1 [Published in Indicative of Grace – Imperative of Freedom: Essays in Honour of Eberhard Jüngel in His 80th Year. Edited by R. David Nelson. London: Bloomsbury/T&T Clark, 2014. Link to publication: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/indicative-of-grace-imperative-of-freedom9780567153593/]
The Spirit of Freedom: Eberhard Jüngel’s Theology of the Third Article David W. Congdon
I The occasion of Eberhard Jüngel’s eightieth birthday provides an opportunity to look back at a remark by Karl Barth from 1964, the year of Jüngel’s thirtieth birthday. On March 2, Barth met a group of students from Tübingen at the Bruderholz Restaurant for another one of his famous conversations. During the course of the discussion, an unknown student raised the topic of Jüngel’s recent interpretation of Barth’s analogia fidei.1 The student wished to know whether Jüngel’s understanding accorded with Barth’s own. Barth responded by saying that he had read the essay but no longer remembered the details. He instead changed the topic to address Jüngel himself as an interpreter of his theology. I know only one thing that I remember for sure: Jüngel is one of those—and really not one of the worst, but rather a good representative of those who are terribly eager to learn the essentials from me . . . and then comes an “and”! With him it is the “and” of Ernst Fuchs. It’s well known that one can also sayμ Barth “and” Bultmann. Here in Switzerland we have [Gerhard] Ebeling, so that one can also sayμ Barth “and” Ebeling. I like to compare this theology to a garden of paradise, at the entrance to which stand, on the left and the right, two heraldic stone lions that bear these names. . . . There are many
Eberhard Jüngel, “Die Möglichkeit theologischer Anthropologie auf dem Grunde der Analogieμ Eine Untersuchung zum Analogieverständnis Karl Barths [1λ62],” in Barth-Studien (Zürich-Köln: Benziger Verlag, 1982), 210–32. 1