thus descend to everyone. We believe that it does so. And now, can we assume that there are souls that remain perpetually closed to such love? As a possibility in principle, this cannot be rejected. In reality, it can become infinitely improbable—precisely through what preparatory grace is capable of effecting in the soul. It can do no more than knock at the door, and there are souls that already open themselves to it upon hearing this unobtrusive call. Others allow it to go unheeded. Then it can steal its way into souls and begin to spread itself out there more and more.... If all the impulses opposed to the spirit have been expelled from the soul, then any free decision against this has become infinitely improbable. After witnessing the horrors of Nazism, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross later appeared to have come around to this more pessimistic view, saying that "The possibility of some final loss appears more real and pressing than one which would seem infinitely improbable." Defending von Balthasar, Cardinal Avery Dulles interprets this passage as an "orthodox" expression of "hope" rather than a systematic soteriological doctrine. Other scholars have similarly recognized this distinction in the theologian's work more generally. Von Balthasar responded to allegations of heresy after the publication of Was dürfen wir hoffen? by asking, "How can anyone equate hoping with knowing? I hope that my friend will recover from his serious illness—do I therefore know this?" The position has been described as the result of a sort of conflict among the theological virtues: since "Love believes all things, [but also] hopes all things" (1 Corinthians ), what for fides must be rejected, for spes must be accepted, in order to recover with the theology of hope what in 553 the dogmatic theology had condemned with the anathema of the fifth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople against the possibility of apocatastasis or universal salvation. As Alyssa Pitstick phrases it, universal salvation, if it happens, would be the result of the "utter abandonment the Son undergoes". In A Short Discourse on Hell, von Balthasar lists Erich Przywara, Henri de Lubac, Gaston Fessard, Maurice Blondel, Charles Péguy, Paul Claudel, Gabriel Marcel, Leon Bloy, Joseph Ratzinger, Walter Kasper, Romano Guardini, and Karl Rahner as Catholic thinkers who share his perspective on hope—"In summa: a company in which one can feel quite comfortable". The debate on von Balthasar's "Theology of