Quote

A truth that is merely handed on, without being thought anew from its very foundations, has lost its vital power.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Hans Urs von Balthasar
Age: 82 †
Born: 1905
Born: August 12
Died: 1988
Died: June 26
Cardinal
Catholic Priest
Theologian
Translator
Writer
Lucerne
Switzerland
Balthasar
Hans-Urs von Balthasar
Without
Handed
Vital
Merely
Foundation
Lost
Thought
Truth
Anew
Power
Foundations

More quotes by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Image
God defines himself as I am who I am, which also means: My being is such that I shall always be present in every moment of becoming.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
There is a moment when the interior light of the eyes of faith becomes one with the exterior light that shines from Christ, and this occurs because man's thirst, as he strives and seeks after God, is quenched as he finds repose in the revealed form of the Son.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
There is much in Christianity which can be subjected to exact analysis. But the ultimate things are shrouded in the silent mysteries of God.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
The greatest tragedy in the history of Christianity was neither the Crusades nor the Reformation nor the Inquisition, but rather the split that opened up between theology and spirituality at the end of the Middle Ages.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
Consequently, Christian meditation is entirely trinitarian and at the same time entirely human. In order to find God, no one need reject being human personally or socially, but in order to find God all must see the world and themselves in the Holy Spirit as they are in God's sight.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
Every experience of beauty points to [eternity].
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
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
Image
Christian obedience, by its very nature, has a heroic character.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
Love alone is credible.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
The saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
The Passion narratives are the first pieces of the Gospels that were composed as a unity.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
Only in Christ are all things in communion. He is the point of convergence of all hearts and beings and therefore the bridge and the shortest way from each to each.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word which both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
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
Image
The inner reality of love can be recognized only by love.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
Lovers are the ones who know most about God the theologian must listen to them.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
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
Image
Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
Image
To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.
Hans Urs von Balthasar