Love Itself Is Understanding

Scholars of the ex-Jesuit theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88) have long recognized that the saints occupy a prominent position in his theology, yet careful studies of this feature of his thought are still acutely needed.In Love Itself Is Understanding, Matthew Rothaus Moser endeavors to fill this lacuna through a meticulous examination of von Balthasar's treatment of the saints, and the result is the most detailed, engaging, and creative discussion of the topic in Balthasar's theology to date.Of greatest interest to Moser is von Balthasar's view of "saintly knowing" (xxi), or the ways in which the saints offer a distinctive and noteworthy religious epistemology.As Moser summarizes this form of knowledge, "[t]he saints know as lovers do, that is, by loving.Love is a disposition of receptivity, surrender, and obedience, an ecstatic charity toward something beyond the self [...].By loving, the saints are conformed or attuned to truth.Their entire existence is adequated to the truth of Being" (xxiii).Moser argues that it is precisely through the saints that von Balthasar seeks to bridge the divide between the "speculative and the affective" and, in so doing, to make spiritually edifying theology academically rigorous, and vice versa.Chapter One, "Balthasar, the Ignatian Theologian," notes the centrality of Ignatius and Ignatian spirituality for von Balthasar, as seen especially in the prominence of receptivity and obedience as themes in von Balthasar's theology.Moser highlights the fact that, for Balthasar, theology is born in the encounter with Christ, and Ignatius is the paragon of the sort of indifferent obedience that allows this encounter to be most fruitful.Chapter Two, "Balthasar on Mission," takes the Ignatian insights from the first chapter and applies them to von Balthasar's missional concerns, which entail both enriching the church and "an interpretation, critique, and redemption of the broader culture" (25).The two tasks converge when the church engages with the culture of which it is a part instead of walling itself off from the world.From this well-known Balthasarian call for the church to raze the bastions, Moser proceeds to treat von Balthasar's critique of modernity with reference to Hegel, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard, among others.A familiar contrast between von Balthasar and the German Jesuit Karl Rahner follows, but Moser adds the salutary point that von Balthasar's emphasis on the distinctively Catholic Denkform over Rahnerian accommodationism takes a "saintly shape."As Moser puts it, "[i]t is the captivating form of saintly lives, especially the splendor of their sanctity, that will enliven, enrich, and guide the church" (65)

Christian tradition · Obedience · Spirituality · Theology · Catholicism and Religious Studies · Christian Theology and Mission · Evelyn Waugh and Hans Urs von Balthasar Studies · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies · Religious Studies