Available from: https://www.globethics.net/gtl/10233311

 

Hans Urs von Balthasar, a prominent twentieth-century Swiss Catholic theologian and contemporary of Karl Barth, similarly criticized the Catholic theology of his day. He argued that "not only the faith but the heart, too, is wrapped up in a spiritless, conscientious and ultimately Pharisaic practice, a religion of dogmas and an enthusiasm for dogmas (the more that are defied, the better), a zeal for everything that can be seen, that is limited, calculable, and controlled." We should not understand such statements by Balthasar as anti-intellectual, a disdain for dogmatic theology, or a lack of concern for conceptual clarity in theological discourse as many of his critics maintain. rather, his objections centered on contemporary theology's assent to the false dichotomy between theology and the Christian life, for it is "contrary to the very conceptions of the Fathers to attempt to divide their works into those dealing with doctrine and those concerned with the Christian life (spirituality)." How, then, are we to connect orthodoxy with orthopraxy, right thinking about God with right action?