Daily Inspiration Quote by Hans Urs von Balthasar

At the heart of von Balthasar's theology is a refusal to let Christianity become either sentimental optimism or grim moralism. He plants the Cross at the New Testament's center, then immediately denies it the last word. The Cross "receives its interpretation" from the Resurrection: a deliberately asymmetric claim that sounds almost like a critical method. You don't read Easter through Good Friday; you read Good Friday through Easter.

The intent is polemical in a quiet, ecclesial way. Mid-century European Christianity was tempted by two distortions: a devotional fixation on suffering (the Cross as spiritual masochism or mere ethical example) and a modernizing gloss that treats Resurrection as metaphor (uplift, renewal, vibes). Von Balthasar blocks both. He insists the Cross is the concrete scandal, not an idea, but he also insists its meaning is not self-evident. Left alone, the Cross could look like divine defeat, abandonment, or the universe's indifference baptized into piety. Resurrection is not a happy ending stapled on; it is the hermeneutical key that retroactively discloses what the Cross was: not tragedy mistaken for salvation, but salvation that passes through tragedy without being explained away.

The subtext is also christological and dramatic, vintage Balthasar: revelation is an event with a plot, not a set of propositions. The Cross is the deepest plunge into human God-forsakenness; the Resurrection is the divine verdict that this plunge was love in action, not a cosmic mistake. That interpretive order matters because it tells believers what to do with suffering: neither idolize it nor flee it, but see it as something that can be taken up and transformed, not merely endured.