His father, Oscar Ludwig Carl von Balthasar (1872–1946), was a church architect, and his mother, Gabrielle Pietzcker (d. 1929), helped found the Schweizerischer Katholischer Frauenbund [de] (Swiss League of Catholic Women).

After stints researching in Vienna and Berlin, he obtained his doctorate in 1928, with a dissertation on the theme of eschatology in German and Germanophone thought, drawing heavily from Catholic theology.

[25] Writing in the 1980s, he said of this latter work that "its fundamental impulse was the desire to reveal ... the ultimate religious attitude, often hidden, of the great figures of modern German literature.

"[26] According to Henrici, submitting a dissertation of this nature to the "Liberal Protestant" University of Zurich was academically risky for a student at that time, but the faculty awarded Balthasar his doctorate summa cum laude.

[33] After two years as a Jesuit novice, he studied philosophy at Pullach, near Munich, where he came into contact with Erich Przywara, who formed him in Scholasticism and whose work on the analogia entis impacted him, though he would later express some hesitation about certain aspects of his thought.

As a motto on his ordination card, he used the phrase "Benedixit, fregit, deditque" ("He blessed it, broke it, and gave"), taken from the words of the institution of the Eucharist in the Gospel of Luke.

When given the choice between a professorship at the Gregorian University in Rome and a role as student chaplain in Basel, Switzerland, he chose the chaplaincy, preferring pastoral work to academia.

[36] According to Jacques Servais, "A good number of the young men eventually entered the Society of Jesus, while others decided to remain in the lay state, hoping to find a form of consecration to God in the world.

A mother in her late thirties, and a somewhat prominent figure in Basel society, she was married to the historian Werner Kaegi, with two children from her first marriage to Emil Dürr [de], who had died suddenly in 1934.

"[38] Shortly following her reception into the Catholic Church on 1 November 1940—at a liturgy celebrated by Balthasar—Speyr began reporting intense experiences in prayer, including visions of Christ's Passion and encounters with various saints.

[41] Some of Speyr's works, namely those of a more explicitly mystical character, were not released until Pope John Paul II organized a Vatican symposium on her thought in 1985, almost 20 years after her death.

He was scheduled to give a Christmas sermon on Swiss public radio, but this was cancelled at the last moment because of the ongoing national constitutional ban on Jesuit activity.

[51] That same year, his Jesuit superiors informed him that the Society of Jesus could not be answerable for the Community of Saint John, the secular institute he had begun to organize with Adrienne von Speyr.

[52] Feeling that he "was being called by God to certain definite tasks in the Church", he made a 30-day retreat at the request of Father General Jean-Baptiste Janssens, where the director confirmed that Balthasar, while remaining a priest, should leave the Jesuit order to work with the Community of Saint John.

Balthasar's exit from the Jesuits left him "literally on the street", as biographer Peter Henrici notes, and he took up lecture tours across Germany, which helped him provide for himself and fund the Johannes Verlag publishing house.

Much of his work during this period—written after the release of Pope Pius XII's apostolic constitution Provida Mater Ecclesia, which gave an ecclesiastical blessing to secular institutes—confronts the question of how Christian discipleship might be lived from within the world.

[57] After he was welcomed into the Diocese of Chur, he settled in the city of Basel, hosted by his married friends Werner Kaegi and Adrienne von Speyr, in whose home he remained until 1967.

During this period—although he was diagnosed with leukemia in 1958—Balthasar wrote prolifically,[58] most notably the seven-volume work Herrlichkeit (The Glory of the Lord) (1961–1967), which was to serve as the first part of a theological trilogy on the three classical transcendentals of beauty, goodness, and truth.

[59] With Joseph Ratzinger and Henri de Lubac, he founded the international theological journal Communio in 1971, with collaboration from members of the Italian Communion and Liberation movement, including Angelo Scola.

[60] The journal was conceived as a more traditionally minded alternative to the progressive Concilium, and Balthasar described its mission in terms of courage: "[T]his truth we believe in strips us bare.

From the low point of being banned from teaching as a result of his leaving the Society of Jesus,[62] Balthasar's reputation had risen to the extent that John Paul II announced plans to make him a cardinal on 29 May 1988.

[64] Along with Karl Rahner and Bernard Lonergan, Balthasar sought to offer a response to Western modernity, which posed a challenge to traditional Catholic thought.

[13]: 2  An example of his eclecticism was his long study and conversation with the influential Reformed Swiss theologian Karl Barth, on whose work he wrote the first Catholic analysis and response.

Theologik is a three-volume work on "theological logical theory" describing the truth about the relation of the nature of Jesus Christ (christology) to reality itself (ontology, or the study of being).

[71] Balthasar published varied works spanning many decades, fields of study (e.g., literature and literary analysis, lives of the saints, and the Church Fathers), and languages.

Balthasar used the expression Casta Meretrix to argue that the term Whore of Babylon was acceptable in a certain tradition of the Church, in the writings of Rabanus Maurus for instance.

"[85] Ralph Martin and James O'Connor[86][87] hold that Balthasar's denial of universalism is incomplete, given his prominent use of a quote by Discalced Carmelite saint Edith Stein in his book-length essay Kleiner Diskurs über die Hölle (A Short Discourse on Hell, included in the English translation of Dare We Hope), which references an "infinitely improbable" resistance to grace.

[94] In A Short Discourse on Hell, Balthasar lists Erich Przywara, Henri de Lubac, Gaston Fessard, Maurice Blondel, Charles Péguy, Paul Claudel, Gabriel Marcel, Léon Bloy, Joseph Ratzinger, Walter Kasper, Romano Guardini, and Karl Rahner as Catholic thinkers who share his perspective on hope—"In summa: a company in which one can feel quite comfortable.

[103] Since the transcendentals are "properties of being", pulchrum, bonum et verum derive from the Ens, just as in the aforementioned Gospel self-definition of Jesus "the way, the truth and the life" are consequential aspects of "I am."

[105] Balthasar's major writings have been translated into English, and the journal he co-founded with Henri de Lubac, Karl Lehmann, and Joseph Ratzinger, Communio, currently appears in 12 languages.