Word: ng
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...first the case was pressed in abstruse books of theology and all but inaccessible journals. Angry arguments were muffled behind closed clerical doors in The Netherlands, Germany and Rome. But in 1974 the debate became more general with the publication of Küng's Christ Sein (English edition: On Being a Christian; Doubleday; 1976), which quickly became Germany's bestselling religious book in a quarter-century...
...book, Küng reinterpreted the dogmas that were hammered out by the church's early ecumenical councils to counter prevalent heresies that threatened to split the church. Those councils insisted that Jesus was really a man, not some sort of divine apparition. But they also asserted that he was the Son of God, part of the eternal Godhead. The first two councils crafted the Nicene Creed, which was formulated by A.D. 381 and has been recited at every Sunday Mass since the llth century: Jesus is "eternally begotten of the Father ... true God from true...
...ng wrote that nothing should be "deducted" from these ancient dogmas so long as they fit modern scholars' understanding of the New Testament. But he argued that the dogmas must be "transferred to the mental climate of our own time." Küng's own paraphrase of the dogmas: God "was present, at work, speaking, acting and definitively revealing himself in Jesus. The ancient statements that the Son "preexisted" with the Father from eternity were meant merely to substantiate God's unique "call, offer and claim made known in and with Jesus...
...German bishops, authorized by the Vatican to handle the case, feared the book's wide influence and demanded amendments. They were not upset by what Küng said, but by what he did not say. Letters passed back and forth, and a summit meeting with Küng was held a year ago in Stuttgart. Three months later, Joseph Cardinal Hoffner, chairman of the bishops' conference, wrote a letter accusing Küng of evading a binding creed, and demanding in exasperation: "Is Jesus Christ the preexisting, eternal Son of God, one in being with the Father...
...ng's reply is his 394-page Um Nichts Als Die Wahrheit (Nothing But the Truth), published last week by Piper Verlag. The book's full documentation of the dispute attempts to prove that Küng is the victim of an unfair inquisition. In a concluding proclamation, Küng states that he accepts the Chalcedon formula but that interpretations of it must follow the view of many modern scholars that Jesus did not proclaim himself as the eternal Son of God, nor did the early Christians. What is more, Küng argues, the ancient dogmas...