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

Abstract

Eberhard jüngel'S reputation as a severely professional systematic and philosophical theologian is beginning to drift across to the English speaking world. His Gott ah Geheimnis der Welt, which first appeared in 1976 and whose third edition is here translated by Darrell L. Guder, is a curious book. It is perhaps best read not so much as a single argument but as a series of studies which at important points overlap or converge. It is a remarkably wide-ranging book: indeed, so wideranging that the argument becomes frustratingly difficult to get hold of in its entirety. Jü ngel writes illuminatingly about a variety of philosophical and theological traditions, and does so in order to advance some large-scale proposals about how a contemporary Christian doctrine of God ought to be pursued. And yet at the end of the book, even the reader who has put in the demanding work of mastering Jüngel's complex argument is left with an odd feeling of dissatisfaction, as if the book somehow lacks a recognisable, sustained treatment of its central theme.