Divine Holiness as Absolute Love: Hans Urs von Balthasar on the Holiness of the Trinitarian Life

Abstract This essay will consider the holiness of God through the lens of divine love, as is appropriate when following the contours of the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. For him, divine love is fundamentally selfless, a self-giving in which the divine persons ‘consider others more important than themselves.’ Holiness, therefore, is not found in a purity or otherness that stands above or apart from creation, but rather in a purity of love that gives of itself entirely for the sake of creation. That is, holiness as divine love is a holiness that purifies for the sake of union, rather than a preceding framework purity that must be attained by creation in order to be united with God. It is a perfectly pure active and seeking desire for the Other. The union that is sought by the holy love of God, however, maintains the distinction between God and creation ultimately because of the emergence of the Spirit from the self-giving love of the Father and Son, a point that has not been appreciated fully in Anglophone Balthasarian scholarship. This essay will develop the connection between divine holiness and love further by looking at the role of the Spirit in von Balthasar’s thinking in the final years before his death.