adventures.
4. It is important to note that though Alfred Delp overlapped with Hans Urs von Balthasar at Stimmen der Zeit in the latter half of 1939 and planned a collaborative project with Balthasar and Karl Rahner, a greater intimacy existed between Delp and Rahner. Besides, there existed a tension between Balthasar and Rahner. In The Moment of Christian Witness, Balthasar argues that Rahner’s theology, particularly his concept of the anonymous Christian, could never sustain a heroic Christian witness in the modern world. He accuses Rahner of lacking a confident faith amidst growing Enlightenment secularism. As such, Balthasar’s theology of martyrdom, as Philip Endean argues, is unrealistic and ahistorical in light of Alfred Delp, who struggled with bouts of anxiety and self-doubt at the end of his life. Against the Titans acknowledges that Balthasar’s criticism of Rahner, particularly in The Moment of Christian Witness, is unfair and meanspirited. That said, Against the Titans puts Balthasar’s ideas in dialogue with Delp’s. It will demonstrate that Delp’s writings concerning anxiety, self-emptying, and discipleship amidst the modern age’s Promethean heroism dovetail well with Balthasar’s theology. For more of Endean’s analysis of Delp, Balthasar, and Rahner see Philip Endean, “Von Balthasar, Rahner, and the Commissar,” New Blackfriars 79, no. 923 (1998): 33–38; “A Symbol Perfected in Death,” The Way 43, no. 4 (2004): 67–82.
5. Thomas Merton, “Introduction,” in Alfred Delp, SJ: Prison Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), xxxiv.
6. Merton, “Introduction,” xxxii.
7. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama IV: Theological Dramatic Theory: The Action, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 317.
8. Timothy Yoder, “Hans Urs von Balthasar and Kenosis: The Pathway to Human Agency” (PhD diss., Loyola University Chicago, 2013).
9. Matthew A. Rothaus Möser, Love Itself Is Understanding: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of the Saints (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016).
10. John R. Cihak, Balthasar and Anxiety (New York: T & T Clark, 2009).
11. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian and Anxiety (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000).
12. Ernst Jünger’s life covers one hundred years (1895–1998) and five eras of contemporary German history: the late Wilhelmine era, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, Germany divided, and the new Germany. Against the Titans focuses on Jünger’s violent, militant writings during the Weimar Republic. Though there was an initial sympathy toward the Nazis, the book recognizes that Jünger rejected Hitler’s overture to join the Nazis. That said, Jünger’s biting criticism of liberalism, hubristic desire for power through technology, and idolatry of war permit a glimpse into the unstable era of the 1920s and 1930s.
13. Thomas R. Nevin, Ernst Jünger and Germany: Into the Abyss, 1914–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996).
14. Thomas Rohkrämer, A Single Communal Faith? The German Right from Conservatism to National Socialism (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007).
15. Roger Griffin, A Fascist Century, ed. Matthew Feldman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), xii.
16. Griffin, A Fascist Century, 42.
17. Roger Griffin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 165.
18. Roger Griffin, Fascism, Key Concepts in Political Theory (Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2018), 47.
19. Griffin describes the methodological attempt to penetrate the fascist self-understanding as empathy. Methodological empathy allows one to enter the worldview of the protagonist of fascism. Adopting this approach does not mean that one accepts the fascist value-system. Griffin, Fascism, Key Concepts in Political Theory, 36–39.
20. Alfred Delp, Gesammelte Schriften 1: Geistliche Schriften, ed. Roman Bleistein (Frankfurt am Main: Josef Knecht, 1982); Alfred Delp, Gesammelte Schriften 2: Philosophische Schriften, ed. Roman Bleistein (Frankfurt am Main: Josef Knecht, 1983); Alfred Delp, Gesammelte Schriften 3: Predigten und Ansprachen, ed. Roman Bleistein (Frankfurt am Main: Josef Knecht, 1983); Alfred Delp, Gesammelte Schriften 4: Aus dem Gefängnis, ed. Roman Bleistein (Frankfurt am Main: Josef Knecht, 1985); Alfred Delp, Gesammelte Schriften 5: Briefe – Texte – Rezensionen, ed. Roman Bleistein (Frankfurt am Main: Josef Knecht, 1988).
21. Mary Frances Coady, With Bound Hands: A Jesuit in Nazi Germany: The Life and Selected Prison Letters of Alfred Delp (Chicago, Ill: Jesuit Way, 2003).
22. Roman Bleistein, Alfred Delp: Geschichte eines Zeugen (Frankfurt am Main: Josef Knecht, 1989).
23. Andreas Schaller, Lass dich los zu deinem Gott: Eine theologische Studie zur Anthropologie von Alfred Delp SJ (Freiburg: Herder, 2012).
24. Günther Saltin, “Das Kreuz-Geheimnis Gottes und Lebensordnung des Menschen. Ein bisher nicht veröffentlicher Entwurf zu einem Einkehrtag: Bearbeitung und Kommentar,” in Alfred-Delp-Jahrbuch, vol. 4 (Berlin: Lit Verlag Dr. W. Hopf, 2010).
25. Alfred Delp, Advent of the Heart: Seasonal Sermons and Prison Writings, 1941–1944 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006).
26. Alfred Delp, Alfred Delp, S.J.: Prison Writings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004).
27. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 8, trans. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2002), 143–62.
28. See Romans 8:26: “In the same way, the Spirit comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings” (NAB).
29. See Romans 5:5: “And the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (NAB).
30. Delp, Gesammelte Schriften 4, 243.
31. Delp, Gesammelte Schriften 1, 158.
32. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give to you. This I command you, to love one another” (John 15:12–17; NAB).
33. Delp, Gesammelte Schriften 1, 51–68.
34. Delp, Gesammelte Schriften 3, 39–148.
35. Cihak, Balthasar and Anxiety, 2–3.
36. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama II: Theological Dramatic Theory: The Dramatis Personae: Man in God, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 420–26.
37. The word “liberal” refers to liberalism, which as a philosophy espouses the primacy of individuals over social groups. It encourages the individual to choose his or her good life. It favors natural and spontaneous social relations over ones that are institutionalized and imposed. In terms of political theory, liberalism embraces the modern state founded on limited government and the autonomy of the individual, understood as liberal democracy. Nonetheless, the variants of liberal democracy that emerged in the “West” are not synonymous with modernity, but rather one contingent form of it. See Griffin, A Fascist Century, 30.
