All posts tagged Hans Urs von Balthasar

  • What Does This Mean? (Five Hundred Miles of Crucifixes)

    San_Martin_Fromista_cristo
    What Does This Mean? (Five Hundred Miles of Crucifixes)
    Brian Zahnd

    Six months ago Peri and I walked five hundred miles across Spain on the Camino de Santiago. It was quite simply the most wonderful, most spiritual, most healing thing we’ve ever done. The Camino changed both of us. This morning as I prayed I thanked God in tears for the gift of the Camino. Until today I’ve not written about it, mostly because I’m still absorbing it. But Holy Week seems like the right time to share one aspect of my experience.

    We began the Camino on September 14, 2016 ( Holy Cross Day). After a long trek across the Pyrenees mountains from St.-Jean-Pied-de-Port, France we arrived in Roncesvalles, Spain. In Roncesvalles I spent some time alone in a thirteenth century chapel gazing on a medieval crucifix. While sitting in this dimly lit sanctuary the Holy Spirit seemed to give me four instructions for my five hundred mile walk:
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  • End of the Line (Five Years Later)

    endoftheline

    In May 2010 Charisma Magazine asked me to write this op-ed. Five years later I feel it’s perhaps even more relevant. What do you think?

    END OF THE LINE
    By Brian Zahnd

    Western Christianity is at a critical juncture. Those who care deeply about the church are aware of this. Things are not as they once were. Things are changing. Dramatically so. Even if we don’t understand what is happening, we can certainly feel it. There is an uneasy feeling throughout evangelicalism that everything is changing. Long-held certitudes are being challenged from both within and without the Christian faith. The way things were even ten years ago is no longer the way things are today. It’s easy to be disconcerted by it all.

    In the midst of pronounced uncertainty it is tempting to succumb to nostalgia and pine away for some point in the past that we identify as the “glory days.” But we cannot go back. The healthy practice of recognizing the contributions of the past and building upon them is not the same thing as a regressive attempt to return to a bygone era. This is the problem with revivalism. Too often it is a naive attempt to recapture a particular past. It’s like a Renaissance fair — nice entertainment for a Saturday afternoon but you can’t live there. An idealized memory of the past is not a vision which can carry us into the future. Nostalgic reminiscing about the past is for those who no longer have the courage to creatively engage with contemporary challenges and opportunities. All of this is related to the critical juncture we have come to in the course of Western Christianity.
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  • End of the Line

    parismetro.orleans

    End of the Line
    By Brian Zahnd

    Western Christianity is at a critical juncture. Those who care deeply about the church are aware of this. Things are not as they once were. Things are changing. Dramatically so. Even if we don’t understand what is happening, we can certainly feel it. There is an uneasy feeling throughout evangelicalism that everything is changing. Long-held certitudes are being challenged from both within and without the Christian faith. The way things were even ten years ago is no longer the way things are today. It’s easy to be disconcerted by it all. Read more

  • The Crucified God

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    The Crucified God
    Brian Zahnd

    “When the crucified Jesus is called ‘the image of the invisible God,’
    the meaning is that this is God and God is like this.”
    –Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God

    “Being disguised under the disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death,
    the Christform is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who God is.”
    –John R. Cihak, Love Alone Is Believable: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Apologetics

    “Jesus is the only perfect theology.”
    –Brad Jersak

    God is like Jesus.
    God has always been like Jesus.
    There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus.
    We haven’t always known this.
    But now we do.
    –Brian Zahnd

    I want to know who God is. I want to know what God is like. So what should I do? Read the Bible? Yes…but. The Bible is a big and complicated book and subject to what Christian Smith wryly calls “pervasive interpretive pluralism.” Smith is referring to the embarrassing plethora of contradictory interpretations from equally qualified and well-intentioned interpreters.

    So what do we do? Where do we stand within Scripture in order to interpret the rest of the text? Genesis? Leviticus? Joshua? Revelation? What we need is a way to center our reading of Scripture – a vantage point from which to interpret the whole of Scripture. My humble suggestion is that this place is the cross. Not only do I advocate a Christocentric reading of the Bible, I contend that the cross is the most Christ-revealing moment in the Bible.

    If we want to know what God is like, the best thing we can do is look at Jesus upon the cross. God is like that!
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  • Truth, Violence and Love

    Angelico

    What is truth?

    This was Pilate’s famous ironic question of Christ. A short time later—after Jesus had been scourged and was now standing before Pilate wearing a crown of thorns—Pilate answered his own question when he said to Jesus, “Do you not know that I have power to crucify you?” In this moment the “truth” came out. For in the end it is the power of violence that is the ultimate truth for the principalities and powers. The “truth” of violence is the axis around which the world ruled by the principalities and powers revolves. It is their centering principle. It is the bottom line for those under the spell of “the ruler of this world.”

    Pragmatism is the ultimate truth of empire, and the ultimate pragmatism is violence. (Though ordinarily great effort is expended to conceal this “awful truth”.) So despite the fact that noble virtues are often present within the empire (family, justice, service, etc.), the axis of empire, the centering principle, the final truth is violence. This was certainly true of Rome. Read more

  • End of the Line

    This is an article I wrote for the May issue of Charisma Magazine at the request of the new editor, Marcus Yoars.

    END OF THE LINE
    By Brian Zahnd

    God is shifting the church from one seasonal platform to another. Are we ready?

    Western Christianity is at a critical juncture. Those who care deeply about the church are aware of this. Things are not as they once were. Things are changing. Dramatically so. Even if we don’t understand what is happening, we can certainly feel it. There is an uneasy feeling throughout evangelicalism that everything is changing. Long-held certitudes are being challenged from both within and without the Christian faith. The way things were even ten years ago is no longer the way things are today. It’s easy to be disconcerted by it all. Read more

  • Crazy Love

    Why is there something instead of nothing?
    The only feasible answer is an Absolute Being (God).

    But why would God create?
    Why would God bother?
    Why would Absolute Being sufficient in itself create other?

    The only feasible answer is… Read more