Among Balthasar's greatest contributions: announcement of the Dramatic structure of human existence, against competing models of progress and chaos. For him life is always the clash and confrontation of freedoms: our own, God's, the angels and the demons. We are engaged in an ongoing drama, at times tragic and then comic, as each of us personally engages the freedoms of other humans and the domains of heaven and of hell. This is combat, but not chaos. There is movement, in freedom, but no mechanical inevitability as progress. Each of us faces constantly the decision: for life or for death; as did the good and bad angels, our parents Adam and Eve and every spirit, human and angelic, in Creation. This drama reaches climax and conclusion: for each of us at death, for all of Creation with the return of Jesus.
Progress: Modernity
Modernity, starting with the rationalism of the Enlightenment, is built upon the myth or dogma of progress: that humanity is moving forward and upward, into a this-worldly utopia, entirely without the supernatural, through human agency and reason. Three of the four great "masters of suspicion" structure this narrative: Marx, Darwin and Freud.
Marx took the Hegelian "dialectic" of history, materialized it, and posited an inevitable, inexorable, conflictual movement into freedom through the revolution of the oppressed against those in power. In the industrial society of his time, Marx asserted the victory of the working class, the proletariat, over the capitalist class. In time, however, this economic model was superseded by the cultural one: the liberation of racial groups, sexual minorities, women and similar groups. And so, the "arc of history" is always the resistance of those oppressed, their capture of power and liberation.
Darwin's discovery of biological evolution was, of course, exaggerated into a philosophical meta-narrative whereby the human race is developing, not just physically by survival of the fittest, but culturally and spiritually by the advance of science and technology. This stream of Progressivism replaces the combat model of Marx with the quasi-mechanical, inevitable development of science, reason, and education. In this story line, human reason, over time, overcomes ignorance, superstition, religion, authority, tradition and so-called-revelation. Gradually but inexorably, human reason and agency attain happiness and liberation from physical vulnerabilities (sickness) and intellectual/spiritual failings (religion).
Not so much Freud, ever the sober realist, but a school of his followers identified human integrity and happiness with liberation from inhibitions of guilt and shame around sex. Here we have the famous "triumph of the therapeutic." This story has human sexuality as inherently wholesome and uncomplicated but violated by societal negativity and repression. Here we have Cultural Liberalism pure and simple.
These three "liberation movements" are distinct but entirely compatible, they work to support each other and together compose the Progressivism that exploded upon the West in the 1960s and has reigned as the hegemonic, elite culture since then.
Post-Modernity: Chaos, Nihilism, Will to Power
Nietzsche, our fourth "master of suspicion," shared with the sober realist Freud an immunity to the illusions of progress. With a depth and clarity of insight that eludes progressives, he saw that the "death of God" brings us no earthly utopia, but "war of all against all"...descent into the abyss of chaos and meaningless, reliance upon the bare, naked human will, and nothing else. He thus resists the systemic optimism of evolutionary theory. His raw religion of power absorbs easily the sexual license of cultural progressivism. as well as the tribal resentments of cultural Marxism. But he strips these ideologies of all comfort and leaves the sexual libertine and the raging revolutionary both to face the boundless abyss of despair and meaninglessness. In the long run, Nietzsche is our primary antagonist: brutally honest and real, free of illusion and delusion.
Balthasar: Catholic Drama
Against the delusional optimism of rationalistic modernity and the despairing-raging irrationality of post-modernity, Balthasar proclaims the Eventful Drama of human salvation and damnation. In an Act of gracious, free, unbounded generosity the Triune-Event-Communion-of-Love CREATED us other free, rational, relational spiritual agents, angels and humans. We, all of us, are engaged in a Drama of Freedom, with each other, with the kingdoms of heaven and of hell. Wounded by earlier exercises of this freedom, we nevertheless engage freely with each other and the two conflicting dominions in decision, combat, collaboration, communion, surrender, agency, assent, reception, donation, affirmation, disobedience, defiance, disbelief, faith, hatred and love.
Conclusion
In today's gospel (John 6;60-9), the disciples complain that Jesus teaching is hard. Many return to their former way of life and no longer walk with him. Jesus asks the twelve: "Do you also want to leave?" Simon Peter, impetuous-volatile-unreliable-honest, answers: "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God."
Each of us, every day, hears this same question! May each of us, whatever our Peter-like failings, answer with such clarity and conviction!
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