Existence as Prayer: The Consciousness of Christ in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Haughey, John C.

Existence as Prayer: The Consciousness of Christ in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. By Mark L. Yenson. American University Studies 7. New York: Peter Lang, 2014. Pp. vi + 231. $85.95.

What did early Christianity think was Jesus' own understanding of himself and his mission? This volume by Yenson answers this question as Hans Urs von Balthasar has answered it in his voluminous publications. Balthasar in turn was indebted primarily to two main sources, Maximus the Confessor (d. 662 CE) and the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE).

A reader who is somewhat familiar with these conciliar and patristic sources will be impressed with Balthasar's unique rendering of them as Y. elaborates it. Mission becomes the key to Christ's identity. He is never a conscious subject independent of his mission; his conscious subjectivity is always determined by his mission. Rather than ascribing a visio immediata to Christ's human soul, as the tradition had usually done, Y.'s understanding of Balthasar was that "Jesus' mission consciousness has the character of an inner imperative conditioning his entire being and knowing. For this reason prayer and action do not exist in juxtaposition in Jesus' life but mutually inhere" (132).

Unlike many 20th-century Christologies--Pannenberg's, for example--Balthasarian Christology does not posit a competition between a divine and a human ego. Thus Christ who "became like us in all things but sin" can become "the archetype of human receptivity, faith and obedience." Flence, just as Christian believers have to do, Jesus too needed to have hope, trust, patience, and obedience. Both are in a condition of "unknowing." This nescience was transfigured into a positive value in Jesus' human existence, as it can be in ours (147).

Y. is sensitive to the subtlety of Balthasar's understanding of the unique character of Jesus' faith--which is no small feat. Balthasar believed that Jesus lived by faith. At the same time, however, Balthasar is "critical of the univocal ascription of faith to Christ and contends that Christ's faith is qualitatively different from the faith of believers on account of the provenience of his mission" (137). Jesus' faith was in his Father. Our faith in the Father is mediated by Jesus, since "he expresses the faithfulness of God in and by his person" (137).

Is Balthasar's Christology a low Christology? Yes and no. Yes because he went against Thomas and the Scholastic tradition all the way back to Augustine in arguing that Jesus had the virtue of faith, and that his faith was on a continuum with the personal faith in God that Israel had. However, he saw Jesus completing and perfecting the Old Testament notion of faith (134). Thomas could not see Jesus having faith because he believed him to be in continual possession of the beatific vision. On the other hand, no, because for Balthasar faith is an existential and obediential stance, not primarily a category of religious knowing. In its inner essence he sees faith as "the complete correspondence between God's fidelity and man's fidelity" (134). Furthermore, his vision was "divine and universal"; thus hardly like ours.

Y. puzzles over the influence of Adrienne von Speyr's "visions" on Balthasar's Christology. Other commentators have also puzzled over her influence, especially over her understanding of Christ's descent into hell. Her visions of hell as a place where faith, hope, and charity were absent occurred annually during her Holy Week Tridua. These led her to underscore the absolute nescience Jesus experienced on the cross and at his death, but she interpreted this nescience positively, seeing it in the light of his absolute obedience.

Y. also touches on some of the difference between Rahner and Balthasar. Rahner was interested in a theory of consciousness and cognition in and of themselves, whereas Balthasar's interest was about these in light of Jesus' own consciousness. But both thinkers affirmed that nescience can be "a more perfect attribute" in a consciousness than knowing. Rahner believes that nescience gives "human freedom and susceptibility to temptation ... room to operate" (132).

The volume's title appeals to the personal possibilities of such a condition, like being able to rid oneself of the need to keep at the activity of praying. Could one, for example, imagine that being in Christ is to already be in prayer? But Y. does not exploit this line of understanding and leaves the reader to make what he or she will make of it. I suspect that Y. sees there is so much more to learn about Jesus' union with his Father before venturing such personal applications.

DOI: 10.1177/0040563914565312

John C. Haughey, S.J.

Colombiere Jesuit Community, Baltimore