Seeing the Form Book

Although it is properly set within Balthasar's wider work Glory of the Lord and the even broader 'triptych' consisting of the aesthetics, Theo-Drama, and Theo-Logic, Seeing the Form is one of the best single volumes of theology I have ever read. In it, Hans Urs von Balthasar, attempts to reclaim "beauty" as an essential category for theology. On analogy with inner-worldly beauty, God's glory shows itself to the eyes of faith which it itself grants us. This showing itself occurs in a form - a particular concrete and determinate reality - which is the expression of its own mysterious depths. These depths are expressed precisely in the form, which is never simply cast aside to get to the 'real meaning' behind it (e.g., in mere allegory). Jesus Christ is the ultimate form of God's self-expression, and as such is the ultimate organizing principle of any truly theological aesthetic. Christian faith, therefore, is a matter of an ever-deepening vision in which God himself is seen in his self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Balthasar takes us through a breathtaking array of implications of this basic form-principle of theological aesthetics in the fields of fundamental theology, dogmatics, epistemology, ecclesiology, sacramental theology, philosophy and Christian experience.