Hans Urs von Balthasar

The work with which we embark on this first volume of a series of theological studies is a work with which the philosophical person does not begin, but rather concludes. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#concludes #does #embark #first #person

Thus it is necessary to commence from an inescapable duality: the finite is not the infinite. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#duality #finite #inescapable #infinite #necessary

Without a doubt, at the center of the New Testament there stands the Cross, which receives its interpretation from the Resurrection. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#cross #doubt #interpretation #new #new testament

The One, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attributes of Being, because they surpass all the limits of essences and are coextensive with Being. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#beautiful #because #being #call #essences

St. Paul would say to the philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to attain the Divine. That is why all pre-Christian philosophy is theological at its summit. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#created #divine #god #man #paul

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. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#fact #god #harbors #in fact #love

The inner reality of love can be recognized only by love. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#love #only #reality #recognized

But the issue is not only life and death but our existence before God and our being judged by him. All of us were sinners before him and worthy of condemnation. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#being #being judged #condemnation #death #existence

We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. ↗

— Hans Urs von Balthasar

#beauty #believe #dare #dispose #easily

Not 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

#beauty #become #exposes #face #features