The author of this article, Dominic Robinson SJ, points out a close comparison between Pope Benedict's themes of eros and agape in the encyclical and the same themes in the writing of Hans Urs von Balthasar. A particular book in which von Balthasar presents this theme is entitled in English translation Love Alone is Credible. This is a book I chose to study for one of my examinations at the Gregorian University in first semester theology. How I had failed to recognise its parallels in Deus Caritas Est now that I have had them pointed out defeats me altogether! Dominic Robinson writes:
Balthasar also uses the terms agape and eros to characterise the eternal drama of God’s love for humanity played out in the appearance and descent of Christ. The eros of our longing for the meaning of our earthly existence is echoed in the agape of the perfect image of the God who meets us in the event of the incarnation. Christ, lover and beloved, our Advent hope, turns us towards a vision of our future glory for which we naturally long, and which will surely be sealed in his coming. This is undoubtedly a timely theme in a world where so many are searching for a sense of value, dignity and identity, but in which the figure of Jesus Christ has, perhaps in a strange twist even at Christmas, become much less obvious as the focal point of culture and human identity.
He continues to highlight the work of a Lutheran theologian and of the Protestant thinker Karl Barth (who profoundly influenced von Balthasar) in a similar vein, suggesting a quite fascinating ecumencial possibility of this thought.
..continuity [between eros and agape] will also constitute Balthasar’s discourse, just as it is also a key message of Deus Caritas Est. Agape and eros come together in a new way which proclaims how Christ’s infinite love transforms all our finite human desires. Thus the drama of this encounter of Advent hope with Easter joy transcends the perceived dualism surrounding the motifs agape and eros in the Lutheran and Roman Catholic traditions.
At a rather more subtle level, Dominic Robinson offers a reflection on the thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar that is genuinely and totally Balthasarian. It is thoroughly Christocentric. One of the more frustrating aspects I found in reading On the Way to Life (a document commissioned by the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales Department for Education and Formation and written by Frs James Hanvey SJ and Tony Carroll SJ of the Heythrop Institute for Religion, Ethics and Public Life and intended to offer an analytical basis for renewing religious education and catechesis) was its citations of von Balthasar in support of a perspective that was contrary to any genuinely Balthasarian vision.
I wonder whether we will now see an end to the fashion of quoting von Balthasar to support non-Balthasarian views by some of Dominic Robinson's colleagues at Heythrop College....
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