In this programmatic volume, Hans Urs von Balthasar asks what is specifically Christian about Christianity. What is the logos that lends Christian teaching its necessity? According to Balthasar, the Patristic Age, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance located this logos within the realm of the cosmos, whereas modernity shifted its locus to man himself. “But neither the world as a whole nor man in particular can provide the measure for what God wishes to say to man in Christ; God’s Word is unconditionally theo-logical, or, better, theo-pragmatic: what God wishes to say to man is a deed on his behalf, a deed that interprets itself before man and for his sake (and only therefore to him and in him). What we intend to say about this deed in this book is that it is credible only as love — specifically, as God’s own love, the manifestation of which is the glory of God.” (From the author’s Preface)