This intriguing book focuses on what Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) was publishing in the 1930s and early 1940s, relating his ideas to the various cultural contexts which he was both drawing upon and responding to, essentially of course the rise of Naziism.The evidence is that Balthasar was as untroubled in his anti-Semitism as most non-Jewish intellectuals and academics were at the time. (Unlike English-speaking commentators, Dr Peterson understands how the nobiliary predicate works: thus, when she finally appears, Adrienne von Speyr is also referred to simply as Speyr.)The story starts with Goethe and Nietzsche, then homes in on the specifically Catholic context, highlighting Romano Guardini and Erich Przywara (whose early work is not free of anti-Semitic sallies either). Peterson e