A Generous Symphony

Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the preeminent theologians of Roman Catholic theology in the modern-era, constructed a theological world suffused by the literary, a vision carried across over 16 volumes of his magnum opus. A Generous Symphony offers a balanced appraisal of Balthasar's literary achievement and explicates Balthasar's literary criticism as a distinctive theology of revelation, which offers possibilities for understanding how divine presence may be manifested outside the canonical boundaries of Christian tradition. The structure of A Generous Symphony is a chronological presentation of the Balthasarian canon of imaginative literature, which allows readers to see how social and historical interests guide Balthasar's readings in the pre-Christian, medieval, and modern eras. Balthasar's deep investment in the uniqueness of Christian revelation is underlined, while, at the same time, his aesthetic sympathies cause him to invest literature with 'quasi-sacramental' status.