Hans Urs von Balthasar didn’t exactly deny the existence of Hell, but he did say that we don’t know whether any human being has actually been condemned to go there. Perhaps they all get another chance. Perhaps Hell is empty.
I got very interested von Balthasar’s writings at one time. He wrote some very interesting stuff, and he criticized the liberal theologians in some good essays. But that idea about Hell, and a couple of other things, put me off him. I don’t see many people talking about him now. Too bad, because he was a brilliant theologian, but went a bit off the rails.
A lot of the people Ratzinger was associated with before the Second Vatican Council were modernists, and he was one of the key advisers in their discussions. But unlike von Balthazar and others, he remained orthodox, and I would say turned more conservative as the liberals made more and more trouble in the Church.
So I can see how someone might have doubted his orthodoxy at the time. He moved among liberals. But close examination of all his writings would prove them mistaken. He stayed orthodox.
I assure you that von Balthasar remains the single most important Catholic theologian today, surpassing Rahner. More dissertations are written about him than anyone else. Ratzinger will eventually surpass him—Ratzinger is the greatest theologian since Aquinas.
I have directed doctoral dissertations on von Balthasar. One of my former colleagues is one of the experts on von Balthasar. My colleagues consider me an expert on von Balthasar, though I tell them they are wrong.
Neither von Balthasar or Ratzinger were liberals.
He did not say that we don’t know whether hell is empty.
What he asked was a question: dare we hope that all might be saved?
In that he was doing what Origen and other great theologians did. Pushing the envelope but that is not and cannot be heresy.
Heresy requires obstinate persistence in error after having been warned.
Traditionalist Catholics throw the word “heresy” around far too easily.
Particularly attacks on vB by New Oxford Review (and then attacks on anyone who defended vB, like Richard John Neuhaus) were misguided and unjust.
Von Balthasar famously attacked Karl Rahner and in so doing, I think hit the nail on the head: Catholic liberals (Rahner, Marechal etc.) were seeking to find a way to reconcile Catholicism and Kant.
Von Balthasar thought this was wrongheaded. Kant is inimical to Christian faith. Period.
Ratzinger never ever tried to reconcile Christian faith with Kant.
Ratzinger and von Balthasar were both part of a movement (de Lubac, Guardini etc.) who jettisoned the Leo III effort to stake out a neutral philosophical ground where Kantian modernists and Catholic philosophers could meet. Guardini, Ratzinger, de Lubac said, no, let’s do what the Fathers of the Church did—throw Christ at them. Christ is the philosophical (and theological) face of Christianity.
Ratzinger, von Balthasar and others have maintained a breathtaking Christian apologetic without succumbing to watered-down Kantian anti-revelation thinking arising from the Enlightenment. They have successfully demonstrated that the best defense against modern secularism is a good offence: Jesus Christ, divinely revealed Son of the Father incarnate.
The meme that Ratzinger was a modernist who stuck his finger in the air and shapeshifted is itself a MODERNIST meme, picked up by the traditionalists who think that anything except late 19thc Neo-Thomism is modernist.
Sorry, but Leo III blew it when he called on Thomas Aquinas as the Catholic philosophical key. Thomas certainly is central in Catholic apologetics but Augustine and Bonaventure should have been right there with Thomas and we’d have had a much better case.
That’s what De Lubac, Guardini, Ratzinger, von Balthasar understood: Thomas, yes, by all means, but not only Thomas. The tradition is much bigger than that. And turning Thomas into a one-size-fits all philosopher (when he understood himself as a THEOLOGIAN) distorts even the valuable aspects of Thomas.
But because Guardini, de Lubac, vonB, Ratzinger etc. dared to challenge the reigning Leoninie Neo-Thomism in the 1930s, they were labeled mondernists. A cheap shot, begin regurgitated throughout the Integrist swamps today.
De Lubac did modify his position, listened to critics on some points. Good for him. Von Balthasar can be criticized on various points, including his “dare we hope.”
John Paul II, who admired vonB (and was labeled a modernist by the Integrists for that crime) explicitly departed from vB on the “dare we hope that all may be saved.” But he DID NOT CALL vonB a heretic. He just said, on this point, vB is wrong. Now that’s a real Catholic, a real theologian speaking: I’ll take issue with point X and Y but I admire what you did on points Z and G and I won’t go throwing “heretic” around lightly.
The RadTrads could learn a bit from JPII, if they ever stop denouncing everyone and his cousin as heretics.