Mary in the teachings of Heinrich Joseph Franz von Balthasar

The Theology of von BalthasarThe work of von Balthasar provides ample space for the Mother of the Lord, and Mariology becomes in him a fertile field for new applications and verifications of paths, such as theological aesthetics and theodramatic. All of von Balthasar’s theology unfolds in a triptych that includes the following moments: 1. Theological Aesthetics, or theophany, as the perception of divine revelation in the world, therefore, vision and encounter with God. 2. Drama, or theodramatic, as the reality of God’s action in and over the world. 3. Logic, or theology, as the description of revelation and God’s action in the form of concepts and words. We will focus on the first two parts to understand how the author articulates the discourse on Mary. In Theology, Volume I and Volume II, in fact, there is no Marian reference.

Maria in Theological Aesthetics

Before expressing von Balthasar’s thoughts on Mary, it is necessary to frame his insights within the original perspective of his theology, presented in the foundational work titled *Herrlichkeit. Eine Theologische Ästhetik*, published in Einsiedeln in several volumes between 1961 and 1969. The work is published in German, in five volumes, by Herder. According to von Balthasar, theological aesthetics means “to contemplate God not as He communicates truth or as He is goodness to man, but as He draws near to man to manifest Himself in the eternal splendor of His trinitarian love.” The Christian message is thus interpreted through the category of beauty, and von Balthasar presents at least four motivations for doing so:– Aesthetic interpretation does not alter or diminish revelation in any way. – If the prerogatives of beauty and splendor are lacking, no authentic knowledge is possible, for only in the luminous form of beauty does being become visible and desirable, and this holds true also for revelation. – In aesthetic intuition, the other is encountered as another, disinterestedly, which safeguards the transcendence of revelation. – The Christian message is fundamentally a message of love, which is inseparable from beauty. The beloved object appears always stupendous and marvelous, especially when it concerns the divine Logos who manifests Himself as “Love,” “Agape,” and as such, as glory and splendor.The two Marian aspects that emerge in von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics are:– Mary’s archetypal experience – Mary, the splendor of the Church

Mary’s Archetypal Experience and the Church

Our act of faith has its origin in an initial, immediate, and sensory experience of knowledge, in which the senses entered fully into action. God revealed Himself to men through touching, hearing, and seeing (1 John 1:1, 3). But in addition to this typical and archetypal experience of the Apostles, which forms the foundation of the Church’s faith (Ephesians 2:20), there is also a more mysterious and profound experience, which is the continuity between Mary’s maternal and spiritual experience and the maternal experience of the Church. Precisely at the intersection of all the paths of the Old Testament leading to the New Testament, lies Mary’s Marian experience, so rich and hidden that it is almost impossible to describe. It is, however, so important that it appears as the backdrop to all that is visibly offered. In this experience, Zion passes to the Church, the Word to the flesh, the head to the body. It is the place of superabundant fertility.This Marian experience distinguishes itself from that of the Apostles by being deeper and trans-historical, and it is necessary for the Church to give a total and engaging response.Far from abstraction, Mary’s experience has a Christological and ecclesiological function, as it is a fundamental experience of faith in a context of solidarity and contains, in a germinal and physical way, Christians with their faith. Mary is therefore “the breast and prototype of the Church,” representing the fertility and inner form of the Church: Mary’s response of faith is prototypical, as it includes and generates the faith of the Church. It follows that the Church, the more properly Church, the more immaculate, Christ-like, and Marian it is. The Church can indeed consider itself “the union of those who, gathered and constituted by the ‘yes’ spoken by Mary, are ready to welcome with promptness God’s salvific will for themselves and for all brothers.”Mary’s Marian spirituality is a factor of unity in the Church, as all other particular spiritualities should converge into it: it is the eclesial spirituality par excellence, prior to any differentiation. Mary’s “yes” is the foundation and essence of the New Testament Church: “Whoever joins himself vitally to this yes becomes a living member of the people of God, and the more widely he can say this, the more he becomes truly ecclesial.” This “Marian principle” is the criterion for establishing the holiness of the Church.Mary, the splendor of the ChurchThe theological aesthetics seeks to grasp the figure concretely, without yielding to the reduction of logical procedures. In this conversion to the image, the idea shines visibly and plausibly, and its meaning is intuited as in a work of art. The Virgin Mary presents an image or figure of intense aesthetic value. A work of God, Mary’s essence is like a malleable material at the disposition of divine action: “One must see in Mary the prototype of what the Divine Art can do with human clay that does not resist it.”a) Mary’s figure reveals the reality of the Church, although there are other archetypes (for example, Peter for the hierarchical function), and to make the Church recognizable, one must turn to Mary, “who reveals the supreme beauty, that of the Bride-Church of the New Testament.” Moreover: “The Lord does not want the Church to stand before Him as a single manifest failure, but as a glorious and worthy bride. Here the Marian principle necessarily intervenes in the Church.” Therefore, Christians need to keep Mary’s inner image before their eyes if they want to be a holy and Christ-like Church, capable of shining the work of God in the world. “To the extent that the Church is Marian, it is a pure figure, immediately decipherable and understandable. To the extent that man is Marian, Christianity would likewise be decipherable and understandable in him.”b) Mary reveals the mystery of the creature’s cooperation with God, highlighting the infinite distance between the Lord and His servant, a distance expressed in everything the Lord commands and the servant obeys.Maria in TheodramaSuch obedience, which characterizes not only Mary’s life but also that of the Christian, is the opposite of passivity and involves constant attention and the deployment of all one’s forces. Participating in Christ’s kenosis, the light that shines in Mary is in a condition of abasement and darkness: “She is devoid of visible miraculous works, of mystical phenomena. Men neither recognize nor reject her; Mary is immersed in the twilight of grace and faith. Her glorification is posthumous.”But even in this twilight, Mary is a “figure of revelation,” not an allegory but a real symbol of the corporal and spiritual Church conformed to the Word, and the educational power that flows from her contemplation is not to be underestimated.Maria in TheodramaticAfter dedicating 5 volumes to theological aesthetics, von Balthasar turns to theodrama in 3 volumes. He also devotes a significant space to Mary, because man is not a spectator but a co-actor in God’s drama. Without aiming for a complete Mariology, von Balthasar touches upon many aspects of Marian doctrine in a broad perspective, where the Bible, patristic writings, history of theology, and systematic reflection converge. From this context emerge these elements, which we will briefly examine:– Mary as the theological person of the theodrama – Preliminaries to Mariology – Mariology: the dramatic person of MaryMary as the theological person of the theodramaAdopting the category of theatrical drama as a pre-comprehension and starting point, von Balthasar views God’s action as “salvation realized, reconciliation of the world with God through an initiative of love that is given only.” Therefore, men can become actors in the theodrama only if inserted in Christ and in response to a vocation. These two conditions are fulfilled in Mary, who, through a vocation beyond her expectations, is placed in the dramatic space of Christ.a) Mary is called to participate in the divine drama, making her election a theological and public person, available to the community. Mary becomes the archetype of all “theological” persons, of their vocation, and their mission.b) With her election, Mary finds herself in a space saturated by the real Person of Christ, and she belongs uniquely and prior to all others to the “Christological constellation,” formed by those who are the true pillars of the Church (Peter, Paul, John, etc.). Mary’s mission, while representing a space open to subsequent figures, contemporary and future, is strongly theodramatic because the Virgin is part of the “constellation of Christ.” Like all of us, she is engaged in making her own self ever more transparently isomorphic with the mission entrusted and given by God.

c) Mary is inserted as a woman into the Incarnation, and it would seem necessary, through her motherhood in relation to the Son of God, to give primacy to Mary in the birth of Christ. This priority of Mary in regard to the birth of Christ reflects itself in her relationship to the Church and her motherhood in relation to the faithful, who “always assume that Mary conceived and gave birth to the Messiah for the world.” Therefore, Mariology, even though intertwined with Ecclesiology, “must claim priority in treating of the Mother of the Redeemer, without whom there would be neither a structured Church nor, in general, divine grace.”Prolegomena to MariologyIntroducing the discussion on Mary, von Balthasar notes and contests the tendency of Mariologists to reduce what can be said about the Virgin to a firm principle, forgetting that she is a woman, that is, a mobile process not reducible to any univocity.a) Reviewing the series of first principles proposed by theologians, the author does not find them satisfactory: Scheeben’s “nuptial motherhood” is ambivalent. The “divine motherhood” of many obscures the role of the woman. Mueller, Semmelroth, et al.’s “Mary as the archetype of the Church” leads Mariology to dissolve into a global Ecclesiology. According to von Balthasar, one should first focus on the historicity of Mary as a woman (narrative Mariology), emphasizing her freedom, which has an unparalleled form in relation to any other human person.b) Having identified the basic point of Mariology, von Balthasar does not hide the difficulty for those who wish to articulate the intimate proximity between mother and Son and the infinite distance between Creator and creature, historical realities that have caused oscillation between the praise and forgetting of Mary. Tracing Mariology’s development from this postulate, von Balthasar distinguishes three periods, moving from a patristic image of Mary as a typological Church (archetype) to her emergence over the Church as the mother of the faithful and the Lord’s bride (medieval), until a “purely christological” image that makes Mary the archetypal and teleological image of the Church (initial and final). The conciliar configuration remains a milestone that will not be easily displaced, but a new and profound configuration is needed that brings Mary onto the stage with a dramatic role in the theodrama. Von Balthasar offers his contribution in this direction, situating Mary’s existence within the broad arc of salvation history.Mariology: The Dramatic Person of MaryThe usual placement of Mary in a specific time period is not satisfactory because her story is broader and more problematic, in such a way that she can only be situated in Christ or in a truly faithful Church. Consequently, the author articulates Mary’s presence in a triple tension that goes from the terrestrial paradise to the time of salvation and, finally, to eschatology.a) Between the Terrestrial Paradise and the FallThis first placement places Mary in the tension between her belonging to humanity and her sanctity: “Mary must, as the true Mother of the Savior, truly belong to the human race in need of salvation, and yet, to be that Mother, she must be entirely holy and immaculate.”(b) Between the Old and New Covenants The second tension in Mary’s existence arises from her participation in two times of salvation: “As a fleshly mother, she finds herself in direct continuity with the generations that come from Adam, passing through Abraham, while as a virgin mother, made pregnant by the power of the ‘yes’ to the Spirit who covered her with his shadow, she establishes a rupture and a new beginning.” This tension between the two Testaments becomes dramatic through her marriage to Joseph and is dramatically expressed in the five episodes of Jesus’ “rejection”: “The twelve-year-old boy breaks with his lineage so harshly that his parents do not understand. The words of repulsion to his mother in Cana do not allow for sweet interpretations. The refusal to receive her when she goes to seek him and the reference to the listeners as brothers, sisters, and Mother of Jesus must have wounded her heart like a sword. The blessing directed towards the maternal breast is redirected to the faithful once more. The act of withdrawing from her in the words ‘Woman, behold your son’ seals the long series of distance.” The author explains that in these episodes, Mary serves Jesus as an “object of demonstration” of the necessary transcendence of flesh and blood to inherit the Kingdom of God. These distances are not absolute, but often represent delays and conceal a recovery: despite her “rejection,” the twelve-year-old boy returns with his parents and lives submissively to them. In Cana, she is attended to. The sending to Calvary underlines the expansion of physical motherhood to spiritual and universal, and so on. Thus, hidden in the visible humiliation is the secret glorification of Mary.(c) Between time and eternity

As two preceding tensions converge into a third, which definitively characterizes Mary: «The strongest tension is the last, the eschatological one, between time and eternity. It is to this that we must arrive if Mary is the true Mother of the living, who, from a reconquered earthly paradise (the immaculate conception), gives birth to the offspring of the Messiah and his brothers, but this in the pains of childbirth on the cross. What Mary gives birth to in the pure virginity of paradise, but in the pains of temporality and desert, is fruit for eternal life». Having said this, von Balthasar emphasizes Mary’s profound bond with Christ and with the Church, of which she is «the personal center», so that the Church is only understandable «from Mary». «Mary as Mother of Christ is the carnal model of the Church, which spiritually gives birth to Christ, and is still the individual, real, and universal model for all the faithful». Thus, one can affirm that Mary subsists as a full synthesis of Abraham’s faith, as a perfect Daughter of Zion, in the passage from the Old to the New Testament and to the Church, as the quintessence of the personal Church of the New Testament.

Conclusion

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s reflection on Mary, situated in the horizon of Theological Aesthetics and Theodramatic, reveals a deeply integrated understanding of the Mother of the Lord’s figure in the mystery of revelation and salvation. Far from reducing Mary to a simple object of devotion or an abstract principle of theology, the author presents her as a living theological person, situated at the center of the salvific drama, where God’s gratuitous initiative and the creature’s free response meet. Mary is not merely contemplated as a beautiful and radiant figure of revelation, but as a real protagonist of salvation history, whose entire existence is shaped by the mission she received.

In Theological Aesthetics, Mary appears as the archetype of the ecclesial form, the image in which the Church recognizes its deepest identity. In her, revelation assumes a concrete, sensitive, and intelligible figure, capable of manifesting God’s glory in the world. Her «yes» becomes the original principle of the Church, the source of its spiritual fertility, and the criterion of its holiness. Mary’s beauty is not merely aesthetic, but theological, because it reflects the form of the Trinitarian love that is given to humanity.

In Theodramatic, Mary is inserted into the drama of salvation as a fully committed theological person to the mission entrusted by God. Her existence unfolds in a continuous tension between grace and freedom, nearness and distance, time and eternity. Mary’s motherhood, both carnal and spiritual, inseparably links Christ to the Church and makes her the personal center of the salvific history. Through trials, distances, and apparent denials, the depth of her participation in the Paschal mystery is manifested, where humiliation becomes glorification.

Thus, for von Balthasar, Mary is not merely a topic of mariology, but a hermeneutical key for understanding Christian theology as a whole. In her, the beauty of revelation, the dramaticity of salvation, and the truth of faith are united. Mary remains, therefore, as a living synthesis of the human response to God’s love, a model for the Church, and a eschatological figure of the redeemed humanity, in which the divine drama reaches its most luminous and fertile form.

For the contemporary magisterial framing of mariology that complements Balthasar’s vision, the encyclical Redemptoris Mater by John Paul II deepens Mary’s role in the economy of salvation.

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