Home Page  Fr Aidan Nichols   Say It Is Pentecost A Guide Through Balthasar's Logic Content Preface ix 1 Introducing Balthasar's Logic 1 PART 1: TRUTH OF THE WORLD 2 Being and Truth 9 3 Subject, Object - and God 15 4 Inwardness and Freedom 23 5 Image and Reality 35 6 Being Situated 45 7 Mystery 51 8 Truth Worldly and Truth Divine 55 PART 2: TRUTH OF THE WORD 9 The Johannine 'Entry' 63 10 Logic and Love 67 11 Ana-logic: Tracing the Trinity 69 12 The Self-expression of the Logos 73 13 The Place of the Logos in God 81 14 The Emergence of the World through the Word 91 15 Cata-logic: Fulfilment from God 95 16 The Word Is Made Flesh 101 17 And Made Sin: The Logic of Contradiction 119 PART 3: TRUTH OF THE SPIRIT 18 The Spirit's 'Entry' into Logic 127 19 Christ and the Spirit 131 20 The Holy Spirit, the Interpreter 135 21 The Spirit as Personal Being 139 22 Dyad in the Triad: The Father's 'Two Hands' 147 23 The Spirit and the Church: Logical Preliminaries 161 24 The Spirit and the Church: Subjective and Objective 171 25 The Spirit and the World 187 26 Return to the Father 191 PART 4: A RETROSPECTIVE GLANCE 27 Epilogue to the Trilogy 197 28 Postword 211 Select Bibliography 213 Index of Subjects 215 Index of Names 225 Or say it is Pentecost: the hawthorn-tree, met with coagulate magnified flowers of may blooms in a haze of light Geoffrey Hill The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Péguy Preface With the present work, I come to the end of my task of providing Balthasar's prolix trilogy - Herrlichkeit, Theodramatik, Theologik - with an interpretative summary. The last member of the trio, the theological logic, is also the shortest. But since it contains, in its opening volume, Balthasar's metaphysics and epistemology - a synthesis of Christian Scholasticism and the classical German philosophical tradition, theologically re-worked - it is hardly the least demanding. The effort of understanding is rewarded, however, with a fuller grasp of Balthasar's contentions in the aesthetics and dramatics, as well as in the remaining volumes of Theologik itself. Readers of my two earlier commentaries, The Word Has Been Abroad and No Bloodless Myth, will have found some material on and the drama, respectively: enough to explain the terms 'aesthetics' and 'dramatics' which control the sub-titles of these 'Guides'. But of logic as ordinarily understood - whether the traditional syllogistic variety, or the modal logic favoured in the later Middle Ages as again today, or the symbolic logic of the mathematically inclined, they will find little if any trace in Say It Is Pentecost. As with Hegel, Balthasar's logic is his ontology, his study of being - though to be sure there are discussions here of language, in which being comes to expression. Not that the second and third volumes of Theologik - on the difference made to ontology by Christology and Pneumatology - are an afterthought in this respect. For Balthasar, as his (separate) Epilog to the trilogy, also discussed here, points out, understanding of the missions of Son and Spirit not only confirms the judgments about the world's being as divine epiphany made in the opening ontology but also shows the being of the world flowering under the sun of transfiguring grace. This makes appropriate the choice of title and epigraph, for which I am again indebted to the distinguished poet, my fellow-countryman, Geoffrey Hill. The completion of the present study seems a good time to thank too all those in T&T Clark's publishing house who have made the production of these books so singularly free of heartache. Writing them has sometimes been a labour, but it has been a labour of love on behalf of the faith of the Church which Cardinal Balthasar so signally served. AIDAN NICHOLS, OP Blackfriars, Cambridge Memorial of the Holy Name of Jesus, 2000 Copyright © T&T Clark Ltd, 2001 First published 2001 ISBN 0 567 08752 2 Extracts from "Say it is Pentecost" reproduced with the kind permission of the publisher. Copyright ©; T & T Clark Ltd 2001 Version: 6th February 2008 Back  Home Page  Fr Aidan Nichols