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The first attempt at a response: there must have been a fall, a decline, and the road to salvation can only be the return of the sensible finite into the intelligible infinite.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

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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
Fall
Decline
Firsts
Sensible
First
Attempt
Must
Salvation
Response
Road
Intelligible
Infinite
Aggravation
Return
Finite

More quotes by Hans Urs von Balthasar

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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.
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Lovers are the ones who know most about God the theologian must listen to them.
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Every experience of beauty points to [eternity].
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Christian obedience, by its very nature, has a heroic character.
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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.
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Love alone is credible.
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The saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor.
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When you say Yes to God unconditionally, you have no idea how far this Yes is going to take you. Certainly farther than you can guess and calculate beforehand... but just how far and in what form? At the same time, this Yes is the sole, non-negotiable prerequisite of all Christian understanding, of all theology and ecclesial wisdom.
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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.
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Thus it is necessary to commence from an inescapable duality: the finite is not the infinite.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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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
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The inner reality of love can be recognized only by love.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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A truth that is merely handed on, without being thought anew from its very foundations, has lost its vital power.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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No one should think he can quickly dispose of questions posed here offhandedly. It was precisely because writers were in the habit during the time of the Reformation of theologizing with a hammer that the split in the Church became irreparable. And to work at overcoming this split means much effort. Only the patient need apply.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance.
Hans Urs von Balthasar