Fr. Raymond Gawronski, S.J. (Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley)
Open to all graduate and undergraduate students (including non-University of Chicago students). Copies of the readings will be provided. Registration is required as space is limited. Please contact Mark Franzen with any questions.
Hans Urs von Balthasar’s distinction between “sitting” and “kneeling” theologies has become paradigmatic. He also thought the split between thinking (dogmatic) and praying (mystical/spiritual) theologies has been the worst tragedy to befall Christianity in its long history. In his Gifford Lectures of 1980-81, Persian born scholar and “perennialist” Seyyed Hossein Nasr surveyed the sweep of Western intellectual history, tracing the separation of sacred/initiatory knowledge from abstract conceptualization. While both identify a historic break, von Balthasar’s account differs profoundly in being radically Christocentric, centering on the Logos that is Jesus Christ.
In this three-hour seminar session, participants will discuss von Balthasar’s programmatic essay “Theology and Sanctity” (Explorations in Theology I, pp. 181-209) and then attempt a dialogue with Nasr’s “Knowledge and Its Desacralization” (Knowledge and the Sacred, ch. 1), with an eye toward healing what many see has been a catastrophic rupture.