LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
The Dazzling Darkness of God’s Triune Love: Introducing Evangelicals to the Theology of Hans
Urs von Balthasar
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
11/2022
Jürgen Moltmann observes that Christian theology and the Church face “a double crisis: the
crisis of relevance and the crisis of identity.” When theology and the Church endeavor to be
relevant to the surrounding pluralistic culture, they face a “crisis of their own Christian identity”
because they are confronted with conflicting viewpoints. Yet the more they “assert their
identity in traditional dogmas, rights and moral notions, the more irrelevant and unbelievable
they become.” Some respond by capitulating to the cultural ethos of the day becoming
indistinguishable from the culture while others isolate themselves and withdraw into Christian
ghettos failing to engage the culture. Such responses seem to indicate a bifurcation between
theology and the Christian life, between the theoretical and the practical.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, a prominent twentieth-century Swiss Catholic theologian and
contemporary of Karl Barth, similarly criticized the Catholic theology of his day. He argued that
“not only the faith but the heart, too, is wrapped up in a spiritless, conscientious and ultimately
Pharisaical practice, a religion of dogmas and an enthusiasm for dogmas (the more that are
defined, the better), a zeal for everything that can be seen, that is limited, calculable, and
controlled.” We should not understand such statements by Balthasar as anti-intellectual, a
disdain for dogmatic theology, or a lack of concern for conceptual clarity in theological
discourse as many of his critics maintain. Rather, his objections centered on contemporary
theology’s assent to the false dichotomy between theology and the Christian life, for it is
“contrary to the very conceptions of the Fathers to attempt to divide their works into those
dealing with doctrine and those concerned with the Christian life (spirituality).”4 How, then, are
we to connect orthodoxy with orthopraxy, right thinking about God with right action?
Balthasar maintained that this presumed bifurcation between theology and the Christian
life “has sapped the vital force of the Church today and the credibility of her preaching of
eternal truth.” Professional theologians have unfortunately perpetuated this problem,
according to Balthasar, since they pursue either a scientific dogmatic theology with the utmost
precision or a spiritualized mystical theology characterized by platitudinous piety that lacks
substance. Consequently, pastors and church leaders bear the brunt of this penury situation as
they seek to address the concerns of their congregants with the truth of the gospel. Balthasar
contended, though, that such matters could find resolution at the nexus of “wisdom and
holiness.”
Balthasar insisted, then, that we must reconsider the nature of theology in order to
retrieve this unity between scholar and saint, between theology and the Christian life. Christian
theology, according to Balthasar, “has always been, at its heights, a spiritual activity, aware not
only of a rational and ethical but of an aesthetic responsibility to the relative proportions of the
various parts of revelation.” Moreover, theology must have its center where revelation has its
center, namely, in the living resurrected Christ mediated through Scripture and the Church. The
pursuit of theology devoid of this Christological center is a bankrupt endeavor as theological
discourse “draws attention to peripheral matters, or serves only human curiosity or vanity (and
nothing is more vain than the human mind in its thinking).” Saints never lose sight of this fact,
for “they give themselves to their work and world, while ‘praying at all times’ and ‘doing all to
the glory of God’ (1 Tim 5:17; 1 Cor 10:31).”8 True theology, therefore, has the person and
work of Jesus Christ at its center that brings together both wisdom and holiness in the spirit of
prayer.
Balthasar endeavored to follow this prescription by identifying Jesus Christ, who is the
distinct speaking and doing form of God’s self-revelation, as the Lord of Glory (Herrlichkeit) and
the form above all forms (Übergestalt).9 His theological journey took him into the dazzling
darkness of God’s triune love where “the splendor which breaks forth from this love of God. ..
gives itself without remainder and is poured forth in the form of worldly powerlessness.” This
inbreaking and self-presentation of God in the world was a supreme act of his freedom that
necessitated human action thereby instituting the most prodigious drama—God’s drama of
redemption. Within all this, we come to see the structure of truth, God’s theologic, “which can
indeed be nothing other than the discernment of being in the freedom of its self-revelation.”
The preceding paragraph sketches the contours of Balthasar’s mature thought in the
fifteen-volume English translation of his trilogy—The Glory of the Lord (7 vols.), Theo-Drama (5
vols.), and Theo-Logic (3 vols.). This essay can in no way articulate the complexity and nuances
of his trilogy with any degree of sufficiency. Although there are several gateways into
Balthasar’s theology, this essay seeks to explicate what I think to be one of the primary entry
points, namely, what is meant by the dazzling darkness of God’s triune love. Balthasar’s
theology is not systematic in the traditional sense where one can turn to a particular section
and read his definitive take on a particular doctrine or issue (e.g., the Trinity, atonement, etc.).
Rather, his theology is more symphonic in that he weaves together a variety of themes in order
to demonstrate the interconnectedness of theology that results not simply in the mere
contemplation of theology’s object, namely, the triune God, but the actions required by those
who properly perceive him in faith. The motifs covered in this essay resonate throughout his
trilogy and even into many of his works beyond it, striking a prominent chord within the
concerto of Balthasar’s theology.
We begin, then, by providing a brief narrative context of his life that alludes to the impetus
for much of his work, allowing us to frame the subsequent discussion on the dazzling darkness
of God’s triune love. The next section explicates Balthasar’s notion of the dazzling darkness of
God’s triune love through what I call “divine eternal kenosis” that serves as the basis for all
other kenotic movements, including Christ’s decent into hell. Finally, we conclude by suggesting
relevant points where evangelicals should critically yet charitably engage Balthasar’s theology
while offering resources in a postscript, both primary and secondary works, for further
exploration.
1. Formative Influences in the Life of Hans Urs von Balthasar
Balthasar was born in Lucerne, Switzerland on August 12, 1905 into an aristocratic family of
Hungarian descent. His childhood and early adolescent education occurred at a Benedictine
abbey school in Engelberg, in the heart of the mountains, just outside Lucerne. While there, the
influence of the Benedictine monks nourished his love of music, so much so that he published
his first book at the age of twenty: The Development of the Musical Idea: An Attempt at a
Synthesis of Music (1925).12 Before finishing his secondary education in Engelberg, though, his
parents moved and enrolled him in a Jesuit college in Feldkirch, Austria. Dissatisfied with his
parents’ decision, Balthasar finished his final examinations a year early and matriculated at the
University of Zurich in Germanistik, an amalgam of German literature, philosophy, and
linguistics, in 1923.
Balthasar’s studies, in pursuit of a doctorate, took him to important centers of learning
such as Berlin and Vienna where he encountered the likes of Fr. Romano Guardini (Berlin),
Rudolf Allers (Vienna), and Hans Eibl (Vienna). In October 1928, five years after enrolling,
Balthasar completed his doctoral examinations and soon thereafter finished his final revisions
on his dissertation entitled The History of the Eschatological Problem in Modern German
Literature, which was published in 1930. Nearly one month later, he enrolled in the Jesuit
novitiate where he studied the neo-scholastic manuals in preparation for ordination as a Jesuit
priest.14 During this time of preparation, he embarked upon the thirty-day Spiritual Exercises of
St. Ignatius of Loyola with some friends under the tutelage of Fr. Friedrich Kronseder where he
experienced an unmistakable divine calling that changed the course of his life.
1.1. The Calling of God on His Life
Balthasar’s decision to enter the priesthood did not come without serious consideration
since his contemporaries during his study of Germanistik considered it “a misfortune if
someone apostatized and turned to the study of theology.”16 Furthermore, the Jesuit College
at Feldkirch where he began his Jesuit studies was located in a predominately Protestant area
hostile to the Jesuit cause. Yet, in an interview thirty years later, Balthasar recollected his
“electing” experience that he described as “a kind of invisible theme of my life.” He recalled his
experience that day with a vividness not lacking in detail:
Today, thirty years later, I can still find the very tree along the lost path of a forest in the
German part of the Black Forest not far from Basel under which I was struck by a sudden bolt of
lightning.. .. It was neither theology nor the priesthood that forced itself at that time on my
spirit; it was only this: You have nothing to choose, you are called. You will not serve, but others
will make use of your service; you have no plans to make, you are only a small stone in a mosaic
designed long before you. I had only to “give up all and follow,” without making my own plans,
without wishes or anticipations. I had only to wait there expectantly and look out for the way I
would be used. And that is how it happened.
In the midst of this experience, Balthasar began to realize the implications of this divine
encounter for his life: “When I once thought: so, God has given me complete certainty and has
provided for me an exactly outlined mission, it struck me that he was free to turn it all on its
head—in fact in a moment and in spite of the views and habits of the tool that I was.”
The importance of this divine call on Balthasar’s life cannot be overstated, for “the key to
‘understanding’ his person as well as his work is this obedient Yes to the call to follow Christ.. ..
Whatever von Balthasar has done since then can be grasped only as an activity within this
original Yes to the call God made to him,” as Werner Löser notes. We see some of the
implications of this experience when we compare the theses of the first of his major writings,
The Apocalypse of the German Soul based in large part on his dissertation, and the
aforementioned trilogy.
His first major work based on his dissertation sought to trace German thought, beginning
with the German Idealism of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, examining German
poets from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to Rainer Maria Rilke, and culminating with the likes
of Friedrich Nietzsche and other German thinkers of the twentieth century. He surmised that
the German soul is anthropocentric; that is, it seeks to construct one’s understanding of self
and the world solely from the vantage point of human subjectivity. Humanity is the measure of
all things. In contrast, he based his trilogy on the premise that human beings find meaning only
when they transcend themselves in order to participate in God’s divine reality, namely, the
drama of redemption. Key to understanding this contrast and much of Balthasar’s life and work
is his divine calling. To be sure, though, other important figures aid him in fleshing out his
thoughts.
1.2. Significant Philosophical, Theological, and Spiritual Influences
Erich Przywara, a Jesuit theologian whom Balthasar encountered in Munich in the early
1930s, was one of the seminal figures in the 20th century debate regarding the analogia entis
or the analogy of being—the idea that “between Creator and creature no similarity can be
noted, however great it may be, without noting a greater dissimilarity.” Balthasar learned from
Przywara how to analyze the history of philosophy using the doctrine of analogia entis.
Consequently, Balthasar appropriated Przywara’s ontological position stressing the ever-greater
dissimilarity between God and humanity no matter the similarity thereby opening space for
genuine divine/human interaction. This human participation in the divine life became the
cornerstone for Balthasar’s theo-dramatics.
Another significant contemporary, whom Balthasar lionized, was Henri de Lubac whom he
met while studying near Lyons, France. Balthasar drew deeply from de Lubac’s encyclopedic
knowledge of the patristic fathers, going on to write several monographs on the likes of Origen
of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus the Confessor, Augustine, and others. His study of
these Church fathers surfaced again in his trilogy as he drew upon their works to establish a
historical basis for his theological aesthetics. More importantly, though, de Lubac’s influence, as
well as Przywara’s, enabled Balthasar to alleviate an intense dissatisfaction he had with his
studies while preparing to become a Jesuit priest. Balthasar remarked, “My entire period of
study in the Society was a grim struggle with the dreariness of theology, with what men had
made out of the glory of revelation.” This assessment of his Neo-Scholastic training along with
his previous intuitions regarding his Germanistik studies became the impetus for his criticisms
of Catholic theology mentioned at the outset of this essay. Yet he kept much of these thoughts
to himself, becoming a Jesuit priest on July 26, 1936.
Balthasar’s first assignment as a Jesuit priest came as a collaborator for the prestigious
periodical Stimmen der Zeit, located in Munich near Ludwigstrasse where “the boots of the SS
sounded ever more loudly. .. and no ear could escape the loudspeakers that were set up
everywhere in the city.”23 Shortly thereafter, Balthasar’s superiors offered him the opportunity
to serve as a chaplain at the University of Basel or as a professor teaching theology at the
Pontifical Jesuit University in Rome, the renowned Gregorian University. Given Balthasar’s
relative disdain for professional theologians and the shallow neo-scholastic theology of his day,
he opted for serving as a chaplain. This decision took him to Basel, where he encountered two
other figures and arguably the most influential—Karl Barth and Adrienne von Speyr.
Karl Barth, acclaimed as one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century,
expressed mutual admiration for Balthasar as the two engaged in critical yet charitable dialogue
regarding a whole host of theological issues. Balthasar gave lectures on Barth, in Barth’s
presence, and would later publish those lectures in a monograph entitled The Theology of Karl
Barth. In this seminal work on Barth, Balthasar identified Barth’s theology as “beautiful” as it
stressed the objectivity of divine revelation, namely, God’s self-revelation in Christ, and drew
our attention to the aesthetic side of existence, including divine revelation.25 This admiration,
though, did not preclude Balthasar from vigorously opposing Barth regarding, for example, the
analogy of being, the narrowness of Barth’s Christocentrism, or the nature of the Church. Thus,
much of Balthasar’s later writings were in direct response to Barth’s work. To be sure, though,
Balthasar saw Barth as an advocate, as one who could be “like a Trojan horse to bring about
change in Catholicism,” the kind of change that breathed vibrancy and life into the arid neo-
scholasticism of his day.
Both Balthasar and Barth possessed a profound spirituality evidenced by their
commitments to overcome the bifurcation between theology and the Christian life. Balthasar
seemed to take a more mystical approach, acknowledging that Adrienne von Speyr, a medical
doctor and mystic whom he converted to Catholicism, had more of an impact on his life than
any other.27 More specifically, her terrifying visions of Christ’s descent into hell, which she
received while taking the Eucharist, found their way into Balthasar’s theology of Holy Saturday.
Her visions and mystical writings, though, were not viewed by the establishment as authentic or
worthy of publication. As such, Balthasar found these dismissive attitudes appalling and
determined to publish her work. In 1945, Balthasar and Speyr, with the financial backing of a
friend from Einsiedeln, collaborated to form the Johannes Verlag, a publishing house to print
and distribute her writings.
Balthasar’s Jesuit superiors did not approve of this endeavor, so they gave him an
ultimatum to either abandon his pursuits or be disbanded from the Jesuit Society. After much
prayer and consideration, Balthasar determined to leave the priesthood in February 1950,
knowing the full ramifications of his decision. This decision caused him an immense amount of
grief as he was further isolated from the ecclesiastical establishment and pushed to the
margins.30 From this point forward, though, Balthasar produced his massive trilogy, a work of
enormous range and complexity that winds its way through the dazzling darkness of God’s
triune love. It is this motif to which we now turn.
2. The Dazzling Darkness of God’s Triune Love
Balthasar, following his conviction that theology needs an objective center, identifies Jesus
Christ as the Lord of Glory (Herrlichkeit) and the form above all forms (Übergestalt). These
designations assume three things, according to Balthasar. First, God “is the infinitely free agent
who, in his freedom, invents a world and, also in his freedom, creates that world.” As Lord, God
is Wholly Other than his creation thereby controlling the form and content of his
communicative actions to his creation. In other words, God determines how and what he
communicates of himself to his creation. Thus, “he is the triune God who in Jesus Christ
becomes man.”31
Second, while interpreting Rom 1:19–20, Balthasar underscores the utter dissimilarity
between God and his creation (i.e., the Creator-creature distinction). In doing so, he stresses
the importance of God’s glory shining in and through the form of his creation so that his
creatures might be able to see it. Further emphasizing this point, Balthasar remarks that the
glory seen in creation “is the glory of God and not of the world, since it is precisely such
confusion that at once leads to the terrible fall which results from confusing God’s glory with
the ‘likeness’ (á½?μοίμα) of the ‘form’ (εá¼°κÏ?ν).”32
Third, the revelation of God in Christ is not the “prolongation” or “intensification” of his
revelation in creation. Rather, it brings together the “heavenly and earthly, which is thus
endowed by grace with a crown, the radiance of whose glory belong[s] to the Kyrios of the
world.” God’s revelation in creation prepares the way for his self-revelation in Christ such that
Christ is the “perfection of the form of the world.”33 This perfection, though, is seen only by
faith “as the appearing of the triune God” and “is the crowning recapitulation of everything in
heaven and on earth.”34 Therefore, Jesus Christ, not humanity, is the measure of all things.
Building upon these presuppositions, Balthasar answers the question, “why is there
something rather than nothing,” theologically, giving a theological basis to the transcendentals
of being (i.e., the true, the good, and the beautiful).35 In doing so, he subdivides objective
revelation into two related yet distinct parts, revelation in creation and in Christ.36 The first,
revelation in creation, manifests God’s glory in and through the created order such that our
existence is to be understood as a gift. The glory of God in creation anticipates and foreshadows
the second, the manifestation of God’s glory in the incarnation where the Word of God comes
in the form of a human being (Phil 2:6). What appears, then, in the hypostatic union of Christ,
according to Balthasar, is “the becoming visible and experienceable of the God who is himself
triune” whereby the Christ-form (Gestalt Christi) manifests the form of God (Gestalt Gottes) in
the glory of the triune God.37 What, though, does Balthasar mean by divine glory?
2.1. Balthasar’s Theological Interpretation of Scripture
Balthasar remarks that the “Bible is full of statements about God’s glory, and the passages
and vistas are far more numerous than most believers realize: glory is a fundamental statement
that leavens all of Scripture.”38 That being the case, Balthasar connects the glory of God’s
revelation in creation and in Christ via the tabernacle and the temple: “In this way the form of
the world itself, which as such already was the revelation of the divine δóξα, in Christ and in the
Holy Spirit poured out through him becomes a temple which, like the tabernacle and Solomon’s
edifice, harbors within and above itself the kâbôd of God.”39 By typologically connecting the ×?
Ö¸Ö¼×?Ö¹×?×?Ö¾×?×?×?×? with the δóξα-Χριστοá¿¡, Balthasar begins to illumine what he
means by the dazzling darkness of God’s triune love.
This ×?Ö¸Ö¼×?Ö¹×?×?Ö¾×?×?×?×? to which Balthasar refers, is also the same glory present
in the cloud and fire that leads the nation of Israel both day and night through the wilderness
(Exod 13:21; 40:38). Balthasar sees a dialectic between the deep and threatening darkness of
the cloud and the blinding and consuming light of the fire. Consequently, “if the first sort of
appearance has on the people the effect of the absolutely tremendum, then the second sort is
the fascinosum.”40 We see both of these phenomena in the life of Moses. First, the Israelites
trembled with fear at the thunder and lightning emanating from the thick dark cloud on Mt.
Sinai when Moses receives the Ten Commandments (Exod 20:19–21). Second, Moses is
consumed with the fire of the unconsumed bush that draws him to it, piquing his interest in this
marvelous sight (Exod 3). These phenomena converge, according to Balthasar, to form the ×?
Ö¸Ö¼×?Ö¹×?×?Ö¾×?×?×?×?, which is the manifest presence of God “in the form of fire and
wrapped in ‘the’ cloud” that fills the tabernacle and establishes the covenant cultic practices of
Israel (Exod 40:34–38).41 Therefore, within the ×?Ö¸Ö¼×?Ö¹×?×?Ö¾×?×?×?×? a dazzling within
the darkness exists that allures yet humbles.
Balthasar identifies these same themes typologically in the δóξα-Χριστοá¿¡, revealed
definitively when God the Father glorifies his Son on the cross. The Christ-form integrates the
darkness of the cross and descent into hell with the trinitarian love of God such that “the form
which gives expression to the meaning of a radically sinful existence which yet stands under the
sign of the hope for redemption. .. takes the modalities of fallen existence upon itself so as to
transvalue them by redemptive suffering.”42 In other words, the awful suffering of Christ on
the cross not only indicates the radical nature of our sin but also indicates the awe-full hope of
redemption.
We should by no means conclude, at this point, that Balthasar is glorifying suffering.
Rather, Balthasar is drawing our attention to that fact that Jesus Christ radiates the splendor of
God’s glory because he is perfectly in tune with the Father’s will, obeying the Father even unto
death and thereby fulfilling his mission to the world (John 17). This is the beauty of Christ’s
holiness. There is, thus, a dazzling within the darkness of the δóξα-Χριστοá¿¡, something that is
alluring within the tragic, when the Father through the Spirit glorifies the Son in his death and
decent into hell that reveals the triune love of God for us in Christ’s glorious resurrection. In
turn, God draws humanity to himself in the humbleness of faith.43
We have mentioned on several occasions that God’s triune nature is manifested in and
through the Christ-form. Yet what does Balthasar mean by this? To be sure, Jesus Christ, who
makes the invisible God visible, “appears in such a way that this polarity reveals itself to us as a
personal relationship within God’s very nature,” manifesting a dialogical I-Thou relationship
characterized by lordliness and holiness in the bond of love. According to Balthasar, though,
the kenosis evidenced by Christ (Phil 2:6) also reveals a primal eternal kenosis within the
Godhead that “makes possible all other kenotic movements of God into the world.”
This intratrinitarian kenosis is the total self-giving of the Father where “the Father strips
himself, without remainder, of his Godhead and hands it over to the Son” (John 14:26; 16:13–
15).46 The Son’s response is one “of eternal thanksgiving (eucharistia) to the Father, the Source
—a thanksgiving as selfless and unreserved as the Father’s original self-surrender.” The Spirit
proceeds from the Father and the Son such that he is “common to both as the essence of love.
maintains the infinite difference between them, seals it and, since he is the one Spirit of them
both, bridges it.” This infinite distance within the Godhead serves as the basis for the
possibility, not only of other kenotic events within the economy, but also of “every other
separation be it never so dark and bitter.” What might be the significance, then, not only of the
dazzling darkness of God’s triune love but also of this “divine eternal kenosis” for Balthasar’s
theology?
