The Von Balthasar Reader

Rating:
Summary: A Missed Opportunity
Review: In its original German, this book filled an essential need among the reading public. Unfortunately, the English version hobbled itself with a clumsy translation, one that a general reader unfamiliar with the Tuetonic style of the translators will have trouble deciphering. Moreover, the translators also decided to drop several of the essays, under the pretext (in the 1980's!) that some of those essays would "soon" be appearing in English. But by now, that is true of almost all of the selections chosen in the Reader. And yet, the presence of essays and selections scattered all over the place is precisely the readon for a Reader in the first place! Now the publishers have brought out the book again, unchanged and still truncated and abridged. The introductory essay is worth reading, but the the reading public would be better advised to read some of Balthasar's own shorter works that summarize his thought rather than trying to make sense of this densely and woodenly translated Reader.

Rating:
Summary: Not a good introduction
Review: It seems like that most readers who try to understand Balthasar might want to have a structural grasp of his aesthetic-dramatic-logic trilogy in his own words. However, the selections are presented in traditional Catholic categories of God, Jesus, Church etc. which usually cannot easily convey the main thrust of the theologian's project. I bought this book together with Edward Oakes' and I found myself spending all my time reading Oakes' intro rather than this reader. This book is a complete disappointment for me.

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