Hans Urs von Balthasar Quotes on Love

Hans Urs von Balthasar’s fifteen-volume trilogy on the transcendentals — The Glory of the Lord (theological aesthetics), Theo-Drama (theological dramatic theory), and Theo-Logic (theological logic) — gives twentieth-century Catholic theology its most ambitious contemporary statement, with love as its constant interior orientation. The treatment is concentrated in the late synthesis Love Alone Is Credible (1963), which argues that the divine love disclosed in the Christ-event is the only adequate principle for theological reflection — the philosophical and historical apologetics of earlier Catholic thought have been displaced by the self-evidence of the love that gives itself in the cross. The framework, integrating patristic, medieval, and modern Catholic thought with sustained engagement with Goethe, Schelling, and the great works of Western literature, shaped the post-conciliar Communio movement and the broader twentieth-century Catholic reflection on the primacy of love.