“The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in order to consecrate a human being to God and to communicate to that person the divine gift of birth from God.”

—  Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Source: Unless You Become Like This Child

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The Church does not dispense the sacrament of baptism in order to acquire for herself an increase in membership but in …" by Hans Urs Von Balthasar?
Hans Urs Von Balthasar photo
Hans Urs Von Balthasar 17
Swedish Catholic theologian 1905–1988

Related quotes

“If God does not lie at the end of any telescope, neither does he lie at the end of any syllogism. I can never starting from the natural order prove the divine order. The proof of the divine order must lie, somehow, within itself. It must be its own witness. For it, like the natural order, is complete within itself, self-contained.”

Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) British civil servant, educator and philosopher.

p. 138.

Albert Einstein photo

“He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"Education for Independent Thought" in The New York Times, 5 October 1952. Reprinted in Ideas and Opinions (1954)
1950s
Context: It is not enough to teach a man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and of the morally good. Otherwise he—with his specialized knowledge—more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community. These precious things are conveyed to the younger generation through personal contact with those who teach, not—or at least not in the main—through textbooks. It is this that primarily constitutes and preserves culture. This is what I have in mind when I recommend the "humanities" as important, not just dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy.

Kurien Kunnumpuram photo

“I wish to adopt a holistic approach to the mission of the Church. To my mind the mission of the Church is to collaborate with God in God’s work for the wholeness of the human person, the human community and the cosmos according to the pattern revealed in Jesus Christ”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram 2011
On the Church

Hilaire Belloc photo

“So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep:
So pledge my waking from the gift of sleep,
And, sacramental, raise me the Divine:
Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine (1932)

“I know that with consecration on the part of believers, separation from the world, disentanglement from enslaving sins, and a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, the church would become a conquering power in the world, not by its constructed theology, not by its Sabbath services, not by its arguments to convince the intellect, but by its simple story of Jesus' love, by the CROSS, the CROSS — God's hammer, God's fire.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 144.

Kurien Kunnumpuram photo

“Mission of the Church is to collaborate with God in his work for the wholeness of the human person, the human community and the cosmos according to the pattern revealed in Jesus Christ.”

Kurien Kunnumpuram (1931–2018) Indian theologian

Kunnumpuram, K. (2009) Towards the Fullness of Life: Reflections on the Daily Living of the Faith. Mumbai: St Pauls
On the Church

“By becoming poor and entrusting divine revelation to a carpenter from Nazareth, God makes clear where one has to be in order to hear the divine word and experience divine presence.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Speaking the Truth: Ecumenism, Liberation, and Black Theology (1986), p. 9

Álvaro Corrada del Río photo

“Sometimes in our activist and production-oriented American society and culture we succumb to pragmatism looking at the Christian life and our sharing in the apostolic mission of the Church as a matter being able to “do” things for Christ, the Church or others. In fact, the Christian life is a gift and a call to truth and love given to us by God. It is first a matter of "being," of simply existing as a person created by God and redeemed by him in Christ. We live out this truth and love in specific ways according to our age, talents, and unique vocation. At no point are the sacraments about what we have done or promise to do for God. They are God's free gift of grace to us. At the same time, these gifts of love entail an obligation to bear witness to God's love in word and deed by our collaboration in freedom with the grace given.”

Álvaro Corrada del Río (1942) Puerto Rican Catholic bishop

Pastoral Reflection on the Sacrament of Confirmation http://www.americancatholicpress.org/Bishop_Corrada_Pastoral_Reflecton%20_on_Confirmation.html (October 7, 2005)

Martin Luther photo

“Now when God sends forth his holy Gospel, He deals with us in a twofold manner, the first outwardly, then inwardly. Outwardly he deals with us through the oral word of the Gospel and through material sings, that is, baptism adndthe sacrament of the altar. Inwardly He deals with us through the Holy spirit, faith, and other gifts. But whatever their measure of order the outward factors should and must procede. The inward experience follows and is effected by the outward. God has determined to give the inward to no one except through the outward.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Luthers Works, 40 p. 146 as quoted in Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin https://books.google.com/books?id=95sDFZbl4S4C&pg=PA55&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=3#v=onepage&q=Calvin&f=falseby Carlos M. N. Eire, p. 72

Aurelius Augustinus photo

“Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked.”

Aurelius Augustinus book The City of God

XV, 22
The City of God (early 400s)

Related topics