Quotes from Hans Urs von Balthasar

The first concern must, then, not be to speak as others speak, but to conceive of the word of truth with understanding and exactitude... It is not a matter of refuting the opinions of others, but of presenting one's own; not a matter of contesting some aspect of the teaching or behavior of others that seems not to be good, but of writing on behalf of truth.

This speciously deep thought was to haunt Christian metaphysics: that love without pain and guilt remains simply a joke, a game.

He is such all the more in that through this—concretely, through his Cross—he can demonstrate his infinite gratitude to the Father. And in doing precisely that, he will be allowed to prove to the creatures that God, despite all appearances, is the love that goes all the way "to the end" (Jn 13:1) of its possibilities.

An affirmation of a paradoxical unity of ontological opposites, rooted in the Chalcedonian Understanding of the Person of Christ—"one individual or person subsisting in two natures, without confusion or change, without division or separation".

The Church and her exegesis of revelation progress through the ever-changing periods of world history. New aspects emerge, while others wane; efforts are made to compensate for one-sided emphases, but not rarely they are simply replaced with the opposite extremes. Today too, then, it is a duty to restate the principles in a new and timely way—while being as measured as possible—and in so doing to retrieve what is of permanent value.

The man who follows Christ in full, who denies himself and and dies to himself and to the world, can never, ever be a "bourgeois."

We have seen how someone else has encountered the word of God, we have even profited by his encounter, but all the same it was his and not ours—and we ourselves have achieved nothing.

God does not only oppose the enemy of the divine from an external or superior standpoint, but also does the unthinkable: he exposes himself to Satan's fascination, in order to burst the dazzling bubble from within.

This paradox of a synthesis that unites creatures by distinguishing them and distinguishes them by uniting them—a paradox that can be found throughout the whole edifice of the universe—takes its origin in the most original relation of all things: their relation to God.

The heart of this relationship is that there is one universal presence of the cause of all that is, secretly and unrecognizably binding all things together, yet dwelling in each being in a different way; this presence holds the individual parts of the whole together, in itself and in each other, unconfused and inseparable, and allows them, through this very relationship of creative unity, to live more for each other than for themselves.

Aristotelianism and the theology of Chalcedon enter here into an unbreakable alliance: they preserve the rights of nature against the rampages of an unchecked supernaturalism.

But then, in the midst of exile, there came promises of return, of a continuation of the interrupted history. There arose a vision of a mysterious person who would expiate the people's guilt on their behalf. And now Jesus' knowledge reaches beyond the "house left desolate", for he goes on: "You will not see me until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!