The following commentary was a discussion post from a recent online course on 19th and 20th century theology. It is based on Roger Olson's extensive discussion of Moltmann in his recently published, The Journey of Modern Theology: From Reconstruction to Deconstruction (pp. 452-476). Since then I have read Moltmann's Theology of Hope and have begun to re-read his more recent, The Coming of God, as well as the extensive commentaries on Moltmann's eschatological vision by Richard Bauckham. The result of this more recent re-reading may result in some revision of the following commentary which I will let stand here as a provisional statement.
__________________________________________________________________________
This week’s reading on Jurgen Moltmann helped to deepen my appreciation
for the significance of his future-oriented emphasis on hope. It also raised recurring aspects of his
eschatological theology of hope that I continue to find perplexing.
Through Olson’s discussion, I gained a deeper understanding of the
biographical significance of Moltmann’s theology of hope, rooted in the
hopelessness and despair he experienced as a German prisoner of war for two
years after WWII. It was not only his
personal experience, but the press of broader historical events rooted in the
evil and destruction that permeated Europe during the 1930s and 40s, in which
Moltmann found, through his conversion to Christianity, a more enduring
reality—an alternative vision in the kingdom of God of what the world will become
when God draws the future of his kingdom within the moving trajectory of human
and broader creational history. This tension between the then current personal
and historical reality he encountered in the mid-1940s and the indwelling
vision of God coming to humankind in the form of the crucified Christ
stimulated a profound sense of hope within Moltmann that he initially fleshed
out through the insights of the atheist utopian visionary Ernst Block that he
sought to Christianize.
Central for Moltmann was not so much the indwelling of God in any
immediate personal or historical encounter, but God’s perpetual coming in
leading creation to its destined future dwelling place, in which, in one of
Moltmann’s most oft cited biblical passages, “God will be all in all” (1 Cor
15:28). Based on this perspective, “From
first to last [for Moltmann] …Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward
looking and forward moving, and also revolutionizing and transforming the
present. The eschatological is not one
element of Christianity, but it is the medium of Christian faith as such, the
key in which everything is set, the glow that suffuses everything here in the
dawn of an expected new day” (Moltmann, cited in Olson, pp. 450-51).
While I am appreciative of his theology of hope, I have problems with
Moltmann’s overarching emphasis on eschatology for a variety of reasons, one of
the chief being his failure to grapple sufficiently with the deep-rooted;
arguably, unfathomable tension between the already and not yet, as reflected in
a great deal of orthodox Christianity
across a wide theological stream.
This is troubling and draws out, at least in me, a sense of unreality at
the heart of his future-oriented vision.
Is not God present to us now, in a real and vital sense, however
ineffably so—providing us with a real presence that guides us through the veil
of tears in the here and now—however much the “earnest” of the eschatological
hope holds promises of a better day to come?
Think, too, of the question the apostles posed to the risen Lord: [When]
“will you restore the kingdom to Israel”?
Recall the response: “It is not
for you to know the times or seasons….But you will receive power on high” to do
the work I am calling you now to do (Acts 1:6-8).
It is the relative lack of this tension between the already given
fruits of Christ’s first coming (including the living power of the resurrection
and ascension) and the future oriented hope when God brings in the entire
creation into his full glorious presence that I am most troubled by the
eschatological aspect of Moltmann’s very fruitful theology.
Through Olson’s discussion I have gained a clearer appreciation for the
biographical role in shaping his vison.
As Olson cites Moltmann: “I
probably owe this hope,” my hope for my own very survival in every sense, “for
it is what saved me from despairing and giving up.” With that hope I set “a new ‘personal goal’
of studying theology, so that I might understand the power of hope to which I owe
my life” (Olson p. 453).
Well done, thou good and faithful servant, but what about those of us
with a different set of personal trajectories, set within a different
historical experience? In short, how
universal is the theology of hope or Moltmann’s broader eschatological vision
for our personal and collective early 21st century U. S. and Western
context? How central is it as the
all-important prism of any creative and vital theological work?
By way of concluding, I appreciate Moltmann’s role in bringing
eschatology back into prominence where it had gone through considerable
declension in much of late 19th and early 20th century theological
perspectives. This was a major
contribution through which Moltmann brought considerable credibility toward the
restoration of the orthodox great tradition to Protestant mainline
denomination, a work in progress, to be sure.
One author has also noted that in his eschatological focus—so very
different than that of the author of The
Late Great Planet Earth—Moltmann has made a major connection with
Pentecostal theology (Castelo, “Reclaiming the Future,” in Chung, ed., Jurgen Moltmann and Evangelical Theology,
pp. 209-210). This, too, is a great contribution, as is his broader
eschatological passion, in which Moltmann links his eschatology of the time
when God will become all-in-all to his Trinitarian vision, not only of the
crucified Christ, but of the crucified God, in which the crucifixion becomes an
eternal presence in the heart of God, even in the glorious fulfillment
promised, when human and creational history become one with their eternal
destiny.
All of this is very fruitful, well beyond what can be explored
here. This makes even more pressing the
need to work through the perplexities and problems that I do find in his
eschatological vision. Is there gold
here in Moltmann evocative vision for a more fruitful evangelical
theology? I think there is.
Inquiring minds want to know how much and how his insights can be
fruitfully appropriated.
No comments:
Post a Comment