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LOUIS BOUYERS SOPHIOLOGY: A BALTHASARIAN RETRIEVAL


KEITH LEMNA

Depaul University, Chicago IL, USA

The French Oratorian theologian Louis Bouyer (19132004), though seldom acknowledged as such, was one of the theological giants of the twentieth century. He is well-known as a specialist in liturgy and spirituality. His book on the Eucharist was one of the three most inuential texts on the subject of liturgy composed in the twentieth century.1 His integrative vision of theology and spirituality was formative for a generation of theologians in France.2 Nevertheless, his work as a whole has been little studied to this point in secondary literature, and his importance and boldness as a speculative theologian in particular has gone virtually without notice. Bouyer completed a nine-volume synthesis of Christian doctrine, comprising three trilogies, which ranks among the eminent achievements in systematic theology in the twentieth century.3 Especially when these nine volumes are seen in the full context of his writings, which total 50 books and many articles, there can be little doubt that Bouyer was one of the greatest theologians of his generation. With all of this said, Bouyers work has not gone completely without notice.4 Cardinal Ratzinger, whose seminal work on the liturgy, The Spirit of the Liturgy, bears an imprint of Bouyers inuence, has said of Bouyer that he was a mind with a very special character . . . a convert with extraordinary knowledge of the Fathers, the history of the liturgy, and biblical and Jewish traditions.5 But perhaps most of all it was Hans Urs von Balthasar who recognized the importance of Bouyers work, both in its speculative daring and its orthodoxy. Balthasar translated four of Bouyers books for his own publishing house. In one of his summaries of his own lifes work, written in 1975, he placed Bouyer among a list of prestigious authors:
And if now I search my heart, there are in this last category of books [that is, books translated by him for his publishing house] many books that are dearer and more important to me than my own books. There are the works of my friends, such as Henri de Lubac and Louis Bouyer, of the great poets, such as Claudel, Peguy, Bernanos, without speaking of Maurice Blondel or of Ignatius, Calderon, and John of the Cross, to whom also I have dared to draw near.6

One particular aspect of Bouyers work that drew Balthasars appreciative attention was his sophiology. Balthasar recognized the importance of Bouyers sophiology and commended it for further theological reection. Balthasars fragmentary exposition of Bouyers sophiology is the basis for the present study. Bouyers sophianic theology is one of the most far-reaching examples of twentiethcentury Catholic revival in the closely connected areas of Mariology, ecclesiology, and the spirituality of nuptial mysticism. In many ways, Bouyer anticipated and developed in the context of the theology of grace John Paul IIs theology of the body. Inuenced especially by his friendship with the Russian Orthodox theologian Serge Bulgakov, Bouyer brings sophiology fully into the context of Western theology. In the present study, I wish to bring
r 2009 The Author. The Heythrop Journal r 2009 Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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out some important aspects of Bouyers theology in this regard, following especially Balthasars exposition of it. I shall proceed in three sections, rst of all recounting the Bulgakovian center of Bouyers sophiology. In a second section, I shall follow Balthasars exposition and shall connect Bouyers sophianic theology to three central areas of concern in modern theology. In a third and concluding section, I shall provide some brief summary comments.

I. THE INFLUENCE OF BULGAKOV ON BOUYER

In order to understand Bouyers sophiology, it is helpful to recount his encounter with the Russian school. Russian sophiology, whose most important twentieth century exponent was Serge Bulgakov, had its origin in the writings of Vladimir Soloviev (18531900), widely recognized as one of the greatest of all Russian theologians and philosophers. In addition to Bulgakov, there was one other eminent, twentieth-century proponent of this school of thought (in addition to several lesser disciples): Pavel Florensky (18821943), who is often referred to as the Russian Teilhard de Chardin. Florensky was a prestigious mathematician and engineer, as well as priest/theologian, who, like Teilhard, took modern science as the starting point for understanding the mystery of the faith. Bulgakov was an eminent Marxian economist before converting to Russian Orthodoxy and eventually accepting the priesthood. Both men were exiled in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution. Florensky was forced, after some time, into a Siberian concentration camp where he died. Bulgakov was forced to emigrate, nally ending up in Paris where he lived out his days as the founding dean and professor of theology at the Saint Sergius Theological Institute, which was the center of expatriate Russian Orthodox theologians.7 The sophiologists centered their theological work on the doctrine of divine Wisdom or Sophia. These Russian thinkers were rooted in the insights of the Church Fathers, yet they were at the same time very open to modern modes of thought, particularly to German Idealism. Given their openness to the problematic for all human thought opened up by 19th century German philosophy, they were looked at with much suspicion in conservative quarters of the Russian Church. Indeed, the Patriarch of Moscow condemned Bulgakovs writings, though the condemnation was ultimately shown to lack canonical authority.8 The sophiologists had much inuence on and generated a great deal of discussion in Russian intellectual circles in the rst part of the twentieth century. But their inuence was not conned to the quarters of Russian theologians. Especially after the emigration of Bulgakov to France, sophiology came to inuence French Catholic theologians as well. In the circles of Eastern Orthodoxy, the inuence of sophianic theology abated in the wake of the widespread emergence of Neopatristic theology, whose representatives were generally hostile to sophiology. Nevertheless, there are signs of a reawakening interest in sophiology. Paul Valliere has argued, for instance, in his work on modern Russian Orthodox theology, that the school was perhaps the most profound expression of Christian theology in modern times, dealing sympathetically and ontologically with the unavoidable issues of man and his creative becoming. He sees the attempt by the Russian sophiologists to reconcile the truths of the tradition of the Church with modern humanitys sense of historical process and nite subjectivity as having yielded lasting fruits.9 For similar reasons, John Milbank has recently asserted that sophiology is the most signicant theology of the previous two centuries.10 He is especially adamant to point out the importance of sophiology for Western theology. He sees close thematic connections in

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aspects of the theologies of Bulgakov, Teilhard de Chardin, and Henri de Lubac.11 Bouyer, as intimated, had a similarly high estimation of sophiology. He saw the greatest value of sophianic theology in its openness to considering the God-world relation as an intrinsic unity. He argued that the Russian school comprised the most profound of all modern theologies in exploring the relationship between the eternal life of the Trinity and the creation and deication of the world in man. Bouyer argued that no other school of thought in modern times had so clearly identied this crucial concern, let alone systematically explored it.12 It is clear, then, that Bouyers sophiology is incomprehensible without seeing it in light of his relationship with Bulgakov. It was in Paris, as a participant in an ecumenical endeavor, that Bouyer, then a young Lutheran pastor, rst met Bulgakov. He provides a brief account of his meetings with Bulgakov and recounts the latters life and works in an article written in support of the publication, in 1978, of an English anthology of Bulgakovs writings.13 It is here that we learn of Bouyers admiration for the man. Indeed, fully assenting to the sentiment expressed by another teacher of his, August Lecerf, Bouyer exclaims that Bulgakov was a great and holy servant of the Church.14 He considered Bulgakov to be a great spirit, with whom a single meeting was enough to mark ones whole life. He was a powerful visionary . . . one of the most indisputable geniuses of the modern age. His theology evokes a great height, a grandeur which takes our breath away, but in a humble humanity, in its best attestation.15 He was, Bouyer asserts, both a theologian of epoch-shaping importance and a humble and holy priest. He was, in other words, a man of both tremendous intellectual brilliance and profound spirituality. Even more, Bouyer is in agreement with Bulgakovs most important commentator Lev Zander in saying of Bulgakov that he is a modern-day Origen, with the ambiguities that such a comparison entails.16 All of this was to make of Bouyer if not the disciple [of Father Serges], a status which he would not want to presume for himself, at least the constant admirer of him.17 The personal inuence of Bulgakov upon Bouyer, demonstrated in the snippets provided here, which could be multiplied, is indubitable. However, Bulgakovs inuence was also decisive upon Bouyer on the level of academic research. Bouyers encounters with Bulgakov shaped the direction of his own theological investigations. This is especially so when it comes to Bouyers trilogies. This inuence is certainly evident to the astute observer by a mere perusal of the titles in the trilogies, the rst and last volumes of which are centrally and explicitly concerned with the theme of Wisdom.18 Upon reading the trilogies, it is even clearer that sophiology was a central concern for Bouyer. This is conrmed in a book-length interview that Bouyer conducted with Georges Daix in 1979. Daix devotes a whole chapter, in the published form of the interview, to a discussion of the trilogies. He asks Bouyer how he came to the idea of the theological synthesis attempted in the trilogies. Bouyer responds:
. . . I was strongly inuenced at the very beginning of my priestly life and of my theological research by two different personalities, Father Serge Bulgakov and Dom Lambert Beauduin. The two oriented me in complementary ways toward this work [the trilogies] in relation to which all that I have written previously seems to me to constitute only an approach and preparation.19

Bouyer describes, in turn, the themes dear to Bulgakov and Beauduin that he would himself later develop. Bulgakov, for his part, whose inuence on Bouyer is our only concern here, put at the center of all the fundamental problem of theology to know the relation between God, the life that He has in Himself from all eternity and which opens out

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in the Trinity, and creation, considered not only as product of God but as called to return to Him, to enter into relation with Him and to live in a share of His own life.20 This was, indeed, the central question of sophiology, dened by Bouyer as . . . a theology constructed around the notion of the divine Wisdom, around, therefore, the vision that from all eternity God has of the world in Himself as destined in time to become distinct from Him and to enter into such a relationship with Him that it will serve . . . to express his own interiority and to communicate it.21 Bouyers trilogies themselves, moreover, are not without analogy with those of Father Bulgakov. Bulgakov had composed a doctrinal synthesis that comprised two trilogies: as of 1979, the time of the interview in question, Bouyer had still thought of his own synthesis in terms of two trilogies. They are, like Bulgakovs, impregnated by sapiential, sophiological research.22 The emphasis in his own work, he says, is on a thearcian triadology which sees the Father as the source of life both within and without the Trinity. But this emphasis on the Trinitarian primacy of the Father is not, he avers, itself absent in Bulgakovs work; it is simply not as emphasized by Bulgakov. The Bulgakovian inuence on Bouyers research is clear. But what, more precisely, is sophiology? In the midst of the production of his trilogies, Bouyer gave a sketch of the sophiological theme in an article entitled An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom and Creation in the Tradition.23 He later extended this article in the book Sophia: Le Monde en Dieu, which is the concluding volume of his trilogies on dogmatic theology. The article gives a snapshot of the sophiological theme as Bouyer sees it and as he expresses it in greater detail in the trilogies. For the purposes of the present study, it will sufce to introduce the theme by giving a brief summary of the salient points in this article. According to Bouyer, the Russian sophiologists revived a theme that was present throughout the tradition of the Church, East and West, all the way into medieval times. That is, they sought to think about the relationship between God and the world in such a way that they did not detach the doctrine of God from Gods eternal plan for creation, the divine Wisdom. The world itself is, for sophiology, a created projection of this Wisdom in God. Bouyer argues that this is a traditional Christian vision of the world, well-attested to in biblical, patristic, and scholastic theology. Both Saint Athanasius in the East, on whom Bouyer did his doctoral dissertation, and Saint Augustine in the West, expressed such a sophiology: i.e. a vision of a created Wisdom or Sophia as the nal embodiment of the glorication of human nature in Christ, in His mystical body the Church, in the blessed Virgin Mary rst of all and nally in the whole creation, as an association of the whole of created reality, around man, with the life of God as it exists eternally in himself.24 Bouyer follows Bulgakov in showing that the sophiological theme is expressed architecturally and liturgically in the tradition. He admits with Bulgakov that the great churches of Constantinople dedicated to Wisdom may or may not express a vision in accordance with Russian sophiology, because these churches seem to equate the gure of Wisdom, without differentiation, to the God-man. However, he condently asserts that the Churches dedicated to Sophia in Thessalonica in the early Middle Ages and in Kiev and Novgorod after the conversion of Russia to Christianity are precursors to the theology of Soloviev and his followers. The dedication feasts of the Churches of Novgorod, for instance, Bouyer notes, are on feast days for the Blessed Virgin Mary. Moreover, liturgical texts, particularly in the Russian Churches, were composed which formally applied the biblical texts on Wisdom to Mary, seen in the perspective of Apocalypse XII, as an eschatological icon of the nal glory of the whole Church and the whole redeemed world.25 Bouyer argues that this is a testimony to the unanimous mind of the ancient

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Church, for the Western Church applies these same texts to Mary. Particularly in Chartres, but not exclusively, the whole decoration of cathedrals dedicated to . . . our Lady . . . is conspicuously inspired, as in Kiev or Novgorod, by the same interpretation.26 But, above all, Bouyer argues, the sophiological theme as seen by this Russian school is a biblical one. Wisdom, on this interpretation, is an expression in the perfected world of the divine plan that God has for it in himself eternally. It has a quasi-personal reality for both the Russian school and for biblical texts such as Proverbs 8, Ecclesiastes 24, and Wisdom of Solomon 7. It is the vision of Wisdom found in the New Testament, particularly in the Pauline letters, where it is related to the Christian Mystery. Regarding the connection of Mystery and Wisdom, Bouyer argues that they both relate to the last times when the nal secret of Gods eternal plan for creation will be revealed. He follows the famous biblical exegete, Raymond Brown, in understanding the biblical word mystery as in the common language of the time in the ancient near east, where it meant the supreme decision taken in his council by the sovereign king, to solve a major problem of the city.27 The Pauline Mystery is, in the same way:
. . . the ultimate resolve of the divine Wisdom, solving in a bafing way, totally disconcerting for poor human wisdom, the alienation of creation from its Creator, resulting from sin, but now removed by the redemptive Incarnation: the taking upon Himself by the Son of God of our fallen humanity, to renew it, to bring it to perfection, in the very reciprocal conjunction of the reconciled creation with its creator.28

The Mystery of Christ, as the captivity epistles, especially Colossians and Ephesians, tell us, is the fulllment of the whole divine design for man and the world around him.29 Its consummation brings the universal recapitulation, the total reconciliation of all of creation, in Christs Mystical Body. Paul describes this completion in Ephesians as the nal espousal of the eschatological Church made of sinners become pure and immaculate to Christ the Bridegroom (Eph. 5). Wisdom fullled is, to switch to the concordant Johannine language of the Apocalypse, the Bride of the Lamb, the redeemed world, which comes down from heaven at the end of time.30 Bouyer argues that more forcefully than in the Old Testament Paul and John see the personied Wisdom of God [as] ultimately identied with the gloried creation, all made one with and in the eternal Son, the eternal Logos or Word of God made esh of our fallen humanity.31 From the last Adam, who is the eternal object of Gods thought and will concerning creation, is born the new Eve, to be denitively united with Him in marriage. The new Eve is the eschatological Church born, as the Fathers say, from the Cross of Christ, to become one esh with the last Adam, in one Spirit, through that very Love of God manifested to us above all in the Cross of His Son, and now shed forth in all our own hearts by the Spirit given to us.32 This particular understanding of Wisdom is developed and synthesized in the tradition. Bouyer argues that Maximus the Confessor (6th Century) develops it in his Logos Christology. Saint Thomas develops it, especially in his treatise De Veritate. For Thomas, all created beings, but above all human or angelic spirits, ideally exist from all eternity in God, more precisely included within that Son who is also the Word (Verbum) in which the Father expresses Himself totally by projecting all His own being into the Son.33 Bouyer argues that this is to say that the Father thinks all of creation inseparably in his eternal thought of himself. In the procession of the Spirit, who eternally rests on the Son,34 he loves creation in loving his Son, who returns that very love in the Spirit. However, creation does not on this account pre-exist in God as it exists projected into an existence

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distinct from God. It does not pre-exist, that is to say, in its diminished, fallen state: It pre-exists rather, in the whole perfection it will reach only as a consequence of the Incarnation of the Son in the esh of fallen humanity, that is to say, as it will have become as the last fruit of His cross and resurrection: perfectly reconciled within itself as with God in Christ . . . .35 Eckhart and the Rhenish mystics, to continue Bouyers genealogy, carried on this vision of Wisdom and creation. Maximus, Aquinas, these later mystical writers, and many others in the tradition, had in mind the same thing as Augustine and Athanasius: the vision, as Saint Paul understood it, of God being the last all in all, or, as Saint Thomas will say, a vision not only of God in all things, but more exactly, of all things in God.36 And this, Bouyer assures us, is precisely what Soloviev, Florensky and Bulgakov wanted to express a nal vision of all things in God. This was the panentheistic vision common to the tradition. It is, remarkably, both Thomistic and Bulgakovian.37 It is the vision that Bouyer himself seeks to express in his trilogies. All of this is not to say that Bouyer nds the sophiologists to be entirely unproblematic. They were, he recognizes, the heirs of a questionable line of speculation present among the great German Idealists stemming from the early 18th century German-Lutheran cobbler and mystic Jacob Boehme. He recognizes that the Russian sophiologists did not always escape the Boehmian tendency to view creation as a necessary fulllment of the divine being, to see it as it is de facto as the only way it could possibly be, and to see Wisdom as a feminine divine counterpart to a purely masculine god. Bouyer argues nevertheless that Bulgakov put the Russian position on solid, orthodox ground when he published, among his nal writings, his Outline of Sophiology Sophia: the Wisdom of God. This nal expression of sophiology captures a truly orthodox vision of the relation of the world to God in Sophia.38 A true theological vision of Wisdom, then, is ultimately a vision of the gloried creation: divine Wisdom is projected into the world and reaches eschatological fulllment in the new Eve, created Wisdom, the cosmic Church at the end of time perfectly espoused to the Last Adam, Christ the Bridegroom. Created Wisdom is the world around man eschatologically reecting its perfected, eternal model in the thought of God. Divine Wisdom is the foundation for the world, according to Bulgakov in his Outline.39 It is the Daughter of the Father in the Son, according to Bouyer.40 For Bulgakov, this is the proper panentheistic way of viewing his sophiology: God confers on a principle which originates in himself an existence distinct from his own. This is not pantheism, but panentheism.41 For Bouyer, Wisdom exists eternally in the Son as the principle, projected into time, of his nuptial union with creation. Sophia is, ultimately, the pan-organism of the divine ideas for creation, the unity of all with all and in all.42 Wisdom is not a fourth hypostasis or divine feminine consort. It is the essence of God considered in relation to the creation and redemption of the world and connected to the gure of Wisdom found in the revealed Word of God. Creatures exist authentically, on Bulgakovs view, only to the extent of their participation in Gods eternal thought for them. The sophiological emphasis is on participation but considered in regard to the historical unity of creation and the free acceptance or rejection by the creature of Gods sovereign will in Christ. In the sophiological thematic, creaturely participation in Gods eternal life is not simply oriented to the divine essence. Rather, it is oriented toward the theandric perfection of Christ, centered on his redeeming mission in history whereby creatures are joined by the power of his Holy Spirit in the most intimate union conceivable to Mary and the Church.43

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Bouyer argues that although the Russian vision of Wisdom did not reach true systematic clarity until Bulgakov published his nal volume on the theme, it was implicit in Bulgakovs theology from the moment of his conversion to Orthodoxy, which, appropriately, began with an experience he had while visiting the Hagia Sophia for the rst time.44 In the end, in the nal, eschatological glorication of humanity and of the world around it, Sophia:
. . . becomes the world: I am in the world and the world is in me . . . It is the beatitude of the nal knowledge of all in all and of all in one, of the innite plenitude in the multiplicity, of the world in its unity. This is in truth Sophia: the real unity of the world in the Logos, the co-inherence of all with all, the world of the divine ideas . . . 45

This is the vision to which Bouyer generally assents. He works out a similar vision in his trilogies. Creaturely Sophia becomes in the eschatological Church the consummation of the divine Wisdom, the transcendental divine prototype for creation. Similitude of creation to God is centered on the cosmic-historical narrative of salvation. The cosmos is inextricably connected to humanity and vice versa. Humanity itself is not just a collection of unattached individuals but a reciprocity of consciousnesses oriented by the ever-present power of Gods Spirit toward a single trans-cosmic/historical goal, to which they can either freely orient themselves or turn away from.46 The world of the divine ideas, then, centered on the eternal Mystery of Christ, will reach an embodied fullness when the Last Adam is espoused to the New Eve. The participation of the creature in the fullness of Gods eternal existence is centered on the eternal principle of divine Wisdom, whose central key is the Mystery of the Cross.

II. BALTHASARS EXPOSITION: FUNDAMENTAL CONNECTIONS

As already mentioned Hans Urs von Balthsar recognized the importance of Bouyers sophiology and gave some exposition of it. He did so in three writings that I shall briey explore in this section: 1) the third volume in English (part II of volume III in German) of his Theo-Drama; 2) the epilogue to his translation of Bouyers Woman in the Church; 3) his interview with Angelo Scola, published and translated into English as Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good.47 Balthsars exposition, when all three of these particular writings are taken together, gets at the heart of Bouyers sophiology and is of great assistance in any attempt to understand it. I shall, in this section, provide my own suggestions for the wider signicance of Bouyers sophiology by following Balthasars exposition. I shall proceed in three brief subsections, connecting Bouyers sophiology to wider discussions in Western theology of the theology of grace, Trinitarian theology, and the theology of liberation. There is no question here of giving thorough analysis of these connections. My goal is simply to suggest aspects of Bouyers sophiology that might repay further investigation. A) Bouyers Sophiology and the Theology of Grace A quotation drawn from the third volume of Balthasars Theo-Drama brings us to the theological core of Bouyers sophiology:
Louis Bouyer . . . sees a supernatural superexistence (surexistence) in the souls united to the Church by the triune God; this surexistence makes them, in their communio, an image of Gods

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three-personal unity. Furthermore, taking up a theme of Russian sophiology, he sees Gods world plan prepared in the divine Logos, perfected in Mary/the Church as the feminine Sophia; in Christ, the Logos becomes the masculine representation of God: the spousal relationship of these two is the eschatological fulllment of salvation.48

It is the meaning implicit in the expression supernatural superexistence (surexistence surnaturelle or ubernatu rlich Uberexistenz), rightly highlighted by Balthasar, that I wish to bring out in this brief subsection. The expression calls to mind, of course, Rahners doctrine of the supernatural existential. It brings Bouyers sophiology into the wider context of twentieth century Catholic disputes on the relation of nature and grace. Bouyer himself never placed his own theology into this wider debate that stemmed from Henri de Lubacs writings, at least in a technical sense, though his implicit theology of grace is clearly very much in line with Henri de Lubacs. Even so, the sophiological key into which he transposes the doctrine of grace involves us, as Balthasar realizes, in Trinitarian, Mariological, and ecclesiological discourse. For the sophiological doctrine, then, grace is not isolable into a system detachable from all of the other dimensions of Christian theology. Bouyer was much more concerned with East-West dialogue on the doctrine of grace than with the intra-ecclesial, Western disputes between de Lubac and the Neo-Thomists. He sees sophiology as an integrating perspective on the disparate theologies of grace that one nds in Palamist theology, on the one hand, and Thomist theology, on the other hand. Sophiology, he argues, provides a Eucharistic third-way between Eastern and Western doctrines of grace, one that accounts for their respective concerns, all the while rounding off the one-sidedness of each tradition. He makes his case the most clearly and forcefully in his book The Invisible Father.49 Bouyer takes neither a straight Palamist nor a straight Thomist position. He agrees, in ` part, with proponents of each position vis-a-vis their opponents.50 He recognizes that the theology of deication is essential to both Western and Eastern theologies of grace, but that each tradition has its strengths and weaknesses in this regard. On the one hand, he sees in the Thomist doctrine of created grace full recognition that deication must involve a transformation of the human person that is consummative rather than annihilating of her. Yet, he agrees with Palamist critics of Thomism that the Thomist doctrine of created grace might entail a sense that mans deication is not in God but apart from him.51 On the other hand, Bouyer agrees with the Palamist emphasis on the uncreated nature of the grace that is imparted to the human soul through the power of the Holy Spirit, though he recognizes with the Thomists that the Palamist distinction between Gods essence and his relational energies entails a splitting apart of the unity of God.52 Bouyer takes the divine simplicity as a non-negotiable starting point for the theology of grace. Yet, in its aspect as Wisdom, that is, as ontological pre-vision for the ecclesial nuptiality of creation, he sees the divine essence as oriented to a mysterious, personal embodiment outside of itself. When creation is brought to completion by the power of the Cross and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit created natures will be instituted afresh (to use the expression of Gregory Nazianzen) in the supernatural, personalized unity of the eternal Church. The Church, as Body and Bride of Christ, will not be absorbed into the Godhead but will retain its personal existence. The deied being of the redeemed and saved, reecting the Trinity in their super-naturalized social unity, will be in some mysterious manner both created and uncreated. There will be, truly, an interpenetration by the Holy Spirit in human spirit that makes the deied, re-created subject godlike in God, and yet a consummated creature in the unity of the Church.53

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This is an apophatic concept of deication, and Balthasar has captured well its mysterious implications in highlighting in his description of it the expression supernatural superexistence. Human existence is not, on this view, as with Rahner, simply constituted by its ever-present relationship to grace. Created natures are not merely supernatural existentials. They are not merely obediential potencies for a supernatural grace that may never appear. Even more, on this sophianic view, we are essentially constituted by a proleptic interpenetration by the Spirit of God, who wills eternally to makes us fully superexistential in our concrete encounter in history with the Incarnate Christ. One can say of this that our consummation in the Spirit will surpass all of our expectations. Ultimately, even the nuptial analogy of the God-world relationship provides only a shadow of analogy for the deep mystery of our deication in the Trinity. No mediating concept can fully grasp the grace of union that God wills to impart to his eschatological Bride. The Father desires to impart to us the gift of his uncreated being, through the Wisdom of his Son that is eternally consummated in him by the Gift of the Spirit. Yet, Gods eternal Wisdom is ordered to created alterity. This alterity is the necessary precondition for Gods nuptial union with creation. Created Wisdom, then, is not dissolved when the Spirit of the Son is sent to consummate the Sons relationship to his eschatological Bride. The perfect conuence of divine and created Wisdom in the Church of the last days will not mean a confusion or change of divine and human natures. This understanding of the completion of grace through the perfected, hypostatized Wisdom of the eschatological Church requires much greater elaboration and analysis than it is my intention to provide here. Bouyer himself hints at how it might be elaborated, but one would have to supplement his own analysis with greater consideration of the writings of the Russian sophiologists, and Bulgakov most of all. Even so, it is important to recognize that consideration of the theology of grace in the context of sophiology has the benet of rooting speculative discourse on the reality of grace very closely to Trinitarian revelation and to the interconnection of ecclesiology and cosmology. Eternal Wisdom is not simply the essence of the One God, but the eternal precondition for creation, metaphysically enfolded in the eternally generated person of the Son and illuminated eternally by the procession of the Holy Spirit. Sophiologists realize that created wisdom itself is incomprehensible outside of consideration of the covenantal relationship that God the Father establishes with his chosen people, his pan-cosmic Church, through his two hands (to speak as Saint Irenaues did), the Eternal Son and the Holy Spirit. Bouyers theology of grace, in developing the sophianic perspective in the context of Western theology, is one of the most fully integrative theologies of the twentieth century. B) Inner Analogy and Trinitarian Sophiology Bouyers Woman in the Church, which Balthasar translated for his publishing house, was written as a polemical defense of the Churchs all-male priesthood. Though its focus is more practical than speculative, the work nevertheless contains a rich and dense, though compact, discourse on sophiology. Balthasar wrote an epilogue to the book that helps greatly to elucidate Bouyers sophiology. He focuses on the inner analogy that Bouyer describes between the natural sexual relationship between man and woman and Christs supernatural relationship to the Church. This leads him to develop an interesting implication of the Trinitarian dimension of Bouyers sophiology. Balthasar follows Bouyer in ascribing to woman, in the nuptial relationship, an inward bearing to alterity. The foundational point for both Balthasar and Bouyer in the nuptial analogy is the maternal womb of woman. There is a natural, inner depth to the womans

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capacity to relate to another person that is not present in the male. This capacity, in fact, represents the deepest potency of creaturely essence. The inner receptivity of the female makes of her in her perfection, unlike the male, the worlds comprehensive answer to God.54 She is more authentically creaturely than the male. In Mary, who perfectly exemplies the maternal essence of creation, woman is revealed as the direct, personal prototype for the ecclesial perfection that Christ wishes to bring to consummation socially and cosmically by the power of his Spirit. Man, the male, is called to represent the Fatherhood of God. But he can never be the Father in essence. In the nuptial relationship, the male can only let the creative, primal principle of uncreated fatherhood pass through him. He exhibits a bi-polarity, as Balthasar says in following Bouyer. His creaturely masculinity is only of an episodic, functional, representative nature. He does not embody the full reality of creaturely, maternal essence in the way that woman does.55 Christ himself, in his masculinity, plays a representative role. Balthasar argues, in support of Bouyers thesis, that Christs representation of the eternal Father innitely surpasses all creaturely representation of the Fathers originary essence. For Christ is himself the eternal image and hypostatic representative of the Father. In his incarnation, he shows himself to be the sole valid representative of the only fatherhood perfectly deserving of the name: the paternity of the eternal Father.56 As the one and only valid (and perfect) representative of the Father, the Son is able, in pouring out his Spirit on the Cross, to bring forth the Church as his body and bride. As the perfect representative both eternally and in history of the eternal Father, Christ is able to serve as the conduit through which the Fathers innite fruitfulness and blessings extend into creation in the Spirit. Christ, the Bridegroom, in caring for his Church, Bride, and Wisdom, fashions his own fullness in her.57 Balthasar develops this analysis in a most interesting fashion. He notes that as the perfect and eternal representative of the Fathers life, Christs mode of divinity is an eternally receptive one.58 As man, Balthasar argues, the Son never represents himself but only the Father. Yet, given the Trinitarian taxis, the Sons earthly humility is already familiar to him. He lives in eternal receptiveness in relation to the First Person of the Trinity. Balthasar concludes that in regard to the Church, Christ already foreknows in himself what its feminine-active mode of receptiveness involves. Balthasar argues in support of the radical separation that Bouyer posits between the Logos and Sophia. God is not sexual in his eternal being, as the Gnostics thought, yet there is a preguring relationality in God that grounds the communion of God with maternal creation. In developing Bouyers analysis, Balthasar suggests that there is in Gods foreknowledge of creation a nuptial aspect essential to the very generation of the Son. The separation between Logos and Sophia, eternally pregured in the life of the Trinity, is ordered to an alterity that alone enables the bridal character of both the Word and Wisdom. But the Wisdom contained in the Son from all eternity is within the Sons very mode of receptive divinity. The God-world relationship is already anticipated in the very life of the eternal Trinity, in the eternal mode of divinity of the Second Person of the Trinity.59 Balthasar is quite right to note the boldness of Bouyers sophiology. But precisely in its boldness it coheres, in this Trinitarian dimension that Balthasar brings out, with Balthasars own daring speculations in regard to the dynamic relationality of the triune life. Balthasars own work has garnered much discussion in this regard.60 Much has been written about his doctrine of Trinitarian inversion, of the ever-surpassing consummation of triune life, of the innite distance in God, always overcome by the hypostatic Gift of the

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Spirit, which surpasses all conceivable distance between God and creation. Bouyer himself, in his own trilogies, brought the sophiological doctrine into a dynamic Trinitarianism that bears resemblance to Balthasars Trinitarian thought in some respects. A comparison of the two great theologians and friends, on the doctrine of the Trinity, would be theologically fruitful: they are not perfectly at one in the Trinitarian dimension of their thinking, yet they provide a complementary balance to each other.

C) Marian Liberation The Trinitarian dimension of Bouyers sophiology can be more fully developed in connection with his doctrine of the perfection of created freedom in Mary, for he recognizes that Marys free acceptance of Gods will for her in Christ bears analogy to the eternal consummation of Triune freedom in the procession of the Holy Spirit. In his interview with Angelo Scola, published in English as Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good, Balthasar briey describes Bouyers sophiology as an orthodox alternative to Leonardo Boffs pneumatological Mariology. Balthasar argues that Boffs Mariology contains much that is beautiful and in agreement with Tradition.61 Yet, it throws a curious light on his Christology, which does not present human liberation in the sense of traditional Christian soteriology.62 Balthasar argues that Boff takes Marian eschatology to an unacceptable extreme. Boff sees in Marys overshadowing by the Spirit a hypostatic union separate from the God-man. Balthasar suggests that Boff posits this pneumatological hypostatization in order to achieve a Jungian sexual balance in consideration of the God-world relationship. Boff sees it as necessary to balance the predominantly masculine union of God and humanity in Christ with a predominantly feminine union of God and humanity in the Holy Spirit. On Boffs view, Gods consecration of creation in the hypostatic union of Christ leaves the feminine dimension of creation without full divinehuman union. Only pneumatological hypostatization in Mary can ll this void.63 Balthasar gets to the nub of the problem with Boffs position with the pertinent question of what he could possibly mean by a hypostatic union in the case of Mary. After all, Mary, unlike Christ, is not a divine person. Balthasar sees that there is a legitimate concern inspiring Boffs Mariology. It is only to be regretted, Balthasar suggests, that Boff did not mention two theologians who are both close to his basic intention but develop it in an orthodox form.64 Balthasar refers to Teilhard de Chardin, on the one hand, with his vision of the Eternel Feminin, and to Bouyers sophiology, on the other hand.65 Balthasar argues that both Teilhard and Bouyer see in the motherhood of Mary the nal perfection of Sophia striving upward within the world process, just as Christ presents the denitive Incarnation of the Logos, increasingly made concrete by the same process.66 One need not, according to this sophiological doctrine, seek to do justice to the suprasexual origin of God by positing two hypostatic unions. This is so because in the Logos-Wisdom union is expressed a nuptial toward each other.67 The consummation of creation in the Holy Spirit is one with the recapitulation of creation in Christs Mystical Body. This, Balthasar argues, is a full theological development of Pauls doctrine in Ephesians 5 and of countless Christian commentaries on the Canticle of Canticles.68 Moreover, he sees this LogosWisdom theology of nuptial union as doing justice to Pauls recapitulation of the whole biblical tradition in 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul implores the Christians in Corinth to recognize that the full dignity of man and woman is only given due justice by consecration of their division of roles. Femininity is consecrated precisely in its deied otherness by the nuptial union of Christ with his eschatological Bride.

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This bit of exposition by Balthasar sums up quite nicely one aspect of Bouyers intention in developing his sophiology, namely, his desire to express the full union of God and the world in man through a perfect communion: a relationship wherein unity is perfected precisely in the owering of difference. The sophiological doctrine, then, helps us to see that, like the Trinitarian life itself, the eschatological consummation of the God-world relationship in Christ will be a perfection of difference within perfect unity. In placing Bouyers sophiology in the context of Boffs pneumatological Mariology, Balthasar has in fact opened the door to furthering the exposition of the Trinitarian dimension of Bouyers sophianic theology. Bouyer summarizes his Trinitarian vision of sophiology in his book dedicated to theological cosmology, and it will sufce for our purposes to highlight this summary.69 First of all, Bouyer distinguishes, from the side of the creature, certain relational aspects of the divine essence. In the creatures relation to God, the divine essence can be seen as Essence (in the Father), Wisdom (in the Son), and Glory (in the Spirit). Again, there can be for Bouyer no splitting apart of the divine essence in se. Nevertheless, he holds that the creatures adoptive liation in the eternal Son allows her to see that Gods essence does not stand under the divine persons as a separate substance: it is embodied in a relationally personal manner, yet not in such a way that it becomes a different essence in each divine Person.70 Boff had argued that the Holy Spirit manifests the feminine in God. Bouyer does so as well, but for Bouyer the femininity of the Holy Spirit is analogically differentiated from femininity in creation. Bouyer argues that in perfect sponsality and motherhood Mary and the Church bring creaturely essence to its fulllment. Analogously, he argues, the Holy Spirit in his personal mode of divinity brings the Trinity to fulllment. In the procession of the Holy Spirit, resting in the Wisdom of the Son, Gods triune essence shines forth eternally in the fullness of glory. In his mission in the world, the Spirit consummates creation by his glorifying presence in the womb of the Church. Creaturely motherhood and sponsality, the essence of feminity, are then seen to be an inverted or counterposed image of the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit. In the at of Mary, the womb of humanity is gloried by the lial presence of Christ whose Spirit eternally dwells within him in fullness. Just as Mary recapitulates creaturely essence in the fullness of her receptive nitude, so the Holy Spirit recapitulates the innite essence of God in his active consummation of the divine life, and he brings the transguration of creation to fulllment in the Church.71 There is no question for Bouyer, as for Boff, of a Marian hypostatic union in the Holy Spirit that exists alongside of and other to the hypostatic union of the Word. Because of his understanding of the Trinity, he does not have to consecrate the feminine by recourse to an unorthodox pneumatology. He sees that in Mary creation is brought to consummation in a perfected communion by the power of her counterposed archetype, the Holy Spirit: but this is so only in maternal relationship with the hypostatic union of the eternal Logos. Marys at is the perfect expression of human freedom, of true liberation in synergy with the Holy Spirit, the perfect freedom of God. In Marys perfect expression of freedom, consummated by the power of the freedom of the Holy Spirit in nuptial union with Christ the Bridegroom, a true liberation theology is expressed: one that does not go beyond or exist outside of the gift of freedom that Christ gives to man by the redemptive power of his Cross. Marian freedom does not give birth to a second hypostatic union of God and man. In her at, she brings to birth a personal communion of God and creation in Christ that is a perfected unity in consecrated difference whose fully unifying dimension is lost to Boffs Mariology.72

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III. CONCLUSION

I have only desired to bring out Bouyers sophiology in its barest elements in this study, but with an eye toward suggesting the relevance of his analysis in three much-discussed areas of modern theology: the theology of grace, Trinitarian theology, and the theology of liberation. In regard to the theology of grace, Bouyers theology is uniquely integrative of all of the dimensions of theology and of creation. In regard to his Trinitarian theology, Bouyers sophiology is complementary to Balthasars vastly inuential and even ecclesially important triadology and has a supportive resonance that it would be of interest and importance to bring out further. In regard to his doctrine of Marian liberation, Bouyer takes account of the concerns of Boff while expressing an orthodox, pneumatic doctrine of the feminine that sees the order of creation in terms of the perfection of freedom in the divine-human union in Christ. I would only like to add briey, in conclusion, the suggestion that the nuptial theology of Bouyer gives a full context for the nuptial theme of twentieth century Catholic thought as a whole. Indeed, one might see a special canonization by the Western Church of the sophiological perspective in John Paul IIs encyclical Fides et Ratio. In this document, the Holy Father both commended the philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev and spoke of Mary as the Seat of Wisdom (which was the title of Bouyers rst book in the trilogies).73 Bouyers sophianic theology has not been given an appropriate level of treatment in secondary literature, which is unfortunate given its resonance with the reawakening in the West to the theology of the Canticle of Canticles. Hans Urs von Balthasar, for one, understood the resonance of Bouyers sophiology with his own Marian perspective (on the Church, the cosmos, and even the polis). I have endeavored in the present study to bring Bouyers work to a wider English-speaking audience, albeit in a less ambitious manner than Balthasar endeavored to do by translating his books for a German-speaking audience.

Notes
1 See Bouyers Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer, trans. Charles Underhill Quinn (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968). The other two books on liturgy to which Bouyers Eucharist is often compared are: Josef Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, trans. Francis A. Brunner (New York: Benzinger Bros., 1959), and Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1945). 2 See Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustigers funeral homily for Bouyer Un itineraire aussi singulier que fecond, in Georges Daix, Le metier de theologien: Entretiens avec Georges Daix (Geneva: Ad Solem, 2007), 913. 3 For a brief summary of Bouyers works as a whole, see Jean Duchesne, Whos (Still) Afraid of Louis Bouyer? in Communio 32 (2005): 38390. 4 There have been several dissertations completed on Bouyers theology in recent years. The rst book to be published that looks at Bouyers theology as a whole was recently issued in France: Davide Zordan, Connaissance et myste`re: LItineraire theologique de Louis Bouyer (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2008). See my own dissertation, Trinitarian Panentheism: A Study of the God-world Relationship in the Theology of Louis Bouyer (Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 2007). 5 Cardinal Ratzinger, Milestones: Memoirs 19271977, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 143. 6 Hans Urs von Balthasar, My Work in Retrospect, trans. Fr. Brian McNeill, C.R.V., et. al. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 108. Rodney A. Howsare reports on a lecture that Hans Urs von Balthasar gave at The Catholic University of America in which Balthasar attempted to locate his own thought. He distinguished two well-known camps in modern Catholic theology, the Rahnerian transcendental theology, on the one hand, and the ressourcement theology of de Lubac, on the other hand. Balthasar did not situate his own thinking in either of these schools of thought. Rather, he placed it in the school of those who are overwhelmed by the Word of God in the way the beloved is overwhelmed by the declaration of the lover. In this school of thought, Balthasar places himself alongside the

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biblical scholars Heinz Schurman and Heinrich Schlier as well as Louis Bouyer. See Howsare, Balthasar: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: T&T Clark, 2009). The quotation is found on p. 33. 7 See Bouyers own summary in The Church of God, Charles Underhill Quinn (Chicago, IL: Franciscan Herald Press, 1982), 13344. 8 Cf. Aidan Nichols, Bulgakov and Sophiology, in Scribe of the Kingdom: Essays on Theology and Culture (London: Sheed & Ward), 119. 9 See Valliere, Modern Russian Theology: Bukharev, Soloviev, Bulgakov, Orthodox Theology in a New Key (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), see especially 373403. 10 John Milbank, Sophiology and Theurgy: The New Theological Horizon, available from http://www.geocities.com/sbulgakovsociety/MilbankSophiologyTheurgy.doc; Internet; accessed June 17, 2006. See also Antoine Arjakovsky, The Sophiology of Father Sergius Bulgakov and Contemporary Western Theology, in St. Vladimirs Theological Quarterly 49: 12 (2005): 21935. Arjakovsky begins the article by saying: From the outset it must be said that the idea that Sophiology would be a thing of the past is already out of date (219). 11 Cf. John Milbank, The Suspended Middle (Grand Rapids, MI: Eedrmans 2005), 10408. Milbank, in this short and much criticized book, opposes Balthasars theology of grace to the sophiological doctrine of grace in both de Lubac and Bulgakov. He favors the latter two and rejects Balthasars account of grace as, at once, Barthian and Rahnerian. Implied in the present article is the suggestion that this opposition posited by Milbank between Balthasar, on the one hand, and de Lubac and Bulgakov, on the other hand, is untenable: at least in the manner in which it is put forth by Milbank. 12 Cf. An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom and Creation in the Tradition, Le Messager Orthodoxe 98 (1985): 14961. 13 Louis Bouyer, La personnalite et loeuvre de Serge Bulgakov (18711944), in Nova et Vetera (French Language Edition) 53 (1978): 13544. 14 Bouyer, La personnalite et loeuvre de Serge Bulgakov (18711944), 137. 15 Bouyer, La personnalite et loeuvre de Serge Bulgakov (18711944), 136. 16 According to Bouyer, it is on the issue of the God-world relationship, the world centered on man in the Church, that Bulgakovs insights have a novel perspicacity akin to Origens on spirituality and Christology. 17 La personnalite et loeuvre de Serge Bulgakov, 137. Bouyer, as will be shown below, recognized that the sophiologists and Bulgakov put forth some questionable positions, or at least formulations. 18 The rst volume is The Seat of Wisdom: An Essay on the Place of the Virgin Mary in Christian Theology, trans. ne A.V. Littledale (New York: Pantheon Books, 1962). This book is a translation of La Tro de la Sagesse: Essai Sur la Signication du Culte Marial (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1957). The nal volume is Sophia: Le Monde en Dieu (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1998). 19 Daix, Le metier de theologien: Entretiens avec Georges Daix, 188. . . . jai ete fortement inuence au depart meme ` ma vie sacerdotale et de ma recherche theologique par deux personnalites differentes, le pere Serge Bulgakov et Dom ` Lambert Beauduin. Tous deux mont oriente de facon complementaire de vers cette oeuvre par rapport a laquelle tout ce que jai ecrit auparavant ne me semble constituer quapproches et preparations. ` 20 Bouyer, La personnalite et loeuvre de Serge Bulgakov, 137. . . . au centrer de tout le probleme fondamental de ` la theologie, a savoir le rapport entre Dieu, la vie de Dieu quIl a en Lui-meme de toute eternite et qui sepanouit dans la ` ` Trinite, et la creation, considere non seulement comme produite par Lui mais comme appelee a se retourner vers Lui, a ` entrer avec Lui et a vivre dans un partage de sa propre vie. 21 Daix, Le metier de theologien: Entretiens avec Georges Daix, 189. . . . dune theologie construite autour de la notion de la Sagesse divine, autour donc de la vision que de toute eternite Dieu a du monde en Lui-meme comme ` ` ` destine a la fois a devenir distinct de Lui et a entrer en un rapport tel avec Lui quil sen servira . . . pour exprimer sa vie interieure et la communiquer. 22 Daix, Le metier de theologien: Entretiens avec Georges Daix, 190. 23 Bouyer, An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom and Creation in the Tradition, in Le Messager Orthodoxe 98 (1985): 14961. 24 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom, 151. Augustines sophiology is expressed most brilliantly, according to Bouyer, in Book XII of his Confessions and Athanasiuss in paragraphs 7678 and 8082 of his Second Discourse Against the Arians. 25 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom, 152. 26 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom, 152. 27 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom, 155. 28 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom, 155. 29 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom, 155. 30 Rev. 21:2. 31 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom,155. 32 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom, 155. 33 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom, 156. 34 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom, 156. 35 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom, 156. 36 An Introduction to the Theme of Wisdom, 157. 37 See Bouyers Sophia, 1267.

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38 See Sergei Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God, An Outline of Sophiology (Great Barrington, MA: Lindisferne Books, 1993). According to Bouyer, with this nal elaboration of the theme before he died, Bulgakov had at last produced a sketch of it so sound that it could rightfully obtain the highest praise and imprimatur from a Thomist as strict but as spiritually intelligent as Msgr. Goodier. See La personnalite, 143. 39 Cf. Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God, 67. 40 Cosmos, 307. 41 Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God, 72. 42 Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God, 72. 43 Bulgakov, Sophia: The Wisdom of God, 98113. See also Bouyers Sophia, 17782. 44 Bouyer provides an account of this experience in La personnalite et loeuvre de Serge Bulgakov, 144. 45 Quoted from Bulgakov, as the climax to the article, by Bouyer in La personnalite et loeuvre de Serge Bulgakov, 144. . . . devient le monde: je suis dans le monde et le monde est en moi . . . Cest la beatitude de la connaissance nale ` ` du tout en tout et du tout en un, de linnie plenitude dans la multiplicite, du monde dans lunite. Cest la en verite Sophia: la reelle unite du monde dans le Logos, la co-inherence de tout avec tout, le monde des divines Idees . . . 46 Cf. Cosmos, 3145. 47 See Hans Urs von Balthasar: Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Volume III: Dramatis Personae: Man in God, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990); Epilogue, in Louis Bouyer, Woman in the Church, trans. Marilyn Teichert (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), 11321. Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good, trans. Maria Shrady (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989). I do not follow Balthasars exposition chronologically in this section, but thematically. 48 Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Volume III, 346. 49 Bouyer, The Invisible Father, trans. Hugh Gilbert, O.S.B. (Petersham, MA: St. Bedes Publication, 1999), 21836. This concern to develop a sophiological doctrine of grace that synthesizes Eastern and Western concerns is also a major ce theme of his book on the Holy Spirit. Bouyer, Le Consolateur: Esprit Saint Et Vie De Gra (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1980), 42132. 50 The Thomist-Palamist divide continues to this day. A.N. Williamss attempt to synthesize Thomism and Palamism has met with stern rebuke from both directions. See. A.N. Williams, The Ground of Union: Deication in Aquinas and Palamas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). A particularly harsh treatment of the Western, Thomist doctrine of grace has been recently leveled by the Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bradshaw. See Bradshaw, Aristotle East and West: Metaphysics and the Division of Christendom (Cambridge University Press, 2004). Though Bradshaws study is seemingly quite erudite in its treatment of the East, his polemic against the West is so severe and one-sided that it calls the credibility of his entire study into question. 51 Bouyer, The Invisible Father, 235. 52 Bouyer, The Invisible Father, 234. 53 Bouyer, Le Consolateur, 42132. 54 Balthasar, Epilogue, Woman in the Church, 114. 55 Balthasar, Epilogue, Woman in the Church, 115. 56 Balthasar, Epilogue, Woman in the Church, 115. 57 Balthasar, Epilogue, Woman in the Church, 115. 58 Balthasar, Epilogue, Woman in the Church, 117. 59 Balthasar, Epilogue, Woman in the Church, 117118. 60 Cf. Gerard F. OHanlon, S.J., The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). See also David Schindlers review, in The Thomist 58 (April 1994): 335342. Balthasars Trinitarian theology has been severely criticized by Milbank in The Suspended Middle, 7476. 61 Balthasar, Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good, 4445. 62 Balthasar, Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good, 4445. 63 Balthasar, Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good, 4445. 64 Balthasar, Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good, 46. 65 Balthasar, Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good, 46. 66 Balthasar, Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good, 46. 67 Balthasar, Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good, 46. 68 Balthasar, Test Everything, Hold Fast to What is Good, 46. 69 Louis Bouyer, Cosmos: The World and the Glory of God, trans. Pierre de Fontnouvelle (Petersham, MA: Saint Bedes Publications, 1988). 70 Bouyer, Cosmos, 194. 71 Bouyer, Cosmos, 19495. 72 For the fully eschatological dimension of Bouyers sophiology, see Cosmos, 22633. 73 John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, y74, y108.

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