Hans Urs von Balthasar
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Hans Urs von Balthasarwas a Swiss theologian and Catholic priest who was to be created a cardinal of the Catholic Church but died before the ceremony. He is considered one of the most important Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century...
NationalitySwiss
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth12 August 1905
CountrySwitzerland
men encounters god-love
Prior to an individual's encounter with the love of God at a particular time in history, however, there has to be another, more fundamental and archetypal encounter, which belongs to the conditions of possibility of the appearance of divine love to man.
reality reality-of-love
The inner reality of love can be recognized only by love.
moving his-love way
To be sure, the response of faith to revelation, which God grants to the creature he chooses and moves with his love, occurs in such a way that it is truly the creature that provides the response, with its own nature and its natural powers of love.
alone-in-love credible
Love alone is credible.
love attitude promise
Wonder-the enthusiastic ardor for the sublimity of being, for its worthiness to be an object of knowledge-promises to become the point of departure for genuine insight only where it has reached the stage in which the subject, overwhelmed by the object, has, as it were, fused into a single point or into nothing... like the movement of hope and love toward God, which is genuine and selfless only where it has assumed the attitude of pure worship of God for his own sake.
absolute-love being-unloved unloved
There will never be beings unloved by God, since God is absolute love.
lovers theologian knows
Lovers are the ones who know most about God; the theologian must listen to them.
love faith religion
Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
philosophical firsts doe
The work with which we embark on this first volume of a series of theological studies is a work with which the philosophical person does not begin, but rather concludes.
passion unity pieces
The Passion narratives are the first pieces of the Gospels that were composed as a unity.
doubt resurrection interpretation
Without a doubt, at the center of the New Testament there stands the Cross, which receives its interpretation from the Resurrection.
issues life-and-death god-life
But the issue is not only life and death but our existence before God and our being judged by him. All of us were sinners before him and worthy of condemnation.
christian humanity church
One can understand nothing of Christ without the mystery of the Trinity, nothing of the Church without faith in the divinity and humanity of Christ, nothing of the sacraments without the bridal mystery between Christian life without Christian faith. Thus, the present sermons revolve around the same center--the inexhaustible mystery of the one indivisible faith.
easter fall together
If one does away with the fact of the Resurrection, one also does away with the Cross, for both stand and fall together, and one would then have to find a new center for the whole message of the gospel.