The Glory of the Lord, vol. IV: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity
Overview
In this fourth volume of his magnum opus, von Balthasar considers the metaphysical tradition of the contemplation of Being. He provides major studies of Homer, the Greek Tragedians, Plato, and Plotinus and the development of this tradition in the Middle Ages. He then explores the analogy between the metaphysical vision of the Being and the Christian vision of the divine glory of the Trinity. The book is a remarkable attempt to rediscover the ancient vision of Being in all its awesomeness as the context within which the specifically Christian vision, rooted in God’s gracious self-revelation, took form and was expressed.
With the Logos edition the reader has an abundance of resources that offer applicable and insightful material for their study. You can easily search the subject of theological aesthetics to access an assortment of useful resources and perspectives from a variety of pastors and theologians.
- Considers the mutual relation of theology and metaphysics
- Explores the metaphysical tradition of the contemplation of Being
- Provides major studies of Homer, the Greek Tragedians, and more
Top Highlights
“the one central point, dispensed from above, unattainable from below” (Page 317)
“‘Glory’ cannot be defined. The reason for this confronts us with the particular difficulty of the task that remains to be carried out. The Bible is full of statements about God’s glory, and the passages and vistas are far more numerous than most believers realise: glory is a fundamental statement that leavens all of Scripture. God himself is glorious: in his appearing, in his Word and law, in his message of grace and in his act of redemption; therefore he is glorious also in what he has established, in man whom he has favoured, for man is, in his being, ordered ‘to the praise of glory’, εἰς ἔπαινον δοξης (Eph 1:6); God is glorious in his Church and in the whole cosmos irradiated by his glory.” (Page 11)
“Spolia Aegyptiorum (Exod 3:21–22; 12:35–36), the famous image, so much discussed by the Fathers, expresses the essential: the investment of the rightful heir with the goods of an earlier culture, whereby these goods are indeed consecrated by their holy use but yet cannot be transformed into that sanctifying process itself. God and silver serve as a monstrance (i.e. as a pointer); they do not become what is thus manifested.” (Page 320)
“Nevertheless the last word of the pre-Christian world is not this self-subverting dialectic, which scintillates demonically between pantheism and atheism and in which all the glory of true humility is hedged in by the presumption and arrogance of pure knowledge or visionary concupiscence.” (Page 241)
“The Christian event, as the estuary and goal of the biblical story, ushers in a completely new experience of the divine glory. This new thing provides not merely an additional dimension to what mankind had already known of glory; it completely transforms it.” (Page 317)
Balthasar’s most important works, at least in his own eyes, are not his writings but his foundations.
—Peter Henrici
. . . meeting Balthasar was for me the beginning of a lifelong friendship I can only be thankful for. Never again have I found anyone with such a comprehensive theological and humanistic education as Balthasar . . . and I cannot even begin to say how much I owe to my encounter with him.
—Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
- Title: The Glory of the Lord, vol. IV: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity
- Author: Hans Urs von Balthasar
- Publisher: Ignatius
- Publication Date: 1989
- Pages: 419