The Mystery of Easter[1] (German: Theologie der Drei Tage[2][3]) is a 1969[2][4] book by the Swiss theologian and Catholic priest Hans Urs von Balthasar.
[6] The book began as a monograph-sized article for the volume 3/2 of the dogmatic encyclopedia Mysterium Salutis (1965-1976), which was intended as a complete treatment of the mystery of salvation in Catholic theology.
Balthasar's willingness to assume the nature and the consequence of his sin makes him, as well as the reader, extrapolate that God can endure and conquer godlessness, abandonment, and death.
His exegesis emphasizes that Jesus was not betrayed but surrendered and delivered up by himself, since the meaning of the Greek word used by the New Testament, paradidonai (παραδιδόναι, Latin: tradere), is unequivocally "handing over of self".
[12][13] In the 1972 "Preface to the Second Edition", Balthasar takes a cue from Revelation 13:8[14] (Vulgate: agni qui occisus est ab origine mundi, NIV: "the Lamb who was slain from the creation of the world") to push the theology of the Cross from the immanent Trinity up to the economic One, so that "God is love" consists in an "eternal super-kenosis".