Does Jesus Know Us?: Do We Know Him?

By Hans Urs von Balthasar

Only one who is convinced that he knows Jesus as a person and that Jesus has personal knowledge of him has truly entered into his Christian faith. Balthasar sets forth and explains the Scriptural evidence for our ability to know the Lord.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ignatius Press
• Release date: Nov 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781681491424

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) was a Swiss theologian widely regarded as one of the greatest theologians and spiritual writers of modern times. Named a cardinal by Pope John Paul II, he died shortly before being formally inducted into the College of Cardinals. He wrote over one hundred books, including Prayer, Heart of the World, Mary for Today, Love Alone Is Credible, Mysterium Paschale and his major multi-volume theological works: The Glory of the Lord, Theo-Drama and Theo-Logic.

Book preview

Does Jesus Know Us—Do We Know Him?

HANS URS VON BALTHASAR

Does Jesus Know Us—

Do We Know Him?

Translated by

Graham Harrison

IGNATIUS PRESS    SAN FRANCISCO

Title of German original:

Kennt uns Jesus—Kennen wir ihn?

© 1980 Verlag Herder, Freiburg in Breisgau

Cover by Victoria Hoke Lane

With ecclesiastical approval

© 1983 Ignatius Press, San Francisco

All rights reserved

Second printing 1986

ISBN 978-0-89870-023-7

Library of Congress Catalogue Number 82-84581

Printed in the United States of America

Preface

It is a perplexing situation. On the one hand we seem to be seeing a repetition of those biblical scenes in which Jesus is surrounded by the crowd, almost stifled and pushed into the lake: a Jesus-spirituality, both ecclesial and unecclesial, is spreading over the globe. On the other hand the exegetes keep on erecting more and more barriers, making it hard for us to approach the historical Jesus; often they try to make it impossible. In general the situation may be put like this: to a degree, people take no notice of the barriers or simply break through them, in the doubtlessly sound instinct that no Scribe can diminish the uniqueness and the day-to-day significance of the figure of Jesus. I must get to him, the simple man (am-ha-arez) says, for he belongs to me.

The two reflections which follow do not claim to mediate in the conflict between naive piety and scientific exegesis. But they arise from the conviction that only the Scriptures of the New Covenant, taken as witnesses of faith and in their entirety, can produce a tangible and credible portrait of Jesus Christ, whereas every critical attempt to approach him from a position other than that of the faith witnessed to in the Scriptures can only result in a pallid, distorted picture unworthy of belief (and hence devoid of interest).

It is a fact: only the person who is convinced that Jesus knows him personally gains access to knowledge of him. And only the person who is confident of knowing him as he is, can know that he is also known by him!

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Basel, January 6, 1980

Contents

Part One

Does Jesus Know Us?

Introduction

I. How Jesus Knows Man

1. Knowledge of the heart

         Lord, you know all things

         What comes into the light, is light

2. Knowledge of temptation

         Acquaintance through weakness

         Diagnosis

3. Knowing by taking our place

         Wounded for our transgressions

         The hour

II. Jesus’ Knowledge and Us

1. Judge and advocate

2. Bodily exchange

3. Knowing, we are known

Part Two

Do We Know Jesus?

I. Kinds of Knowledge

1. The inflation of knowledge

2. The figure in its wholeness

II. Jesus, God’s Interpreter

1. The elusive figure

2. Grace and judgment

III. The Spirit, Interpreter of Jesus

1. Knowledge from within

2. Knowledge of Cross and Resurrection

3. To know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge

Part One

Does Jesus Know Us?

Introduction

Considering the tradition we have received concerning Jesus, this must seem a strange question. Does not the Gospel give a positive answer on every page? Or is there perhaps a qualitative difference between the way Jesus knows us and the way others do, causing us to ask what his way is? Comparing him with other normative human beings (as Jaspers calls them) we can see that a Socrates had a deep knowledge of man: he was able to reveal, beneath the layers of superficial or merely apparent knowledge, man’s profound ignorance, instanced in himself and in others, an ignorance distinguishing the human from the divine. This he did by virtue of a daimon, a quasi-divine inspiration enabling him to sense what was right and true. Buddha, equally, glimpsed the depths of man when he discovered, beneath the busy-ness which haunts him, a hidden, tormenting thirst which must be quieted if a person is to burst through the narrow, unlit prison of his ego and enter into unlimited light. But does this knowledge go far enough? Are we known in having our ignorance laid bare or by being shown a way to rid ourselves of our ego? If we include the many insights of other normative people, while each shows a different aspect of man, true up to a point, their perspectives do not match perfectly; taken together they simply reveal man as a sphinx.

On the other hand, we could point to the advances of the human sciences since the time of Jesus; surely his knowledge is archaic and primitive compared with the insight of modern psychology in all its branches and methods, of which the Gospel seems to have no intimations? Yet, leaving aside the latter issue for the moment, does not this very psychology exhibit the same confusion of tongues, since each theory and school depends upon a different conception of man? Ask Freud, Adler, Jung, Fromm and others about the meaning of human existence—which is after all the goal of every practical measure we take in coming to grips with it—and you will hear as many divergent answers.

Do we not need a ray of light from a plane higher than the human in order adequately to illuminate the riddle of man? Do we not need a light from God such as began to shine with the prophets, relentlessly laying bare what sought to remain hidden, yet not condemning it in disgust but elevating it in a helpful spirit? Jesus’ knowledge of man, then, could be the perfection of this light sent by God. On the one hand he ruthlessly reveals the heart—as the divine Word is commissioned to do: "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any