Eberhard Jüngel (1934 - 2021)

29/09/2021

Eberhard Jüngel, one of the greatest evangelical theologians of the second half of the twentieth century, passed away on 28 September 2021.

Born and raised in what was then the German Democratic Republic, Jüngel tells us that his interest in the Gospel was stimulated by a word of the Johannine Christ: "The truth will make you free" (Jn 8:32). The exact opposite of a regime based on barbed wire and systematic lies.

A pupil and friend of Karl Barth, he was called to teach first in Zurich, then in Tübingen. His works include God the Mystery of the World, a highly original reflection on the structure of faith in relation to thought, The Gospel of Justification as the Centre of Christian Faith and numerous volumes of essays, a selection of which was translated into Italian as Possibility of God in the Reality of the World. A small theological autobiography, L'avventura di pensare Dio (The Adventure of Thinking God), curiously enough published first in Italian translation and only later in German, can serve as an introduction to his thought.

Jüngel was a frequent guest of the Valdese Faculty of Theology, which remembers him with gratitude.