Frederick Herzog

The Reverend Frederick Herzog
Born	Frederick Ludwig Herzog (1925-11-29)November 29, 1925 Ashley, North Dakota, US
Died	October 9, 1995(1995-10-09) (aged 69) Durham, North Carolina, US
Spouse	Kristin Herzog
Ecclesiastical career
Religion	Christianity
Church	United Church of Christ
Academic background
Alma mater	Princeton University
Thesis	The Possibility of Theological Understanding (1953)
Doctoral advisor	Paul Lehmann
Influences	Karl Barth
Academic work
Discipline	Theology
Sub-discipline	Systematic theology
School or tradition	Liberation theology
Institutions	Duke University
Influenced	Daniel M. Bell Jr. Joerg Rieger

Frederick Ludwig Herzog (1925–1995) was an American systematic theologian at Duke University and minister of the United Church of Christ. An impassioned champion of civil rights, his academic focus was liberation theology.

Life

Herzog was born on November 29, 1925, in Ashley, North Dakota. He earned his doctorate from Princeton University in 1953 under the supervision of Paul Lehmann after having studied in Germany and Switzerland, where he was an assistant to the theologian Karl Barth. He was ordained to the ministry of the United Church of Christ, the successor to the German Reformed denomination of his childhood. In 1960, he joined the faculty at Duke Divinity School. Herzog taught Christian theology at Duke until his sudden death during a faculty meeting on October 9, 1995. In the spring of 1970, he wrote the first North American article by a white theologian on liberation theology, following James Cone's Black Theology and Black Power published in 1969, and in 1972 his Liberation Theology was published. In Justice Church Herzog extended his methodology for liberation theology in North America. During the final ten years of his life, his writings were strongly affected by his work in Latin America, especially Peru where he assisted with the support of a Methodist-related seminary, the cause of which he was championing at the moment of his death.

His daughter, Dagmar Herzog, is professor of history at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

Published works

• Herzog, F. Liberation Theology
• Herzog, F. European Pietism Reviewed
• Herzog, F. Justice Church
• Herzog, F. God-Walk - Liberation Shaping Dogmatics

Two books have been published referring to his work:

• Theology & Corporate Conscience: Essays in Honor of Frederick Herzog (ed by MD Meeks, J Moltmann, FR Trost)
• Theology from the Belly of the Whale: A Frederick Herzog Reader (ed by Joerg Rieger)

The Duke University Libraries has a collection of his papers:

• Guide to the Frederick Herzog Papers, 1947-2011 and undated (bulk 1947-1995)

References

Sources

• Bell, Daniel M. Jr. (2001). Liberation Theology After the End of History: The Refusal to Cease Suffering. London: Routledge (published 2005). ISBN 978-0-203-19244-3.
• Herzog, Frederick (1953). The Possibility of Theological Understanding: An Inquiry into the Presuppositions of Hermeneutics in Theology (ThD dissertation). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University. OCLC 612393441.
•  ———  (2005) [1980]. Justice Church: The New Function of the Church in North American Christianity. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf and Stock. ISBN 978-1-59752-367-7.
• Rieger, Joerg (2005). "Herzog, Frederick (1925–95)". In Shook, John R. (ed.). The Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers. Vol. 2. Bristol, England: Thoemmes Continuum. pp. 1098–1101. doi:10.1093/acref/9780199754663.001.0001. ISBN 978-1-84371-037-0.
• Rieger, Joerg; Kwok Pui-lan (2012). Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude. Religion in the Modern World. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4422-1793-5.