Von Balthasar (1): early work

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905-1988)

• Doctoral thesis, German philology, romantic literature and philosophy.
• Entrance into the Society of Jesus in 1929.
• 1934, Jesuit faculty at Lyons, to study theology in preparation for ordination as a priest.

‘[In Lyon] he came into contact with [Henri de Lubac and] the revival of patristic studies then under way, a movement that was to have a powerfully shaping effect on Catholic theology, spirituality, and worship in the decades after World War II and that was to be one of the decisive forces preparing the way for the Second Vatican Council.’[1]

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[1] Hans Urs VonBalthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The UniverseAccording toMaximus the Confessor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003),p. 11.

• LISTEN: Vatican Radio interview with Professor Giorgio Salzano, Pontifical Gregorian University, on the importance of Balthasar today...

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Von Balthasar (4): theology on its knees

Von Balthasar advocated fresh perspectives on Christianity for the 20th century. Question: is it possible to do theology under the burden of prevailing logo-centric and conceptual, analytical and rational models of thought? He believed this was a problem because it made the Church and Christian teaching irrelevant to everyday life and Christian experience. But ultimately because it was a detriment of the ‘mystery’ which is to know and talk about God. He therefore placed centrally the Incarnation and the Trinity as mysteries of God uniquely revealed. With this, he proposed that theology should be theology on its knees, that as theologians we could only do our work ‘on bent knee’.[1]

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[1] Cf. H.U. von Balthasar, ‘Theology and Holiness’ (Theologie und Heiligkeit), an essay written in 1948, in Verbum Caro. Schriften zur Theologie I, Einsiedeln, 1960, 195-224. 

Dermot A. Power recommends: ‘For a clear elucidation of von Balthsar’s view of the synthesis between personal and ecclesial holiness, cf. Antonia Sicari, 'Theology & Holiness', Communio, XVI (1989), pp. 351-365.

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Von Balthasar (3): touched as if by lightning!

‘Today, even after thirty years, I would be able to find along this out-of-the-way trail in the Black Forest of Germany... the tree under which I was touched as if by lighting.  I was taking part in a 30 day retreat while studying German philology.  In this group, it would be considered a disgrace to defect and take up the study of theology.  But it was neither theology nor the priesthood which came to mind at this time.  It was simply this: you have nothing to choose, for you are called; ...you are but a small stone in a mosaic conceived from the beginning.’[1]

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[1] Pourquoi je me suisfait prêtre; témoignages recueillis, cited in Achiel Peelman, Le salut comme drame trinitaire: la “Theodramatik” de Hans Urs von Balthasar (Montreal: Médiaspaul, 2002), p. 25.

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Von Balthasar (2): Ressourcement (Nouvelle Théologie)

‘...[T]he study fo the Fathers offered a new approach to the mystery of Christian salvation, as it is contained in the word of Scripture and the living tradition of the Church: a way largely free of the rigid intellectual confines of the scholasticism of twentieth-century theological manuals, more self-consciously rooted in biblical proclamation and liturgical practice and more optimistic about the possibilities of a direct, experiential union of the human subject with the | infinite god. … [T]he Catholic rediscovery of patristic literature in the late 1930s ... even for those whose later work would be more in systematic or dogmatic theology … serious study of the Fathers was a decisive force in freeing their thought, early in their careers, for fresh ways of conceiving and formulating the heart of the Catholic tradition.’[1]

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[1] Hans Urs VonBalthasar, Cosmic Liturgy: The UniverseAccording to Maximus the Confessor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003),pp. 11-12.

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