Hans Küng R.I.P.

Having reached the biblical age of 93, the outstanding Swiss theologian died last Tuesday in his house in Tübingen.

Hans Küng was one of the best-known church critics in the German-speaking world. Again and again, he criticized the structures of his Catholic Church, e.g., he expressed doubts about the dogma of papal infallibility.

 
No wonder the Church revoked Küng's teaching license in 1979, but he remained at the University of Tübingen as a faculty-independent professor of ecumenical theology.

Red Baron is always interested in the fundamental question, "Why do we exist?" So Küng became my trusted and loyal comrade in my seeking of God.

Here are some of his books (from left to right) that I read: On Being a Christian (1974),
Judaism: Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1992), Christianity: Its Essence and History (1995), Islam: Past, Present, and Future (2007), Eternal Life: Life after Death As a Medical, Philosophical and Theological Program (1984), Credo: The Apostle's Creed Explained for Today (1993), What I Believe (2010), The Beginning of All Things – Science and Religion (2007).

There is an anecdote. During a three-month scientific stay at the High Energy Accelerator Research Center (KEK) in Japan in 1980, I stowed the heavy volume On Being a Christian in my luggage to study it carefully while at KEK.

On February 8, an article appeared in The Japan Times, "Kueng: Member of the Loyal Opposition," describing the ousting of Küng as a professor of Catholic theology. The tenor of the paper and most letters to the editor harped on the inquisitional attitude of the Church.

On the other hand, in a letter to the editor, Red Baron deplored Rome's inflexibility. I claimed that changing times need fresh interpretations of the gospel. For me, Küng was one of the heralds of good tidings, a modern evangelist.

In the early 1990s, Küng initiated his project Weltethos, of which he became president. Küng described the Global Ethic Project's goal as "Peace among religions, cultures, and nations based on some common elementary ethical values, standards and attitudes."

©Gunther Schenk/Wikipedia

Here is a picture from those younger years: Mayor Boris Palmer, Old-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, and President of the Global Ethic Foundation Hans Küng (from left to right) on May 8, 2007, in Tübingen on the occasion of the "Global Ethic" speech organized by Küng and delivered by Schmidt. Palmer still serves as Mayor of Tübingen.

The query "Why do we exist?" still haunts me. When in 2005, I had finished Küng's book, Der Anfang aller Dinge (The Beginning of All Things), I felt fit to address the religious war on evolution, giving a talk on Intelligent Design versus Darwinism at the Freiburg-Madison-Gesellschaft.

In 2010, I read Küng's book Was ich glaube (What I believe) and later was deeply disappointed by "Stephen Hawking's book The Grand Design.

In December 2012, after more input to my religious quest, I concluded with the Beatles, "All you need is love."

Again in December, but two years later, I read an article about "True Religion." When I finished, I repeated the author's conclusion, "All religious movements are based on faith; and faith, which is belief in the absence of convincing evidence, isn't true or false, but simply irrational."

But there is hope. My favorite astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson published Cosmic Queries, StarTalk's Guide to Who We Are, How We Got Here, and Where We're Going.

If Neil doesn't answer the query, "Why do we exist?" will he at least teach me where we are going? I am eagerly waiting for Cosmic Queries to become available as an e-book.

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