Von Balthasar on the Impossibility of the Gospel

The first thing that must strike a non-Christian about the Christian’s faith is that it obviously presumes far too much. It is too good to be true: the mystery of being, revealed as absolute love, condescending to wash his creatures’ feet, and even their souls, taking upon himself all the confusion of guilt, all the God-directed hatred, all the accusations showered upon him with cudgels, all the disbelief that arrogantly covers up what he had revealed, all the mocking hostility that once for all nailed down his inconceivable movement of self-abasement—in order to pardon his creature, before himself and the world. This is truly too much from the Good; nothing in the world would justify such a metaphysics, and therefore it cannot be justified by that individual sign called “Jesus of Nazareth”, which has so little historical evidence and is so difficult to decipher. To build such an extravagent building on such a fragile foundation would overstep all the limits of reason. (Love Alone is Credible, p.102)

Now, lest anyone misunderstand: von Balthasar is not trying to deny the historical reality of Jesus; he is simply saying that the historical evidence for Jesus cannot bear the weight of justifying this entire understanding of God. Von Balthasar is arguing that faith responds to “the inconceivability of God’s love”. He is arguing that the Gospel of God’s love is not something we can work up to rationally. Personally, I think there’s something very valuable in this insight. What do others think?

Hans Urs von Balthasar on Substitutionary Atonement

It is always the dogma of the removal of guilt through representative substitution that shows most decisively whether an approach is merely anthropologically or truly christologically (that is, theologically) centered. Without this dogma, it always remains possible to interpret everything in rational terms as an expression of human possibility, no matter how much historical mediation one wishes to build in. Our inability to resolve this dogma into gnosis is the true scandal; it is a signal and a warning that this is where genuine faith begins. For it is precisely here, in this deed, that genuine divine love begins and ends, a love that overwhelms us and exceeds all capacity to think it—and thereby becomes completely evident as love. Ultimately, there can be absolute faith only in this deed, because only such a deed, if it should happen, is absolute love, love as the absolute, as the ungraspable epitome of the wholly-other God: “We believe the love God has for us” (I Jn 4:16). (Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible, San Fransisco: Ignatius, 2004, p.100).

I have just finished reading this book, which I have found difficult, but challenging and uplifting at a number of points. Any thoughts on this remarkable passage?