Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) is one of the most prolific, creative and wide-ranging theologians of the twentieth century who is just now coming to prominence. But because of his own daring speculations about the meaning of Christ's descent into hell after the crucifixion, about the uniqueness of Christ as savior of a pluralistic world, and because he draws so many of his resources for his theology from literature, drama, and philosophy, Balthasar has never been an easily-categorized theologian. He is neither liberal nor conservative, neither Thomist nor modernist and he seems to elude all attempts to capture the exact way he creatively reinterprets the tradition of Christian thought. For that reason, this Companion is singularly welcome bringing together a wide range of theologians both to outline and to assess the work of someone whom history will surely rank someday with Origen, John Calvin, and Karl Barth.

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) is one of the most prolific, creative and wide-ranging theologians of the twentieth century who is just now coming to prominence. But because of his own daring speculations about the meaning of Christ's descent into hell after the crucifixion, about the uniqueness of Christ as savior of a pluralistic world, and because he draws so many of his resources for his theology from literature, drama, and philosophy, Balthasar has never been an easily-categorized theologian. He is neither liberal nor conservative, neither Thomist nor modernist and he seems to elude all attempts to capture the exact way he creatively reinterprets the tradition of Christian thought. For that reason, this Companion is singularly welcome bringing together a wide range of theologians both to outline and to assess the work of someone whom history will surely rank someday with Origen, John Calvin, and Karl Barth.

Few topics in theology are as complex and multifaceted as grace: over the course of centuries, many seemingly arbitrary distinctions and arcane debates have arisen around it. Edward Oakes, however, argues that all of these distinctions and debates are ultimately motivated by one central question: What are God's intentions for the world? In A Theology of Grace in Six Controversies Oakes examines issues relating to grace and points them back to that central question, illuminating and explaining what is really at stake in these debates. Maintaining that controversies clarify issues, especially those as convoluted as that of grace, Oakes works through six central debates on the topic, including sin and justification, evolution and original sin, and free will and predestination.

Featuring works by Karl Barth, Martin Buber, Immanuel Kant, Albert Schweitzer, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Rahner, and others, these are the essential writings on religion by German theologians, authors, and philosophers, from the Enlightenment to the present.

At the heart of all ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Evangelicals is their fundamental agreement on Christology -- and a common understanding and confession of the lordship of Jesus Christ as the unique Savior of the human race. Infinity Dwindled to Infancy provides a broad survey of doctrinal and historical issues at play in Christology. Drawing from a wide range of sources -- contemporary New Testament scholarship and patristic Christology, key medieval theologians, major Protestant voices, Catholic theologians, and recent magisterial statements from Vatican II -- Edward T. Oakes presents two millennia of thinking on one of the great paradoxes at the heart of Christian faith: -an infinite God who is finite man . . . in short, Infinity dwindled to infancy.-

When set against the wider background of twentieth-century theology, the figures of Hans Urs von Balthasar comes across as rather isolated, even lonely. This largely, though not entirely, due to the accidents of his biography: borne in Lucerne, Switzerland, on 12 August 1905 of an upper-middle class family of noble stock, he quickly became known for his precocious talents in music and literature.