Theo-Drama: The Action

From the preface to Hans Urs von Balthazar’s THEO-DRAMA, THEOLOGICAL DRAMATIC THEORY, VOLUME IV, THE ACTION

We have prepared at considerable length for the “action” that is the subject of this volume. First, in the Prelegomena, we prepared the way for our use of dramatic categories in the understanding of revelation (“theology”). The next task was to introduce the dramatis personae themselves. But here we discovered a tension: on the one hand, the creature is manifestly free before God (volume 2) and, on the other hand, this very freedom is a freedom “in Christ” -and, it is only “in Christ” that theological persons can exist at all (volume 3). This tension is so explosive that it was bound to burst into flame in the conflagration of the action; accordingly, we begin this volume “under the sign of the Apocalypse”.

The Book of Revelation make sit quite clear that the action set in train by human freedom is not overridden or trivialized by the all-encompassing action of the “Lamb as though it had been slain”. What we have here is not the kind of apokatastasis that subsumes the Christian’s wrestling with God and God’s wrestling with him in an overall philosophical perspective (in the manner of Plotinus or Hegel), according to which the world proceeds from the divine and subsequently returns to it. No; for we are faced with a titanic rejection on man’s part: he resists being embraced by this very mystery of the Cross. This anti-Christian aversion is something new; it has only existed since the coming of Christ: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin.” It is only when heaven is wide open that hell too yawns at our feet. So this examination of the action will not not unveil what is ultimate; but, where the action is transparent, it will give us an intimation, a shadowy awareness of that ultimate reality. The final drama has not yet taken place.

 

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