Written during a time of great upheaval in the Church, the present volume (first published by Benzinger in 1965) addresses a fundamental question: Who is a Christian? Of this question, Balthasar observes that it “has been assumed without reflection in every attempted reform of today’s Church. In other words, it is taken for granted — in the sense that people, on the one hand, behave as though we already know the answer and, based on this knowledge, need only take the necessary precautionary measures. On the other hand, in relation to the traditional solutions and guiding ideals of the Christian, they allow themselves the freedom to express the strongest suspicion of ideology and so presume to measure these concepts against a criterion that they apply without attempting to justify it. It is not hard to isolate this unreflecting and yet obvious criterion, for it springs of itself from the mass of prevailing tendencies — well intended, popularly applauded, yet in urgent need of critical scrutiny and sifting — within modern Christianity”.
