Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses: Perceiving Splendour(Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology)

In this study, Mark McInroy argues that the 'spiritual senses' play a crucial yet previously unappreciated role in the theological aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The doctrine of the spiritual senses typically claims that human beings can be made capable of perceiving non-corporeal, 'spiritual' realities. After a lengthy period of disuse, Balthasar recovers the doctrine in the mid-twentieth century and articulates it afresh in his theological aesthetics. At the heart of this project stands the task of perceiving the absolute beauty of the divine form through which God is revealed to human beings. Although extensive scholarly attention has focused on Balthasar's understanding of revelation, beauty, and form, what remains curiously under-studied is his model of the perceptual faculties through which one beholds the form that God reveals. McInroy claims that Balthasar draws upon the tradition of the spiritual senses in order to develop the means through which one perceives the 'splendour' of divine revelation. McInroy further argues that, in playing this role, the spiritual senses function as an indispensable component of Balthasar's unique, aesthetic resolution to the high-profile debates in modern Catholic theology between Neo-Scholastic theologians and their opponents. As a third option between Neo-Scholastic 'extrinsicism', which arguably insists on the authority of revelation to the point of disaffecting the human being, and 'immanentism', which reduces God's revelation to human categories in the name of relevance, McInroy proposes that Balthasar's model of spiritual perception allows one to be both delighted and astounded by the glory of God's revelation.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1: "In the Spirit of Origen:" Balthasar's Exploration of Patristic Versions of the Spiritual Senses 2: Balthasar's Reading of Medieval and Early Modern Versions of the Spiritual Senses 3: The Spiritual Senses in a Modern Idiom: Balthasar's Contemporary Interlocutors 4: Balthasar's Distinctive Rearticulation of the Doctrine of the Spiritual Senses 5: Perceiving Splendor: The Role of the Spiritual Senses in Balthasar's Theological Aesthetics 6: Seeing (Spiritually) is Believing: The Spiritual Senses and Faith Conclusion

About the Author :
Mark McInroy is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of St Thomas.

Review :
"As a relatively brief study, and one written clearly, it would serve well in an advanced university course or a graduate course, yet it also works well as an introduction...His discussion of Balthasar's theological aesthetics in particular is both smooth and sure. There and elsewhere, McInroy shows himself to be a promising scholar who has done a service to scholarship."--Anglican Theological Review "[A] fine study...This work could be said to provide a very important guide to a crucial (and easily misperceived) tool in Balthasar's fundamental theology. Mark McInroy's elucidation of the inner workings of Balthasar's theological epistemology helps us understand more profoundly how to construe the Swiss thinker's real achievements....McInroy gives us a thought-provoking contribution to the modern/postmodern conversation about how 'knowing' happens....This is an enormously well conceived and handsomely well-achieved study. It goes without saying that it will forward Balthasar studies hugely."--Journal of the American Academy of Religion "The study is strongest in the story it tells about what, exactly, Balthasar takes from the Fathers, how he differs from his contemporaries in his use of the doctrine, and the importance he places on the interweaving of bodily and spiritual perception."--"The Journal of Religion