He is regarded as one of the most important German theologians after the Second Vatican Council, who influenced liberation theology and focused on compassion.

[3] His experience in the war matches that of the German Calvinist theologian Jürgen Moltmann who would go on to write with Metz on political theology against a background of direct confrontation with Nazism.

[2] He introduced philosophical and political ideas of 1968, by Ernst Bloch and the Frankfurt School of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, in theology, which was received with opposition.

[1] He participated in the founding of the University of Bielefeld, and was a leading member of the international Paulus-Gesellschaft dedicated to a dialogue of Christianity and Marxism.

Collected articles can be found in A Passion for God: The Mystical-Political Dimension of Christianity, translated by Matthew Ashley and in John K. Downey, ed., Love's Strategy: The Political Theology of Johann Baptist Metz.

[6] Fundamental to Metz's work is the concept of "dangerous memory", which relates to anamnesis in the Greek New Testament, a term which is central to the theology of the Eucharist.

This need explains in part his break with Rahner, whose transcendental method appeals to historicity but does not come to terms with actual history.