ABSTRACT
Eberhard Jüngel has contributed to the renewal of German theology in the twentieth century through his uncommonly concentrated writings. Above all, he thinks through the theological significance of Jesus’ death. As a philosopher, he helps make it possible for faith to speak and think about God, and he draws the consequences of this for anthropology, ecclesiology, sacramental thinking, and ethics, as well as offering many insights that shed light on society from a theological perspective. Jüngel is anchored in tradition both through his work with classical texts from within and outside the Christian tradition, and by developing the inheritance from the dialectical theology. He builds on Rudolf Bultmann and Ernst Fuchs, and renews and develops the thinking of Karl Barth for his own contemporaries, inter alia through his understanding of language. His thinking is elegant and strikingly original. With Jürgen Moltmann and Hans Küng and Walter Kasper, his colleagues at the Catholic theological faculty (Joseph Ratzinger gave up his professorship at the time when Jüngel arrived), he helped make Tübingen the most important center of theological studies in Germany over several decades.
