An essay written as part of my Grad. Dip. Theology in 2016. A printable version of this essay, with full references, is at the bottom of this page.
Introduction
Christian writers have often drawn on concepts from story-telling, narrative, and stage performance in order to illuminate history and revelation. In the last half-century, however, a thorough systematic theology has developed in which the history of creation, the interactions between God and humanity, and eschatology are all expressed as drama. Hans Urs von Balthasar is the progenitor of this theo-dramatic approach.
In this essay I investigate whether some aspects of theo-drama find their source and inspiration in the much earlier thought of Athanasius, particularly in his text On the Incarnation.
Athanasius and On the Incarnation
Athanasius (c. 296-373 CE) attended the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) and later served as Bishop of Alexandria (Farmer 2011). Much of his life was spent in exile, largely because of his opposition to Arianism. Against the Arian claim that Jesus was created rather than eternal, Athanasius asserted that Jesus was of one substance (homoousios, or ὁμοούσιος in Greek) with the Father. The book On the Incarnation was written by Athanasius as a sequel to his earlier Against the Gentiles, but according to the translator, John Behr, whether these were written before or after the controversies with Arianism is unclear.
Three key chapters of On the Incarnation are headed “The divine dilemma regarding life and death”, “The divine dilemma regarding knowledge and ignorance” and “The death of Christ and the resurrection of the body”. An outline of those chapters is provided here, but they are neatly summarised in the final section of the third chapter, which notes that Christians should not be ashamed to say that “the Saviour raised up his body”, that he is the true Son of God who took on a body for the salvation of all, taught about the Father, destroyed death and “granted incorruptibility to all through the promise of the resurrection”.
Humanity was made in the divine image but became corrupted. In contrast to that, Athanasius emphasises the eternal existence of the Word, who “takes for himself a body” so that the image of God could be re-created in us and so that all people “might gain a notion through him of the knowledge of the Father”. This two-fold mission of redemption and education will be discussed more below.
In this text, Jesus’ incarnation is inseparable from his death and resurrection. By “sojourning” among us and offering his body “as a substitute for all” he fulfilled the requirement for death. But by virtue of the Word’s own incorruptibility he also brought a promise of incorruptibility to all through his resurrection. As a consequence, we no longer need to fear death.
Theo-drama I – Balthasar
Sixteen centuries after Athanasius, starting in 1973, Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) published a massive five-volume work entitled Theo-Drama that “shows how many of the trends of modern theology … point to an understanding of human and cosmic reality as a divine drama”. Balthasar was a Swiss, Catholic theologian, a friend of Karl Barth, and a Jesuit for the middle 30 years of his life.
Balthasar views the interactions between God and humanity as an unfolding drama, with God as the author, Jesus as the “chief actor” and Spirit as director. The creativity of those three contributors is expressed in a theatre (the world) through a performance (history) that involves all of humanity in the dramatis personae.
For the most part Balthasar does not directly engage with Athanasius, to the extent that an otherwise complimentary commentator views his lack of engagement as a significant inadequacy. Nevertheless, some key themes from On the Incarnation can be seen in Balthasar’s writings.
As a starting point, both view history as Christo-centric, with a script that is driven from above, at God’s initiative, and yet enacted from below. As Athanasius wrote, the God Word “sojourned as a human being, taking to himself a body like theirs” so that “from below” (that is, through the actions of a human body) people would come to know the God Word and through him know the Father. Both Balthasar and Athanasius acknowledge that this educative intention of the incarnation is complemented by a redemptive intention: they jointly assert that “the Word is at work making God intelligible” and also that “the Savior … banished death from us and renewed us”.
Both authors portray the divine movement as a kenotic descent, though Balthasar extends that concept well beyond Athanasius. For Athanasius, God, including the pre-existent Word, cannot die, but took on a body that was capable of dying. The incorporeal became physical though was not constrained by that embodied form. The body was mortal and yet immune from corruption. Jesus allowed himself to suffer the ignominy of the Cross. Balthasar makes kenosis a central concept and follows the descent of the Word not only from the infinite to the finite, but from human life to the depths of hell. For Balthasar, it is not only in becoming human and suffering death that Jesus emptied himself, but that self-emptying is a fundamental quality of the God-head.
The self-giving descent of the God Word results in an elevation of corrupted humanity. Balthasar notes that a central feature of Jesus’ mission is this “wondrous exchange” that occurs between God and humanity through the incarnation. He cites Athanasius in that context, though not from On the Incarnation. The idea is nevertheless on display in On the Incarnation, for instance in the claim that “He was incarnate that we might be made god”.
Notwithstanding these similarities between Balthasar and Athanasius, the shared themes described above are common to other Patristics, and Balthasar draws on that whole tradition rather than on Athanasius specifically. In both Theo-Drama and Mysterium Paschale there are multiple allusions to Athanasius and several direct quotes from On the Incarnation but no sustained discussion nor acknowledgement of Athanasius as a key inspiration.
A deeper influence on Balthasar by the Athanasian, or at least Patristic, heritage might be implied by the movement from role to mission that Balthasar discusses at the end of the Prolegomena. Here Balthasar comments on the important shift in the way we might answer the question “Who am I?” in the light of a theo-dramatic interpretation of life. In On the Incarnation, Athanasius is at pains to show that the essence of the God Word is not an arbitrary role that was assumed while Jesus was embodied. On the contrary, the book’s thesis depends on understanding the intent of the incarnation, that is the nature of the God Word’s mission. Athanasius would not have used that terminology, and Balthasar gives no credit to him for the idea, and yet it is fundamentally the same conclusion that Balthasar makes. Furthermore, the same can be said of the rest of humanity: our essence does not depend on an arbitrary role we might play but on our mission. The dramatic tension established in the Bible does not end with the final verse of Revelation, because “the man who is a serious co-actor with God … contribute[s] to the unfolding of this dramatic tension”. That is to say, we share with Jesus not only something of the same divine image but also the same mission to redeem the world and to make the Father known.
Theo-drama II – other authors
Other theologians have extended Balthasar’s theo-drama and made additional linkages to Athanasius. Raymund Schwager, for instance, appropriated theo-drama in his political theology as well as using Athanasius as a key source for his understanding of redemption.
Kevin Vanhoozer also creates a bridge between Balthasar and Athanasius. Following Balthasar, Vanhoozer suggests that “The Christian life is fundamentally dramatic, involving speech and action on behalf of Jesus’ truth and life. It concerns the way of living truthfully, and its claims to truth cannot be isolated from the way of life with which it is associated”. He proposes a canonical-linguistic approach to theology, which “maintains that the normative use [of language] is ultimately not that of ecclesial culture but of the biblical canon”.
For Vanhoozer, “The church is a company of players gathered together to stage scenes of the kingdom of God for the sake of a watching world”. An ecclesiology based on theo-drama does not imply that a fixed script is performed repeatedly. On the contrary, “to be faithful in its witness, the church must constantly be different. Indeed, at times it must even improvise”.
An example of this contextualised improvisation is Athanasius’ appropriation of the term homoousios (same substance) in his response to Arianism, which eventually led to the standard Trinitarian formulation adopted after the First Council of Constantinople. Homoousios is not a biblical term and the lengthy controversy over how to express the relationship between Father, Son and Spirit could not be resolved by merely repeating what Scripture already said. Furthermore, homoousios had been used by Gnostics and Arians, and so it was a bold and creative response on Athanasius’ part to improvise by introducing a new meaning to the term.
Vanhoozer makes an important distinction between scriptwriting and improvisation. The “script” in his version of theo-drama is affected by the canon, tradition, Jesus and the on-going inspiration of the Spirit, but should not be re-written by the church. Scriptwriting, he claims, is what the Arians sought to do through denying the full deity of Jesus whereas Athanasius’ use of homoousios constituted improvisation within the script. The distinction, in that example at least, strikes me as post-hoc justification from the point of view of the dispute’s victor. If Arianism had prevailed would not Vanhoozer claim the reverse, that it was Athanasius who had engaged in illegitimate scriptwriting?
This understanding of theology, and in particular, mission, as improvisation is developed in more detail by Samuel Wells:
The Bible is not so much a script that the church learns and performs as it is a training school that shapes the habits and practices of a community. This community learns to take the right things for granted, and on the basis of this faithfulness, it trusts itself to improvise within its tradition. Improvisation means a community formed in the right habits trusting itself to embody its traditions in new and often challenging circumstances; and this is exactly what the church is called to do.
Like Vanhoozer, his approach is also indebted to Balthasar and, in a small way, to Athanasius.
Conclusion
Though claiming a pivotal role for On the Incarnation in the development of modern theo-drama would be an exaggeration, there are clear signs that key proponents of theo-drama have found support for their approach from Athanasius. The work of Hans Urs von Balthasar reflects the same understanding of the Word made flesh who dwelt among us as Athanasius and other Patristics. Balthasar proposes that the incarnation is the pivotal scene in a divine drama. Others have extended the dramatic metaphor to show how it might guide ethics and mission.
On the Incarnation, as part of the church’s tradition, does not define or even constrain the way today’s church enacts the script. Rather, through recording one performance of a key scene, it serves as an example of faithful improvisation within that script. In theo-drama, as in On the Incarnation, the God Word is the primary actor, and the performance of history unfolds as the human and divine players respond to each other’s actions. Theo-drama asserts that the on-going mission of the church is both redemptive and educational: precisely the two purposes that Athanasius assigns to the incarnation.