Hans Urs von Balthasar 1905 – 1988

Hans Urs von Balthasar was a Swiss Catholic theologian and philosopher and one of the most wide-ranging Christian thinkers of the twentieth century. After early studies of German literature and many years of Jesuit formation, he left the Society of Jesus in 1950 to co-found with the mystic Adrienne von Speyr the secular Community of St. John. His fifteen-volume Trilogy, comprising The Glory of the Lord, Theo-Drama, and Theo-Logic, ordered Christian theology around the transcendentals of beauty, goodness, and truth. He was a close friend and interlocutor of Karl Barth and was named cardinal shortly before his death.

Hans Urs von Balthasar was born at Lucerne in August 1905 into an old Swiss patrician family. He studied German literature, philosophy, and music at Zurich, Vienna, and Berlin, completing his doctorate at Zurich in 1929 with a thesis on the eschatological problem in modern German literature, and entered the Society of Jesus the same year. After theological studies at Lyon-Fourvière under Henri de Lubac he was ordained priest in 1936; in 1940, working as student chaplain at Basel, he met the Swiss physician and mystic Adrienne von Speyr, with whom he co-founded the secular institute Community of Saint John in 1945 and left the Jesuits in 1950 to lead.

His enormous output includes the trilogy The Glory of the Lord (Herrlichkeit, seven volumes 1961–1969), Theo-Drama (Theodramatik, five volumes 1973–1983), and Theo-Logic (Theologik, three volumes 1985–1987); the studies on Maximus the Confessor (Cosmic Liturgy, 1941), Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Karl Barth, and Bernanos; the meditations Heart of the World, The Christian and Anxiety, and Mysterium Paschale; and the controversial Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? (1986).

Balthasar restored the transcendental of the beautiful to the centre of theological method, treated revelation as a dramatic action between the triune God and humanity, interpreted Christ's descent into hell as a Holy Saturday of solidarity with the absent God, and proposed a 'kneeling theology' in continuity with the saints. He was named cardinal by John Paul II in 1988 and died at Basel two days before the consistory.