{"id":2708,"date":"2024-06-09T10:42:02","date_gmt":"2024-06-09T10:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/?p=2708"},"modified":"2024-06-09T10:42:02","modified_gmt":"2024-06-09T10:42:02","slug":"more-then-good-news-a-promise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/?p=2708","title":{"rendered":"More Then Good News – a Promise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Chapter 24

Good Monday Morning to this new week.

And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. 1. Corinthians 15.28<\/strong><\/em>

In honor of J\u00fcrgen Moltmann, who passed away this past week. (07.04.1926-03.06.2024)

On June 3rd, after 98 years on this earth, J\u00fcrgen Moltmann entered his eternal rest. It is impossible to summarize Moltmann\u2019s legacy in a handful of paragraphs. A prolific writer, he produced more than forty theological monographs over a span of six decades. He was on par with Barth and Pannenberg as one of the great Christian systematic theologians of the twentieth century, but it was not primarily his systematicity that had a profound influence on those of us whose work\u2014or whose lives\u2014he changed. Instead, one piece or another of his theology slipped into our heads and our hearts, under our skin. His writing, like his demeanor, was humble and self-effacing. It was, one could say, quietly revolutionary: the unsuspecting reader might flip a page, stumble upon an unassuming sentence, and catch themselves thinking, \u201cThis changes everything.\u201d It is impossible to summarize Moltmann\u2019s legacy in a handful of paragraphs. A prolific writer, he produced more than forty theological monographs over a span of six decades. He was on par with Barth and Pannenberg as one of the great Christian systematic theologians of the twentieth century, but it was not primarily his systematicity that had a profound influence on those of us whose work or whose lives he changed. Instead, one piece or another of his theology slipped into our heads and our hearts, under our skin. His writing, like his demeanor, was humble and self-effacing. It was, one could say, quietly revolutionary: the unsuspecting reader might flip a page, stumble upon an unassuming sentence, and catch themselves thinking, \u201cThis changes everything.\u201d

Facts About Jurgen Moltmann<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jurgen Moltmann, a prominent German theologian, was actually a prisoner of war during World War II. He was captured and held captive by the British army for several years in an internment camp. This experience had a profound impact on his theological thinking and shaped his understanding of hope and redemption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite being known for his Christian theology, Moltmann drew inspiration from a wide range of philosophical and cultural sources. He was heavily influenced by the existential philosophy of Karl Jaspers and was deeply engaged with philosophical and sociopolitical trends of his time, including Marxism and liberation theology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moltmann’s most famous work, “Theology of Hope,” which revolutionized Christian eschatology, was initially met with skepticism and criticism from many theologians. It challenged traditional notions of a purely heavenly afterlife and emphasized the importance of hope and liberation in the here and now. However, it eventually became a seminal work in theological circles and greatly influenced subsequent generations of theologians.

Moltmann\u2019s stress on eschatology was stated unmistakably in his first major publication,\u00a0Theology of Hope. Christianity, he argued, is not only\u00a0evangelion\u00a0but\u00a0epangelia: not only \u2018good news\u2019 but \u2018promise\u2019. Furthermore,\u00a0evangelion\u00a0itself has to be taken not primarily as good news about the past but as good news about the future. There is an alternative way, argues Moltmann. Christ did not simply repeat the past. Neither will Christian history merely repeat the past. The parousia (second coming) will bring something new: something that has never happened before, even in Christ. The resurrection tells us that history is governed not by analogy, but by (divine) promise. It is the first of these ideas that dominates Moltmann\u2019s Christology. He is concerned with the eschatological journey of Jesus. It is not, however, a solitary journey. It is a trinitarian one: the story is the story of Jesus\u2019 dealings with the Father and Jesus\u2019 dealings with the Spirit as, together, they redeem and renew creation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus\u2019 Way, according to Moltmann, is in three stages: the messianic fulfilment in the Advent: the apocalyptic sufferings of Messiah at Calvary; and the messianic consummation in the final renewal of the cosmos.

Moltmann is deeply conscious that messiahship is a Jewish concept and that any claim that Jesus is the Messiah must refer in the first instance to his being the Jewish Messiah (there is no other) and the fulfilment of Jewish hope. This raises a question of critical importance: Why does the Jew say \u2018No!\u2019 to Jesus? Moltmann cites a number of Jewish scholars (most notably Martin Buber) to provide an answer. They say, \u2018Jesus has not fulfilled our hope! The world is not redeemed! And we do not see the life and work of Jesus as constituting any real caesura in human history! Moltmann\u2019s answer is to accept the premises of the Jewish argument and then proceed to assimilate it into his Christology. Jesus has not fulfilled the hope of Israel: yet. The \u2018yet\u2019 is crucial. Jesus has still to complete his way and finish his journey. Moltmann even suggests that he is not yet Messiah. It is something he is becoming or working his way into. The fact that Christ has not completed his task does not discredit him. He is on the way to completing it and in his parousia he will give us all that the Jew ever longed for. In particular, he will give us that new creation which is central to Jewish hope. The kingdom of God will ultimately mean the transformation of the whole of reality. It is external, material and social, involving both a universal reign of peace and a perfected creation. Moltmann\u2019s favourite text is 1 Corinthians 15:28: God will be all in all. The best provisional exegesis is the Lord\u2019s Prayer: when the Messiah finishes his journey. God\u2019s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“For the Greek philosophers and the Fathers of the church, knowing meant something different: it meant knowing in wonder. By knowing or perceiving one participates in the life of the other. Here knowing does not transform the counterpart into the property of the knower; the knower does not appropriate what he knows. On the contrary, he is transformed through sympathy, becoming a participant in what he perceives.” J.M.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“To believe means to hope for, to reflect on, to dream about, and to love things and people beyond ourselves.” J.M.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May this promise more than the hope and good news we carry, continue to challenge and inspire us, reminding us that in Christ, we are always moving towards a future where “God will be all in all.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rest in peace, J\u00fcrgen Moltmann.

Philemon <\/p>\n\n\n\n


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    <\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Chapter 24 Good Monday Morning to this new week. And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all. 1. Corinthians 15.28 In honor of J\u00fcrgen Moltmann, who passed away this past week. … <\/p>\n

    Continue reading “More Then Good News – a Promise”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2709,"href":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2708\/revisions\/2709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/warapunga.ch\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}