A Dialectic Between Sin and Hell

In the following from Prayer, Balthasar quotes a relatively obscure Cardinal Bona. Giovanni Bona (1609-1674) was an Italian Cistercian, cardinal, liturgist and devotional author. One can only be amazed at Balthasar's depth and range of knowledge of the western canon and Church leaders through the ages. Cardinal Bona responds to the mystery confronted when one contemplates God's infinite mercy and at the same time his just judgement.
Balthasar does make it clear that there can be no uncertainty regarding our sinfulness and our deserving of the just judgement of God. We have no defense. "Yet at the same time, if my faith and love are alive and genuine, I simply cannot accept my personal condemnation from the mouth of God, for the Son, Love himself, has borne it on my behalf."

from pp. 300 – 301

There is a dialectic to be maintained in the contemplation of hell. We see it in the Son's being forsaken by God and in his descent into the darkness of Hades. In the Son who bears, not his own sins, but mine, I glimpse the terrible severity of the fathers judgment -- for who but the Son really knows what it means to be forsaken by the Father? It is my "journey into hell" that I observed him undertake, a journey which, God knows, I have deserved. I cannot dissociate myself from it in my contemplation. I cannot nurture the secret sense of having saved my own skin because my Friend, my Beloved, Eternal Love himself, has taken the rap in my place. That would be absolute lovelessness, crass egoism, cold heart…. All the sinner can do, contemplating the judgment pronounced upon his own sin, is simply to be there while his case is heard, to be there just as he is, the sinner who wasn't there when he was needed, who betrayed the Lord like Judas and denied him like Peter and fled like the others;… And so is bound to consent to the Judge's sentence and the Victim's cry of abandonment: Yes, that is the truth, that is what I have deserved.

The dialectic of this contemplation consists in this: because he believes (that what is involved is the redemption of the world and his own redemption), because he loves (and hence cannot dissociate himself from the Son), the believer must accept the Father's sentence of condemnation upon the sinner (i.e., upon himself). The very faith and love which go to make this contemplation also submit to the Father’s judgment. Naturally faith and love you expect from the Father nothing but what is good; they themselves are graces flowing from the completed redemption and resurrection. But their expectation of everything that is good actually includes saying Yes to their own just condemnation. God would be right to condemn them. He was right to forsake the Son who was carrying my sin, who embodied my sin. And yet it is really faith and love, and they alone, who conduct this contemplation; faced with redemption from hell -- the process which alone proves that there is such a thing as faith, as love -- they admit that we are worthy of damnation. Yet at the same time, if my faith and love are alive and genuine, I simply cannot accept my personal condemnation from the mouth of God, for the Son, Love himself, has borne it on my behalf. What the holy Cardinal Bona made bold to say is a thoroughly Christian affirmation, essential to the theology of faith and love:

"O Lord, in thee I have trusted: let me never be put to shame. And if an angel from heaven were to assure me that I had been cast out from thy sight, I would not believe him. Even if thou thyself, O God Most High, wert to say that thou hadst damned me for all eternity, I would not listen to thy words. Pardon me, O Lord, but I would not believe thee. For even if thou slayest me and bringest me down to hell, I will still hope in thee for ever" (Via compendia ad Deum, c.12, decas 9).

There is no other way of reflecting upon grave sin and its penalty but this. Worldly reason will find the double truth unintelligible, but for faith it is quite clear: there is no alternative. For where the vitality of faith and love (which springs from the Lord's resurrection) breaks through, we cannot be under the dominion of the fear of hell.

Balthasar - A Dialectic Between Sin and the Cross

In the previous post Balthasar speaks of  our participation in the cross of Christ, "Such participation, as the Lord wishes, can go to the extremes of powerlessness, spiritual darkness, forsakeness and rejection; since these things are sharing in the cross ..." He here indicates the Ignatian roots of his spirituality. He goes on in the following to further delve into St. Ignatius' exercises as we contemplate our own sin and the sin of the world.

from pp. 298-300

But there is a dialectic in our contemplation of sin in the light of the cross: only by looking at my Redeemer can I understand the extent of what I have done. In the face of redeeming love I am pierced through by a nameless terror: I might be, indeed I am a murderer of Eternal Love; no excuses are of any avail; I deserve unconditional damnation. Beholding the handiwork of ultimate love between Father, Son and Spirit, performed for me, loveless as I am, I begin to understand that I do not belong among them, that I do not have love and thus I'm deserving of eternal wrath. Indeed, I merit destruction and banishment from the whole divine order:

"A shout of astonishment and profound love, as I think how every created thing has not refused to keep me alive. The angels, the sword of God's justice, have put up with me, protected me, prayed for me: the saints have gone on praying and interceding on my behalf: the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, the natural elements, the fruits of the earth, birds, fish, the whole animal kingdom…; Why is not the very earth opened to swallow me, creating new hells for my eternal torment?" (Exercises, 60)  [St. Ignatius]… does not neglect to put the contemplation of general and personal sinfulness in the theological context of the redemption. Each individual reflection leads up to the Colloquies with the merciful Lord "hanging on the Cross before me", whose love shows me what I have (not) done for Christ, what I am (not) doing for Christ, and what I shall (not) do for Christ. And it is within this “kind of talk friends have with one another, or perhaps like the way a servant speaks to his master" (Exercises, 54) that I become aware that I have thoroughly deserved hell. Unless it acquires a profile by being contrasted with redeeming love, the idea of hell will remain fantastic and imaginary, impossible for us to take absolutely seriously in our prayer. But, once it has this firm outline, it is what "stops the mouth" (Rom. 3:10) of the sinner who is always trying to find some reason why God cannot really abandon a man.

His Death on the Cross - Our Death to Ourselves

Balthasar continues in the final chapter in Prayer to define the contours of our contemplation of the cross. Our personal crosses are given to us by Jesus. He sheds light on the appropriate attitude toward our sinfulness; by illuminating our abject behavior, unable to be turned around, without the light of Jesus' death on the cross.

from pp. 297-298

This is a fundamental axiom of soteriology… It is the ascending and exalted Head of the Church and of mankind who distributes the charisms and missions of discipleship (Eph. 4: 7f). Out of the fullness of his victory the Son endows the different kinds of men with different modes of sharing in his temporal sufferings…. Such participation, as the Lord wishes, can go to the extremes of powerlessness, spiritual darkness, forsakeness and rejection; since these things are sharing in the cross, they may go beyond what can be experienced and endured at the natural level. They can be so intense that the subject seems to lose all spiritual light whatever all prospect and hope of redemption and resurrection. And yet, infallibly, this is all a result of that light; it presupposes it, objectively and even subjectively. For the light is never withdrawn from a believer unless, having already experienced it, he consents, at least implicitly, to be deprived of it.

All faith is resurrection faith. Hence contemplation of the cross is part of contemplation of the resurrection…contemplation of the cross is the context in which we are to contemplate our own sin and the sin of the world…we cannot reflect fruitfully upon sin unless we do so on the way to penance, and the origin of penance is the cross. Only in the light of the cross and its judgment on sin can the sinner hope to get some idea of what his sin is. Our so-called good or bad conscience…is inadequate on its own, for sin is by nature a lie and thus casts a fog over our insight into ourselves. It is easier than we think to circumvent our consciences and to adopt the standards of the "world". On the other hand, we can be thrown into a sudden despair with regard to the abyss of our own sin, and this despair is not God's will either, but comes from our own attitude of sin. The cross gives the sinner the proper objectivity (a God-given degree of insight into his sinfulness) in the proper subjectivity (a God-given experience of contrition, repentance and sorrow), resulting in an appropriate sense of fear of judgment. There is nothing Christian about unleashing an unrestrained anxiety about judgment which ignores the reality of the cross-indeed, it is totally un-Christian.

Reflection - A Coincidence of Events

Of course, Christmas is a joyous occasion. Jesus Christ is born. God has taken on human form. God condescended to become one of us. As difficult a concept as this is to understand, one cannot help but be gladdened, even flattered, that this is what our Faith asks us to believe. Yet, the postings of January regarding Balthasar's last chapter in his book Prayer, and two sermons serving as readings for the Office of Readings for Friday, January 8 (from Christian Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours, Catholic Book Publishing Co.), indicate that this is not a complete picture of the joy and the peace that we celebrate at Christmas.

In a Christmas day sermon Leo the Great closes the sermon with the following:

"Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ."

Peter Chrysologus in a sermon entitled "The sacrament of Christ's incarnation", ends his sermon thus:

"and so Christ is born that by his birth he might restore our nature. He became a child, was fed, and grew that he might inaugurate the one perfect age to remain forever as he had created it. He supports man that man might no longer fall. And the creature he had formed of earth he now makes heavenly; and what he had endowed with the human soul he now vivifies to become a heavenly spirit. In this way he fully raised man to God, and left in him neither sin, nor death, nor travail, nor pain, nor anything earthly, with the grace of our Lord Christ Jesus…. Amen."

 

In the coincidence of reading these sermons and their connection with Balthasar's reflections on the Cross and Resurrection it became clear to me that the birth of Jesus, the joy of the Christmas season and the love and peace it promises, is not complete until we make that connection between Christ's birth and the birth of the new man, his death on the Cross and our death to ourselves, and Jesus’ resurrection and our resurrection to that divinized recreation.

"Prayer" - von Balthasar continues

Its one thing to read St. Paul's letters and it is totally different to see their theological fabric. Balthasar weaves his discussion on the contemplation of the cross and resurrection with words from St. Paul's various letters. In so doing he brings new dimensions to St. Paul's letters and new insights into our participation in the mystery of the cross.

More from the last chapter of Prayer:

It could be said that the center of Paul’s entire theology is the fact that the balance of the old and the new aeon, the first and second Adam, cross and resurrection, fear and hope, has been tipped in favor of the resurrection. Moreover, the first of each of these pairs is embraced by the second; the cross in the Christian life is borne by the power of the resurrection: “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies …. So we do not lose heart. (2 Cor.4:8-10, 16-18)

…. Thus Paul always speaks of his own sufferings … as a demonstration of the power of the Risen Lord, never as being in competition with the Lord’s passion. …. Thus the servant has no reason for boasting; he only does his duty (1 Cor. 9:16) in allowing the Father to reveal his Son in him (Gal. 1:16). All this “bearing death in the body” is the result of a contemplation of the resurrection in which we are assimilated more and more efficaciously to the glory of the Son, who transforms the beholder into himself: “We all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18) pp. 296-7 

"Prayer", Hans Urs von Balthasar

When searching my small library for a book, I cannot help but pass by my shelf of von Balthsar's writings. His seventeen volume Trilogy, The Glory of the Lord, Theo Drama, and Theo Logic are neatly lined up in a row. I've only made it to Volume 7 of The Glory of the Lord. Yet, each time I pass my eyes over this shelf I invariably grab a small paperback volume entitled Prayer. 
This most recent time I pulled it off the shelf, fully forgetting my reason for scanning my book shelves, and I began to reread some of the book. Now, someone told me once, (my spiritual director I think) that it is not the number of books that you read that is a most important thing, but, the number of books that you re-read. I have not re-read the entire book. Each time I pick it up I go to certain sections that struck me as particularly meaningful or especially beautifully phrased.

I offer here a brief snippet from the very last chapter in the book, Cross and Resurrection
.

But “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us … while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Rom.5:8,10) … The sentence which in principle determined our fate was performed upon Jesus Christ on behalf of sinners: in him we were crucified and condemned to death; in him we were made the recipients of grace and adopted as children. In him and without any activity on our part, God’s anger toward us has changed into tender, caring love. All this has become a reality, in and through Christ, in the Father’s heaven: our task is to let it come true in all its fullness in our temporal existence on earth.

In the New Covenant “what we ought to do” follows from “what we are”. We are justified and should act accordingly. We have died with Christ, we have been buried and raised with him, and this should determine our behavior: we should no longer live in sin; the “old man” is dead and we should actually regard him as such, daily encountering his resistance to the death sentence served upon him, making him die daily (Rom 6). pp. 295-296