Why Would God Love Us? God's Love and The Depth of Beimg

Poster on Religious forums

Let's say there is a omnipotent creator being who likes to be called God. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-capable. This dude is the single most powerful being in existence and created this whole universe because he got bored one day and decided to brighten up his surroundings. Why the hell would such a powerful infalliable being care about a puny, measly race such as the human race? What makes us so special that we get promises and covenants with this superpower? Why does he give flying **** whether we know he's there or not? Why does he care what I eat on Fridays, or whether I beat my meat, or whether I lied to my mother? It makes absolutely no sense in my mind, this basic principle of a creator being who cares so damn much about the impotent human race in our microscopic section of the universe.[1]

I have seen this view expressed in many ways in many forums. This particular one is average in many ways, maybe a bit more cynical and snide than most. They seem to reflect the idea that God is too  big to care about us. First let's put to rest the misconceptions unique to this expression. God not a dude. God is not "the single most powerful being in existence." Tillich says this explicitly.[2]  God is not a being but being itself. Thus, God is not the most powerful being but the basis of all being.

This guy just reads into the proposition the idea that God created out of boredom. This is very telling because in asserting a trivial or time killing reason for creation he just denigrates his own existence and all the rest of existence., We are just an  after thought God doesn't really care. A sick flawed God reflects this guy's view of himself. This guy is ascribing it all to absurdly cynical reasons. This tells us more about him then it does about God. Joseph Campbell once said "cynicism appears as insight to the cowardly mind.[3] It's actually cowardice that negates us ever looking for the positive, preparing for inevitable failure. Even apart from this extreme version the whole "God is too big care" ideas really self pity anyway. Perhaps it's also fear of failure. If we accept God's love then we feel more is expected of us.

It may be that the basic question "why would God care?" is a valid question at some level. Assuming so cam we give a good answer? Of course we should be prepared to find that we can't fathom it. God's love is beyond our understanding as is everything else about God. Why should we think we could understand this aspect of God? But we may find some valid reasons. Yet we have to remember that weather or  we understand It. Understanding why God loves us is not necessary to the fact that he does. Yet I have huge reasons to believe that he does. These are demonstrable. The overwhelming sense of love that accompanies mystical experience is enough to confirm God's love in a way that can never the doubted. This is well documented aspect of mystical experience.

The question has to be differentiated still further. There is no doubt that great insights and revelations are profoundly felt in mystic or peak-experiences, and certainly some of these are, ipso facto, intrinsically valid as experiences. That is, one can and does learn from such experiences that, e.g., joy, ecstasy, and rapture do in fact exist and that they are in principle available for the experiencer, even if they never have been before. Thus the peaker learns surely and certainly that life can be worthwhile, that it can be beautiful and valuable. There are ends in life, i.e., experiences which are so precious in themselves as to prove that not everything is a means to some end other than itself."[4]

In addition ot the empirical fact of God's love it makes sense that God would love, it is God's nature to love, God is love. We know that God is the ground of being, or being itself. Tillich makes this connection. Tillich says that if We know being has depth we can't be atheists:

"The name of infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of our being is God. That depth is what the word God means. And if that word has not much meaning for you, translate it, and speak of the depths of your life, of the source of your being, of your ultimate concern, of what you take seriously without any reservation. Perhaps, in order to do so, you must forget everything traditional that you have learned about God, perhaps even that word itself. For if you know that God means depth, you know much about Him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. Being itself is surface only. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not."[5]

What this means this depth of being is that there's more to being than just the fact of things existing. Part of that is modes of existing, such as necessity and contingent, part of it is the existential dimension and the phenomenological dimension. One such aspect is transcendent truth. IF we could know there is a transcendent truth we could know there's depth tha would give us a handle on the kind of depth that is a clue toward realization of the divine. Tillich did not make a formal argument stating "here is my ontological argument." Many see implicit in Tillich's work a new approach to the ontological. In other words It is God's nature to love because God is the basis of all being and there is a connection in the nature of love and the nature of being.

I believe that when the Bible says "God is love" it means it literally. In other words, we should put an "itself" there. God is "love itself,": the thing that love is actually the essence of what God is. Now you may ask how can God be both being itself and love itself? Because these two are inextricably bound up together. Love is giving, the idea of seeking the good of the other, according the other full human dignity equal to one's own, these are ideas that entail give over, supplying the other with something. It's a positivity in the sense that it supplies an actual thing to someone. Being also shares these qualifies. Being is giving in the sense that it bettors itself upon the beings and they have their existence. It is positive in the sense that it is something and not taking something away, it's not a void as nothingness is, but moves in the direction of filling a void; nothingness becomes being, the existence of things.

So love and being are really the same impulse and they both unite in the spirit of God. God is the basis of all being, of all reality. God's character is love; that is God seeks the good of the other and bestows upon us the ultimate human dignity of being a child of God. At this point I turn to the other great theologian of Being itself, Hans Urs Von Balthasar.

The common human tendency is to think God created because he needed something. Balthasar is hinting, I think, that God creates because its his nature as being to foment more being, in other words, its creative and God is Creative. It is not for God’s need that he creates but for what will become our need once we are created. In other words, God created us so that we can enjoy being, not because he needed us because once a part of being we would need and would be fulfilled in the need by love.

No Philosophy could give a satisfactory response to that question [why did infinte create finite?] St Paul would say to philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to obtain the Divine. That is why all pre Christian philosophy is theological at its summit. But, in fact, the true response to philosophy could only be given by Being himself, revealing himself from himself. Will man be capable of understanding this revelation? The affirmative response will be given only by the God of the Bible. On the one hand this God, creator of the world and of man, knows his creature. “I who have created the eye do not see? I who have created the ear do not hear?” And we add who who have created language, could not speak and make myself heard?” This posits a counterpart: to be able to hear and understand the auto-revelation of God man must in himself be a search for God, a question posed to him. Thus there is Biblical theology without a religious philosophy. Human reason must be open to the infinite.[6]

Notice how he capitalizes “B” in being and refers to being as “himself.” He personifies being and clearly speaks of it as the creator.

Balthasar sees the understanding of the revelation of “being himself” (my phrase based upon his) to humanity as rooted in the most fundamental human relationship. He says, “the infant is brought to consciousness of himself only by love, by the smile of his mother. In that encounter the horizon of all unlimited opens unto him.”[7] What he means by that is it is only through being por soir, for itself, in other words, consciousness, that we are able to comprehend the infinite and that only in contrast to the finite. Before we can do that, however, we have to become aware of ourselves so we can know we are finite. I think he’s making an implication that love is a link to being itself, and that through our encounter with love, the mother, we encounter the father, so to speak—by way of encountering love. We can see this in four truths that Balthasar finds rooted in this encounter:

(1) realizing that he Is other to the mother, the only way the child realizes he loves the mother; (2) love is good, therefore, being is good; (3) love is true, therefore, being is true; (4) love evokes joy therefore being is beautiful.[8] Notice the link between being and love. He is one of the rare theologians to point out this curial link.

The one, the true, the good, the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attributes of being, because they surpass all the limits of essence, and are coextensive with Being. If there is an insurmountable distance between God and his creature, but if there is also an analogy between them which cannot be resolved in any form of identity, there must also exist an analogy between the transcendentals—between those of the creature and those in God.[9]

In this quotation he as much as equates being and God, since he speaks of the attributes of being then connects the understanding of these to the link between God and the creature. There is more to be said about Balthasar based upon this observation and it will figure importantly in two more chapters, including the last one, and the over all conclusion.

we don't know what God's purpose for us is but if God is too "out there" for us to believe he loves us then we can't second guess his purposes and thus we have not right to doubt his love.

 

Sources


[1]godlikemadman, Religious Forums, feb 26, 2011
http://www.religiousforums.com/threads/why-does-god-care-about-human-beings-so-much.111976/
accessed April 10, 2016


[2] Paul, Tillich, The Courage to Be, Yale University Press; 2 Sub, 2000, 182.

[3]  Joseph Campbell, The Hero with A Thousand Faces.

[4] Abraham H. Maslow, "Appendix D. What is the Validity of Knowledge Gained in Peak-Experiences?" Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences. New York: Penguin books, 2014.

[5] Paul Tillich, The Shaking of The Foundations

[6] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “A Resume of my Thought,” in David L. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work. San Francisco:Ignatious Press, 1991, on like version p1-2 URL:

http://books.google.com/books?id=LLhBuwGFEugC&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=Hans+Urs+Von+Balthasar+connection+between+Love+and+Being&source=bl&ots=E6-L_5GF4p&sig=A-MzjMjMmqjBqRmAaUOWGYiOUww&hl=en&ei=xrTSSdLiJdqJnAe4tNTgBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#v=onepage&q=Hans%20Urs%20Von%20Balthasar%20connection%20between%20Love%20and%20Being&f=true

[7] Ibid, 1

[8] Ibid., 3

[9] Ibid.

 

 

TS Abductive version 3 of 3

The argument offers the best explanation

The argument seeks to explain why organizing principals are necessary and all pervasive. It also seeks to explain how such principles can be. Where are they located? How can disembobied principals be “out there?” The transcendental signifier fits the criteria offered as “best explanation.

Simple

There are two aspects, elegance (number and concisenss of the theories basic principles.) and ontological simplicity (number of entities proposed). The TSED and God are not two entities but one and the same. That's one “entity” the TSED has ontological simplicity. I don't know if Christian theology could be said to be concise but it can't be as complex as the mathematics for the multiverse. Religious answers are not scientific. They can't be judged by the same standards. Yet, concepts can be concise and clearity often makes for simplicity. God is a concept, as is the TSED. The concept iclear and concise: God is the mind that thinks the world.

Theologically God has always been considered simple: God is not a body, not composed of form or matter, He's not a product of nature.1

Competitive

Science and religion are not competitors. Belief and atheism do compete. They both seek to explain ultimate origins. The best atheism can do is use science to assert that Gravity is the ultimate. Since we don't really understand gravity well enough to say it's self creating and self sufficient that's not much of an answer. In positing a “why” they are stuck with denying that there is a why. Science does not compete with God, except as used by the new atheist. It is there use of science that speak to as a rival hypothesis.

Consistent

There are no contradictions in the concept of God per se. There may be contradictions in some ideas of God but not in all of them. Of course atheists might point out that the problem of theodicy (why does God allow pain and evil?) creates a contradiction between the world as we know it and the idea of a loving God who cares for each one of us. There are various theological answers, however that mitigate the contradiction. One of them might be that God must allow the possibility of evil choices and their consequences to have moral universe. A moral universe is one in which free moral agents willingly choose the good. If its a real choice we have to be free to make the wrong choice.

That opens the door to the issue of hidden reasons in God's plan. Why, for example, is free will so important? Without free will there is no actual love. So if all if this nonsense in life is all about love why doesn't God just tell us what it's all for? So there's a level beyond which we just don't know. That does not constitute a contradiction in the concept of God, or even in that of a loving God. That kind of answer must be given carefully, however, or we charges of double standard.

Complete

Here the previous answer of hidden knowledge might be seen as a violation of this criterion. It calls for an answer to reveal more answers about the data than do its rival hypotheses. Yet now we are asking allowances for hidden answers. On the other hand, none of the other hypotheses offer complete answers with disclosure of all potential data. We don't understand everything about gravity for example, as stated above. The God hypothesis answers issues on many levels that science can't offer. This is not to say that science is no good, God and science are in different domains and they answer different kinds of questions. Belief in God enables us to posit a final cause that sits behind the chain of cause and effect as a whole. It also not only offers answers at a philosophical level but allows connections between the causal postulate of the universe and other areas of reality that impinge upon existential issues and ethics. Why are we here? Does life have a meaning? How shall I deal with others? These are questions for science has no answers. The believer is then free to use science to answer questions about the workings of the physical world. Science is not competing but in considering “competing hypotheses” I use science as a rival only to the extent that atheists turn to it as though it were a rival to religion.

Philosophical

Why interject extraneous matters into the issue of origins when they are not directly concerned with origins? Because they are not extraneous, they are philosophical, this is why the answer to the question of origins has to be on a philosophical level. After all not all of the data for which the argument seeks to account is data from the physical sciences. There is also the data about generative grammar, and the logic of arguments, all the myriad organizing principles that make up the metaphysical hierarchy. What's the point of caring about how the universe works if we don't have in the back of our questions issues of higher magnitude about why we are here and how we should live? Heidegger insisted that the most fundamental question of metaphysical thinking is, “why is there something rather than nothing at all.” Now he says Christians can't answer it because they have a ready made answer. He point of the question is to think, not to apply ready made answers.ii.2

To my mind that truly captures the distinction between philosophy and theology. Philosophy is asking questions which one does not expect an answer, while theology is accepting answers without knowing how they were obtained. Seriously, the insistence upon asking the question points up the fact that we want to ask such questions and real thinkers are not satisfied with ignoring them. Whether we content our selves with answers that speak to us deeply, or use the question to stimulate thought we are not satisfied with ignoring such things. I would venture to assert that most of us want answers to such questions. Scientists continue asserting answers to the ultimate origin they don't just give and stop looking. But science can't really engage the question at the metaphysical level; it can't deal with “why?” As I said before the best they can do is say there is no why. That is not satisfying.

Does belief in God offer an ultimate why? As I said above there are truths in God we are not given to know. Yet I think we can go further to answering these things than the skeptic would have us believe. We can't really know why God created or why God allows conflicts between good and evil. We can know that the answer will be bound up with the nature of being and the love of God. Here I speak from a Christian perspective. Perhaps other traditions would give other answers but I can only speak from my own tradition. From the Christian tradition there is an association between “The Ground of Being,” or “being itself,” (God) and love.

We find this association in the works of Hans Urs Von Balthasar. Von Balthasar was a major Catholic theologian who unfortunatley is not so well know to Protestant theology students. Balthasar is one of the most interesting and brilliant figures of the twentieth century, yet hardly anyone has heard of him outside the confines of academic theology. Even most theological students in the Protestant world are not very familiar with his works. He was a friend of John Paul II, called “the most cultured man of our time by Henri de Lubac. His achievements are called ‘breathtaking’ my one of the major catholic theologians of the century, Carl Rahner. He wrote over a thousand books and articles. He was born in Lucerne Switzerland, 1905, and Grew up a Catholic, son of a pious mother. He took his doctorate from the Liberal Protestant University of Zurich, having grown up educated by Benedictines and Jesuits. He became a Jesuit priest. He worked as a student Chaplin in the 30s. He became good friends with Protestant theologian Karl Barth, one of the greats of the century..3

The common human tendency is to think God created because he needed something. Balthasar is hinting, I think, that God creates because its his nature as being to foment more being, in other words, its creative and God is Creative. It is not for God’s need that he creates but for what will become our need once we are created. In other words, God created us so that we can enjoy being, not because he needed us because once a part of being we would need and would be fulfilled in the need by love.

No Philosophy could give a satisfactory response to that question [why did infinte create finite?] St Paul would say to philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to obtain the Divine. That is why all pre Christian philosophy is theological at its summit. But, in fact, the true response to philosophy could only be given by Being himself, revealing himself from himself. Will man be capable of understanding this revelation? The affirmative response will be given only by the God of the Bible. On the one hand this God, creator of the world and of man, knows his creature. “I who have created the eye do not see? I who have created the ear do not hear?” And we add I who have created language, could not speak and make myself heard?” This posits a counterpart: to be able to hear and understand the auto-revelation of God man must in himself be a search for God, a question posed to him. Thus there is Biblical theology without a religious philosophy. Human reason must be open to the infinite.

.1

Balthasar sees the understanding of the revelation of “being himself” (my phrase based upon his) to humanity as rooted in the most fundamental human relationship. He says, “the infant is brought to consciousness of “himself” only by love, by the smile of his mother. In that encounter the horizon of all unlimited opens unto him.” .5 What he means by that is it is only through being por soir, for itself, in other words, consciousness, that we are able to comprehend the infinite and that only in contrast to the finite. Before we can do that, however, we have to become aware of ourselves so we can know we are finite. I think he’s making an implication that love is a link to being itself, and that through our encounter with love, the mother, we encounter the father, so to speak—by way of encountering love. We can see this in four truths that Balthasar finds rooted in this encounter: (1) realizing that he Is other to the mother, the only way the child realizes he loves the mother; (2) love is good, therefore, being is good; (3) love is true, therefore, being is true; (4) love evokes joy therefore being is beautiful. Notice the link between being and love. He is one of the rare theologians to point out this curial link.

The one, the true, the good, the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attributes of being, because they surpass all the limits of essence, and are coextensive with Being. If there is an insurmountable distance between God and his creature, but if there is also an analogy between them which cannot be resolved in any form of identity, there must also exist an analogy between the transcendentals—between those of the creature and those in God.

.6

Of course though the special revelation in the Bible the Christian tradition has always recognized that “God is love.” (1 John 4:8). “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8). “Love is poured into our hearts though the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 5:1 NIV). There is also empirical evidence based upon universal aspects of religious experience that are found in all faiths and all cultures. The same experiences are described but they explained through different traditions. When researchers take the names out the answers are the same compared to those of other faiths and cultures. In other words instead of Jesus or Vishnu they said “higher power.” Th.7 ey experiences described have basically two dimensions: (1) an undifferentiated sense of the unity of all things, and (2) deep abiding universal love. This seems to reflect the two fundamental aspects of reality Undifferentiated unity mirrors being itself, love mirror's God's motivations. These ideas plus the data on experiences suggest ajn answer, a reason for creation. That reason is love. God's purposes are about love. God created humanity as an expression of his love, and to be in a love relationship with us.

Some philosophers, even Christian one's have called God an “ultimate brute fact.” A b.8 rute fact is the existence of something for which there is no purpose. It is something that just happens to be. While it is true that God is not the product of a purpose of a higher will, God can never be a brute fact. God is the final stopping point of all causal chains. God is eternal and has no beginning but this not proof that God has no purpose. God is not something that just happens to be and might as well have not been. God is the ground of being God has to be, and God posses purpose; to foment more being in love. God inaugurates the purpose of God. Just as God is self sustaining God is self purposing. It's not a gratuitous decision but the result of the nature of what it means to be being itself; being and love are linked at a fundamental level. Being gives out to the beings, the ground of being foments more being.9 Love is giving, love is the will to the good of the other. Being is of tye nature that it seeks the good.


Sources

1. Thomas Aquinas, Op. Cit.

2. Heidegger, Martin, 1959, Introduction to Metaphysics, Trans. Manheim. New Haven: Yale University Press. –––, 1962, Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, New York: Harper & Row.
3. Joel Graver, “a Short Biography,” Online resource, Hans Urs Von Balthesar, An Internet Archive, URL: http://www.lasalle.edu/~garver/bio.htm (visited 12/3/10).

4. Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “A Resume of my Thought,” in David L. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work. San Francisco:Ignatious Press, 1991, on like version p1-2

5.Ibid.

6. Ibid.


7. Ralph Hood Jr., “The Common Core Thesis in the Study of Mysticism.” In Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion. Patrick Mcnamara ed. West Port CT: Prager Publications, 2006, 119-235.

8. Swinburne calls God ultimate brute fact. He means by that there is no higher purpose than God, not that God has no purpose. Balthasar argues that God's purpose is love and that is self justifying self determining. my phrase, see Balthasar above. op cit.

9. John MacQuarry, Principles of Christian theology, (1965). His concept being let's be. Balthasar makes it more active, being creates beings.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Being itself, and the Personal God.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905-1988)

I feel like I talk too much about Tillich and not enough other theologians who agreed that God is being itself. Balthasar is not as well know but is as deeply respected as Tillich in Catholic circles. He believe God is being itself and personal.

Balthasar one of the most interesting and brilliant figures of the twentieth century, yet hardly anyone has heard of him outside the confines of academic theology. Even most theological students in the Proestant world are not very familiar with his works. He was a friend of John Paul II, called “the most cultured man of our time by Henri de Lubac. His achievements are called ‘breathtaking’ my one of the major catholic theologians of the century, Carl Rahner.[1] He wrote over a thousand books and articles. He was born in Lucerne Switzerland, 1905, and Grew up a Catholic, son of a pious mother.[2] He took his doctorate from the Liberal Protestant University of Zurich, having grown up educated by Benedictines and Jesuits. He became a Jesuit priest. He worked as a student Chaplin in the 30s. He became good friends with Protestant theologian Karl Barth, one of the greats of the century.

Balthasar was unable to work as a full fledged Jesuit priest due to the war years and the arrangement the government had between Protestants and Catholics, he was seen as belonging to the area of south Germany. He made a living as a translator and lecturer and editor. He ran publications and started a spiritual community. He spent most of his adult life this way, in association with a woman named Speyr who was never recognized as a mystic by the church. He had miracles and visions but being unrecognized, Balthasar’s community was not accepted and he was unable to gain a post. This situation dominated his life in the 40s,50’s, and 60s. He had to leave the Jesuits. He also lectured in these years on spiritual topics and made a living that way, but his health deteriorated as a result. In the 60s he began to be recognized as a theologian and was given honors and doctorates. In 1988 John Paul II made him a cardinal. That was also the year of his death. His community of st. John was a publishing house and he ran a journal called Communio. These eventually found great success in the 70s and were recognized by the Vatican. The major avenue to his success was his books and his lectures.[3]

Balthasar’s overall theological project centers upon the dualities between human conflict with ourselves and our place in being. Examples of the dualities that fascinate Balthasar include: our own contingency and that of the world around us in contrast to the sense of being itself.[4] Balthasar openly and obvious equates being with God. In his work about Balthasar’s live, David L. Schindler includes a short article by Balthasar himself called “a Resume of my Thought.”[5] He begins this “resume” by talking about the dilemma between human contingency and limitation in contrast to the infinite nature of being. This does not necessitate asserting God up fornt although he’s not concerned with a “proof.” His thesis is that all human philosophy either explicitly or tacitly concerns itself with this topic and by implication tacitly affirms the infinite and the absolute.[6] He comes to the conclusion that the duality is inescapable. The finite is not the infinite. Even the monism of the east is seen through nuanced dualities. Thus he asks the question “why are we not God?” The basis of the question is that we are aspects of being. We are products of being, yet we are contingent being, Why are we contingent and not necessary? The solutions that he ponders seem to end in one way or another with an indignant God creating a finite world out of need or alienation from his own infinity. He finds that only the God of the Bible offers a satisfactory answer, and that answer is in a sense the opposite of what we would think.

The common human tendency is to think God created because he needed something. Balthasar is hinting, I think, that God creates because its his nature as being to foment more being, in other words, its creative and God is Creative. It is not for God’s need that he creates but for what will become our need once we are created. In other words, God created us so that we can enjoy being, not because he needed us because once a part of being we would need and would be fulfilled in the need by love.

No Philosophy could give a satisfactory response to that question [why did infinte create finite?] St Paul would say to philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to obtain the Divine. That is why all pre Christian philosophy is theological at its summit. But, in fact, the true response to philosophy could only be given by Being himself, revealing himself from himself. Will man be capable of understanding this revelation? The affirmative response will be given only by the God of the Bible. On the one hand this God, creator of the world and of man, knows his creature. “I who have created the eye do not see? I who have created the ear do not hear?” And we add who who have created language, could not speak and make myself heard?” This posits a counterpart: to be able to hear and understand the auto-revelation of God man must in himself be a search for God, a question posed to him. Thus there is Biblical theology without a religious philosophy. Human reason must be open to the infinite.[7]

Notice how he capitalizes “B” in being and refers to being as “himself.” He personifies being and clearly speaks of it as the creator.

Balthasar sees the understanding of the revelation of “being himself” (my phrase based upon his) to humanity as rooted in the most fundamental human relationship. He says, “the infant is brought to consciousness of himself only by love, by the smile of his mother. In that encounter the horizon of all unlimited opens unto him.”[8] What he means by that is it is only through being por soir, for itself, in other words, consciousness, that we are able to comprehend the infinite and that only in contrast to the finite. Before we can do that, however, we have to become aware of ourselves so we can know we are finite. I think he’s making an implication that love is a link to being itself, and that through our encounter with love, the mother, we encounter the father, so to speak—by way of encountering love. We can see this in four truths that Balthasar finds rooted in this encounter:

(1) realizing that he Is other to the mother, the only way the child realizes he loves the mother; (2) love is good, therefore, being is good; (3) love is true, therefore, being is true; (4) love evokes joy therefore being is beautiful.[9] Notice the link between being and love. He is one of the rare theologians to point out this curial link.

The one, the true, the good, the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attributes of being, because they surpass all the limits of essence, and are coextensive with Being. If there is an insurmountable distance between God and his creature, but if there is also an analogy between them which cannot be resolved in any form of identity, there must also exist an analogy between the transcendentals—between those of the creature and those in God.[10]

In this quotation he as much as equates being and God, since he speaks of the attributes of being then connects the understanding of these to the link between God and the creature. There is more to be said about Balthasar based upon this observation and it will figure importantly in two more chapters, including the last one, and the over all conclusion.

Balthasar confirms for me so many things I thought but didn't have the courage to say, or that I "sort of thought" but didn't have the intellect to formulate. I think he boldly and unabashedly resoled the problem of paradox between personal God and being itself. He was the first to show me the link bewteen being and love (although Tillich does mention it but I saw it in Balthasar first). He capitalizes "B" in "Being" and speak of Being a "he." The idea that God created not becasue he "needed to" but becasue his nature is creative.

---

[1] Joel Graver, “a Short Biography,” website:Hans Urs Von Balthasar, an Internet Archieve. URL sighted: http://www.lasalle.edu/~garver/bio.htm (visited 12/3/10).

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid, “overview of Balthasar’s project: URL: http://www.joelgarver.com/writ/theo/balt/overview.htm

[5] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “A Resume of my Thought,” in David L. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work. San Francisco:Ignatious Press, 1991, on like version p1-2 URL:

http://books.google.com/books?id=LLhBuwGFEugC&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=Hans+Urs+Von+Balthasar+connection+between+Love+and+Being&source=bl&ots=E6-L_5GF4p&sig=A-MzjMjMmqjBqRmAaUOWGYiOUww&hl=en&ei=xrTSSdLiJdqJnAe4tNTgBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#v=onepage&q=Hans%20Urs%20Von%20Balthasar%20connection%20between%20Love%20and%20Being&f=true

[6] Ibid, 1

[7] Ibid., 3

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

On God and Love

 


Magritte, a long time poster on both CARM and my boards is typical of many atheists in that he expresses a shallow understanding of the nature of love, especially that of agape which is  linked to the sort of love that God is said to have for his creation. On my boards, while criticizing my concept of God he says:

Magritte on Mon Jan 07, 2013 1:35 pm

I dast you to distinguish being from nature without simply adding anthropomorphic labels like love, purpose, meaning, "depth", etc.

I answered:

Metacrock wrote:An over arching consciousness that makes rules for the universe and creates the universe

Magritte

Oops, there's the big man in the sky again - a thing set apart from and beside other things, over arching the universe as Olympus over arches the earth, with God slaving away at his little drawing board, coming up with rules for his hobby universe then creating it with his little celestial saws and hammers.

Let's face it, Metacrock, you talk the Tillich talk but you don't actually understand it on a conceptual level. I realize you don't think God has physical feet and a penis and a robe and a beard, but aside from that your God is a big old Santa-God, the primitive conception that William Blake lampooned as Old Nobodaddy.

 .......He is equating God's love with the human variety that we feel when we either express great fondness for ice cream, feel the effects of nature while beholding the opposite sex, or want to put down family roots in a nice town. He associates God's love with the limits of human love and thus construes any concept that God is loving with what I have called "the big man in the sky." I can assure the reader I gave them that concept, no atheist on CARM used that phrase before I drilled it into their heads. Now they are assuming I don't know what it means. So they see the idea of God's love as proof of anthropomorphism. He also makes the classic blunder of thinking that Tillich's view of god is that of a totally impersonal force. God cannot have even the slightest hint of consciousness he's the big man in the sky. There are only two possibility, total impervious bead force with no consciousness at all, automatically force like magnetism, or the big  man in the sky. While he is right about the idea that a disembodied mind could have the attributes of a big man in sky if one is not careful to understand those attributes, he could just be a jumped up superman, but that's not necessarily the case just because one sees God and humans have this one ting in common, love.
.......Before I explore the concept of love and demonstrate the differences in divine and human versions I am going to dispell this shallow mistake that God can't be loving and that any hint of personal nature is big man in the sky. First the idea that Tillich does not allow for the slightest big of consciousness in God. I wrote a huge post on my boards which is really a chapter from my unpublished Tillich book, that explores this question about Tillich's view of God as "personal." Of cousre Magritte never read it. In rejecting what he calls "the god of Theism" Tillich is not nixing all concepts of consciousness in God. He's dealing with levels of God talk in which the theistic level is lower level of understanding. The lowest of all just sees God as a big man. The theist level seems God as a big ego, that doesn't  mean that he's saying all conscoiusness concepts of God are on that level. I say in that essay "For Tillich God is not a wielder of final cause but is a conduit for cause distributed throughout all of reality. Here he is referring to the panENtheist assumptions of his view. God is in all things and as such is relating to them in the manner of a unifying source rather than a direct manipulator.[vii] God for Tillich is the unconditioned boundless undifferentiated unity."

But it is an old and always emphasized theological doctrine that God acts in all beings according to their special nature, in man according to their rational nature, in animals and plants according to their inorganic nature. The symbol of omnipotence expresses the religious experience that no structure of reality and no event in nature and history has the power of preventing us from community with the infinite and unexhaustible ground of meaning and being. What "omnipotence" means should be found in the words Deutero — Isaiah (Is. 40) speaks to the exiled in Babylon when he describes the nothingness of the world-empires in comparison with the divine power to fulfil its historical aim through an infinitely small group of exiled people. Or what "omnipotence" means must be found in the words Paul (Rom. 8) speaks to the few Christians in the slums of the big cities when he pronounces that neither natural nor political powers, neither earthly nor heavenly forces can separate us from the "Love of God." If the idea of omnipotence is taken out of this context and transformed into the description of a special form of causality, it becomes not only self-contradicting — as Einstein rightly states — but also absurd and irreligious.(1)

this foot note is not linked, see below.


What we see in this quote is very crucial becuase it means that Tillich is working within the framework of universal conscoiusness of God that Dionysus the areiopagite works in. That means that his view of God is not devoid of conscoiusness nor is he without love, his conscoiusness is on a higher level and is structured among all form of consciousness.  He's not without it. For Tillich God is beyond understanding and sybmolic lanague of God as personal is good but it has to be kept on the level of metaphor. We can literalize the metaphor. That doesn't mean we can't use it.

I say in my essay:

Tillich argues the symbol for the transcendent and transpersonal has to be the personal because it can’t be anything less than personal. One cannot point to a higher reality by going lower in symbol choice. We must use the highest we know point to something transcendent. Tillich interprets the following statement by Einstein: “He "attains that humble attitude of mind towards the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence, which, in its profoundest depths, is inaccessible to man,”(2)

quoting Tillich:

For as the philosopher Schelling says: "Only a person can heal a person." This is the reason that the symbol of the Personal God is indispensable for living religion. It is a symbol, not an object, and it never should be interpreted as an object. And it is one symbol besides others indicating that our personal center is grasped by the manifestation of the inaccessible ground and abyss of being.(3)

Tillich argues the symbol for the transcendent and transpersonal has to be the personal because it can’t be anything less than personal. One cannot point to a higher reality by going lower in symbol choice. We must use the highest we know point to something transcendent.He says in Systematic Theology vol 1 as well as in The Courage to Be that God cannot be less than personal! But is the personal itself. This phrase is always totally ignored by the current atheist camping to coopt Tillich.

For as the philosopher Schelling says: "Only a person can heal a person." This is the reason that the symbol of the Personal God is indispensable for living religion. It is a symbol, not an object, and it never should be interpreted as an object. And it is one symbol besides others indicating that our personal center is grasped by the manifestation of the inaccessible ground and abyss of being. (4)

What all of this means to me is that God is consciousness, as my essay argues consciousness on the highest level above our level of understanding. That means we can't equate God with having personality or having personal traits or having the same kind of emotions that we have, but does not mean that we should not speak of God as connected to our concept of love. Not in the least does it mean that. It's a metaphor but it's an indispensable metaphor.
.......What he's really talking about in speaking of God as not personal he also combines with not an object. What he's really talking about is the phenomenology of self not the abolition of all conscious nature in God. That is it's not that God i not conscious it's that God is not an object becasue the subject/object dichotomy is a mistake.We don't need to take Tillich's word for it alone. There's no reason to confine ourselves to Tillich as though he's the only one who ever had the notion that God is being itself. That notion has been put forth by theologians since the early days of Christianity. There are other modern apostles of this concept. None are as famous as Tillich but some are just as accomplished. Hans Urs Von Balthasar for example was called the most cultured man of the 20th century. He was admired throughout the Catholic world, although not well known among protestants.

My list of great theoloigans who taught that God is being itself:

Clement of Alexandria (150-215)

Origen (185-253)

Gregory of Nyssa (335-394)

St.Augustine ?

Dionysus The Areopogite ( w/500)

John of Scythopolis (536-550)

Maximus The Confessor (580?-662?)

John of Damascus (676-749)

St.Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Paul Tillich

Hans Kung

Wolfhart Panennberg

Hans Urs Von Balthasar

John Macquarie (1919-2007)

of cousre there is no time to go into all of these so I'll just look at Balthasar.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905-1988)

Balthasar one of the most interesting and brilliant figures of the twentieth century, yet hardly anyone has heard of him outside the confines of academic theology. Even most theological students in the Proestant world are not very familiar with his works. He was a friend of John Paul II, called “the most cultured man of our time by Henri de Lubac. His achievements are called ‘breathtaking’ my one of the major catholic theologians of the century, Carl Rahner.[5] He wrote over a thousand books and articles. He was born in Lucerne Switzerland, 1905, and Grew up a Catholic, son of a pious mother.[6] He took his doctorate from the Liberal Protestant University of Zurich, having grown up educated by Benedictines and Jesuits. He became a Jesuit priest. He worked as a student Chaplin in the 30s. He became good friends with Protestant theologian Karl Barth, one of the greats of the century.

            Balthasar was unable to work as a full fledge Jesuit priest due to the war years and the arrangement the government had between Protestants and Catholics, he was seen as belonging to the area of south Germany. He made a living as a translator and lecturer and editor. He ran publications and started a spiritual community. He spent most of his adult life this way, in association with a woman named Speyr who was never recognized as a mystic by the church. He had miracles and visions but being unrecognized, Balthasar’s community was not accepted and he was unable to gain a post. This situation dominated his life in the 40s,50’s, and 60s. He had to leave the Jesuits. He also lectured in these years on spiritual topics and made a living that way, but his health deteriorated as a result. In the 60s he began to be recognized as a theologian and was given honors and doctorates. In 1988 John Paul II made him a cardinal. That was also the year of his death. His community of st. John was a publishing house and he ran a journal called Communio. These eventually found great success in the 70s and were recognized by the Vatican. The major avenue to his success was his books and his lectures.[7]

            Balthasar’s overall theological project centers upon the dualities between human conflict with ourselves and our place in being. Examples of the dualities that fascinate Balthasar include: our own contingency and that of the world around us in contrast to the sense of being itself.[8] Balthasar openly and obvious equates being with God. In his work about Balthasar’s live, David L. Schindler includes a short article by Balthasar himself called “a Resume of my Thought.”[9] He begins this “resume” by talking about the dilemma between human contingency and limitation in contrast to the infinite nature of being. This does not necessitate asserting God up fornt although he’s not concerned with a “proof.” His thesis is that all human philosophy either explicitly or tacitly concerns itself with this topic and by implication tacitly affirms the infinite and the absolute.[10] He comes to the conclusion that the duality is inescapable. The finite is not the infinite. Even the monism of the east is seen through nuanced dualities. Thus he asks the question “why are we not God?” The basis of the question is that we are aspects of being. We are products of being, yet we are contingent being, Why are we contingent and not necessary? The solutions that he ponders seem to end in one way or another with an indignant God creating a finite world out of need or alienation from his own infinity. He finds that only the God of the Bible offers a satisfactory answer, and that answer is in a sense the opposite of what we would think.

            The common human tendency is to think God created because he needed something. Balthasar is hinting, I think, that God creates because its his nature as being to foment more being, in other words, its creative and God is Creative. It is not for God’s need that he creates but for what will become our need once we are created. In other words, God created us so that we can enjoy being, not because he needed us because once a part of being we would need and would be fulfilled in the need by love.

No Philosophy could give a satisfactory response to that question [why did infinte create finite?] St Paul would say to philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to obtain the Divine. That is why all pre Christian philosophy is theological at its summit. But, in fact, the true response to philosophy could only be given by Being himself, revealing himself from himself. Will man be capable of understanding this revelation? The affirmative response will be given only by the God of the Bible. On the one hand this God, creator of the world and of man, knows his creature. “I who have created the eye do not see? I who have created the ear do not hear?” And we add who who have created language, could not speak and make myself heard?” This posits a counterpart: to be able to hear and understand the auto-revelation of God man must in himself be a search for God, a question posed to him. Thus there is Biblical theology without a religious philosophy. Human reason must be open to the inifinte.[11]

Notice how he capitalizes “B” in being and refers to being as “himself.” He personifies being and clearly speaks of it as the creator.

            Balthasar sees the understanding of the revelation of “being himself” (my phrase based upon his) to humanity as rooted in the most fundamental human relationship. He says, “the infant is brought to consciousness of himself only by love, by the smile of his mother. In that encounter the horizon of all unlimited opens unto him.”[12] What he means by that is it is only through being por soir, for itself, in other words, consciousness, that we are able to comprehend the infinite and that only in contrast to the finte. Before we can do that, however, we have to become aware of ourselves so we can know we are finite. I think he’s making an implication that love is a link to being itself, and that through our encounter with love, the mother, we encounter the father, so to speak—by way of encountering love. We can see this in four truths that Balthasar finds rooted in this cncounter:

(1) realizing that he Is other to the mother, the only way the child realizes he loves the mother; (2) love is good, therefore, being is good; (3) love is true, therefore, being is true; (4) love evokes joy therefore being is beautiful.[13] Notice the link between being and love. He is one of the rare theologians to point out this curial link.

The one, the true, the good, the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attitubutes of being, because they surpass all the limits of essence, and are coextensive with Being. If there is an insurmountable distance between God and his creature, but if there is also an analogy between them which cannot be resolved in any form of identity, there must also exist an analogy between the transcendentals—between those of the creature and those in God.[14]

In this quotation he as much as equates being and God, since he speaks of the attributes of being then connects the understanding of these to the link between God and the creature. There is more to be said about Balthasar based upon this observation and it will figure importantly in two more chapters, including the last one, and the over all conclusion.

 .......Moreover the fact of the universal nature of mystical experience should also give us pause to consider the personal nature of God. That in itself is empirical disproof of the assertion that if God is love then God is big man in sky. Love is a profound mystical concept that can't be reduced to human experience alone. The universal nature of mystical experience, which includes the all pervasive sense of God's love is documented by Hood's M scale studies.(15)

In part 2, next time, I'll actually explore the concept of love and why it's not indicative of big man in sky. I hope to also explore that concept and make clear why there has to be distinction between consciousness and big man ism.

(1) Paul Tillich, “The Idea of a Personal God.” Online article from a blog by Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith reprinted with permission form the Yale Divinity School Library. URL: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/ ... onse.shtml (visited 8/31/2010) This article is no longer on the net. I have found a summary of it by Glen Chestnut: http://hindsfoot.org/einstein.pdf
this is from: Chapter 11 of Glenn F. Chesnut, God and Spirituality: Philosophical Essays, Hindsfoot Foundation (Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2010).
(2) quoting myself in essay linked from board
(3) Tillich, idea of personal, op cit
(4) ibid

[5] Joel Graver, “a Short Biography,” website:Hans Urs Von Balthasar, an Internet Archieve. URL sighted: http://www.lasalle.edu/~garver/bio.htm (visited 12/3/10).

[6] Ibid

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid, “overview of Balthasar’s project: URL: http://www.joelgarver.com/writ/theo/balt/overview.htm

[9] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “A Resume of my Thought,” in David L. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work. San Francisco:Ignatious Press, 1991, on like version p1-2 URL:

http://books.google.com/books?id=LLhBuwGFEugC&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=Hans+Urs+Von+Balthasar+connection+between+Love+and+Being&source=bl&ots=E6-L_5GF4p&sig=A-MzjMjMmqjBqRmAaUOWGYiOUww&hl=en&ei=xrTSSdLiJdqJnAe4tNTgBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#v=onepage&q=Hans%20Urs%20Von%20Balthasar%20connection%20between%20Love%20and%20Being&f=true

[10] Ibid, 1

[11] Ibid., 3

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

(15) Ralph Hood, Jr. "The Common Core Thesis in the Study of Mysticism,"  Where God and science meet,  Vol. 3,Westport, CT: Praeger.P, McNamar (Ed.), pp. 119-138. 

Link to on line copy: I apologize for footnoting the whole article. I also apologize that the online copy is just a preview and is missing the crucial pages. It can't be helped. I had the whole essay at one point and they changed it on Google books.

How Can the Ground of Being Be Loving? The Other Ground of Being Theologian, Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905-1988)

This is for my old Friend Rudy, who I knew before there was an Internet. He showed up on my blog the other day after I have not spoken to him in years. He said he couldn't see Being itself as love. So to further illustrate that connection I turn to the other great theologian of Being itself besides Tillich or John Macquarrie; Has Urs Von Balthasar.

Balthasar one of the most interesting and brilliant figures of the twentieth century, yet hardly anyone has heard of him outside the confines of academic theology. Even most theological students in the Proestant world are not very familiar with his works. He was a friend of John Paul II, called “the most cultured man of our time by Henri de Lubac. His achievements are called ‘breathtaking’ my one of the major catholic theologians of the century, Carl Rahner.[1] He wrote over a thousand books and articles. He was born in Lucerne Switzerland, 1905, and Grew up a Catholic, son of a pious mother.[2] He took his doctorate from the Liberal Protestant University of Zurich, having grown up educated by Benedictines and Jesuits. He became a Jesuit priest. He worked as a student Chaplin in the 30s. He became good friends with Protestant theologian Karl Barth, one of the greats of the century.

Balthasar was unable to work as a full fledged Jesuit priest due to the war years and the arrangement the government had between Protestants and Catholics, he was seen as belonging to the area of south Germany. He made a living as a translator and lecturer and editor. He ran publications and started a spiritual community. He spent most of his adult life this way, in association with a woman named Speyr who was never recognized as a mystic by the church. He had miracles and visions but being unrecognized, Balthasar’s community was not accepted and he was unable to gain a post. This situation dominated his life in the 40s,50’s, and 60s. He had to leave the Jesuits. He also lectured in these years on spiritual topics and made a living that way, but his health deteriorated as a result. In the 60s he began to be recognized as a theologian and was given honors and doctorates. In 1988 John Paul II made him a cardinal. That was also the year of his death. His community of st. John was a publishing house and he ran a journal called Communio. These eventually found great success in the 70s and were recognized by the Vatican. The major avenues to his success were his books and his lectures.[3]

Balthasar’s overall theological project centers upon the dualities between human conflict with ourselves and our place in being. Examples of the dualities that fascinate Balthasar include: our own contingency and that of the world around us in contrast to the sense of being itself.[4] Balthasar openly and obviously equates being with God. In his work about Balthasar’s live, David L. Schindler includes a short article by Balthasar himself called “a Resume of my Thought.”[5] He begins this “resume” by talking about the dilemma between human contingency and limitation in contrast to the infinite nature of being. This does not necessitate asserting God up front although he’s not concerned with a “proof.” His thesis is that all human philosophy either explicitly or tacitly concerns itself with this topic and by implication tacitly affirms the infinite and the absolute.[6] He comes to the conclusion that the duality is inescapable. The finite is not the infinite. Even the monism of the east is seen through nuanced dualities. Thus he asks the question “why are we not God?” The basis of the question is that we are aspects of being. We are products of being, yet we are contingent being, Why are we contingent and not necessary? The solutions that he ponders seems to end in one way or another with an indignant God creating a finite world out of need or alienation from his own infinity. He finds that only the God of the Bible offers a satisfactory answer, and that answer is in a sense the opposite of what we would think.

The common human tendency is to think God created because he needed something. Balthasar is hinting, I think, that God creates because its his nature as being to foment more being, in other words, its creative and God is Creative. It is not for God’s need that he creates but for what will become our need once we are created. In other words, God created us so that we can enjoy being, not because he needed us because once a part of being we would need and would be fulfilled in the need by love.

No Philosophy could give a satisfactory response to that question [why did infinte create finite?] St Paul would say to philosophers that God created man so that he would seek the Divine, try to obtain the Divine. That is why all pre Christian philosophy is theological at its summit. But, in fact, the true response to philosophy could only be given by Being himself, revealing himself from himself. Will man be capable of understanding this revelation? The affirmative response will be given only by the God of the Bible. On the one hand this God, creator of the world and of man, knows his creature. “I who have created the eye do not see? I who have created the ear do not hear?” And we add who who have created language, could not speak and make myself heard?” This posits a counterpart: to be able to hear and understand the auto-revelation of God man must in himself be a search for God, a question posed to him. Thus there is Biblical theology without a religious philosophy. Human reason must be open to the infinite.[7]

Notice how he capitalizes “B” in being and refers to being as “himself.” He personifies being and clearly speaks of it as the creator.

Balthasar sees the understanding of the revelation of “being himself” (my phrase based upon his) to humanity as rooted in the most fundamental human relationship. He says, “the infant is brought to consciousness of himself only by love, by the smile of his mother. In that encounter the horizon of all unlimited opens unto him.”[8] What he means by that is it is only through being por soir, for itself, in other words, consciousness, that we are able to comprehend the infinite and that only in contrast to the finite. Before we can do that, however, we have to become aware of ourselves so we can know we are finite. I think he’s making an implication that love is a link to being itself, and that through our encounter with love, the mother, we encounter the father, so to speak—by way of encountering love. We can see this in four truths that Balthasar finds rooted in this encounter:

(1) realizing that he Is other to the mother, the only way the child realizes he loves the mother; (2) love is good, therefore, being is good; (3) love is true, therefore, being is true; (4) love evokes joy therefore being is beautiful.[9] Notice the link between being and love. He is one of the rare theologians to point out this curial link.

The one, the true, the good, the Beautiful, these are what we call the transcendental attributes of being, because they surpass all the limits of essence, and are coextensive with Being. If there is an insurmountable distance between God and his creature, but if there is also an analogy between them which cannot be resolved in any form of identity, there must also exist an analogy between the transcendentals—between those of the creature and those in God.[10]

In this quotation he as much as equates being and God, since he speaks of the attributes of being then connects the understanding of these to the link between God and the creature. There is more to be said about Balthasar based upon this observation and it will figure importantly in two more chapters, including the last one, and the over all conclusion.

Balthasar confirms for me so many things I thought but didn't have the courage to say, or that I "sort of thought" but didn't have the intellect to formulate. I think he boldly and unabashedly resoled the problem of paradox between personal God and being itself. He was the first to show me the link bewteen being and love (although Tillich does mention it but I saw it in Balthasar first). He capitalizes "B" in "Being" and speak of Being a "he." The idea that God created not becasue he "needed to" but becasue his nature is creative.

---

[1] Joel Graver, “a Short Biography,” website:Hans Urs Von Balthasar, an Internet Archieve. URL sighted: http://www.lasalle.edu/~garver/bio.htm (visited 12/3/10).

[2] Ibid

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid, “overview of Balthasar’s project: URL: http://www.joelgarver.com/writ/theo/balt/overview.htm

[5] Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “A Resume of my Thought,” in David L. Schindler, Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work. San Francisco:Ignatious Press, 1991, on like version p1-2 URL:

http://books.google.com/books?id=LLhBuwGFEugC&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=Hans+Urs+Von+Balthasar+connection+between+Love+and+Being&source=bl&ots=E6-L_5GF4p&sig=A-MzjMjMmqjBqRmAaUOWGYiOUww&hl=en&ei=xrTSSdLiJdqJnAe4tNTgBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#v=onepage&q=Hans%20Urs%20Von%20Balthasar%20connection%20between%20Love%20and%20Being&f=true

[6] Ibid, 1

[7] Ibid., 3

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.