From Abyss to Glory

We are witnesses to the postmodern abyss of distrust in truth, unities, and foundations. Since the turn of the century, this abyss of nihilism has become even deeper, invoking crises of fragmentation and relativism and threatening and challenging Christian theology. Friedrich Nietzsche’s announcement of “the death of God”, which turned out to be a cry of anxiety rather than of triumph, now resonates more powerfully than ever with a compelling question: How has Christianity itself engendered the gulf between the biblical truth and the expression of faith in God? To be more specific, based on the interpretation of the post-Nietzschean critique that I am going to propose, how has Christianity failed to show that Logos is incarnated and embodied in the Christian life?

It is commonly believed that the postmodern rejection of Christianity, which was triggered by Nietzsche and Heidegger in particular and continued by their postmodern heirs, is not motivated by a rejection of the biblical God but instead by a rejection of a certain god of metaphysics and reflects a primarily ethical concern regarding the practical impact of Christianity that is expressed as the violent and oppressive othering in the history of modern Christianity.¹ The religious veneration of the omnipotent God of theism that grounds the value system of a meaningful life has been called into question. The question of God, however, has not been banished with the decline of modernity; rather, as will be shown, it has evoked “abysmal” awe for nontheistic god(s), which is expressed as an ethical sensitivity toward the unnamable other(s).

1. My Task

This book aims to articulate a theological alternative to postmodern nihilism and influential critiques of Christian thought via a reappraisal of theological knowing. The book has a threefold task. First, I provide an overarching understanding of the nihilistic state of the postmodern world through a broad examination of nihilism as resulting from the decline of the West in the course of modernization and the rise of postmodern culture. Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger are enigmatic but pivotal thinkers whose rigorous skepticism concerning the old metaphysical value and belief systems has inspired much postmodern belief that is absent of tradition and doctrine. I limit my study of postmodern theorists to Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995), Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998), Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), and Gianni Vattimo (1936–), who have all been inspired by the Nietzschean and Heideggerian spirit to different degrees. Each of these thinkers attempts to offer an in-depth diagnosis of the problem of meaning and a new transformative understanding of nihilism through a critical engagement with Christianity according to the particular needs of the current situation.

Arguably, postmodern theology is attempting to find a map through the nihilistic abyss of current society where God is absent. Thus, as the second part of my task, I seek to characterize the postmodern approach to religion by examining postmodern interpretations of theology within three important themes: postmodern faith, the postmodern self, and postmodern kenosis. Here, I revisit the postmodernist thinkers named above to articulate how theology matters in the current context. In this concern, I have found Lieven Boeve’s theological analysis of Lyotard’s phenomenology and Jean-Luc Marion’s post-Heideggerian theology (or phenomenology) useful in understanding the ethics of otherness as the shared postmodern belief in the rejection of traditional metaphysics. While showing that addressing otherness or alterity has become key in the current discussion of religion, I am also concerned with discussing the state of the self or selfhood in relation to otherness. My examination of the mysticism found in Paul Tillich’s theology, especially his theological concept of the abyss as a reference to God, highlights the importance of his contribution to the current antifoundationalist discussion in search of the self’s place in the postmodern condition. As I will discuss, Tillich’s treatment of God beyond traditional theism offers a new interpretation of the self’s mystical experience of the divine (as the Other) within the postmodern context and inspires contemporary readers to gain a new perspective on mysticism through the writings of authors such as Meister Eckhart and Hadewijch.

Lastly, the question of how theology matters in today’s world cannot be fully considered without a postmodern analysis of kenosis, which is at the core of Christian theology. My approach to postmodern kenosis is undertaken primarily through a critical study of Vattimo and Derrida. I access Vattimo’s philosophy of weak thought in light of the incarnation and Derrida’s Jewish and ethical interpretation of messianism in light of deconstruction for they shed a new light on kenosis as applied to the postmodern condition. I then address some of the specific problems or weaknesses I have found in critical analyses of the postmodern antifoundationalist approach to religion that have challenged me to develop my own alternative while acknowledging the helpful aspects of these analyses.

The final part of the task I wish to highlight here is Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theology of beauty as my theological alternative. I place him in conversation with the antifoundationalist thinkers addressed above to show how his theo-aesthetic lens offers rich and critical insights into postmodern understanding of faith, the self, and kenosis. He serves to explain why and how theology ought to matter in today’s world, offering a path out of the nihilistic abyss. I provide a brief summary of the significance of von Balthasar’s contribution to the present work in the following section.

2. Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Contribution

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988), a Swiss theologian, was one of the most important Catholic intellectuals of the twentieth century. He was incredibly prolific and diverse. As fellow Jesuit priest Henri de Lubac claims, “[T]his man is perhaps the most cultivated of his time. If there is a Christian culture, then here it is! Classical antiquity, the great European literature, the metaphysical tradition, the history of religions, the diverse exploratory adventures of contemporary man, above all, the sacred sciences.”² Von Balthasar’s broad and substantial understanding of philosophy, theology (especially the thought of the Church Fathers, both in the West and the East), art, and culture makes him a valuable guide who can lead us to a wide range of perspectives on the relevance of these themes in the current epoch. His (deeply theological) dialogue with the preeminent German thinkers from the late eighteenth century to the twentieth century, such as Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche, Heidegger, is found in his major early work, his expanded three-volume doctoral dissertation entitled Apocalypse of the German Soul, as well as his mature thought culminating in his trilogy and this helps us to have a constructive and critical engagement with their postmodern heirs.

Most importantly, von Balthasar is considered one of the key instigators of twentieth- and twenty-first-century theology’s renewed interest in beauty.³ Von Balthasar’s theology of beauty is well articulated in his seven-volume The Glory of the Lord, which is the first part of his trilogy that also includes his five-volume Theo-Drama and three-volume Theo-Logic. In this magnum opus, von Balthasar clearly states that beauty indeed reveals the very truth of Christianity―the glory of God is incarnate in Jesus Christ by the Spirit—and is to be seen as a triune love that offers cosmic and personal meaning to human existence. For von Balthasar, the goodness and truth of God, which are made concretely present in beauty of kenotic love of Christ, is evident above all the other themes that ought to be the subject of theology, but beauty has lost its ontological significance. What is really at stake in the context of today’s nihilistic abyss is modernity’s loss of connection with the transcendental aspect of beauty, which has caused a sense of God’s absence and a loss of the true telos and therefore a loss of the foundation for a meaningful human existence.

My interest in von Balthasar’s theology of beauty lies specifically in his notion of form (Gestalt), which is fused with Goethe’s notion of the Gestalt, is filtered through Thomism, and has Christ at the center, where the inner depth of the self’s reality is expressed through its concrete outward appearance. The Gestalt is the locus where von Balthasar strives to restore the connection between the beautiful and the transcendental, faith and ethics, and ultimately the human and the divine to take back the very ground and source of human existence. I argue that our failure to see the self and the other in the form (the Gestalt) has contributed to the postmodern abyss of fragmentation, distrust of truth, and questioning of values. For von Balthasar, it is only with the eyes of faith that we can see the form correctly as the kenotic translation of the eternal love of Christ whose human form (the Gestalt Christi) in-forms a real and profound knowledge of all created beings. I believe that restoring beauty to faith—the aesthetic experience of the formal archetype or the Christ form (Gestalt Christi)—will bring back a transcendent center to the Gestalt, drawing together all the disparate threads of meaning of the self and the other in the world, and will thus make the Gestalt become the locus where the incarnate and living Logos, the glory of kenotic love of God, can be expressed, revealed, and seen here and now.

3. Overview

This book is divided into three parts. The first part engages with the question of how we should understand the status or condition of nihilism that we face today. It offers a critical reflection on the emergence of postmodern nihilism that has become the very condition of contemporary society, addressing the postmodern accusations against Christianity and their historical background in three chapters.

Chapter 1 outlines the ways in which nihilism has been constructed through modernization by examining modernity’s attempt to test the traditional belief system founded upon the two-world framework. The second half of the chapter gives special attention to Fredrich Nietzsche, whose understanding of nihilism has had a decisive influence on his twentieth-century heirs.

Chapter 2 discusses how the development of the notion of the sublime is parallel to that of nihilism, invoking the postmodern abyss. The idea of the sublime, like nihilism, is both a historically particular and culturally specific concept developed in the context of secularization, which is the detachment from the notion of religious convictions. I will critically address the nature of the dialectical abyss by asking the following categorical questions: How has the abyss become a crucial metaphor for the postmodern condition of nihilism, and how is it employed to express relativism, imbalance, the dissolution of values, and, more fundamentally, God’s absence?