Urs von Balthasar’s theology is attuned to a realism which becomes more attractive as Rahner’s engagement with Kantianism seems less pertinent. This realism ‘turns the rudder hard over’, as von Balthasar said of Barth; but how did he acquire it? Rowan Williams has suggested that von Balthasar’s seamanship originates partly with Heidegger. This article will place him within the German Catholic revival of the 1920s and 1930s. At this time, German Catholics delved into phenomenology, and into Newman’s theology. They appraised Aquinas’s thought differently than did English or French neo-Thomists.

The Memoirs of the Hungarian philosopher Aurel Kolnai (1900-1973) supply some sidelights on von Balthasar’s writings. Both men attended the University of Vienna between 1922 and 1926. There von Balthasar is said to have “. . . heard the Plotinus lectures of Hans Eibl: there being was . . . interpreted as . . . the self-communicating good.” He will later say that the affinity between Thomas and Heidegger derives not from Aristotle, but from “. . . that Plotinus for whom being remains a supraconceptual mystery.. ,” Kolnai places Eibl in his time and place: