Because God is love – Eberhard Jungel, tough theology and poetry.

 This morning I was re-reading some passages in Eberhard Jungel, God as the Mystery of the World.
(page 223)  Jungel's volume is  widely recognised as difficult to read, brilliantly
argued, and a serious challenge to all attempts in modernity to reduce transcendence to philosophical
irrelevance. Below I've copied it out exactly as in the book, but put it into verse form, with only a
couple of parentheses omitted – the italics are in the original. Rearranged like this does it
read as theology or poetry, or a prose poem? The question is an open one – I'm genuinely
intrigued by how it looks and reads when the long teutonic syntax is
broken down into rhythm and different form. I also wish I could read German to hear how it sounds as Jungel wrote it. Just a wee thought
experiment – what do you think – could it pass as a poem?

Because God is love….we are!

God is creator out of love
and thus creator out of nothing.
This creative act of God is, however,
nothing else than God's being,
which as such is creative being.
In that God relates himself creatively to nothingness,
he is the one who distinguishes himself from nothingness,
he is the opponent of nothingness.

God's being, as overflowing and creative being,
is the eternal reduction of nothingness…
Creation from nothingness
is a struggle against nothingness
which carries out this reduction positively.
As such it is the realization of the divine being.

In the work of creation,
God's being not only acts as love
but confirms itself to be love.
Therefore that God is love
is the reason that anything exists at all,
rather than nothingness.
Because God is love,
we are.