I finally have a little time to myself, time which will no doubt be wasted in some way or another, but time which will have all sorts of promise and trajectory… Here’s a few things to waste your own time with.

Firstly, the Karl Barth Blog Conference of 2008 has just begun. Effectively this is actually (more promisingly *cough*) a ramble through the work of Eberhard Jüngel, the greatest living theologian. Unfortunately, this is a piece of self-gratification as I want to point out that I actually kicked off the proceedings with a post on the relationship between philosophy and theology in Jüngel’s work. It’s not very interesting (nor worth reading if Shane Wilkins has any say in the matter!) but it’s there all the same. The next few posts are as follows:

All are worth a read and the rest of the conference is worth following. Maybe it will even persuade me to hold the first Eberhard Jüngel Blog Conference here…

Anyway, in line with this, it got me thinking about Jüngel-studien. I’m becoming increasingly aware that the field is held in complete monopoly by the Webster school of thought. What this boils down to is twofold:

  1. The relationship between Jüngel’s theology and Heidegger’s philosophy is not fully fleshed out but rather assumed. That is to say, the neglect of any understanding of the relationship between philosophy and theology in Jüngel’s work effectively leads to a misunderstanding of Jüngel’s Heideggereanism. With a little fuller understanding of this relationship, the flaws in Heidegger’s philosophy do not lead to Jüngel’s theology being dismissed as ‘deleterious’. The beauty of Jüngel’s project is that he takes into account the fluxing and quotidian nature of the path of thought and thus of theology and so does not make totalising claims in his theology. His theology works within a philosophical framework which is adaptable to the Zeitgeist. Should Jüngel’s philosophical foundations be shown to be suspect, the whole structure of his theology doesn’t (or shouldn’t) fall to the ground. This is something which can be explored through Barth’s theology and something which I have written a paper on in the past – maybe I will dredge it up to post on here someday.
  2. Webster also completely overlooks the influence of Luther upon Jüngel’s own development. However, Jüngel himself has noted the importance of Luther upon his work (which is hardly surprising given that Jüngel is himself a Lutheran theologian) in his book The Freedom of the Christian. In this vein, any criticism of Jüngel’s buying into Heideggerean philosophy should not be a simple perjorative dismissal tout court. Jüngel’s Heideggereanism is a methodology which assists his theological task – thus, a criticism say of Heidegger’s inability to overcome Cartesian subjectivity is not to be levelled at Jüngel as a matter of course, but rather, Jüngel’s account of subjectivity should be read through his theological works (such as The Freedom of the Christian).

As an aside, it’s good to see that Alastair is back to posting.