Reclaiming Balthasar's Theodramatic Eschatology: Revisions from Jacques Maritain, Joseph Ratzinger, and Bernard Lonergan

This dissertation takes up the problem of Hans Urs von Balthasar's purported resolution to the aporia between God's infinite love and the reality of eternal damnation, namely, his trinitarian theodramatic eschatology. Instead of being preoccupied with interpretive questions, I examine the logical rigor and precision of Balthasar's arguments, principally in his Theodramatik, in comparison to that found in Maritain, Ratzinger, Lonergan, and other Thomists. I also evaluate the arguments of some who have already criticized his work from one angle or another. Thorough analysis of Balthasar's fundamental claims yields the conclusion that his theological anthropology, in particular, his understanding of the grace-freedom dynamic, is lacking and detrimentally affects his eschatology. His eschatological position that all men may in fact be saved is a result, primarily, of the simplistic view of grace and freedom that he unwittingly assumes. His theology of the descent, while at points rhetorically excessive, represents a legitimate development and does not necessarily entail universalism. Furthermore, while his trinitarian theory at times borders on the mythological (thanks to Adrienne von Speyr), his understanding of divine suffering may be appropriated in dialogue with Jacques Maritain and Joseph Ratzinger, with whom he is closely allied on many fronts. But in order to reclaim Balthasar's theodramatic approach from its tendency toward universalism (following Karl Barth), attention must be given to the twentieth century developments in the Catholic theology of grace, attention which he did not wish to pay to such purportedly "neo-scholastic" debates.;The growing consensus that has been emerging, at least among Thomists, concerning the question of the divine permission of moral evil, fills a lacuna in Balthasar's project, derailing it from the path of universalism and setting it on track toward a more robust theological anthropology. A critique of his monumental work along these lines yields a more balanced approach to the task of reconciling God's infinite mercy with the persistent reality of moral evil. The unbounded power of God's grace is not undermined by recognizing the possibility of created freedom to refuse His glory definitively; rather, the natural integrity of human freedom is slighted by an over-emphatic anti-Pelagian view of grace as either inherently irresistible or predetermined to be impotent. The intrinsic efficacy of divine grace and the natural integrity of human freedom together must be affirmed. The eschatological consequence of such a moderate view is precisely a more modest proposal for how in the end God may be "omnia in omnibus" (1 Cor 15:28).