Contesting the World and the Divine: Balthasar's Trinitarian “Response” to Gianni Vattimo's Secular Christianity

This essay joins the contemporary debate over the proper theological and philosophical hermeneutic for interpreting the phenomenon of secularism. The first part offers a sustained Balthasar‐influenced critique of Gianni Vattimo's secular translation of Christianity. I argue that Vattimo's Heideggerian‐Hegelian influenced reading of secularism as Christianity's proper telos is both philosophically and theologically problematic. Part Two of this article reads Balthasar's work as a response to the philosophical and theological underpinnings of Vattimo's thought. Balthasar would argue that it is in a more traditional, yet remarkably daring account of the Trinitarian relations that the “secular” finds both its ground and dignity.