| Christoph Schwöbel | |
| Birth Date: | 19 February 1955 |
| Birth Place: | Frankfurt am Main |
| Nationality: | German |
| Education: | Lutheran Theology and Philosophy |
| Occupation: | Lutheran Theologian Professor of Systematic Theology |
Christoph Schwöbel (19 February 1955 – 18 September 2021) was a German Lutheran Theologian and Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Christoph Schwöbel was born in Frankfurt am Main. He studied Lutheran Theology and Philosophy at the Kirchliche Hochschule, Bethel, and at Philipps-Universität Marburg, received his doctorate in 1978 in Marburg and qualified there as a professor, through his Habilitation, in 1990. He was ordained a minister of the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1994.[1]
Christoph Schwöbel was Lecturer for Systematic Theology at King's College London from 1986 to 1993 and in 1988 founded the Research Institute in Systematic Theology (RIST), serving as its Director until 1993.
Subsequently, he taught as professor of systematic theology at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel from 1993 to 1999. This was followed by a professorship of systematic and ecumenical theology at the Faculty of Theology of Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg from 1999 to 2004, where he was also director of the Ecumenical Institute. From October 2004 to July 2018, he was Professor of Systematic Theology at the Faculty of Protestant Theology at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen.
His focus was in the area of fundamental theology and philosophy of religion. In connection with the topic of creationism, Schwöbel provided a scholarly theoretical analysis. He considered the juxtaposition natural science versus faith used by many ideological evolutionists in the debate with creationism to be self-defeating, and pointed out
Schwöbel was also director of the Institute for Hermeneutics and Dialogue of Cultures. He edited the journal Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie.
He was a member of the scientific advisory board of the interdisciplinary research center Key Concepts in Interreligious Discourses (KCID) at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.[2]
In September 2018, Schwöbel succeeded the English theologian John Webster as Chair of Divinity at the University of St Andrews, established in 1643.[3] [4]