Hans Urs von Balthasar
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The Reverend Father Hans Urs von Balthasar |
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|---|---|
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 26 July 1939 by Michael von Faulhaber |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
12 August 1905 Lucerne, Switzerland |
| Died | 26 June 1988 (aged 82) Basel, Switzerland |
| Nationality | Swiss |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic |
Hans Urs von Balthasar (12 August 1905 – 26 June 1988) was a Swiss theologian and Catholic priest who was to be created a cardinal of the Catholic Church but died before the ceremony. He is considered one of the most important Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century.
Balthasar was born in Lucerne, Switzerland, on 12 August 1905, to a wealthy family. He was educated first by Benedictine monks at the abbey school at Engelberg in central Switzerland. Before finishing his secondary education, however, Balthasar was moved by his parents to the Stella Matutina College run by the Society of Jesus in Feldkirch, Austria. In 1923 he enrolled in the University of Zurich. His studies in philosophy and German literature led him to study subsequently in Vienna and Berlin and culminated in his doctoral work on German literature and idealism.
In 1929, having submitted his thesis, he entered the Society of Jesus, better known as the Jesuits (in Germany, since the Jesuits were banned in Switzerland until 1973). For three years he studied philosophy at Pullach, near Munich, and came into contact with Erich Przywara, whose work on analogia entis (the analogy of being) was very influential on him. In 1932, he moved to Fourvières, the Jesuit school at Lyon, for his four years of theological study. Here he encountered Jean Daniélou, Gaston Fessard, and Henri de Lubac. Daniélou and de Lubac were both to become notable from the 1940s onwards as members of the nouvelle théologie, a group of thinkers raising deep questions about the neoscholastic doctrine of grace and nature, with its suggestion that human nature could be conceived of in isolation from its relation to the vision of God. Both Daniélou and de Lubac, as part of their re-assessment of neoscholastic thought, were increasingly turning to studies of patristic thinkers. Balthasar received from his time here an enduring love of the Church Fathers, which was later to lead to his studies of Origen of Alexandria (1938), Maximus the Confessor, Kosmische Liturgie (1941), and Gregory of Nyssa, Présence et pensée (1942).
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