Category Archives: Eberhard Jüngel

Things of Note

Posted by on September 15, 2009 5 comments

Evan has notified us of an upcoming Review of Politics issue that is dedicated to the work of William Cavanaugh. Looks like some important reading there.

Also, Millinerd has done a  write-up of what looks to be a very important article on the analogia entis by our own R.O Flyer. The article engages John Betz’s recent work on the topic and brings it into conversation with the work of Eberhard Jüngel. Here’s just a snip from Millinerd’s summary:

Jüngel realizes that the analogia entis “protects the holy grail of the mystery, and as such is really the opposite of what Protestant polemics have made it out to be.” While a quick read of Summa I.13 could have gotten Protestant critics there much earlier, it’s nice to hear such an assertion from a Protestant voice as authoritative as Jüngel’s. Protestants were attacking a phantom Catholic doctrine after all. We can therefore lay down the polemics and get back to the business of unity, right?

Wrong. Siggelkow relates how Jüngel resumes the attack on analogy by criticizing the very mystery of God that the analogia entis hopes to protect. Notwithstanding the fact that Aquinas is a rather vigorous defender of the Incarnation, Jüngel insists that “the theological critique to be directed against the great accomplishment of [the Catholic] metaphysical tradition focuses on the fact that in its obtrusiveness the unknownness of God has become an unbearably sinister riddle.” Jüngel’s alternative to normative Christian theology is an eschatologically charged “analogy of advent,” one that is free from Catholic metaphysical constraints. . . .

To summarize, the sad reality is this: Once Protestants railed against the analogia entis because it made God too near. Now, Protestants rail against the analogia entis because it makes God too far away. One wonders, then, if this debate is telling us more about Protestant attitudes towards Catholicism than about the analogia entis itself. But the real irony, at least the one presented by this incisive issue of the Princeton Theological Review, is even sadder: The mystery of Catholic theology that Jüngel calls an “unbearably sinister riddle” is the common inheritance of Orthodox theology, which of course includes Maximus the Confessor. Which is to say, this issue builds an ecumenical bridge, torches it, and watches it burn.

I still suspect that Flyer and Jüngel are right, though.

Poverty and Jesus

Posted by on July 21, 2009 1 comment

“[Jesus's] kingship has no worldly luster, his power is powerlessness compared to the strength of others. ‘He who alone is rich is . . . the poorest of the poor’ (167). In word and deed he turns especially toward the poor; their poverty corresponds to his. The royal man’s activity shows a marked affinity for the shadowy side of human existence. This, in turn, is closely linked to the ‘revolutionary character of his relationship to the orders of life and value current in the world around him’ (171). Precisely because Jesus proclaimed no program of his own, he called all human programs and principles into question. Living under the ruling order of his day, he nevertheless had the royal freedom to testify to the Kingdom of God, which is the limit of all human activity. No human system is fully valid for God, not is any fully applicable to the human Jesus. God is the one who shatters all human conventions, the judge of all human constructions. And Jesus manifests this in his existence ‘as this (if we may risk the dangerous word) partisan of the poor, and finally as this revolutionary’ (180). But in all this he is not opposed to the human race, but for it—as the Savior of the world, whose assault on the world is spearheaded by the gospel. God judges the human race only in order to restore it.”

~ Eberhard Jüngel, Karl Barth: A Theological Legacy, 136. (Page references in the quote are to Barth, CD IV/2)

The Karl Barth Blog Conference So Far…

Posted by on June 18, 2008 Comments Off

The Karl Barth Blog Conference is in full swing and so far there have been some great posts and some great discussions ensuing as a result.  Here are the papers that have been presented thus far:

If you haven’t read any of these posts yet, please head over and engage them.  Right now this is the nexus for superb theological blogging.  I for one can’t wait to see the final posts over the next few days.  Thanks to Travis for putting this great event on every year!

 

The Historicization of God’s Being

Posted by on June 17, 2008 12 comments

The Karl Barth Blog Conference is now well underway and my own contribution has just been posted today, dealing with the issue of Jüngel’s theological ontology and the whole thorny issue of the historicality of God’s being.  I argue in this post that, according to Jüngel, God’s very being is constituted through the history of Jesus’ death and resurrection and only if we affirm God as thus constituted by the historical man, Jesus can we rightly affirm the transcendence and freedom of the eternal God.

The 2008 Karl Barth Blog Conference Begins

Posted by on June 15, 2008 Comments Off

The 2008 Karl Barth Blog Conference has now begun.  Over the next week we can look forward to a variety of posts exploring Eberhard Jüngel’s radical interpretation of Barth’s theology of the Trinity in God’s Being is in Becoming.  This is sure to be a great conference.  Stay tuned.

The 2008 Karl Barth Blog Conference Draws Nigh

Posted by on June 4, 2008 4 comments

This year’s Karl Barth Blog Conference is going to begin in under two weeks.  Stay tuned to Der Evangelische Theologe for what is sure to be a great conference.

The topic for the conference will be Eberhard Jüngel’s God’s Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth. The projected schedule is as follows:

  • Day 1 – “Introduction,” by WTM; with an introductory discussion entitled “And Never the Twain Shall Meet…: Theology Meets Philosophy in Jüngel’s Work,” by Jon Mackenzie.
  • Day 2 – “The Passion of God: Some Questions for Jungel on Divine Suffering,” by Scott Jackson; Response by Matthew Bruce.
  • Day 3 – “A Still Greater Historicity: Hegel, Jüngel, and the Historicization of God’s Being,” by your’s truly; Response by Adam Steward.
  • Day 4 – “Minor Premise: Incipient Theological Ethics in God’s Being is in Becoming,” James Cubie; Reponse by Shane Wilkins.
  • Day 5 – “God’s Objectivity: Revelation as Sacrament in Jüngel’s ‘God’s Being is in Becoming’” by Thomas Adams; Response by Chris TerryNelson.
  • Day 6 – “Demythologizing the Divide between Barth and Bultmann: Jüngel’s Gottes Sein ist im Werden as an Attempt toward a Rapprochement between Karl and Rudolf,” by David Congdon; Response by Luke.

Jenson, Jüngel, and the Resurrection

Posted by on January 31, 2008 1 comment

In my recent re-reading of the works of Eberhard Jüngel I’ve noticed a far stronger connection that I saw before between his theology and the theology of Robert Jenson.  While there are certain central differences between the two (most notably in their respective understandings of justification, the sacraments, and eccleisology), they are extremely close in their understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity, and in particular the relationship between Jesus and the Trinity.

For Jenson and Jüngel, Jesus is indispensable to a proper account of the immanent Trinity.  For both of these theologians, Jesus is, in the strongest possible terms identical with the eternal Logos.  Following Barth, particularly his development of the doctrine of God in CD II/2, they both argue that God’s being is constituted by his eternal self-determination, which includes his determination to be God for us in Jesus.  Thus, for Jenson and Jüngel Jesus simply is the Logos.  The eternal, communal event of decision whereby the triune God is God is identical with God’s determination to be God for us as Jesus.  Therefore, since God is the act of his own decision – his being and act being one – Jesus himself is the presupposition of God’s own triune eternity.

The crucial difference I see between Jenson and Jüngel on the issue of Christology lies in their respective narrative orientations, so to speak.  Both of them are thoroughgoingly historicist in their understanding of the Christ and the Trinity, however the narratival lens they utilize in drawing forth a proper understanding of Christ is slightly different.  For Jüngel the central point is God’s unity with death and perishability in the crucifixion of Christ.  It is God’s identity with the Crucified one that is the central point of Jüngel’s theological ontology, his doctrine of the Trinity, and his Christology.  For Jenson, however it is Christ’s resurrection that had the most pronounced dogmatic significance.  It is the event of Christ’s resurrection by the Father in the power of the Spirit that is the very event of the eternal triune being. 

This is not to say that either theologian ignores the resurrection or the cross, but rather to note a fundamentally unique flavor to their respective theologies.  For Jüngel what we behold in the transition between cross and resurrection is the “union of death and life in favor of life.”  It is the taking of death up into the being of God, whereby God creatively involves himself with nothingness, bringing the no-thingness that is sin and death into the plenitude of divine life, thereby suffusing death with the eternal life that is the trinitarian communion of mutual otherness.  For Jenson however, what we behold in the death and resurrection of Christ is not so much the taking up of death into life as it is the invasion of death by the inexhaustible power of life.  Death is not so much brought up into God for Jenson.  Rather the life of God apocalyptically invades, defeats, and overturns death.  God does not so much absorb death as explode it through the resurrection of Christ.

Certainly the respective flavors of Jenson and Jüngel are probably not incompatible.  Rather they serve to open up divergent vistas on the central mystery of the Christian faith that contribute to our appreciation of its panoramic beauty.  All theologians seek to intellectually involve themselves in the process of moving from death to life, from cross to resurrection.  Jenson and Jüngel offer two supremely helpful examples of precisely this transitional mode in which theology must be done.

Jesus as God’s Self-Interpretation

Posted by on January 30, 2008 7 comments

One of the central theses of Eberhard Jüngel’s book God’s Being is in Becoming is that the doctrine of the Trinity is our interpretation of God’s own self-interpretation.  For Jüngel, God’s revelation perfectly corresponds to Godself.  The triune God is the one who corresponds to himself.  His being is his act, and the revelation of the Trinity in Christ and the Spirit constitutes God’s self-interpretation.  The economic Trinity is God interpreting himself before us, it is God’s act of saying who and what God is within the realm of created being.

It seems to me that Jüngel’s construal of the Trinity as God’s self-interpretation might offer a helpful way to mediate the various debates surrounding the relationship between the man Jesus and the eternal trinitarian Son.  If Jüngel is correct that the economic Trinity is God’s self-interpretation, could we not argue that Jesus is the self-interpretation of the eternal trinitarian Son?  Thus, it isn’t strictly accurate to speak of the Logosas having an incarnate and an unincarnate state in a static sense.  Rather, the man Jesus himself is the eternal self-interpretation of the Son.  From all eternity the Son of the Father interprets himself as Jesus of Nazareth.  And because God’s act of self-interpretation is identical with God himself, the Son’s self-interpretation of himself as Jesus means that Jesus simply is the eternal trinitarian Son without remainder. 

And thus, as Jüngel says, God’s self-interpretation, the event of decision to be the God that he is identical with the eternal being of God.  God is the event of his own decision and that decision is “not to be understood only as a decision for God, but also . . . as a decision for humanity” (p. 81).  This “decision for humanity” which is eternally included in the event of the triune God is precisely the decision we see actualized in the man Jesus.  A proper understanding of the second person of the Trinity requires us to begin and end on this point.  If we grant that the actualistic ontology of Jüngel (and Barth, and perhaps Aquinas as well) is the most appropriate theological construal of being, then we are forced to conclude that the man Jesus is the eternal self-interpretation of the trinitarian Son.  Everything that we behold in Jesus belongs to the eternal identity of the triune God.  The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world is the Nazarene.

Love Alone can Involve itself with Death

Posted by on January 28, 2008 1 comment

“Resurrection means the overcoming of death.  But death will cease only when it no longer consumes the life which excludes it, but when life has absorbed death into itself.  The victory over death, which is the object of faith’s hope on the basis of God’s identification with the dead Jesus which took place in the death of Jesus, is the transformation of death through its reception into that life which is called eternal life.  For that reason the death which was turned around on the cross of Christ is called a ‘Phenomenon of God.’  It is only short-circuited criticism which wants to see here a final triumph of death.  Rather, what happens here is that turning around of death into life which is the very essence of love.  The issue here is the truth in the profound statement (1 John 3:14): ‘He who does not love abides in death.’  Death is not turned around apart from love, because love alone is able to involve itself with the complete harshness of death.”

–Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 364.

Karl Barth Blog Conference 2008: Update

Posted by on January 28, 2008 Comments Off

As it turns out my own proposal for a plenary paper for this year’s Karl Barth Blog Conference will be published on day three of the conference.  The title for my piece is “A Still Greater Historicity:  Hegel, Jüngel, and the Historicization of God’s Being”.  This paper will exmine  the role of Hegel in Jüngel’s trinitarianism (with special reference to God’s Being is in Becoming) in dialogue with recent discussions about the relationship between the economic and immanent trinities, particularly the question of how Jesus is indispensable to an account of the immanent Trinity.

Here is one of the important quotes from Jüngel’s God’s Being is in Becoming on this issue:

“God’s being in person is in a spcifict way a free event in so far as it is not only ‘being . . . moved in itself and therefore motivating being’, but ‘being which is self-moved’.  That means that, as event, the being of God posesses the freedom of decision.  Decision does not belong to the being of God as somthing supplementary to this being; rather as event, God’s being is his own decision. ‘The fact that God’s being is event, the event of God’s act, necessarily . . . means that it is His own consicous, willed, and executed decision.’  What was already worked out in the doctrine of the Trinity is now confirmed from working out a concept of being apprpriate to God: God’s being is constuted through historicality.  For in its ‘decision, and therefore personal being’ God’s being ‘is the being of God in the nature of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit’ in which ‘God live from and by Himself’.” (p. 80-81)

One of the things that his quote shows very well is, not only Jüngel’s superb exposition of Barth’s actualistic and historicist doctrine of God, but the way in which Barth’s doctrine of God establishes a properly theological construal of being.  In contrast to John Milbank’s accusation, that Barth’s work ultimately fails “to redefine being and knowledge theologically” (Radical Orthodoxy, p. 22), Jüngel shows how Barth’s Christocentric theology of election grounds and is grounded in a properly theological ontology.  For Barth and Jüngel, to be is to be included in God’s primal decision to be God-for-humanity.  And, as revealed in Christ, this decision is not something extraneous to God, but is rather identical with God’s very being (for Jesus is “very God of very God”).  God’s decision to be God for us is the very decision by which God is God.  As Jüngel points out, “the decision about God’s being is not to be understood only as a decision for God, but also – precisly as a decision for God – as a decision for humanity” (p. 81).  Therefore, being is theologically defined as that which is included in the event of the triune God’s election of the world in Jesus, which includes all things, leaving nothing out.  In contrast to Milbank and others who see the triumph of a sort of post-Kantian philosophy in Barth’s thought, when he is read rightly, as Jüngel exemplfies, his theology offers a profoundly robust theological ontology that is at once Christological, historical, actualistic, and participatory.  It is this ontology that I will be exploring in the upcoming Karl Barth conference, with special reference to the doctrine of the Trinity. 

Jüngel: The Poverty of Jesus and the Being of God

Posted by on January 27, 2008 1 comment

“If one understands the divinity of God out of its unity with the poverty of the existence of the Crucified One, then God’s being can no longer be thought as infinite in contrast with every finitude, and certainly not as independence in contrast with every dependence, and obviously not as an eternity which excludes time, not as a highest essence which does not know nothingness.  The God who is in heaven because he cannot be on earth is replaced by the Father who is in heave in such a way that his heavenly kingdom can come into the world, that is, a God who is in heaven in such a way that he can identify himself with the poverty of the man Jesus, with the existence of a man brought from life to death on the cross.”

–Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the Dispute between Theism and Atheism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 209.

The Second Annual Karl Barth Blog Conference

Posted by on January 24, 2008 1 comment

 Travis has announced the upcoming Second Annual Karl Barth Blog Conference.  After last year’s smashing success engaging Karl Barth’s Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century, this is sure to be an excellent series of collaborative posts as well.  Here is the information on the conference which is scheduled for early June:

The topic for the conference will be Eberhard Jüngel’s God’s Being is in Becoming: The Trinitarian Being of God in the Theology of Karl Barth. The projected schedule is as follows:

  • Day 1 – “Introduction,” by WTM
  • Day 2 – “The Passion of God: Some Questions for Jungel on Divine Suffering,” by Scott Jackson; Response by Matthew Bruce.
  • Day 3 – “TBA,” TBA; Response by TBA.
  • Day 4 – “Minor Premise: Incipient Theological Ethics in God’s Being is in Becoming,” James Cubie; Reponse by Shane Wilkins.
  • Day 5 – “God’s Objectivity: Revelation as Sacrament in Jüngel’s ‘God’s Being is in Becoming’” by Thomas Adams; Response by Chris TerryNelson.
  • Day 6 – “Demythologizing the Divide between Barth and Bultmann: Jüngel’s Gottes Sein ist im Werden as an Attempt toward a Rapprochement between Karl and Rudolf,” by David Congdon; Response by TBA.

Faith as Participation in God

Posted by on October 16, 2006 2 comments

Faith is participation in God himself. Certainly faith does not force itself into a position between God and God. It is the essence of faith to let God be who he is. But if faith does participate in God himself, without penetrating God in such a way that it forces itself between God and God, then God’s being must be thought as a being which allows that it be participated in, that is, a being which turns outward what it is inwardly. This happens in the word and only in the word of God. For it is part and parcel of the essence of the word to allow participation in the being of the one who speaks by bringing that being to turn itself to someone else. In the word, the being of the speaker expresses itself. From an anthropological viewpoint it is often true that in the word often more of the being of the speaker is expressed than this person knows or wants – and ontological fact from which psychoanalysis, for example, derives its whole existence. In a theological regard, the word is not to be looked on as involuntary or even traitorous expression. The Johannine identification of the logos with God himself (John 1:1) says instead that God in the word expresses his most inward being without reservation. He turns himself outward, without holding back any part of himself. He gives himself entirely in the word which he alone speaks. In this sense it is true “that God alone comes through the word alone” [Ebeling]. If God makes participation in himself possible through his word, then this gift of participation is an event of the divine being itself. The explicit cognition of this gift of participation, the thinking of what faith is, implies then the possibility of thinking of God as he really is, in and of himself. It is a part of the truth of faith that God is to be thought as he is, based on his self-disclosure.

-Eberhard Jungel, God as the Mystery of the World, 176-177.

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