The response to the work of the Swiss Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–88) is in most cases positive and uncritical. Balthasar's extensive oeuvre might be the reason for this biased reception, and his critics might just not know where to start. Regrettably, mainly conservative Roman Catholic theologians are inspired to read his theological writings. On the surface, this collection of essays seems to suffer from the same ecclesial and obedient appreciation of his work. It is introduced by Cardinal Karl Lehmann and has among its authors some of the household Balthasar commentators, like Alois Haas and Thomas Krenski. Yet, in comparison with previous anthologies of Balthasar research, this volume provides original approaches to his work by a new and more critical generation of Balthasarians and others. The editors stress the idea that, despite the title of Balthasar's magnum opus The glory of the Lord, his theology is a theologia crucis. In the introduction they promise to articulate the theological provocations of his work for contemporary faith and theology, and to investigate the anthropological questions his ideas have raised, instead of confirming his theology to be a positivism of revelation.

In part i, ‘Systematic perspectives’, Holger Zaborowski describes Balthasar's theology as a challenging example of the Catholic integration of philosophy and theology. Jean Luc Marion reformulates Balthasar's Christology as a phenomenology. In perhaps the most central and innovative essay of this collection, Magnus Striet offers a rereading of Balthasar's theological aesthetics through the work of Hans Blumenberg, combining doctrines of perception and beauty with doctrines of freedom and sin. Jan-Heiner Tück further explores the idea of freedom in Balthasar's theology of drama. Apart from familiar Balthasarian themes like the descent into hell and the eschatology of apokatastasis, Stephan Ackermann and Gisbert Greshake offer new perspectives on the ecclesiology. Jacques Servais concludes part i with an essay on yet unexplored themes in Balthasar's work: wisdom and joy. Part ii, ‘Constellations’, consists of four essays on Balthasar's conversation partners: Henri de Lubac, Karl Barth, Erich Przywara and Karl Rahner. This volume should really have opened with these theologically constitutive personal encounters in the early phases of Balthasar's theology. Unfortunately, this collection does not conclude with an evaluation or future perspective on the work of a theologian who has formed a class on his own.