Saturday 3 June 2006

For the love of God (8): Why I love Jürgen Moltmann

A guest-post by Thom Chittom

“I first read Theology of Hope in April 1973,” writes Richard Bauckham, “and I remember that first reading as one of the most exciting theological experiences of my life.”

I couldn’t agree more. My paperback Fortress edition—dog-eared, coffee stained, highlighted, annotated and signed!—is a cornerstone of my theological library. And why? Because of Jürgen Moltmann.

Of course, Jürgen Moltmann may as well come from another planet. I’m an American, and a Southerner at that. Moltmann was a teenage Nazi, a Hamburger in Hitler’s dying Reich. He found hope in Christ as an Allied prisoner of war in Britain, and discovered a theology of hope absorbed in the maverick Marxist machinations of Ernst Bloch’s Das Prinzip Hoffnung while on vacation with his wife Elisabeth. He romantically recited lengthy sections while they walked together along the piney Bayern trails.

Later on, the 1964 publication of Theologie der Hoffnung (translated as Theology of Hope in 1967) made Moltmann the bushy-browed theological superstar of an international Zeitgeist. An impossibility in the present Western malaise, no matter its technologies! Indeed, Moltmann is completely Herr-und-Sie-formal old-school, a luddite who has never even had an email address. When I broached the subject of jurgenmoltmann.com with him one afternoon, he only scowled: “I’m just an old European!” Yep, Jürgen Moltmann is pretty close to theo-irresistibility!

See, that father of hope-theology gave me a future. As he says, the resurrection of Christ from the dead “announces the coming of a not yet existing reality from the nature of the truth.” That makes history into real history—real past, real present, real future—rather than dismissing it into an ideological lacuna, as did the premil-dispensationalism of my youth. Unencumbered by the possibilities of the past, Promise strides out of the empty tomb before history itself, pulling everything along behind it, going out to meet its own prophetic pronouncements in missionary zeal, the whole world “involved in God’s eschatological process of history, not only the world of men and nations.” And there, too, is my neighbor! “Faith [in the promises] does not come into its own in becoming radically unworldly, but by hopeful outgoing into the world it becomes a benefit to the world.”

Indeed, I love Jürgen Moltmann because he widened my horizons. He is a prolific theologian (three book-length bibliographies have been published), a political thinker in the best sense of the word, and a man for whom theology is still a wrestling with God. And his message is everywhere and always the same, that “through the knowledge of the resurrection of the crucified the contradiction that is always and everywhere perceptible [is] taken up into the confidence of hope.”

5 Comments:

One of Freedom said...

Great post Thom. I too derive much life from Moltmann's works, the little that I have read that is. I have often dragged along my copy of Trinity and the Kingdom or The Crucified God on walks, completely absorbed as theological vistas open before me. I read lots of hard stuff slow, but Moltmann I read slow to savour.

Jordan Barrett said...

Very good post! I'm really loving the personal side of these posts, and this is a great example of that.

I have tried to work on a page at Theopedia (www.Theopedia.com) on Motlmann, and would love it Thom if you could help (or anyone else too!).

http://www.theopedia.com/J%C3%BCrgen_Moltmann

byron smith said...

Thanks Thom. All these thinkers are not easily reduced to slogans or movements, and indeed the personal take on experiencing them (and the world and God through them) is a refreshing way (back) in.

tchittom said...

Thank you all for your kind comments. You are right, byron, it is very difficult to put these thinkers in summary. Jordan, you are so right! Thank you for steering me in the right direction!

Unknown said...

I am reading Crucified God right now and I have read the intro to theology of hope ...I love moltmann too...where are you a theology student?

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