Hans Küng Prefers Death to Disability

Thank you for that fascinating reflection, Mark. As a (part-time) academic theologian and full-time pastor, I can personally imagine some of what Küng fears, how he laments his decline, and how he will grieve his loss. On the other hand, I would expect one of the most famous (sometimes infamous) theologians of the twentieth century to understand that lament and grief are part of living in a world groaning for its redemption, and that suffering can at least potentially be or become redemptive; not least of all in the Suffering Servant himself, but also how our suffering can in some mysterious way participate in Christ’s sufferings. I think of the very difficult-to-interpret saying of Paul, Colossians 1:24: “Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church.” Not that there is something lacking in the value of Christ’s suffering, but that we also take up our cross, die with Christ, and also experience fleeting moments of resurrection and new life. The NLT might be on the right track when it renders this verse “I am glad when I suffer for you in my body, for I am participating in the sufferings of Christ that continue for his body, the church.” Suffering is a profound mystery, one that apparently eludes this theologian (presuming his views are rightly represented, and presuming that his utterances are deliberate reflections and not just cries of desperation.) Being united with Christ also means that our suffering, perhaps even what we think of as “natural” suffering, can at least potentially take on a meaning and significance that cannot be found in a naturalistic worldview, one with which Küng found himself far too comfortable. The utterly secular, vacuously utilitarian view of suffering that Küng appears to buy into is astounding and disappointing. It is not, however, terribly surprising to those familiar with his rationalistic theological method, which exegetes culture more than listening to Scripture, and seeks to defensively justify Christian faith to a secular world, when the Christian faith rather stands as a prophetic critique of secular, materialistic, utilitarian—in a word, hopeless naturalism. When I was in seminary I read his 800 page book Does God Exist? and at the end I still had no idea what Küng’s answer was. I hope for his sake, and perhaps for the sake of those who admired his culturally respectable, but scripturally inadequate and, it seems, spiritually comfortless theological work, that he comes to a deeper, more authentically biblical, more genuinely spiritual view of the matter, and also that he comes to see how harmful and dismissive his statements are for those who don’t have perfect minds and bodies. And perhaps this is not Hans Küng at his best, but in his weakness, and perhaps were he in a better state of mind and spirit he would not say such things.