Jürgen Moltmann's Ethics of Hope

Eschatological Possibilities For Moral Action

Timothy Harvie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754664819
• eBook ISBN: 9781317109983
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book develops a thorough account of the sphere of human moral action in sustained dialogue with Jürgen Moltmann. By examining God's role as promise-giver, particularly in the Christian understanding of resurrection, this work describes the occupancy of both history and space in moral terms. This leads to an understanding of Jesus' description of 'the kingdom of God' to feature prominently in describing both the possibility and content of human moral action. By offering an account of each of the main doctrines found in Moltmann's corpus - the role of the future, the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and anthropology - this book locates how each contributes to the understanding of ethics from a Christian perspective and subsequently applies these findings to the contemporary issue of poverty and global economics.

PART I
Doctrinal Considerations

Chapter 1

Hope and Promise

Introduction

When Jürgen Moltmann first published Theologie der Hoffnung1 in 1964, his stated aim was to recover the importance of eschatology from the margins of theological discourse. He sought to recall eschatology from being designated solely as the ‘last things’. Taking his cue from the young Barth,2 Moltmann states: ‘From first to last, and not merely in epilogue, Christianity is eschatology, is hope, forward looking and forward moving, and therefore also revolutionizing and transforming the present.’3 This eschatological emphasis is, for Moltmann, the generative thrust for Christian hope. Hope, eschatologically rooted, has a future orientation without causing the one who hopes to either abandon the present or to ignore or deny the past. On the contrary, for Moltmann Christian hope is founded on the promise of God given in a particular place in history, which creates and secures a new trajectory for history and human existence within history. It is the burden of this opening chapter to work out the meaning and implications of this assertion.

Beginning with the arguments laid out in Theology of Hope, this chapter will attempt to explicate and assess Moltmann’s account of promise as it relates to the implications of Christian hope for a moral theology of human action. The argument will begin with an exploration into the necessity and role of eschatology as Moltmann perceives it. If the Christian hope is eschatological in nature and rooted in divine promise, there must be some accounting as to why it is plausible for theology to believe this is so. Therefore, a broad treatment of the centrality of eschatology for hope in will be given, with particular reference to the importance of scripture in Moltmann’s thought. From this vantage point, a more specified account of promise will be articulated. The Christological locus of promise and hope will be brought to the fore, noting the dialectic of cross and resurrection as it forms the shape and content of the promise which constitutes Christian hope. The essential role of cross-resurrection in Moltmann’s articulation of the history of promise will raise the question of the impact of divine promise on Christian moral action. The question of the trajectory of human action from the standpoint of divine promise needs to be articulated more clearly for an adequate account of a moral theology of hope.

Eschatology

It has already been noted that from early on, Moltmann desired to reassert the importance of eschatology for Christian theology. For him, Christian hope is inseparable from the future orientation of eschatology, even if eschatology itself is a broader framework than the usually assumed ‘last things’. However, if hope, when eschatologically rooted, does have a future orientation, then this also lends it a historical character which explores and re-conceives the framework of past, present and future: ‘Christian theology speaks of God with respect to the concrete, specific, and contingent history, which is told and witnessed to in the biblical writings.’4 This is not to say that Christian hope is a by-product of pure historicity, which is manifested from the natural course of events. Rather, Christian hope is a future that is promised in the past work of God in history which alters the Christian conception of and engagement with the present. For Moltmann, any docta spes begins from the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He says:

Christian eschatology does not speak of the future as such. It sets out from a definite reality in history and announces the future of that reality, its future possibilities and its power over the future. Christian eschatology speaks of Jesus Christ and his future …. In thus announcing his future in the world in terms of promise, they point believers in him towards the hope of his still outstanding future.5

By this Moltmann is saying that with the occurrence of a particular event a certain type of momentum is gathered, driving the course of subsequent events toward a certain end. This end, towards which history is now heading, affects what occurs in the present. Therefore, the history of the created order changed decidedly with the resurrection of Christ, thereby promising a qualitatively new type of future, which in turn alters the present existence of the Christian. Christian existence is altered because of this pointing towards the future from the statements of promise given by God in Jesus Christ.

From this brief introduction, the priority of hope for Christian theology becomes unambiguous. In addition to Christian theology, hope founded in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ also unequivocally changes the sphere of human action. That is, both human and cosmic history, nature and the whole created order become the space for redemption rather than the theatre for the ongoing victory of death and sinfulness. This is neither to say that the effects of sin are not still felt nor that violence, oppression and injustice are not still at work in human history. Moltmann has neither an over-realized eschatology nor a chiliastic view of history.6 Rather, in the singular event of cross and resurrection, a new history has been made possible by securing a new future through divine promise.7

Moltmann is here emphasizing the importance of history as the medium for God’s self-revelatory acts to humanity.8 In Moltmann’s thought, history becomes both God’s creative work and a sinful status quo which God must overcome. This dialectic of positive and negative views of history is firmly integrated in Moltmann’s theology of promise. In the midst of a history wrought with injustice, turmoil and sin, the promise of God (given definitively in the resurrection of Jesus Christ) secures a new future which contravenes the sinful status quo of the present with a new creative work of God for a redeemed cosmos. This new, creative work secured in the promise is a novum in history which moves towards the present.

Therefore, the relationship between promise and history relies heavily on the concept of prolepsis for Moltmann’s construal of eschatology. The raising of Christ from the dead is the proleptic event signifying the universal reign of God. In Pauline language, Christ is the ‘firstfruits’.9 However, the risen Christ does not merely signify the future universal Kingdom of God, but as its initiator, he is also the means by which this Kingdom comes about: ‘It is not merely said that Jesus is the first to arise and that believers will attain like him to resurrection, but it is proclaimed that he is himself the resurrection and the life and that consequently believers find their future in him and not merely like him.’10

Moltmann argues that his construal of hope is plausible precisely because it is found in the structure of the biblical materials themselves. It is a notable feature of Theology of Hope that the work is primarily influenced by the biblical scholarship of the time.11 In a subsequent essay, Moltmann states that the ‘text’ of his Theology of Hope was the Bible.12 An eschatological reading of hope based on the promises of God is plausible for Moltmann because he views scripture as testifying to this very fact. As will be discussed in greater detail below, Moltmann’s explication of promise-fulfilment motifs is gleaned from the history of Israel’s interactions with Yahweh as borne witness to in the Hebrew scriptures. The influence of biblical scholars such as Gerhard von Rad and Ernst Käsemann can be seen throughout Moltmann’s reading of the biblical materials, particularly the history of Israel and the cross and resurrection of Christ.13

Having highlighted the importance of hope and eschatology for Christian theology, it is essential to systematically explicate the various themes discussed above. To fully engage all the complexities at work in a Christian ethics of hope, a more detailed analysis of the nature and content of the divine promise is needed. However, as will be seen, there are several issues surrounding Moltmann’s use of promise which need further clarification. For example, what is the precise nature of the promise (especially in the cross and resurrection of Christ) as it relates to both the creation of a new history and the contradiction of the old? To put the matter another way, is there nothing of the present state of the world which is redeemable within the current work of the divine economy or must the believer simply await a contradictory world created ex nihilo? It would seem that when attempting to articulate a moral theology of hope, the relationship between Christian action within a world where sin is still present and God’s action to redeem that world through Christ must be brought into clearer relation. By attempting to remove the ambiguity of the relation between sin and redemption, the argument will move beyond Moltmann’s account, even if remaining within its general purview.

Promise

The integral role of promise for Christian hope may be most clearly seen in Moltmann’s Theology of Hope. That a Christian understanding of hope is rooted in the divine promise has been briefly sketched above, but needs to be explicated more cogently. In defining promise, Moltmann makes seven key points:

(a) A promise is a declaration which announces the coming of a reality that does not yet exist …. (b) The promise binds man to the future and gives him a sense for history …. (c) The history which is initiated and determined by promise does not consist in cyclic recurrence, but has a definite trend towards the promised and outstanding future …. (d) If the word is a word of promise, then that means that this word has not yet found a reality congruous [Wirklichkeitsdeckung] with it, but that on the ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part I Doctrinal Considerations
• Chapter 1 Hope and Promise
• Chapter 2 Hope for the Kingdom of God
• Chapter 3 Hope and the Spirit of God
• Chapter 4 Hope in the Triune God
• Part II Theological and Topical Considerations
• Chapter 5 Time and Space for Hope
• Chapter 6 Hope for Humanity
• Chapter 7 Hope for the Economy
• Bibliography
• Index