From a ZENIT essay, "An Answer to the Utilitarian Spirit of Modernity", by Fr. Mauro Gagliardi:
In the introduction to the first volume of his monumental "Herrlichkeit" (The Glory of the Lord), in which he developed a systematic theology centered on the transcendentalism of the beautiful, Hans Urs von Balthasar writes:
"Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word that both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness.
"No more loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face, which threaten to become incomprehensible to man. We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it.
"Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance" (H.U. von Balthasar, "The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics," Volume 1, "Seeing the Form," T&T Clark, Edinburgh 1982, p. 18).
The U.S. edition of von Balthasar's "The Glory of the Lord" is published by Ignatius Press, who has been the primary publisher in this country over the past thirty years:
The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics
• Volume I: Seeing the Form
• Volume II: Clerical Styles
• Volume III: Lay Styles
• Volume IV: The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity
• Volume V: The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age
• Volume VI: Theology: The Old Covenant
• Volume VII: Theology: The New Covenant
Visit the Ignatius Insight author page for von Balthasar to see a full listing of his books published by Ignatius Press.
Comments