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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

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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
Rather
Ages
History
Spirituality
Inquisition
Ends
Tragedy
Crusades
Neither
Reformation
Christianity
Split
Greatest
Splits
Middle
Opened
Age
Theology

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.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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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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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
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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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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
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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
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The Christian response is contained in these two fundamental dogmas: that of the Trinity and that of the Incarnation. In the trinitarian dogma God is one, good, true, and beautiful because he is essentially Love, and Love supposes the one, the other, and their unity.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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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.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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Only the Christian religion, which in its essence is communicated by the eternal child of God, keeps alive in its believers the lifelong awareness of their being children, and therefore of having to ask and give thanks for things.
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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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.
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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We are not only interested in those aspects of the mystery of the Roman Catholic Church which set her apart from the other Christian communities, but also to show how often they are central beliefs by describing what is specifically Catholic in such a way that the partner in dialogue can see, even from his own standpoint, the inner consistency.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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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.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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It is, finally, a word is untimely in three different senses, and bearing it as one's treasure will not win one anyone's favours one rather risks finding oneself outside everyone's camp... Beauty is the word that shall be our first.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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Lovers are the ones who know most about God the theologian must listen to them.
Hans Urs von Balthasar
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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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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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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