Hans Küng, who died recently aged 93, was a “great figure in the theology of the last century whose ideas must always make us reflect on the Catholic Church, the churches, society and culture”. Perhaps surprisingly, it was the Pontifical Academy for Life that said so. Of course, it was not the only thing the Vatican authorities had to say about him. Küng was chastised when he denied papal infallibility and when he opposed the canonisation of Pius IX. He was severely reprimanded for his accusation that Pope John Paul II was “an authoritarian pontiff” for forbidding women candidates for the diaconate, for his refusal to permit laicisation and for his strictures on the so-called liberation theologians of Central and South America. Küng also opposed the Church’s prohibition of euthanasia. For these things he was stripped of his licence to teach as a Catholic theologian – though he remained a priest.
He was a notable renegade, so what more is there to be said? Quite a lot, actually, and about some of the most important matters concerning the nature of the Catholic Church and the history of its doctrines.
Surely the Church’s fundamental belief is in the existence of God. Küng maintained, controversially that God’s existence cannot be proved, and this seemed to some in authority to be a plain denial of official doctrine and in particular the traditional proofs enshrined in the Five Ways of St Thomas Aquinas and the Ontological Proof of Anselm. Rather, Küng said: “One affirms the existence of God by a free act of reasonable trust.” In this, I think he was right, because there is something arrogant as well as fishy about attempts to prove God’s existence. Fishy, because, following Descartes’ Cogito, ergo sum, it makes human consciousness the foundation of human knowledge. Surely God’s existence must be more fundamental than my existence and it is with the absolute presupposition of the existence of God that all theology must begin?
Worse, the pretension to prove the existence of God is arrogant because, as it were, it puts God on trial – as if man were the measure of all things. Küng was right to maintain that his view that we know God’s existence “by a free act of reasonable trust” is closer to traditional Catholic teaching than the anthropocentric reasoning which characterised Enlightenment prejudices.
As for what is meant by “the existence of God”, there is much confusion of thought. God does not exist as other things exist such as trees, stars and human beings. That is, God is not just another object in the universe, in his own Creation. Rather – and necessarily this is a mystery – God’s existence is what allows everything else, including humankind, to exist. This, after all, is the true meaning of the Creation.
And then the authorities alleged that Küng held some dodgy notions about the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century which, he held, “was an overreaction for, in spite of its many imperfections, the Catholic Church remains the Body of Christ”. Küng did himself no favours by arguing that the Protestant Karl Barth’s understanding of Justification by Faith was little different from the teaching of the Council of Trent. He was in good company, for Pope Benedict visited Barth in Switzerland and later declared in his Last Testament: “Barth was one of the fathers of theology with whom I had grown up.” Benedict affirmed Barth as the greatest theologian since Aquinas.
An obituarist praised Küng as “a theologian of the first rank who had the unusual ability to present theological questions clearly and comprehensively”. That is true and it is scandalous that it should be unusual: for if a thing cannot be said clearly, it cannot be said at all: indeed, it cannot even be thought. As Wittgenstein said in Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology: “To say something clearly is no more than saying it. For saying something unclearly is not saying anything at all.”
And in their clarity of thought and speech, Küng, Ratzinger and Barth are alike in that they are the antidote to the typographical gibberish which too often passes for theological writing.
De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, and for all his faults and all his recklessness, Hans Küng was a star. He even had an asteroid named after him.
Rev Dr Peter Mullen is an Anglican priest and philosopher, formerlyRector of St Michael Cornhill, London
This article appears in the May issue of the Catholic Herald. Subscribe now.
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