Engagement with God: The Drama of Christian Discipleship

by Hans Urs von Balthasar

Publisher:

Ignatius

, 2008

Overview

The brilliant theologian and philosopher Hans Urs von Balthasar writes about God’s involvement with man and man’s involvement with God in the Old and the New Testaments. He shows how that interaction of the divine with the human reveals the meaning of true freedom that man is always hungering for but often strives after in wrong and dangerous ways. He shows that God’s free revelation of himself in Christ is an invitation to enter into the realm of absolute and divine freedom, in which alone human freedom can be fully realized.

From the true Christian there radiates the kind of freedom that is constantly being sought after by the non-Christian. In modern times, the freedom of man is a theme that preoccupies everyone. Atheistic philosophies are wholly taken up with this preoccupation. The Enlightenment was concerned with the freeing of reason from the “fetters of faith”. Marx wrote about freeing man economically, and Freud wrote of freeing man from the bondage of a past as yet unmastered.

As opposed to those whose search for freedom urges them onward into a barren void, the Christian stands as the messenger of freedom accomplished and a freedom attainable by all. A true freedom of the sons and daughters of God.

Key Features

• Shows that God’s free revelation of himself in Christ is an invitation.
• Radiates the kind of freedom that is constantly being sought after by the non-Christian.
• Writes about God’s involvement with man and man’s involvement

Praise for Engagement with God

Just as Love Alone Is Credible captures the essence of the seven-volume The Glory of the Lord, so does Engagement with God explain his five-volume Theo-Drama. But here he does more: by setting his account of the drama of Christian discipleship against the anti-Christian ideologies of the 1960s he brings his theology to bear on the highest cost of discipleship martyrdom by seeing the martyr as the mirror of God’s own involvement in the human race through his own martyred Son. One can hardly read a more sober, and yet exhilarating, account of what it means to live committed to God’s own commitment to the world.

--Edward T. Oakes, S. J.Author, Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Product Details

• Title: Engagement with God: The Drama of Christian Discipleship
• Author: Hans Urs von Balthasar
• Publisher: Ignatius
• Print Publication Date: 2008
• Logos Release Date: 2024
• Pages: 106
• Era: era:contemporary
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: God (Christianity); Theological anthropology; Christian life
• Resource ID: LLS:ENGAGEMENTWITHGOD
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2024-02-14T21:03:10Z

About Hans Urs von Balthasar

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) was a Swiss Roman Catholic theologian. Along with Karl Rahner, Balthasar is one of the most important Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century.