Ethics of Hope

Jurgen Moltmann

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780800698584
• eBook ISBN: 9781451411928
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

A creative and programmatic work, Ethics of Hope is a realistic assessment of the human prospect, as well as its imperatives, from one who stakes everything on God's promise to rescue life from the jaws of death.

Ethics of the Just Peace

Chapter 11: Criteria for Forming a Judgment

We shall begin with the introductory question about the criteria for forming a political judgment in questions about a just peace.

Righteousness, Justice, and Equality

The first question in political decisions is whether they serve social equality in a society or promote the inequality of its citizens politically, socially and economically. The foundation of every democracy is the equality of its citizens. According to the tradition of democratic constitutions, equality comes before liberty, for there is liberty only on the basis of equality—only social equality can ensure a society’s internal peace.

Between the nations too it is only justice which ensures peace, not the supremacy of a nation or an imperium. The military, ecological and terrorist perils have already become so great that if the human race is to survive, the concern for its survival must be given absolute precedence over and above the particular interests of nations, classes and races. Egoistic, particularist interests will bring about the world’s downfall. It is only in a community of human beings that it can survive. Human rights are an initial outline for a universal basic law or constitution for humanity.

The Deficits of Politics in the Face of Global Problems

Every political decision and every political demand is made in the face of the fact that the problems of the modern world are becoming global, whereas the political institutions have remained local. The peoples of the earth are increasingly becoming the objects of man-made crises, but they must become the determining subjects of their own history if they want to overcome these crises. New nuclear powers are emerging which do not feel bound to any treaties about the non-proliferation or non-distribution of nuclear weapons. The financial markets have been deregulated and are leading the worldwide economy into catastrophes under which the poor countries have to suffer most. The ecological disasters do not come to a halt at national frontiers. The growth of the world population is uncontrollable. The nation states of the nineteenth century and the empires of the twentieth are becoming increasingly helpless. Out of their own self-interest, they are furthering the dangers instead of preventing them. Consequently, people are losing interest in their powerless policies and prefer to engage in citizens’ initiatives locally and in global movements and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These non-parliamentary global movements are driving beyond nationally limited policies. Greenpeace and the European Social Forum are the best examples. So the first task in the face of the global problems will be to overcome this deficit in politics.

Are Ethics Always Too Late on the Scene?

If we ask about ways out of the present worldwide dangers, we are always already too late. Politics then become a matter of crisis management, and ethics turn into damage limitation. What is ethically required is demanded only in case of need, and after it has become the subject of general agreement. But what we need is crisis prevention, and we must first surmount the ethics which are the cause of the crisis. We are not just looking for ways out of the dangers, but also for ways of preventing them. That is why it is important to look beyond the dangers themselves, and to anticipate a future in which all human beings will be able to live. Since the dangers are becoming global, what is required are not just system repairs but also a restructuring of the chaotic foundations of the world’s previous political systems. It is only if we believe that ‘another world is possible’, as ATTAC says, and only if we hope that it will be better than the present one, that we can do what is necessary today. Erich Fried wrote forty years ago that:

The man who wants the world to stay

just as it is

doesn’t want it to stay at all.

This is even more apt today than it was then.

Is Trust the Substance of Democratic Politics?

Trust is the substance of democratic politics, said Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the German Federal Republic (although his relationship to the truth was very much his own)—not power, not even the sovereignty of a government. Democratic politics is essentially speaking the self-government of the people, which means that it is peace politics, not power politics. Politics, as Althusius said long ago, is ars consociandi—the art of consociation. For a democratically elected government trust is the greatest good because, unlike authoritarian and autocratic forms of government, it has to be trustworthy. Everyone must deal circumspectly with this general good and must not put it at risk through lies. People must do what they say they are going to do, and must say what they are doing. Anyone who replaces trust by controls sows mistrust and destroys his own basis. Without trust, nothing works in a democracy. Trust is won through truthfulness and is strengthened by honesty. Mistrust evokes fear, and leads to the struggle of each against all.

Chapter 12: Divine and Human Righteousness and Justice

In the Reformation period this chapter would have been entitled: ‘Of Divine and Human Righteousness’, the frame of reference being that human righteousness should conform to the righteousness of God. But how was this correspondence viewed then, and how is it viewed now?

“Tit for Tat“ Religion

Secular states are an achievement of the Enlightenment. Previously, and outside the modern world still, states were formed through their political religions and were under the sway, and subject to the retribution, of their gods.^[1]According to the ancient doctrine of the state, worship of the gods of city, country and state is the state’s supreme purpose (finis principalis).^[2] The state’s gods provide for its prosperity and peace, so the state’s citizens must provide for their appropriate worship. The favour of these gods is won through public sacrifice, but if there are famines, pestilences, natural catastrophes and wars, these are signs that the gods are angry because of the blasphemy, insufficient cultic observance or the disobedience of the state’s citizens. The people must do penance, as once in Nineveh, and must make special sacrifices, or they must slay the wicked who are in their midst. The book of Jonah tells of both reactions: the storm at sea, because one of God’s prophets has taken flight, and the favour of this same God conferred on the repentant people in Nineveh. To ensure the favour of the gods was also the preeminent task of oriental rulers, for they were all priestly kings. The Roman caesar too was the pontifex maximus of Rome’s state gods. The Chinese emperor certainly stood over against his subjects as ‘Son of Heaven’, but if he fell into disfavour with heaven and his country was visited by famine, plague, earthquakes and floods, he could be overthrown. The Moloch in Carthage demanded children as sacrifices, the Aztecs and Mayas offered their gods still quivering hearts.

Against the background of an interpretation like this, blasphemy is the worst of crimes. It is directed not against human beings but against the gods who protect them, and indirectly puts the life of the whole people in the greatest danger.^[3] This crime against the gods calls forth their vengeance. The blasphemer has to die in order that the gods may be pacified and the people survive. In ancient Israel there was a legal regulation that ‘He who blasphemes the name of the Lord shall be put to death: all the congregation shall stone him’ (Lev. 24.16).

According to the early Christian testimonies, Jesus was condemned by the high priest as blasphemer, although he was executed by the Romans as a rebel against the imperium: ‘Then the high priest tore his robes, and said, “He has uttered blasphemy. Why do we still need witnesses? You have now heard his blasphemy. What is your judgement?” They answered, “He deserves death”’ (Matt. 26.65-66).

Jesus’ ‘blasphemy’ was the revelation of his divine sonship.

In the pre-Constantinian period Christians in the Roman empire were accused of being ‘atheists’, and were persecuted on those grounds if they were not prepared to pay homage to the gods of state and nature and to the cult of the emperor, because they could not, as they said, get involved with ‘demons’.^[4] Justin Martyr called himself an ‘atheist’ in reference to these gods. Discipleship of the Christ crucified in the name of these gods freed Christians from this fear of the gods and instead made them in times of need ‘enemies of the state’ who had to be sacrificed to those gods. Tertullian writes, full of ironic bitterness: ‘If the Tiber bursts its banks (setting Rome under water), if the Nile does not burst its banks (and the land of Egypt remains infertile), the cry is immediately: the Christians to the lions!’

Through the emperors Theodosius and Justinian, the Christian faith became the Roman imperial religion and thus took over the role that had been played by the ancient pagan state religion, without calling it in question. In Christian legislation, from then on the pagan cults counted as ‘blasphemous’. The death of Jesus was laid at the door of the Jews in order that, with Pontius Pilate, the Romans might wash their hands in innocence. Christianity became one more ‘tit for tat’ religion.^[5] As late as 1706 the law and theological faculties in the university of Tübingen declared jointly: ‘That blasphemy was the most horrible and greatest of crimes, whereby God could easily be moved to wrath and could avenge the outrage on the whole land through famine, earthquake and pestilence.’^[6]

In the German states, in times of emergency, the Protestant prince, as simultaneously the supreme bishop, would call for days of repentance so that God’s wrath might be turned away. In Germany, the ‘Day of Repentance and Prayer’ was a public holiday held in Protestant regions until a few years ago; it was thought of as a day observed by the state church in order to turn away the wrath of God.

The Catholic bishops of Portugal interpreted the famous Lisbon earthquake of 1755, with its more than 20,000 dead, as an educative punishment by God for the sinful inhabitants of the city, and thereby roused the protest atheism of Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire.

The Protestant fundamentalist Jerry Falwell interpreted the attack by Islamist terrorists on the World Trade Center in New York as God’s punishment for ‘homosexual New York’, as if God were a terrorist God.

When the tsunami in the Indonesian province of Aceh left hundreds of thousands dead, fundamentalist mullahs interpreted this as the punishment of their God for the lax Islamic observance of the inhabitants. In Africa the theological pronouncement that AIDS is a divine punishment means death for women affected by the disease. They are stigmatized socially and are excluded and cast out. Today this ‘tit for tat’ religion has not disappeared either publicly or from the private life of many people. In the face of possible deadly perils, ‘pacts’ are always made with providence, and catastrophes are always followed by a search for scapegoats who have to be sacrificed.

In modern democratic constitutions blasphemy against the state’s gods have been replaced by offensive behaviour towards religious communities. It is now no longer the gods who are protected; it is the religious sensibilities of men and women. In Prussia, a law of 1794 formulated the accepted standard. According to this, to offend religious sensibilities and insult religious communities was a punishable offence. The protection of peace, religion and peoples’ sensibilities takes the place of blasphemy in the German constitution of 1919 and in the Basic Law of the German Federal Republic. For this three objective reasons can be given:

1. The theological reason

‘For the Deity to be injured is impossible; that he should revenge himself on human beings because of an infringement of the respect due to Him is inconceivable; that it must be made good through the punishment of the offender is foolishness. But the church, as moral person, has a right to respect. Anyone who belittles its purposes belittles the society, anyone who disparages the object of religious worship … disparages himself.’^[7]

2. The moral reason

The good is not performed out of fear of punishment by the gods or out of expectation of a heavenly reward. That is religious slave morality. The good is done simply because it is the good.^[8] That is the liberty of God’s children.

3. The Christian reason

For believers, with Christ’s giving of himself for the reconciliation of the godless world, fear of the gods and sacrificial cults have been ended once and for all. It is not the wrath of God that has to be reconciled but the godless world: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself’ (2 Cor. 5.19). To put it in the old sacrificial language: God himself brings the sacrifice, not for his own reconciliation but for ours. Natural catastrophes and stroke of fate are not divine revelations; they are the outcome of a disrupted nature for whose reconciliation and new creation Christians hope.

The Link between Acts and Consequences, and Karma

The ancient Indian doctrine of Karma transfers the divine justice from the transcendent sphere to immanence.^[9] Karma means the consequences of acts which ensue with logical necessity: ‘As one acts, so one will be after death’ or, to put it more simply: ‘If you steal corn you will become a rat’. Or, as a German proverb says: ‘Life punishes latecomers.’ The idea behind this is an ‘automatic retaliation causality linked to the acts committed’.^[10] In India what wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Preface
• Eschatology and Ethics
• An Ethics of Life
• Earth Ethics
• Ethics of the Just Peace
• Joy in God: Aesthetic Counterpoints