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Diaphany of the Divine Milieu or the Epiphany of Divine Glory? – The Revelation of the Natural World in Teilhard de Chardin and Hans Urs von Balthasar
Author(s) -
Tóth Beáta
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
new blackfriars
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1741-2005
pISSN - 0028-4289
DOI - 10.1111/j.1741-2005.2011.01442.x
Subject(s) - revelation , glory , philosophy , epiphany , naturalism , theology , natural (archaeology) , aside , epistemology , history , physics , linguistics , archaeology , optics
Is the world the site of diaphany where one encounters the ‘transparency of God in the universe’ in a Teilhardian fashion, or should one give credit to von Balthasar's insistence that the cosmos can never serve as the final meaning of revelation since divine revelation is best conceived as God's unsurpassable work of art, the epiphany of divine glory over against the cosmos and human history? This paper seeks to explore the contours of two different conceptions of the natural world as God's creation and as the site of revelation. While, in passing remarks throughout his treatment of the form of divine glory, von Balthasar is repeatedly dismissive of the Teilhardian vision, he seems to overlook entirely the real significance of the Teilhardian endeavour, which is directed towards seeing a different and yet essentially similar form, that of the Christiform cosmos. Far from representing a kind of naive ‘new naturalism’ (as von Balthasar contends), Teilhard de Chardin's theology ultimately gets very near the same via tertia heralded by his Swiss confrère.