INTRODUCTION

Hans Urs von Balthasar is a theologian whom one never reads indifferently. He himself decried the 'sleek and passionless' theological treatise as the sole form of theological presentation; and, while never suggesting any abandonment of intellectual rigour, he urged upon theology 'movement, sharp debate (quaestio disputata) [and] the virile language of deep and powerful emotion' (ET1, 204). Thus, if readers of Balthasar's oeuvre are oftentimes led to marvel at the sheer range and erudition of his presentation, just as much as they are sometimes left puzzling over the undeniable risk of his 'creative invention', it is when they come to his treatment of the saints - those men and women of prayer who have taken their sanctification by the triune God most seriously - that they become most profoundly aware of the passion and indeed strangeness of his theological itinerary. For what we have to reckon with here is the impact of that powerful and disturbing experience of lives formed and informed by divine love; that is to say, the making and remaking of human beings into the image of Christ. And this, as Augustine well demonstrated in his Confessions, involves no smooth and untroubled elevation to a higher plane of existence, but the struggle and turmoil of discovering at ever deeper levels of one's existence the purification that obedience to the call of Christ involves.