Eberhard Jüngel: existing outside ourselves

“[T]hat which is closest to man, the very ground of his existence and his being, is not something which belongs to him.... [H]is life, that which is most his own, is nevertheless not his own.... For man cannot be truly himself without at the same time standing ‘outside himself’ before God. Whether he is aware of it or not, or whether he even cares to be aware of it, man receives his true self from beyond himself.”

—Eberhard Jüngel, Death: The Riddle and the Mystery (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1975), p. 63.