Hans Urs von Balthasar

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Does anyone else find him extremely hard to follow? I’ve read his Christian Mediation at least four times (it’s only about a hundred pages) along with a couple other works and I keep hoping what he’s saying will click, but it never does. It’s not even his theological terminology that’s difficult, it’s just that he’s so vague. He’ll use a word, like “sacrament”, in it’s normal usage and then in the next sentence or even later in the same sentence the word changes meanings. And his thoughts don’t seem to flow into one another, it’s just sort of like rambling stream of consciousness. I’ve never been so frustrated with a spiritual writer, especially because he was very highly recommended to me.
 
PadraigPearce said:
Does anyone else find him extremely hard to follow? I’ve read his Christian Mediation at least four times (it’s only about a hundred pages) along with a couple other works and I keep hoping what he’s saying will click, but it never does. It’s not even his theological terminology that’s difficult, it’s just that he’s so vague. He’ll use a word, like “sacrament”, in it’s normal usage and then in the next sentence or even later in the same sentence the word changes meanings. And his thoughts don’t seem to flow into one another, it’s just sort of like rambling stream of consciousness. I’ve never been so frustrated with a spiritual writer, especially because he was very highly recommended to me.
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Try meditating on each sentence for a day or so, before reading the next.
 
I loved what I’ve read of Balthasar’s work, but then I read it when I had access to some really, really, really brilliant theology professors and could go ask questions. Maybe you could read a synopsis or explanatory-type book on Balthasar first?
 
PadraigPearce said:
Does anyone else find him extremely hard to follow?
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Yes, he is definitely not as lucid as St. Thomas Aquinas. I started reading his “The Fathers, the Scholastics, and Ourselves” article, which I thought would be a good article on how St. Thomas’s perennial philosophy relates to modern problems, but instead I got an article that gives theology a bad name, something far from the science of theology as St. Thomas would do, something very subjective and hand-wavy. Rahner, Balthasr, Ratzinger, etc., all follow in Card. Newman’s progressive footsteps, beginning with his modernist Development of Christian Doctrine and Grammar of Assent.
 
Who is he? :confused: I’m sorry I’ve never heard of him… is he an author, or a theologian?
 
PadraigPearce said:
Does anyone else find him extremely hard to follow? I’ve read his Christian Mediation at least four times (it’s only about a hundred pages) along with a couple other works and I keep hoping what he’s saying will click, but it never does. It’s not even his theological terminology that’s difficult, it’s just that he’s so vague. He’ll use a word, like “sacrament”, in it’s normal usage and then in the next sentence or even later in the same sentence the word changes meanings. And his thoughts don’t seem to flow into one another, it’s just sort of like rambling stream of consciousness. I’ve never been so frustrated with a spiritual writer, especially because he was very highly recommended to me.
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I’d recommend other authors instead, there are plenty who would not recommend him. Why waste your time when there’s far better spiritual writing to read?
 
It’s never a waste of time to follow your heart and read a Catholic theologian. Ignore Shin. I’ve read around Hans Urs von Balthasar and his theories of aesthetics – haven’t challenged him yet but he appears to have inspired many. He was a Swiss theologian and priest who was nominated to be a cardinal of the Catholic Church but died before the ceremony took place. He is considered one of the most important theologians of the 20th century and is worthy of your attention. He is, as some have noted, prickly and eclectic, difficult to follow at times. But if you pick up volume one of a seven volume theological work, you may already expect that…

Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s Theological Aesthetics
The Glory of the Lord is a seven-volume work written by the 20th century Swiss Jesuit theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar that exhaustively explains his theology. The subtitle of his work is “A Theological Aesthetics,” and he makes it clear from the very beginning of his writing that the beautiful is a key element to understanding his theology. In fact, it is his starting point.

Beauty is the word that shall be our first. Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach since only it dances, as an uncontained splendor, around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. . . . No longer loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face which threaten to become incomprehensible to man.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar, *The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics *(San Francisco: Ignatius Press/New York: Crossroad Publications, 1982) Vol. I: Seeing the Form, 18.

The above is taken from an essay on Balthazar written by Rev. Walter F. Kedjierski who is an Associate Pastor at St. Catherine of Sienna Roman Catholic Parish in Franklin Square, NY and teaches theology at St. John’s University, NY. He contributed a wonderful essay on Catholic Aesthetics to the Princeton Theological Review back in 2007 titled The Beautiful As A Gateway To The Transcendent. It dealt with how the Christian tradition has come to appreciate beauty as a gateway to the divine. Reading selections here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/03/31/beauty-as-a-gateway-to-the-divine/

dj
 
Shin said:
I’d recommend other authors instead, there are plenty who would not recommend him. Why waste your time when there’s far better spiritual writing to read?
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Pope Benedict would recommend him, if Wikipedia is to be believed. They even founded a journal together. 🤷

"At Balthasar’s funeral, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger said, speaking of Balthasar’s work in general, “What the pope intended to express by this mark of distinction [elevation to the Cardinalate], and of honor, remains valid, no longer only private individuals but the Church itself, in its official responsibility, tells us that he is right in what he teaches of the faith.” "
 
These days we have many “famous” cardinals, if you want to call them that…

Rev. Regis Scanlan has an article, (Google) “The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar”

Yes: “Communio is a federation of theological journals, founded in 1972 by Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Walter Kasper, Marc Ouellet, Louis Bouyer and others”

Not entirely splendid company… Kaspar… Lubac… yes back then Cardinal Ratzinger too…

The progressive wing indeed. Kaspar who doesn’t believe in the historical New Testament. Balthasar who doesn’t believe anyone goes to Hell. Lubac, the lover of the Nouvelle “Theologie.”

New theology… says it all, no wonder it’s incomprehensible. 🙂
 
Shin said:
These days we have many “famous” cardinals, if you want to call them that…

Rev. Regis Scanlan has an article, (Google) “The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar”

Yes: “Communio is a federation of theological journals, founded in 1972 by Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Walter Kasper, Marc Ouellet, Louis Bouyer and others”

Not entirely splendid company… Kaspar… Lubac… yes back then Cardinal Ratzinger too…

The progressive wing indeed. Kaspar who doesn’t believe in the historical New Testament. Balthasar who doesn’t believe anyone goes to Hell. Lubac, the lover of the Nouvelle “Theologie.”

New theology… says it all, no wonder it’s incomprehensible. 🙂
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Wow, I never know Communio was founded by all these progressive theologians. No wonder I have never read it.
 
Shin said:
These days we have many “famous” cardinals, if you want to call them that…

Rev. Regis Scanlan has an article, (Google) “The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar”

Yes: “Communio is a federation of theological journals, founded in 1972 by Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, Walter Kasper, Marc Ouellet, Louis Bouyer and others”

Not entirely splendid company… Kaspar… Lubac… yes back then Cardinal Ratzinger too…

The progressive wing indeed. Kaspar who doesn’t believe in the historical New Testament. Balthasar who doesn’t believe anyone goes to Hell. Lubac, the lover of the Nouvelle “Theologie.”

New theology… says it all, no wonder it’s incomprehensible. 🙂
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Okay. Just keep rereading Aquinas, then. I’m not here to argue with you. 🤷
 
djeter, thanks for the article. He is a fascinating thinker. I guess you just have to learn how to read him. Peter Kreeft said in one of his books that there are three kinds of philosophers. Those who start out obscure and later become clear, those who start out clear and later become obscure, and those who start out obscure and stay obscure. I’m thinking Balthasar is probably in the first category.
 
Shin said:
Rev. Regis Scanlan has an article, (Google) “The Inflated Reputation of Hans Urs von Balthasar”

Balthasar who doesn’t believe anyone goes to Hell. Lubac, the lover of the Nouvelle “Theologie.”

New theology… says it all, no wonder it’s incomprehensible. 🙂
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I love, for the most, Balthazar’s work. He was Paul the Sixths’s favorite contemporary theologian, and I agree; his works on aesthetics are masterpieces. But, I also agree that he engages in ambiguity,and some Hegelian relativity.

But none of his works have been condemned yet, unlike others ( cough Aquinas and the immaculate conception cough) give him a try before you condemn him.

By the way shin, my otaku friend, he never said that no one goes to hell, he said that it* is possible *that all will be saved…big difference. 👍
 
Neo_Scotist said:
I love, for the most, Balthazar’s work. He was Paul the Sixths’s favorite contemporary theologian, and I agree; his works on aesthetics are masterpieces. But, I also agree that he engages in ambiguity,and some Hegelian relativity.

But none of his works have been condemned yet, unlike others ( cough Aquinas and the immaculate conception cough) give him a try before you condemn him.

By the way shin, he never said that no one goes to hell, he said that it* is possible *that all will be saved…big difference. 👍
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