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God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute Between Theism and Atheism
Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso
414 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1983
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116 people want to read
About the author
Eberhard Jüngel
79 books13 followersEberhard Jüngel is a German Lutheran theologian. He is also Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology and the Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Evangelical Theology of the University of Tübingen.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 12, 2023
Jüngel takes some big swings in his attempt to work out a revised doctrine of God from the revelatory foundation he began in God’s Being is in Becoming. To be honest, I’m not if they all land, but I very much appreciate the attempts.
I don’t think that I fully grasped the weight of the philosophical arguments in which he was trying to intervene, so I’m willing to suggest I was simply missing the force of the argument in more than a few places.
Overall, I think there’s a lot to process here, and it may take me a very long time to really work out what I make of Jüngel’s argument.
I don’t think that I fully grasped the weight of the philosophical arguments in which he was trying to intervene, so I’m willing to suggest I was simply missing the force of the argument in more than a few places.
Overall, I think there’s a lot to process here, and it may take me a very long time to really work out what I make of Jüngel’s argument.
May 28, 2024
THE GERMAN THEOLOGIAN DEALS WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT GOD
Eberhard Jüngel (born 1934) is a German Lutheran theologian who taught at the University of Tübingen until his retirement in 2003.
He wrote in the Foreword to this 1977 book, “The studies in this book are intended in their way to aid us to that we can SAY what we are actually TALKING about when we talk about God. Who or what is God?... It must and should be done so that our talk about God does not end up silencing him. Compared to atheistic thoughtlessness, this is the much greater danger for theology: that God will be talked to death, that he is silenced by the very words that seek to talk about him… we no longer dare to think God. Both the atheism and the theology of the modern day stand equally overshadowed by the dark clouds of the unthinkability of God. Both faith and unbelief seem to regard these shadows as their destiny. At the end of the history of metaphysics, God appears to have become unthinkable. The attempts to think in this book are directed against that appearance. Their goal is to illumine the possibility of talk about God based on the experience of the humanity of God, and to learn to think God again on the basis of unambiguous talk about God.” (Pg. vii)
He continues, “I have allowed myself to take seriously the fact that the Christian faith lives out of that particular proclamation which identifies God with the crucified man Jesus and thus differentiates between God and God. Nietzsche’s polemic remark that such a God would be a ‘negation of God’ … has been taken up in a positive way in order to advance to a fruitful stage the controversy, now made necessary by dialectical theology, with the metaphysical tradition which dominates both theology and philosophy… It is to be hoped that the new treatment of the analogy problem in this book will make this clear. The corresponding hermeneutical study of the problem of the speakability of God is also nourished by the material statement that God has defined himself through identification with the crucified Jesus.” (Pg. ix-x)
He says of the concept of the ‘Death of God’: “There is no other phrase which so appropriately indicates the basic theological aporia of Christian talk about God in the modern age because it also reminds us of the innermost problem of a theology of the Crucified One… The origin of the idea of the death of God shows how the axiom of absoluteness in theology can be surmounted in favor of a Christian concept of God… one cannot evade learning to distinguish between a meaningful and an absurd use of language about the death of God.” (Pg. 42)
Later, he adds, “We do not intend to provide an apologetic for Christianity. We are occupied with the talk about the death of God because of the theological relevance of the problem concerned in such talk, but not for apologetic reasons: neither in the sense that theology’s case should be defended against the claims of such talk, nor in the sense that we might want to make theology interesting—again---with this dark statement. Theology is either interesting on its own, or not at all.” (Pg. 45)
He states, “Where is God? We can no longer avoid the remarkable fact that this question, in its modern form, is not directed toward the existence of God, but toward his essence. WHAT tradition has understood by ‘God’ is what has become a problem. The ‘idea of God,’ which thought of God as the totally Other… w controls everything… was questioned. Where is God, if that is what he is like? That is the question which must then be answered… there is an aporia in the ‘natural’ concept of God which makes the essence of God problematical, and it does so not only in its christological usage but also in its nontheological, expressly atheistic usage. Both theism and atheism are afflicted by this aporia in the concept of the essence of God, Theism is afflicted because it plays the aporia down; atheism is afflicted because it lets itself be played down by the aporia. Only when this aporia has been recognized as such and we have learned from it, can the opposition of Christianity and atheism become genuine. Only when faith has worked through the ‘particles of truth’… of atheism, and only when atheism has acknowledged that faith in the crucified God is its twin, will the alternative be a firm one… and the dispute between belief and unbelief will be rid of the dullness which has beclouded it till now.” (Pg. 102)
He suggests, “Theologically, man is relevant as the being which is defined by the ‘word of God.’ The ‘word of God’ is to be understood as the abbreviated formulation of the entire fact that God addresses us about himself and thus about ourselves. In that process, what happens is that a ‘word’ which addresses us ‘surpasses our being-here,’ and this happens in a much more radical way. In that man is addressed by God about God, a total distancing of the ego takes place over against its being-here and being-now, and accordingly a completely new qualification of man’s state of being present results, which one could call eschatological spiritual presence. Every word of God which addresses surpasses our being-here in that it places us BEFORE GOD.” (Pg. 174)
He asserts, “Christian theology today must make a decision. It must decide whether it will follow Fichte and his theological heirs and renounce the thinkability of God. Or it must … be prepared to destroy the presupposed understanding of the divine being ‘superior to us’ … in order to think God in the way that he has revealed himself in his identity with the man Jesus.” (Pg. 187)
He states, “Theological reflection … will not be able to dissociate itself from the intellectual history defined by the dominance of ‘I think’ as though it simply could move beyond the historical situation of thought with its plenitude of problems…. It is incontestable, then, that that thinking which follows the movement of faith can no longer seek to ground itself in ‘I think,’ nor even attempt to ground itself at all. Rather, as the thought of faith, it is grounded in the selfsame word which makes faith possible… it is equally indubitable that it is the human person who is thinking when theology is being done…” (Pg. 200-201
He asks, “How is that being to be named who counters growing sin with still greater grace (Rom 5:20)? The answer does not have to be sought. It is both anthropologically and theologically evident and is called LOVE. The basic hermeneutical structure of Evangelical talk about God… is the linguistic-logical expression for the being of God, which being realizes itself in the midst of such great self-relatedness as still greater selflessness, and is as such love. But love is compelled to express itself in speech. Part of love is the declaration of love and the confirmation of love. Since God is not only one who loves, but is love itself, one MUST not only speak about him, but one CAN speak about him. Love possesses the power of speech.” (Pg. 298) Later, he adds, “But since God can be thought as love only on the basis of his identity with the man Jesus, and since, moreover, the essence of love implies the polarity of lover and loved, the discussion of the statement ‘God is love’ must necessarily lead to the understanding of God’s self-distinction from God and ultimately to the concept of the triune God, whose only ‘vestige’ … can be the being of man with whom God has identified himself.” (Pg. 314)
He argues, “It is not adequate, then, simply to collate the biblical statements about God as the Father, God as the Son, and God as the Spirit, and then to derive from this material the coercive necessity of the doctrine of the Trinity. The ‘biblical material’ as such offers only a possibility for the doctrine of the Trinity, but not its necessity… God’s being requires that it be understood as the being of the triune God… The guiding motif was, however, always faith in the identification of God with the man Jesus.” (Pg. 351) Later he adds, “Jesus was this absolutely free man… As the man who existed entirely from God, Jesus enabled faith in God’s fatherly nearness, faith in the nearness of God as the Father.” (Pg. 359)
This book will interest those seriously studying 20th century theology.
Eberhard Jüngel (born 1934) is a German Lutheran theologian who taught at the University of Tübingen until his retirement in 2003.
He wrote in the Foreword to this 1977 book, “The studies in this book are intended in their way to aid us to that we can SAY what we are actually TALKING about when we talk about God. Who or what is God?... It must and should be done so that our talk about God does not end up silencing him. Compared to atheistic thoughtlessness, this is the much greater danger for theology: that God will be talked to death, that he is silenced by the very words that seek to talk about him… we no longer dare to think God. Both the atheism and the theology of the modern day stand equally overshadowed by the dark clouds of the unthinkability of God. Both faith and unbelief seem to regard these shadows as their destiny. At the end of the history of metaphysics, God appears to have become unthinkable. The attempts to think in this book are directed against that appearance. Their goal is to illumine the possibility of talk about God based on the experience of the humanity of God, and to learn to think God again on the basis of unambiguous talk about God.” (Pg. vii)
He continues, “I have allowed myself to take seriously the fact that the Christian faith lives out of that particular proclamation which identifies God with the crucified man Jesus and thus differentiates between God and God. Nietzsche’s polemic remark that such a God would be a ‘negation of God’ … has been taken up in a positive way in order to advance to a fruitful stage the controversy, now made necessary by dialectical theology, with the metaphysical tradition which dominates both theology and philosophy… It is to be hoped that the new treatment of the analogy problem in this book will make this clear. The corresponding hermeneutical study of the problem of the speakability of God is also nourished by the material statement that God has defined himself through identification with the crucified Jesus.” (Pg. ix-x)
He says of the concept of the ‘Death of God’: “There is no other phrase which so appropriately indicates the basic theological aporia of Christian talk about God in the modern age because it also reminds us of the innermost problem of a theology of the Crucified One… The origin of the idea of the death of God shows how the axiom of absoluteness in theology can be surmounted in favor of a Christian concept of God… one cannot evade learning to distinguish between a meaningful and an absurd use of language about the death of God.” (Pg. 42)
Later, he adds, “We do not intend to provide an apologetic for Christianity. We are occupied with the talk about the death of God because of the theological relevance of the problem concerned in such talk, but not for apologetic reasons: neither in the sense that theology’s case should be defended against the claims of such talk, nor in the sense that we might want to make theology interesting—again---with this dark statement. Theology is either interesting on its own, or not at all.” (Pg. 45)
He states, “Where is God? We can no longer avoid the remarkable fact that this question, in its modern form, is not directed toward the existence of God, but toward his essence. WHAT tradition has understood by ‘God’ is what has become a problem. The ‘idea of God,’ which thought of God as the totally Other… w controls everything… was questioned. Where is God, if that is what he is like? That is the question which must then be answered… there is an aporia in the ‘natural’ concept of God which makes the essence of God problematical, and it does so not only in its christological usage but also in its nontheological, expressly atheistic usage. Both theism and atheism are afflicted by this aporia in the concept of the essence of God, Theism is afflicted because it plays the aporia down; atheism is afflicted because it lets itself be played down by the aporia. Only when this aporia has been recognized as such and we have learned from it, can the opposition of Christianity and atheism become genuine. Only when faith has worked through the ‘particles of truth’… of atheism, and only when atheism has acknowledged that faith in the crucified God is its twin, will the alternative be a firm one… and the dispute between belief and unbelief will be rid of the dullness which has beclouded it till now.” (Pg. 102)
He suggests, “Theologically, man is relevant as the being which is defined by the ‘word of God.’ The ‘word of God’ is to be understood as the abbreviated formulation of the entire fact that God addresses us about himself and thus about ourselves. In that process, what happens is that a ‘word’ which addresses us ‘surpasses our being-here,’ and this happens in a much more radical way. In that man is addressed by God about God, a total distancing of the ego takes place over against its being-here and being-now, and accordingly a completely new qualification of man’s state of being present results, which one could call eschatological spiritual presence. Every word of God which addresses surpasses our being-here in that it places us BEFORE GOD.” (Pg. 174)
He asserts, “Christian theology today must make a decision. It must decide whether it will follow Fichte and his theological heirs and renounce the thinkability of God. Or it must … be prepared to destroy the presupposed understanding of the divine being ‘superior to us’ … in order to think God in the way that he has revealed himself in his identity with the man Jesus.” (Pg. 187)
He states, “Theological reflection … will not be able to dissociate itself from the intellectual history defined by the dominance of ‘I think’ as though it simply could move beyond the historical situation of thought with its plenitude of problems…. It is incontestable, then, that that thinking which follows the movement of faith can no longer seek to ground itself in ‘I think,’ nor even attempt to ground itself at all. Rather, as the thought of faith, it is grounded in the selfsame word which makes faith possible… it is equally indubitable that it is the human person who is thinking when theology is being done…” (Pg. 200-201
He asks, “How is that being to be named who counters growing sin with still greater grace (Rom 5:20)? The answer does not have to be sought. It is both anthropologically and theologically evident and is called LOVE. The basic hermeneutical structure of Evangelical talk about God… is the linguistic-logical expression for the being of God, which being realizes itself in the midst of such great self-relatedness as still greater selflessness, and is as such love. But love is compelled to express itself in speech. Part of love is the declaration of love and the confirmation of love. Since God is not only one who loves, but is love itself, one MUST not only speak about him, but one CAN speak about him. Love possesses the power of speech.” (Pg. 298) Later, he adds, “But since God can be thought as love only on the basis of his identity with the man Jesus, and since, moreover, the essence of love implies the polarity of lover and loved, the discussion of the statement ‘God is love’ must necessarily lead to the understanding of God’s self-distinction from God and ultimately to the concept of the triune God, whose only ‘vestige’ … can be the being of man with whom God has identified himself.” (Pg. 314)
He argues, “It is not adequate, then, simply to collate the biblical statements about God as the Father, God as the Son, and God as the Spirit, and then to derive from this material the coercive necessity of the doctrine of the Trinity. The ‘biblical material’ as such offers only a possibility for the doctrine of the Trinity, but not its necessity… God’s being requires that it be understood as the being of the triune God… The guiding motif was, however, always faith in the identification of God with the man Jesus.” (Pg. 351) Later he adds, “Jesus was this absolutely free man… As the man who existed entirely from God, Jesus enabled faith in God’s fatherly nearness, faith in the nearness of God as the Father.” (Pg. 359)
This book will interest those seriously studying 20th century theology.
September 29, 2014
This book set me off on quite a journey. Life's never been the same since, but that may have more to do with personal biography than with the book. A searingly honest wrestling of a theist with atheism.
July 21, 2025
That was utterly remarkable! Now, I'll admit I think I grasped maybe 80% of this as some of it went over my head. But that's not because it wasn't clearly written or really well translated, but because of my lack of previous knowledge. I'd heard some good things about Jüngel and those have been justified. He brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to very relevant debates about how we can think about God, how we talk about him, and how God reveals himself to humanity. Taking up the concept of the death of God, particularly in response to Nietzsche, he emphasizes the necessity of grappling with the death of God in the way God identifies himself with the Crucified one. In a world where many ask essentially 'is God necessary', Jüngel answers, 'No, God is more than necessary' and then spends an entire book unpacking that.
Remarkable, but will take a while to read and ponder slowly.
Remarkable, but will take a while to read and ponder slowly.
July 14, 2018
Perhaps the best work in theology I have read so far.
October 27, 2008
The most profound theological commentary on 1 John 4:8's statement: "God is love."
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews