An obvious starting point in examining the influence of Karl Barth on the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar is surely Balthasar's 1951 classic, The Theology of Karl Barth. At its centre is a straightforward thesis: Barth in the works of his early, ‘dialectical’ period strongly rejected analogy, but later accepted that analogy has a necessary role to play in theology. The form of analogy Barth accepted, the ‘analogy of faith’, analogia fidei, restricted the application of analogy to the event of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. This was developed in opposition to the ‘analogy of being’, the analogia entis, where one may speak of a correspondence between the created and uncreated orders, without the restriction Barth imposed. In Balthasar's view, from the rejection of the analogia entis stem the principal weaknesses of Barth's theology: an insufficient theology of Creation, Incarnation, the Church, and of our creaturely response to the love of God. For Barth, on the other hand, the analogia entis is “the invention of the antichrist” and the principal error of the Catholic Church.

In his clearly written, thoughtful and balanced book Stephen D. Wigley argues that The Theology of Karl Barth, with its focus on analogy and its defence of the analogia entis, not only discloses Balthasar's view of Barth's theology, but also provides a key to the understanding of Balthasar's own theological project. This is hardly a controversial view, especially in the case of the first part of Balthasar's trilogy, The Glory of the Lord, which is centred around the transcendental of being, beauty. It was Barth who restored beauty to theological debate through his discussion of glory (divine beauty) as an attribute of God in Church Dogmatics II/1. But Wigley takes this further. Each of the three parts of Balthasar's trilogy focuses on one of the transcendentals of being: beauty, goodness and truth. When the transcendentals are applied to God as well as to the created order the analogia entis is presumed, and so the analogia entis pervades the whole of Balthasar's vast work. This suggests Wigley's main thesis: that the formation of Balthasar's trilogy arose out of his engagement with the theology of Barth, and so the trilogy can be read as a Catholic response to Barth, even where Barth's theology is not mentioned. Balthasar's aim is to uphold key Barthian insights, but developed in the light of the analogia entis. These insights are thereby shown to be compatible with the analogia entis. In this way Balthasar asserts the analogia entis without having to forego what the analogia fidei is meant to safeguard, the centrality of the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.

Wigley takes each part of Balthasar's trilogy in turn. His task is least difficult when discussing the first part of Balthasar's trilogy, where Balthasar acknowledges his debt to Barth. Citing the influence of Barth, Balthasar asserts a theology of beauty that starts from Christian revelation, rather than imposing upon revelation worldly categories and standards. In this way, a theological conception of divine beauty is asserted, one that is capable of embracing what might otherwise seem most devoid of beauty in the eyes of the world, the Cross and disfigurement of Christ. Yet Balthasar develops his theological aesthetics in ways that would never have been countenanced by Barth, going beyond the analogia fidei to the analogia entis. Balthasar moves beyond a narrowly conceived Christological focus to where philosophical aesthetics can legitimately enhance and expand theological understanding, where works of art, literature and philosophy, from Aeschylus to Péguy, are viewed as sources of genuine theological insight.

Wigley makes a plausible case for the view that the same basic structure, where Balthasar preserves Barthian insights, whilst developing them in the light of the analogia entis, is also to be found in the other two parts of Balthasar's trilogy. Since Barth is mentioned comparatively little, it is not surprising that Wigley has frequently to depend on locating positions that suggest, rather than assert, the influence of Barth. A case in point, from the second part of the trilogy, Theo-Drama, is Balthasar's theology of atonement. Like Barth, Balthasar asserts the soteriological primacy of the Christ-event in all its particularity against theologies where atonement is presented in general anthropocentric terms. Yet, where Barth limits the salvific to the event of revelation where God meets humanity in Jesus Christ, Balthasar works on a larger canvas, embracing a conception of salvation involving the transformation of our being. The nature of our humanity enables us to participate in the saving work of Christ, to receive the transformative imprint of God. In this way Balthasar can uphold the primacy of Christ's work in our salvation, whilst incorporating what he noted in The Theology of Karl Barth as lacking in Barth due to his rejection of the analogia entis: an adequate theology of human response in the drama of our salvation.

In the case of the first part of Balthasar's trilogy, where the influence of Barth is explicit and acknowledged, Wigley's position seems safe. It is regarding the other two parts of the trilogy that deficiencies in Wigley's argument become apparent. Wigley's aim is to show more than that it is reasonable to read Balthasar's trilogy as having been shaped by Balthasar's encounter with Barth. His aim, rather, is to show that it has actually been shaped in this way, which is a more substantial claim. One obvious problem is that Wigley fails to rule out other possibilities. To be fair, it would be no mean feat to convincingly separate out the various influences on the work of a theologian like Balthasar, who drew heavily on the work of so many thinkers. Yet that is surely what Wigley must do if he is to substantiate his thesis. In particular, how is one to distinguish between the positive influence of Erich Przywara, Balthasar's former teacher and mentor and the foremost expert of the day on the theology of the analogia entis, and the effect of Balthasar's disagreement with Barth? Both would move Balthasar in the direction of giving centrality to the analogia entis. And how might the theology of Adrienne von Speyr, an enormous influence on Balthasar by the time of the writing of the trilogy, have also influenced the shape of that great work? Furthermore, sources that might have helped shed light on these problems and support Wigley's thesis, such as letters and journals, are not cited; nor is the lack of such citation remarked upon, presumably because Wigley is unaware of the problem. This suspicion is supported at a number of points where Wigley's conclusions exceed what the evidence provides. Perhaps the most telling example is where Wigley concludes his analysis of Ben Quash's work on Balthasar by stating (p.123): ‘Quash's work confirms the argument of this study, that the shape of von Balthasar's theology is determined by the substance of his critical engagement with Karl Barth.’ The problem here is with the word ‘confirms’. Quash's work no doubt supports Wigley's position, but nothing Quash says goes quite so far as to confirm it. To make this point may seem pedantic, that Wigley's mistake is but a mere slip. But treating necessary conditions as sufficient conditions throughout the book, despite many illuminating insights, is enough for one to conclude that Wigley has charted much of the way without quite reaching the Promised Land.