Balthasar, as it happens, was a close friend and neighbor of Barth in Basel, and the influence of the latter on the former was deep and long-lasting (Balthasar’s influence on Barth, however, was less notable). What both had in common was an insistence that the Bible be taken on its own terms, even if both accepted as well the results of historical criticism (provided they were reliable). For both as well, accepting the Bible on its own terms meant that it would be impossible, pace Schleiermacher and Rahner, to subsume the figure of Jesus into some more overarching framework. In other words, Jesus’ claim to be “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6) must be taken on its own terms, quite independent of the historical process by which that claim came to be embedded in the Fourth Gospel and not in the others. And if that claim is taken on its own terms, it shows that Jesus was not merely a teacher who pointed to the way but was, in himself, in his own person, the Way itself.
But to any worldview whatever, such a claim, no matter how mediated, must lead to outrage. For a claim to be the Way, the Truth, the Life means at core that one whitecap atop a wave claims to be not only the sea and the seabed but the generating matrix of the world as well (“Before Abraham was, I am”). Moreover, that claim is so preposterous that it can only be validated by God himself in the resurrection. Thus the three together – Claim, Death, and Resurrection – form a triadic pattern (Gestalt, one of Balthasar’s favorite words) that is the indissoluble core of the Christian proclamation.
Edward T. Oakes, Article "Christology" in the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Catholicism
Father Oakes sent me this article, along with an excellent review of From Darwin to Hitler coming up in First Things.
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