5 - Analogy's unaccountable scaffolding

Summary

JACOB

A clear night in the desert

And even the camels are blinking in wonder:

The ladder is too famous

To be anything other than golden

glorious, great before God,

Unless you were there

In which case it shone

In a ray of moon made sun

Softly enmetalled and yet

A thing of wood

Angled from earth

To heady nothingness.

Jacob sees each rung

Each nail dug in

Unaccountably scaffolding skyward.

How long it must have taken

What endless patience

In heavenly construction.

How it must have disturbed the angels –

Who watched it with a thankful sigh

Lower through cloud –

Who tread upon it cautiously.

(sally bushell)

Identity and analogy

What the last chapter raised was the crucial question of whether the force of theodramatics – with all its potential in the service of a vibrant theological approach to history, and a vibrant eschatology – is not inevitably muted by stressing the importance of a certain sort of Christian ‘indifference’. A concept of ‘indifference’ in the guise of ecclesial obedience is what we find in von Balthasar's work; it is a concept which, while drawing on a long Christian tradition, nonetheless acquires a significant part of its content from a set of Hegelian associations.

It was a question that had begun to emerge already at the close of chapter 2.