The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review

The Thomist 65 (2001): 567-81 BALTHASAR ON CHRIST'S CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE CROSS MATIHEW LEVERING Ave Maria College Ypsilanti, Michigan POPE JOHN PAUL Il's recent apostolic letter, Novo millennia ineunte, contains the following passage: Jesus' cry on the cross, dear brothers and sisters, is not the cry of anguish of a man without hope, but the prayer of the Son who offers his life to the Father in love, for the salvation of all. At the very moment when he identifies with our sin, "abandoned" by the Father, he "abandons" himself into the hands of the Father. His eyes remain fixed on the Father. Precisely because of the knowledge and experience of the Father which he alone has, even at this moment of darkness he sees clearly the gravity of sin and suffers because of it. He alone, who sees the Father and rejoices fully in him, can understand completely what it means to resist the Father's love by sin. More than an experience of physical pain, his passion is an agonizing suffering of the soul. Theological tradition has not failed to ask howJesus could possibly experience at one and the same time his profound unity with the Father, by its very nature a source of joy and happiness, and an agony that goes all the way to his final cry of abandonment. The simultaneous presence of these two seemingly irreconcilable aspects is rooted in the fathomless depths of the hypostatic union. (No. 26) Why does the Pope direct special attention at the turn of the millennium to the question of Christ's consciousness on the Cross? While the Pope's intentions surely reflect his pastoral mission, theologians will recognize that this question is of systematic import in the work of one of the twentieth century's most acclaimed theologians, Hans Urs von Balthasar. Read this way, the apostolic letter serves as an opportune point of entry 567 568 MATTHEW LEVERING into the task of understanding and assessing Balthasar's theology of the Cross. In volume 4 of his Theo-Drama, Balthasar states, It is all the more terrifying for the Son, therefore, in the darkness of his anguish, to see that this whole work, which has begun to be realized in Mary, is pointless (because of his gratuitous suffering) and doomedto failure. The Son is not simply alone with sinners in that absolute exchange envisaged by Luther: he is accompanied by a witness to God's activity {which always operates sola gratia), and this robs the Man of Sorrows of all hope of completing his mission.1 Does this mean that Jesus is hopeless on the Cross? Compare a second text, this time from volume 2 of Balthasar's Theologik (published five years later): "Jesus must have had before his eyes the impossibility of accomplishing his earthly mission ... from the very beginning and, as resistance to him grew, with increasing clarity."2 In his experience, therefore, two things can and must occur together: forsakenness by the Father as the final radicalness of frustration and failure (Mk 15:34, Mt 27:46) andthe knowledge (which at the moment is perhaps no longer tangible) that "the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, every man to his home, and will leave me alone; yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me" (Jn 16:32). Ultimate failure and sure knowledge of ultimate fulfillment are not, as in the Old Testament, juxtaposed, but contain one another here.3 1 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 4, TheAction, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 357. 2 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Ibeologik, vol. 2: Wahrheit Gottes (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag,, 1985), 222. "Die Unvollendbarkeit seiner irdischen Sendung-Sammlung der zerstreuten Schafe Israels, gar Wiederherstellung des Zwolfstiimmevolkes, jaals dererwahlte Gesandte das 'Licht der Vlker bis zu den Grenzen der Erde' zu sein (Is 49:6; Lk 2:32)-mu« Jesus von Anfang an und bein dem wachsenden Widerstand immer klarer vor Augen gestanden haben." Cf. ibid., 305ff. 3 Ibid., 223. "Das hindert nicht, er~ vielmehr, daB im Enderlebnis beides beisammen sein kann und muB: das Verlassensein vom Yater als letzte Radikalitiit des Scheiterns...