Eberhard Jüngel

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Eberhard Jüngel (born December 5, 1934 in Magdeburg ) is a German Protestant theologian . Until 2003 he was full professor for systematic theology and philosophy of religion and director of the institute for hermeneutics at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen . Until 2013 he was Chancellor of the Pour le Mérite Order for Sciences and Arts. He has received numerous honors for his scientific achievements.

Live and act

School time and years of study

In Jüngel's parental home, religion was not in great demand; his father was a decidedly non-religious person. One day before graduating from high school, Jüngel was removed from grammar school as an "enemy of the republic" because he had allowed himself to speak out what he believed to be truth:

"[...] that was a plethora of incidents. For example, the church diaconal institutions in Magdeburg, the Pfeiffer foundations, were confiscated by the state. And we - a friend and I - protested violently in class when the teachers wanted to justify it and pointed out that this was injustice - also according to the laws and the constitution of the German Democratic Republic. "

- Eberhard Jüngel

For Jüngel only studying Protestant theology at a church college was considered. He wanted to be a pastor. In 1953 he began his theological training at the Catechetical College in Naumburg an der Saale . Two years later he moved to the Sprachenkonvikt, the church college in East Berlin. In 1957 he continued his studies at the Universities of Zurich and Basel . Among the university lecturers who were important to him were the philosopher Gerhard Stammler, but also Heinrich Vogel and Gerhard Ebeling . Ernst Fuchs became his most influential theological teacher , through whom the young man met Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Heidegger , whose writings impressed him from an early age. Like Ebeling, Fuchs himself was a Bultmann student. In Switzerland, the encounter with Karl Barth was of decisive importance for his theological thinking:

“[…] I went to Switzerland illegally for one semester, although I have otherwise tried to strictly observe the laws of the German Democratic Republic. I let the rumor spread that I had suffered a nervous breakdown, and to my horror - after I returned after a semester - I was told from all sides: We always saw it coming. In truth, I was fine. I had flown to Zurich - the Berlin Wall wasn't in place yet, so all you had to do was take the S-Bahn to Tempelhof and board the plane. In Zurich, I mainly studied theology with Gerhard Ebeling, but then went to Basel once a week to see Karl Barth - and there I met a teacher who made a very special impression on me. I was impressed by something about Barth that I just missed in his students: the incredible concentration of his theological thinking, at the same time with a great serenity and relaxation of the intellect. Then I was very impressed by the simultaneity of interest in heaven and earth. That one has to be faithful to the earth if one is interested in heaven. I understood that with Barth. "

- Eberhard Jüngel

Eberhard Jüngel completed his theology studies in 1960 with the first theological exam at the Consistory of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg .

The young theologian

This was followed by activities as vicar of the Berlin church and as an assistant at the church college there. In 1961 Jüngel received his doctorate in West Berlin with a New Testament dissertation on Paul and Jesus , which was published in 1962:

“The historical-critical research of the New Testament had worked out the difference between Jesus of Nazareth, who had proclaimed the coming of the kingdom of God and was executed, and Paul, who preached Jesus' death as God's reconciling act and justification of the sinner. At the beginning of Christianity there seemed to be an unbridgeable discontinuity: the preaching Jesus becomes the preached Christ. In this investigation, to clarify the question of the origin of Christology, Jüngel compared the Pauline doctrine of justification and the preaching of Jesus as two linguistic events that agree that they announce the eschatological (final) devotion to people. "

- Richard Schroeder

After the Berlin Wall was built in 1961, Jüngel taught at the Sprachenkonvikt in the eastern part of the city, which has since been separated from the church college in Berlin-Zehlendorf. In 1962 he was ordained pastor of the Evangelical Church in Magdeburg. He completed his habilitation in systematic theology at the theological faculty of the Humboldt University in East Berlin. An attempt to appoint him to the theological faculty of the University of Greifswald failed in 1964. He taught at the Sprachenkonvikt until the end of the summer semester 1966, first of all New Testament and later Dogmatics . In 1965 he published his second book God's Being Is In Becoming . In it he tried to combine Karl Barth's doctrine of the Trinity with the hermeneutic discussions of the Bultmann School.

Full professor

In the winter semester of 1966, Jüngel accepted a call to the theological faculty of the University of Zurich with a temporary exit permit from the GDR authorities. There he held the chair for systematic theology and history of dogma until 1969. In 1969 he received a call to the Protestant theological faculty of the University of Tübingen. He became full professor for systematic theology and philosophy of religion and director of the Institute for Hermeneutics. In 1977 his main work “God as a secret of the world. To justify the theology of the crucified in the dispute between theism and atheism ” . For young people God is the secret of the world because although he is invisible, he reveals himself by coming into the world. Jüngel remained loyal to the University of Tübingen despite several calls to other faculties, such as the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . He also taught at the Philosophical Faculty in Tübingen. Eberhard Jüngel was twice dean of the Protestant theological faculty and visiting professor at several universities in Germany. In the 1999/2000 academic year he was a fellow at the renowned Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin . Jüngel's books on the doctrine of justification and death are considered standard works of systematic theology. Jüngel's retirement took place in 2003. His successor at the Tübingen chair was the systematic theologian Christoph Schwöbel .

Public work

For 29 years, Eberhard Jüngel was a member of the Synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany and its Standing Committee on Scripture and Preaching. From 1987 to 2005 he was part-time Ephorus at the Evangelical Monastery in Tübingen . His successor in this office was the theologian and church historian Volker Henning Drecoll . Jüngel was a deputy judge at the State Court of Baden-Württemberg. From 2003 to 2006 he also headed the research facility of the Evangelical Study Community in Heidelberg. Jüngel was Gadamer endowed professor in 2007. He repeatedly interfered in the political discussion through newspaper articles and lectures. The theologian, known for his precise differentiations, lives in Tübingen and is a bachelor and hobby cook. For decades he met regularly for dinner with his professor friends Hans Küng and Jürgen Moltmann , which “used to last until late at night”. Richard von Weizsäcker , himself a Protestant, said: "The boy, that's our Ratzinger ".

theology

General

Eberhard Jüngel, who knows how to combine the fundamental concerns of the theological antipodes Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Barth in an original way , is - together with his theological companions Jürgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg - one of the most important German Protestant theologians of our time. It is received far beyond the German-speaking and Protestant regions. For young people it is the task of theology to think of God as love. According to Jüngel, God does not communicate himself as the highest being who stands above the world and then in a second step relates to the world and the world to himself. Rather, God has freely determined himself in eternity that he would only come to himself and thus to us through the person Jesus, who was subjected to the curse on sin on the cross. Therefore, freely accepted historicity belongs to God's definition of essence.

“In the doctrine of the Trinity , God's historicity is thought of as truth. In the power of this truth, God can then be spoken of as a Christian, God's being can be told as a story. "

- Eberhard Jüngel

According to Jüngel, we do not come to the historical work of God through a knowledge of the essence prior to revelation . Rather, through the historical work of God we are determined to come to his essential knowledge. We are denied a knowledge of God outside of revelation. Only in the event of his identification with the dead Jesus can the essence of God be known.

“So it is related to Jesus' death cry that Christian faith is a well-founded trust in God. The pagan centurion called the dead man God's Son. This means that God became one with this person in the event of Jesus' death, that is, at the point where the abandonment of God culminated. God identified himself with Jesus, with this mortal person, in order to be there for all mortal people in unity with this dead man. The salvation of mankind therefore occurs on the cross of Jesus. Because that is salvation: that God is there for us. "

- Eberhard Jüngel

God reveals himself to us through his self-discernment and self-identification. God does not confess to him because Jesus is the Son of God. But because God confesses to Jesus, Jesus be God's Son. God defines himself in his divinity as life and love through identification with the crucified Jesus, whom he reveals as his Son. In the event of Jesus' death, God accept death as that which is alien and contrary to him, that is, as the whole ungodliness of the world, and asserts himself in relation to death as life. Since the cross, death has been part of the eternal being and essence of God. The death of God on the cross is the revelation of the greater god of life than love compared to death. God can only be thought of as love because of his identity with the man Jesus:

“'God is love' is therefore only a true human sentence if God is an event as love among people. [...] The phrase 'God is love' is formulated truth. If it is not to curdle into a formula, it must both be lived and thought. "

- Eberhard Jüngel

According to Jüngel, the omnipotence of God can only be understood as the "omnipotence of God who suffers for his creature", not as all causality. The talk of the creatio ex nihilo should be understood in such a way that God limited himself here by placing “the other he wanted next to him”. The self-limitation of God in its original beginning corresponds to the mystery of the love of God, which constitutes the trinitarian being of God - as a “community of mutual otherness” and thus related to itself and at the same time limited. The emergence of evil and the facticity of evil can only be described as a dark riddle.

The historical Jesus

Dogmatic necessity

For Jüngel the dogmatic meaning of the question about the historical Jesus is the center of theology. There are two reasons for this:

  • Christian theology is related in content to Jesus as Christ.
  • The topic methodically leads into the center of theological thought work.

The theological thought process again consists of a tension with two poles:

  • historical knowledge
  • dogmatic responsibility

Historical knowledge is an analysis of what has become, what has been and what effect it has, e.g. B. the historical Jesus in the approach of historical research. The dogmatic responsibility should discuss the present meaning - also and especially in view of the truth awareness of the modern age and its criticism. Historical knowledge is the prerequisite, but not the (evidence) ground for dogmatic responsibility. At the same time, dogmatic responsibility always remains related to historical knowledge. Dogmatic responsibility begins at the point where Jesus is known as Christ / Kyrios / Son of God (Christological being). Bultmann has already asked the leading question from the historical Jesus to the post-Easter known Christ: How does the preacher (historical Jesus) become the preacher (of the post-Easter community)? Jüngel's attempted answer: Jesus gets the predication Christ, which implies two sides:

  • "Jesus = Christ" is a confession about the man Jesus, namely that one should speak and think of him as of God.
  • "Jesus = Christ" is a statement of a homological situation: He who says this confesses himself to be a believer.

In previous research there are two extremes:

  1. Life of Jesus research based belief on fact.
  2. Kerygma theologies that take up the criticism of Kähler, Hermann, Schweitzer, ... and radicalize it so much that the historical Jesus becomes irrelevant (Bultmann + Barth)

A mediating position does not look for reasons of evidence through historical facts (like 1.), so that faith would have to be forced, but also does not want to completely renounce the historical connection (like 2.), but looks for the clues of the Christ kerygma in the historical Jesus.

The attachment of the Christ kerygma to the historical Jesus

The main thesis of Jüngel is that Jesus and his proclamation of the Kingdom of God represent an elementary interruption on all levels (political, religious, ...). For Jüngel this interruption has four main aspects:

  1. The kingdom of God and his coming represent the reversal of the previous orders of life. The kingdom of God is there in the parable itself. "In the parable the rulership of God comes up and so, as a parable, it [the rulership of God] comes into the world."
  2. a) From the point of view of Jesus' contemporaries, the world is determined by forces of destruction. This system of rule is torn by Jesus z. B. by casting out demons and transferring this power to his disciples. The dawn of God's reign is a novelty that triggers jubilation and joy, and there is no time for fasting and mourning because “the bridegroom” is there. b) For his understanding of revelation, Jüngel draws on Lévinas' further development of Heidegger's context of being (being-in-the-world). The normal human condition is related to inner-worldly beings (as in Heidegger), but there are also exceptions to this due to interruptions. These are brought about by the “face of the other” and at the same time mean an imperative for me to take on my interpersonal responsibility. This is what Lévinas calls the Word of God, where the circle of revelation closes. With Jüngel, God comes into the world through speaking.
  3. Jesus' appearance is characterized by a "royal freedom" (Barth) that leaves one stunned. Jesus cannot be classified and it is precisely because of this that Jesus' deeds and his miracles bring about the rule of God.
  4. a) Jesus understands himself entirely from God, entirely from the kingdom of God. b) In the apocalyptic tradition, Jesus expects the coming kingdom. That means that Jesus does not bring the kingdom with him, but it is the other way around: The kingdom comes and brings Jesus with him. c) The kingdom of God is so close that the chronological question of the exact time of coming is superfluous: The kingdom of God is so close that it is urgent. d) The main concern of the kingdom is to realize the unhindered togetherness of God and man.

Personal identity of Jesus Christ

According to Jüngel, when one asks about identity, one must generally always ask about the relationships that make up a person. Jesus' identity is characterized by the fact that he is completely absent from God, to put it simply: Jesus cannot be understood without God. For young people this is also the correspondence between the historical Jesus and the preached Christ. Jüngel finally answers the initial question, what the dogmatic meaning of the question about the historical Jesus is, as follows:

"The dogmatic meaning of the historical Jesus consists in the fact that he is the man corresponding to God and as such the Son of God, who also wants to make us into men corresponding to God."

Memberships and honors

Fonts

  • Paul and Jesus. An investigation to clarify the question of the origin of Christology. Mohr, Tübingen 1962, 6th edition 1986, ISBN 3-16-145119-8 .
  • On the origin of the analogy in Parmenides and Heraklit (1964)
  • God's being is becoming. Responsible speech on God's being in Karl Barth, a paraphrase (1965, 4th edition 1986) ISBN 3-16-145077-9 .
  • Tod (1971, 5th edition 1993) ISBN 3-579-03760-9 .
  • On the way to the point. Theological Remarks (1972, 3rd edition 2000) ISBN 3-16-147293-4 .
  • God as the secret of the world. On the justification of the theology of the crucified in the dispute between theism and atheism (1977, 7th edition 2001) ISBN 3-16-147620-4 .
  • Contestation and Assurance of Faith, or How the Church Gets Back to Its Cause (1976) ISBN 3-459-01089-4
  • Making the Truth Right (1977) ISBN 3-7831-0525-0 .
  • Correspondences: God - Truth - Human (1980, 3rd edition 2002)
  • Barth Studies (1982) ISBN 3-545-24211-0 .
  • Taste and see. Sermons III (1983) ISBN 3-459-01510-1 .
  • To make a state with peace. Political existence according to Barmen V (1984) ISBN 3-459-01563-2 .
  • Interruptions. Sermons IV (1989) ISBN 3-459-01826-7 .
  • Worthless truth. On the identity and relevance of the Christian faith (1990, 2nd edition 2003) ISBN 3-16-148222-0 .
  • The gospel of the justification of the wicked as the center of the Christian faith (1998, 3rd edition 1999) ISBN 3-16-147271-3 .
  • Indicatives of grace - imperatives of freedom. Theological Discussions IV (2000) ISBN 3-16-147366-3 .
  • … A bit meschugge… Sermons and Biblical Reflections V (2001) ISBN 3-87173-222-2 .
  • Relational. Perspectives of Faith (2002) ISBN 3-87173-245-1 .
  • ... because it was a spoken word ... Sermons I (2003) ISBN 3-87173-261-3 .
  • Presence of Mind. Sermons II (2003) ISBN 3-87173-262-1 .
  • Beginner. Origin and future of Christian existence (2003) ISBN 3-87173-275-3 .
  • Become whole. Theological Discussions V (2003) ISBN 3-16-147969-6 .
  • Sermons 1-4 (2003) ISBN 3-87173-265-6 .
  • Born to be amazed. Sermons VI (2004) ISBN 3-87173-296-6 .
  • Death, the riddle and the mystery (1975) ISBN 978-0-664-20821-9 .
  • God as the Mystery of the World. On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism (1983) ISBN 978-0-567-09345-5 .
  • Theological Essays II (1994) ISBN 978-0-567-09706-4 .
  • Theological Essays I (1999) ISBN 978-0-567-29502-6 .
  • God's Being Is in Becoming. The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth: A Paraphrase (2001) ISBN 978-0-8028-4295-4 .
  • Justification. The Heart of Christian Faith (2001) ISBN 978-0-567-08775-1 .
  • Eberhard Jüngel . In: Systematic Theology of the Present in Self-Representations , ed. v. Christian Henning, Karsten Lehmkühler. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 1998, pp. 188–210 ISBN 3-8252-2048-6 (UTB 2048)

literature

  • Rainer Dvorak: God is love. A study on the foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity by Eberhard Jüngel . Echter, Würzburg 1999
  • Frank Fuchs: Concretions of the narrative: using the example of Eberhard Jüngel's theology and sermons including the hermeneutics of Paul Ricœur and the text linguistics of Klaus Brinker . Lit, Münster 2004
  • Engelbert Paulus: Love - the secret of the world. Formal and material aspects of Eberhard Jüngel's theology . Bonner Dogmatic Studies 7. Echter, Würzburg 1990
  • John Bainbridge Webster: Eberhard Jüngel. An Introduction to his Theology. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge 1991

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information about Jüngel on the website of the Protestant theological faculty of the University of Tübingen , accessed on January 13, 2015.
  2. ↑ Quoted from Johannes Weiß: The high art of distinguishing. A portrait of the theologian Eberhard Jüngel . SWR2 Questions of Faith - Manuscript 2004
  3. ↑ Quoted from Johannes Weiß: The high art of distinguishing. A portrait of the theologian Eberhard Jüngel . SWR2 Questions of Faith - Manuscript 2004
  4. ↑ Eberhard Jüngel: Paulus and Jesus. An investigation to clarify the question of the origin of Christology. 6. unchangeable Ed., Mohr, Tübingen 1986.
  5. ↑ Richard Schroeder: How God came into the world , in: Die Zeit 50/2004 of December 2, 2004
  6. ^ Friedemann Stengel: The Theological Faculties in the GDR . 1998, p. 432 .
  7. ↑ Life's work 2006. Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Eberhard Jüngel on predigtpreis.de
  8. ↑ Christian Tsalos: Eberhard Jüngel 75th . Press release of the Evangelical Church in Württemberg from December 2, 2009.
  9. ↑ Quoted from Markus Brauer: The thinker who came from the GDR , in: Stuttgarter Nachrichten of December 4, 2009.
  10. ↑ Thomas Krazeisen: Liberating Truth , in: Eßlinger Zeitung, article from December 5, 2009
  11. ↑ Short biography of Jüngel Eberhard on theology.de
  12. ↑ Eberhard Jüngel: God as a secret of the world , 8th edition 2010, p. 472.
  13. ↑ Eberhard Jüngel: On the way to the matter , 3rd edition 2000, p. 298.
  14. ↑ Eberhard Jüngel: Become whole. Theological Discussions V , 2003, p. 83.
  15. ↑ Eberhard Jüngel: God as a secret of the world , 8th edition 2010, p. 430.
  16. ↑ Eberhard Jüngel: God's original beginning as creative self-limitation. In: Ders .: Worthless truth. On the identity and relevance of the Christian faith, theological discussions. III, Munich 1990, p. 272.
  17. ↑ Jüngel: God's original beginning as creative self-limitation. 1990, p. 268.
  18. ↑ Jüngel: God's original beginning as creative self-limitation. 1990, p. 274.
  19. ↑ Eberhard Jüngel: On the dogmatic significance of the question of the historical Jesus . In: Worthless Truth . 1988, p. 214 ff .
  20. ↑ E. Jüngel: The dogmatic meaning of the question about the historical Jesus . In: Worthless Truth . 1988, p. 242 .
  21. ^ Press and Information Office of the Federal Government: Orden Pour le Mérite elected new chancellors . Press release No. 223 from June 20, 2013

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Jüngel, Eberhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theologian and professor
DATE OF BIRTH December 5, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Magdeburg