”It has to do with faith, love and hope – as much in secular as in religious terms. Without belief, without love and without hope my life would be meaningless. And in this respect, it is not about religion but about lived life.“
Jürgen Moltmann died Sunday after 98 years fully alive to the hope God places in us humans. His writings are foundational to the church of enough heart, hope, spirit and critical mind that Jesus might recognize. His “Theology of Hope” anchored my theological formation at Emory where he visited occasionally. The best sermon I ever preached, God is Not Done, in 1979 (!), has his fingerprints all over it. He is a powerful influence on the Leading Causes of Life intellectually and personally as he married Jim and Renate Cochrane who also met through him.
Like another icon in my life, Carl Sandburg, Jürgen almost died typing, releasing a profound book only last year. It is not yet in English, Weisheit in der Klimakrise: Perspektiven eine Theologie des Lebens (Gütersloher, 2023), which can be translated as “Wisdom in the Climate Crisis: Perspectives of a Theology of Life.”
While we less educated ones wait for the English edition, we can catch a sense of where he was going as he was dying in this article: The transformation of theology in the present climate crisis. Fiercely clear-eyed about the radical threat to the survival of our and many other species, he was undeterred in his theologically informed lens of hope. His wife, Elisabeth, who he dearly grieved since her passing in his arms in 2016, tuned him to the eschatological implications of the climate collapse.
In this sense he was not only undeterred, but undetoured.
He taught us a pastor, friend, intellect and spiritual guide to stand on hope and do not read the world through fear, even when those fears are quite justified.
Jim translated part of the introduction of his new book for me: “Instead of hope for life, anxiety about life spreads. ‘Fear the warming of the earth!’ one might say. ‘Fear the extinction of species!’ ‘Beware the poisoning of the air!’ These are the admonitions of the present, intended also to awaken those who do not take the coming dangers seriously enough. This fear is justified. But it must be limited to concrete fears if we do not want to lose our ability to act. Fear is the feeling of the coming dangers, so to speak, the radar of our mind, which warns us but should not paralyze us.”
We must not be detoured, either.
Against the tide of vacant secularism and stupid Christianity, The Reverand Dr Moltmann gives dignity, purpose and usefulness to theology. Theology of hope enabled action. “Then the question is: How can humans affirm their existence if they live in a meaningless world? Perhaps, there is no ‘strong anthropic principle’, but there is a solid ‘Christological principle’ which allows human beings to feel at home in the cosmos. There is a ‘cosmic Christ’.” (Moltmann, J., 2023, ‘The transformation of theology in the present climate crisis’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 79(2), a8460. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v79i2.8460).
He ended that article exactly as he ended his life, an undetoured trustworthy witness.
“In the Letter to the Ephesians, the second act, which follows after the reconciliation of the cosmos ‘through his blood’ (Eph 1:7), is called anakephaleiosis ton panton, ‘a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth’ [εἰς οἰκονομίαν τοῦ πληρώματος τῶν καιρῶν, ἀνακεφαλαιώσασθαι τὰ πάντα ἐν τῷ Χριστῷ, τὰ ἐπὶ τοῖς οὐρανοῖς καὶ τὰ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἐν αὐτῷ] (Eph 1:10). Here the theological foundation for a ‘cosmic spirituality’ is to be found. Christ also died for the redemption of the cosmos. We are ushered into God’s ‘wide space’ if we meditate on this.”
Thank you, Jürgen.
//// The image of Dr. Moltmann is from https://scottpaeth.typepad.com/main/2014/08/where-to-start-with-j%C3%BCrgen-moltmann.html