ove Alone is Believable: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Apologetics | Monsignor John R.

Cihak |
Ignatius Insight

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The greatest challenge I find in bringing someone to Christ and his Church is finding ways to
engage him in meaningful conversation.

Talk of truth is often met with a yawn, and an assertion about what is good is met with a stare of
incomprehension. In the malaise of contemporary American life, people do not seem to be
moved much by claims of truth or goodness. Relativism has made truth to be whatever one
desires, thereby turning the good into whatever makes one "feel" good. With access to these
roads of Truth and Goodness into the human heart darkened by relativism, how can one engage
the average non-believer? How can one place him on the road that would ultimately lead him
back to the Truth and the Good?

Though people may glaze over when one makes claims of truth and goodness, their ears seem to
perk up at the mention of beauty: the flash of lightening across the sky, the dramatic auburn
colors of a late summer sunset, a sublime snatch of music whether it be Mozart’s Requiem or a
David Gilmour guitar solo.

An even more intense encounter is with the beauty that expresses human love: the exhilaration
when love is extended and the other’s eyes sparkle, trembling lips break into a smile and say
"Yes." The heart soars, and one may even weep for joy. Often the encounter is described as
being swept off one’s feet. Though perhaps darkened to what is true and good, the post-modern
heart is still captivated by beauty revealing love, and this may be the road to Christ for many
citizens of the post-modern world.

Enter the Swiss Priest and Theologian…

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s life was hardly the plain, uneventful life of a scholar. Born in 1905, he
lived through the horror and devastation of both World Wars, writing his doctoral thesis, The
Apocalypse of the German Soul, during Hitler’s rise to power. He was immersed in literature,
music, and philosophy. In 1929, after a retreat where he felt a powerful call to the priesthood, he
entered the Society of Jesus and was educated by some of the best of his time including the
Polish philosopher, Erich Przywara, and French Jesuit and patristic scholar, Henri de Lubac.

Balthasar is becoming recognized as perhaps the greatest theologian of the 20th century–yet he
never held an academic position in theology. Far from being an ivory tower academic, he was
involved with the pastoral duties as a student chaplain at the University of Basel, Switzerland. It
was there that he came to know Adrienne von Spyer, who converted to the Catholic Church and
became the recipient of what seems to have been intense mystical graces.

Together they discerned a call to found a secular institute (a community whose members take
vows of poverty, chastity and obedience but live in the world engaged in secular professions),
the Community of St. John. To continue his work as leader of the community, Balthasar
eventually had to make one of the most painful decisions of his life: to leave the Jesuit Order and
become a diocesan priest. In the 1950s, this simply was not done.

This irregular ecclesial situation led to his being not invited to Vatican II as an "expert
theologian," yet in the wake of the Council he served on the Vatican’s International Theological
Commission. Toward the end of his life he was named to the College of Cardinals by Pope John
Paul II, but died on June 28, 1988, two days before receiving his red hat. During his life he
authored thousands of works in theology and literature. His aim was always two fold: to help the
believer understand his faith more deeply, and to draw others into the saving relationship with
Jesus Christ and his Church.

Through his studies and life in German culture, he realized the direction Western civilization was
heading. He knew the dizzying heights to which Western culture could soar in music, art,
literature, and philosophy, but that it also chose ugly depths: war, oppression, abortion, and
exploitation. As a Catholic priest, he knew he had to help Western civilization open itself again to
God’s revelation of absolute love in the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth,
and be saved. Balthasar seized upon love revealed in beauty as the path to bring the non-
believer to faith. Western culture, having grown tired of seeking truth and goodness, and largely
despairing of finding them, could be brought back to the One who is both Truth and Goodness
through Beauty.

The purpose here is briefly to outline his central apologetical insight: divine love revealed as
beauty.