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

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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.

The Revelation of Love as Beauty

One of Balthasar’s key insights into how God incites man with his divine love is to encourage the
non-believer to ponder his encounters with beauty in the world, especially as found in human
love. Since most non-believers like to consider themselves open-minded, Balthasar capitalized
on that desire by helping them see the mystery of Being as revealed in beauty. His thought in
this regard has been developed wonderfully by Fr. Thomas Dubay in The Evidential Power of
Beauty (Ignatius, 1999). Non-believers must also consider the limitations of worldly beauty,
especially in the brokenness and failures of all human love. Why is love in this world so finite and
fractured? Why are all attempts at love stamped as "failed" by the inevitable reality of death?
This predicament leads to the vital question: Is there a love beyond this world?

At this point the non-believer can be led to wonder at the Cross and be provoked by this sign of
divine revelation. They can be challenged to open their heart to the encounter with the beautiful
form of Christ crucified revealing in its depths the Triune God of love. The non-believer with an
open heart can be drawn by the grace coming through this form into the dynamic of love,
leading to an act of faith. Though this theme is present throughout Balthasar vast writings, I will
concentrate on two of his foundational works: Love Alone Is Credible (Ignatius, 2004), and The
Glory of the Lord, (tr. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis), vol. 1 (Ignatius, 1982).

Balthasar argues that the encounter with beauty in the world is analogous to the encounter with
the Triune God. What happens in the "aesthetic encounter"? He sees that beauty is an
indissolvable union of two things: species and lumen. Beauty consists of a specific, tangible form
(species) accessible to human senses with a splendor emanating from the form (lumen). Beauty
has a particular form, is concretely situated in the coordinates of time and space, and thus has
proportion so that it can be perceived. The splendor is the attractive charm of the Beautiful, the
gravitational pull, the tractor beam pulling the beholder into it. When confronted with the
Beautiful, one encounters "the real presence of the depths, of the whole reality, and . . . a real
pointing beyond itself to those depths" (GL).
In the perception of beauty, two moments occur: first vision and then rapture, the result of
which is the impression of the form on the beholder. The splendor moves out from within the
form, enraptures the person and transports him into its depths. Thus the visible form "not only
‘points’ to an invisible, unfathomable mystery; form is the apparition of this mystery, and reveals
it while, naturally, at the same time protecting and veiling it" (GL). In beauty, the beholder is
drawn out of himself and pulled into the form by the attractive force of the beautiful thing,
thereby encountering the beautiful thing in itself.

The Aesthetical Encounter

A simple example to illustrate the aesthetical encounter can be found in looking up into a clear
night sky at the stars. One is struck by the immensity and order of the universe, by the
arrangement of the constellations. On an especially clear night, one seems engulfed by the sheer
number of stars. Presented with this beautiful form, a sensitive viewer is drawn in by light
breaking forth from the form. This light is not simply the light emanating from each star, the
result of burning gases. It is the light of Being. Transported into the depths of the form, the
viewer ponders foundational questions such as: How did this happen? Where did these things
come from? Why is this form so beautiful? Why am I so moved by it?

The result of the aesthetical encounter is an encounter with the mystery of Being-in-itself. One
has been shown the form and through the form been brought into an encounter with the depth
of Being. Wondering at the mystery of a particular being, one is drawn into that beautiful form,
and touches the mystery of absolute Being. The form and the depths of its being are
indissoluble. In beauty one doesn’t "get behind" the form. Rather one touches the depths of
Being in the form itself.

For Balthasar, things that exist don’t just lay there in existence; they glow from their
participation in absolute Being. In Beauty, one is taken in and grasped by Being. In order to
perceive a particular being as it is, one must surrender, be receptive, and be willing to be taken
in by the form. Control or manipulation on the part of the beholder derails the aesthetical
encounter. To share in the beauty, the viewer must renounce himself. The result of the
encounter with beauty is the impressing of the form on the person leaving him breathless,
exhilarated, full of awe and infused with joy. He is "seduced" by the beautiful form whether it is
a stunning landscape or one’s beloved.
• Biography of Hans Urs von Balthasar

• All Ignatius Press books by Hans Urs von Balthasar

• Excerpts from the writings of Hans Urs von Balthasar

• Ignatius Insight Articles about Hans Urs von Balthasar

• Pope Benedict XVI Praises Hans Urs von Balthasar (Oct. 2005)

While acknowledging the joy of beauty in this world, and especially the beauty in human love, a
terrible frustration accompanies, and threatens that joy. Human love is marked by three failures:
limitation, selfishness and death. "Human love being finite seems to contradict itself," (LA) writes
Balthasar, because "what love means . . . is that the present should be eternal" (LA). Not only is
human love limited, it’s also infected with selfishness. He reasons, "The ordinary level of human
existence, where man meets man, is a sort of middle zone where love and self-interest, love and
the absence of love, temper one another" (LA). Love’s limitation and brokenness are marked by
the ultimate seal of death, which seems to rob human love of everything it strives for. He
concludes, "Human love, regarded as created love only, is a strange hieroglyph" (LA). Man
cannot find the resolution to his predicament in the world or in himself. Is there liberation from
it?

Balthasar answers, "God’s love [is] a love which goes in search of man in order to lift him out of
the pit, free him from his bonds and place him in the freedom of the divine love that is now
human as well" (LA). How can man perceive God revealing himself, and give himself to God in
the act of faith? God, who is love, has startled the world with his self-revelation as the Beautiful
One.

Balthasar argues that the beautiful is the first point of insight by which one perceives God’s
revelation. God’s appearance in the world is analogous to the aesthetical encounter. Analogy is
the only possible means whereby man may speak about God without depriving him of his
absolute mystery, or the believer the possibility of articulating an explanation of divine
revelation. Analogy neither distances nor compromises God’s absolute transcendence and love.
What corresponds to "beauty" on the natural plane is the Lord’s "glory" on the divine plane.
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have revealed themselves as one God in order to liberate man
and bring him to live within the divine life of the Trinity. Man could never anticipate God’s
astounding initiative in reaching out to save him.

The Form of the Cross

The pinnacle of this revelation, which Balthasar calls the "Christform", is Jesus nailed to the
Cross. One may object, "How can the crucifixion of Jesus be the preeminent revelation of
Beauty?" In the ugliest place of human existence (crucifixion and death) God reveals himself as
absolute, total self-giving love. The Trinity is self-giving love. Being disguised under the
disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death, the Christform is paradoxically the clearest
revelation of who God is. This love can only be fully revealed in a world corrupted by sin through
death, the ultimate expression of self-giving in this world.

And so this is the supreme moment of transcending beauty, a revelation of love visible in the
world, yet pointing to a love beyond this world. As St. John so profoundly grasps in his Gospel,
the concealment of the Son under the form of the Cross is his glory because it reveals a love to
the absolute end. The glory of the Son does not come after the Cross. The Cross is his glory. Even
in this ultimate form of beauty in self-giving love, God does not overwhelm human freedom. No
one is forced to believe that this crucified man is the divine Son of God saving the world.

As in the aesthetical encounter, the form is Jesus nailed to the Cross. One must decipher the
Christform which stands in history as a concrete sign (species). Anyone can stand before it and
wonder, "Who is this?" God has disturbed history forever with his provocative sign of love. The
perception of faith, however, is beyond the ability of man alone. What is required is a new light.
Without this light man cannot see the depths of the form. In other words, the non-believer looks
at the Cross and says, "I see just a man." God must awaken in man the capacity to recognize him.

The splendor (lumen) emanating from the form is the glory of the Lord containing divine grace.
This glory strikes the non-believer (vision) pulling him into the form and enabling him to believe
(rapture). He is pulled into its depths, not simply for an encounter with absolute Being, but into a
personal relationship with the tri-personal God (who is also absolute Being). The act of faith is to
be swept up into the form of the Triune God’s self-revelation in Jesus of Nazareth through the
splendor of divine grace. The non-believer is seduced by the form.