Küng, Hans (b. 1928)

Hans Küng is a Swiss theologian and Roman Catholic priest and the author of numerous books on Christianity, world religions, and global ethics. He was a professor in the Catholic faculty at the University of Tübingen from 1960 until 1979, when his license to teach Catholic theology was rescinded by the Vatican. He continued as professor of Ecumenical Theology and director of the Institute for Ecumenical Research at the University of Tübingen until his retirement in 1996. He is currently the president of the Global Ethics Foundation, which seeks to contribute to global peace by encouraging the religions of the world to recognize and reflect on the ethical values that they share in common.

Küng received his licentiate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, and he then completed his doctorate in theology at the Institut Catholique in Paris, where he was encouraged to write a dissertation on the theology of the Protestant theologian Karl Barth. The dissertation, published in English as Justification: The Doctrine of Karl Barth and a Catholic Reflection, set the direction of his career. Three theological themes, identified by Hermann Häring and repeated by Küng in his memoirs, emerged in this early work and continue to characterize his theology: (1) an interest in promoting dialogue, (2) breaking through barriers, and (3) effecting reconciliation and peace between confessions, religions, and believers and nonbelievers.

His early theological writings were framed with an eye toward healing the divisions between Catholics and Protestants. Appointed at Tübingen just prior to the Second Vatican Council, he published two works (The Council and Reunion [1960] and Structures of the Church [1962]) intended to encourage the Council toward greater [Page 679]Christian unity. As a theological consultant (peritus) at the Second Vatican Council, Küng consistently advocated for great attention to historical critical scholarship, which he viewed as a means of breaking through long-standing barriers between confessions. His work on justification, published in 1957, laid the foundation for the Malta Report, issued in 1973 by the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity, which came to a common understanding of the doctrine of justification that had originally precipitated the 16th-century split between Protestants and Catholics.

His difficulties with the Vatican enlarged his horizons beyond Christian theology, leading to studies of other traditions (Judaism [1991], Tracing the Way [1999], Islam [2004]) alongside Christianity (Christianity [1994], The Catholic Church [2001]). In his pioneering work, Global Responsibility (1990), he argued that the religions of the world as well as those who profess no religion could make a contribution to the peace of humankind by building a consensus on common values and standards. His ideas led to the drafting of a “Declaration Toward a Global Ethic,” which was endorsed by the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago in 1993, and the establishment of the Global Ethic Foundation. In 2001, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed him to a committee of 20 “eminent persons” invited to speak to the UN General Assembly during the “International Year of the Dialogue Among Civilizations.”

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