\nIn method, Balthasar preferred an evocative and untidy richness over the kind of objective systematization characteristic of many great Christian thinkers. He suggested that Christian truth is \u201csymphonic,\u201d less a collection of positions and doctrines than an organic, dynamic and narratival display of divine love. Theology fails in its task if it presents us simply with something that is true. An adequate Christian theology must allow God\u2019s glory\u2014the majesty of divine love\u2014to appear before us and strike us with its wonder, such that we find our hearts set on fire as did the disciples before us.<\/p>\n
Yet he worried that theology no longer concerned itself with this project. In Balthasar\u2019s opinion, contemporary culture and the Christians within it had lost the ability to see the deeper goodness of the world and, correspondingly, its transcendent and divine origin. In classical, Greco-Roman culture, the cosmos had been understood as saturated with the divine; the world was the stage on which human and divine actors together participated in a common cosmic drama. Modern society no longer saw existence in this way. Where the ancient person interpreted his life in terms of a divine drama, the contemporary person looked out upon an empty and meaningless horizon of cosmic chaos. Forgotten was the Christian commitment to a universe made sacred by Christ; the divine and the earthly had become separate realms. Reflection on the world was the exclusive domain of science; theology concerned itself only with the iteration of otherworldly truths. A \u201clight has gone out,\u201d he lamented.<\/p>\n
To counter this false dichotomy of secular and sacred, a recovery of the sacramental vision found in such sources as the early fathers of the church and the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola was necessary. Christ has revealed to us a divine drama unfolding in our world; he welcomes us to participate in it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(If you’re wondering why, it’s because it’s the 100th anniversary of his birth) Another America article: In method, Balthasar preferred an evocative and untidy richness over the kind of objective systematization characteristic of many great Christian thinkers. He suggested that Christian truth is \u201csymphonic,\u201d less a collection of positions and doctrines than an organic, dynamic…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n
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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}