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Examples of how Peirce's semiotics lend philosophical credibility to Hans Urs von

Balthasar's idea of seeing the form of divine Beauty:


I.
https://www.academia.edu/23926605/Strange_Companions_The_Possibility_of_Hans_U
rs_von_Balthasar_and_Comparative_Theology
Strange Companions? The Possibility of Hans Urs von Balthasar and Comparative
Theology by Joshua Brown
Benets of Reading Balthasar for Comparative Theology
At this point we have reached a position from which we may suggest three main benets
Balthasars theological aesthetic offers comparative theology. First, Balthasars
theological aesthetics offers an extremely helpful avenue for thinking about
non-Christian texts, especially those of South and East Asian lineage. There is no need
here to rehearse the various criticisms about the concept of religion and how it effects
the study of non-Christian traditions; we can here simply point out that viewing traditions
such as Islam, Confucianism, and Hinduism as religions can easily draw attention to
propositional differences with Christianity, or make one so keen to avoid conflict that the
propositional content of Christian proclamation is diminished. The theological aesthetic
imagination cultivated in reading Balthasar shifts focus toward the cultural embodiment
of religious doctrine and commitment as the idiom of the encounter with God. This is an
instinct developed throughout Balthasars corpus, which as often commends a
Cervantes or Claudel as it does St. Irenaeus or St. Bonaventure. For the comparative
theologian, this sort of focus on aesthetics, cultural embodiment, and practice can allow
fuller insight into what aspects of non-Christian religious traditions can be incorporated
into the Gospel.

The comparative theologian is able to give the same answer as St. Thomas to the
crucix as San Domenico: Lord, I want nothing but yourself. Such a dispositional
foundation enriches comparative theology, as can be seen in Clooneys book His Hiding
Place is Darkness and indeed his theology in general. This book does not issue a
challenge to Christianity that it has failed in a certain notional or practical aspect that
must now be corrected by a heretofore-untested comparative reading. Rather, Clooney
speaks of the experience of the grieved lover striving for the beloved, and seeks to
explore this experience in greater fullness. Whereas a deciency model of comparative
theology would draw its power from limiting and critiquing its own tradition, Clooneys
model can explore the depths of both Christianity and Hinduism, all in the language of
love. Hence, Clooney grounds his expansive comparative work in the specicity and
particularity of his own enduring love for Jesus Christ. The foundation of love allows to
delve deeply into the particularity of his Christian eros and draw Hindu wisdom within
this eros, rather, than set it aside for the sake of a totalizing theological intellectual
grammar.

I have simply endeavored to show how Hans Urs von Balthasars theology is full of
promise for the comparative theologian. Even though Balthasar himself was not trained
in any comparative method and shows little ability to have done so, his theological
perspective is such that it inspires deep, rich, and meaningful theological readings of
non-Christian traditions. Because Balthasar sees revelation not in terms of propositions,
but in terms of the divine Gestalt that approaches us, the form is itself innite, and able
to accept congurations that seem alien to it at rst. Because Balthasar sees the Gestalt
as founded in and testifying to Christ, it allows the comparative theological task that
invaluable central anchor, informing us at all times about what sort of portrait we are
composing, and allowing us a way to perceive what gives life to our reading of
non-Christian texts. And, because Balthasar sees the encounter with revelation in terms
of ecstatic aesthetic experience, it makes room for the loving heart to take up
non-Christian testimony in understanding, perceiving, and describing the Gestalt of God.

II.
https://www.amazon.com/Community-Beautiful-Theological-Aesthetics-Theology/dp/08
14659233

The Community of the Beautiful: A Theological Aesthetics by Alejandro R. Garcia-Rivera


The Community of the Beautiful is not simply an analysis of Balthasar's theology; there
exists a more personal and concrete reason for a reconsideration of the connection
between God and the beautiful. The experience of a particular living ecclesial tradition,
the Latin Church of the Americas, may be a guide to a world that lost its condence in
the religious dimensions of the beautiful. Garcia-Rivera recasts the question of
theological aesthetics posed above in light of the religious experience of the Latin
Church of the Americas so that the question becomes: What moves the human heart?
To answer that question, Garcia-Rivera draws on along-ignored philosophical tradition.
The philosophical semiotics of Charles Peirce and Josiah Royce enter into dialogue with
the theological aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar to describe the traditional
transcendentals, the True and the Good, as communities. The nal transcendental, the
beautiful, enters into conversation with the semiotic aesthetics of Jan Mukarovsky and
the religious experience of the Latin American Church to become the dazzling Vision of
the community of the beautiful, God's community.
III.
https://www.academia.edu/7739396/With_John_Sobert_Sylvest_Reasons_and_Values_
of_the_Heart_in_a_Pluralistic_World_Toward_a_Contemplative_Phenomenology_for_Inter
religious_Dialogue_Studies_in_Interreligious_Dialogue_20_2_2010_170-93
Reasons and Values of the Heart in a Pluralistic World: Toward a Contemplative

Phenomenology for Interreligious Dialogue, Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 20:2


(2010): 170-93
If we adopt a contemplative phenomenology that more broadly conceives religious
epistemology beyond the traditional philosophical categories of epistemic justication
(empirical and logical) and normative praxes (ethical, moral and practical) to include
other indispensable human values as well, such as the esthetic, affective, aspirational,
relational, and other embodied aspects of all that humans experience as true, good,
beautiful, and unitive, then these additional perspectives will contribute to a more holistic
(hence, authentic) anthropology.
In a reality that is radically graced, pervasively incarnational, profusely pneumatological.
We are perhaps guided more so by Beauty and Goodness to hold these types of beliefs
as Truth and not so much by metaphysical proofs.
Nowhere in our argument do we presume the doctrine of soteriological universalism. As
with Balthasar (1988) and Barth (see Colwell 1992), we might even hope for such, but in
the end, given the creaturely freedom to resist even divine grace as incomprehensible
as such resistance might beit remains possible that some might not be nally saved.

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