“Christ’s new foundation, his Church is the communication to mankind of the pneuma, interior to God, which is the location, consummation and testimony of the love between the Father and Son. Henceforth the Church exists consciously, the unbelieving world unconsciously, within the trinitarian love, which proved itself to be the final thing, the eschaton, because in the midst of its opposite — in the ‘hell’ of lost human freedom — it could be itself, as the Son’s perfect obedience of love even in the realm of the dead.”
–Hans Urs von Balthasar, Convergences: To the Source of the Christian Mystery (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1983), 93.
Thanks for pointing me toward the Balthasar conference. I have really enjoyed reading it. Thanks also for this quote. I really liked it. Was Balthasar Catholic?
Coldfire,
Balthasar was Roman Catholic, indeed.
Balthasar is also intensely catholic: de Lubac called him ‘the most cultured man in Europe.’