Moltmann Quotes

Looking for some materials for my dissertation, (Yes, I am still trying to finish my second draft), I stumbled upon insightful Moltmann quotes from this site.

Some quotes from Moltmann’s presentation at Garrett are below:

“Despair can be like an iron band constricting the heart.”–Jurgen Moltmann

“The turn from this end [despair] to a new beginning came from three things. A blooming cherry tree, the unexpected kindness of Scottish workers and their families, and the Bible.”–Jurgen Moltmann, the spark of life when he first left the prisoner of war camp after WWII

“Christ’s own ‘God-forsaken-ness’ on the cross showed me where God is present where God had been present in those nights of deaths in the fire storms in Hamburg and where God would be present in my future whatever may come.”–Jurgen Moltmann

“Imprisoned professors taught imprisoned students free theology.”–Jurgen Moltmann, on studying theology at the POW camp at the Norton Camp in Nottingham, England

“There are various names for this ‘Spirit of Life’ because there are various life experiences.”–Jurgen Moltmann, on the Holy Spirit

“God is not only a divine person who we can address in prayer, but also a wide living space … We human beings are giving each other space for living when we meet each other in love and friendship.”–Jurgen Moltmann

“With every righteous action, we prepare the way for the New Earth on which righteousness will dwell. And bringing justice to those who suffer violence means to bring the light of God’s future to them.”–Jurgen Moltmann, on the future of God

“Americans as no one else in the Old World are looking ahead and are future-minded without the limitations of traditions and can look ahead without the burdens of the past.”–Jurgen Moltmann, on America

“To reinvent your own country you need a great audacity of hope.”–Jurgen Moltmann, on the recurrent desire of American presidents to reinvent America

“[In 1967] The ‘Hope Movement’ replaced the ‘God is Dead’ movement.”–Jurgen Moltmann

“Christian hope does not promise successful days to the rich and the strong, but resurrection and life to those who must exist in the shadows of death.  Success is no name of God. Righteousness is.”–Jurgen Moltmann

“There were two different expectations … in this land of the future. On the one hand the the optimistic belief in an unending progress with millenarianistic overtones and on the other hand the doomsday expectation of the final battle of Armageddon. Both are perspectives are uniquely American and both are inter-related.”–Jurgen Moltmann, on the messianic politics of the American founding fathers

“No where else in Christianity does the terrible or heroic name of Armageddon play such role as in America. Not even in the Revelation of John.”–Jurgen Moltmann, on the Left Behind series

Fearful faith

Many Christians believe that their priority as believers is to defend doctrine and teachings of God not only to the people of other faiths but more so from fellow believers inside the church. I believe though the number one priority for every Christian is to share gospel of reconciliation. Our powerful God through his Holy Spirit is able to defend himself against false teachings.

Moltmann says that if we assume a rigid defensive stance regarding our doctrine, it is actually cowardly.

The decay of faith and its identity, through the a decline into unbelief and a different identity, forms an exact parallel to their decay through a decline into a fearful defensive faith. Faith is fearful and defensive when it begins to die inwardly, struggling to maintain itself and reaching out for security and guarantees. In so doing, it removes itself from the hand of the one who has promised to maintain it, and its own manipulations bring it to ruin. This pusillanimous faith usually occurs in the form of orthodoxy which feels threatened and is therefore more rigid than ever. It occurs wherever, in the face of the immorality of the present age, the gospel of creative love for the abandoned is replaced by the law of what supposed to be Christian morality, and by penal law.

He who is of little faith looks for support and protection for his faith because it is preyed upon by fear. Such faith tries to protect its 'most sacred things', God, Christ, doctrine and morality, because it clearly no longer believes that these are sufficiently powerful to maintain themselves. When the 'religion of fear' finds its way into the Christian church, those who regard themselves as the most vigilant guardians of faith do violence to faith and smother it.

Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, pp. 11-12.

Moltmann on purgatory

The real basis for the doctrine of purgatory is neither scripture nor tradition, but the 'church's practice of prayer and penance'. Since the beginning--so argument runs--there have been in the church prayers for the dead, good works, almsgiving, personal penitential practices, and the acquisition of indulgences, vicariously applicable to the dead, which free them from punishments for sin. The Letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on Certain Questions of Eschatology (17 May 1979) puts it event more clearly: 'The church rejects all ways of thinking and speaking through which its prayers, the burial rites and the cult of the dead would lose their meaning and become incomprehensible: for all this is in substance a locus theologicus.' But that means in plai term that theology is there in order to justify the existing practice of the church. Once this method is followed, there is no possible way of examining particular ecclesiastical and devotional practices for their conformity to scripture and gospel.

Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, 99.

Moltmann on ancestor cult

Okinawa counts as a centre of the Asian ancestor cult. Everywhere in the mountains one sees graves with benches in front of them where families can gather. I gave the main lecture of my tour in a Catholic church taking as my subject “Ancestor cult and the Resurrection Hope.” My listeners were very moved, and for the first time I saw Japanese people weeping. For them, the dead are not “dead and gone” as they are for us.

As ancestors, they are indeed very much present, and as good spirits can bless and as suffering spirits torment. Down to the present day, the battle of Okinawa has left behind it long shadows in families. The stories they tell are terrible beyond all imaginings. During a long car journey, Professor Kinjo, who is today 80 years old and pastor of the central church, told me defeated Japanese soldiers on the island of Takashiki drove families in his village into the caves to mass suicide, in order to save “the Tenno honour.” He himself and his brother were forced to kill their own mother, and he only survived by chance. On the southern tip of Okinawa, whole classes of Japanese schoolchildren threw themselves down the precipice. Finally, Admiral Otta committed ritual suicide. On the black marble tablets in the Peace Park, the name of 250,000 people who died in that battle are engraved. The souls of these dead find no peace, because they have received no justice, and to find peace with the dead belongs to the reverence for ancestors.

Christian missionaries condemned this Asiatic reverence for ancestors as idolatry and demanded that Christians abandon it. But that was the non-culture of the Western world rather than Christian faith. It is better to develop a Christian form of reverence for ancestors, springing from the shared Christian resurrection hope, as has happened in Korea. And for us in the West, it is important to learn again how to deal with the burdens and blessings of our forefathers instead of letting them disappear in anonymous graves; for whether we like it or not, we live in their light and in their shadow.

Jurgen Moltmann, A Broad Place: An Autobiography, 365-66.

Quote of the day

"The Spirit of God is called the Holy Spirit because it makes our life here worth something living, not because it is alien and estranged from life. The Spirit sets this life in the presence of the living God and int he great river of eternal love... the operations of God's life-giving and life-affirming Spirit are universal and can be recognized in everything which ministers to life and resists its destruction." Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, x-xi *The boys are our Pastor's twin sons

Homeless people and abandoned houses

Being from the Third World and working right now with migrant workers from impoverished neighboring countries, I could not resist posting this quote from Jurgen Moltmann. We are working everyday with poor migrant workers, homeless, exploited, and most of the times abused. Their plight is a result of many factors like political oppression, economic privation and possibly religious persecution. Here, the migrants are homeless while there are hundreds of beautiful “row houses” which are abandoned, apparently left by their rich owners to live in the beautiful suburb.

Even though with the NASA spaceships we stand on the roof of the world, so to speak, when night comes we return to the world underground cellars. The one watches the clock and ‘hasn’t any time’; the other is on the streets and has no place. The person who is without a country is usually without a home too, the person without a home becomes restless and stranger in a hostile world. To a large extent, over population engenders the mass of surplus people who have to emigrate if they want to survive. Millions in the countries of the Third World have become migrants without either country or home. In the societies of the industrial West, the problem of the homeless is not a housing problem or a matter of an ‘overload boat.” this is an anti-social policy of pushing people out… In the reports of an Open-Door community in Atlanta, Georgia, I read that (1) Housing precedes life, housing precedes employment, housing is a human right. (2) But keeping countless people homeless meant that a cheap labour pool of disposable people is always available, because these people have no country, family, or other ties.

Jurgen Moltmann, Science and Wisdom, p126

The photo is from www. irrawaddy.org

Who is a theologian?

“I have no theological training! I don’t even have short course training about missions but I’m here in preaching the gospel!” my friend said emphatically as he delivered his sermon last Sunday. For me, his lack of training became apparent as his sermon was loaded with big theological terms that I guess most people in the congregation never heard before. He claimed he is not a theologian and he doesn’t need to be one to be used by God. I agree and disagree.

Who is a theologian? The problem arise when we think that the word theologian is to be used strictly for those who are academically trained and competent expert. But as Barth, Bultmann, R.C. Sproul, Moltmann among others would say every Christian is a theologian. Moltmann says it well,

“Theology is the business of all God’s people. It is not just the affair of the theological faculties, and not just the concern of the church’s colleges and seminaries. The faith of the whole body of Christians on earth seeks to know and understand. If it doesn’t it isn’t Christian faith. This means that the foundation for every theological specialization is the general theology of all believers, which corresponds to the Reformation’s thesis about the universal priesthood of all believers. All Christians who believe and who think about what they believe are theologians, whether they are young or old, women or men"

I know Pastors who don’t have seminary training, but the way they study the Scripture and expound it when they are preaching made the Word of God simple, clear and concretely applicable to everyday life of the believers. And I mention this in contrast to those who have “training” but seem to cloud the meaning of the Scripture because there is just too much background info and abstract ideas. When we study the Bible and communicate its message to the people, we are theologians. As Moltmann further says, “the text of biblical message is the same everywhere. This cuts across the different cultural contexts and creates ecumenical context, which extends through out ‘the whole Christendom on the earth’….academic theology is nothing other than the scholarly penetration and illumination by mind and spirit of what Christians in the congregation think when they believe in God and live in the fellowship of Christ.”

Indeed, we are all theologians, for better or for worse… the task I believe is as Christians we should all strive to be better theologians.

Many faces of oppression

The oppression of human beings by other human beings has many different faces. It can take the form of political oppression, economic exploitation, social exclusion, cultural estrangement and sexist humiliation. It takes other forms too. But it is ways a crime against life. For human life is life in community and communication. Life means 'loving your neighbour as yourself', not 'subdue him and make him submissive'. To oppress other people means to cut oneself off from God too, for if a man does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen' (1 John 4.20)

Oppression always has two sides. On the one side stands the master, on the other side lies the slave. On the one side is the arrogant self-elevation of the exploiter, on the other side is the suffering of his victim. Oppression destroys humanity on both sides. The oppressors acts inhumanely, the victim dehumanized. The evil the perpetrator commits robs him of his humanity, the suffering he inflicts dehumanizes the victim. Where suffering is experienced in the pain of humiliation on the one hand, evil spreads on the other.

Jurgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, p185

Whenever my mind starts to wander reading Moltmann, he would say something that would glue back my eyes on the pages. It is because he would say something that so real and concrete. As if he is describing something familiar, something that happens around me.And here Moltmann vividly contrasts the difference on the quality of life of the rich and the poor, oppressors and the oppressed and both of them need liberation.One from suffering and the other from the evil they commit.

Theology beyond context

Every theology, however conditioned it may be by its context, kairos and culture, says something about God and is important to all who believe in God. Every Christian theology, however conditioned it is by context, kairos and culture, follows and interprets the text of biblical writings. So it is important for everyone who exists within the orbit where the Bible is interpreted, wherever they live, whenever they live, and whoever they may be. For it is the text which determines what for it is in the context. Otherwise the word context would have no meaning. So there is a communio theologorum, a community of theologians, which spans time, space, cultures and classes, which is engaged in dispute, dialogue, and occasionally also interacts in mutual influence and enrichment. This is not abstract perennial theology of which we spoke. It is a concrete theologia viaoturm, a theology of those on the way, who are differing estrangements of this world and this history are searching for the one coming truth will one day illumine everyone.

Jurgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, pp60-61.

Moltmann on Academic Theology

I started reading Jurgen Moltmann's Experiences in Theology. I agree with Frank it is fun and enjoyable to read and judging from the few pages I had read so far, the book's language is clear and simple but not simplistic. A characteristic very hard to find in a theology book. It is readable compare to Moltmann's early "contributions" to theology. For people like me whose first language is not English this is excellent.

I may response to this book while I go along by either posting quotes or making comments positively or otherwise. Meanwhile, here's an interesting quote:

Academic theology is nothing other than the scholarly penetration and illumination by mind and spirit of what Christian in the congregations think when they believe in God and live in the fellowship of Christ. By scholarly I mean that the theology is methodologically verifiable and comprehensible. Good scholarly theology is therefore basically simple, because it is clear. Only cloudy theology is complicated and difficult. Whether it be Athanasius or Augustine, Aquinas ot Calvin, Schleiermacher or Barth--the fundamental ideas of every good theological system can be presented in a single page. p. 13