After a long wait in the shadows of better-known theologians, Hans Urs von Balthasar came to prominence and even preeminence in Catholic circles in the years after Vatican II. Some theologians have watched his rise with apprehension, concerned that his work, however brilliant, has too often been received without critical appraisal. Karen Kilby's book aims to help remedy this lacuna.

Balthasar's opus is vast, while Kilby's book is short. However, the author ably portrays many of the principal insights that Balthasar's thought has to offer. Her exposition includes historical background, followed by two chapters on recurrent images in Balthasar's thought (the Picture and the Play; Fulfillment and Circle), and a chapter each on his Trinitarian theology and on his portrayal of gender and sexual imagery. Kilby commends Balthasar for attempting to integrate Trinitarian doctrine, Christology, soteriology, and anthropology, especially through his presentation of a mission Christology (98). Second, his use of aesthetic and dramatic categories has opened new vistas in theology. Finally, Balthasar's extensive appeals to gender and to sexual imagery have helped advance discussion concerning the relevance of sexuality to theology.

As expected, the provocatively titled book is heavy on criticism of Balthasar's work. His attempt to carry out the Catholic imperative, to synthesize the various dimensions of theology, involves several controversial speculative claims, among which are the following: the Father himself undergoes a kind of kenosis in generating the Son; each of the divine Persons surrenders himself to the others; there is a kind of painless (supra-) suffering in God; Christ's soul undergoes suffering during his descent into hell on Holy Saturday; and imagery drawn from marriage and from sexual intercourse is revelatory of the relationship of the church and each individual believer to the divine Persons, especially to Christ. Kilby rightly observes that such claims risk the errors, among others, of dolorism and gender stereotyping.

Much more problematic for Kilby is Balthasar's method. Indeed, the main burden of her book is to show that he is caught in a performative contradiction. Contrary to his urgent demand for a theology “on its knees,” a reverential theology, Balthasar's own practice of theology characteristically presumes “a position above Scripture, tradition, and history, and also above his readers” (14). Given his penchant for making apodictic assertions without much support or explanation, she asks, is his theology sufficiently dramatic according to his own standards (62)?

Many of Kilby's cautions, though not always her conclusions, about the substance of Balthasar's more controversial claims are worthy of serious consideration. Moreover, the author expends a good deal of energy on presenting arguments that speak in his favor. Her main criticism of his method, however, misses the mark. Granted, Balthasar is not Thomas Aquinas: the latter was readier to admit unresolved questions and to modify positions on the basis of progressive distinctions. It must also be recalled that Thomas preferred to argue theses according to the agonistic model of disputation. Balthasar's style is much more like that of Thomas' contemporary Bonaventure, who had a totalizing bent of mind that was more consonant with the Neoplatonic tradition; this way of proceeding was also operative in the thought of Hegel, whom Balthasar honored as the first dramatic theologian. Imperious and daring as Balthasar could be, his confidence rested ultimately in Christ and in the Christian faith, and not in the powers of his own mind. Kilby's comparison of Balthasar's method to spiritual direction is to the point here. The spiritual director does have an authority, but not because of any office. Rather, a good director, according to the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, is someone who has earned the trust of directees by being attentive to the movements of the Holy Spirit in their lives. Active receptivity precedes the giving of “direction.” So it was that Balthasar the theologian attempted to pass on what he received. Whatever he wrote, he, like Origen, left to the judgment of the church, which he was ever eager to acknowledge as his mother.

This book could be used for a graduate class that deals with Balthasar's thought.