 Ebeling was later a student of Rudolf Bultmann and Wilhelm Maurer in Marburg and of Emil Brunner at the University of Zürich, Switzerland.The years of his study in Berlin, Marburg, and Zürich fell in the period of Nazism in Germany, and his contact with Dietrich Bonhoeffer as well as his work in the Confessing Church had an enduring influence on his thought.He completed his Doctor of Theology degree in 1938 at the University of Zürich under the supervision of ; his dissertation was entitled "Evangelical Interpretation of the Gospels