This extremely well-written and scholarly monograph is a systematic theological demonstration of the integrity of Hans Urs von Balthasar's eschatology with the rest of his theology. Thus Healy shows convincingly not only that Balthasar's eschatology is thoroughly Christological and trinitarian, but that it cannot be understood without an appreciation of such a grounding. This is perhaps not surprising, given the nature and structure of Balthasar's theology; however, Healy has done readers a huge service in delineating and illuminating this aspect of Balthasar's theology with such depth and clarity. In particular, the way in which he pays careful attention to the Thomistic roots of Balthasar's ontology and then demonstrates how Balthasar moves beyond them is extremely helpful, especially in the current theological context in which there is so much debate about theology's Thomistic inheritance.
Healy's approach to his subject is demonstrated by the fact that of four substantial chapters only the last is dedicated to eschatology proper. In the first chapter, Healy establishes the originality of Balthasar's eschatology on the grounds of three fundamental claims: that one must recognise ‘the originality and fruitfulness of his vision of a reciprocal drama between God and the world’; that ‘the ultimate form of the end, and thus the measure of all that is meant by eschatology, is given in Christ's Eucharistic and pneumatic gift of himself’; and finally that the fact that Christ establishes the form of eschatology as ‘participation in God's engagement with the world’ means that humanity's path back to God is in fact a path into rather than away from the world (p. 3).
In the next two chapters, which form the heart of Healy's monograph, he deals with the ontology and Christology underlying Balthasar's eschatology. In particular, in Chapter 2 he focuses on the concept of the analogia entis in Balthasar's theology and he introduces the fundamental concept of a reciprocal but asymmetrical relation between God and creation. The asymmetricality of such a relation allows one to hold that God can receive something from creation without the loss of God's infinite perfection. It thus, Healy argues, allows Balthasar to refocus eschatological questions away from the anthropological (‘What does man lose if he loses God?’) to the theological (‘What does God lose if he loses man?’) (p. 1). The significance of this shift in perspective is immense: in relation to eschatology it perhaps becomes most clear in the final chapter's discussion of hell. In the third chapter, Healy explains Balthasar's next move: that the analogia entis is concretised in Jesus Christ: ‘as fully human he reveals the true meaning of creation, and as fully divine he reveals the true meaning of God. The crucial point is that this twofold revelation occurs in and through the union of his person, even as that union requires an abiding difference between his human nature and his divine nature.’ (p. 91) Healy stresses that Christ does not reproduce or provide one more example of ‘the analogically structured relation between God and the creature’; rather he ‘enacts’ it (p. 96). The other important point made in this chapter is Healy's emphasis on the fact that ‘the analogy (difference in unity) between human and divine in Christ's person is grounded in a more fundamental relation between Father, Son and Spirit.’ (p. 101), that is: ‘Christ's human obedience is an “interpretation” into the language of time and creatureliness of the Son's eternal relation of love to his Father, who has eternally begotten him out of love. Both as “truly man” and “truly God” the Son receives his being as an unfathomable gift from the Father.’ (p. 107). These Christological ideas are explored through the traditional language of the hypostatic union, theotokos, kenosis, representation and so on. However, emerging from these discussions is Healy's constant emphasis that Balthasar, unlike so many other users of this language, constantly presses the universal significance of the incarnation – that precisely as the ‘concretisation of the analogia entis’ it includes not only all of humanity, but (though humanity) all of creation.
In his fourth chapter, Healy deals with eschatology through the concept of deification: if the subject-matter of Christology is the concretisation of the analogia entis, that of eschatology is ‘the consummated eschatological form of the analogy of being’ (p. 178). More specifically, Healy's claim is that this takes place in ‘the Eucharistic fulfilment of Christ's mission in the Spirit’ (p. 162), in which there is a mutual self-communication between God and the world. The universalisation of this communion is grounded on humanity's role as summing-up creation (for which theme Balthasar is indebted to Maximus the Confessor). It is in this context that the most famous and most controversial part of Balthasar's eschatology is discussed – that is, his views of hell. In this brief section Healy argues against those who would accuse Balthasar of ‘a kind of christocentric automatism’ by which all are saved. Instead, he draws attention to Balthasar's focus on ‘the Son's willingness to suffer the consequence of the totality of the world's sin’ (p. 206) and on hell as a real possibility for each person which they ought to confront in themselves.
The huge merit of Healy's work is its exceptionally clear and systematic account of a very complex theology. To launch a fundamental critique of a theology as organic and inter-connected as Balthasar's would clearly be beyond its scope. However, there were some points at which some more comment or critique would be welcome. For example, while it is clearly not the case that Balthasar is a simplistically optimistic universalist, I wonder whether there is a greater tension or paradox in his eschatology than that which Healy appears to characterise as ‘an eschatology of universal hope’ (p. 208). As in the eschatology of Karl Rahner, there seems to be a genuine and tense paradox between faith in Christ's universal saving power and the personal possibility of hell, a paradox which causes one not so much to reaffirm that one should ‘hope’ for the salvation of all (which tends to construe ‘hope’ as meaning ‘I wish for x, but it might not happen’); but rather to reassess the nature of Christian hope in a more fundamental way. Further reflection on this might help us understand how, for Balthasar, in the context of the life-giving exchange of the Eucharist, what is evil and ugly ‘can and must be accepted positively’– a claim which could otherwise seem impossible or trite (p. 200-1).
A second and related problem is that Healy's account of the role of the Eucharist in Balthasar's theology sometimes seems to give that sacrament a historical and liturgical particularity which would make Balthasar's integration of it into eschatology almost untranslatable into another theological tradition (a pity, given than Balthasar's thought can and does stimulate much theological reflection outside Roman Catholicism). At other times, however, that particularly was lost, the Eucharist became a kind of cosmic principle and one was left wondering in fact how the motif of the Eucharist improved over that of the beatific vision, which itself is felt by Healy to be in danger of being too abstract.
Other points which would merit further very interesting research would be Balthasar's readings of the earlier church fathers. Healy gives very interesting comparisons of Aquinas and Palamas with Balthasar: one is only hoping that someone will soon write a detailed study of how Balthasar reads Gregory of Nyssa, Origen and Maximus the Confessor.
In sum, this is an excellent book, an important one not only for the reader of Balthasar, but for any theologian interested in questions of ontology and eschatology. Whilst this reviewer is not convinced that Balthasar provides the ‘renewal of metaphysics’ that Healy claims for him, nevertheless Healy's elucidation of concepts such as the analogia entis, the asymmetrical mutuality between God and creation and the notion of gift and loss in respect of God, does provide a stimulating resource in the ongoing debate.
