Hans Urs von Balthasar (; 12 August 1905, Lucerne – 26 June 1988, Basel) was a Swiss theologian and Catholic priest who is considered one of the most important Catholic theologians of the 20th century. With Joseph Ratzinger and Henri de Lubac, he founded the theological journal Communio. Over the course of his life, he authored 85 books, over 500 articles and essays, and almost 100 translations. He is known for his 15-volume trilogy on beauty (The Glory of the Lord), goodness (Theo-Drama), and truth (Theo-Logic).
Pope John Paul II announced his choice of Balthasar to become a cardinal, but he died shortly before the consistory. Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) said in his funeral oration for Balthasar that "he is right in what he teaches of the faith" and that he "points the way to the sources of living water."
Life and career
Early life
Balthasar was born in Lucerne, Switzerland, on 12 August 1905, to a patrician family. His father, Oscar Ludwig Carl von Balthasar (1872–1946), was a church architect, and his mother, Gabrielle Pietzcker (d. 1929), helped found the Schweizerischer Katholischer Frauenbund (Swiss League of Catholic Women). Pietzcker was related to the beatified Hungarian bishop Blessed Vilmos Apor, who was shot by Soviet troops in 1945 while trying to protect women from drunken Soviet soldiers. Oscar and Gabrielle had three children. Hans Urs was the eldest. Their son Dieter would join the Swiss Guard. Their daughter Renée (1908–1986) became the superior general of the .Peter Henrici (1991), p. 8. Hans Urs would later describe his family as "straightforwardly Catholic ... I grew up with a faith that was equally straightforward, untroubled by doubt. I can still remember the silent and very moving early Masses on my own in the choir of the Franciscan church in Lucerne and the ten-o'clock Mass in the Jesuit church, which I thought was stunningly beautiful."
As a child, Hans and his family spent much time at the hotel Pension Felsberg, which his grandmother managed. Here, he was regularly exposed to a "cosmopolitan" atmosphere where "trilingualism (German, French, English) [was] taken for granted," as biographer Peter Henrici notes.Peter Henrici (1991), pp. 8–9. Hans, who had absolute pitch, was immersed in classical music, particularly Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and Mahler, and this interest would continue through early adulthood. By his own account, he "spent endless hours on the piano".Von Balthasar, Our Task, p. 36. While studying at the University of Vienna, he reportedly would play the piano four hands almost nightly with his roommate Rudolf Allers. Later, as a Jesuit chaplain, he would perform a transcription of Mozart's Don Giovanni from memory.Peter Henrici (1991), p. 16.
Education
Educated first by Benedictine monks at the abbey school of Engelberg in central Switzerland—during the time of the First World War—Balthasar transferred to the more academically rigorous Stella Matutina, a preparatory school run by the Society of Jesus in Feldkirch, Austria, whose alumni include Arthur Conan Doyle and the Thomist cardinal Franz Ehrle. Aside from music, Balthasar also took a strong interest in literature, later citing Dante and Goethe as key early influences.Peter Henrici (1991), p. 9.
A year before graduation from Stella Matutina, he enrolled early at the University of Zurich to study German literature. After stints researching in Vienna and Berlin, he obtained his doctorate in 1928, with a dissertation on the theme of eschatology in German and Germanophone thought, drawing heavily from Catholic theology.The doctorate was entitled "History of the Eschatological Problem in German Literature". It appeared, considerably rewritten, as Apokalypse der deutschen Seele, 3 vols, (Salzburg, 1937-9) Writing in the 1980s, he said of this latter work that "its fundamental impulse was the desire to reveal ... the ultimate religious attitude, often hidden, of the great figures of modern German literature. I wanted to let them, so to speak, 'make their confession'. The work was of insufficient maturity—most of the chapters ought to be rewritten—and yet some of it may still be valid."Von Balthasar, Our Task, p. 37. According to Henrici, submitting a dissertation of this nature to the "Liberal Protestant" University of Zurich was academically risky for a student at that time, but the faculty awarded Balthasar his doctorate summa cum laude.Peter Henrici (1991), pp. 10–11.
Society of Jesus
Though a practicing Catholic, with "untroubled faith" and "devotion to our Lady", Balthasar had remained largely uninterested in theology and spirituality until his university years. At the University of Vienna—where atheism was prevalent—he was influenced in his religious thinking by Hans Eibl and, more decisively, his friend Rudolf Allers, a convert to Catholicism. While studying in Berlin, he also heard lectures by the theologian Romano Guardini.Peter Henrici (1991), p. 10.
In 1929, Balthasar attended a retreat for students in Wyhlen, Germany, and sensed what he believed to be a sudden call to follow Jesus Christ:Even today [in 1959], after thirty years, I could still find again the tree on the lost path in the Black Forest, not far from Basel, under which I was struck as if by lightning.... [I]t was neither theology nor the priesthood that, at that moment, appeared in a flash before my mind; it was this alone: You have nothing to choose; you are called. You will not serve; another will use you. You have no plans to make; you are only a small little tile in a mosaic that has long been ready. I needed only to "leave everything and follow," without making plans, without wishes or ideas: I needed only to stand there and wait and see what I would be used for—and so it happened.von Balthasar, Hans Urs. "Perché mi sono fatto sacerdote." In Hans Urs von Balthasar. Edited by Elio Guerriero. Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1991.He understood this experience as having been mediated by the figure of Ignatius of Loyola. Balthasar would later write of Loyola, "I did not choose him; he set me ablaze like a bolt of lightning."von Balthasar, Hans Urs (1988). "Le sorgenti della vita." In La realtà e la gloria: Articoli e interviste 1978–1988. Milan: EDIT. On November 18, 1929, Balthasar entered the Society of Jesus in south Germany, not long after the death of his mother.Peter Henrici (1991), p. 12. At that time, Jesuit work and ministry was prohibited in Switzerland by constitutional law.Peter Henrici (1991), pp. 14–15.
After two years as a Jesuit novice, he studied philosophy at Pullach, near Munich, where he came into contact with Erich Przywara, who formed him in Scholasticism and whose work on the analogia entis impacted him, though he would later express some hesitation about certain aspects of his thought. In 1932, Balthasar moved to Fourvière, the Jesuit school in Lyon, France, for four years of theological study. Here he encountered fellow Jesuits Henri Bouillard, Jean Daniélou, Gaston Fessard, and Henri de Lubac, figures later associated with the nouvelle théologie. De Lubac kindled the young student's interest in the Church Fathers, especially Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor. In Lyon, Balthasar also encountered the work of French writers Charles Péguy, Georges Bernanos, and Paul Claudel.
Balthasar was ordained a priest on 26 July 1936. As a motto on his ordination card, he used the phrase "Benedixit, fregit, deditque" ("He blessed it, broke it, and gave"), taken from the words of the institution of the Eucharist in the Gospel of Luke.Henrici, "A Sketch", p. 14. After finishing his theological studies in 1937, he was sent to Munich to work at the journal Stimmen der Zeit, where he remained until 1939. He completed his tertianship with Albert Steger in 1940.
When given the choice between a professorship at the Gregorian University in Rome and a role as student chaplain in Basel, Switzerland, he chose the chaplaincy, preferring pastoral work to academia. Moving to Basel in 1940, Balthasar edited the Europaische Reihe literary series for the Sammlung Klosterberg, translated French Resistance poetry, helped to produce plays (including a staging of his own translations of Bernanos' Dialogues of the Carmelites and Claudel's The Satin Slipper), published book-length studies on Maximus the Confessor and Gregory of Nyssa, and regularly lectured to students. He established the Studentische Schulungsgemeinschaft in 1941, an institute for student formation that featured courses and conferences by Hugo Rahner, Martin Buber, Yves Congar, Gustav Siewerth, Henri de Lubac, and others. To the students, Balthasar offered liturgies, sermons, retreats, and spiritual direction, with a particular emphasis on the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.Peter Henrici (1991), pp. 15–16. According to Jacques Servais, "A good number of the young men eventually entered the Society of Jesus, while others decided to remain in the lay state, hoping to find a form of consecration to God in the world."
Collaboration with Adrienne von Speyr
During his first months in Basel, he met the physician Adrienne von Speyr through a mutual friend. A mother in her late thirties, and a somewhat prominent figure in Basel society, she was married to the historian Werner Kaegi, with two children from her first marriage to , who had died suddenly in 1934. She was a Protestant, but interested in becoming Catholic. Balthasar began to offer her catechetical instruction and later said of this process, "In the instructions she understood everything immediately, as though she had only—and for how long!—waited to hear exactly what I was saying in order to affirm it."
Shortly following her reception into the Catholic Church on 1 November 1940—at a liturgy celebrated by Balthasar—Speyr began reporting intense experiences in prayer, including visions of Christ's Passion and encounters with various saints. In Balthasar's words, "A veritable cataract of mystical graces poured over Adrienne in a seemingly chaotic storm that whirled her in all directions at once."Von Balthasar, First Glance, p. 33. He began to accompany her as a spiritual director, in order to help evaluate the experiences. After he became convinced of the authenticity of Speyr's mysticism, Balthasar and Speyr both began to believe that they had a shared theological mission.Von Balthasar, Our Task, p. 13–20.