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The 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?" Because Küng continued to provide no flat answer, the hierarchy last November issued a formal warning that the book created a "distressing insecurity of faith" and charged that Küng had failed to explain how his Christology could be reconciled with the historic creeds.
Küng'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Küng argues, the ancient dogmas were flawed because they relied upon Greek concepts of man and nature that are now outdated.
Küng thinks that the bishops simply misunderstand his method. Like Jesuit Karl Rahner and other contemporary theologians, he starts his Christology "from below," with the man Jesus, and works upward toward his divinity. The council dogmas started "from above," with ideas about God's essence. Church officials, however, are convinced that content, not method, is at stake. Some censure from the German bishops or the Vatican could result.
Disputes over Christology are not limited to Catholics. Though many Protestant scholars have been questioning the dogmas for more than a century, elements of the Church of England were scandalized last year when seven university theologians put out a book contending that Jesus was not really God at all. In the U.S., Southern Baptist Theologian Robert S. Alley, religion chairman at the University of Richmond, was abruptly switched to another department after he told a meeting of atheists that "Jesus never really claimed to be God, nor to be related to him as son." Next month the board will debate a faculty demand that Alley be reinstated.