Hans Urs von Balthasar portrays the mystery of the redemption dramatically. He locates the ‘quintessence’ of the biblical witness to this mystery in five motifs, which must be held together for a coherent theology of the redemption.Footnote 1 The five motifs are: the Son's self-giving, his exchange of places with sinners, liberation from sin, initiation into divine life and God's merciful love. The dramatic approach seeks to hold these motifs in an appropriate tension by not reducing them to a higher integration or ‘system’ and by not allowing any one motif to dominate the others.Footnote 2 A survey of the history of soteriology shows that this tension has not always been upheld, with one motif often stressed at the expense of others, or conversely with one motif underdeveloped.Footnote 3 To hold the five motifs together in appropriate tension, Balthasar articulates a ‘trinitarian substructure’ in his dramatic approach to soteriology.Footnote 4
Balthasar places particular emphasis on Christ's representation of sinners in the second motif of the exchange of places. This motif is based upon the pro nobis (‘for us’) formula of scripture and was important to the fathers of the church and Thomas Aquinas. But Balthasar finds that ‘[w]hile, in principle the Church Fathers understand this in a radical sense, it is only in the modern variations of the theories of representation that the consequences are fully drawn out’.Footnote 5 He argues that the fathers and Aquinas seem not to take seriously enough Christ's bearing of human sin. They come upon an ‘unconscious limit – unconscious because it is taken for granted’ that Christ takes on ‘the consequences of sin and the punishment due to sin, whereas sin itself is not taken on by him’.Footnote 6 By contrast, dramatic soteriology emphasises and makes an attempt to explain how Christ takes on ‘sin itself’ to accomplish the work of redemption.
But it may be asked if Balthasar really gets beyond this ‘unconscious limit’. Aquinas explains clearly why Christ could not take on sin itself upon the cross and why he accepts only the consequences of sin. Briefly, since sin itself is a failure or lack and makes one a sinner, for Christ to take on sin itself would imply a failure or lack in Christ and make him a sinner, which cannot assist the work of the redemption. For his part, Balthasar is quick to point out that Christ does not become a sinner upon the cross. But to say that Christ accepts only the consequences of sin makes him far too removed from the reality of sin; rather, for Balthasar, Christ must bear human sin by entering into its darkness in a kind of inner appropriation and not as an external burden. Beyond the obvious difference between the two positions, however, Balthasar seems to reproduce the ‘unconscious limit’ now in terms of Christ accepting the darkness of sin while not becoming a sinner himself.
This essay aims to clarify Balthasar's understanding of Christ bearing sin and argues that Balthasar does not get beyond the ‘unconscious limit’ of the fathers and Aquinas. This argument is unfolded in three steps. First, I outline Aquinas’ framework and explanation for Christ's acceptance of the consequences of sin and not sin itself. Second, I examine Balthasar's dramatic articulation of Christ bearing sin itself on the cross and conclude in light of Aquinas that, strictly speaking, this is no more than an acceptance of the consequences of sin. Third, I offer a constructive suggestion for interpreting Balthasar's emphasis on Christ bearing sin itself upon the cross: the dramatic approach re-establishes dynamics that Aquinas’ metaphysical analysis seeks to account for, yet which tend to be taken statically.
Thomas Aquinas: Christ accepts the consequences of sin
Aquinas’ explanation of why Christ accepts only the consequences of sin, and not sin itself, is embedded within his contemplation of the mystery of redemption. What follows is a cursory glance of his treatment in the Summa Theologiae, particularly concerning satisfaction, which structures his articulation of the removal of sin by Christ's passion. This is reviewed in three steps: first, the meaning of Christ's satisfaction; second, the explanation of how one can satisfy for another; and third, the reasons why Christ does not take on sin itself, or guilt, in making satisfaction. This allows us to determine how for Aquinas Christ's passion is effective for removing sin even though Christ does not, strictly speaking, take on sin itself.
Question 48 of the Tertia pars presents five traditional motifs that explain how God saves us through Christ's passion: merit, satisfaction, sacrifice, redemption and efficiency.Footnote 7 While these motifs are not reducible to one another, satisfaction has an explanatory prominence.Footnote 8 In addition to interpreting the biblical metaphors of sacrifice and redemption, satisfaction articulates how Christ enters into some sort of relation to human sin in order to remove it. Aquinas defines satisfaction as the offering of ‘something which the offended one loves equally, or even more than he detested the offence’.Footnote 9 This definition does not necessitate an intrinsic relation to the wrongdoing; nevertheless, it is ‘a fitting way of satisfying for another to submit oneself to the penalty (poena) deserved by that other’.Footnote 10
Christ's act of satisfaction is helpfully analysed according to form and matter.Footnote 11 Its form or principle is charity, by which one is inclined to satisfy for another, and this is what makes it effective for removing wrongdoing. Nonetheless, its matter is fittingly the very punishment due for the wrongdoing. This position is further illuminated by contrast with both Anselm and proponents of penal substitution. Anselm clearly dissociates satisfaction from punishment. It is a good given to God not otherwise due, but proportionate to the magnitude of the wrongdoing of human sin.Footnote 12 Anselm places the emphasis on Christ's life lived totally for God and his undeserved death as a good given to God not otherwise due, which satisfies or outweighs the wrongdoing of sin. On the other hand, penal substitution places emphasis upon Christ suffering the punishment due to sin instead of us in order to redeem us.Footnote 13 Like Anselm, Aquinas views Christ's satisfaction, through its principle of charity, as a good work that outweighs wrongdoing. Unlike Anselm and somewhat like penal substitution, Aquinas affirms the fittingness of Christ accepting the punishment due to human sin.Footnote 14 But Christ's charity, and not suffering punishment in itself, is what is effective for removing sin.
Earlier in the Summa, Aquinas explains in more detail the possibility of satisfying for another. This presupposes the doctrine of creation and its metaphysical elaboration, particularly concerning sin, guilt and punishment. God creates the world as good and orders each thing to its proper end for the sake of God's goodness.Footnote 15 Aquinas employs a metaphysical distinction between being (first act) and operation (second act), such that ‘good’ has a twofold sense.Footnote 16 A thing is good insofar as it has being and exists, and a thing does good insofar as it performs operations toward its proper end. Evil, following Augustine, is the privation of good; hence, evil also has a twofold sense. Focusing on voluntary agents, evil is divided into punishment (malum poenae) and guilt (malum culpae). Punishment is a subtraction in the form or integrity of a thing and is called such because it is contrary to the will, which naturally wills its good. Guilt is a failure in operation to do the good proportionate to one's nature, since it is ‘imputed to anyone as a fault to fail as regards perfect action, of which he is master by the will’.Footnote 17 Punishment immediately follows guilt for the sake of restoring justice and order.Footnote 18
Punishment is divided into two types: simple and satisfactory. Simple punishment is the ordinary sense of the word, and ‘it has always a relation to a sin (culpam) in the one punished’.Footnote 19 More broadly, it may be taken as resulting from original sin, which everyone experiences. In this case, it is principally the deprivation of original justice, and consequently includes the resulting defects in human nature, such as death, hunger and thirst.Footnote 20 But whether in relation to actual or original sin, simple punishment is essentially contrary to the will. Satisfactory punishment is distinguished from simple punishment precisely because it involves a willingness to undergo punishment due to another for wrongdoing, and so ‘loses somewhat of the nature of punishment’.Footnote 21 Its principle is love or charity: ‘since those who differ as to the debt of punishment, may be one in will by the union of love, it happens that one who has not sinned, bears willingly the punishment for another: thus even in human affairs we see men take the debts of another upon themselves’.Footnote 22 It removes wrongdoing because it satisfies the requirement of justice from which the need for punishment arose.
Christ's passion is understood as an instance of satisfactory punishment, and not simple punishment, for he suffers for the wrongdoing of others, and not for himself.Footnote 23 Yet, his passion exceeds this definition, for Christ makes superabundant satisfaction. This is because of his exceeding charity, his dignity as a divine person and the extent of his sufferings.Footnote 24 Christ's satisfaction is not merely an instance of justice, though it certainly satisfies the requirements of the latter; rather, it goes beyond justice into the realm of mercy, for God was in no way bound to give Christ as a satisfier for human sins.Footnote 25
But what of guilt? Since it is a failure of operation to do the good, Aquinas makes explicit that it is unfitting for Christ to accept guilt because it would mean ‘withdrawing from the art of the Divine wisdom and from the order of the Divine goodness’.Footnote 26 It would impede Christ's ability to satisfy for us, because it would take away his perfection of knowledge and virtue, which are needed to have the power of satisfying.Footnote 27 Further, Aquinas holds that there is a communion of operation of the divine and human natures in Christ.Footnote 28 If Christ were to assume guilt in his human nature, it would destroy this communion of operation by introducing a failure of operation in his person. Since ‘[t]o operate belongs to a subsisting hypostasis’, to the person of Christ who is the second person of the Trinity, this would lead to the impossible situation of God willing the malum culpae, which contradicts God's omnipotence.Footnote 29
How then is guilt taken away? The principle of Christ's satisfaction, his charity, provides the solution. Christ's passion is a universal cause for the forgiveness of sins that must be applied to its recipients.Footnote 30 It removes the common sin of the whole human race as an act of satisfaction that proceeds from charity, and the personal sin of those who communicate in Christ's passion through ‘faith and charity and the sacraments of faith’.Footnote 31 Christ's exceeding charity displayed through the extent of his sufferings and through his dignity as a divine person in a human nature is central to the removal of common and personal sin. This charity is pleasing to God and compensates for all wrongdoing of sin.Footnote 32 But this display of charity also provokes charity in us through grace, which heals the failure of operation that is sin and guilt by turning the mind toward God and away from sin.Footnote 33 This grace and charity is neither abstract nor individualistic. Christ is the head of the mystical body, in which his fullness of grace and charity and the effect of his act of satisfaction is communicated from head to members. Finally, because Christ is a divine person, his passion operates with divine power that forgives sin.
For Aquinas, Christ's satisfaction has its effectiveness from his exceeding charity, his dignity as a divine person and the extent of his sufferings. He willingly and lovingly accepts to undergo suffering and death, the punishment of sin, in order to transform it into an act of satisfaction that removes all punishment and guilt. This suffering satisfies the order of justice, which punishment seeks to restore, and so displays the seriousness of human sin. But more important is the charity and dignity of his person that show forth God's mercy and grace, which heals guilt and compensates for the debt of punishment.
Before turning to Balthasar, it seems to me that, though Christ does not take on guilt or sin itself, it does not follow that he is removed from the darkness or reality of sin. Punishment, for Aquinas, cannot be construed as something removed from the reality of sin; rather, it follows immediately and dynamically upon guilt and has serious effects that culminate with death. Christ's acceptance of punishment, but not guilt, does not prevent him from experiencing the darkness of sin. Rather, Aquinas holds that the magnitude of Christ's suffering was greatest. He grieves over all sins, ‘hence He ascribes them, so to speak, to Himself, saying [Ps 21.2]: “The words of my sins.”’Footnote 34 From his exceeding wisdom and charity ‘the pang of contrition is intensified, and because He grieved at the one time for all sins’.Footnote 35 As innocent and not guilty, his pain ‘is more intensified by reason of his innocence, in so far as he deems the hurt inflicted to be more undeserved’.Footnote 36 He possesses the beatific vision: ‘His soul likewise, from its interior powers, apprehended most vehemently all the causes of sadness.’Footnote 37 The perfection of Christ's knowledge and virtue, his exceeding wisdom and charity, enable him to truly grasp the darkness and reality of sin so as to make amends for it as human, and to forgive this wrongdoing as God.
Hans Urs von Balthasar: Christ enters the inner reality of sin
The dramatic soteriology of Hans Urs von Balthasar takes seriously Christ's exchange of places with sinners. For Balthasar, the position of Aquinas and the fathers, that Christ accepts only the consequences of sin and not sin itself, does not go far enough: ‘in Thomas, as in Anselm, we find the same lack of any inner contact between Jesus and the reality of sin as such’.Footnote 38 But, as we have now seen in Aquinas, Christ cannot take on ‘the reality of sin as such’ in a strict sense as guilt or the failure to do the good, because this would make him a sinner. Furthermore, it may be disputed if Christ accepting the consequences of sin really does prevent him from ‘inner contact’ with the reality of sin. What follows is a careful examination of Balthasar's understanding of Christ taking on sin itself in Theo-Drama IV.
Balthasar makes clear his emphasis concerning Christ's representation of sinners. His position is unambiguous: ‘It is a mistake to speak of Christ's work on our behalf as something removed from the darkness of sin.’Footnote 39 Then, discussing the concept of punishment, he reiterates: ‘It is essential to maintain, however, that the Crucified does not bear the burden as something external: he in no way distances himself from those who by rights should have to bear it.’Footnote 40 The basic category of Christ's mission provides context for his position: the ‘hour’ ‘calls for an inner appropriation of what is ungodly and hostile to God, an identification with that darkness of alienation from God into which the sinner falls as a result of his No’.Footnote 41
This position on Christ's representation of sinners is unfolded according to two trajectories: first, from the history of soteriology, and second, from a trinitarian substructure. Let us consider the first. Balthasar makes use of his survey of the history of soteriology to set up a dialectic in order to locate and clarify his position. He places Anselm and Karl Rahner on one side, and Luther on the other. To maintain his position that Christ enters fully into the darkness of sin, he first dissociates himself from what he sees in Anselm and Rahner's position, namely that Christ's death is removed from the darkness of sin because it overthrows sin through pure merit.Footnote 42 But he quickly stresses that he does not fall to the other extreme, namely, what he sees in Luther's position, which is that Christ identifies with the actual ‘no’ of sin itself: ‘Nor, on the other hand, can it be interpreted as an identification of the Crucified with the actual No of sin itself; Luther says that this No at least begins to surface in Jesus, but he “swallows it down”.’Footnote 43 Balthasar's conceptual position moves away from Anselm and Rahner toward Luther, but does not arrive there: Christ experiences the darkness of the sinful state, but not by identifying with the ‘no’ of sin. This position, however, does not seem to be conceptually more than Aquinas’ position that Christ accepts the malum poenae of sin, but not the malum culpae, for the ‘no’ of sin is the failure to do the good that one ought.
Balthasar grounds his position in a trinitarian substructure. Christ is able to experience the darkness of the sinful state, but not in the way that the (God-hating) sinner experiences it. Moreover, Christ's experience is ‘a deeper and darker experience … because it takes place in the profound depths of the relations between the divine Hypostases – which are inaccessible to any creature’.Footnote 44 Influenced by the concept of kenosis, Balthasar earlier establishes that the eternal generation of the Son ‘involves the positing of an absolute, infinite “distance” that can contain and embrace all the other distances that are possible within the world of finitude, including the distance of sin’.Footnote 45 Hence, ‘the Son's eternal, holy distance from the Father, in the Spirit, forms the basis on which the unholy distance of the world's sin can be transposed into it, can be transcended and overcome by it’.Footnote 46
This trinitarian substructure grounds the explanation of how Christ accepts guilt. Drawing on René Girard and Raymund Schwager, Balthasar suggests that ‘perverse finite freedom casts all its guilt onto God, making him the sole accused, the scapegoat, while God allows himself to be thoroughly affected by this, not only in the humanity of Christ but also in Christ's trinitarian mission’.Footnote 47 He emphasises, ‘nothing would be achieved by men unloading their sin if the one onto whom they load it were incapable of receiving it in its totality, as what it is’.Footnote 48 Christ's trinitarian distance enables him to bear human sin as ‘what it is’. Schwager elaborates on how the transfer of guilt occurs, affirming that ‘it is not just the punishment for sins but the sins themselves that were transferred to the holy one’.Footnote 49 Following Girard, he explains: ‘a group of people can liberate themselves from their conflicts and rivalries by ganging up against someone and, in the act of killing, transfer their own violence to that person. This process is utterly real, since it ends in the victim's murder’.Footnote 50 For Schwager, the reality of the transfer of guilt is in the killing or murder of the victim. But following Aquinas’ stricter terms, this violence and death seems nothing more than the consequence of sin and its failure, and not that the failure of the sinner is transferred. The transfer of guilt in Balthasar and Schwager is therefore equivalent to punishment in Aquinas, for death is punishment for sin, willingly accepted by Christ.
Balthasar, however, holds that use of the concept of punishment in relation to Christ is ‘largely a matter of language’. He seeks to emphasise that Christ enters fully into the darkness of sin, though not as a sinner. If one insists that ‘an innocent man as such cannot be “punished”, even if he is atoning for the guilty, we shall avoid the term [punishment]’.Footnote 51 But if one wishes to retain the term, one must speak carefully: ‘Subjectively, therefore, [Christ] can experience [the burden of sin] as “punishment”, although objectively speaking, in his case it cannot be such.’Footnote 52 ‘Subjectively’ appears to refer to Jesus’ experience of suffering.Footnote 53 ‘Objectively’ seems to imply, at least negatively, the equivalent of Aquinas’ simple punishment, that one is punished because one is guilty. By way of this distinction, then, we return to Aquinas: subjective and objective punishment corresponds respectively to satisfactory and simple punishment.
For all his intent to get beyond the ‘unconscious limit’ of Aquinas and the fathers, Balthasar is still constrained by that very limit in his treatment of Christ bearing human sin. In saying that Christ experiences the darkness of sin but does not identify with the ‘no’ of the sinful state, he does not say anything more than that Christ does not accept the malum culpae. In acknowledging that Christ experiences his sufferings subjectively as punishment, but not objectively so, he does not say anything more than that Christ accepts the malum poenae as satisfactory punishment. But what is new and vivid is Balthasar's introduction of the concept of trinitarian distance to ground Christ's experience of the darkness of the sin. This, I suggest, begins to indicate how we may constructively approach Balthasar's dramatic soteriology after having considered the strictures of Aquinas.
Dramatising contemplation: Balthasar and Aquinas
To insist that Balthasar remains under Aquinas’ strictures on Christ bearing human sin is not intended as a ‘take down’ of Balthasar using Aquinas. Rather, it seems to me that Balthasar needs the strict distinction between guilt and punishment to portray Christ as the innocent one who dramatically bears our sins away. What follows is a constructive attempt to further articulate the unique contribution of Balthasar on this question within the boundaries set by Aquinas.
For Balthasar, trinitarian distance grounds dramatic soteriology. The Son's infinite distance from the Father enables him to ‘act out’, as it were, the distance that the reality of sin is, so as to transcend and overcome it. Christ truly exchanges places with sinners to redeem them dramatically: he ‘performs’ in their place what is to happen to them. This requires, as Balthasar suggests, some sort of ‘inner contact’ with the reality of sin so as to bear it away. What about the strictures of Aquinas concerning guilt and punishment? I find a suggestion of Ben Quash concerning the basic concept of mission to be salutary. He suggests that Balthasar's use of mission in his christology allows him to ‘dramatize’ the hypostatic union in order to better account for the fullness of Christ's humanity, in contrast to accounts that emphasise static essences.Footnote 54 Balthasar himself tells us that he seeks ‘a portrayal of the person of Christ that neither preempts the action undertaken by him nor falls back into the kind of purely extra-historical, static, “essence” Christology that sees itself as a complete and rounded “part one”, smoothly unfolding into a soteriological “part two”’.Footnote 55
Similarly, I suggest, Balthasar dramatises the concepts of guilt and punishment in his soteriology. This dramatisation resists viewing these concepts as static, as a stale and abstract metaphysical distinction, for which a certain decadent scholasticism is often reproached.Footnote 56 For Aquinas, there is a dynamic relation between guilt and punishment, which Balthasar helps us to more fully appreciate. Punishment follows upon guilt and so is in some way always related to guilt, either from original or actual sin. This, of course, does not mean that because someone suffers punishment they are guilty of sin. This would reduce all punishment to simple punishment and would exclude satisfactory punishment, bearing another's burden, of which Christ is the paradigm exemplar. By insisting that Christ bears sin itself, Balthasar dramatically portrays how Christ's sufferings (satisfactory punishment) relate him to the violence and fate of sinners (fault/guilt). He vividly signals how Christ through his sufferings is laden with the guilt of the world that he labours to take away in his trinitarian mission.
While trinitarian distance is not fully compatible with Aquinas’ account, still it serves to highlight the dramatic action that takes place between the actors of the Father and the Son. The dramatisation of guilt and punishment emphasises the seriousness of human sin that is the source of the Son's sufferings, which, out of exceeding charity, he makes into an act of satisfaction to the Father. Though for Aquinas trinitarian difference implies inseparability, not distance, still he takes the Son's exposure to the malum poenae as abandonment.Footnote 57 The Father and the Son, from eternity, will to save the human race through Christ's passion, and the Father inspires the Son in his human nature to undergo this suffering out of obedience and love to the Father, and for us.Footnote 58 This is hardly undramatic, and Balthasar assists in recovering the dramatic dimension of Aquinas’ contemplation.Footnote 59
Balthasar intended his theo-drama to be a deeply scholarly theology that is at the same time fully in touch with lived Christian life.Footnote 60 The meaning of a dramatic approach is inscribed in the progression of his trilogy of aesthetics, dramatics and logic. The aesthetics’ focus upon the beauty of divine revelation and its contemplation needs to be complemented by a dramatics, since ‘God's revelation is not an object to be looked at: it is his action in and upon the world, and the world can only respond, and hence “understand”, through action on its part.’Footnote 61 The categories of drama, from the theatre, the stage, are therefore appropriate for expressing God's action in history, which metaphysical analysis does not and need not capture. While Aquinas’ Summa does aim at contemplation and employs metaphysical analysis, I do not want to suggest that he is undramatic. The history of Thomism and its influence upon theology rendered static what once was a dynamic understanding of scripture.Footnote 62 Balthasar's portrayal of the cross dramatises the concepts of guilt and punishment, manifesting their dynamics and seriousness in human life, and even more so for the triune God, who acts dramatically to bear this burden away through the innocent Christ.
Conclusion
Balthasar's theology of the redemption dramatises this mystery, developing the motif of Christ's representation of sinners by emphasising his bearing of sin itself. Yet I have argued that this representation remains conditioned by Aquinas’ strict requirement that Christ takes on punishment, but not guilt. Christ cannot accept the latter because that would be to accept a failure in his operation, something totally unfitting to his person and work. Rather, his loving and willing acceptance of the consequences of sin is made into a work of satisfaction that removes guilt from sinners. Balthasar is not content with this way of putting things, but maintains that Christ does not accept the ‘no’ of sin, which in Aquinas, strictly speaking, is guilt. Balthasar's speaking of Christ taking on sin itself may be understood as Christ taking on guilt by way of accepting punishment. This way of speaking, however, is dramatic, and not metaphysical. There are good reasons to speak dramatically about the redemption, which does not reject metaphysical commitments, but portrays Christ's work in a more intelligible way to lived experience.
