Even if a unity of faith is not possible, a unity of love is.
Lovers are the ones who know most about God; the theologian must listen to them.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that lovers possess a deep understanding of divine love and spirituality that theologians can learn from.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar emphasizes that the experiences and insights gained from love are profound and valuable in the understanding of God. He argues that lovers, through their emotional and spiritual connections, have a unique perspective that transcends academic theological study, suggesting that personal relationships and love can reveal deeper truths about the divine.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a wedding speech, one might say, 'Lovers are the ones who know most about God; the theologian must listen to them.' to highlight the importance of love in understanding spirituality.
More from Hans Urs Von Balthasar
All quotes →It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.
A truth that is merely handed on, without being thought anew from its very foundations, has lost its vital power.
The Holy Spirit knows what a particular age's most pressing need is far better than men with their programs.
The first attempt at a response: there must have been a fall, a decline, and the road to salvation can only be the return of the sensible finite into the intelligible infinite.
But the saints are never the kind of killjoy spinster aunts who go in for faultfinding and lack all sense of humor. (Nor should the Karl Barth who so loved and understood Mozart be regarded as such.)For humor is a mysterious but unmistakable charism inseparable from Catholic faith, and neither the "progressives" nor the "integralists" seem to possess it - the latter even less than the former.
Similar quotes
Like a river flows surely to the sea/Darling so it goes/Some things are meant to be/Take my hand, take my whole life too/For I can't help falling in love with you.
And what do all the great words come to in the end, but that? I love you - I am at rest with you - I have come home.
True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.
Love has the patience to endure the fault it sees but cannot cure.
Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.
So I be written in the Book of Love. I do not care about that Book Above. Erase my name, or write it as you will. So I be written in the Book of Love.