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Irish Theological Quarterly

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Balthasar's Theological Aesthetics and Lacanian Psychoanalysis


Thomas Dalzell
Irish Theological Quarterly 2004; 69; 3
DOI: 10.1177/002114000406900101
The online version of this article can be found at:
http://itq.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/69/1/3

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Pontifical University, St. Patrick's College, Maynooth, Co. Kildare, Ireland

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Thomas Dalzell

Balthasars

Theological Aesthetics and


Lacanian Psychoanalysis
Convergences between the theological aesthetics of von Balthasar and the thought of
Jacques Lacan allow the author to interpret the aesthetic moments of perception and rapture in terms of truth and desire. A study of Lacans appraisal of Las Meninas demonstrates how the work of art engages the truth and desire of the subject. In turn, these are

presupposed and perfected in the encounter with Gods own work of art, Jesus Christ.
the demise of the beautiful from the high arts, philosophy,
Western religion, the plethora of
new works on theological aestheticsZ - and even the success of the recent
Seeing Salvation exhibition at the National Gallery in London - would
suggest that beauty is making a comeback. It seems that it is no longer
necessary for theology to renounce its natural interest in aesthetics.
Indeed, as Hans Urs von Balthasar has remarked, for it to continue to do
so, whether consciously or unconsciously, out of weakness or forgetfulness, or because of false scientific rigour, would entail its giving up a good
part of itself, if not the best part. Doing aesthetics, therefore, as Frank
Burch Brown has urged, is not so much a theological option as a theological necessity.5 While beauty has been important to other theologians
such as Karl Barth and Paul Tillich,6 this paper will focus on von
Balthasars theological aesthetics and attempt to bring it into dialogue
with the insights of psychoanalysis, especially as enunciated by Jacques
Lacan in his return to Freud. It is hoped that psychoanalysis will shed

Despite
belles lettres, cultural studies, and

1. See Edward Farley, Faith and Beauty. A Theological Aesthetic (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001)
1-12.
2. See, in addition to Farley, Alejandro Garcia-Rivera, The Community of the Beautiful. A
Theological Aesthetics (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1999); Richard Harries, Art and the
Beauty of God. A Christian Understanding (London: Cassell, 1993); George Pattison, Art,
Modernity and Faith: Restoring the Image (London: SCM, 1998); Patrick Sherry, Spirit and
Beauty. An Introduction to Theological Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992); Gesa
Thiessen, Theology and Modern Irish Art (Dublin: Columba Press, 1999); Richard R.
Viladesau, Theological Aesthetics. God in Imagination, Beauty and Art (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1999).


3. See Lucrezia Walker, Galleries, The Tablet (26th February 2000) 283; Neil MacGregor,
Seeing Salvation, The Tablet (1st April 2000) 448-450.
4. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Herrlichkeit. Eine theologische Äesthetik I. Schau der Gestalt
(Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1961) 110.
5. Frank Burch Brown, Religious Aesthetics. A Theological Study of Making and Meaning
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993) 37.
6. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II, eds. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh:
T & T Clark, 1970) 641f.; Paul Tillich, Main Works/Hauptwerke. Writings in the Philosophy
of Culture/ Kulturphilosophische Schriften II, ed. Michael Palmer (Berlin, New York: De
Gruyter, Evangelisches Verlagswerk, 1990).
3

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4
some

light

which is

on

what is

at

stake

not

just

in aesthetics but in

an

aesthetics

specifically theological.

I. Hans Urs

von

Balthasars

Theology of Beauty

Theological Aesthetics rather than Aesthetic Theology


Hans Urs von Balthasars theological aesthetics is a theology of Gods
self-revelation in the light of the third transcendental, beauty. For
Balthasar, the transcendental attributes of Being are linked. Therefore he
can say that the beautiful is the way in which Gods goodness gives itself
so that it can be understood as truth. Hence, Herrlichkeit is followed by a
theological dramatics, which understands the revelation of Gods glory
as a free self-gift, and a theological logics, which considers its truth. This
means that Balthasars theological aesthetics is not simply a retrieval of
the category of the beautiful for theology. He does not merely develop an
aesthetic theology, but a theological aesthetics whose central concern is
the revelation of Gods own beauty. But, as we will see, his theological
aesthetics is an aesthetics, and it is this that makes a dialogue with psychol.

analysis possible.
In Herrlichkeit, Balthasar isolates two moments in his conception of
beauty: form and splendour. Regarding the former, he notes that the language traditionally associated with a beautiful object is form (Gestalt) or
figure (Gebilde) and that the adjectives formosus (from forma) and speciosus (from species) derive from the first moment.9 But then there arises the
question of what changes the species into speciosa. This refers to the second moment, and, for Balthasar, it is the splendour which radiates from
within the form. In the beautiful object, according to Balthasar, we are
confronted with two moments at the same time. We encounter not only
the form but something else - splendour - which evokes rapture which,
for Balthasar, is a matter of transport. 10
That Balthasars theological aesthetics, while interested in Gods
beauty, remains an aesthetics as such, is clear from his view that the radiance of Gods glory reveals itself within the radiance of Being. In other
words, the inner life of God revealed in the beautiful form of Christ sheds

light on the mystery of Being. But this has implications for the
human subject. If the divine glory reveals itself within the structures of
natural aesthetics, this means that human perception must play a mediating role in the appreciation of the divine mystery. Hence Balthasars
claim in his dialogue with Karl Barth, that, since Gods revelation has to
take place within the structures of metaphysics if it is to be perceived at
new

7. I

am

grateful to Dr. Declan Marmion, SM


Theology and Philosophy, Dublin,

Institute of

and Dr. Gesa Thiessen of the Milltown


for their helpful comments on an earlier

draft of this paper.


8. See Balthasar, Theologik I: Wahrheit der
9. Balthasar, Herrlichkeit I, 18.
10. Ibid. 18; 112.

Welt, 255; 246.

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all, Barths analogia fidei must contain within itself the analogic entis.ll
That having been said, Balthasars own distinction between the natural a
priori (philosophical faith as openness) and the theological a priori
(theological faith) confirms his position that what faith perceives is more
than the beauty of Being. In other words, for Balthasar, there is only an
analogy between aesthetics and an aesthetics which is specifically theological, one which is interested in Gods own beauty, the beauty of Gods
Trinitarian love. Yet, as such, his theological aesthetics has to remain an
aesthetics, because he recognizes that the natural structures of the human
subject have to be respected, if Trinitarian beauty is to be perceived at all.
Our question is whether psychoanalysis can help us understand those structures.

2.

Philosophical and Theological Aesthetic Openness

Since Balthasars aesthetics deals with the perception of divine beauty


through the form (Gestalt) of Christ - the locus par excellence of
divine beautys self revelation - he examines the nature of that perception with a view to understanding how it is similar and dissimilar to nat,
ural vision. His starting point is that faith is required, if the subject is to
see it for what it is, since, in his view, Gods own splendour cannot be
reduced to other instances of aesthetic radiance which can be perceived
in the world. Yet, he recognizes that natural or philosophical perception
and faith-perception are not beyond comparison. His argument is that,
just as nature and grace are compatible, Gods self-revelation is offered to
the human subject in such a way that it can be seen.&dquo; Another way of
putting this is that there is an analogy between the perception of God as
revealed in the Christ-form and the perception of what is disclosed in
other finite beings. Regarding the latter, the horizon of the human spirit
is thought to extend beyond worldly being to absolute Being; indeed, it is
only in the light of Being that worldly objects can be perceived. But
Balthasars point is that the light of faith shines in the locus of the same
spirit that knows Being in such a way that respects it and makes it capable of something more than a natural or philosophic act. 13 This is confirmed by his acceptance of Heideggers idea of Ekstasis. In the latter,
Balthasar notes, two aspects of the philosophic act are brought together:
dread (Ent-setzen) as the finite discovers in itself the opening up of infinity, and rapture (Ent-zucken) at perceiving such a self-bestowing fullness.&dquo;
We will see later how psychoanalysis has something to say about the
dread experienced in the context of aesthetics. For Balthasar, perception
and rapture - transport into the depths of God - are central to the act of
faith also.
in and

11.

Balthasar, Karl Barth. Darstellung

und

Deutung seiner Theologie (Köln: Hegner, 1962)

177-181.
12. Balthasar, Herrlichkeit I, 113.
13. See ibid. 157.
14. See ibid. 151 (Heideggers text

not

cited).

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is thought to surpass the


Balthasar
Moreover,
argues that, when Being is perceived
philosophic
as Trinitarian love, the dread involved in philosophical faith is
removed. 15 Hence, if his theological aesthetics attempts to overcome
extrinsicism by showing that the act of faith has a foundation in the natural openness of the human spirit, it is also clear that he maintains a discontinuity between the two. For him, the human subjects natural a priori,
taken to be the ability to understand all existents in the light of Being, is
surpassed by the theological a priori (faith) as its ontological and epistemological elevation. Yet, what is important to this paper is that he does
recognize a continuity. Just as grace does not destroy nature but perfects
it, according to the old scholastic dictum, so too Balthasars theological
aesthetics does respect and fulfil the natural aesthetic openness of the
human subject. Responding to the light of faith, therefore, is no more
heteronymous than the subjects being open to the light of Being.

On the other hand,

theological perception

act.

3.

Rapture in Theological Aesthetics


as form and splendour are united,

For Balthasar, just

so perception and
aesthetics
not
rapture go together. 16
theological
only includes a theof
but
also
a
of
the
elevation
or transport so as
vision,
ory
theory
subjects
to participate in the glory of God made manifest in Christ as the form of
forms. Just as Heidegger included rapture (Ent-zucken) in his conception
of the philosophic act, Balthasars aesthetics, unlike much aesthetic theology which concentrates on revelation alone, contends that the revelation of Gods beauty is not art for arts sake, but intends the rapturous
transport of the subject who perceives it. Of course, for Balthasar, the rapture in question does not carry one only to the heights of Being. Rather,
the Holy Spirit is understood to draw or transport the believer in rapture
into the sphere of glory inside the Trinitarian God. But, as we have seen,
if this is what happens in faith, such theological rapture is thought to
respect and perfect philosophical rapture. Can psychoanalysis shed any
light on the latter? Is such rapture not the awakening of desire which is
never satisfied and hence can be understood - theologically - to carry the
subject to the threshold of faith?
For Balthasar, faith and grace are complementarily structured so that
one culminates in the other. Faith is understood as the act of acceptance,
the obedient opening oneself to the revealing God who calls the believer
to a graced relatlonship.&dquo; But this gracing of the human subject will not
bP at the expense of his or her humanity. Balthasar does not accept that,
when the finite subject is drawn into relationship with the God of Jesus
Christ, his or her natural capacities are brought to nothing or replaced.
On the contrary, his argument is that God perfects those capacities for a

His

15. Ibid. 151-152.

16. Ibid. 10.


17. Ibid. 284-285.

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rapture analogous to, but completely beyond, the rapture which is an


actualization of his or her natural powers. But what are those powers?
What is aesthetic perceptiveness and rapture? To attempt an answer to
these questions, we will now turn to psychoanalysis and in particular to
Jacques Lacans views on what is happening when we are confronted by
visual art.
II. The Contribution from

Psychoanalysis

1. Lacan and Visual Art: The Gaze


Jacques Lacan does not set out to analyse a painter, nor does he involve
himself in art criticism. His interest is not in the meaning of a painting as

representation but in the effect it has on the viewer. While one might
think that a painter, like an actor, wishes to attract the eye of the viewer,
Lacan thinks not, and he distinguishes the eye from what he calls the
gaze. In Seminar XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of PsychoanalysiS, he
associates the eye with the looking proper to the register he calls the

imaginary.&dquo; It is a narcissistic looking, as in a mirror, which offers the


illusion of completion devoid of lack, and he claims that it can even be
detected in philosophies which understand consciousness as a turning
back on itself.&dquo; In Lacans opinion, this is not what art is about. Why do
we look at paintings then, especially portraits? When we see a painting,
Lacan contends, something slips and is to some degree eluded. This is
what he calls the gaze. While we are the ones looking at the painting,
something in the work of art - even if no eyes are to be seen20 - gazes at
us; we are looked at. Moreover, for Lacan, there is something absent to
be observed in every picture, which is not the case in mere looking.&dquo; In
every picture, he claims, this absence is replaced by the gaze.22 In other
words, the gaze comes in the place of what has been lost ever since the
first separation of the infant from its mother. That loss causes a lack and
because that lack is intolerable we put something in its place, what Lacan
calls the objet petit a. The objet a of Lacanian algebra in the scopic field
18. For Lacan, the Ego is an imaginary construct dating from what he calls the mirror
in it the infant is captivated by its own image (see Lacan, The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience in Écrits. A

stage;

Selection, tr. Alan Sheridan [London: Routledge, 1999] 1-7). However, according to Lacan,
the painting is not a mirror; it does not reveal the illusory completeness of the Ego, but the
division of the subject.
19. See ibid. 74.
20. Ibid. 101.
21. In reference to the theft of the Mona Lisa, Darian Leader has suggested that our looking for things once we have lost them might give us a clue to why we look at visual art.
The crowds that flocked to the Louvre after the theft demonstrate the true function of the
work of art: to evoke the gap between the artwork and the place it occupies. As Leader
points out, for Le Figaro at least, that place was an enormous, horrific, gaping void. See
Darian Leader, Stealing the Mona Lisa. What Art Stops us from Seeing (London: Faber and
Faber, 2002) 7; 66-67.
22. Ibid. 108.

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gaze symbolizes our lack and it is for this reason that a


us. It may frighten us; we may even experience dread
disturb
painting may
because the painting confronts us with our loss. Hence, Lacan argues,
from the moment the gaze appears, the subject tries to avoid it by having
recourse to mere looking in which the gaze is elided.
is the

gaze.23 The

2. The Ambassadors

Anamorphosis

is

by Hans Holbein the Younger

an

artistic device used

to

give

distorted image but

which, when viewed from a certain point, shows what is represented in its
proportions. While the earliest examples appear in the notes of
Leonardo da Vinci, a classic example is to be found in The Ambassadors
(1533) by Hans Holbein the Younger. 14 This painting depicts two characters : the ambassadors Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve, but it is
known for a curious object in its foreground. If, according to Lacan, a
painting looks at us, and even makes us into a painting, 15 it is not the
ambassadors, in his opinion, that look at us. It is, rather, this strange
oblique object that can be apprehended as a skull, but only, perhaps, as
one turns around on leaving the room. The picture looks at us from the
deaths head and captures us. We are, according to Lacan, drawn into the
picture and represented there as caught.26 But as such, this painting is a
trap not for the eye but for the gaze.27 What the elongated skull manifests
is the gaze, what we put in place of the lost object.&dquo; It confronts us with
our loss. It is this that both fascinates and disturbs. It confronts us with
the lack that causes our desire. For Lacan, it makes visible for us the subject as castrated in the sense of having given up an imaginary unity with
the mother. It reveals the imaged embodiment of what is called in
Lacanian algebra the minus phi of castration where phi represents the
phallus that is understood to be the symbol of desire.29 In other words, a
painting confronts us with the primal separation, which causes our lack,
which causes our desire. This, in Lacans opinion, is the value of a painting ; it is not a representation, of the ambassadors, for example. What it
manifests - the gaze - is a representative of what remains absent.
true

3. Las Meninas by Diego Velazquez


Las Meninas, the seventeenth-century masterpiece by Veldzquez,
which, interestingly, was called the theology of painting by Luca
Giordano,3 is a classic example of a painting which disturbs the viewer.
23. Lacan adds the

scopic drive

to

the list of drives

(see ibid. 78). If every drive has

an

object, the object of the scopic drive is the gaze.


24.
and
25.
26.
27.

For various views on Holbein, see Mark Roskill (ed.),


Reception, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

Hans Holbein:

Painting,

Prints

Lacan, ibid. 106.


Ibid. 92.

Ibid. 89; 101.

28. Ibid. 89.


29. Ibid.
30. See Dieter Beaujean,
Meninas can be viewed on:

Velázquez. Life and Work (Köln: Könemann, 2000) 85.

http://museoprado.mcu.es/visitas.html

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Las

For Lacan, it demonstrates well the subjects relation in the scopic field to
the objet a, cause of desire. The title refers to the young court companions
the maids of honour - of the daughter of Philip IV and Marianna of
Austria, the Infanta Margarita. Given this name in the nineteenth century, it was known as The Family of Philip IV at first. Las Meninas disori-

the viewer; there is, we might say, too much going on. If this is a
in that each of the figures is looking somewhere Lacan observes in Seminar XIII, The Object in Psychoanalysis (1965-66),
that the looks are lost on some invisible point. Apart from the look of one
of the figures, Maria Agostina Sariente, no other look fixes on anything.&dquo;
Even the figure at the back, Don Jos6 Nieto Veldzquez, who is leaving, is
said to confuse us.
How was this masterpiece accomplished? Did Velazquez use a mirror to
paint the gathered personages behind him? Did he employ a stand-in for
himself while painting the meninas in front of him? Is the artist is painting the King and Queen? Are they standing in front of the painting and
being reflected in the mirror at the back and, if so, why does the perspective not work? These are the kind of questions, as Lacan remarks, that
give viewers a headache as they try to work out the trick of the paintings
construction. According to Lacan, the heart of the problem is: what is the
ents

painting of looks -

painter painting?32
Since the artist includes himself in the painting, it has been argued by
Jonathan Brown that Velazquez wanted to make it known that his declaration of the nobility of his art - as a liberal art whose guarantor was perspective - was endorsed by the king.33 But that is to enquire about the
intention of the artist. Lacan is more interested in the effect the painting
has on the viewer and the painting demonstrating that effect. Once
again, Lacan draws our attention to an absence. He disagrees with Michel
Foucaults view that this painting is the representation of representation.34
Since something is lost, Lacan thinks it can only be the representative of a
representation which remains absent (V orstellungsreprsentanz). 35
Foucault highlights the dialectic of visibility and invisibility in Las
Meninas. The painter, he notes, is visible in the painting; as he emerges
from behind the canvas, his torso and face are halfway between the visible and invisible. But, Foucault points out, what is on the canvas is invisible to us as well as what he is looking at, although we can place ourselves
at that point occupying the same position as his subject. Furthermore, he
adds that there is another invisible point exterior to the painting: we
31. See Lacan, Seminar 17 (11.05.66), Seminar XIII (1965-66). The Object of Psychoanalysis. Unpublished tr. Cormac Gallagher, 1-17 at 14.
32. See Lacan Seminar 17 (11.05.66), Seminar XIII, 10.
33. See Brown, Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1978) 101; 96-7.
34. See Foucault, The Order of Things. An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (London:
Routledge, 1970) 3-16.
35. See Lacan, Seminar 17 (11.05.66), 11; 9.

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10

dont see where the painter is painting from. For Foucault, it is invisibility
that the painting makes perceptible, the invisibility of what is on the
other side of the canvas, of where the subjects are standing, where the
spectator is, where the painter is painting from.36 For Lacan, on the other
hand, the problem with the painting is not one of visibility. The difficulty,
Lacan argues, is not that the gaze is invisible; the issue is that it cannot
be visualized at all because it is not a gaze that is seen.
Like The Ambassadors, Lacan speaks about Las Meninas capturing us;
the one who looks at it is fastened on it (y est boucl), is caught into its
space.37 More importantly, he highlights the dreamy look of the figure at
the back who is leaving. He contends that this is the point where the
lines of perspective come together, the point of capture and of the action
the painting exercises on the viewer. While Foucault thinks the dreamy
figure may be about to enter the room, Lacan proposes that Velazquez
himself is leaving us, leaving us with his painting for our eternal interro-

gation.38
Later in Seminar 2~III, we find Las Meninas contrasted with the mirror.
The picture-subject relation is said to be fundamentally different to the
mirror-subject relation because the former refers to the lost object and to
the subject as divided.39 If a mirror offers the completeness of representation, the picture is, for Lacan, but the representative of a representation.&dquo;
In other words, the subject is positioned by Las Meninas by being sustained in his or her lack - not illusory completeness - in relation to the
objet a, cause of desire, made manifest by the painting. Hence Lacans
pointing out that if Velazquez responds to the Infantas let me see with
you do not see me from where I am looking at you, he does not say 4there,
from where I am looking at you, because the there is elided. In other
words, it is a gaping place, an unmarked interval, an absence.41 In short,
if Las Meninas incarnates the gaze,42 Lacan believes it demonstrates that
the gaze is not a seen gaze but a gaze in another register.
In all this, Lacan would seem to be right in not attempting to analyse
the artist since, if the artist did not tell us his or her story, this would be
in the imaginary. The importance of Lacans contribution, rather, is his
showing us the effect the work of art can have on us in awakening our
desire. The work of art confronts us not with an image of our own
36.
37.
38.
39.

See Foucault, ibid.


Lacan, Seminar 17 (11.05.66), 10.
See Foucault, ibid. 10; Lacan, ibid. 12; 16.
See Lacan, Seminar 19 (25.05.66), Seminar XIII (1965-66). The Object

in Psychoanalysis. Unpublished tr. Cormac Gallagher, 1-12 at 2.


40. Hence the complaints when the Louvre decided to put the Mona Lisa under glass. On
the other hand, as Darian Leader reminds us, the legendary art dealer Duveen used to heavily varnish his paintings because his clients used to enjoy looking at their own image in

them (see Leader, ibid. 28).


41. Ibid. 5.
42. See Brendan Staunton, Lacan on Las Meninas. The Visual Structure of the Human
Subject, The Letter 12 (Spring 1998) 25-40 at 34.

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11

completion but with the lack that causes desire. Psychoanalysis, therefore, is not primarily interested in the artist, despite Freuds reflections on
Leonardo da Vinci;43 it is concerned rather with the effect art has on the
viewer. Nor, according to psychoanalysis, is art about representation; its
function and effect are elsewhere.
III. Balthasar and Lacan:
1. An

Convergences

Analogous Perception

Both theological aesthetics and psychoanalysis are concerned with perception and transport. For Balthasar, Jesus Christ is Gods representative.
God is revealed in him and that revelation is given for faith-perception.
In addition, as the manifestation of Gods Trinitarian beauty, he is
thought to enable Christian ecstasy or transport. Lacanian psychoanalysis, as we have seen, is also interested in what is perceived in a work of art
and has its own way of understanding what the work of art provokes. But
Lacan will not reduce its idea of perception to the visual. Just as Balthasar

deliberately hyphenates Wahrnehmung (perception) to Wahr-nehmung44


(taking to be true), so Lacanian psychoanalysis is concerned with the perception via the work of art of the subjects own truth, something which
cannot be visualized but - as unconscious - is only accessible through
representatives.45
What makes Balthasars aesthetics specifically theological is that, while
its proximate object is Jesus Christ, its ultimate object is the beauty of
Gods Trinitarian love. For that reason, Jesus is not thought to be only
another beautiful form, another instance of beauty in the world. Balthasar
contrasts such worldly forms with his form and regards him as the archetypal form. For Balthasar, he is the form of forms, the measure of measures, the glory of glories.46 Although he is regarded as the analogia entis in
person, he is not merely another revelation of the beauty of Being but
rather the very appearance of the beauty of Gods inner love. He is the
representative of Gods

own love in the world. And if the aesthetic act


of transport, this perception of divine beauty is also
thought to lead to transport. If God is made visible in the Christ-form,
those who see his form are said to be caught up in love of this God they

includes

cannot

a moment

see. 41

43. See Freud, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, Art and Literature,
Penguin Freud Library 14. (London: Penguin, 1990) 143-231.
44. See Herrlichkeit I, 10.
45. Hence if the German priest-artist Sieger Köder has suggested that the figures in Las
Meninas gain their importance from the unimportance of their environment and that,
apart from them, there is almost nothing to be seen (see Köder, Ein Fest der Narren? Zur
Geschichte meines Bildes Das Mahl mit den Sündern (1971-73), Geist und Leben 2 [2002]
135-141 at 140), it can be argued that what is incarnated in the painting cannot be seen.
46. See Balthasar, Herrlichkeit I, 450-451.
47. See Preface of Christmas, I in The Roman Missal (cited Balthasar, Herrlichkeit I, 120).

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12

But

that if psychoanalysis is also concerned with what is


that the painting, for example, does not make the
perceived,
invisible visible. What is perceived is at a level other than seeing as such.
One does not see a representation but is confronted with a representative
of what is missing. If, for Lacan, a signifier represents the subject which
remains hidden,48 can it not be argued that, in the context of divine manifestation, Jesus functions in a certain sense like a divine signifier? As
Gods own Word incarnate, could we not say that he represents God in
Gods apparent absence? In Balthasars own view, Jesus becomes humanitys representative (Stellvertreter) before God, in the sense of taking the
place of sinful humanity. On the other, and what is more relevant to this
paper, he understands him as Gods representative (Reprasentanz) in the
world.49
If this suggests similarities between what psychoanalysis understands to
be happening when one sees a picture and what is happening when one
is confronted with Christ as Gods work of art, it has to be conceded that
there are important dissimilarities also. There is only an analogy between
them. If the gaze is thought to represent what is absent, the lost object,
Balthasar does not think that the splendour of Gods beauty is situated
behind the form; rather, the form is its very appearing. 50 More importantly,
while Jesus can be understood to represent the God who is hidden, it is
the viewer that puts the gaze in place of the lost object. The incarnate
Word is positioned by God not the viewer. Although it might be argued
that his humanity is from below, from the world, it is on Gods initiative
that it is assumed by the eternal Word. Jesus, therefore, cannot be reduced
we

have

seen

it maintains

to a

Lacanian

2. An

objet a.

Analogous Rapture

Like a work of art, or any instance of worldly beauty, Balthasar understands Jesus to cause rapture or transport as the believer is caught up in
love of the God they cannot see. Is there not a certain similarity between
the work of art manifesting the subjects lack and so awakening his or her
desire, and Gods work of art enabling such transport? Is such graced
transport not grounded in the human metonymic movement which characterizes the desire of every subject? Just as Balthasars theological aesthetics is guided by the principle that grace does not destroy nature, but
perfects it, does not the displacement effected by the Christ-form not
respect and perfect the natural structure of human desire?
48. See Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 207.
49. This dual function is important to Balthasar who bases his argument for the restriction
of priestly ordination to males on the basis that while all Christians continue the redemptive work of substituting (Stellvertretung) for sinners, only males-like Jesus- can represent
Gods active paternity in the world. On this, see Robert A. Pesarchick, The Trinitarian
Foundation of Human Sexuality as Revealed by Christ According to Hans Urs von Balthasar.
The Revelatory Significance of the Male Christ and the Male Ministerial Priesthood (Rome:
Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2000).
50. See Balthasar, Herrlichkeit I, 18.

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13

Desire is

key concept in Lacanian psychoanalysis. Following Spinoza

and Hegel as interpreted by Kojeve,5 Lacan believes that it constitutes


the human subject. But what is desire? As a continuous unconscious
force, it is to be distinguished, in his view, from both need and demand.
When a child demands the satisfaction of biological needs, the demand is
at the same time asking for something more from the Other. When need
has been satisfied, something remains unsatisfied. This, for Lacan, is
desire. It cannot be reduced to need or demand but remains when the former is taken away from the latter.52 As such, desire can never be satisfied.
It is, according to Lacan, always the desire for something else. In
Lacanian terms, desire is a metonymy;53 that is to say, its object is constantly being deferred. Satisfaction only leads to disappointment and the
resumption of desire. No material object ever satisfies it.
If this is reminiscent of the Blondelian shift, with its dynamic tension
between la volonte voulante and l.cr, volonte vouLue which carries one to the
threshold of faith,54 for Lacan, the metonymy of desire is unconscious. As
an unconscious dynamism, it is thought to be due to language. The subject endlessly tries to retrieve what was lost when he or she first entered
language. When, for example, Freuds grandson used his Fort! - da! game
to symbolize in speech his mothers absence and presence respectively, the
relationship was no longer one of immediacy but from then on one mediated by language. But that beginning of the childs world being mediated
by language implied something being lost, a lack that could never be
filled by any material object. This is the lack that causes desire. As we saw
earlier, the principal signifier in Lacanian psychoanalysis of what is
desired is the phallus. Rather than a physical organ, it is the symbol of
what is desired. But the point is that, as the signifier of the lacking object,
it is impossible to tie down; it is forever receding. It is the fact of this castration or separation from the (lost) object, he contends, that confronts
us in the work of art.55
But desire also has its place in the field of religion and theology. In
Freuds Future of an ILlusion, the origins of religious ideas are illusions, fulfilments of the oldest wishes of humankind. The continuation of a sense
of helplessness throughout life, which in childhood occasioned the need
for fatherly protection, made it necessary, in Freuds view, to cling to the
51. See Baruch

Spinoza, Ethics, tr. A. Boyle (London: Dent 1910); Lacan, Seminar XI, 275
(cited Dylan Evans, An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, London:
Routledge, 2001, 36); Alexandre Kojève, Introduction à la lecture de Hegel (Paris: Gallimard,
1947); cited in David Maceys Introduction in Jacques Lacan, The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psycho-analysis, vii-xxxiii at xix.
52. See Jacques Lacan, Écrits. A Selection, 287.
53. Ibid. 175.
54. By Blondelian shift is

meant

the rejection of extrinsicism in favour of seeing

an

self-transcending dynamism in human beings before they make an act of faith. See
Gabriel Daly, Transcendence and Immanence. A Study in Catholic Modernism and Integralism
innate

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) 30-33.


55. Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts, 89.

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14
existence of

an even more powerful father, God.56 Elsewhere, Freud


understands the origin of religion in terms of unconscious guilt due to the
murder of the primal father and a deferred obedience, which tries to placate him.5 But there can also be, as Tom McGrath has pointed out, a religion based not on need but on desire, something which was familiar to
Augustine whose heart was restless.58 For McGrath, desire, not need, is
religions point of emergence in a more profound sense.
The mystics are experts in desire. In Lacans Seminar XX, entitled
Encore, he argues that the mystic experiences a jouissance59 that is more
than phallic. While he thinks, for example, there is no doubt that
Berninis Teresa of Avila is experiencing jouissance, her ecstasy cannot, in
his view, be reduced to sexual pleasure.6 Nor is it to be understood in
terms of love. As Helen Sheehan has argued, the mystics jouissance is not
about love but about desire.61 Support for this is found in Teresa of Avilas
distinguishing union (love) and rapture or transport; union is said to be
altogether inward, while the ends of rapture are both inward and outward. 61 In short, desire cannot be reduced to enjoyment and for desire to
exist there must be distance, not unity; the desire of the mystic transports
her (or him) to the God who remains transcendent.
Moreover, desire is also of concern, not just to religion, but to theology.
If, for Lacan, desire emerges in the dialectic of infant and mother, much
of what Balthasar has to say about the relationships between philosophy
and theology, nature and grace, and even the Son and the Father in the
Trinitarian life of God is grounded in his understanding of the childmother relation .6 Following Henri de Lubacs position that there is in the
human spirit a natural desire for a supernatural end 64 Balthasar under-

56. See Freud, The Future of an Illusion, Penguin Freud Library 12 (London: Penguin,
1991) 179-241 at 212.
57. See Freud, Totem and Taboo, Penguin Freud Library 13 (London: Penguin, 1990) 43224 at 203-205.
58. See Tom McGrath, SJ , The Illusion of the Future: Freuds Anxiety and Religion, The
Letter 6 (Spring 1996) 79-90.
59. The English word enjoyment does not include the sexual connotations of the French
original. Initially used by Lacan as a term for sexual pleasure, jouissance comes to designate
the subjects enjoyment of desiring as such, since desire cannot be satisfied by any object.
It is later distinguished from desire as its aim and also from pleasure as its opposite. For a
much fuller treatment, see Dylan Evans, From Kantian Ethics to Mystical Experience: An
Exploration of Jouissance in Dany Nobus (ed.), Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis
(London: Rebus Press, 1998) 1-28.
60. See Lacan, God and the Jouissance of the Woman, Encore. tr. Jacqueline Rose (cited
in Juliet Mitchell and Jacqueline Rose, eds., Feminine Sexuality. Jacques Lacan and the école
freudienne [London: Macmillan Press, 1982] 137-148 at 146-147).
61. See Helen Sheehan, The Jouissance of the Mystic, The Letter 1 (Summer 1994) 111116 at 113.
62. See Teresa of Avila, The Life of Teresa of Avila, by herself. tr. J. M. Cohen (London:
Penguin Classics, 1957) 136 (cited in Sheehan, ibid.).
63. See Thomas Dalzell, The Dramatic Encounter of Divine and Human Freedom in the
Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (Bem: Peter Lang Verlag, 2000) 51-58.
64. See De Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural. tr. Rosemary Sheed (London:
Chapman, 1967) 72.

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15

stands our relationship with God to be a continuation of what occurs in


the primal relationship the child has with his or her mother.65
Mythological religion, while in need of purification by philosophy, for
there can only be one God, is based, in his view, on the childs experience
in relation to the mother. Awe, prayer, and sacrifice are thought to continue the childs abandonment to her, although it is only with the God of
Israel, as both loving and absolute (Plotinuss One was impersonal), that
the possibility first emerges that the promise written into the child might
reach fulfilment.66
While this self-abandonment of the child might suggest, in Lacanian
terms, a renunciation of the childs subjectivity in the attempt to be
something for the mother,6 something imaginary and not unrelated to
looking as opposed to the gaze, Balthasar accepts that the child must be
made to move beyond the mother into relation with others and with
God.68 He notes, however, that all that is experienced afterwards is disappointment and nostalgia. Nothing and no one, not even the mother,
matches the original intuition of fullness and happiness; what is experienced is only beings, not Being, world, not God.69
For Balthasar, the childs early experience of his or her mother is a
basis in later life for what Aquinas calls natural love of God above all
things.7 But in Balthasars conception, the expectation grounded in the
child-mother relation appears to be one of union with God. However, it
must be recognized that distance and alterity are important to Balthasar
as well. The world does not, in his view, dissolve or lose itself in its relationship with God, but retains its distinctiveness. On the one hand, the
childs response to the mother, which, according to Balthasar, corresponds to the finite souls yearning for the One in Plotinus, is taken to
be the basis for Christian rapture and transport, as encounter with God
comes to be situated within the encounter in God. On the other, the
otherness of the finite is said to be forever guaranteed by the otherness
of the Son, since the metaphorical distance between the divine persons
is thought to be eternally held open by the Holy Spirit.&dquo; For Lacan, distance is important for desire and Balthasars idea of relationship with
God does not remove distance but leaves room for the metonymic
movement of desire.

65. Balthasar, Der Zugang zur Wirklichkeit Gottes, Mysterium salutis, Grundriß heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik II (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1967) 15-45 at 21.
66. Ibid. 24.
67. See Joel

Dor, Introduction to the Reading of Lacan. The Unconscious is Structured Like a


Language (Northvale: Jason Aronson, 1997) 98-99; Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject.
Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997) 54.
68. See Balthasar, Der Zugang zur Wirklichkeit Gottes, 16-17.
69. Ibid. 27.
70. Thomas Aquinas, ST I-Ilae q. 109 a. 3. (cited ibid. 29).
71. Balthasar, Theodramatik III. Die Handlung (Einsiedeln: Johannes,

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1980) 301.

16

Conclusion

being argued here that psychoanalysis can replace religion, or


theological aesthetics can be reduced to the mechanisms which are
more properly the field of psychoanalysis. Nor is it being suggested that
either God or Jesus is a Lacanian objet a, a partial object which we put in
place of what we have lost. Rather it is being proposed that there are elements in the Lacans approach that can shed light on the human subjects
relationship with God. Gods self-revelation, if it is to be perceived, meets
human subjects as they are in their structure. Just as theological aesthetics is an aesthetics, just as it respects and perfects the subjects aesthetic
structures of perception and transport, so it is possible to argue that the
supreme instance of Gods beauty in the world is not only revelatory but
as a representative of what remains hidden - engages the subjects desire
and carries it to the heights of the transcendent God.
It is

not

that

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