Hans Küng

Life

Küng was born on March 19, 1928, in Sursee in the canton of Lucerne, Switzerland. He studied philosophy and theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1954. In 1957 he received his doctorate in theology from the Catholic Institute of Paris. His dissertation compared the teaching of the Protestant theologian Karl Barth with Catholic doctrine and concluded that the differences between them were not great enough to divide the church. The dissertation's subject is reported to have been justification (God's declaring the sinner righteous). From 1960 until his retirement in 1996, he taught at the University of Tübingen in Germany. He took part in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) as a theological expert (peritus) appointed by the pope. Along with his Tübingen colleague Joseph Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI), he was among the youngest of the council's experts. He died at his home in Tübingen on April 6, 2021, at the age of 93.

Work and Contributions

In Infallible? An Inquiry, published in the early 1970s, Küng questioned the theological foundations of papal infallibility. Proclaimed by the First Vatican Council in 1870, this doctrine holds that the pope is free from error when he formally defines matters of faith and morals. Küng argued that the doctrine blocked the path to unity with other churches. He also criticized mandatory priestly celibacy, the prohibition of women's ordination, and the centralization of authority in the Roman Curia. He further proposed lifting the excommunications issued during the Reformation, recognizing Protestant and Anglican ministries, and allowing shared participation in one another's Eucharist.

In December 1979, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith withdrew his authorization to teach Catholic theology (missio canonica). He nevertheless remained a priest and continued to teach at the University of Tübingen as a professor of ecumenical theology, while also continuing as director of the university's Institute for Ecumenical Research, a post he had held since 1964. Later, convinced that there can be no peace among nations without peace among religions, he put forward the Global Ethic Project, which sought an ethic that the world's religions could hold in common. The Global Ethic Foundation was established on the basis of this project.

Influence on the Korean Church

Bundo Publishing (the Benedictine press in Korea) published Korean editions of What Is the Church?, Why I Am Still a Christian, and Global Responsibility (Projekt Weltethos), and other works such as The Catholic Church and Great Christian Thinkers have also been translated. His major work The Church was first published in Korea in 2007, translated by Jeong Ji-ryeon, who has taught at Methodist Theological University and elsewhere. Protestant media introduced the book as an ecclesiology that strikes a balance between Protestantism and Catholicism, because it treats church offices as differences in charisms (gifts given by God) rather than as ranks in a hierarchy and envisions a church order close to the priesthood of all believers. Graduate theses on his ecclesiology have also been written within Korean theological scholarship.

Assessment

Küng is regarded, together with Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx, as one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the late twentieth century. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, by contrast, judged that he could not be considered a Catholic theologian. He was among the sharpest critics of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. In his final years he corresponded with Pope Francis. In 2019, forty years after losing his teaching authorization, he stated that he considered himself effectively rehabilitated, if only unofficially. His program, with its emphasis on interreligious dialogue, is also sometimes mentioned in debates over religious pluralism.