James M. Robinson did his doctorate under Karl Barth in Basel, Switzerland (1952). He taught again and again as Visiting Professor at Continental universities: Gottingen (1959), Zurich (1960, 1962), Strasbourg (1970-71), Tubingen (1986), Geneva (1992), and Bamberg (1997). As an expert on Continental theology, he experienced the shift from the prewar debate of the Confessing Church to the postwar focus on demythologizing (Rudolf Bultmann), language (the later Heidegger), the new hermeneutic (Ernst Fuchs and Gerhard Ebeling), and neo-conservatism (Wolfhart Pannenberg).