Introductory

It would not be difficult to come away from a superficial reading of Gott als Geheimnis, especially on the formal issues discussed in the previous two chapters, with a sense that Jüngel attempts consistently to shift attention away from the human knower and speaker of God. Such a reading, indeed, might lead to criticism that his emphasis on the derivative nature of human knowledge and speech implies that man is an insignificant reality. This kind of line of criticism has already been forestalled to some degree, especially in looking at Jüngel's work on parable, metaphor and analogy. If it is more fully to be countered, it will have to be by attention to Jüngel's doctrine of God, one of whose chief themes is the correlation of divine and human subjectivity.

Because Gott als Geheimnis is in many ways a difficult and diffuse book, with little in the way of a sustained statement of its main proposals, the centrality of this theme may not be immediately apparent. It does, however, provide an underlying structure to the book, focussing on two particular concerns. First, Jüngel offers a theological statement of the confession that God's divinity is actual as his humanity. God is neither aloof nor tyrannous but reveals himself as the human God who safeguards the authenticity of man: in being pro se God is equiprimordially pro nobis.