Jürgen Moltmann

Religion and State in Germany: West and East

The relationship between church and state in Germany is conditioned by the centuries-long history of state Christianity and also by the struggle for the independence of the churches over against the state. The churches won their critical power against the states power in their opposition to Hitlers dictatorship and the totalitarian Weltanschauung of national socialism. Since the division of the two German states in 1961, a church in socialism has developed in the German Democratic Republic. It is willing both to resist the totalitarian claims of its society and also to join into a critical partnership with the state to develop domestic social politics and peace politics between nations. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the Catholic and Evangelical churches are further developing themselves along the lines of a church for the people (Volkskirche). This understanding of the nature of the church has been repeatedly placed into question since the development of the peace movement in 1981. A critical distance between the churches, on the one hand, and the claims and the political religion of the state, on the other, has consequently developed.

The "Crucified God": A Trinitarian Theology of the Cross

Is it not the case that Christian theology must reopen the theopassion question which it early rejected: Has God himself suffered?

Reconciliation with Nature

The first part of this article argues that the ecological crisis of nature today is, at the same time, a religious crisis of the human race, at least of the Western world. In the second part, three perspectives from the Biblical-Christian traditions are offered which may overcome this religious crisis of the human race and the ecological crisis of nature.

The Fellowship of the Holy Spirit: Trinitarian Pneumatology

‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God the Father and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all.’ This is an ancient form of benediction very generally used in the Christian church. I should like to take it up here, asking what is meant by ‘the fellowship of the Holy Spirit’? Does the divine Spirit enter into community with us human beings? Does he admit us into his ‘community’ with the Father and the Son? Why does the benediction not talk about divine sovereignty and absolute human dependence in connection with the Holy Spirit? Why does it so emphatically use the word ‘fellowship’ instead?

Theology of Mystical Experience

Mystical Theology aims to be a ‘wisdom of experience’, not a ‘wisdom of doctrine’. 1 It is not as theology that it is mystical, but in the fact that it brings mystical experience to expression in words. Mystical experience, however, cannot be communicated in doctrinal propositions. So the ‘theology of mystical experience’ always tells only of the way, the journey, the transition to that unutterable and incommunicable experience of God. So far as its doctrinal content is concerned, the theology of the mystics has up to the present seldom appeared particularly impressive. By tracing the history of ideas, one can easily enough recognise the augustinian, the neoplatonic and the gnostic motifs, and track them back to their roots. With this approach, however, one is not on the same path as the mystical theologians. It is therefore more appropriate to ask what experiences they were seeking to express with the help of those images and ideas. In order to share in their experience, it makes sense to join with them on the same journey, whether with Bernard of Clairvaux on the ‘ladder of love’, with Bonaventura on the ‘pilgrimage of the soul to God’, with Thomas a Kempis on the road of the Imitatio Christi or with Thomas Merton on the ‘seven-storey mountain’.

Resurrection as Hope

The Resurrection of Christ: Traditional QuestionsThe “Resurrection of Christ” is controversial. It does not fit into the modern world of things calculable and manipulable. Is it a historical event among other historical events that took place or that are still taking place? Is it a symbol of the language of times past?

The Blessing of Hope: The Theology of Hope and the Full Gospel of Life

From the perspective of the author’s own theology of hope, this article offers an affirmation and a constructive critical engagement of the ‘Full Gospel’ theology of Korean pastor, David Yonggi Cho. After acknowledgement of certain commonalities in the originating contexts of both Cho’s and the author’s respective theological perspectives, particular points of agreement and suggestions for further expansion and development are presented and elaborated with a view toward a ‘Full Gospel of the Advent of Christ’.

Personal recollections of Wolfhart Pannenberg

On the occasion of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s death in September 2014, Prof. Jürgen Moltmann reflects on how his own professional and personal life intersected over the last six decades with that of his former colleague, from their first meeting as students at the University of Göttingen to their time as colleagues at the Kirchliche Hochschule Wuppertal all the way to their regular meetings between Tübingen and Munich as professors emeriti. Prof. Moltmann lifts up both the mutual respect, which both men had for each other, and also where they parted ways on political grounds. These recollections are an important testimony of one giant of twentieth-century Protestant theology of another.

Control is Good–Trust is Better: Freedom and Security in a “Free World”

“Trust is good, control is better,” said Lenin and those who want the total surveillance state. But who controls the controllers? This ancient question is unanswered. No control works without trust. After looking into different levels of trust from psychology to politics, we ask about trust in God. Only a God who bears the sins and sufferings of the world is trustworthy. Can trust be restored when it is broken? Repentance, confession of guilt, change of the heart and reparation of damages can restore trust on the personal level as well as on the political.

What is a theologian

This article is the text of a lecture delivered on 12 November 1998 at the Pontifical University, Maynooth. Professor Moltmann reflects on such questions as: Who is a theologian? How can one become a theologian?, and offers a personal, distinctly Lutheran answer to these existential questions.