INTRODUCTION

When Hans Urs von Balthasar set out in 1947 to write what would later become in 1985 the first volume of the Theologik, he was already convinced that Jesus Christ was the heart of the world. Historically, the Jesuit order (Society of Jesus), to which he belonged at the time, had often been linked with devotion to Jesus' Sacred Heart. But long before the Second Vatican Council this devotion had come under attack for its lachrymose sentimentality. So in Heart of the World (first published in German in 1945), Balthasar had tried to give more tough-minded consideration than was usual to that spiritual theme. Moreover, he realized that one could not flesh out the claim that Jesus Christ was the midpoint of being without a thoroughgoing investigation into the relations of christology with ontology, the study of being, the exploration of reality in its fundamental pith, shape, direction.

Normally speaking, an ‘ontological christology’ is simply an investigation of the reality of Christ as one personal being inhabiting two natures, divine and human, and accepting their union in himself. It is a christology that takes with full metaphysical seriousness the affirmation of the Council of Chalcedon about Christ’s two-in-one make-up, and tries to do it philosophical justice.