for this exchange, and above all for Alyssa Lyra Pitstick’s services to theology in airing these important issues. I doubt, however, that she will much appreciate my nod of thanks in her direction, for I hold that her real service has been to argue against Balthasar so disagreeably that she will end up midwifing his theology into the mainstream of Church thinking far more than my own poor efforts have so far managed to do. Because my objections to her prosecutorial brief against Balthasar focus above all on the three issues of Protestantism, papacy, and purgatory, I shall take advantage of this accidental alliteration and cluster my response accordingly.

Let us begin with Pitstick and Protestantism. I chose the quotation from Karl Barth on the nonnecessity of hell deliberately. Knowing of her curt dismissal of the Reformers in her dissertation and book, I expected she would fall into the trap I set for her, and fall she did. But if she objects to Barth here, does that mean she holds with St. Augustine’s theory of double predestination-that some go to hell by necessity? Maybe yes, but presumably no. In which case she then agrees with Barth that no one goes to hell by necessity but only by free choice. Then why object to the statement? Just because a Protestant said it? But as Vatican II teaches, "Catholics must gladly acknowledge and esteem the truly Christian endowments in our common heritage which are to be found among our separated brethren."

At all events, if Pitstick is looking for an official statement from the Catholic Magisterium affirming Barth on the single predestination of all human beings in the predestined status of Christ as the New Adam, she may find it in John Paul II’s encyclical Dives in Misericordia: "Connected with the mystery of creation is the mystery of election, which in a special way shaped the history of the people whose spiritual father is Abraham by virtue of his faith. Nevertheless,...that mystery of election refers to every man and woman, to the whole great human family." This same anti-Augustinian (and, ironically, anti-Reformed) denial of limited atonement and double predestination was reaffirmed by Cardinal Ratzinger in his book God Is Near Us, where he says, "Jesus died, not just for a part of mankind, but for everyone....[God] does not make any distinction between people he dislikes, people he does not want to be saved, and others whom he prefers," a position which he, of course, reiterated in his first papal encyclical, Deus Caritas Est.

Which brings me to the next point: Pitstick and the popes. Pitstick tries manfully to put some light both between Balthasar’s cardinalatial status and his orthodoxy, and between Ratzinger’s "private theological opinions" as a professor and his new responsibilities in the Chair of Peter to defend church tradition. In her attempt to find such light, she mentions his book The Sabbath in History. Unfortunately, I could find no such book by that title in Books in Print or in any online source, either in English or in German. So let me cite, in turn, a more accessible quotation, from Cardinal Ratzinger’s homily at Balthasar’s funeral Mass in Lucerne, Switzerland, on July 1, 1988 (printed as an appendix to David Schindler’s Hans Urs von Balthasar: Life and Work). Explaining why Balthasar had earlier "thrice thrust aside" the proffered red hat, and yet why John Paul II insisted under holy obedience that he accept the honor, the cardinal-homilist said: "This [refusal] was not motivated by a coquettish desire to act the great one, but by the Ignatian spirit which characterized his life....But what the pope intended to express by this mark of distinctive honor remains valid: no longer only private individuals but the Church herself, in her official responsibility, tells us that he is right in what he teaches of the Faith, that he points the way to the sources of living water-a witness to the word which teaches us Christ." This is precisely the same point Pope Benedict made in his address before the Lateran University in October 2005, where, without knowing of her work, he ended up directly refuting Pitstick’s claim that Balthasar was dissembling when he assumed the mantle of an ecclesial theologian: "On an occasion such as this, it would be easy to fall into the temptation to return to personal memories, based on the sincere friendship that united us and on the numerous works that we undertook together, addressing many of the challenges of those years....However, I do not wish to make reference to memories, but rather to the richness of von Balthasar’s theology," said the pontiff. "Hans Urs von Balthasar was a theologian who put research at the service of the Church, as he was convinced that theology could only be theology when it is ecclesial."

Finally, there is the matter of Pitstick and purgatory. Another reason I am grateful for this exchange comes from Pitstick’s clarification of her views on pre-Christian purgatory. I admit I initially thought she had identified the limbo of the fathers with purgatory (in her book, the point is obscurely made). But now I find out that purgatory is but the pre-Christian antechamber to limbo, a conclusion she calls - "reasonable," which it no doubt is, given her monophysite presuppositions. For I now see that, on her account, Jesus could not descend into purgatory, lest his radiant divinity come into contact with even trivial sin.

No, the only souls Jesus can meet are those already completely purged of sin (and prior to his death, to boot!), lest he extend his table fellowship with sinners in the underworld. No wonder for her Christ’s glorious entrance into hell began at 3:01 p.m. on Good Friday, since there was only an already glorious and sinless region for him to descend into. Exactly why so trivial a work of rescuing the already redeemed required a three-day sojourn (or why the Church’s liturgical tradition never celebrates Christ’s victory over death until the darkness of Holy Saturday is about to give way to the light of Easter Sunday) is never explained. But the whole point of Balthasar’s development of doctrine here rests on the fact that only Jesus’ human soul, still hypostatically united to his divine person, descended into hell. In other words, when Paul says (drawing on the earliest formulation of the Church’s kerygma) that Christ died "according to the Scriptures" and "on the third day" rose again, that duration must itself be theologically significant.

Once more we come up against Pitstick’s aversion to anything Protestantism has touched. As Stephen Greenblatt showed in his brilliant Hamlet in Purgatory, no doctrine proved more church-dividing in the - sixteenth century than that of purgatory. Perhaps - ecumenical agreement (however conceived) will finally reach consensus on this issue in the twenty-first century. But what will happen if the discussants then find out that they now have one more hurdle to scale: assent to Pitstick’s pre-Christian purgatory?

None of my objections to Pitstick’s innovations will of course mitigate the anxiety Balthasar causes, both among the hostile and the friendly. Personally, I would never assert an empty hell, and not just because Origenism is a heresy, but more because I cannot make the iniquity on display in the daily headlines jibe with the idea of universal salvation.

So how then do I reconcile that position with my enthusiasm for Balthasar? By citing the French anthropologist Ren Girard’s recent book Celui par Qui le Scandale Arrive (the title alludes to Jesus’ saying that "scandals will come, but woe to him by whom they come"). In that book, Girard speaks retrospectively of his work in a way that uncannily mimics Balthasar’s voice: "We have no choice but to go back and forth, from alpha to omega. And these constant back-and-forth movements force us to phrase matters in a convoluted, spiraling fashion, which eventually runs the risk of being unsettling and even incomprehensible for the reader....I think one needs to read [my work] like a thriller. All the elements are given at the beginning, but it is necessary to read to the very end for the meaning to become completely apparent."

One other thing. Pitstick concludes her argument in last month’s issue of FIRST THINGS by claiming that Balthasar stands not only in "a de facto [but] sometimes even conscious rejection of Catholic tradition." By using the word conscious, Pitstick clearly means that Balthasar is lying when he professes to be a Catholic theologian. This is no mere innuendo; it is defamation, which has no place in theological disputation.

ALYSSA LYRA PITSTICK received her doctorate in theology from the Angelicum in Rome. Her dissertation, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ's Descent into Hell, will soon be published by WB. Eerdmans.

EDWARD T. OAKES, S.J., teaches theology at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois. He is the author of Pattern of Redemption and many other works on the thought of Balthasar.

Not wishing to speculate on subject beyond my comprehension, I offer only that "hell" in the Bible seems to be the Hades of the parable of Lazaeas and the rich man, which is to say the abode of the dead. He would then rise from the dead and with him the souls of the Fathers. Unlike them he would be assumed body and soul into heaven on Easter. As to the rest, I suppose that Baltazar is stressing the identity of Jesus with his brother men.

Interesting and heavy discussion...also an example of how academic careers are made, by causing a stir in the academic world. I think the first writer makes assumptions about Balthazar's state of mind, intentions and assumption that go beyond good taste and into mindreading.

He has been the person to shoot arrows at lately. Multiple academic careers will be made in the process.

5 posted on 03/16/2007 2:43:58 PM PDT by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)

I've been reading this discussion in "First Things" for several months. Very deep, and not likely to make much impact on my faith, I have to say.

However, I have to say that, although on the basic point, I generally agree with Ms. Pitstick, she's such a superior-toned grump that I really want to agree with the other guy!

Heads-up, Alyssa, if you're reading this ... your attitude is making enemies for your analysis.

Yes, it does. I have to wonder if anyone else in the world really cares that much :-). I've seen an occasional two- or three-paragraph excerpt from Balthasar, but never purchased a book ... and I'm a fairly serious consumer of theological literature, compared to the rest of the world.

It reminds me of the saying about academic battles, "The wars are so vicious because the stakes are so small."

I only know about it from reading :-).

Seriously, I guess you have to do something drastic to make a living as an academic theologian. It obviously makes people cranky, so I'm glad I found something else to do with my life.

Von Balthasar wrote some great things, particularly about the Church. I liked two of them, Heart of the World and The Office of Peter, in particular.

I don't care much for the visionary, Adrienne Speyer, who was his inspiration for some of his more radical ideas, though. One of the problems with von Balthasar is that he moves back and forth between being a solid (and extremely wordy and detailed!) German theologian and being a mystic. There is the famous phrase that mysticism "begins in mist and ends in schism," and it is certainly true that some of his more "mystical" things may not be great doctrinal expressions. But many of his other works are really worth reading.

I've read a couple of books of Adrienne von Speyr's, and they were interesting. However, they really didn't work for me, and ended up donated to the homeschool association book exchange or the parish used book sale.

Some writers, I just say, "Huh?" and she's one of them.

Check out "Theology and Sanity" by Frank Sheed. I need the royalties.

;-o)

Seriously, it has been one of the most influential Catholic books I've ever read. I am also partial to Flannery O'Connor. Grace administered by sledge hammer is how God works often, I think.

F

I've never bought a Frank Sheed book, although I see them in the catalogs. I'll have to try the used book sites, after searching the library catalog.

Flannery O'Connor doesn't reach me, for some reason. What I've read leaves me saying, "Why did I put myself through this?"

Dr. Pitstick's thesis gets my vote. It was finished when Christ, on the cross, said it was finished.

John 19:30

When Jesus had taken the wine, he said, "It is finished." And bowing his head, he handed over the spirit.

I highly recommend Frank. He writes beautiful prose and it is so easy to comprehend.

I think one must read the letters of O'Connor before reading her work. She was dying, knew she was dying and that had a huge impact on how she needed to portray God's grace. That is why I call it the "sledge hammer" approach.

Thanks for the suggestion - I'm sure the Ignatius catalog has it. Maybe there will be a post-Easter clearance sale.

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