Balthasar and Anxiety

Anxiety is a serious and very real problem today. What is it? Where does it come from? Is it something original to human nature? Did Jesus Christ say or do anything about it? Does the Christian Faith have a contribution to make toward understanding and alleviating anxiety? These and other similar questions are taken up in this book.Balthasar and Anxiety is a theological study of the problem of anxiety through the lens of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1910-1988), arguably one of the greatest and most prolific Catholic theologians of the 20th Century. His treatment of anxiety, borne from his friendship with the Viennese psychiatrist Rudolf Allers and with the German psychiatrist Albert Gorres, is illuminating and provocative. But as he himself admitted, his initial thoughts required further development. This study is a systematic presentation, analysis and development of Balthasar's original theology of anxiety found in his only work on the subject, Der Christ und die Angst. One of the great qualities of the Swiss theologian's approach to theology is the ability to engage diverse currents of thought, so this study is structured in dialogue with contemporary psychiatry and with some of the great thinkers on the problem of anxiety: Soren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, George Bernanos, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther and St. Ignatius of Loyola. Cihak's study, sufficiently rigorous yet accessible to the non-specialist, orchestrates these thinkers around the phenomenon of anxiety, anxiety's origins, its redemption by Jesus Christ and its transformation in the Christian life from initial believers to the great mystics and saints. The entire study is framed by the two Gardens wherein transpire the most significant events concerning anxiety for Balthasar: the Garden of Eden and the Garden of Gethsemane.