"Is sin, man’s refusal to be reconciled with eternal, absolute Goodness, really an organ essential to life? Is it not much more like a spreading cancer? Can we say that God is robbing man of anything by restoring his health? Furthermore, if a man has become locked in a syndrome of refusal, if he refuses to keep faith with God, can he free himself from his own obstinacy? He may think he can, but in reality he becomes a slave of his ‘No’ because there is only true freedom when we are in contact with the Good, in the atmosphere of love -- that is, of God. This is something that has to be shown, from within, to the person who has turned away. What is taken away from sinful man through the surrender of the Son of God is nothing other than his alienation from the Good; what is given to him is nothing other than inner access to the Good, that is, true freedom. He is liberated both toward himself and toward God.'Bought at a great price.' The first Christians were well aware of this when they put these two little words, 'pro nobis,' at the heart of the Creed. It was 'for us' that the Son came down from heaven, 'for us' that he was crucified, died and was buried. And this means not only 'for our benefit' but also 'in our place,' taking over what was our due. If this is watered down, the fundamental tenet of the New Testament disappears and it looks as if God is always reconciled, sin is always forgiven and overcome, irrespective of Christ's self-surrender; then the Cross becomes merely a particularly eloquent symbol of God's unchanging kindness, only a symbol, indicating something but not effecting anything. ... By sleight of hand the modern world has caused death to vanish from its everyday awareness: let us make sure that we Christians do not, by equal stealth, remove the tremendous drama of the Cross from our Christianity. "
Hans Urs von Balthasar, You Crown the Year with Your Goodness: Radio Sermons, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), pp. 78-79.
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