Eberhard Jüngel

Eberhard Jüngel (5 December 1934 – 28 September 2021) was a German Lutheran theologian. He was Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology and the Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the University of Tübingen.

Life and work
Jüngel was born in Magdeburg on 5 December 1934 as the son of the electrician Kurt Jüngel and his wife Margarete née Rothemann, into a non-religious home. After World War II, Magdeburg was located in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). He remembered that his decision to pursue a career in theology was met with "the concerned astonishment" of his mother and "the resolute refusal" of his father.' However, it was precisely the communist milieu of his youth which led him to Christian theology: "That was the discovery of the church as the one place within a Stalinist society where one could speak the truth without being penalized."

Jüngel studied undergraduate theology at the Kirchliche Hochschule Berlin-Ost (Theological Seminary of East Berlin). During this time he was particularly interested in the works of Ernst Fuchs and Heinrich Vogel, who influenced his work throughout his life. He concluded his undergraduate theological studies in Switzerland in 1957 and 1958, working with Gerhard Ebeling at the University of Zürich, and with Karl Barth at the University of Basel. In 1961, he completed his doctorate supervised by Fuchs on Paulus und Jesus. Eine Untersuchung zur Präzisierung der Frage nach dem Ursprung der Christologie (Paulus and Jesus. An investigation to clarify the question of the origin of Christology). He completed his habilitation in systematic theology in 1962 at the Kirchliche Hochschule Berlin-Ost.

In 1962, as a direct result of the erection of the Berlin Wall, Jüngel was appointed to the position of Dozent für Neues Testament (Lecturer in New Testament) in the Hochschule, a position he retained until 1966. At the end of his tenure at the Hochschule, Jüngel was appointed Ordinarius für Systematische Theologie und Dogmengeschichte (Professor of systematic theology and history of dogmatics) at the University of Zürich, where he taught until 1969. Moving to West Germany in 1969, Jüngel accepted a position of Ordinarius für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie (Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion) at the University of Tübingen, where he also assumed the role of director of the Institute for Hermeneutics. Despite a plethora of offers for positions at other universities, Jüngel remained at Tübingen until his retirement in 2003. His successor was the systematic theologian Christoph Schwöbel.

Jüngel held a number of additional positions throughout his academic career:
 * Between 1987 and 2005, he was Ephorus (Director) of Evangelisches Stift Tübingen, a Protestant house of studies and teaching founded in 1536 in a former Augustinian monastery. He was succeeded in 2005 by the Theologian and Church Historian Volker Henning Drecoll.
 * From 2003 to 2006, he was the director of the Forschungsstätte der Evangelischen Studiengemeinschaft (Research Centre for Protestant Studies) in Heidelberg.
 * In 2007, he was appointed the Gadamer-Stiftungsprofessor (Hans-Georg Gadamer Chair in Theology) at the University of Heidelberg.

He was a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, also Chancellor of the Order Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts, and a member of the Synod of the Protestant Church in Germany. In 1994, he received the Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and in 2000 the Medal of Merit of the State of Baden-Württemberg. Jüngel received honorary doctorates from the University of Greifswald and from the University of Basel.

Jüngel died in Tübingen on 28 September 2021.

Theology
Main features of Jüngel's theology (Evolution and inner consistency):
 * 1) Paul and Jesus – Jüngel's thesis deals with the issues arising from the interpretation of the New Testament
 * 2) God's being is in becoming – His first book in the area of dogmatic theology
 * 3) Christology: exegesis and dogmatics – Understanding of the relationship between the historical and the dogmatic in Christology
 * 4) God the mystery of the world: speaking about God, thinking about God, the human god
 * 5) Atheism and the theology of death – His response to atheism, and his theology of death
 * 6) Anthropology and justification – Relation between God and man
 * 7) Anthropology and analogy – The man who expresses God
 * 8) Towards a theology of the natural – Confrontation of the Christian faith with the contemporary experience of reality