Following his acclaimed The Word Has Been Abroad: A Guide Through Balthasar’s Aesthetics, No Bloodless Myth by Aidan Nichols offers a lucid and accessible guide to the five-volume Theo-Drama of Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the most ambitious theological projects of the twentieth century.
In Theo-Drama, Balthasar presents the Christian revelation as a divine drama in which God and humanity are real actors, not abstract principles. Nichols carefully summarizes and interprets this vast work, showing how Balthasar’s dramatic theology avoids both rationalist reduction and mythic vagueness, grounding salvation history in concrete action, freedom, and truth.
Rather than treating theology as a bloodless system of ideas, Nichols highlights Balthasar’s insistence that doctrine emerges from lived encounter—above all, the drama of Christ’s obedience, suffering, and self-gift. The book clarifies Balthasar’s use of dramatic categories, his engagement with philosophy and literature, and the theological coherence of Theo-Drama as a whole.
Written for theologians, students, and serious readers alike, No Bloodless Myth serves as both an introduction and an interpretive key to one of the most demanding and rewarding theological works of the modern era.
About the Author
Aidan Nichols, O.P., is a Dominican friar and theologian whose work spans fundamental, historical, and systematic theology, as well as theology’s engagement with art, literature, and philosophy. He has taught theology in England, Italy, the United States, and Ethiopia, and was for many years associated with the University of Cambridge.
Fr. Nichols is the author of numerous influential works, including The Word Has Been Abroad, The Shape of Catholic Theology, Epiphany, Lovely, Like Jerusalem, The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI, and Lost in Wonder. He is widely regarded for his ability to render complex theological systems clear, faithful, and intelligible to both scholars and educated lay readers.
