(previously unpublished) Letter of Balthasar on the love of God and Hegel's dialectic

Instead of Love, Absolute Knowledge operates in Hegel

Dear Director,
I have read with pleasure in the last 30Giorni the article For a spiritual reading. Reading the phrase which, citing Hegel, speaks of those «who claim that grace springs from sin almost as if produced by a dialectic», an episode came to mind of around twenty years ago, in 1987. For my degree thesis in philosophy I was focusing on the theme of the relation between dialectic and theology of the cross in Luther (later, however, I changed topic). So, somewhat brazen-faced, I wrote a letter to Hans Urs von Balthasar, whom obviously I didn’t know, to submit the outline of my research. I started from the idea of a French scholar, H. Schmitz, a pupil of Maritain, whereby there is a line of continuity – in the sense proper to the dialectic – from Luther, the German Protestant mystic Böhme and Hegel. Furthermore I also referred to von Balthasar’s book Il cristiano e l’angoscia [The Christian and anguish], then just published in Italian, in which these issues are also spoken of. I asked finally if he could suggest some text, his or by other authors, on the matter.
Von Balthasar answered me after a week with a little note that I still have. I send you a copy of it, because it seems to me much on the line of the phrase quoted above. Thank you for your work, cordially,

Eugenio Andreatta - Padua


4 May 1987
CH-4051,Basel,
Arnold Böcklinstraße 42

Dear Sir,
As a Catholic which I am, I do without the dialectic (whether that of Böhme, or that of Luther or Hegel); exactly as it was for my teacher, E. Przywara (Analogia Entis I). The cross (and the anguish) has nothing to with the dialectic, because the cross is the evident expiatory love of God. On Luther [you will find] me taking a rigorous position in Teologica II (1985), in which I certainly admit the existence of the Iustus-Peccator question, but with the intent of resolving it in an absolutely different way. Instead of Love, Absolute Knowledge operates in Hegel, which changes everything.
With best wishes. Yours,

HvBalthasar

Letters from Convents at 30 Days