HANS URS VON BALTHASAR AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE PATRISTIC RENAISSANCE. PART I: IRENAEUS AND ORIGEN
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31392/cult.alm.2024.3.5Keywords:
theology, Church Fathers, Logos, mystery, tradition, CatholicismAbstract
The theological work of the Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar is mainly studied with a focus on his most significant intellectual vision – a revolutionary theory concerning the priority of theological aesthetics (theoaesthetics), as well as his understanding beauty as a principal transcendental in comparison with goodness and truth. Instead, Balthasar’s patristic books remain largely understudied, despite their crucial role in the early stages of his scholarly research. Moreover, in the context of the Ukrainian academic sphere, there is hardly any reason to talk about a serious analysis of at least one of the components of Balthasar’s legacy. Therefore, this article aims to partially fill this gap, namely, to reveal the main ideas from Balthasar’s early patristic works, which were dedicated to the St. Irenaeus of Lyons and Origen as bearers of unequaled theological mentality and exceptional creativity unique to the early Church. The research contains a detailed author’s consideration of Irenaeus’s anti-Gnostic apology for human history and his defense of the value of empirical reality. The concept of Church tradition Irenaeus formulated, which was opposed to the Gnostic tradition of secret esoteric knowledge, is also considered. In the part of the article that deals with Balthasar’s interpretation of Origen, the author unfolds the meaning of the basic concepts of the Alexandrian master thinker, i.e. mystery which means the ultimate fullness of rationally incomprehensible reality, and Word (Logos) which is the symbolic sacramental self-revelation of this mystery in the material world. Also, the article does not overlook Balthasar's explanation of Origen's teaching about the objective availability of Logos in this world, the perception of which is conditioned by the subjective readiness of a person. The article's conclusions contain the author's reflections on Balthasar's attachment to Greek patristics as a historical example of diversity in unity, and theological pluralism within one tradition without any impoverishment of the wealth of patristic intuitions that could have been caused by their repressive unification.
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