Hans urs von Balthazar and Contempory Feminist Theology
 
	  Michelle A.Gonzalez
 Theological Studies, 65
		(2004) Vol.65, no.3, Sept.2004  
	  
		[The author initiates a dialogue between Hans
		  Urs von Balthasar and contemporary feminist theology, focusing on three areas:
		  theological anthropology, theological method, and Christology. Each section
		  begins by exploring Balthasar’s theological standpoint. This is followed
		  by feminist responses to the themes and questions raised by his theology, both
		  favorable and critical. She concludes by exploring the mutual critiques that
		  each theological standpoint poses to the other, arguing for the fruitfulness of
		  this conversation.]  
	 The significance of gender as an analytical lens and
		category in theology has been brought forth through the works of various
		theologians in the last four decades. Feminist theologians in particular have
		emphasized the function of sexism in the construction of Christian theology,
		identity, and tradition in both historical and contemporary ecclesial and
		academic circles.(1) Central to their theological task is entering into
		conversation with the Christian theological tradition through a feminist
		analysis. Feminist theologians find an unlikely partner in Hans Urs von
		Balthasar, a theologian who also takes the category of gender as essential to
		his understanding of theology, the human, and divine action.  
	 My article initiates a dialogue between Balthasar and
		contemporary feminist theology, focusing on three areas: theological
		anthropology, theological method, and Christology. In each section I begin by
		exploring Balthasar’s theological standpoint. This is followed by feminist
		responses to the themes and questions raised by his theology, both favorable
		and critical. I conclude by exploring the mutual critiques each theological
		standpoint poses to the other. While some Balthasar scholars have explored the
		function of gender in his theology, I would argue that it has not been given
		the prominence it deserves.(2) In addition, these studies have not placed
		Balthasar in conversation with contemporary feminist theologians.(3) The goal
		of my study is not merely to critique Balthasar through the lens of feminist
		theology but to engage critically his work as well as some central themes
		within feminist scholarship. This is, therefore, a mutual exchange.  
	 An Introductory Word on Balthasar  
	 Often, when one hears the name Hans Urs von Balthasar in
		theological circles, two things come to mind: the conservative nature of his
		work and his theological esthetics. One of the greatest theologians of the 20th
		century, he has, until recently, been caricatured as an extremely conservative,
		and therefore to many an unappealing theologian. This is a result, in part, of
		two interrelated factors. First, there is a tendency to judge Balthasar by his
		shorter, more polemical writings. These concern popular issues such as women's
		ordination and clerical celibacy. Second, and directly related to the former,
		is the fact that it is only in the past few decades that the majority of
		Balthasar's corpus has been translated into the English language.(4) 
	  The second great trademark of Balthasar’s work is
		his theological esthetics which culminates in the seven-volume The Glory of
		the Lord(5) It is considered by many to be one of the 20th century’s
		greatest achievements within theology.(6) Situated as the first part of
		Balthasar’s enormous trilogy, his esthetics seeks to recover the esthetic
		form of theology. The trilogy itself is based on the three transcendentals of
		being: the Beautiful (Herrlichkeit), the Good (Theodramatik), and
		the True (Theologik). The order of the trilogy is not arbitrary. The
		manifestation, or theophany, of the esthetics leads to the encounter of the
		dramatics. As Balthasar wrote: “God does not want to be just
		‘contemplated’ and ‘perceived’ by us, like a solitary actor
		by his public; no, from the beginning he has provided for a play in which we
		all must share.”(7) The theo-drama is followed by the theo-logic, which
		treats the human articulation of the dramatic event.  
	 To those familiar with Balthasar’s theology and
		with the relevant secondary scholarship, the centrality of gender in my study
		may seem surprising. While there are various authors that examine the role of
		gender in his work, the majority of Balthasar scholars do not. When examined,
		gender is treated primarily in light of Balthasar’s anthropology, which,
		while fundamental to understanding its function in his theology, is not an
		exhaustive approach. Perhaps one of the more creative aspects of
		Balthasar’s theology is found in the fact that gender is not merely an
		anthropological category. In addition to revealing something about human
		nature, as Lucy Gardner and David Moss highlight, “there is another
		critical role which sexual difference is asked to perform in Balthasar’s
		theology. It is also presented as analogical to the difference between
		the world and God-a difference we shall name theological
		difference.” (8) In other words, gender functions in his concept of
		God and Christology. However, I would push the point further and affirm that
		gender permeates every aspect of Balthasar’s theology.(9) Unlike many of
		his contemporary Western European counterparts, gender is a central analytic
		category in Balthasar’s work.  
	 Balthasar’s model of humanity is based on an
		understanding of the female as primarily receptive and the male as active.
		Balthasar models human sexuality in very clear terms of activity and
		receptivity. This giving and receiving is constitutive of the Trinity and also
		linked to Balthasar’s kenotic Christology and concept of God. The
		self-giving and pouring out manifested on the cross and on Holy Saturday are
		identical to the inner-trinitarian relations of giving and receiving.
		God’s nature is thus relational and constituted by action. This, in turn,
		leads to a Christology that understands Jesus Christ, and consequently
		humanity, as constituted in relation. Relationship and action are
		foundational to our understanding of God and of humanity. This understanding of
		God and humanity as relational echoes the insights of various contemporary
		feminist theologians who see a relational anthropology as central to
		undermining individualistic and hierarchical understandings of the self.(10)
		 
	 While feminists may find problematic what Balthasar
		writes about gender, he must nonetheless be commended for attempting to
		understand the human person in light of his or her embodied sexuality.
		Balthasar constructs gender theologically. Also, as one of numerous
		theologians that contributed to the project of ressourcement in
		20th-century Catholic theology, Balthasar’s retrieval of “Church
		Mothers” is consonant with feminist historical scholarship.(11) While
		Balthasar’s motivations for historical recovery differ from those of
		feminists, still they share this tenet in their work.  
	 Relational Anthropologies and Gender Complementarity
		 
	 One cannot address the question of gender in theology
		without examining anthropology. Angelo Scola notes that for Balthasar,
		humanity’s self consciousness “is constituted by two factors: the
		experience of selfpossession, and universal openness, the necessity of
		recognizing the coexistence of men and things . . . . In virtue of the first
		pole, freedom is the capacity for self-movement, for responsibility, and for
		choice; by virtue of the second it is the capacity for assent, for acceptance,
		and for obedience.”(12) The first pole, self-possession, is characterized
		by autonomy. The second pole of freedom is constituted by relationships with
		others. For Balthasar, humans have a seemingly contradictory awareness of their
		freedom. It is contradictory because it is a freedom that is limited.(13) While
		humans are free, they have an awareness that this freedom is a gift; we are
		free yet dependent on God who has given them the gift of freedom. This paradox
		of the human is understood, for Balthasar, in terms of three polarities: spirit
		and body, man and woman, individual and community.(14) Humans are always
		struggling within these polarities to find a sense of our humanity. 
	 Separate But Equal? Balthasar’s Gender
		Complementarity 
	 While Balthasar always argues for the equality of the
		polarities, in terms of gender the male has priority. This position has a
		christological foundation, for Balthasar argues that based on man’s
		natural priority Christ was incarnate in male flesh.(15) Balthasar’s
		understanding of the feminine as receptivity and response naturally leads to an
		ontological priority of the male. While Balthasar wants to maintain the
		equality of the sexes, it is arguable, as the following passage demonstrates,
		if he succeeds:  
	  
		Man and woman are face to face. Here their equal rank
		  is given even more emphasis: man looks around him and meets with an answering
		  gaze that turns the one-who-sees into the one who-is-seen .... Thus the woman,
		  who is both ‘answer’ and ‘face’, is not only man’s
		  delight: she is the help, the security, the home man needs; she is the vessel
		  of fulfillment specially designed for him. Nor is she simply the vessel of
		  his fruitfulness: she is equipped with her own explicit fruitfulness.
		  Yet her fruitfulness is not a primary fruitfulness: it is an answering
		  fruitfulness, designed to receive man’s fruitfulness (which, in itself, is
		  helpless) and bring it to its ‘fullness’.”(16) 
	 
	 Three points are significant to highlight. First, for
		Balthasar, feminine receptivity is an active receptivity, not a passive one;
		women are actively responsive. Second, there is a tension in wanting to depict
		both sexes as equal, yet giving the male primary status. Lastly, it is
		important to note that in their relationship to God, all humans are feminine,
		for they all respond to God’s action. The human as the created feminine
		creature remains responsive and receptive to God’s revelation, while women
		take on this role in regard to men in human relations. This leads, inevitably,
		to masculine activity becoming equated with divine agency. Gerard Loughlin
		foregrounds the inconsistency of this when he writes: “Balthasar wants
		equality of male and female but the text displays the priority of the male; he
		wants the priority of the male but the text insinuates an equality with the
		female, so we have the ‘relative priority of the man’, which only
		whispers the relative equality of the woman.”(17) There is an ambiguous
		understanding of gender that is simultaneously egalitarian and hierarchical in
		Balthasar’s theology. 
	 Balthasar understood the distinction between the sexes
		as reflective of their  imago Dei, and fruitfulness plays a central
		role, for it mirrors the eternal fecundity of the Trinity. By positing gender
		in the  imago Dei, Balthasar understood the distinctions between the
		sexes as embedded in humanity’s spirit in such a way that “the
		physical difference appears insignificant in comparison.”(18) The two
		sexes image the kenotic self-giving and receiving of the trinitarian
		relationships.  
	  
		Since it is women’s essential vocation to receive
		  man’s fruitfulness into her own fruitfulness, thus uniting in herself the
		  fruitfulness of both, it follows that she is actually the fruit-bearing
		  principle in the creaturely realm . . . . In the most general terms, this means
		  that the woman does not merely give back to man what she has received from him:
		  she gives him something new, something that integrates the gift he gave her but
		  that ‘faces’ him in a totally new and unexpected form . . . . She
		  responds through reproduction.(19) 
	 Lucy Moss and David Gardner have argued that in this passage, woman is
		constructed as oriented toward man; her vocation is understood in terms of
		serving him. By constructing woman’s response in terms of reproduction,
		Balthasar also describes her activity as returning something to the man, purely
		defining her activity in terms of the male.(20) Though women’s receptivity
		is defined as an active fruitfulness, Balthasar nonetheless maintains a
		biological framework for the relationship between men and women. This
		generative model orients the female toward the male as
		active-generative-recipient. 
	 For Balthasar, the responsive human is seen as secondary
		in relationship to God. “We have already indicated that the creature can
		only be secondary, responsive, ‘feminine’ vis-à-vis God . . .
		However, insofar as every creature - be it male or female in the natural order
		- is originally the fruit of the primary, absolute, self-giving divine love,
		there is a clear analogy to the female principle in the world.”(21) The
		human is secondary in regard to God; the female in regard to the male.
		Therefore, woman is doubly secondary in Balthasar’s theology. This is
		grounded in Balthasar’s definition of the human as essentially feminine in
		regard to God. However, in relationship with each other, men have an added
		masculine principle that is not present in women.  
	 Linked to this theme is Balthasar’s understanding
		of woman as answer. Once again, returning to an earlier citation, Balthasar
		defines man and woman as equal, though woman is understood as man’s
		answer. She is “designed for him.” While her receptivity is active,
		it is understood as a responsive-active-receptivity. Balthasar’s
		construction of woman as answer leads to an understanding of woman as
		constituted by her relationship to man. Her sense of self is defined in terms
		of the male and is thus secondary.(22) In the original German text of
		Balthasar’s writings the male-female pair is Wort-Antwort. The
		complementarity that Balthasar envisions is more obvious in the original
		language, yet as Antwort to the male Wort, the primacy of the male is
		reinforced. One cannot answer unless spoken to. Woman is constructed as
		responsive to the male. If one looks at the history of feminist theology, it
		began as a response to androcentric, patriarchal theological constructions.
		However, this feminine “response” is quite different from what
		Balthasar has in mind.  
	 Egalitarian Anthropologies: Feminist Responses to
		Balthasar  
	 As noted by Mary Ann Hinsdale in her excellent overview
		of theological anthropology in feminist theology, a critique of androcentric,
		patriarchal understandings of the human has accompanied feminist theology since
		its inception in the 1960s.(23) As early as 1960, Valerie Saiving mused:
		“I am no longer certain as I once was that, when theologians speak of
		‘man,’ they are using the word in its generic sense.”(24)
		Instead of attempting to summarize the complexity and depth of feminist
		theological anthropologies, my comments are shaped by the dialogue with
		Balthasar’s theology. Two themes found in his theology that mirror the
		concerns of feminist theologians are relational constructions of the human and
		gender complementarity. While the former resonates with the writings of various
		theologians, the latter is often met with disdain and criticism.(25) For these
		theologians, the roots of gender complementarity are in the dualistic
		anthropology of male-mind/ soul and woman-body, where women are symbolically
		subordinate to men.  
	 Mary Aquin O’Neill provides a succinct definition
		of gender complementarity that sounds eerily similar to the very theological
		anthropology of Hans Urs von Balthasar.  
	  
		This anthropology of complementarity, as it came to be
		  known, posits a theology in which the sexes complete one another, not only on
		  the level of reproduction, but in the full range of human existence: social,
		  intellectual, psychological, spiritual. There is a male way of being and a
		  female way, and these can be known from an examination of the bodies of the two
		  and given a fair degree of specificity. Thus men are supposed to be, by nature,
		  active, rational, willful, autonomous beings whose direction goes outward into
		  the world; women are to be passive, intuitive, emotional, connected beings
		  whose natural inclination is inward. This bipolar vision of the sexes leads to
		  an equally bipolar understanding of their respective places, namely, the world
		  and the home.(26 ) 
	 As O’Neill emphasizes, this bipolar anthropology
		essentializes sexual identity and social roles. Feminist theologian Daphne
		Hampson has noted that a theological anthropology based on a vision of gender
		complementarity is in sharp contrast the vision of the human embraced by many
		feminist theologians. In this construction, man is the normative center.
		“A good way then of marking the male concept of
		‘complementarity’ is to note that the female is always to
		‘complement’ the male and never vice versa. That is to say, he
		is subject, while she is ‘other’.”(27) What is deemed feminine
		is the male projection of attributes that are excluded from the construction of
		masculine identity. Taking a slightly different path, Anne E. Carr cites the
		work of O’Neill who argues that gender complementarity is: “fraught
		with problems, the chief of which is that defining male and female polarities
		(activity/passivity, reason/intuition, emotion/will, etc.), denies the
		wholeness of human experience and the hopes of women themselves. In this vision
		of humanity, the activities of each sex are rigidly limited, as is the scope of
		human freedom, judgment, and responsibility over nature.”(28) Gender
		complementarity denies the fullness of the individual human and his or her
		nature by characterizing certain attributes based on biological sex.  
	 In a thoughtful attempt to bridge the insights of
		essentialist understandings of the human and what are termed
		“agnostic,” constructivist notions of selfhood, Nancy Dallavalle
		argues for critical essentialism as a response to the either/or paradigms of
		current discussions between feminist theory and theology.(29) Rejecting
		essentialist claims surrounding human relationships, Dallavalle notes:
		“Male and female are to be understood as essential differences, but this
		difference need not imply an anthropology of complementarity in which male and
		female only find their meaning in the other.”(30) Dallavalle acknowledges
		that gender dualisms saturate theological anthropologies, especially models
		where women are deemed subordinate to men. Yet another approach is found in the
		writings of Prudence Allen. In contrast to the “fractional sex
		complementarity” that dominates anthropologies, Allen proposes
		“integral sex complementarity” as a viable option for Christian
		anthropologies.(31) Fractional sex complementarity sees men as providing
		certain characteristics, female others, and when combined they make an
		integrated whole. Instead, Allen offers her integral approach.  
	  
		If man and woman are considered whole already as
		  self-defining individuals and self-giving persons, then they are more like
		  integers than like fractions. Furthermore, the interaction of two whole beings
		  leads to a more fertile result than simply one whole composed of two fractional
		  beings. In fact, in integral sex complementarity, the bonding of two persons
		  creates what can be called a synergetic effect, or one plus one adds up
		  to more than two.(32)  
	 No matter what the given response, what is clear is that
		within contemporary feminist theology gender complementarity is, as envisioned
		in Balthasar’s construction, extremely problematic.  
	 While his model of gender complementarity hampers
		Balthasar’s anthropology in the eyes of feminists, his emphasis on
		relationality as the center of what it means to be human resonates with the
		work of contemporary feminist theologians. Linked to this relational
		understanding of the self is the feminist emphasis on embodiment. Rosemary
		Radford Ruether, in her now classic Sexism and GodTalk: Toward a Feminist
		Theology, outlines a feminist anthropology that undermines patriarchal
		understandings of humanity.(33) Ruether begins her chapter by presenting what
		she describes as the dual structure of Christian theological anthropology,
		essence and existence, which represent human authentic potential and historical
		humanity. Central to this anthropology is the notion of humanity created in the
		image of God. There is a tension, however, between the notions of male and
		female created both in the image of God and the tradition that correlates
		female with lower human nature. “Males, as the monopolizers of theological
		self-definition, project onto women their own rejection of their ‘lower
		selves.’ Women, although equivalent in the image of God, nevertheless
		symbolize the lower self, representing this in their physical, sexual
		nature.”(34) Citing central figures including Augustine, Aquinas, Luther,
		Calvin, and Barth, Ruether presents the classic patriarchal paradigms of
		women’s humanity. In a similar vein, Ruether critiques Romantic and
		Liberal feminist anthropologies as unsatisfactory models of egalitarian
		anthropologies. Critiquing gender complementarity, Ruether argues that such
		models perpetuate gender stereotypes, undermining a notion of human personhood
		that embraces human nature as both male and female. Women, Ruether argues,
		“need to appropriate and deepen the integration of the whole
		self-relational with rational modes of thought - that is already
		theirs.”(35) Ruether concludes by offering a relational anthropology that
		emphasizes our interconnectedness with others.  
	 Latina feminist theologian María Pilar Aquino, in
		her first book, Our Cry for Life: Feminist Theology from Latin America,
		argued for an egalitarian anthropology as fundamental to overcome
		patriarchal and individualistic anthropologies of Western European philosophies
		and theologies.(36) Central to her study is a critique of any type of
		subordinationist or androcentric anthropology. These are exemplified in the
		dualist anthropologies of Augustine and Aquinas. In both, Aquino holds, women
		are reduced to their procreative function. “For Augustine, the meaning and
		purpose of the sexual difference between women and men finds its ultimate
		justification in procreation . ... In Thomas, the biological purpose of
		women’s existence is explained by the good of the species. Women are
		subordinate through their auxiliary - and therefore inferior - procreative
		function.”(37) In contrast to this construction, Aquino offers an
		egalitarian anthropology based on four broad brushstrokes.  
	 First, an egalitarian anthropology must be human
		centered, placing both sexes at the center of theological reflection. This is
		contra a male centered anthropology where woman is constructed as other.
		Second, this anthropology is unitarian, undermining a dualistic vision of the
		human being and human history. Realism is the third feature of this
		anthropology, which “enters deep into history and struggles to transform
		the realities that cause death.”(38) Last, this anthropology is
		multidimensional, embracing the complexity of the human. Anthropologies such as
		Ruether’s and Aquino’s demonstrate that the relational construction
		of humanity found in Balthasar’s writings is, while problematic, not
		entirely alien to feminist constructions.  
	 A Gendered Theological Method 
	 In a sense, it is almost inappropriate to speak of
		Balthasar in terms of method. To speak of theological method often implies an
		explicit, systematic approach to one’s theology. As noted by J. Randolph
		Sachs: “Balthasar himself never tires of emphasizing the non-systematic
		nature of his theology.”(39) Nonetheless, there are clear methodological
		features of his theology. Balthasar scholars have used various ways to describe
		the meditative dimension of his theology. Sachs notes that for Balthasar,
		theology and spirituality have an intrinsic relationship.(40) Edward Oakes has
		observed that for Balthasar, theological content and form can never be
		separated from each other.(41) Medard Kehl, I find, has the most succinct and
		clear definition of Balthasar’s method. “For Balthasar, good theology
		is contemplation brought to conceptualization.”(42) Contemplation has both
		an objective and subjective dimension. It is found in the openness of the
		divine to the human and the human’s open receptivity to the divine.(43)
		Contemplation, however, is not merely passive receptivity but also entails
		active participation.  
	 Balthasar offered various discussions of his theological
		method that affirm the above-mentioned assessments. In his article “The
		Place of Theology,“ he wrote: “From the very outset, one approaches
		the word of God, the scripture, on one’s knees, prostrate, in the
		conviction that the written word has within it the spirit and power to bring
		about, in faith, contact with the infinity of the Word.”(44) One can see,
		therefore, why Balthasar’s theology is often characterized as a kneeling
		theology.(45) The material of theology must be governed by the event of
		revelation, must remain contemporary, and must tie the revelation of today with
		the tradition of yesterday. Balthasar’s emphasis on the spiritual
		dimension of theology is governed by a concern for what he sees as the cleavage
		between theology and spirituality. This “schism” of disciplines began
		with Scholasticism but has come to its fullest fruition in the modern era.(46)
		In light of his method, there are three areas where gender has distinct
		implications: in Balthasar’s relationship with Adrienne von Speyr, in
		questions of authority in regards to Balthasar’s sources, and in his
		understanding of the theological task. In all three areas, gender plays a
		distinct function in Balthasar’s understanding of the sources and norms
		for theology.  
	 The Priest and the Mystic: Balthasar and Speyr 
	 Perhaps no other figure in Balthasar’s life has
		provoked more confusion and sometimes disdain than the medical doctor Adrienne
		von Speyr. Some, such as Edward Oakes, name Balthasar’s relationship with
		Speyr as the factor that led to his marginal status in 20th-century theology:
		“[W]e have before us the single most telling factor responsible for
		Balthasar’s isolation from the rest of twentieth-century theology; for
		Adrienne von Speyr struck (and still strikes) many people as, if not bizarre,
		at least alienating and too intense for their taste.”(47) Part of the
		confusion and alienation surrounding the role of Speyr in Balthasar’s
		theology is due to her mystical experiences, where she claimed visions of Mary
		and direct personal revelation.  
	 However one interprets the relationship and its impact,
		one cannot deny the role Speyr played in Balthasar’s life and intellectual
		development.(48) He wrote in the introduction to his book Our Task:
		“This book has one chief aim: to prevent any attempt being made after my
		death to separate my work from that of Adrienne von Speyr. It will show that in
		no respect is this possible, as regards both theology and the developing
		community.”(49) In this book one discovers Balthasar’s humble and
		honest account of the profound influence that Speyr had upon him. Similar
		sentiments are also revealed in My Work: In Retrospect. Balthasar felt
		Speyr’s influence on his writing was extensive. Repeatedly he affirmed the
		complementary and unified nature of their work, once again denying the
		possibility of separating the two. In attempting to depict his work since
		meeting Speyr he wrote: “This is not an easy task. The views and projects
		I brought with me are so interconnected with what came from her that the two
		can never be neatly separated.”(50)  
	 Though at first a Protestant, Speyr converted to Roman
		Catholicism the very year she met Balthasar. He was her spiritual mentor. Their
		relationship was one of deep friendship and collaboration. One may question the
		importance of this relationship in a study of Balthasar.(5l) I find, however,
		that a study of Balthasar cannot be accomplished rightfully without an
		examination of his relationship to Speyr. John Roten, in his article, “The
		Two Halves of the Moon: Marian Anthropological Dimensions in the Common Mission
		of Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar,” raises as an integral
		aspect of his study:  
	  
		The psychological and theological symbiosis with
		  Adrienne von Speyr and largely because of this symbiosis - Hans Urs von
		  Balthasar’s profoundly Marian mental structure. There is ample evidence
		  that not only Balthasar’s Marian theology but even more deeply - his
		  personality structure, the habits of the heart and the intellectual framework,
		  have been influenced and co-shaped by Adrienne von Speyr. Furthermore, it can
		  be shown that Hans Urs von Balthasar’s personality structure and his
		  Mariology are intimately related and concurrent.(52) 
	 Roten’s article stresses Speyr’s profound
		influence on Balthasar both personally and theologically. Balthasar edited some
		15 of Speyr’s works, all containing Marian themes. Her mystical
		experiences of Mary had a weighty effect on Balthasar. Balthasar and
		Speyr’s relationship was, in their eyes, an embodiment of their
		theological views. They saw it as “God’s willingness to be present in
		this double figure of priest and mystic.”(53) In other words, Balthasar as
		priest and Speyr as mystic together were representational of God’s
		intended humanity in its separate but united roles. The male and female each
		served a divine purpose that is fully realized in the unity of their
		relationship.  
	 In addition to their theological collaboration,
		Balthasar and Speyr together founded a secular institute, the Community of
		Saint John. In 1947 Balthasar set up the publication house Johannes Verlag in
		order to publish Speyr’s works. During this period, the 1940s, events
		began to swirl around Balthasar that created an atmosphere of crisis: the death
		of his father, tensions with the Swiss Jesuits, theological scrutiny, his
		relationship with Adrienne von Speyr, and his role in the Community of Saint
		John. The authenticity of Speyr’s mystical visions was called into
		question, as was the Community of Saint John. These tensions and events
		culminated in his departure from the Society of Jesus in 1950.  
	 Balthasar’s understanding of the female as active
		recipient and the male as simply active was, in his eyes, personified in his
		working relationship with Speyr. Roten, describing Speyr and Balthasar, wrote:
		“They are kneeling and sitting theology united; the overflowing abundance
		carried in the womb of the woman and the representative function of the man,
		called upon to interpret and formulate - all these aspects of a complementary
		thematic can be found in the different facets of the double mission.”(54)
		While Roten gives clear priority to the receptive act of Speyr’s mystical
		visions, it is the male’s role to intellectualize the content of such
		visions. The woman actively receives, while the male actively conceptualizes.
		It is interesting to note that Speyr’s mysticism is polarized against
		Balthasar’s intellect. Clearly, in Roten’s eyes, Speyr would be
		incapable of thinking about her own visions. This is not her role. As Balthasar
		described their collaboration: “For Adrienne, there was the seemingly
		endless quest for Catholic truth . . . For me, there was an education - first
		of all literary, then philosophical and theological - which was intended to
		give me a knowledge of the spiritual tradition of the Church, within which I
		could situate what was special and new about Adrienne’s
		insights.”(55) Balthasar saw his education as a means of contextualizing
		Speyr’s spiritual visions.  
	 The Prominence of Women in Balthasar’s Theology
		 
	 His relationship with Speyr is one of several instances
		where Balthasar brings forth the voices of women as theological sources in his
		work. Speyr’s manuscripts, for example, would never have seen the light of
		day without him. Speyr is also a theological resource in Balthasar’s own
		writing, which he cites among the voices of the Church Fathers. His monographs
		on Therese of Lisieux and Elizabeth of the Trinity demonstrate his push to lift
		the voices of women. This has implications for the theological method of
		contemporary theology. As Angelo Scola emphasizes:  
	  
		‘Academic theology’ does not like being
		  asked to submit to the schooling of Thérèse of Lisieux to learn
		  Catholic integration from her. And yet this is the way which Hans
		  Urs von Balthasar walked untiringly to the end; this is the way he suggested
		  for theology. I am thinking here of his edition of the works of Marie de la
		  Trinité shortly before his death, and especially of the gigantic work of
		  Adrienne von Speyr. In his activity as a translator and editor, von Balthasar
		  edited many works by women of the past and present. More than any other (male)
		  theologian, he was engaged in a theological conversation with these
		  women. He did not see their experiences and reflections as
		  ‘spirituality’, but as theological contributions.(56)
		   
	 While I agree with Scola’s assessment of the impact
		Balthasar’s works on women’s contributions for contemporary theology,
		I am hesitant to agree with his contention that women and men are given equal
		theological weight in Balthasar’s corpus. While Balthasar clearly wants to
		overcome, for example, the cleft between theology and spirituality, I am not
		convinced that he succeeds given his understanding of the theological task.
		 
	 Balthasar interpreted his relationship with Speyr as a model for
		gendered theological activity. Her role, as mystic, was to provide the data
		which he in turn would shape with his intellectual background into theological
		reflection. I am not implying that Balthasar did not take Speyr’s
		contribution seriously. He understood her visions as a vital theological
		resource for the contemporary Church. He cited them as sources in his writings.
		At the same time, however, in his theological method, her contribution is the
		spiritual life or vision that informs theology, though it is not exactly
		theology. There is ambiguity in this model, for among other things, Balthasar
		understood the split between theology and spirituality to be extremely
		detrimental for contemporary Christianity. At the same time, unfortunately,
		this is yet another area where his ambiguous understanding of gender perhaps
		weakened his work.  
	 Balthasar on Feminism: The Barring of Women from
		Theology  
	 Linked to this gendered understanding of the theological
		task is Balthasar’s critique of feminism. Balthasar explicitly addressed
		feminism when he treated the question of the ordination of women. He began by
		defining feminism as both an “offensive” and an “assault”
		which seeks the equality of men and women. He argued that women’s attempts
		for the equality of the sexes “can scarcely be done without an unnatural
		masculinization of woman or a leveling of the difference between the
		sexes.”(57) Balthasar continued by asserting that the contemporary era is
		in fact no longer patriarchal, for the era of “the dominance of the father
		in the clan” is over. Instead Balthasar framed the present in terms of the
		“prevalence of a rationalism to which natural things and conditions mean
		above all material for manufacturables.” He continued by naming this
		rationalism as philosophical. Proceeding with his gendered presentation of the
		philosophical task, Balthasar described the intellectual process as feminine,
		procreative receptivity that then bears its seeds in myth, images, and
		concepts. In the current technological and positivistic philosophy, Balthasar
		contended, the female element vanishes. “There is no longer anything that
		maternally embraces the human being’s existence; under the power of the
		human spirit, nature has descended to the level of mere material.”(58) The
		feminine is thus equated with the natural.  
	 Balthasar critiqued feminism’s attempts to rectify
		this situation through entry into the masculine discourse of rational
		philosophy. “This epochal forgetting, in which the femininity of the woman
		is also forgotten, cannot be reversed by any kind of rationally expedient
		planning, least of all by the woman’s moving into the already
		overpopulated other side.”(59) Balthasar did not reduce the philosophical
		process, however, to masculine activity. In a sense, the feminine is the
		“stuff” from which philosophical reflection emerges. He is in fact
		critiquing the loss of what he called “the feminine” in current
		philosophical reflection. How did Balthasar think the current situation can be
		rectified? “If we can do so, then certainly only through the woman who
		perceives and understands her role as counterpoise to and spearhead against
		man’s increasingly history-less world, and then must do just the opposite
		of what current feminism does. Neither competition with man in the typically
		masculine field nor a rationally drawn up (with masculine means!) counteraction
		against the masculine world is meaningful.”(60) Women must therefore more
		fully embrace their “femininity” in order to counteract the
		predominance of the masculine. In some ways, Balthasar’s suggestion is
		consonant with the project of feminist theology. He is suggesting that women
		must include their voices in “nontraditional” manners as sources for
		philosophical reflection in order to transform the nature of that discourse.
		However, Balthasar did not put these alternative theological expressions on the
		same playing field as theology.  
	 An example is seen in the fact that none of the twelve
		theologians mentioned in Balthasar’s esthetics are women. Cyril
		O’Regan writes, quite apologetically, that the set of twelve in Glory
		of the Lord is not set by the exclusion of women “for female
		representatives of tradition are treated generously elsewhere in
		Balthasar’s work.”(61) I contend that this is an intentional omission
		on Balthasar’s part. There is once again a complementary understanding of
		spirituality and theology, which can be paralleled to the complementarity of
		the male and female, where the male remains the active, intellectual component.
		While wanting to argue for the equality of these roles, it is naïve, given
		the context of women’s historical marginalization and oppression, to
		assume that a “separate but equal” understanding of voice ever
		embraces true equality. 
	 A final area that links Balthasar’s gendered
		theological method, where the male is seen as the active, intellectualizing
		force, is found in his very definition of the role of the theologian. Antonio
		Sciara highlights that for Balthasar the theologian must be engaged in
		ecclesial office and mission. (62) Clearly, in the Catholic Church today, this
		is an impossibility for a woman. In his article “Theology and
		Sanctity,” it is significant that Balthasar defined the theologian as
		“one whose office and vocation is to expound revelation in its
		fullness.”(63) Balthasar here lamented the split between theology and
		spirituality, yet when women were mentioned (Teresa of Avila, Hildegard of
		Bingen, Matilda, Bridget, and the two Catherines), they were characterized as
		mystics and not theologians.(64) One cannot help but question the significance
		of this distinction for Balthasar’s understanding of the theological task
		that differs radically from feminist reconstructions of theology.  
	 Transforming the Nature of the Theological Task:
		Feminist Method  
	 Feminist theology is characterized by a tripartite
		method: a hermeneutic of suspicion (critique and deconstruction of the past), a
		hermeneutic of retrieval (recovery of the lost history of women), and
		reconstruction (revision of Christian categories). This includes a critique of
		androcentric, patriarchal scholarship and Church life.(65) This leads to a
		revisioning of the entire Christian tradition, for both men and women. In the
		work of feminist theologians one finds a suspicion of giving Christian
		tradition, Scripture, and theology any sort of normative status due to its
		androcentric biases. Therefore, women’s experiences and struggles for
		liberation often become the central commitment and norm in their work.
		Fundamental to feminist theology is recovering women’s intellectual
		histories and the implications of this task. Through their privileging of
		gender as a primary analytical category, feminist theologians seek to highlight
		the ideologies operating in historical and current understandings of Christian
		tradition. Their scholarship demonstrates the dynamics of power and
		marginalization in Christian discourse.  
	 Elizabeth Johnson describes feminist theology’s
		three-fold method in this manner. She writes: “[F]eminist theology engages
		in at least three interrelated tasks: it critically analyzes inherited
		oppressions, searches for alternative wisdom and suppressed history, and risks
		new interpretations of the tradition in conversation with women’s
		lives.”(66) Johnson emphasizes the critical lens of feminist theology and
		the historical dimension of feminist theological projects. As Elisabeth
		Schüssler Fiorenza echoes: “Feminist scholarship unveils the
		patriarchal functions of the intellectual and scientific frameworks generated
		and perpetuated by male-centered scholarship that makes women invisible or
		peripheral in what we know about the world, human life, and cultural or
		religious history.”(67) This first task in feminist theology is to be
		mindful of the function of power and marginalization in inherited and current
		theological discourses.  
	 The second task of feminist theology is dominated by
		historical research. Through this work, the lost women’s voices of
		Christian traditions are recovered through scriptural and historical
		scholarship. Part of this task is unearthing the role of silence that led to
		the marginalization of these women’s voices. Schüssler Fiorenza
		highlights the importance of this step, for a feminist critical analysis must
		be accompanied by knowledge of women’s intellectual contributions
		throughout the centuries.  
	  
		Although women have questioned these explanations and
		  internalizations throughout the centuries, we remain ignorant of our own
		  intellectual traditions and foremothers. All ‘great’ philosophers,
		  scientists, theologians, poets, politicians, artists, and religious leaders
		  seem to have been men who have for centuries been writing and talking to each
		  other in order to define God, the world, human community and existence as
		  ‘they saw it.’ However that does not mean that women have not been
		  ‘great’ thinkers and leaders. Yet their thoughts and works have not
		  been transmitted and become classics of our culture and religion because
		  patriarchy requires that in any conceptualization of the world men and their
		  power have to be central.(68)  
	 One should not, however, limit the subject matter of
		this task to the scholarship of women. Part of this second step includes
		unearthing the male voices that have been silenced, misinterpreted, or ignored.
		The third task of feminist theology creates new theological constructions in
		light of the prior two steps. 
	 In light of Balthasar’s theology, there are some
		points of consonance between his theological projects and those of feminist
		theologians. Entirely absent in Balthasar is a critical appraisal of the
		Christian tradition in light of a feminist hermeneutic. This should not be
		surprising to us. However, in his critique of the severance of theology and
		spirituality in modern theology, Balthasar is creating the contemporary form of
		“appropriate” theological reflection. His use of esthetic resources
		(drama, poetry) within his theology demonstrates his desire to reimagine the
		form of theological reflection. In this sense, his theology mirrors feminist
		attempts to include alternative voices and avenues of theological reflection.
		 
	 Regarding the historical retrieval that marks the second
		key moment of feminist theological method, Balthasar’s ressourcement
		of women’s voices is clearly in the spirit of feminist historical
		scholarship. In a similar vein, his efforts to promote and publish the work of
		Speyr are to be commended. However, it is in his theological construction that
		Balthasar falls short of feminist concerns. Balthasar clearly limited the
		contributions of the very women he celebrates to the realm of spirituality,
		which is contrasted to academic, male, philosophical and theological
		reflection. While he clearly took women’s contributions seriously, as is
		seen in the interconnection of his work with Speyr’s, the manner in which
		women’s voices are constructed in his theology limit their intellectual
		contribution.  
	 Kenosis: Christological Humility and suffering 
	 The centrality of gender in Balthasar’s theology is
		grounded in his concept of God that is analogously constructed in a model of
		human sexuality. Balthasar defined the inner-trinitarian relationships in terms
		of actions, which he analogously designated as sexual. The Father is the
		active, masculine principle, while the Son is passive and feminine. The Spirit
		receives both and simultaneously “gives” as the eternal love between
		Father and Son.(69) In regard to the Father, the Son is receptive, therefore
		feminine. The paradox of Sonship is found in the passivity of his activity.
		However, in regard to the world the Son is active.(70)  
	 Balthasar’s Gendered Trinity 
	 Balthasar’s gender-defined understanding of the
		Trinity, including the paradox of the Son’s masculine and feminine roles,
		is seen in the following quote:  
	  
		In trinitarian terms, of course, the Father, who begets
		  him who is without origin, appears primarily as (super-) masculine; the Son in
		  consenting, appears initially (super-) feminine, but in the act (together with
		  the Father) of breathing forth the Spirit, he is (super-) masculine. As for the
		  Spirit, he is (super-) feminine. There is even something (super-) feminine
		  about the Father too, since, as we have shown, in the action of begetting and
		  breathing forth he allows himself to be determined by the Persons who thus
		  proceed from him; however, this does not affect his primacy on the order of the
		  Trinity.”  
	 Though Jesus’ “economic” life, death,
		Descent into Hell, and Resurrection, the inner or immanent nature of the
		Trinity is revealed. Balthasar’s concept of God is kenotic. The
		life of the Trinity is characterized by infinite selfsurrender. The three
		persons can be conceived only in relationship. “The Father only is, as he
		who generates the Son, he who surrenders and pours himself out in the Son; and
		the Son is, only as he who utterly surrenders himself to the Father,
		acknowledging himself to be the Father’s image and glory; the Spirit is,
		only as witnessing and expressing the love between the Father and the Son,
		proceeding from them.”(72) The Incarnate Son reveals the life of the
		Trinity. The Son’s selfemptying on the cross reveals the surrender that
		characterizes the Being of the three persons of the Trinity. As kenotic,
		Balthasar’s concept of the Trinity is relational. As Sachs has argued:
		“Von Balthasar’s understanding of God is fundamentally kenotic
		(that is, one of self-emptying love), leading to a conception of the
		trinitarian persons in a radically relational and paradoxically
		‘selfless’ way. Thus, he suggests, the three in God are not so much
		different ‘selves’, but different modes of divine
		selflessness.”(73) Thus it is in God’s very nature to surrender
		God’s self in self-emptying love. This is the mode of divine Being.
		Balthasar’s kenotic understanding of God informs his anthropology.
		His image of the human is both relational and self-emptying. Only when the
		human surrenders finite freedom into the realm of the infinite is true humanity
		realized.  
	 One must not understand God’s self-surrender as in
		some way God needing humanity. God’s self-surrender is expressive of
		God’s essence. The surrender that characterizes the inner-trinitarian life
		is an expression of God’s love, through God’s infinite surrender
		within God’s self.(74) Jesus Christ’s surrender on the cross is not
		contra divine nature.(75) Kenosis is the way of divine being. For
		Balthasar the cross is where God’s glory is revealed. On the cross, the
		Son is the fullest representation of Triune love between the Father and the Son
		in the Spirit. The cross is where Jesus’ human obedience is in
		correspondence with this triune love.(61) Christ’s Descent into Hell is
		the center of Balthasar’s Christology. The Descent into Hell marks the end
		of kenosis, and is the ultimate expression in innertrinitarian love.
		Christ on Holy Saturday is exemplary of the divine nature. “Soteriology is
		not added in some way to God’s being, for intra-divine surrender is part
		of God’s deepest nature.  
	 The Humble Glory of the Cross  
	 In order to transform the human condition from within,
		God must go to humanity’s most extreme disillusionment: death without
		finding God. In the Crucified One, creation reaches its fulfillment and God
		reveals God’s truest revelation and glory. Jesus takes humanity’s
		place and becomes sin. In the yes of the cross, sin is engulfed by love;
		through the death and Resurrection humanity is accepted into trinitarian life
		through the gift of the Spirit. On the cross Jesus takes the no of humanity and
		transforms it into a yes, leading them into a new life in the Trinity;
		God’s yes outweighs humanity’s no. The glory of the cross reveals the
		paradox of God’s power. “The paradox must be allowed to stand:
		in the undiminished humanity of Jesus, the whole power and glory of God are
		made present to us.”(78) The hiatus of Holy Saturday reveals the logic of
		God: the hiatus theology must not follow human logic, but instead the
		‘theo-logic’ of God.  
	 Balthasar’s kenotic Christology also informs
		his understanding of Christ in solidarity with sinners. In his reflection on
		Christ’s mission in its final stages, the passion and death, Christ is
		depicted as renouncing all control. “The full universality of his task
		would be unattainable without his total self-abandonment in Passion and
		death.”(79) This tension, where a mission accepted in freedom leads to
		self-abandonment, comes out in its fullness in Mysterium Paschale, one
		of the most creative pieces in Balthasar’s corpus. Here one finds the
		influence of the mystical vision of Adrienne von Speyr. Meditating on the
		events of Holy Saturday, Balthasar portrayed Jesus’ Descent into Hell and
		solidarity with sinners as the result of his utter abandonment by the
		Father.(80) In the self-emptying death on the cross, God’s love and
		perfection finds its fullest glory. Christ’s Descent into Hell is the
		center of Balthasar’s Christology. “In the humility of his obedient
		self-lowering to the death of the Cross he is identical with the exalted
		Lord.”(81) Therefore, one must follow the path of humility in order to
		enter into the glory of God. “Man has to accept that he must go through
		the narrow door of humiliation, of the Cross, encountering the infinite
		precisely in the most finite, in order to arrive at communion with infinite
		freedom.”(82) Thus the path of God is the path of humiliation, not the
		path of glory. God’s omnipotence is the powerlessness of the incarnate and
		crucified One.  
	 Is There Redemptive Suffering?  
	 A Christology that emphasizes Christ’s suffering
		and humility runs the danger of appearing as if it endorses the unjust
		sufferings of peoples throughout history. This is a critique, for example,
		found in various feminist theologians. Womanist theologian Delores Williams,
		writes: “Can there be salvific power for black women in Christian images
		of oppression (for example, Jesus on the cross) meant to teach something about
		redemption?”(83) After examining and critiquing atonement theories,
		Williams comes to the conclusion that it is in fact Jesus’ ministerial
		vision which offers an ethical practice and vision and which is in fact
		redemptive. “The cross thus becomes an image of defilement, a gross
		manifestation of collective human sin.”(84) The Resurrection is God’s
		triumph over this manifestation of human sin. 
	 The theme of kenosis as it relates to gender and
		its implications for feminist theology are fruitful areas of theological
		discussion. As noted by Aristotle Papanikolaou, many feminist theologians have
		a negative relationship with the obedience, self-sacrifice, and humility that
		accompanies kenosis. “As feminists over the past century, and
		especially in the last half-century, have made clear, this understanding of
		kenosis has been used throughout the history of Christianity to maintain
		women in situations of oppression.”(85) Papanikolaou is aware that an
		emphasis on kenosis as humility and self-sacrifice has and can lead to
		oppressive models for women within Christian theology. He finds in the work of
		one feminist theologian, Sarah Coakley, an understanding of kenosis as
		“power-in-vulnerability” that is a feminist perspective much in
		consonance with that of Balthasar.(86)  
	 While noting the dangers of an uncritical acceptance of
		vulnerability in Christian thought, Coakley holds that there is an equal danger
		in Christian feminist thought’s rejection of vulnerability as victimology,
		namely “the failure to embrace a feminist reconceptualizing of the power
		of the cross and resurrection . . . . What I have elsewhere called the
		‘paradox of power and vulnerability’ is I believe uniquely focused in
		this act of silent waiting on the divine in prayer. This is because we can only
		be properly ‘empowered’ here if we cease to set the agenda, if we
		‘make space’ for God to be God. ,87 Coakley’s understanding of
		vulnerability does not concern suffering or self-abnegation, “On the
		contrary, this special `self-emptying’ is not a negation of self, but the
		place of the self’s transformation and expansion into God.”(88)
		Kenosis is understood by Coakley as the human’s openness to God,
		the ability for the human to make room for God in his or her life. Instead of
		understanding vulnerability as opposed to power and thus leading to victimhood,
		Coakley defines vulnerability in terms of transformation and openness to
		receive and give.  
	 In Papanikolaou’s work, Coakley is clearly in
		consonance with Balthasar. Like Coakley, Balthasar does not define kenosis
		in terms of self-sacrifice, but instead in terms of self-giving.
		“Kenosis for Balthasar is not self-sacrifice, but the movements of
		self-giving toward the other in order to receive the other that are
		constitutive of divine and human personhood. Personhood, for Balthasar, is not
		a quality possessed, but a unique and irreducible identity received in
		relations of love and freedom that can only be labeled as
		kenotic.”(89) Also, Coakley and Balthasar define the human’s
		relationship with God as kenotic: an openness and vulnerability to
		God’s love. This is a relational anthropology. Papanikolaou sees this
		thread in Balthasar’s anthropology as consonant with contemporary feminist
		scholarship. “Though perhaps for different reasons, Balthasar and feminist
		theologians in general reject Enlightenment notions of the self in terms of
		individuality, autonomy, independence, and self-sufficiency. They argue for
		relational understandings of the self, a self that is constituted in and
		through community and communion. Such notions of the self reject oppositions of
		the ‘one’ to the ‘other’ but rather affirm a notion of the
		‘one’, of identity that includes the ‘other’.”(90) The
		ambiguity of Balthasar’s work once again resurfaces. Papanikolaou
		persuasively presents the relational nature of Balthasar’s anthropology,
		arguing for its compatibility with feminist scholarship. At the same time, this
		broader emphasis on relationship is shadowed by an essentialist construction of
		the actual relationships between the sexes. Balthasar allows for relationality,
		but only in the manner in which he defines them. 
	 Evaluation: Balthasar and Feminist Theology  
	 An uneasy alliance can be formed with the works of
		Balthasar and contemporary feminist theologies. Uneasy, for there are clear
		moments where Balthasar argues against the very project of feminism or perhaps
		more importantly, where his essentialist understanding of gender shows the very
		anthropology feminists attempts to contest. Nonetheless, an alliance remains
		for there are various points where Balthasar’s work mirrors the concerns
		of feminist theologians. In this section I affirm some of these areas of
		tension and consonance between these theological perspectives. 
	 The greatest point of tension between Balthasar and
		feminist theologians is his complementary understanding of the sexes. The
		gender ambiguities found in his anthropology are not new to some Balthasar
		scholars who point to the dynamic understanding of the human in his thought
		which is sharply contrasted with his static notion of gender. John
		O’Donnell’s critique of Balthasar’s work is centered on what he
		sees as Balthasar’s failure to take into account the dynamic nature of
		sexuality. He is hesitant concerning the sharp divisions Balthasar makes
		between the sexes.  
	  
		Therefore, while not wanting to deny the significance
		  of the distinction between the sexes, one is nevertheless led to ask whether we
		  must not also accept a certain fluidity between them. Can we make a simple
		  identification between the male and the masculine, the female and the feminine?
		  Are not masculine and feminine elements present in each person? In some ways
		  Balthasar seems to admit this, for example, in his theory that Christ is
		  feminine vis-à-vis the Father and masculine vis-à-vis the world
		  or in his notion that the office-holder is feminine as a member of the church
		  but masculine in his priestly role over the community. If this is the case, is
		  Balthasar justified in rigidly excluding the possibility of women being
		  admitted to orders?(91)  
	 In other words, O’Donnell is critical of what he
		defines as the essentialist nature of Balthasar’s understanding of men and
		women. The charge of essentialism is problematic, given Balthasar’s
		relational and dramatic anthropology. The ambiguity is found in
		Balthasar’s treatment of the relationship between the sexes.
		O’Donnell is also critical of the paradoxical nature of Balthasar’s
		constructions of gender, especially in regard to church life. If one accepts
		Balthasar’s contention that men and women are equal and complementary,
		even though the male is primary, and that both men and women share in their
		natures, why does Balthasar refuse for the masculine principle to be in any way
		active in women? In other words, since humanity is essentially feminine, men
		automatically participate within the feminine; however, there is no indication
		in Balthasar’s work concerning how the female embodies the male principle
		in any way.  
	 Balthasar’s work appears to fall into an
		essentialist camp. Given his broader anthropology, however, a categorization of
		Balthasar’s understanding of the human becomes ambiguous. This is due to
		his relational and dramatic anthropology. When discussing the human, Balthasar
		constantly affirmed a dynamic understanding of humanity, grounded in his or her
		historical and cultural context. The articulation of his anthropology within
		the Theo-drama is an intentional move on his part that refutes an
		ahistoricized, essentialist depiction of humanity. In addition, his emphasis on
		the relational nature of the Trinity as constitutive of the imago Dei is
		yet another persuasive argument against an essentialist label on
		Balthasar’s work. One cannot deny, however, that when speaking of gender,
		Balthasar falls, to a certain extent, into an essentialist paradigm. His
		insistence on classifying the nature of men and women into a narrow model is
		problematic.  
	 At the same time, however, Balthasar’s essentialist
		gender complementarity offers an interesting critique of feminist theological
		anthropologies. Feminist theologians have emphasized, for the most part, the
		sociopolitical nature of gender. Arguing against an essentialist depiction of
		the sexes, feminists hesitate to describe any type of universal woman’s
		nature. This has been fueled in recent decades by critiques emerging from women
		of color, as well as postmodern theoretical rejections of essentialized notions
		of the self. Feminist theologians have also argued persuasively and forcefully
		for an emphasis on embodiment, refuting the long-standing dualism that
		privileges the mind-soul over the flesh. This emphasis on the body must lead
		one to examine how humanity’s sexual embodiment contributes to the
		distinctiveness of one’s humanity. To put it rather bluntly, men and women
		are embodied in very different and distinct ways. If you take the body
		seriously, then you must examine how this distinctive embodiment shapes
		one’s theological anthropology. However, feminist theologians often want
		to resist discussing any essential attributes to a particular sex,
		simultaneously celebrating the body, toeing the line between essentialism and
		constructivism. I am not sure one can have it both ways. Balthasar’s
		theology challenges feminists to discern how one can emphasize one’s
		embodied existence while simultaneously denouncing that it results in any
		serious distinctions between men and women.  
	 This gender complementarity spills over into
		Balthasar’s understanding of the theological task, where men and
		women’s voices have distinct contributions based on their embodied
		sexuality. The feminine mystic is seen as the spiritual source for the male
		academic theologian. In an interesting twist, Balthasar actually privileges the
		feminine contribution, calling for theology to turn to more esthetic and
		spiritual resources. However, whether intentional or not Balthasar ends up
		isolating women’s contributions to this mystical realm, downplaying their
		rational, academic, and theological voice. At the same time, through his desire
		to transform and expand the sources that inform theology (especially in his
		emphasis one women’s voices), Balthasar is an unlikely ally for feminist
		historical scholarship.  
	 An example of this is seen in Balthasar’s use of
		literature within theology. A central aspect of Balthasar’s intellectual
		background that has profoundly marked his theology is his studies in
		literature. As noted by Edward Oakes, Balthasar’s training in literature
		colors his theological method. “What makes a study of Balthasar’s
		work with the German classics so important is the issue of interpretation: for
		it was from his study of the German classics that Balthasar first received his
		training as a scholar and thus first came to his method of textual, and even
		theological, interpretation.”(92) However, the significance of
		Balthasar’s use of literature goes well beyond his textual method; it
		offers an inter-disciplinary theological contribution. For Balthasar, literary
		sources are theological. He does not examine literature in order to find
		religious or theological themes therein. Instead, Balthasar holds literature to
		be theological.(93) However, Balthasar does not uncritically accept all
		literature as theology. For him there are certain literary figures who are also
		theologians.  
	 One must examine, however, the underlying framework that
		informs Balthasar’s approach to literature as theology. As noted by John
		Riches, literature and the arts for Balthasar reveal something about being, and
		for this reason are theological.  
	  
		Balthasar’s theology is marked out, that is, by
		  his own conviction that in the great works of art, literature and music we do
		  indeed perceive something of the truth and reality of being. Thus it is
		  clearly of great interest to enquire after Balthasar’s own understanding
		  of an indebtedness to the great figures of the German tradition of letters with
		  which he is engaged . . . . It is not simply questions of the formal
		  similarities between literature, art and music, and theological perceiving that
		  interest Balthasar (though such questions do concern him in Vol. 1 of The
		  Glory of the Lord) but of the content of such widely varied
		  visions.”(94)  
	 The content of literature and the arts reveals something
		about being, in a similar fashion to theological elaborations. This view must
		be seen in light of Balthasar’s contention that through the Incarnation,
		Jesus Christ transformed the very nature of human culture and cultural
		expression. Because all of human culture has been transformed, literature is a
		vital resource of human expression of divine Glory.  
	 The use of literature as a theological resource is not
		new to feminist theologies, and is central in the work of various womanist
		theologians. In her introduction to womanist theology Stephanie Mitchem
		highlights the importance of June Jordan’s poetry, for example, to the
		development of a womanist consciousness. In one of the earliest texts of
		womanist theology, Black Womanist Ethics, Katie Cannon uses the
		literature and life of Zora Neale Hurston as a key interlocutor for womanist
		ethics. Cannon’s work is groundbreaking at various levels. As Mitchem
		notes: “By valuing black women’s experiences, she challenged the
		basic assumptions of white, male, Christian ethics about individuals, personal
		and communal power, and acts of choice. Using Zora Neale Hurston’s
		literature and life, Cannon points to the potential of black literary
		traditions for social analysis.”(95) In a later text Cannon returns to the
		centrality of literature for womanist ethics. “It is my thesis that the
		Black women’s literary tradition is the best available literary repository
		for understanding the ethical values Black women have created and cultivated in
		their participation in this society.”(96) Literature becomes a central
		resource for accessing Black women’s lives, culture, and world view.  
	 The works of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker are central
		voices within womanist theology. Noting that Delores S. Williams has used
		literature as a theological resource, Dwight N. Hopkins turns to Toni
		Morrison’s writings as a source for a constructive black theology.
		Morrison’s literature is a key resource for understanding the spirituality
		of poor Black women. Hopkins argues: “Furthermore, to do theology from
		black women’s literature is precisely theology. Why? Because the
		God of justice and love presented and discovered in African American religious
		values, tradition, and contemporary witness is the same God who freely chooses
		to reveal an emancipatory spirit in black women’s stories.”(97) In a
		similar vein, Cheryl Townsend Gilkes uses literature, specifically Alice
		Walker’s The Color Purple, to explore the complexity of Black
		women’s daily lives and realities. Walker herself speaks of the
		theological nature of her novel when she writes,  
	  
		Whatever else The Color Purple has been taken
		  for during the swift ten years since its publication, it remains for me the
		  theological work examining the journey from the religious back to the spiritual
		  that I spent so much of my adult life, prior to writing it, seeking to avoid
		  .... I would have thought a book that begins ‘Dear God’ would
		  immediately have been identified as a book about the desire to encounter, to
		  hear from, the Ultimate Ancestor.(98)  
	 Novels such as The Color Purple offer alternative
		theological resources that demonstrate that if one is going to attempt to
		recover the voices and experiences of a marginalized people,
		‘traditional’ avenues of research are not always appropriate. The
		most recent monograph by Brazilian theologian Ivone Gebara is yet another
		example of this, where she uses literary sources to inform her theology of evil
		and suffering. (99)  
	 Linked to Balthasar’s use of literature is his
		ressourcement of historical voices in the Christian tradition.
		Balthasar’s encounter with Henri de Lubac was foundational for his love of
		the Church Fathers. Balthasar’s method is characterized by an examination
		of historical figures in light of their contemporary relevance. As Edward Oakes
		notes: “A real assimilation of the thought of the Church Fathers entails,
		rather, an intensive confrontation with their texts together with a burning
		concern with the situation of the contemporary Church.”(100) In other
		words, the goal of Balthasar’s historical studies is to bring to light the
		relevance of the material for the contemporary situation. Balthasar offers a
		critical study of the Fathers in light of their significance for contemporary
		theology. He is not concerned with historical theology per se, but instead the
		significance of historical studies for current theology.  
	 Balthasar’s emphasis on the relevance of the past
		for present study is grounded in his belief that past events and voices remain
		active contributors even centuries after their historical life. “We are
		prone to look on historical revelation as a past event, a presupposed, and not
		as something always happening, to be listened to and obeyed; and it is this
		that becomes the matter of theological reflection.”(101) Instead of seeing
		history as a dead event, theology today must “embrace the riches of past
		theology as a living thing, and to endow it with fresh vitality.”(102) The
		liveliness of the past must be brought into the present in order to enrich the
		contemporary situation. If the past is seen as a dead event, with nothing to
		contribute, one loses a significant dimension of one’s historical identity
		and tradition. The open and living characteristic of revelation is what gives
		historical events their vibrancy. For Balthasar, revelation as eternal is
		always alive and speaking, whether its expression occurs centuries ago or in
		our current situation. Mary Ann Hinsdale has noted that “the task of
		historical recovery and retrieval seeks out the ‘lost voices’
		of women in order to restore them to the communal tradition.”(103) This
		feminist ressourcement strives to incorporate Church Mothers into the
		canons of theological tradition, and is central to feminist theology. Balthasar
		is an unforeseen aid in this project, for part of his retrieval includes the
		voices of women.  
	 In conclusion, it is clear that the relationship between
		Balthasar and feminist theology will remain at best shaky. However, Balthasar
		should not be entirely disregarded, for he does offer some important
		contributions to feminist theological conversations. His most important one, in
		my view, is the theological construction of gender in his writings. Gender is
		not merely a sociopolitical category in his work. Instead it has theological
		value. As feminists currently attempt to navigate an analysis of gender that
		speaks to the complexity and diversity of humanity, coupled with an emphasis on
		the embodied significance of gender, dialogue partners such as Balthasar offer
		unanticipated avenues of theological reflection. If our embodied gender is
		significant and reflective of the image of God in all humanity, it naturally
		follows that a theological analysis of gender is a necessary step in the
		development of feminist theology.  
	  
		Michelle A. Gonzalez received her Ph.D. in
		  systematic and philosophical theology from the Graduate Theological Union, in
		  Berkeley, California. She is now assistant professor of theological studies at
		  Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. Her volume on the life and thought of
		  Sor Juana Inds de la Cruz, Sor Juana: Beauty and Justice in the Americas
		  (Orbis) appeared in 2003. She has published several articles in journals
		  such as the Journal of Hispanic/Latino Theology and essays in collective
		  volumes including Nuevas Voces/New Voices: Horizons in U.S.
		  Hispanic/Latino(a) Theology (Pilgrim). She has also provided essays for the
		  forthcoming Handbook of Latinola Theologies and Postcolonial Theory
		  and Theology (both by Chalice Press).  
	 Footnotes 
	 1. As defined by Rosemary Radford Ruether
		“Ferninist theology is about the deconstruction of these ideological
		justifications of male domination and the vindication of women’s equality
		as the true will of God, human nature, and Christ’s redemptive
		intention” (Women and Redemption: A Theological History
		[Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998]8).  
	 2. Several introductions to Balthasar’s theology do
		not contain an analysis of gender in his theology. See Edward T. Oakes,
		Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (New York:
		Continuum, 1997); Angelo Scola, Hans Urs von Balthasar: A Theological Style
		(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995). 
	 3. The only study that has done so is the recent article
		by Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Person, Kenosis, and Abuse: Hans Urs
		von Balthasar and Feminist Theologies in Conversation,” Modern Theology
		19 (January 2003) 41-65.  
	 4. The last volume of the Theodramatik, for
		example, was translated only in 1998. The first volume of Theologik was
		published in English only in 2000.  
	 5. English translation of Herrlichkeit Eine
		theologische Asthetik.  
	 6. As noted in the opening words of Louis
		Dupré’s often-cited overview of Balthasar’s esthetics:
		“Hans Urs von Balthasar’s seven-volume Herrlichkeit, completed
		by 1969, ranks among the foremost theological achievements of our century”
		(“The Glory of the Lord: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theological
		Aesthetic,” in Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life and Work, ed. David
		L. Schindler [San Francisco: Ignatius, 19911 183).  
	 7. Hans Urs von Balthasar, My Work: In Retrospect
		(San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993).  
	 8. Lucy Gardner and David Moss, “Something Like
		Time: Something Like the Sexes-An Essay in Reception,” in Balthasar at
		the End of Modernity, ed. Lucy Gardner, David Moss, Ben Quash, Graham Ward
		(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999) 78.  
	 9. I agree with John O’Donnell, S.J., when he
		writes: “Moreover, the reader comes to see that Balthasar’s
		understanding of sexuality is central to his vision and sheds light on every
		facet of his theology” (“Man and Woman as Imago Dei in the
		Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Clergy Review 68/4 [1983]
		117).  
	 10. See Maria Pilar Aquino, Our Cry for Life: Feminist Theology from
		Latin America (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993); Carter Heyward, Touching
		Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God (San Francisco:
		HarperSanFrancisco,1989); Ada Maria Isasi-Díaz, “Elements of a
		Mujerista Anthropology,” in Mujerista Theology: A Theology for
		the Twenty-First Century (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996) 128-47; In the
		Embrace of God: Feminist Approaches to Theological Anthropology,  ed. Ann
		O’Hara (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1995).  
	 11. For an excellent introduction to the influence of
		Henri de Lubac on the prominence of ressourcement on Balthasar’s
		theology, see Kevin Mongrain, The Systematic Thought of Hans Urs von
		Balthasar An Irenaean Retrieval (New York: Crossroad, 2002).  
	 12. Scola, Hans Urs von Balthasar 85-86.  
	 13. Describing the human condition, Balthasar wrote:
		“He exists as a limited being in a limited world, but his reason is open
		to the unlimited, to all of being. The proof exists in the recognition of his
		finitude, of his contingence: I am, but I could not-be.” (“A
		Résumé of My Thought,” in Hans Urs von Balthasar: His
		Life and Work 1). I have explicitly decided to maintain the gender
		exclusive language of Balthasar’s writings to emphasize the primacy of the
		male in his theology.  
	 14. Gerard Loughlin, “Erotics: God’s
		Sex,” in Radical Orthodoxy (New York: Routledge, 1999) 150.  
	 15. Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic
		Theory, vol. 2: The Dramatis Personae: Man in God, trans. Graham Harrison
		(San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990) 411; trans. of Theodramatik: Zweiter Band:
		Die Personen des Spiels. Teil 1: Der Mensch in Gott (Einsiedeln: Johannes,
		1976).  
	 16. Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic
		Theory, vol. 3: The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ, trans. Graham
		Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992) 285; trans. of Theodramatik:
		Zweiter Band: Die Personen des Spiels. Teei 2: Die Personen in Christus
		(Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1979).  
	 17. Loughlin, “Erotics: God’s Sex” 153.  
	 18. Balthasar, The Christian State of Life (San Francisco:
		Ignatius, 1983) 227. 
	 19. Balthasar, The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ 286.
		 
	 20. David Moss and Lucy Gardner, “Difference-The Immaculate
		Concept? The Laws of Sexual Difference in the Theology of Hans Urs von
		Balthasar,” Modern Theology 14 (July 1998) 385. 
	 21. Balthasar, The Dramatis Personae: The Person in
		Christ 287.  
	 22. In Balthasar’s theology, Moss and Gardner hold
		woman is “chronologically, temporally, historically, accidentally
		second” (“Something like Time” 86). See n. 8 above.  
	 23. Mary Ann Hinsdale, “Heeding the Voices: An
		Historical Overview,” in In the Embrace of God: Feminist Approaches to
		Theological Anthropology, ed. Ann O’Hara (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis,
		1995) 23.  
	 24. Valerie Saiving “The Human Situation: A
		Feminine View,” in Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion,
		ed. Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow (San Francisco: Harper and Row,
		1992; orig. ed. 1979) 25.  
	 25. Lisa Sowle Cahill stands out as a feminist ethicist
		who embraces a positive interpretation of gender complementarity. “Sexual
		complementarity involves a partnership of life in the service of community-of
		the species and of the whole created order.” Cahill does not, however,
		argue for a gender essentialism outside of reproduction. “I do not believe
		it is now, or ever will be, possible for Christian ethics to enumerate fixed
		normative lists of male and female characteristics and concomitant social
		roles” (Between the Sexes: Foundations for a Christian Ethics of
		Sexuality [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985] 99-100).  
	 26. Mary Aquin O’Neill, “The Mystery of Being
		Human Together,” in Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in
		Feminist Perspective, ed. Catherine Mowry LaCugna (San Francisco:
		HarperSanFrancisco, 1993) 149.  
	 27. Daphne Hampson, After Christianity (Valley
		Forge: Trinity International, 1996) 192.  
	 28. Anne E. Carr, Transforming Grace: Christian
		Tradition and Women’s Experience (New York: Continuum, 1988) 123. See
		Mary Aquin O’Neill, “Toward a Renewed Anthropology,”
		Theological Studies 36 (1975) 725-36.  
	 29. Nancy Dallavalle, “Neither Idolatry nor
		Iconoclasm: A Critical Essentialism for Catholic Feminist Theology,”
		Horizons 25 (1998) 23-42. Various texts have addressed the question of
		essentialism within numerous disciplines across the academy. Rebecca Chopp and
		Sheila Greeve Davaney, Horizons in Feminist Theology: Identity, Tradition,
		and Norms (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997); Serene Jones, Feminist Theory
		and Christian Theology: Cartographies of Grace (Minneapolis: Fortress,
		2000); Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Changing the Subject.- Women’s
		Discourse and Feminist Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994). On the
		history of the philosophical construction of gender, see Prudence Allen, The
		Concept of Woman, vol.1. The Aristotelian Revolution 750 BC-AD 1250 (Grand
		Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997) and her The Concept of Woman, vol. II. The Early
		Humanist Reformation, 1250-1500 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).  
	 30. Dallavalle, “Neither Idolatry Nor
		Iconoclasm” 37.  
	 31. Prudence Allen, “Integral Sex Complementarity
		and the Theology of Communion,” Communio 17 (1990) 523-14.  
	 32. Ibid. 540.  
	 33. Rosemary R. Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward
		a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon, 1993) 93-115. 
	 34. Ibid. 94.  
	 35. Ibid. 112. 
	 36. Maria Pilar Aquino, Our Cry for Life: Feminist
		Theology from Latin America (Maryknoll N.Y.: Orbis, 1993).  
	 37. Ibid. 85.  
	 38. Ibid. 88.  
	 39. John Randolph Sachs, “The Pneumatology and
		Christian Spirituality of Hans Urs von Balthasar” Dr. theol. dissertation,
		University of Tübingen 1984, 25-26.  
	 40. Sachs, “Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in A
		New Handbook to Christian Theologians, ed. Donald W. Musser and John L.
		Price (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996) 496.  
	 41. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption 108.  
	 42. Kehl, “Hans Urs von Balthasar” 35.  
	 43. Balthasar, Prayer (San Francisco: Ignatius,
		1986) 48.  
	 44. Balthasar, “The Place of Theology,” in
		Explorations in Theology, vol. 1, The Word Made Flesh (San Francisco,
		Ignatius, 1989) 150; trans. of Skizzen zur Theologie, Erster Band: Verbum
		Caro (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1960).  
	 45. As David L. Schindler writes: “The phrase he
		coined for the basic way of ‘method’ of theology - namely,
		‘knieende theologie’: praying or kneeling theology - applies
		to his own work. A theology whose first ‘method’ is prayer does not
		exclude other (e.g. historical-critical) methods; but it nonetheless includes
		these only as it transforms them” (“Preface,” in Hans Urs von
		Balthasar: His Life and Work ). xi 
	 46. “Coinciding with the growth of scholasticism,
		medieval spirituality’s intensifying focus on individual experience and
		affectivity gave rise to a spiraling mutual distrust between spirituality and
		theology that lingers even today . . . . From 1948 until nearly the time of his
		death on 1988, Hans Urs von Balthasar was concerned with that separation,
		particularly as it takes place in the later Middle Ages .... The diverging
		needs of inner-ecclesial formation, on one hand, and apologetic and scientific
		theology, on the other hand, led inevitably to the doom of
		theology-spirituality matrix. But that is only the external problem, says von
		Balthasar, it is only the trap in which the real tragedy takes place, namely
		the growing loss of that fertile receptive ground in which spiritual
		consciousness could grow in doctrinal truth. The real tragedy, in other words,
		is that by the later Middle Ages fewer and fewer saints, mystics, and
		theologians still knew how to knit spirituality and theology together in their
		own life and work” (Mark A. McIntosh, Mystical Theology: The Integrity
		of Spirituality and Theology [New York: Blackwell, 1998] 63).  
	 47. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption 4.  
	 48. This is in direct contrast to the view given by the
		recent book of Kevin Mongrain, who downplays the impact of Speyr on Balthasar,
		in spite of Balthasar’s assertions. “The assumption guiding my
		reading of von Speyr is that von Speyr’s influence on his theology was
		deforming rather than constructive, derived rather than original; von Speyr is
		essential for psychologically understanding von Balthasar but completely
		dispensable for theologically understanding him” (Mongrain, The
		Systematic Thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar 11-12). See n. 1l above.  
	 49. Balthasar, Our Task: A Report and A Plan,
		trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994) 13.  
	 50. Ibid. 95. Earlier in this volume he wrote: “It
		is quite impossible to try to disentangle what is hers from what is mine in
		these later works” (ibid. 73). A significant portion of the footnotes in
		volume five of the Theo-drama is from Speyr’s work. Balthasar,
		Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 5: The Last Act, trans.
		Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1998); trans. of Theodramatik:
		Vierter Band: Das Endspiel (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1983).  
	 51. Edward Oakes, for example, does not significantly
		treat Speyr’s influence in his monograph on Balthasar’s theology.
		 
	 52. Johann Roten, “The Two Halves of the Moon:
		Marian Anthropological Dimensions in the Common Mission of Adrienne von Speyr
		and Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Communio 16 (Fall 1989) 421.  
	 53. Ibid. 425.  
	 54. Ibid. 443. “ Scola, Hans Urs von Balthasar 262-63.  
	 55. Balthasar, Our Task.  17. 
	 56. Scola, Hans Ur von Balthasar 262-63.  
	 57. Balthasar, “Women Priests?” in New Elucidations,
		trans. Mary Theresilde Skerry (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986) 188.  
	 58. Ibid. 188-89.  
	 59. Ibid. 190.  
	 60. Ibid. 191.  
	 61. Cyril O’Regan, “Balthasar:Between
		übingen and Postmodernity,” Modern Theology 14 (July 1998)
		331. 
	 62. Antonio Sciari, O.C.D., “Hans Urs von
		Balthasar: Theology and Holiness,” in Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life
		and Work 122.  
	 63. Balthasar, “Theology and Sanctity,” in
		The Word Made Flesh  181. 
	 64. Ibid. 190-91.  
	 65. In the later work of Catholic theologian Elizabeth
		A. Johnson there is a fourfold method of ideological suspicion, historical
		reconstruction, ethical assessment of texts, and hermeneutics of suspicion, of
		remembrance, of proclamation, and celebration (Friends of God and Prophets:
		A Feminist Theological Reading of the Communion of Saints [New York:
		Continuum, 1998] 160-61).  
	 66. Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God
		in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1997) 29.  
	 67. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, “Breaking
		the Silence-Becoming Visible,“ in The Power of Naming: A Concilium
		Reader in Feminist Liberation Theology (New York: Orbis, 1996) 168.  
	 68. Ibid. 171.  
	 69. “If the Father in his surrender is
		‘active’ (‘masculine’) and the Son ‘passive’
		(‘feminine’: receptive of self, by which, however, as the Begotten
		One he also actively receives himself), then the Spirit is in himself both the
		‘most passive’ (since he is the result of two personal activities)
		and the ‘most active’ (because the encounter of Father and Son in
		their eternal love is the perfect, sealing act of the Godhead)“
		(Balthasar, “Preliminary Remarks on the Discernment of Spirits,” in
		Explorations in Theology, vol. 4, Spirit and Institution (San
		Francisco: Ignatius, 1995) 341. While Balthasar generally describes the
		feminine in terms of active receptivity here in this citation he denotes the
		feminine as passive.  
	 70. “According to Balthasar, the activity
		corresponding to this ontological receptivity is obedience. Thus at the heart
		of the Trinity we encounter a profound paradox. The Son’s activity is
		really a passivity. His being, his Sonship, consists in obedience. However, in
		regard to the world, the Son is masculine” (John O’Donnell, S.J.,
		“Man and Woman as Imago Dei ” 118). 
	 71. Balthasar, The Last Act  91. 
	 72. Balthasar, “Characteristics of
		Christianity”, in The Word Made Flesh 169.  
	 73. Sachs, “Hans Urs von Balthasar” 8.  
	 74. Balthasar, “What is Distinctively Christian in
		the Experience of God?” in Spirit and Institution 35.  
	 75. As noted by Margaret M. Turek, Balthasar does not
		have a work devoted exclusively to the first person of the Trinity. “Since
		the Father, as the one-whosends, ‘appears’ on the world stage in the
		mission of his Son, a theodramatic approach to a theology of God the Father
		endeavors to cast light on the aspects of the Father’s action evidenced in
		Jesus’ performance of his (eschatological) role. What emerges is a
		configuration of the Father’s dynamic mode of being God in the economy of
		Jesus Christ from which Balthasar can then extrapolate to the realm of
		God’s eternal, inner-trinitarian Fatherhood.“ The action of the Son
		is thus imitative of the ‘Father,’ since the ‘Father’ is
		the source of the Son’s action (Margaret Turek, “‘As the Father
		Has Loved Me’ (Jn 15:9): Balthasar’s Theodramatic Approach to a
		Theology of God the Father,” Communio 26 [Summer 1999] 295-99).
	 
	 76. Kehl, “Hans Urs von Balthasar” 27.  
	 77. Aidan Nichols, “Introduction”, in Hans Urs
		von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter (Edinburgh: T.
		& T. Clark, 1990) 7.  
	 78. Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale 33.  
	 79. Balthasar, The Dramatis Personae: The Person in
		Christ 170.  
	 80. As Oakes has shown, Balthasar deepens this point in
		his Theologik. “In a most telling footnote in this work, he accuses
		himself of yielding to a ‘compromise’ in his book Mysterium
		Paschale for merely stating that in dying Jesus showed his ‘solidarity
		with the dead,’ rather than coming right out and boldly asserting that
		Jesus had to be tasting the condemnation and fate of the eternally damned in
		his descent into hell” (Oakes, Pattern of Redemption 282, referring
		to Theologik 2.315, n. 1). 
	 81. Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale 79.  
	 82. Balthasar, The Dramatis Personae: Man in God
		276.  
	 83. Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness:
		The Challenge of Womanist God-Talk (New York: Orbis, 1993) 162.  
	 84. Ibid. 166.  
	 85. Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Person, Kenosis,
		and Abuse” 41.  
	 86. Papanikolaou includes a conversation between two
		feminist theologians, Daphne Hampson and Sarah Coakley, on the topic of
		kenosis. Hampson rejects kenosis as a male construction not
		useful for women. For Hampson, “The call for kenosis as a breaking
		of the self so that God may be present has no meaning for women who are denied
		a self within patriarchal and oppressive structures” (ibid. 44).  
	 87. Sarah Coakley, “Kenosis and Subversion: On the
		Repression of ‘Vulnerability’ in Christian Feminist Thinking,”
		in Swallowing the Fishbone: Feminist Theologies Debate Christianity, ed.
		Daphne Hampson (London: SPCK, 1996) 107.  
	 88. Ibid. 108.  
	 89. Papanikolaou, “Person, Kenosis, and Abuse” 42.  
	 90. Ibid. 57. 
	 91. John O’Donnell, S.J., “Man and Woman as
		Imago Dei” 127. 
	 92. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption 73.  
	 93. Alois M. Hass notes that Balthasar would most likely
		be unaccepted by literary scholars and theologians. “The reason is simply
		that von Balthasar lets the whole fullness of literary, philosophical, and
		theological mythical formulations converge toward an explicitly Christian
		mythic, while contemporary literary theology clearly tends toward a
		philosophical mediation between religion and literature”(Alois M.Haas,
		“Hans Urs von Balthasar’s ‘Apocalypse of the German Soul’:
		At the Intersection of German Literature, Philosophy, and Theology,” in
		Hans Urs von Balthasar: His Life arid Work46.  
	 94. Riches, “Afterword,“ in The Analogy of
		Beauty: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Edinburgh: T. & T.
		Clark, 1986) 182.  
	 95. Stephanie Y. Mitchem, Introducing Womanist
		Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 2002) 69.  
	 96. Katie Geneva Cannon, Katie’s Cannon:
		Womanism and the Soul of the Black Community (New York: Continuum, 1996)
		61.  
	 97. Hopkins, Shoes That Fit Our Feet: Sources for a
		Constructive Black Theology (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1993) 83.  
	 98. Alice Walker, “Preface to the Tenth Anniversary
		Edition,“ The Color Purple, 10th anniversary ed. (New York:
		Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992) xi.  
	 99. Ivone Gebara, Out of the Depths: Women’s
		Experience of Evil and Salvation, trans. Ann Patrick Ware (Minneapolis:
		Fortress, 2002).  
	 100. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption 128.  
	 101. Balthasar, “Theology and Sanctity” 205.  
	 102. Balthasar, “The Place of Theology” 159.  
	 103. Hinsdale, “Heeding the Voices” 24. 
    
	   
     
   
   

   
     
        
      
        
                  
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		as published by www.womenpriests.org!
Hans urs von Balthazar and Contempory Feminist Theology

Michelle A.Gonzalez Theological Studies, 65 (2004) Vol.65, no.3, Sept.2004

An Introductory Word on Balthasar

Relational Anthropologies and Gender Complementarity

Separate But Equal? Balthasar’s Gender Complementarity

Egalitarian Anthropologies: Feminist Responses to Balthasar

A Gendered Theological Method

The Priest and the Mystic: Balthasar and Speyr

The Prominence of Women in Balthasar’s Theology

Balthasar on Feminism: The Barring of Women from Theology

Transforming the Nature of the Theological Task: Feminist Method

Kenosis: Christological Humility and suffering

Balthasar’s Gendered Trinity

The Humble Glory of the Cross

Is There Redemptive Suffering?

Evaluation: Balthasar and Feminist Theology

Footnotes

Michelle A.Gonzalez
Theological Studies, 65 (2004) Vol.65, no.3, Sept.2004
