Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth

With Dr. Larry Chapp Ph.D., we conclude our conversation by discussing the sections Love as Deed, Love as Form, and Love as the Light of the World.

From the section entitled Love as Deed:

But the genuine saints desired nothing but the greater glory of God’s love; this alone is the condition of possibility of what they do. A person would contradict them outright if, thinking he knows better, he were to interpret their deeds as means of self-glorification. The saints are lost in the depths of God; they are hidden in him. Their perfection grows not around the center of their ego, but solely around the center of God, whose inconceivable and incalculable grace it is to make his creature freer in himself and for himself to the extent that he becomes freer for God alone. We can resolve this paradox only if we understand, in the light of God’s self-gift, that he is love, which is just as jealous as it is without envy, so that it can gather exclusively to itself just as much as it casts itself out to all.

The sole credibility of the Church Christ founded lies, as he himself says, in the saints, as those who sought to set all things on the love of Christ alone. It is in them that we can see what the “authentic” Church is, that is, what she is in her authenticity, while she is essentially obscured by sinners (as people who do not seriously believe in God’s love) and turned into a useless enigma, which as such deservedly provokes contradiction and blasphemy (Rom 2:24). Christ’s apologetic, by contrast, can be summarized in the sentence: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35). This, however, means demonstrating the truth of dogma: “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfectly one, so that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them even as thou hast loved me” (Jn 17:23). Love as deed: a deed that is as genuinely human (with a heavy emphasis on corporal works of mercy) as it is therefore genuinely divine (because it is granted by God’s patience and humility), and thus a deed that becomes effectively present through everything that happens in the Church (in the preaching and the Mass and the sacraments and the organization and canon law)—this is the “proof of spirit and power”.

It is only at this point, concluding with a flourish, that one can speak about the ultimate mystery of love. This is the magnum mysterium of the “one flesh” (Eph 5:31), as being “one in spirit” (1 Cor 6:17), as “one bread, one body” (1 Cor 10:17). A mystery of unspeakable unity, “no longer living for oneself” (2 Cor 5:15), but henceforward living only for the One who loves, indeed, “no longer do I live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20), “God himself shines in our hearts” (2 Cor 4:6). A reciprocal indwelling that lies beyond all imagination, proceeding from the perception of the “unveiled vision of the glory [of love] of the Lord” to an “ever more glorious reflection through the transformation into the same image, which the Lord works through the power of the Spirit” (2 Cor 3:18).

Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Love Alone is Credible. Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth is a series of conversations with noted theological scholars about the life and teachings of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who is considered one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century.

Find the paperback book here.

From the book description:

In Hans Urs von Balthasar’s masterwork, The Glory of the Lord, the great theologian used the term “theological aesthetic” to describe what he believed to the most accurate method of interpreting the concept of divine love, as opposed to approaches founded on historical or scientific grounds. In this newly translated book, von Balthasar delves deeper into this exploration of what love means, what makes the divine love of God, and how we must become lovers of God in the footsteps of saints like Francis de Sales, John of the Cross and Therese of Lisieux.

Based in the theological aesthetic form, Love Alone is Credible brings a fresh perspective on an oft-explored subject. A deeply insightful and profound theological meditation that serves to both deepen and inform the faith of the believer.

The post Love Alone is Credible with Dr. Larry Chapp pt. 5 – “Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth” Podcast appeared first on Balthasar.

With Dr. Larry Chapp Ph.D., we discuss the sections in Love Alone is Credible that cover Love Must Be Perceived, Love as Revelation, Love as Justification and Faith, and Love as Deed

An excerpt from the section entitled “Love Must Be Perceived” found in the book:

If God wishes to reveal the love that he harbors for the world, this love has to be something that the world can recognize, in spite of, or in fact in, its being wholly other. The inner reality of love can be recognized only by love. In order for a selfish beloved to understand the selfless love of a lover (not only as something he can use, which happens to serve better than other things, but rather as what it truly is), he must already have some glimmer of love, some initial sense of what it is. Similarly, a person who contemplates a great work of art has to have a gift—whether inborn or acquired through training—to be able to perceive and assess its beauty, to distinguish it from mediocre art or kitsch. This preparation of the subject, which raises him up to the revealed object and tunes him to it, is for the individual person the disposition we could call the threefold unity of faith, hope, and love, a disposition that must already be present at least in an inchoative way in the very first genuine encounter. And it can be thus present because the love of God, which is of course grace, necessarily includes in itself its own conditions of recognizability and therefore brings this possibility with it and communicates it.

After a mother has smiled at her child for many days and weeks, she finally receives her child’s smile in response. She has awakened love in the heart of her child, and as the child awakens to love, it also awakens to knowledge: the initially empty-sense impressions gather meaningfully around the core of the Thou. Knowledge (with its whole complex of intuition and concept) comes into play, because the play of love has already begun beforehand, initiated by the mother, the transcendent. God interprets himself to man as love in the same way: he radiates love, which kindles the light of love in the heart of man, and it is precisely this light that allows man to perceive this, the absolute Love: “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor 4:6). In this face, the primal foundation of being smiles at us as a mother and as a father. Insofar as we are his creatures, the seed of love lies dormant within us as the image of God (imago). But just as no child can be awakened to love without being loved, so too no human heart can come to an understanding of God without the free gift of his grace—in the image of his Son.

Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Love Alone is Credible. Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth is a series of conversations with noted theological scholars about the life and teachings of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who is considered one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century.

Find the paperback book here.

From the book description:

In Hans Urs von Balthasar’s masterwork, The Glory of the Lord, the great theologian used the term “theological aesthetic” to describe what he believed to the most accurate method of interpreting the concept of divine love, as opposed to approaches founded on historical or scientific grounds. In this newly translated book, von Balthasar delves deeper into this exploration of what love means, what makes the divine love of God, and how we must become lovers of God in the footsteps of saints like Francis de Sales, John of the Cross and Therese of Lisieux.

Based in the theological aesthetic form, Love Alone is Credible brings a fresh perspective on an oft-explored subject. A deeply insightful and profound theological meditation that serves to both deepen and inform the faith of the believer.

The post Love Alone is Credible with Dr. Larry Chapp pt. 4 – “Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth” Podcast appeared first on Balthasar.

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With Dr. Larry Chapp Ph.D., we discuss the sections in Love Alone is Credible that cover The Cosmological Reduction, The Anthropological Reduction, and The Third Way of Love.

An excerpt from the section entitled “The Third Way of Love” found in the book:

When man encounters the love of God in Christ, not only does he experience what genuine love is, but he is also confronted with the undeniable fact that he, a selfish sinner, does not himself possess true love. He experiences two things at once: the finitude of the creature’s love and its sinful frigidity. To be sure, he does possess something of an “anticipation” [Vorverständnis] of what love is; if he did not, he would not be able to make any sense of the sign of Jesus Christ. Indeed, the sign itself would also be opaque and contradictory in an objective sense, because, here, the love of God has appeared in the form of flesh, that is, in the form of human love. All the same, man cannot come to a recognition of this sign on the basis of his “anticipation” without a radical conversion—a conversion not only of the heart, which must in the face of this love confess that it has failed to love until now, but also a conversion of thought, which must relearn what love after all really is.

First, let us consider the implications of finitude. It is impossible to deny the reality of love that one finds in nature, from its roots in the subhuman realm all the way up to the human. The evidence cannot be gainsaid by any skeptical theory of the will to power or self-fulfillment. We see eros at play beyond the sphere of utility; we see the animal’s service and devotion to its young, and the individual’s self-renouncing sacrifice for the whole. At the human level, what was an ephemeral relationship enters into the sphere of spiritual and supratemporal significance: the passing moment of eros can be the gateway to a lifelong fidelity that outlasts this particular moment, which allows the relationship to one’s young to deepen into a familial love that embraces both nature and spirit; the loss of the individual that passes away in relation to the greater power of the species that endures can give rise to the notion of the individual’s self-offering for the sake of the community, the clan, the people or the nation; and in death one can gather up one’s entire existence in a gesture of self-renunciation and receive an intimation of the meaning of being itself as love.

But though all of this may point the way, it does not accomplish the journey, for there are other equally strong, or stronger, powers that set a limit to love’s movement: the fight for one’s place under the sun; the terrible stifling of the individual by the surrounding relations, the clan, and even by the family; the struggle of natural selection, for which nature itself provides the strength and the arms; the laws of time’s decay: friendships, once thought to be forever, grow cold, people grow apart, views and perspectives and thus hearts too become estranged.

Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Love Alone is Credible. Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.

Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth is a series of conversations with noted theological scholars about the life and teachings of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who is considered one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century.

Find the paperback book here.

From the book description:

In Hans Urs von Balthasar’s masterwork, The Glory of the Lord, the great theologian used the term “theological aesthetic” to describe what he believed to the most accurate method of interpreting the concept of divine love, as opposed to approaches founded on historical or scientific grounds. In this newly translated book, von Balthasar delves deeper into this exploration of what love means, what makes the divine love of God, and how we must become lovers of God in the footsteps of saints like Francis de Sales, John of the Cross and Therese of Lisieux.

Based in the theological aesthetic form, Love Alone is Credible brings a fresh perspective on an oft-explored subject. A deeply insightful and profound theological meditation that serves to both deepen and inform the faith of the believer.

The post Love Alone is Credible with Dr. Larry Chapp pt. 3 – “Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth” Podcast appeared first on Balthasar.

With Dr. Larry Chapp Ph.D., we discuss Balthasar’s expression of the Petrine and Marian dimensions of the Church and that Marian subjectivity is the superior principle that fosters a life of interior holiness.  This is exemplified by the contemplatives who fuel the heartbeat of the Church.  This leads to a discussion on the contribution of women in the theological heart of the Church.  Adrienne von Speyr and the misrepresentation some critics place on her collaboration with Balthasar is addressed by Dr. Chapp.  He highlights the importance of Sacred Scripture in all of Balthasar’s teachings.

Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth is a series of conversations with noted theological scholars about the life and teachings of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who is considered one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century.

Find the paperback book here.

From the book description:

In Hans Urs von Balthasar’s masterwork, The Glory of the Lord, the great theologian used the term “theological aesthetic” to describe what he believed to the most accurate method of interpreting the concept of divine love, as opposed to approaches founded on historical or scientific grounds. In this newly translated book, von Balthasar delves deeper into this exploration of what love means, what makes the divine love of God, and how we must become lovers of God in the footsteps of saints like Francis de Sales, John of the Cross and Therese of Lisieux.

Based in the theological aesthetic form, Love Alone is Credible brings a fresh perspective on an oft-explored subject. A deeply insightful and profound theological meditation that serves to both deepen and inform the faith of the believer.

The post Love Alone is Credible with Dr. Larry Chapp pt. 2 – “Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth” Podcast appeared first on Balthasar.

With Dr. Larry Chapp Ph.D., we begin with a conversation on Hans Urs von Balthasar and his theological significance.  While giving an overview of the book, the essential premise is discussed.  What makes the towering figure of Christ self-authenticating, self-justifying is that it is the unsurpassable revelation of love in its essence and its core.  The importance of mysticism to the contribution of theology is also addressed.

Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth is a series of conversations with noted theological scholars about the life and teachings of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who is considered one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century.

Find the paperback book here.

From the book description:

In Hans Urs von Balthasar’s masterwork, The Glory of the Lord, the great theologian used the term “theological aesthetic” to describe what he believed to the most accurate method of interpreting the concept of divine love, as opposed to approaches founded on historical or scientific grounds. In this newly translated book, von Balthasar delves deeper into this exploration of what love means, what makes the divine love of God, and how we must become lovers of God in the footsteps of saints like Francis de Sales, John of the Cross and Therese of Lisieux.

Based in the theological aesthetic form, Love Alone is Credible brings a fresh perspective on an oft-explored subject. A deeply insightful and profound theological meditation that serves to both deepen and inform the faith of the believer.

The post Love Alone is Credible with Dr. Larry Chapp pt. 1 – “Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth” Podcast appeared first on Balthasar.

With Sr. Gill Goulding, C.J.,  Ph.D., we discuss one of the last books written by Hans Urs Von Balthasar on the theme of spiritual childhood.

Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth is a series of conversations with noted theological scholars about the life and teachings of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar who is considered to be one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century.

Find the paperback book here

From the book description:

All else in the Gospel—the Lord’s Incarnation, his hidden and public lives with their silences, miracles and preaching, his Passion, Cross and Resurrection: all else has been for this.

After giving us the numerous weighty tomes comprising the theological trilogy, von Balthasar, as a kind of last will and testament, proclaims to a self-important and dreadfully earnest generation of contemporaries that only that person is lastingly wise, thoroughly fulfilled, who allows God’s mercy to give him second birth and surround him for good with maternal care. The profound and technical knower of the Fathers of the Church and all Western philosophy and theology reveals himself gladly in the end as a humble disciple of … the Little Flower, Thérèse of the Child Jesus!

Readers will be particularly interested in von Balthasar’s analysis of the role the Mother of Jesus plays in the Christian’s progress toward full spiritual childhood, as well as in the analogy he develops between the insights of early-childhood psychology and the life of Christian childlikeness, which is paradoxically the highest maturity possible to man.

The post Unless You Become Like This Child with Sr. Gill Goulding, C.J., Ph.D. pt. 1 – “Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth” Podcast appeared first on Balthasar.

With Dr. Rodney Howsare, Ph.D., Moment of Christian Witness Balthasar Rodney Howsare Podcast Kris McGregor we continue our conversation on The Moment of Christian Witness.  We discuss the Ernstfall as the form of Christian life, as well as the importance of discerning the sign of the times, the common good, and the sacrifice of the Cross.  Any era the Christian lives in, when they go into the world, they cannot leave any aspect of the faith behind.

Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth is a series of conversations with noted theological scholars about the life and teachings of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar who is considered to be one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century.

Find the paperback book here

From the book description:

Hans Urs von Balthasar puts his finger on the precise origin of all those elements in modern Christianity which see the real Jesus Christ as unknowable, the Gospels as merely the confused reflections of later Christians, and Christian tradition as a perpetuation of the mythology.

The post The Moment of Christian Witness with Dr. Rodney Howsare pt. 4 – “Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth” Podcast appeared first on Balthasar.

With Dr. Rodney Howsare, Ph.D., we continue our conversation on The Moment of Christian Witness.  We explore in-depth section two of the book discussing various philosophical systems, such as those proposed by Kant and Marx, and their effect on the human person.

Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth is a series of conversations with noted theological scholars about the life and teachings of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar who is considered to be one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century.

Find the paperback book here

From the book description:

Hans Urs von Balthasar puts his finger on the precise origin of all those elements in modern Christianity which see the real Jesus Christ as unknowable, the Gospels as merely the confused reflections of later Christians, and Christian tradition as a perpetuation of the mythology.

The post The Moment of Christian Witness with Dr. Rodney Howsare pt. 3 – “Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth” Podcast appeared first on Balthasar.

With Dr. Rodney Howsare Ph.D., we continue with a conversation of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s The Moment of Christian Witness and the first section of the book entitled “The Decisive Moment.”  Among other topics, the Christian sense of mission and the nature of Christian love are discussed.

Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth is a series of conversations with noted theological scholars about the life and teachings of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar who is considered to be one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century.

Find the paperback book here

From the book description:

Hans Urs von Balthasar puts his finger on the precise origin of all those elements in modern Christianity which see the real Jesus Christ as unknowable, the Gospels as merely the confused reflections of later Christians, and Christian tradition as a perpetuation of the mythology.

The post The Moment of Christian Witness with Dr. Rodney Howsare pt. 2 – “Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth” Podcast appeared first on Balthasar.

With Dr. Rodney Howsare Ph.D., we begin with a conversation about Hans Urs von Balthasar and his analysis of the thought of Karl Rahner S.J. and those who followed after him. We then discuss the meaning of what Balthasar calls “the Decisive Moment.”

Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth is a series of conversations with noted theological scholars about the life and teachings of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar who is considered to be one of the most important Catholic intellectuals and writers of the twentieth century.

Find the paperback book here

From the book description:

Hans Urs von Balthasar puts his finger on the precise origin of all those elements in modern Christianity which see the real Jesus Christ as unknowable, the Gospels as merely the confused reflections of later Christians, and Christian tradition as a perpetuation of the mythology.

The post The Moment of Christian Witness with Dr. Rodney Howsare pt. 1 – “Balthasar: Beauty, Goodness, Truth” Podcast appeared first on Balthasar.