Epic theologian: Jürgen Moltmann, Theologian with a lasting legacy

[@relishhh]

His name certainly crops up everywhere.... Maybe I ought to rely on more than just a synopsis here and there and read from the source! Thanks for another helpful video 🎉

[@pastorslibrary]

@@relishhh I know someone who might loan you one at a time....

[@nottsxander]

Thank you!

[@cvd4508]

Thank you pastor. A fitting tribute to Jürgen Moltmann. More contributions on Moltmann would be most welcome. Perhaps a separate video on ' The crucified God', a book so dear to you. Why is it so important? What makes it different from other theologians who write about suffering and the cross? (contemporary authors like Pannenberg but also classical authors like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas). What is the lasting impact of the book? Where do you disagree with Moltmann? And what is the practical and pastoral relevance of his book for us confessing christians today?

[@pastorslibrary]

@@cvd4508 thank you so much for that helpful breakdown idea for another video. I will work on it. God bless you!

[@crusaderboy1976]

Pastor, I used to be a moderator of an old Yahoo Groups dedicated to Moltmann 20 years ago. I have read all his major works. I understand your dilemma not to recommend over 12 books! I suggest that someone who wants to dip their toes in picks up Jürgen Moltmann: Collected Readings, edited by Margaret Kohl (and published in 2014 by Fortress Press). Anthologies like this aren’t ideal for fans, since they miss so many good parts out, but the Kohl anthology is comprehensive.

[@pastorslibrary]

@@crusaderboy1976 thanks for that! I did wonder about mentioning it, but my feelings were similar to yours so I kept mum. I am so pleased to hear about this old group. I am personally very fond of the man's writings. God bless tou

[@crusaderboy1976]

@@pastorslibrary, you are so well-read! In that case, I’d push The Coming of God up to the top of the pile. As an Adventist, Moltmann articulated what I find so problematic about much of the eschatology of my tradition and pointed a way forward. God in Creaton also has some wonderful meditations on the Sabbath and creation. It’s hard to stop at one book.

[@pastorslibrary]

@@crusaderboy1976 I know what you mean. Thank you so.much for your recommendations. God bless you!

[@bongdac4456]

Good day pastor.. Do you have recommendation to best commentaries, which are available online for free? Thank you. Glod bless.

[@pastorslibrary]

I guess that the only free ones are either those who couldn't get published (perhaps because they are of questionable quality) or are so old they are out of copyright. I haven't any experience of them - sorry. I did try a few years back to find any, but wasn't successful at the time. Maybe I should try again?

[@parksideevangelicalchurch2886]

Here's Carl Trueman's assessment of Moltmann in First Things: "Moltmann emerged in the 1960s as a theological example of Hegelian Marxism, folding a reading of Marx refracted through strands of German idealism into the narrative and idioms of the Bible and of Christianity. The result was a heady revolutionary vision that would profoundly shape Latin American Liberation Theology of the kind that would later influence Pope Francis. Moltmann never produced subsequent work that matched this trilogy for its sense of intellectual excitement or influence... He wanted, he said, to be a voice for the oppressed, but the world was changing and he knew he was being left behind. He operated with traditional Marxist categories based on class and rooted in economic relations. But now new discourses of oppression were emerging. Feminist theory granted sex a key role, but he was not a woman. Race was becoming potent as a revolutionary category, but he was white-and, worse, a German, carrying all that corporate guilt for the Holocaust. Sexuality was beginning to shape political thought and action, but he was happily married.... [On the night Trueman met him] Moltmann was aware that night that his time had already passed. Indeed, it was over 20 years since Michel Foucault had declared open war on Hegel and Hegelianism in his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France. Old-style Hegelian Marxism espoused by straight white males was no longer the avant-garde of radical thinking. It was more a relic of the era of grand theories, just another manipulative bid for power and domination. And its theological expression by Moltmann had burned bright for a decade or so before becoming just another failed theological experiment. By the time I met Moltmann, theologically he was already a dinosaur. And he seemed sadly aware that that was the case."

[@pastorslibrary]

@@parksideevangelicalchurch2886 an interesting quote for which I am grateful. I am certainly glad to be able to read books by both of those mentioned here. Blessings!

[@parksideevangelicalchurch2886]

@@pastorslibrary Trueman's conclusion is interesting too: "For Moltmann, the categories of this immediate world context drove his theology. He had no sense of transcendence and no final sense that God’s Word breaks into this world from outside, rather than merely emerging as part of an immanent historical process. And those who marry their theology to immanence are oddly doomed to divorce their theology from relevance. That is why his contributions to Liberation Theology, Christology, social Trinitarianism, theodicy, eschatology, and political theology are all now museum pieces, fodder for courses in modern church history rather than systematics." I know your channel is focused on resources for academic theology and you often emphasise using contemporary resources from the last 30 years or so. I had to do the same when I was at seminary and they can be helpful. Nevertheless, I'm often surprised by how much more relevant and powerful the Reformers and Puritans are in their commentaries and writings. To me, they seem to have a more profound grasp on then response of the heart and the mind to the revelation of God in Scripture than those who take powerful ideas from our culture and use them as a lens to view scripture through. Anyway, thanks for your work.

[@cvd4508]

I am surprised that Trueman writes that Moltmann has no sense of transcendence. Read his later eschatological work ‘The coming of God’ or his recent German books on resurrection ( written after the death of his wife). Does affirming the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our subsequent resurrection in the Age to come (the defining character of christianity) not prove a deep sense of transcendence?

[@parksideevangelicalchurch2886]

@@cvd4508 I think Trueman's focus is on the transcendence of God in the Jonathan Edwards sense. And in the same vein, I think he doubts that Christians will be still reading Moltmann in 300 or 400 years time like they are still reading Jonathan Edwards, John Calvin, Martin Luther and the Puritans today. (Or the Church Fathers, come to that.) Only time will tell. Perhaps part of that transcendence is the ability for great theology to transcend the limits of culture and time and endure over centuries.

[@cvd4508]

@@parksideevangelicalchurch2886 Thanks for this illuminating response. Apparently there are many definitions of transcendence. Whether people still will be reading Moltmann in 400 years: who knows? I was worried by the harsh (ad hominem) words of Trueman. Despite all his shortcomings (and who is without faults?) I consider Moltmann as a brother in Christ.