Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vat the host and the content director

here at Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. Today we have something cool to share with you.

It's a sample lesson from Bishop Aaron's course inside the Word on Fire Institute on

the theology of Hans Urz von Balthazar, one of the most important theologians of the

20th century. This sample lesson covers the topic of beauty as a route of access to

God. So beauty is incredible in itself as something to be drawn to and attracted to

and contemplate, but how can beauty be used as a way to lead people to God? Well that's

what von Balthazar focused on extensively in his writings and that's what Bishop

Aaron focuses on in this lesson from his course on von Balthazar. So sit back and enjoy

this sample lesson from our Word on Fire Institute from Bishop Aaron. Enjoy.

So we're talking about Hans Urz von Balthazar and to get to his thought we have to look at

this issue of the beautiful of beauty. So we saw last time that he was trained in

Gareminis Steak and literature. He was trained in music. It's the aesthetic approach. He's

not a professor of philosophy, never held a professorial chair. He begins from the standpoint

of the beautiful. I mentioned to the famous trilogy, right? We have the Herlischkaite, the

glory of the Lord. You got the Theodrama Teak and the Theologeek moving from the beautiful

to the good and then to the true. Notice first how Balthazar consciously reverses Emmanuel

Kant's famous approach. So Kant, the greatest philosopher of modernity, writes first the critique

of pure reason has to do with the truth. Then the critique of practical reason has to do with

the good and then the critique of judgment, the beautiful. Balthazar purposely reverses that

and puts the beautiful first. And see that's the key now to everything. Now those who've been

following Word on Fire know that I've been arguing for a long time in a lot of different formats.

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