Abstract: This article attempts to show how both the interpretation of Balthasar to the Greek Fathers and his understanding of the Eastern Church have led to some important views in his ecclesiology before 1940. Another attempt aims to correct the general opinion that an Orthodox relevance of the Balthasarian theology can be reduced to his patristic studies. The study draws attention to Balthasar’s three essays written in 1939, where he approaches the issue of the relationship between Eastern and Western Church in theoretical terms. Reading the Fathers, Balthasar develops a very interesting Christological eccle­siology, focused on the mission into the world. This view is carried out by Balthasar as a typological synthesis of the Eastern and the Western Church: the Johannine Orthodox “Church of Seeing” – in the succession of the Greek Church Fathers – suffers in its liturgy and theology from a Neo-Platonic spiritualism which can be corrected only in the synthesis with the Paulinian West “Church of Hearing”. The hypostases of this typological view on the Church and also the different aspects of Balthasar`s analysis of the Fathers are examined from an Orthodox perspective.

Keywords: Hans Urs von Balthasar, Greek Fathers, Eastern Church, Western Church, Unity of the Church

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