“I had taken up the study of philology out of love for German literature; I also did some philosophy, Sanskrit, and Indo-European linguistics. It never occurred to me to consider what I would do with all this knowledge in later life. Only much later, when the lightning flash of vocation was already several years behind me, did I understand. When I had completed my philosophical studies at Pullach (chaperoned at a distance by Erich Przywara) and my four years of theology in Lyons (inspired by Henri de Lubac) in the company of my fellow students Daniélou, Varillon, Bouillard, and many others, I came to see how very helpful my knowledge of Goethe, Hölderlin, Nietzsche, Hofmannsthal, and above all of the Fathers, to whom de Lubac pointed me, would be for the working out of my theology. The chief postulate of my work Herrlichkeit [Glory of the Lord] was the capacity to see a ‘form’ in its interconnected wholeness. I wanted to apply Goethe’s way of seeing to the phenomenon of Jesus and the convergence of New Testament theologies. The Fathers had a similar way of seeing, which retains its validity despite the whole modern tendency to analyze everything.”
