Jürgen Moltmann and Evangelical Theology

A Critical Engagement

Chung

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781498269827
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Jurgen Moltmann is now regarded as one of the most influential theologians since Karl Barth. However, evangelical engagement with Moltmann has been hesitant and deficient. This book fills the gap. Ten respected evangelical theologians engage with Moltmann's theology in a mature, dynamic, and critical manner, seeking to appropriate from it in a discerning manner. The contributors include Sung Wook Chung, Kurt Anders Richardson, Veli-Matti Karkainen, Stephen N. Williams, and Timothy Bradshaw. This book is an excellent demonstration of intellectual confidence and respectability of robust evangelical theology.

1

Moltmann on Scripture and Revelation

Sung Wook Chung

Introduction

In spite of controversies around him, Jürgen Moltmann (1926–) should be regarded as one of the most influential Christian theologians within the camp of ecumenical theology since Karl Barth (1886–1968). However, because of his revisionist positions on many areas of Christian doctrines, evangelical theologians have engaged with Moltmann’s theology insufficiently and hesitatingly. This chapter aims to fill the gap, envisioning a critical engagement with a major locus of Moltmann’s dogmatic theology, that is, his doctrine of revelation and Scripture, from a consensual evangelical perspective. This critical analysis, engagement, and reflection is geared to test Moltmann’s theology, taking the good and leaving the bad aside.

Evangelical Consensus

Revelation

Evangelical theologians have defined revelation as the infinite God’s self-manifestation and self-communication toward finite humans.1 They have also divided revelation into two categories: general or universal revelation and special or specific or particular revelation. General revelation refers to the sort of divine revelation which is available to all human beings, at all places, and at all times. A great example of general revelation is the natural order, which reveals “God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature since the creation of the world” (Rom 1:20). In addition, evangelical theologians have agreed that human history and human constitution and conscience are also channels of general revelation through which some genuine, albeit confused and distorted, knowledge about God’s existence and attributes is offered to all people all over the world. However, because of human sin, human beings cannot enter into a salvific and personal relationship with God through general revelation. This makes another revelation, namely, special revelation necessary.

Special revelation refers to divine self-communication that is available to specific people, at specific places, and at specific times. The purpose of special revelation is to give sinners authentic knowledge of God that leads them to redemptive and personal relationship with God. Evangelical theologians have consented that the triune God revealed himself through a variety of channels including prophetic oracles, visions, dreams, miracles, mighty acts, and appearances. The climax of divine special revelation came with the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Heb 1:1–2). Christ’s apostles were appointed to be receivers and deliverers of special revelation.2

Scripture

According to the evangelical tradition, divine special revelation was inscripturated into sixty-six canonical books through divine inspiration. These inspired books of the Bible are considered to be authoritative for faith and practice of all Christians. As a natural corollary of divine inspiration of the Bible, most evangelical theologians have acknowledged that the Scripture is inerrant or infallible in what it affirms, whether it is related to history, archeology, geography, and science as well as to matters of faith and salvation.3

Evangelical theologians have also agreed that theology as a scientific discipline should be understood to be the study and discourse about God on the basis of biblical revelation. So theology should pursue the knowledge of God that is available primarily in and through the Bible. In that sense, Scripture is the only norming norm of theological discourse, which is differentiated from norms such as tradition, reason, and experience.4 This means there is a close and inseparable connection between theology and the Scripture. The Bible defines the boundary of theology and theology is bound by biblical presuppositions and conceptions. Thus, for evangelicals, genuine theology must be revealed theology, that is, theology grounded upon biblical revelation. Although most evangelicals acknowledge that natural knowledge of God, albeit confused, is available through general revelation, natural theology as a theological discipline independent of revealed theology is anathema.

Moltmann on Revelation

Then, what about Moltmann’s idea of revelation? Does he endorse evangelical ideas of revelation? Does he consent to evangelical categories such as general revelation and special revelation? In short, what on earth is revelation for Moltmann?

It is clear that Moltmann does not endorse evangelical ideas of revelation. For him, when traditional theology—including its evangelical version—discusses revelation, it reduces everything to the problem of the knowledge of God and as a result it “brings about the much lamented formalism of revelation theology.”5 In contrast to the traditional evangelical notion of revelation, which is identified with divine self-disclosure and self-manifestation, Moltmann highlights the biblical notion of the promise of God in terms of God’s revealing action. In so doing, he makes the notion of revelation clothed with radically eschatological character and reduces everything to the problem of “hope” in God, not to the problem of the “knowledge” of God. This means that for Moltmann the idea of knowledge of God is not a framework regulating and governing the idea of revelation any longer. Rather, the ideas of promise and hope dominate his discussion of revelation. Moltmann states, “But now the more recent theology of the Old Testament has indeed shown that the words and statements about the ‘revealing of God’ in the Old Testament are combined throughout with statements about the ‘promise of God.’ God reveals himself in the form of promise and in the history that is marked by promise.”6

Moltmann continues to argue that Israelite faith was radically distinguished from the faith of the world around Israel in that the former was religion centered on the God of promise while the latter was focused on the gods of epiphanies. The essential difference between them did not lie in the fact that Israelite faith was a religion of revelation while Babylonian faith was not. Rather, the difference did lie in “the different ways of conceiving and speaking of the revelation and self-manifestation of the deity.”7

Therefore, while traditional theology, including its evangelical version, has acknowledged that God reveals what he is like, what he does, and what he requires of humans through his self-manifestation and self-communication, Moltmann’s new theology recognizes that God reveals primarily his “faithfulness, and in it himself and his presence,”8 by making and fulfilling promises. And God’s action of making and fulfilling promises transforms his revelation into something radically eschatological. Moltmann contends, “But if promise is determinative of what is said of the revealing of God, then every theological view of biblical revelation contains implicitly a governing view of eschatology . . . The Christian doctrine of the revelation of God must be eschatologically understood, namely, in the field of the promise and expectation of the future of the church.”9

Another rationale behind his radical reinterpretation of the biblical idea of revelation lies in his acceptance of the Reformation theology of promise and rejection of the post-Reformation theology of revelation. Moltmann argues that “the correlate of faith is for the Reformers not an idea of revelation, but is expressly described by them as the promissio dei: fides et promissio sunt correlativa. Faith is called to life by promise and is therefore essentially hope, confidence, trust in the God who will not lie but will remain faithful to his promise.”10 This means that for the Reformers, Christians are called to trust God’s faithfulness and to hope that God’s promise will be fulfilled on account of his faithfulness, not to have faith in the generic and abstract idea of divine revelation.

It is important to appreciate that in this context Moltmann contrasts the Reformers’ theology of promise with Protestant orthodoxy’s theology of reason and revelation. He continues to argue, “it was only in Protestant orthodoxy that under the constraint of the question of reason and revelation, nature and grace, the problem of revelation became the central theme of dogmatic prolegomena. It was only when theology began to employ a concept of reason and a concept of nature which were not derived from a view of promise but were now taken over from Aristotle, that the problem of revelation appeared in its familiar form.”11 This means that for Moltmann ever since the ascendancy of Protestant orthodoxy, the biblical idea of revelation based on God’s promise has been suppressed and suffocated and the theme of divine revelation based on God’s self-communication has taken the place of the theme of divine promise and divine faithfulness to that promise. For this reason, Moltmann attempts to retrieve the “eschatological outlook”12 in which revelation is interpreted to be God’s promise and human hope in its fulfillment.

On the basis of the above discussion, we can conclude that Moltmann’s ideas of revelation are radically different from the evangelical consensus on the notion of reve...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Moltmann on Scripture and Revelation
• Chapter 2: Moltmann’s Communitarian Trinity
• Chapter 3: Moltmann on Creation
• Chapter 4: Moltmann’s Theological Anthropology
• Chapter 5: Moltmann on Jesus Christ
• Chapter 6: The Spirit of Life
• Chapter 7: Moltmann on Salvation
• Chapter 8: Moltmann’s Ecclesiology in Evangelical Perspective
• Chapter 9: Reclaiming the Future
• Chapter 10: An Evangelical Assessment of Jürgen Moltmann’s Ethics
• Bibliography