Sunday, March 02, 2008

Love as Justification and Faith

The fact that the horizon of the love given to us always greatly exceeds our own, and that the disparity can never be wiped out in this life, justifies everything presented as the 'dogmatic' aspect of faith: It may remain immeasurably beyond our capacity to realize this love which is the truth, yet it is no inexistent 'idea', but the full reality from which (In Christ and the Church, his unspotted bride,) all our striving and strength stems; that is why our act of faith in an ever greater love is necessarily identical with our act of faith in an ever greater truth which we cannot understand gnostically with the help of reason since it is pure love, a gift which remains for us an inconceivable miracle.
- Hans Urs von Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible, Chapter VII