The Assent of Faith and the Unity of the Form in Biblical Exegesis: Balthasar’s Response to Rahner

Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar pushed back in various ways against the tide of historical criticism in the twentieth century. On the one hand Rahner wished to distance theology from biblical revelation in his turn towards the subject. In so doing, he sought to preserve theology from the rising tide of skepticism resulting from contemporary exegesis. His philosophical system left little room for historical revelation because of a fixation on individual revelation. Balthasar, on the other hand, questioned whether the Rahnerian system strips Christianity of the need to bear witness to the world, and relativizes Christ’s Incarnation. Balthasar saw the indestructible unity of the form ( gestalt ) presented to humanity in the revelation of Old and New Testaments as an antidote to the fragmentation within biblical studies. Because of gestalt, Scripture is more than a mere sum of its parts. For Balthasar, the faith of the exegete is an irreplaceable requisite for accurate hermeneutics. Dispensing with the revelatory character of the Scriptures would also be unscientific; it is an unsuitable approach to a text that calls one to bear witness. Balthasar thus correctly called for a theological hermeneutic whereby the faithful exegete recognizes the unity of the scriptural account.