Tributes to Jürgen Moltmann (1926-2024) have multiplied since his death. To reduce him to the theologoumene of hope is so astonishing that, in this tribute, we must warn the reader.
Tributes to Jürgen Moltmann (1926-2024) have multiplied since his death, some without really knowing what a distant theology of the XXe century owes him precisely, most harping on the fact that he was the "theologian of hope".
The contribution he made to the theology of the past century is so considerable that to be the accountant of it is an impossible task, so decisive was his influence on ecumenism, liberation theology, pneumatology, ecclesiology, Trinitarian theology, Christology well beyond the Reformation.
To reduce it to the theologoumene of hope is so astonishing that, in the present tribute, the reader must be warned against it. Contemporary theologians "of hope" are numerous: Wolfahrt Pannenberg, Gerhard Sauter or even Emmanuel Durand can claim the title, without even mentioning the Péguy of the Porche. Generally speaking, any theologian who emerges from the deadly debate between Bultmann and Barth, one focused on the horizontal present, the other on God's vertical present, is a theologian of hope. Even Balthasar - who executes the Theology of Hope (1964) in a few lines in his Theodramatik : "Moltmann uses Bloch's schema"[1]) - belongs to those who have given a fundamentally eschatological turn to theology. Any self-respecting theologian is a theologian of hope.
That's not where Moltmann's incomparable contribution lies. Rather, it lies first and foremost in an admirable trio. Moltmann forcefully opposed both the Marxist reading of history and the political theology of Johann Baptist Metz: unlike the latter, he does not dissolve God in politics and human action, but engages the latter on the basis of that which founds it. On the other hand, his aim is not merely anthropological, but creation as a whole. The history of which he speaks implies nature.
Thus, we cannot understand this theologian as an anthropologist.
Thus, this major theologian can only be understood precisely from this point of view: where to found a theology of history taken according to all its dimensions? The Przwywara-Balthasar school's answer was clear: in Christ, concrete analogy, paradox of paradoxes. With the consequent risk, concerning these two, of remaining on the balcony of the concrete unfolding of history - glimpsed abstractly from principles.
Moltmann's response is complementary, and was in fact more striking. It was not so much the atheist Ernst Bloch as the resistance fighter Erik Peterson. There are three pillars, then, to a theology of history, at the origin, at the center and in the becoming.
I At the origin
In the Trinity itself, upstream, at the origin, of which history is imprint and image. This is the lesson of Trinity and Kingdom of God (1986). And it justifies the fact that the best work on Moltmann in French opens with a Trinitarian, not eschatological, chapter[2]. Moltmann's gaze is not only directed towards the final ends, but also towards his archè. Not, therefore, from psychological analogies of the Trinity, but from a social understanding, in relationships themselves, of Trinitarian life thought of as communion. Moltmann's trinitological contribution is also decisive in that, compared with the hypostatic reinforcement promoted by Rahner in a modalist vein and by Balthasar with a tritheistic risk, he better marks (than the former at any rate) the substantial unity of the Persons among themselves thanks to his insistence on perichoresis read as communion. Without Moltmann's Trinitarian understanding, we miss the point.
II At the center
On the Cross, the heart and center of history, in The Crucified God (1972): Cross that enables us to go beyond the limited horizon of human society and inscribe the contradiction of evil in history seen from God's own point of view.
Moltmann's perspective is, of course, partly rooted in the Lutheran heritage, but he immediately rebalances it by integrating the Resurrection fully into his Christological reading. Moltmann does not dissociate the Resurrection and the Crucifixion, which enables him to always measure his prospective view of the end of the world with a retrospective view of God's involvement in the suffering of the world. Hope and Passion are not dissociated; there is no intramundane Grand Soir.
III In the becoming
In historical unfolding from the Spirit, towards the end of time, from a perspective that is at once ecological (God in Creation, 1985), political, and ecclesial and ecumenical (The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 1991). Moltmann's precocious insistence on the Holy Spirit, combined with his radical understanding of the Church as communion - a "Christian communism" (The source of Life, 1997) - was explosive and prophetic.
Moltmann's approach is therefore less a theology of hope, if by this we mean an eschatological and last-ditch theology, than a determined approach to the Trinitarian, Christological and pneumatological "coming of God" (1995). The three dimensions are co-essential, and the central work on hope cannot be dissociated from the other contributions. Human action in history, which is Moltman's point of departure (not arrival), including politics, is both justified and relativized by this origin, center and end. Hope, then, is Moltmann's purpose only if we grasp it "from above", according to the three modalities of origin, middle and end. The eschatology he envisages is not a doctrine of the end of history, but of its foundation. He turns human history, considered in its Trinitarian origin, its Christological center and its pneumatological motor, on its head, from God's point of view. Moltman is a theologian of history, not of the end of history. He can only be understood as a theologian of hope if we see it as a virtue of looking back, at the center, and at the end at once to God's action in history, which comes to support, promote, give meaning and limits to every human action whether political, ecological or ecclesiological.
.The fact remains that this immense theology of history, opposed to Marxism, has probably not reached the end of what is implied by Trinitarian communion, the love of Christ on the Cross and the love of the Spirit. Seeing this triple end of time from the point of view of hope is only the beginning. We still need to turn up the volume. To write Moltmann after Moltman, and to go right to the end of what he has designated as eschatological realities: it will be the task of a generation to move up another notch, to go to the higher space, where it will be charity that best exercises this theology of history. The Trinity as communion of love founds existence; the open Heart of Christ is at the center of history; the Spirit as love lifts human action into the communion of saints and into a political project founded on charity. This will be Moltmann after Moltmann: a theology of history that will be a theology of charity first, and not of hope alone, aligning perichoresis, soteriology of mercy, and an understanding of both the Church and politics as communion. It will be a tribute to Moltmann to take his theology of history to the more ardent degree that hope alone does not account for, and that love alone can glimpse. If the Trinity really is a political program, it will be in the order of charity.
Emmanuel Tourpe
[1] H.U. von Balthasar, La Dramatique divine, IV, Namur, Culture et Vérité, 1983, p. 150.
[2] H. Goudineau-J.-L. Souletie, Jürgen Moltmann, Paris, Cerf, 2002.
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Read in the NRT :
- an analysis of Theology of Hope in the NRT by Paul Tihon s.j. (1971)
- uAn overview of Moltmann's ecclesiology of communion, by Jean Rigal (1998)