Whenever tragic events occur and make the national headlines, there always seems to be someone using it as grounds to trot out the question of theodicy –“If there is a good God, then why so much evil?” While some who bring up the problem of evil do so only as an excuse to flaunt it around amid the jeers and onanisms of the hoi polloi, using it simply as a pretext to be able to pontificate that soporific soundbite of “God is dead” (and thinking it is something avante garde), many others do so out of genuine inquisitiveness and qualms about the reconcilability between God and evil. In the same manner as Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, many people reject the existence of a god due to evil and suffering, or at least believe that it cuts against the notion of a benevolent Deity watching over us. After all, if God is good and powerful, then why is human history a never ending conveyor belt of corpses and suffering?

The Irenaean Model of Theodicy

The second-century church father Irenaeus of Lyons believed that humans were created in the image of God but not in his likeness. Thus, God allows evil and suffering in the world in order to develop our moral character (the ‘likeness’ of God). As another write puts it, the world is a “vale of soul-making” (a phrase used by John Hick, though originally coined by John Keats). Yet is it really justifiable to explain away evil with the concept of soul-making? Some might accept this, thinking that suffering is mitigated by the fact that it is only temporary and that, in the end, all will be made right when “God shall wipe away all tears” (Rev. 21.4).

Irenaeus’ ideas were picked up centuries later by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) and John Hick (1922-2012). An interesting continuance of the Irenaean theodicy is found in how Hick incorporates evolutionary biology. Hick’s says that the evolutionary process leading up to modern man – the homo sapien – is the first stage of mankind’s creation, making us into God’s image. The second stage of our creation is to be in God’s likeness. Whereas Augustine (and mainstream Christian orthodoxy) views humanity’s beginnings as a story from perfection to fallenness, Hick’s casts it as a story from imperfection developing to perfection. In other words, Hick sees our life as a pilgrimage from a moral and spiritual blank slate into the full likeness of God by being able to respond to the challenges and mayhem of life. Hick also maintains that humans are born without an inherent knowledge of God – we are at an “epistemic distance” from God. This is needed in order for the soul-making process be legit (as we need to be able to freely make our own choices, which would be nigh impossible if we had an immediate consciousness of an infinite Deity). [For further reading on this theodicy by John Hick see his Evil and the God of Love (Harper & Row, 1966), and “The World as a Vale of Soul-Making,” in The Problem of Evil, (Oxford Uni Press, 1990) 168-88.]

An interesting question does arise with this type of theodicy. Why would humans, who end up being perfected through the soul-making concept, be better than humans who were just created perfect in the first place? Is it just not possible for God to make such a being? Furthermore, if one were to answer that by saying that virtue gained as the result of the soul-making process is inherently better than virtue possessed all along, then why doesn’t that apply to God?

The Augustinian Model of Theodicy

Augustine’s approach rests upon an interpretation of Genesis 3 that has the origin of moral evil occurring at the fall of Adam and Eve, subsequently leading to the death and destruction found in nature. The lynchpin of this model is the free-will defense against the problem of evil. Augustine’s theodicy can be summed up by saying that humans (and angels) were created with free-will, yet Adam and Eve sinned, thus bringing discord in creation (i.e. natural evil is the result of their fall). Furthermore, God is righteous in not intervening in our suffering due to it being a consequence of our free will. Another key aspect of Augustine’s theodicy is that he defines evil as the privation of good(ness). In other words, God could not have created evil (or be responsible for it) because evil is not a thing in and of itself, but is rather the absence of good. Augustine also considered every human as being “seminally present in the loins of Adam”, thus all humans are fully deserving of the punishment for Adam’s original sin (thus why Mary needed to be immaculately conceived and why Jesus needed to be virginally conceived). Note that this ‘seminal’ headship view is slightly different from the ‘federal’ headship view (which is the more normal view nowadays). The federal headship view holds that Adam was the representative of the human race who nevertheless sinned, thus God can rightly charge every human with Adam’s guilt (maybe “judicial representation” would be a good descriptor of federal headship).

Alvin Plantinga seems to be a modern day proponent of the Augustinian theodicy and it is the typical theodicy found amongst Christians (whether they be evangelical, reformed, catholic, etc), though there are of course variations on it (e.g. those who reject Young Earth Creationism are fine with death occurring before the fall). Apart from the fact that Augustine’s seminal headship view is biologically incorrect, another problem of his theodicy is that one could argue that a perfect creation developing imperfection is a self-contradiction; a perfect creation could not ever go wrong (regardless of the ‘free-will’ that angels and humans possess). A more pertinent problem with it, in my eyes at least, is that it completely fails in light of what we know about the universe; it is untenable in light of our knowledge about cosmogony, evolution, and so forth.

The Theodicy of Jürgen Moltmann

The question of theodicy is central to Moltmann’s theological project and, in fact, it was the suffering that he experienced in World War II that caused him to enter the world of theology. Moltmann nicely lays out the theodicy problem as follows:

It is in suffering that the whole human question about God arises; for incomprehensible suffering calls the God of men and women in question. The suffering of a single innocent child is an irrefutable rebuttal of the notion of the almighty and kindly God in heaven. For a God who lets the innocent suffer and who permits senseless death is not worthy to be called God at all. (The Trinity and the Kingdom of God)

Moltmann then goes on to mention the biblical character of Job and asks: “Does Job have any real theological friend except the crucified Jesus on Golgotha?” That is the crux of Moltmann’s theodicy. For instead of focusing upon the traditional theodicy question of “Why does God allow evil”, Moltmann instead concentrates on a corollary: “Where is God in the midst of all this suffering?” He finds the answer in Jesus’ death cry: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15.34).

Following in the steps of Balthasar, Moltmann views the cross of Christ as a profound revelation as to who God actually is:

‘God’ is not another nature or a heavenly person or a moral authority, but in fact an ‘event’. However, it is not the event of co-humanity, but the event of Golgotha, the event of the love of the Son and the grief of the Father from which the Spirit who opens up the future and creates life in fact derives. (The Crucified God)

Note that Moltmann includes God the Father in the suffering that happens in the crucifixion. Moltmann is not a fan of traditional theodicies which maintain the notion of an impassible deity. Furthermore, in Moltmann’s theodicy, the cross is not just the suffering of the man Jesus, nor merely the ‘death of God’, but it is also death in God. God takes up suffering and death into himself and then overcomes it on Resurrection Sunday through the limitless divine life.

One criticism of Moltmann’s theodicy that I can envisage someone raising is that by pointing to Jesus’ experience of god-forsakenness and suffering as an answer to the problem of evil, one is (in a sense) arguing that God isn’t a sadist because God is actually a masochist. Another criticism is that while Moltmann’s focus upon God’s solidarity in human suffering (and the subsequent hope for resurrection) may indeed afford comfort to some, it nevertheless does not advance an understanding as to the question of ‘why’ there is evil. While I can’t remember Moltmann specifically answering the question of ‘why’ God allows evil and suffering, I think that his answer to this is found in his reliance upon the Kabalistic doctrine of zimzum. This is the idea that God self-contracted in order for the universe to come into being. In other words, the god-forsakenness of the world and of all creation is an inherent part of it, but will disappear when “God is all in all” (1 Cor. 15.23).

I will finish with two of my favorite quotes from Moltmann on theodicy:

The question of theodicy is not a speculative question; it is a critical one. It is the all-embracing eschatological question. It is not purely theoretical, for it cannot be answered with any new theory about the existing world. It is a practical question which will only be answered through  experience of the new world in which ‘God will wipe every tear from their eyes’. It is not really a question at all, in the sense of something we can ask or not ask, like other questions. It is the open wound of life in this world. It is the real task of faith and theology to make it possible for us to survive, to go on living, with this open wound. The person who believes will not rest content with any slickly explanatory answer to the theodicy question. And he will also resist any attempts to soften the question down. The more a person believes, the more deeply he experiences pain over the suffering in the world, and the more passionately he asks about God and the new creation. (The Trinity and the Kingdom of God)

I love how Moltmann dismisses the typical theodicies by calling them “slickly explanatory answers”. Moltmann does not think that the problem of evil and suffering can simply be dismissed with a waving of the hand and an appeal to the sophomoric apologetic tripe of the ‘free-will’ defense. Ultimately, as a Christian, all one can do is contemplate the Crucified One and the new creation.

The theodicy question, born of suffering and pain, negatively mirrors the positive hope for God’s future. We begin to suffer from the conditions of our world if we begin to love the world. And we begin to love the world if we are able to discover hope for it. And we can discover hope for this world if we hear the promise of a future which stands against frustration, transiency, and death. (Religion, Revolution and the Future)

A Few Concluding Thoughts

There are other areas I could dive into to show the relationship between these two theologies/theologians (and I may do so in the future). Suffice to say, Moltmann’s influence on Gutiérrez (and other liberation theologians) is a noteworthy case of theological cross-fertilization between First-World European and Third-World theologians. Yet, Gutiérrez was wary of not taking too much from Moltmann and Europe, primarily seeing the benefits of hope theology in its critiques of the hyper-individualized gospel and our uber-capitalist society, whilst also coveting the stimulating effect Moltmann’s theology has on political consciousness and engagement.

An adequate theological stance on hope must rest upon sufficient grounds. The eschatological hope of Moltmann that is predicated on the resurrection of Christ and the everlasting faithfulness of God appears quite different to Gutiérrez’s more evolutionary optimism, that depends on an extrapolation of the present process, thus providing for a less sure hope. In the end, after briefly looking at the role that Marxism, political theology, and hope play in their respective theologies, one could almost say, to borrow a wordplay from Kayayan, that Moltmann’s theology of hope was effectively secularized in Gutiérrez’s liberation theology, turning it from a theology of anastasis (resurrection) into a theology of epanastasis (revolution)! Naturally, though, Gutiérrez’s revolution would be with bread and wine, not guns and bloodshed.

Gutiérrez  and Hope

While Moltmann’s Theology of Hope was first being read and debated in Europe, Gustavo Gutiérrez was defining theology as a consideration on the praxis of the poor, publishing his important work, A Theology of Liberation, in 1971. Moltmann’s emphasis on hope was readily incorporated into the work of some liberation theologians and some of what Gutiérrez says about hope bears a striking resemblance to Moltmann’s thought. Gutierrez’s liberation theology has a strong bond with Moltmann’s theology of hope in its interest for present transformative action in conformity with a hoped for future. Another similarity to Moltmann, but divergent from most other liberation theologians, is in how Gutiérrez draws upon Ernst Bloch’s understanding of hope (A Theology of Liberation, 123-24; Orbis, 1988). Another parallel between Gutiérrez and Moltmann is seen in how Gutiérrez defines ‘hope’ as an “openness to the God who is to come” (ibid 204), which sounds eerily similar to Moltmann who argues that hope must always be open to the future in which God finally fully arrives and is wholly present.

Yet Gutiérrez’s adoption of Moltmann’s hope theology was not without its criticisms. For instance, Gutiérrez levels the charge that while “hope fulfills a mobilizing and liberating function in history”, Moltmann’s theology is open to the risk of merely replacing a “Christianity of the Beyond” with a “Christianity of the Future”, weakening the struggle for liberation and freedom in the present (ibid 124). Contra Moltmann, Gutiérrez argues that real emancipatory hope doesn’t have its basis in a promise from the future but rather develops through the praxis of the poor contending with their present situation and transforming it (ibid 201-03). Thus, Gutiérrez’s consideration of hope is focused upon a liberating utopia which sees hope as an obligation to a social praxis through which humans become the means of transforming the present into a more just society. He says, “Hope thus emerges as the key to human existence oriented towards the future, because it transforms the present” (ibid 123). As a corollary to this, the power of the future is seen as an extension of God’s power in the present at liberating the oppressed, directing history towards its full realization and completion. Gutiérrez’s understanding of hope goes beyond the never-ending open-ended dialectical analysis of Moltmann.

Gutiérrez argues that it is hope that thrusts society forward by challenging and denouncing the unjust conditions of the present, while seeking and heralding a more righteous future. This understanding of hope is crucial to Gutiérrez’s conception of ‘utopia’ in A Theology of Liberation. While he overtly discusses utopia only in a short section (ibid 135-40), the role of utopia pervades every other topic that he writes on in that book. At the onset of his discussion on utopia, Gutiérrez clarifies his use of the term as referring to “a historical project for a qualitatively different society and to express the aspiration to establish new social relations among human beings” (ibid 135). This liberating utopia is the motivation for hope.

This divergence of Gutiérrez from Moltmann in regards to hope is also seen in how he places an emphasis on a temporal hope. He says:

The Kingdom is realized in a society of fellowship and justice; and, in turn, this realization opens up the promise and hope of complete communion of all persons with God. The political is grafted into the eternal. (ibid 135)

Note that Gutiérrez delineates between hope in the eternal and hope in the temporal (political). He also says that:

The hope which overcomes death must be rooted in the heart of historical praxis; if this hope does not take shape in the present to lead it forward, it will be only an evasion, a futuristic illusion. (ibid 124)

Here he lays bare his belief that eternal hope cannot exist independent of a temporal hope that is “rooted in … historical praxis”. Further along, Gutiérrez says that “without liberating historical events, there would be no growth of the kingdom [of God]” (ibid 177).

Summary

Gutiérrez’s understanding and use of ‘hope’ stands in distinction to Moltmann’s; he has not just uncritically embraced Moltmann’s view of hope but has instead only borrowed from it in order to create his own. Gutiérrez’s hope is directed towards a liberating utopia and a plan for a qualitatively changed society that is more just towards the poor. This is different to Moltmann who sees hope as being founded upon the resurrection of Christ and directed towards the ultimum novum, declining to pivot around a static final objective such as Gutiérrez’s utopia. In short, one could say that Gutiérrez employs a temporal human-based hope and Moltmann employs a future divine-based hope.

Moltmann and Hope

It was after reading Ernst Bloch’s The Principle of Hope that Moltmann was left wondering, “Why has Christian theology let go of its most distinctive theme, hope?” (How I Have Changed, 15; SCM, 1997). From this question arose the momentum for his innovative and influential work, Theology of Hope. For Moltmann hope is the most significant element of human life and experience. Quoting a Rabbinical commentary, he says that “God created all things with finality… but he created man in hope” (The Experiment Hope, 27; Fortress, 1975). Elsewhere he says:

That is why it can be said that living without hope is like no longer living. Hell is hopelessness, and it is not for nothing that at the entrance to Dante’s hell there stand the words: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”

(Theology of Hope, 32; Fortress, 1996)

Hope is a grossly abused word in today’s culture, but Moltmann’s vision of hope stands in a drastic tension with the secular hopes offered up elsewhere in his day, whilst also opposing accusations leveled against hope by thinkers like Spinoza and Freud who argued that hope is an infantile and illusionary deception. Unlike others before him who advocated for an optimistic secular hope without faith in Christ that winds up becoming merely “a utopia and remains hanging in the air” (ibid 20), Moltmann’s hope is founded upon the resurrection of the crucified Christ, saying that Christian faith and hope “stands or falls with the reality of the raising of Jesus from the dead by God” (ibid 166), thus undercutting a Christianity that finds its foundation in existentialism; Moltmann does not see the resurrection faith of the apostles as merely a nice feeling in their bowels having been liberated from the tribalist concepts of cult and law.  Neither does Moltmann see hope as simply an optimistic outlook in progress of the Enlightenment, a deferred escapist hope of being raptured out of this world, nor as an individualized post-mortem hope for another world — the “pie in the sky when you die”. Instead, for Moltmann, in Christ’s resurrection God has embodied his ultimate promise to us, giving us the foundation for a “living hope” (1 Pet. 1.3) in the kingdom of God that is announced in the Scriptures and found in the life and teachings of Jesus.

Moltmann’s hope for the future draws upon Hegel’s forward-moving dialectic of history, seeing the past (thesis) as misery and the future (antithesis) as hope, which requires us to work in the present (synthesis) to effect the change.  It is because Moltmann sees the resurrection of Christ as a guarantee of the new creation that he also views the future as having an impact on the present, rather than the typical way of thinking which postulates that the present leads to the future. By doing so, Moltmann is attempting to give hope the gravitas it needs in order to affect our present lives by seeking to restore to the Church its hope for God’s new creation as a driving force for societal transformation.

Moltmann considers hope (based on the resurrection of Christ) as a source of courage to truly enter into history, rather than a heavenly hope which seeks to escape it. Yet it is critical to note that while Moltmann sees hope as a tangible means of enacting this future kingdom of God in the present, he does not think humanity can fully bring in this new creation; instead, it can ultimately only come about by the direct intervention of God himself in the world. One of the foremost commentators on Moltmann, Richard Bauckham, agrees with this, saying:

It is not that human activity in the present builds the future kingdom, but that the future kingdom by arousing hope and obedience in the present creates anticipations of itself within history. These are real anticipations of the kingdom, forms of God‘s presence…within the contradictions of a still unredeemed world, but they are precisely anticipations of a kingdom which itself remains eschatological, transcendent beyond all its historical approximations.

(The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann, 104; T&T Clark, 1995)

Next up… Gutiérrez  and Hope

Moltmann, Marxism, and Political Theology

As I’ve described elsewhere, Moltmann’s political theology stems from his return to Germany after World War II and the lamentable response he saw from the Church there. Moltmann’s political theology is often said to go together with Marxism, though this a pretty horrendous caricature. Moltmann primarily draws upon Marxist theory through the neo-Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch, who in the 1950s published Das Prinzip Hoffnung (The Principle of Hope), a book that combines Jewish eschatology together with Marxist social analysis. I’ve seen many evangelicals mistakenly think that Moltmann is merely presenting a Christianized form of Marxism, but this is an erroneous understanding of Moltmann’s thought, for he only really uses Marxist thought as a way of speaking on social and economic issues. I’ve discussed Moltmann and Marxism elsewhere too, so it will suffice to say here that Moltmann utilizes Marxist theory in order to free bourgeois Christianity from its capitalist fixation with consumerism and its fetishism of money.

Moltmann does not utilize Marxism to such an extent that it diminishes the Christian hope for the kingdom of God to something that can be accomplished through mere revolutionary political action. As Moltmann himself has said, his political theology “does not want to dissolve Christian faith into politics; nor does it want to replace Christianity with humanism” (“Political Theology”, Theology Today 28; 1971: 6-23; quote from pg. 22). He also says that he “does not want to make political questions the central theme of theology or to give political systems and movements religious support” (ibid 8). As Meeks says, “For Moltmann, political theology is essentially the theology of the practice and realization of Christian mission in the world” (Origins of the Theology of Hope, 129; Fortress, 1974). In essence, for Moltmann Christianity is not synonymous with political action, but political action is an expression of Christian faith.

Gutiérrez, Marxism, and Political Theology

The Marxist thought which underpins Gutiérrez’s liberationist theology is responsible for making it visibly political. In fact, an oft repeated critique of Gutiérrez’s liberation theology is it has a proclivity to reduce faith merely to politics. This is not a terribly surprising charge in light of Gutiérrez’s belief that theology and doctrine follow praxis, saying that “theology does not produce pastoral activity; rather it reflects upon it” (A Theology of Liberation, 9; Orbis, 1988). A way in which Gutiérrez emphasizes praxis is with an emphasis on theology as it relates to social structures. This, in various ways, is seen building to a better world, eventually leading to a kingdom of God on earth; the kingdom of God effectively arrives through a reorganized society. This understanding of the relationship between praxis and theology is, in part, what led Gutiérrez to not being entirely satisfied with Moltmann’s Theology of Hope, for he saw it as only being built upon vague notions of promise and hope without providing a legit plan for societal change. Gutiérrez sought to rectify this by offering up a viable way of effecting the change necessary in his Latin American context.

Gutiérrez develops his theology within his local context, in the underclass of Latin America. Latin American liberation theologians contend that the developing economies of Latin America are dependent upon First World capitalist countries, i.e. the United States, who wind up only perpetuating their exploitation by putting into place political regimes that are merely in support of the status quo. Thus, not surprisingly, Gutiérrez is particularly interested in salvation when it is seen as a political liberation for Latin America from U.S. hegemony. Because of all this, Gutiérrez is careful to exclude elements of Western theology that he considers foreign to his Latin American context, but he is nevertheless in agreement with Moltmann in that he sees the Christian gospel as inextricably consisting of a political element that is not reliant on any particular current political structure. He says: “The Gospel does not get its political dimension from one or another particular option, but from the very nucleus of its message” (ibid 139).

Gutiérrez incorporates some of Marx’s ideas, yet does so without becoming a full Marxist himself. His use of Marx can still be aptly summed up in the eleventh thesis of Marx against Feuerbach: “Hitherto philosophers have explained the world; our task is to change it”. In order to bring about this transformation of the world Gutiérrez employs the Marxist critique of religion in order to criticize bourgeois Christianity for supporting and legitimating the oppressor-oppressed structure of society. Gutiérrez draws upon the Marxist critique of the relationship between religion and capitalism, a relationship which perpetuates the poverty of the poor by reconciling them to their poverty through a hope for riches and justice in the eschatological upheaval when “the first shall be last and the last first”.

Gutiérrez also adopts Marx’s critique of individualism as one of the chief supports of capitalism. Gutiérrez adopts this critique and explicated its theological corollaries by taking it further and saying, for instance, that it runs counter to the biblical directive of solidarity. Another way in which Gutiérrez utilizes Marxism is by adopting Marx’s idea of class struggle. Gutiérrez believes that the oppression of the poor will not be overcome merely by understanding it in theory, but that the poor must see themselves as the oppressed and understand the causes behind their oppression, as well as viewing themselves as the driving force in history and instruments through which change can be implemented, reshaping society in accordance with the elevation of their own welfare. The poor are not meant to merely sit idly by and wait for God to solve the problem and create a just society; rather, it is the poor who are to reform society. Some see more than just a “preferential option for the poor” in Gutiérrez’s liberation theology. I remember seeing one commentator say that Gutiérrez uses the experience of the oppressed and the poor as a source of revelation (in conjunction with the biblical text), though this strikes me as being somewhat of an overstatement.

While Gutiérrez believes that capitalism has failed to succeed in Latin America due to their exploitation by the First World, he is not necessarily promoting a thoroughly Marxist economic system, as he concedes that Marxist states have failed. Instead, he advocates for a system that is unique to the needs of Latin America. He believes that any tangible social transformation can only really come about through small communities and must be a change from bottom up, as opposed to a top down change imposed upon citizens by an authoritarian vanguard party such as what is found in historic examples of socialist states. [Note, though, that not all liberation theologians adopt Marxist theory, e.g. Jon Sobrino seems to deliberately avoid the use of Marxian categories such as class struggle and a classless society in his writings].

Summary

In looking at liberation theology and hope theology through Moltmann and Gutiérrez, one can surmise that both are political theologies that attempt to orient theology towards the downtrodden of society, albeit from different contexts. There is also an undeniable common thread of Marxism to be found in both their political theologies. Moltmann himself notes that Marxism is used by most liberation theologians, including Gutiérrez, as “an analytical instrument – a way of grasping the situations of the poor in Latin America … Put in simpler terms: Marxist analysis, yes; communist therapy, no!” (Experiences in Theology, 245; Fortress, 2000). This use of Marxism, however, isn’t necessarily true for every liberation theologian (e.g. Hugo Assman).

Yet while both Moltmann and Gutiérrez have used Marxist social theory, both decidedly ditching Marxism’s dialectical materialism and atheism, there seems to be a stark difference in how they base their use of Marxism. Gutiérrez appears to start with Marxism and then seeks biblical verification, though naturally departing from Marxism when it comes to the obvious issues of death and God, etc. Conversely, Moltmann starts with the biblical depiction of the future kingdom of God and then employs Marxism as a critique on how the current way of things is opposed to this future hope. The primary appeal to Moltmann in Marxism (as he found it in Bloch) is its imagination for a better future society, rather than the Marxist strategy for proletarian revolution which is a more useful aspect to Gutiérrez.

In a nutshell, liberation theology is a school of thought focusing on the poor and marginalized of society and their liberation from poverty and oppression. Though it is more appropriate to speak of liberation theology in the plural, for liberation theologies are to be found amongst Asians, African-Americans, Latin Americans, and elsewhere. Additionally, there are various types of oppression to which liberation theologies are in response too, e.g., feminist theology, black theology, gay theology, etc. The most notable and lucid expression of liberation theology to date is found in the Catholics of Latin America, the impetus behind this movement being the idea that the underclass of Latin America has been exploited and victimized by capitalism, colonialism, and corporations.

The theology of hope movement, which is more so a confederation of related proposals than an actual school of thought, is comprised of theologians such Wolfhart Pannenberg, Johannes Metz, Dietrich Ritschl, Walther Zimmerli, Carl Braaten, and most notably, Jürgen Moltmann. As one commentator puts it, “The school of hope is not a religio-philosophical derivative of a previous epistemological or metaphysical orientation.  It is an aggregate.  Its basis is a mood” (Walter Capps, “Mapping the Hope Movement”, in The Future of Hope. Fortress, 1969; pp. 1-42; quote from pg. 10).

The unifying thread amongst theologians of hope is a concern to relate the thoroughgoing eschatology and futurism of the Bible to contemporary human experience in a time where the liquidity and velocity of modernity needs to be kept in mind. Hope theology finds its framework in the eschatological thrusts of the Old and New Testaments, with the role of the ‘future’ playing a crucial role in the theology, being found under the rubric of the kingdom of God. Inextricably linked to this utilization of the ‘future’ is the role of ‘hope’ in the present. In short, a theology of hope is a criticism of any form of Constantinian Christianity that attempts to find Christianity’s definitive answer in the present rather than the future.

Ostensibly, liberation theology and a theology of hope may seem to have much in common, yet there are actually considerable distinctions between the two theologies. While it can be said that the emergence of liberation theology and a theology of hope were contemporaneous to one another, there is no causation accompanying this correlation; one did not birth the other. Notwithstanding, the theology of hope school did have an impact on some liberation theologians, though the ideas found in it were not taken wholesale, but were instead selectively chosen and adapted freely. In other words, the relationship between the two theologies is best described as dialectical rather than hierarchical.

This series of blog posts shall examine this relationship by looking at the quintessential theologian of hope, Jürgen Moltmann, and the founder of liberation theologian in Latin America, Gustavo Gutiérrez. Each of these two figures occupies the role of being a pioneer in their respective theology movement, for the theology of hope school owes its existence in large part to Jürgen Moltmann’s work, Theologie der Hoffnung (1964; English translation Theology of Hope, 1967); this work by Moltmann is undoubtedly a principle contemporary work in the area of hope. Likewise, the key work in the beginnings of the liberation theology movement is Gustavo Gutiérrez’s Teología de la Liberación (1971; English translation A Theology of Liberation, 1973).

The value of a Moltmann–Gutiérrez comparison as a heuristic device for understanding the relationship between these two theological movements is established when one reads that Gutiérrez lavished praise upon Moltmann and his Theology of Hope, declaring the book as “one of the most important in contemporary theology” (A Theology of Liberation, 125; Orbis, 1988). Moltmann has likewise been influenced by liberation theologians, saying that he found his theology of hope in Gutiérrez’s A Theology of Liberation (see Moltmann’s Experiences in Theology, 217; Fortress, 2000). In the same book (pp. 217-248), Moltmann discusses Cardinal Ratzinger’s (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XV) criticisms of Latin American liberation theology, effectively coming to the defense of Gutiérrez. It must be kept in mind, though, that while the theme of liberation is of paramount importance for Moltmann, he himself is not a liberation theologian, at least not in the normative sense of engaging in critical contemplation upon theological praxis within a particular community of beleaguered and oppressed people.

This short blog series will focus upon two key areas in these two theologies: (1) the role of Marxism and political theology; and (2) the role of hope. By focusing upon these two themes found in hope theology (through Moltmann) and liberation theology (through Gutiérrez), I hope to shed a little bit of light as to the relationship between these two important 20th century theological movements.

The second-to-last chapter of The Crucified God discusses the implications of the cross towards the psychological liberation of man. This was my least favorite chapter of the book due to the fact that reading about Freud is always cumbersome to me (it always makes my eyes glaze over). So I can’t even really give a fair overview of this chapter except to say that Moltmann critiques and then appropriates Freud. I think Moltmann put it something like this: Christian theology can adopt Freud’s criticism of religion in order to detach liberating faith from the religious superstition of the heart. The final chapter then tackles the political liberation of man, asking “What are the economic, social and political consequences of the gospel of the Son of Man who was crucified as a ‘rebel’?” Moltmann summarizes the ways towards liberation in five different areas:

In the economic dimension of life, liberation means the satisfaction of the material needs of men for health, nourishment, clothing and somewhere to live …

In the political dimension of life, liberation from the vicious circle of oppression also means democracy …

In the cultural dimension of life, liberation from the vicious circle of alienation means identity in the recognition of others …

In the relationship of society to nature, liberation from the vicious circle of the industrial pollution of nature means peace with nature …

In the relationship of man, society and nature to the meaning of life, liberation means a significant life filled with the sense of the whole.

This aspect of Moltmann’s theology – the political aspect – becomes more pronounced throughout his later works. It is actually quite integral to the entirety of his theological project.

Summary

Strangely, despite the fact that Moltmann suggests our understanding of God and the crucifixion event is not trinitarian enough, his own view of the cross in The Crucified God came through as overly binitarian rather than trinitarian. The Spirit is depicted as the divine love between the Father and Son which overcomes the suffering of the Son and the Father’s loss of the Son, thus opening up the eschatological future for this world of suffering, but that is all. The focus throughout is predominantly on the Son and Father. Perhaps that is why Moltmann’s next book, The Church in the Power of the Spirit is focused (as the title suggests) upon the Spirit. Regardless of that quibble, if you’re coming from fundamentalism and/or evangelicalism and the first thing that pops into your head when you hear “cross” is imagery of the wrath of God being poured out on Jesus (who has somehow mystically taken upon himself the sins of the world), then this book is for you as it contains a refreshing perspective on the meaning of the cross for Christian theology.

Though, be forewarned, just like Moltmann’s Theology of Hope, this is one of those dense academic theological works; it is definitely no light reading! In summary, I would say that The Crucified God is a compelling case for the adoption of possibility and patripassianism into ‘orthodox’ Christianity.

In the last chapter Moltmann talked about the historical trial of Christ; in this chapter he talks about the eschatological trial. Here he seeks to understand the life and death of Jesus in the context of his resurrection from the dead and of eschatological faith. After all, one can hardly do theology without giving thought to the act that began the Christian faith – the resurrection. Or as Moltmann says, “if one calls the cross of Jesus the ‘nuclear fact’ of Christian faith, one must call his resurrection the primal datum of that faith”.

Whereas the historical title ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ binds Jesus to his past, the title of ‘Christ’ binds Jesus to his future. The eschatological faith talks of the Jesus whom God raised from among the dead, “and of Jesus as the Christ of God, the one who reserves a place for the God who is to come … because his future determines and explains his origin and his end his beginning”. Moltmann begins by discussing the issue of eschatology and history, then gets into the resurrection of Christ. Regarding the appearances of Christ in the NT, he says that they were not “mystical transportations into another world beyond, nor were they inner illuminations” but were instead “a sight and a foretaste in the countenance of the crucified Christ of the God who was to come”.

This section on the resurrection in this chapter was one of the highlights of the book for me. It contains a lot of nice quotable snippets, such as:

The resurrection of Jesus from the dead by God does not speak the ‘language of facts’, but only the language of faith and hope, that is, the ‘language of promise’.

And:

The new and scandalous element in the Christian message of Easter was not that some man or other was raised before anyone else, but that the one who was raised was this condemned, executed and forsaken man. This was the unexpected element in the kerygma of the resurrection which created the new righteousness of faith.

Moltmann then gets on discussing the significance of the cross of the risen Christ; we must not forget the risen One is also the crucified One, lest the resurrection faith become a means of detaching Christ from the crucifixion.

The following chapter is the heart of the book carries the same title as the book – The Crucified God. While one may have thought the crucifixion did not serve a huge importance in Moltmann’s theology from reading his initial book Theology of Hope, this book and especially this chapter undercuts that notion. He says:

The death of Jesus on the cross is the centre of all Christian theology. … All Christian statements about God, about creation, about sin and death have their focal point in the crucified Christ. All Christian statements about history, about the church, about faith and sanctification, about the future and about hope stem from the crucified Christ.

In this section Moltmann begins investigating the implications of what the crucified Christ means regarding the concept of God: “What does the cross of Jesus mean for God himself?” Moltmann lambasts the likes of Barth for not having an adequate Trinitarian understanding of the suffering of Christ. He says: “Anyone who really talks of the Trinity talks of the cross of Jesus, and does not speculate in heavenly riddles”. I found the following quote compelling and a succinct summary of what Moltmann is pushing at:

When the crucified Jesus is called the ‘image of the invisible God’, the meaning is that this is God, and God is like this. God is not greater than he is in this humiliation. God is not more glorious than he is in this self-surrender. God is not more powerful than he is in this helplesssness. God is not more divine than he is in this humanity. The nucleus of everything that Christian theology says about ‘God’ is to be found in this Christ event. The Christ event on the cross is a God event.

Moltmann then discusses ‘protest atheism’ (this is the type of atheism that stems primarily, not from a lack of evidence for a deity, but from the problem of evil and suffering and how this destroys the notion of a benevolent deity). Moltmann says that this “crude atheism for which this world is everything, is as superficial as the theism which claims to prove the existence of God from the reality of this world”. I love that jab against the theists! I’ve run across too many (Christian) theists who pretend as if atheists are merely sulky children throwing their toys out of the cot in defiance against God, acting like immature and impatient children, whereas Christians are the mature ones who can undergo suffering whilst maintaining faith. This type of thinking just reeks to me of self-congratulatory bullshit (pardon my French).

Naturally, Moltmann asserts that this protest atheism is resolved in the cross of Christ, for God himself has protested against suffering in the death of the godforsaken Christ. Moltmann discusses the two-nature Christology and rails against the (docetic) idea that it is only the human nature of Jesus that suffers while the divine nature of Jesus remains detached. While “Aristotle’s god cannot love” (as Moltmann quips), the fully divine, fully human, Son of God who suffers takes death up into the divine life, can indeed love. Moltmann is definitely no fan of the classical thomistic view of God.

Moltmann then continues by talking about having a sufficiently Trinitarian theology of the cross. Here are a few snippets from this section that provide good insight into where Moltmann goes with this:

In the cross, Father and Son are most deeply separated in the forsakenness and at the same time are most inwardly one in their surrender. What proceeds from this event between Father and Son is the Spirit which justifies the godless, fills the forsaken with love and even brings the dead alive

[…]

What happened on the cross was an event between God and God. It was a deep division in God himself, in so far as God abandoned God and contradicted himself, and at the same time a unity in God, in so far as God was at one with God and corresponded to himself.

[…]

‘God’ is not another nature or a heavenly person or a moral authority, but in fact an ‘event’. [i.e. the event of the cross]

[…]

If one conceives of the Trinity as an event of love in the suffering and death of Jesus … then the Trinity is no self-contained group in heaven, but an eschatological process open for men on earth, which stems from the cross of Christ.

[…]

The divine trinity should not be conceived of as a closed circle of perfect being in heaven … one should think of the Trinity as a dialectical event, indeed as the event of the cross and then as eschatologically open history.

It isn’t so much that Moltmann sees the death of Christ as the ‘death of God’ as he sees it as the start of the God “event” in which the life-giving Spirit transpires from the death of the Son and the grief of the Father.

More to come…

More than anything else, Moltmann is recognized for his resourcing of eschatology as the root of his entire theological endeavor; it permeates everything he writes. At the turn of the twentieth century, through the work of New Testament scholars such as Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer, the eschatological character of Jesus, his message, and the early church, came to the forefront of scholarship. It is by drawing upon this current that Moltmann is able to present his eschatological focus. What begun in Theology of Hope, which is but the prolegomena, is carried throughout all of Moltmann’s writings, coming to full fruition in The Coming of God.

In Theology of Hope Moltmann counters two twentieth-century theological giants, Karl Barth and Rudolf Bultmann, both of whom stressed the finality of the revelation we receive through Christ in the present, albeit they had quite different ways of pursuing this; for the former, revelation was located in God’s subjectivity, while for the latter it was grounded in our subjectivity. The problem with both of these views, in Moltmann’s analysis, is that it focuses on the existential here and now, while depriving Christian theology of its true future orientation. Indeed, the bête noir of Moltmann’s hermeneutical critiques is that of Rudolf Bultmann’s existentialist interpretive method. Moltmann’s response to all this, by following in the steps of Gerhard von Rad, is to focus upon the concept of promise in the biblical text and the portrayal of Yahweh as the God who promises, the God who sends his people off as pilgrims seeking out the fulfillment of these promises.

This necessarily involves a dramatic change to our understanding of revelation of God. Like Barth, Moltmann emphasizes that our knowledge of God comes from God’s own self-revelation to humanity, as opposed to an a-historical, conjectural, or metaphysical meditation on the nature of Being. Moltmann contends that we know God through the history of God’s involvement in the world, specifically through his covenant with Israel and the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Moreover, the significance of God’s appearances does not lie in the epiphany event itself, but in its promise of the future. This turn towards the future depicts God as the God of hope and, since hope is characteristically oriented towards the future, God is one who, as Moltmann says quoting Bloch, has “future as his essential nature” (Theology of Hope, 16; Fortress, 1996). For a thorough inspection of God’s relationship to history in Moltmann’s theology, see Randall Otto, ‘God and History in Jürgen Moltmann’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 35.3, 1992: 375-88.

This understanding of the revelation of God is the stimulus behind Moltmann’s desire to reorient theology around eschatology. Instead of viewing eschatology as the last in a volume on systematic theology, causing it to be “like a loosely attached appendix that wandered off into obscure irrelevancies” (ibid, 15), Moltmann argues that eschatology is central to Christian theology. He says:

From first to last, and not merely in the epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving, and therefore also revolutionizing and transforming the present. (ibid, 16)

This eschatological hermeneutic of Moltmann’s, while being his legacy to the Christian theology, is nevertheless not without its pitfalls. In using the ‘future’ for his epistemology, it seemingly leads to the lack of a solid telos over much of Moltmann’s theology. Perhaps the most noticeable way in which this is seen is in how Moltmann speaks of God as a being who is continually progressing towards the novum ultimum, when the Trinitarian nature of God will fully be realized. In other words, there is no supernatural realm in which God already fully exists in eternity, for God is in time, being thrust along by it. Moreover, it can be argued that the future never seems to reach stasis for Moltmann but is instead eternally progressing; Moltmann’s God could be said to be existentially incomplete. In a similar vein to this, one commentator says that for Moltmann “God is not fully God, because God is part of time which is pushing forward into the future” (David Scaer, ‘Jürgen Moltmann and His Theology of Hope’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 13.2, 1970: 69-79; citation from pg. 69). Another commentator says that Moltmann “understand[s] the Trinity dialectically and views history as the dialectical reunification of the Trinity and the World” (John Cooper, Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers, 22; Baker Academic, 2006).

Despite any failings one may see in Moltmann’s theological method, his reconstitution of theology according to the future – being founded upon the God of promise, bringing with it an open eschatological horizon and ensuing hope – is nevertheless a refreshing and invigorating theological perspective for the church, especially when one considers that the existential theologians were effectively the unchallenged masters of German and Protestant theology in the early twentieth-century. While some may attempt to consign Moltmann’s theological legacy of hope and eschatology to an optimistic period of humanity in the 1970s that is no longer useful or relevant, it is undeniable that it influenced many in the subsequent generation of theologians, such as Miroslav Volf, causing them not to be merely a guild of Moltmannian acolytes, but to take the lead with forward-looking innovative theological replies to the latest issues facing society and the church.

Fundamentalism fossilizes the Bible into an unquestionable authority. Dogmatism freezes living Christian tradition solid. (Moltmann, The Crucified God, 8; Fortress, 1993)

The prolific British New Testament scholar Richard Bauckham is a leading commentator on Moltmann, having produce much literature dealing with Moltmann’s theology, including journal articles, book essays, and even entire books. Bauckham provides what is perhaps the most informative, fair, and thorough criticism of Moltmann’s hermeneutical methodology and use of the biblical text. In God Will Be All in All Bauckham provides quite an acerbic critique of Moltmann’s biblical exegesis in The Coming of God, at one point saying that “what little exegesis he offers tends to be remarkably ignorant and incompetent”, and that Moltmann’s interpretation of the biblical text “requires an exegesis that no hermeneutic, however pre-modem or post-modem, could conceivably support” (God will be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann. Fortress, 2001; pp. 179-80).

Moltmann responds to this later in the same volume with an essay titled, The Bible, the Exegete and the Theologian (pp. 227-232), giving what is the clearest articulation of his relationship to the biblical text. In it he says:

Theology is not subject to the dictation of the texts, or the dictatorship of the exegetes. Questionings as to whether the theology is ‘in conformity with Scripture’ seem to me to be a remnant left over from the old doctrine of verbal inspiration. … Richard Bauckham has taken me to be an exegete, and I am not one. I am a theological partner in dialogue with the texts which I cite, not their exegete. (pp.230-31)

Note that Moltmann delineates between the tasks of ‘theology’ and ‘exegesis’. Consider that in conjunction with Moltmann’s belief that “theology is not a commentary on the biblical writings, and commentaries on the biblical writings are not a substitute for theological reflection” (ibid, 230). Elsewhere he states that he understands the biblical text as “a stimulus to my own theological thinking, not as an authoritative blueprint and confining boundary” (Experiences in Theology, xxii; Fortress, 2000), with the corollary being that one cannot simply proof-text the truth from the Bible as “a quotation from the Bible is not enough to guarantee the truth of what is said” (ibid, 139).

While Moltmann does typically include frequent and diverse references to the Bible, the preceding quotes, when coupled together with his reliance upon using various resources for his ideas, are indicative that he has a distrust of letting theology rest solely upon a single external source of authority. He understands the Bible, not as an absolute authority external to the reader as it is typically considered in conservative evangelical Christianity, but as a resource for the theologian to stimulate creative thinking and as a subversive book that offers hope for the oppressed and poor in spirit.

While contemporary theology must not lose its bearings of history, it is not enough for theologians to simply offer up syntheses of it. In this regard, Moltmann’s theological project is a success, as instead of merely replicating tradition, and instead of adopting the fundamentalist mantra of “the Bible said it, that settles it, I believe it”, he instead advances a fertile way of thinking that reforms the church’s way of thinking and prevents the ossification of theology, enabling the church to speak in a germane manner about the resurrection and lordship of Christ in modern times. Moltmann’s approach used to accomplish this is both creative and stimulating. He engages many diverse sources, yet he does so in a selective manner, juxtaposing them together without rationale and never clearly articulating on exactly what grounds he is engaging them. Moltmann seems to do theology with the supposition that all sources are suspect in their authority, meaning that the best way to comment on life is to give a lucid, transforming narrative. This epistemological skepticism lays bare the postmodern epistemological method of Moltmann (at least when it comes to his attitude towards sources and their authority).