Moltmann – Page 2 – Salvaged Faith

Moltmann Conversation – Session 4 Justice

Posted on September 10, 2009Leave a comment

• War and Peace = 3 options 1) chance swords into Christian swords and become a dragon killer – the evil kingdom is oppressed, the axis of evil eliminated, etc. HCE option and atomic bombs into Christian atomic bombs; 2) leave the swords to the unbelievers – this is an option outside of the perfection of Christ, but the wars are going on and on and on; 3) change swords into plowshares and change war industry into an ecological industrial complex and this is is not to become a peaceable man but a peacemaking man – this would be my option to try to change swords into plowshares. Take swords out of the hands of the violent and make them into peace, because mankind will not survive with swords. For this we need a double strategy – communities which anticipate this peaceable kingdom and on the other hand communities who work for peacemaking in the world. We need peace-makers!

• The anticipation piece, with the piece of resistance- if we embrace hope we live in the peace of resistance. Interested in examples of where are the concrete practices/rhythms/values that we can live as we anticipate. Within the global social movement, resistance only takes us so far before people look for alternatives – where does the church create “landing places” for the future? These movements are not always Christian churches! But many Christians take part in these movements. Some of them are very effective – ie: the green party in Europe, they were an extraparliamentary opposition groups – they formed a party and were bringing the ecological questions to the public. After 20 years, we already see how they pressed these topics/questions of ecology into the other parties – so now they all talk about the environment; same with social justice in Germany – even in free market neo-liberal thought. Showing an alternative life was effective! Many people in Europe don’t join political parties anymore, because that is limited to a nation, while groups are global (like Doctors without Borders).

• Basic communities – different kind of home church – but they tend to embrace practices different from the system – how do they touch you? To live a community life in the slums – to show people how mutual help will bring them out of the misery. The contrary of poverty is is community – b/c in community we are rich in ideas, energies, we can help ourselves. Only the individualization, commercialism that makes people powerless. In community we are strong! Social justice should remind us of the first Christian congregation – Acts 4 – there was not a needy person among them, they had everything in common. This is a promise… but also a commandment in our churches. The church is alive when in the congregation there are communities – smaller groups live together. A lot of churches in Germany are only ½ filled – because you can’t enjoy the service, there is nothing to enjoy – there was a church in Tubingen that is overfilled every Sunday because they consist of smaller communities who meet in houses and work for issues on behalf of the poor, feeding the poor, etc, and then in the service, these groups say what they have done and each speak where they need help and a person who they engaged, etc. (WOW!) This is an old knowledge that a community exists of communities (Wesley class meetings?)

• American public theology has lost a lot of space – the church is relegated to the margins, personal spirituality. Public debate about justice is left to politicians/social services. We wonder in our congregations where is the place of the church? We try to take back some of this public conversation but it’s difficult because the public conversation about justice and goodness is not based on God but is secular. What kinds of vision do you have for the church in relation to that conversation (political theology)? 2 tasks for the church: diakonia – serve the poor and the sick and the homeless and the jobless; prophetic task to say to the powerful and the public “Look! To those who are in the shadows” and without the prophetic voice, the diakonic service would just be reparation and without the diakonic the prophetic would be shallow and empty. Words & deeds. Every person has this experience – if you visit a sick member in the hospital and they say, how nice is it that you are coming b/c my family has forgotten me, you will turn around and go to the family and ask why do you leave your family alone in that hospital?! Same is true for the church at large! We need the silent work and the prophetic voices. You cannot make this – prophets are called and sometimes against their will.

• When I read your work and the work you are asking us to engage into – living the prmise right now… are we becoming co-creators of the kingdom or is this something that we are just to expect to come and to happen? We prepare the way for the righteousness of God to come in our possibilities and our potentialities ,which are certainly limited. Otherwise the kingdom would be the kingdom of man and not of God, so we should have in minds the difference, even if we can and must anticipate the justice of the kingdom. 20th century was called the Christian century – but divided by the colonial powers of the west, and the abyss of WWI, the end of this belief in progress. Now this belief in progress is returning in this idea of globalization – finance/goods/products – this is approaching already with an impact on the environment so we have a globalization without the globe! We need a globalization of social justice, peace-making relationships

• Abu Ghirab – thought of Moltmann’s story and how he said the main thing that helped you follow Jesus was that you experienced so much grace at the hands of your captors – you went back to the camp where you were a prisoner… interested in tension between those two stories. Talk about grace and tragedy: I share with you the anxiety about what your own country can do to other people – it is terrible. We never expected this to happen from the hands of Americans. We had other experiences with Americans after the war in Germany when they started the Marshall plan and the care packages coming, so it’s more convincing to love your enemy than to hate and kill the enemy! So what happened in this prison and Iraq was outrageous and I cannot understand an administration that allows this to happen. But let me stop b/c I don’t want to interfere with your internal affairs – 20 years after the close of the camp I was in, we surviving inmates came together in the same place where nature had taken over the camps and we had worship outside under the oak trees and invited the camp commander to the meeting and he said he had never heard about prisoners who voluntarily came back to the place where they were imprisoned and praised God for what they had experienced! But that is what happened to them and it was a great and gracious gift of the Brit. Govt. and the YMCA to give the former enemies a new chance for life and we will never forget that . After WWI different story, but after WW2 we experienced only help to stand up, to get away from the ruins, to rebuild Germany – reinvented their country with the help of the English, Amerians and the French. This is a much wiser policy when you are against enemies.

• The sweeping up of you into the Hitler Youth and there are young people in other countries who are likewise getting swept up into these movements – any perspective on that? The resistance movements against the Hitler regime were strong in other places because the Germans were an occupation force – to form a resistance in your own people makes you an alien in your own people. To resist apartheid as a black man, was to resist on behalf of your people, but the whites who resisted became isolated in their own people and alienated from own families. This is much more difficult and painful – but one should not… in Germany after WW1 – patriotism was so strong that only a few could go into resistance against your own father – after a time of being alienated in this way – there is no fathership in dictatorship and tyranny! I said to myself when I returned home I will never serve in a german army again – but if I have the chance to kill the german dictator I will do it. I was committed to peace and killing the tyrant. I told this to Mennonites and they said “oh, that’s okay”

Moltmann Conversation – Session 3 Crucified God

Posted on September 10, 2009Leave a comment

• Soteriology didn’t make sense until I read this book – Shroyer

• Don and ann from a pastoral perspective, other speaker coming from a personal working through pain and changing ideas of God – three years since his 4 mo. Son died. Questions of where God is in the midst of that. Moltmann is helpful in remembering the pathos of God – the passability of God. Asking the Why? The why questions is not helpful, because there is no answer we would accept. The why question Jesus answered was the resurrection, but not an explanation. We ask for what will not satisfy us – we don’t want to have an answer – there is no answer that can bring us to peace with the suffering. If we feel the presence of the suffering Christ next to us, in us, that he shares our suffering and we his, then we have consolation. The other question is whether there is a process after death ,to bring the destiny of a life that was cut short – I believe there is. God will bring to a good end what he had begun with a human person

• Dismissal of the question of theodicy, and yet the question is so ubiquitous – I affirm that this is the wrong question, Caputo talks about weak forces in the world from physics (like gravity) – yet people constantly critique God – is this only a philosophical thing: it comes from the stoic philosophy… if God is omnipotent and good, how can ____. So there is no understanding of love, suffering, compassion because it starts from those two qualifications of God from greek philosophy and not from the scriptures. The more I thought about it, I not only felt the compassion and sympathy of Jesus in his passion, as our suffering, but also the bereavement of the Father. If Jesus really was true in saying “why hast thou forsaken me” then the father is also forsaken by his son and we then have two sides of the triune one which suffer bereavement as we do, and the other who suffers forsakenness. For me at least, this was a consolation.

• Challenge in pastoral care – people want a god that is very powerful and want concrete answers – that God is vulnerable, how do we communicate that to our churches? By preaching the presence of Jesus Christ instead of talking about a God apart from the life and the destiny of Jesus Christ. When in my younger years talked about this morning had problems with God, Jesus came and solved these problems I had with God. This is a problem people have with God, but they won’t have them with Christ – without Christ, I would certainly be an atheist as the other members of my family because looking into a human mystery I am not convinced there is a God that has everything under control. Can’t look in the face of a tsunami and see God’s love…. I don’t like general talk about a god – there are so many gods good and evil

• Theologians listening to people, when I speak to people as a pastor and talk about God suffering with them, they feel disappointed b/c they want someone to pull them out. How does the suffering God give us hope? The suffering God is a compassionate God – the god who is there in your distress and situation, he is not far away from you b/c he is compassionate and suffering with you. Other hand – outcome of crucifixion = resurrection, new life, eternal life. We trust the same God that is with us will raise us and bring us into that new life. Suffering God is only the one side. Other side is the God of life. We have a hard time looking at both side. The joy of God and the joy with God at the end is greater than the suffering and grief we experience.

• Validity of the theodicy question? Volf said that atheists are closer to God than theists b/c they are arguing with God constantly… someone said it’s like Moltmann experienced Christ and then fell into the trinity: Looking at Christ, I see God, his God is my God. Theism is a general understanding of transcendence and that there is a higher power somewhere. Atheism is difficult because we had this type of protest – atheism. The best story about it is in the brothers karimozov – Ivan protests because of the suffering of an innocent child – I have nothing against God in heaven, but this earth as God’s kingdom I reject b/c there is not justice on earth. We had that kind of protest atheism after the war that the German Catholic poet said, I don’t like these atheists – they always talk about God! But another time of atheism which is just banality – just talk. In 19th c. the theodicy question is: If God, why evil? Best answer = no God, so the question collapses.

• The god the atheists are debunking is not the God we experience – how so: They have no use for God in their life, neither negative nor positive – you can live without using, but you miss a lot of your life – the liveliness of your life. There are two lands in Europe where atheism is wide spread, perhaps because of a long tradition of suffering under religious persecutions

• Protest atheism – protest hope… as people of God in the world, we live as protesters for hope, holding onto it in the face of suffering and reality: when one has seen the God of Hope (1 Peter 3) we wait and hasten the coming day of the Lord… we wait expectantly for someone that we have been promised is coming – we don’t adjust to unjust conditions in the present because we know that it can and will be changed and therefore you resist conformity and silence to injustice and violence in your surrounding. To wait in this sense means to resist.

• How do we actively resist and be in dialogue and resistance as the church? Follow the Sermon on the Mount – resist capital punishment…. In all the churches we pray, but the NT calling is not only to pray but to pray and watch so open your eyes if you pray to God and see what is a contradiction to God and what is an analogy to the coming of God – watch and don’t close your eyes and transcend to the other world.

• ?:– we have turned this instrument of painful dying into something of gold and silver – we should be reminded of the cross of God again and again and those who followed the crucified one – the early Christians who were called in their surrounding atheists because they refused to serve the political demons of the Roman Empire and they suffered the same fate of Jesus. Only changed after Constatnine – HCE = two crosses… the real Cross of Golgatha, the other is the dream cross of Constantine – on this sign we will win and they painted it on their shields and they won the battle… since that time we have these two crosses. The german, Victoria, st. george cross… they all go back to emperor Constantine and this makes a lot of confusion! All Christian nations have a cross on their flag – only the Americans don’t have it and that’s good (but we have turned our flag into a cross!!!!) On God, One Cross, One Empire – this was emperialistic because of the oneness of God and the oneness of Caesar – St. George = dragon killer saved the church, changed from a Martyr to a dragon killer… St Michael = archangel killing the dragon in heaven, symbolism of Holy Christian Empire that worked until the present day. I agree with the Anabaptists that we must go back to the origin to find a new future for Xty in the world – apart from this time of Xian imperialism

• Atonement theory – Penal Substitutionary, Christus Victor – Jones calls it the Indentification theory, that God identifies with the forsaken part of humanity and the atonement…? We identify with Christ on the cross – so it’s a double identification… is that right? Is that theologically, economically a transaction that takes place in the atonement. It’s very appealing that God suffered, was really tempted, really walked in our shoes, and when we identify with his suffering on the cross, that’s atonement.. How does itwork? We can call it 1) Christology of solidarity, he suffers with us, 2) he suffers for us, the guilty… both sides belong together. He suffers for us is a reconciling suffering – but we must see both sides together. He was given up for our sins and raised for our justification, so the whole process is called justification, on the other hand forgiveness of sin, the crucified one, on the other resurrection – has to bring you to a new life, a new righteous life. There is another point – I had tried to convince Catholics and Lutherans about it, but couldn’t get through. 1) justification of the sinner – but what about victims of sin? Must we not speak about justification of victims of violence and injustice – God is righteous because he gives right to those who suffer. The victims are important and the justification of the victims is the first act – in practical terms, the sinners who have become guilty of their victims have a very short memory, if they remember at all – but those who suffer have a very long memory. For those on the side of the guilty want to enter into life, you have to listen to victims because they tell you who you really are – there is no justification of sinners w/o justification of victims first!!! After the war, we listened to the stories of survivors of concentration camps- because we didn’t know what happened in the death camps. We listened to their stories and looked into the eyes of the survivors and became aware of who we the Germans really were. Same took place in the truth commissions in Africa – the victims must tell the stories, perpetrators must listen to the stories, or they can’t become aware of their guilt. Sacrament of repentance! Confess the truth, change your mind, make good what you have done evil as you can… but there is no ritual/sacrament for the justification of the victims – they have to overcome depression, weakened, degraded – we need to help them get out of this, so that they can overcome feelings of revenge to overcome evil by the good – so they can be alleviated, can raise their harts to God – can find a new self-confidence.
(Resources from Missy Meyers – Andrew Sung Park – rituals for victims… Ruth Duck has some communion liturgies and resources that are helpful here)

• Talk about love. What is so helpful about your work is it reframes so much for us – “anyone who enters into love and suffering enters into God – his forsakenness is lifted in the forsakenness of Christ – need not look away from the negative and death” I think you are expressing a whole new understanding of love that we get from God that helps us experience pain and suffering: The greatest challenge when suffering comes is to become apathetic, to not love anymore because it will cause only pain. If you love no one, you will feel no suffering – if you don’t love yourself you will not feel your own death b/c you don’t care. I saw soldiers who became so apathetic that they don’t care about death b/c they were completely resigned and no logner in service of life, but in service of death. We have similar development with terrorists today – once said – Your young people love life, our young people love death – if you love death, you cannot be threatened with punishment! You cannot feel any deterrent. This is a real danger. If you love life again, you risk disappointment, you must be ready to suffer on behalf of your compassion for another person and you must be ready to feel their dying. (I wonder how this relates to the health care conversation – we don’t want to see/feel other people’s pain and are only worried about our own)

• Personal salvation, Personal cross? All of creation has the space for redemption I nthe cross: In Western tradition we lost the cosmic traditions of Christology that we find in Ephesians and Colossians – that Christ died for the redemption of the universe – it is also corrupted and there are conflicting powers in the world so that even the universe needs reconciliation… not that only humans will be saved, but the universe will be saved – it is a deification of the cosmos! Christ became human so that the whole cosmos will become the place where God makes God’s home

• Universalism? Not a Universalist because there are some people I don’t want to see again – but God created them and would certainly like to see them again. Universalism is not only to speak about all human beings, but to speak about the universe, the stars and the moon and the sun and the whole cosmos. This is always misunderstood by fundamentalists that want a dual end or to have the other go to hell, this is anti-creation! I don’t want to go to heaven, the angels have their home in heave – I want to be reaised on earth and to live on the new earth in which justice lives. God in the end will be all in all – so where then is heaven? Christ ascent to heaven has an eye opening effect on us to those we wish to go to heaven. Luther once said in treatise on preparing for dying – don’t look at hell in the destiny of others – don’t look at heaven in your own destiny – look at hell in the wounds of Christ, there the hell is overcome, because Christ suffered.

Moltmann Conversation – Session 2: Method

Posted on September 10, 20091 Comment

Method w/ Tripp Fuller:

• You broke some of the rules of German Protestant Systematic Theology that would have been part of your theological education. “Every consistent theological system lays claim to totality… in principle one has to be able to say everything… everything has to fit in w/o contradiction… an aesthetic charm… this is a dangerous seduction… humanly speaking, truth is to be found in unhindered dialogue: Aquinas – Is there a God or not? 5 ways of speaking about that.. and then he died. b/c all the great theological systems of medieval times must have an open end, because of the paraousia of Christ. Similar to the great cathedrals – they are beautiful, but they are not allowed to be finished, b/c you must keep at least a hole open for the coming of God – otherwise the system of theology would replace the coming of God/presence of God. A theological system begins with prolegomena – the clearing of the throat. Tillich – message, system, everything related to everything.. but he’s rarely quoting the bible, rarely in discussion Barth started w/ presuppotion: prolegomena w/ self-revelation of God. Dogmatics are for those who are inside the church – good for developing Christian doctrines on things like predestination. But very weak and poor at dialoguing with contemporaries. Theology of nature is the task of Christian theology – our theology is not just for Christians, it is for the kingdom of God for the mission for those who are outside. Yale school: Xian theology for Xians, Chicago school: Xian theology for everybody, otherwise no mission! Moltmann: Xian theology for the kingdom, starting with X and the HS

• Did the fact you didn’t grow up in a tradition give you more freedom? We feel like we need to defend the heritage of the system in which we were reared: Christ is more than one denomination! =) reformed theology was my origin, ecumenical is my future

• Many young people met you in the course of theological education where we have read you after 9/11… Moltmann’s theology helps us to talk about God in a world after world tragedy (following WWII) – What advice do you give us as pastors still wrestling with this experience?: Moved by “Night” by Elie Wiesel, God was not absent, but God suffered with them. This is his recommendation to the victims/families of 9/11 – that God suffered with them, that the terrorists did that act against God also… God is not punishing us by these events. “you carried us like a mother who carries a child in her arms, like a father carries a child through the desert, bearing us on eagle’s wings” This carrying gives his world time, and a chance, and a future – this is the omnipotence of God. Not in control of everything, but carrying and bearing everything.

• Idea of an impassable God? The God of Israel is not apathetic, is full of pathos, full of anger (wounded love) and passion for his people. If God is an apathetic God, then his image of us must be apathetic too – but for us, apathy is an illness. Get out of apathy – it is better to be defeated than to not begin the fight. How was this received – controversial “I like to be controversial”

• You use experiences others don’t – mystical experiences, and don’t express doubt. Advice to pastors about how to do that: Put life and death questions together with theological questions – only way to make it unabstract – otherwise it’s a game only for play. Life experiences are the source of theology.

• Scripture and methodology – the church and theologians need to read forwards and backwards in scripture: I read the bible with the presuppotion to meet the divine word in human words. And when I meet the divine word which became incarnate in Christ – his suffering, death and resurrection – then I feel to meet the truth. But then I have also a contrarian over against the human expressions over the human experiences of the truth. Eg: Paul Galatians 3:28 – all one in Christ & heirs of the kingdom. Justified equality of men/women… but Paul also says women should shut up in the congregation! So I ask, what sentence is closer to Christ – and then my decision is clear. If the women silent, we would have knowledge of the resurrection of Christ! And one of the co-missionaries of Paul was female – Phoebe = bishop of small congregation. Some of these are human expressions, not infallible expressions – if we look at the criteria of the incarnate word of God – Christ. In the letters, we read that the Jews crucified Christ, but this is wrong – the Jews couldn’t crucify persons, only stone – this was a Roman affair. The Jews are not the enemies of God. Read in Paul – Romans 9-11, and we say that this is closer to Christ… only criticized based on the criterion that is in scripture itself!

• A lot of strife in the American church – boils down to biblical hermeneutics – we simply read the bible differently – you are advocating a hermeneutic by which we look at what is closest to Christ. How do you determine that? (noting that you don’t discount personal experience) My question to fundamentalists is: do you really read the bible? Do you understand what you are reading? Just to quote the bible on homosexual persons is wrong, because the term doesn’t appear in the original Hebrew words, etc… so we should not leave biblical hermenutics to the fundamentalists, who believe only in 50 fundamentals and not the rest.

• What is it like to be married to a theologian? Convinced me to say not “this is the case” but “I think this is the case.” Not to make objective statements – because this is my experience – to leave room for others to make up their own mind and not just to quote me. There is no theological dialogue in our house before breakfast.

• Other side of 9/11 question – dealing with tragedy justifies the myth of innocence for our own political philosophy. Impact of liberation theology: what kind of invitation to share and proclaim the insights to people who may not even question that there is complicity in American foreign policy: Political theology overcomes hesitations/limitations of our churches during the Nazi regime, question of two kingdoms = don’t mix theology with politics. In fact, supported b/c of political theology. Internal reason for change = the dead of Auschvitz were pressing on our conscience, we had to change in memory of those people. We still have strong social legislation – we take care of people who are vulnerable.

Moltmann Conversation: Lightning Round

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• JPII: He was a good pope.
• Pannenburg: he is a very dear friend and opponent
• Bonhoffer: died too early
• Alfred North Whitehead: very complicated to read
• Derrida: hmm… I think postmodernity is just another form of modernity.. okay – we have universal dangers which we can meet only united, we can not split up and everything goes and everyting had their own narrative… we live under the strength of the climate catastrophic, over the strength of terrorism… I don’t see why we should give up these universal questions we have to face and answer for this time of postmodern
• Hauerwas: New Testament speaks not about a peaceable kingdom but a peace-making kingdom.
• Martin Luther: Great German & Reformed… MLK – what is the difference?
• Newman? – there was competition between us – great hermeneutic theologian, more adventurous, but since we are both retired, now we are good friends… good beer and a good glass of wine
• Augustine – ask his wife about him… too close to his mother, but I guess that happens
• Freud – there was a colleague of mine who said you can understand Freud only if you know Austrians in Vienna – he served during WWII in an Austrian unit and they only theme of Austrian soldiers from the morning to the night was sex.
• Marx – I like the early Marx, not the Marx of the Capital – early Marx had influences on ___ philosophy, the naturalization of human beings and the humanization of nature, early writings was right and the communifest manifest is one of the great documents of the 19th century, even if you disagree – one of the texts we should read
• Nicholas Pusso? I may have missed my classes on him
• Mirslav Wolf – dear friend, gifted theologian, he came to me in Tubingen to write his dissertation on work and Marx, and when he discovered I had not studied that, this was the beginning, but then he was drafted and when he returned, he was full of signs of suffering and resistance so I loved him very much when he returned from Yugoslavia wounded. And then he wrote a book on unity… and now he’s going on writing. Wanted to go to Heidelberg… or you go to Yale and become American postmodern theologian
• Schleirmacher – lot of criticism of his methods… but most of all that he disliked the OT – the relationship to the OT is the same of the Xianity to other religions, and this is not true. It is for my reformed communistic presby heritage, the OT is tof the same significance as the NT for me. I read the two testaments parallel to one another – they both point to the same future coming of God
• Pelagius – he is the saint of American Christians.

Moltmann Conversation – 1: Method/Life

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• Talking about theological method is like listening to someone clearing their throat – if you do it too long, people will leave

• Easy to tell, difficult to live through these years. Born in 20’s in Hamburg, secular family of educators, no connections to a church – NO church in Hamburg,

• Went to Christmas eve not to celebrate birth of Christ, but to celebrate the holy family: father, mother and first child

• Wanted to study physics – @ 16 started studying quantum physics, but then drafted into German army

• Royal Air Force came and destroyed Hamburg w/ “firestorm” – 14,000 (40,000?) people died on these nights at the end of July, mostly women and children b/c the men were already on the front lines… person standing next to him was bombed, and he was spared – “inconceivably”

o Two questions – Where is God? Why am I not dead like the others?

o These two questions followed him and tortured him for years

• Became a prisoner of war – spent time asking those questions

• My return to life from completely desperate, all prisoners in the camp were trying to conceal their wounded seals by an armor of untouchability

o Blooming cherry tree: overwhelmed by this demonstration of life that he nearly collapsed – still feel the weakness in his knees as he remembers it

o Scottish brothers were so kind to them as their enemies – looked at them like human beings – sensed forgiveness of guilt without confessing

o Distributed bibles (would have expected cigarettes!) and found the psalms of lament – esp Psalm 39.. lost his interest in poems of gothe and faust and started reading the psalms and the death cry of Jesus “my God, my God, why have your forsaken me” – found a fellow sufferer who understands

• Felt jesus in his life and felt like he was taking him (a lost prisoner) up to the resurrection… lost interest in math/physics and wanted to find the truth of Christian faith – seeking God

• Education camp for teachers in post war germany – funded by an American businessman

• First theology book he read was Nehibors “nature and destiny of man” then learned Hebrew and greek… first contact with the church

• Returned hom in April of 48 – his soul was healed from the wounds of the war in the post war time – had come together with Jacob through the struggle with the dark side of God. Experienced the dark sides of God and that experience was also the warmth of his love, the presence of his countenance, the shining face.

• Met wife @ school… passed doctoral examinations and a wedding in same year

• Impression after reading Barth that there can be no new theology, so turned to study of history of reformed theology.

• Began as a pastor in a rural congregation – I had a PHD, but was trying to bridge life experience to life experience – but couldn’t build a connection with them – they were all with their cows! More interested in the 10 commandments than in existential self-understanding problems

• As a pastor had young/old/all the problems of life – as a professor had only young students and a distance between him and the others – hard to bring life into this more distant way of doing theology than he experienced in his congregation

• Guest prof at Duke – differences between German and Duke students… G – What is the church?, Duke – How to run the church?

• Saw race relations in the US in the 60’s – MLK Jr. shot when he was at a conference – “was this the end of my American dream?”

• Began to love America after witnessing a sit-in, people standing up for what they believed in, holding on to hope, “We Shall Over Come”

Conversation pieces:
• The significance of what it meant for him to convert from a secular culture is hard to imagine… what is the message of Faust, Gothe – what was the appeal of it: do good, love the beauty of nature, follow your instinct for adventures of life – humanism, freewill of reason and emotions. Gothe was convinced God is present everywhere and everything is divine – with this supposition, you can’t go through war, and imprisonment and suffering – it collapses very quickly.

• In the war you had close friends die right in front of you, you learned Hitler was exterminating Jews, were these some of the events that caused that to collapse: There were no words for these experiences of forsakenness and destruction – I found the words in the psalms of lament and in Jesus

• “all the best theologians were pastors” Do you continue to draw on those years of pastoral ministry?: when a theological thought occurs to me, I ask what would the people think about it, what would they make with it. Then of course, the people of my congregation appear in my virtual eyes and react to it. Listen to the people’s questions and their answers. The people should not be shy and get away from “professional theology” but should take responsibility for their education – they have connections!!

• Can you tell us the story of being in Latin America: I cam by chance to live there, was invited to give lectures in Buenos Aires and then went to other schools there. Managua, Nicaragua which had been destroyed by war – very self-conscious people, had won their freedom by themselves. Story of how his book “the crucified God” fell out of the bookshelf into the blood of Sobrino when he was killed.
o Conference with liberation theologians – comparison with Marxism, labels thrown around… He knew Marx very well, but he was not a Marxist – the next day, realized all the liberation theologians in Brazil were white! Not black! Then someone from Cuba looked around and said more than a half of humankind is female – there are no females in the room!

• Franke read from EinT, my favorite is intro to the Trinity and the Kingdom of God. You write in preface that after talking to liberation theologians, you realized you were a white, German theologian – so talked about 6 contributions. Impact of burgeoning liberational theology world: Started in theology of hope – resurrection of Christ; then turned b/c antinomianism to the experiences of the cross; book on the crucifixion only – Jesus as son of God and God the Father and we asked where is the Holy Spirit? I found it and wrote this social doctrine of the trinity because since Augustine, we have a psychological doctrine of the trinity – his image is the subject of will and reason – Christ and H.S. – This I found misleading ecause then the misleading b/c then HS only the interrelationship – but they are already interrelated! If the HS is the relationship, then the HS is not a subject! In the Western tradition in the icons of the Trinity – two persons and the dove… in the Eastern tradition – three angels sitting around the table. For a complete doctrine of the trinity, we need the idea to create the social doctrine of the trinity – F/S/HS interrelated, perichoresis, mutual indwelling… then it is completely clear that the Christain congregation is a good image of the Trinity… we are one and we are in one another. Holy Trinity as most basic community. It’s not a mystery – it’s very simple. If you come to fellowship with Jesus, you come into fellowship with the God he called Abba-Father, and you feel the life giving energies of the Spirit. Before we developed the doctrine of the trinity, we lived already in God, surrounded by God – we don’t believe in the Trinity, we live in the Trinity

• Appreciate the way you have helped us talk about the unity of the trinity. Jesus said I and the father are one – not one and the same. DS comes from a non-doctrine based church… their unity comes not from their doctrine but through Christ who provides the unity. As pastors of congregations where there are disagreements – this unity that is not sameness is important: Jesus addressed God as Abba-Father, Paul heard the abba prayer in Galatia and Rome, but after the first century, the prayer disappeared and was replaced with “Our Father who art in Heaven” with a great distance, patriarchalism… if we would use the Abba prayer, we would feel the presence of Jesus in that moment! Tried to convince congregations to replace Lord’s Prayer with Abba prayer – because then you are already in the Trinity. Not just three persons, but three rooms- they give room for the other persons within.

Moltmann Conversation – Notes from Opening with John Franke

Posted on September 10, 2009Leave a comment

1. Job of theology – what is God doing in the world today? in the church today?
2. Have you ever noticed Christians don’t and have never agreed? especially on BIG issues!
3. How do we make sense of that?
4. It’s not THE Christian tradition, but many traditions and ways of Christ.
5. Franke hopes in part that his work (Manifold Witness) will cause people to stop asking why the emergent village doesn’t have set theological beliefs/values
6. the proper way to understand orthodox Biblical Christianity is diverse and pluralist and that is what God designed!
7. Emergent village values church in all its forms
8. 16th century debate = struggle to come up with one right way , but we value plurality.
9. we ALL do theology – not one right system of doctrine, not experts who stand at the front who tell everyone the way it has to be… but within the framework there will/should be a HUGE plurality.
10. Explorations in Theology “Thelogy was and still is an adventure of ideas…. the road emerged only as I walk in it, shaped by personal experiences and political climate of my time. Not concerned with correct idea, but want to explore what is new – and to help others discover theology themselves.” – Moltmann
11. “Don’t ever let my theology keep me from seeing what you are doing in the world” Franke’s prayer
12. We have to be faithful to the vision of plurality we have set for ourselves… How do we open up the dialogue and expand our demographics? Include more people!! The church NEEDS all the nations – all voices, all people.

Moltmann Conversation – Notes from 101 w/ Danielle Shroyer

Posted on September 10, 2009Leave a comment

Moltmann 101

I. impressionistic theologian (nice analogy)

II. Life
A. Hamburg, Germany, secular parents, commune?, spent time gardening on Sunday mornings
B. Loved Einstein, mathematics, science – apathetically joined the Hitler Youth – but was a terrible soldier, German POW – learned about God in the POW educational camp
C. Struck by the power of the story when reading the bible
D. Started theological training, pastor, professor
E. Because of lack of training – not a systematic theologian – not start with doctrines

III. Method
A. Started not by a narrow focus, but through the broadest lens possible and started with eschatology – changed the method of how people understood eschatology
B. We can see doctrine in how it relates to everything else
C. Trilogy! (not intentional)
D. People wanted him to do systematics – no way!
E. Influenced by many other theologians along the way

IV. Theology of Hope
A. Came out at a time when it was a faux paux to talk about eschatology – we are rational men who shouldn’t talk about that tacky subject…. So Moltmann writes all about eschatology
B. The idea that we are too “modern” for eschatology is stupid – unhistorical historicity – you have created a way of speaking of the world that is not grounded in anything real whatsoever
C. The one thing that makes this life real is that we have a hope in something that is coming in the FUTURE
D. Promise of God always taking us towards a future horizon
E. It’s not something we tack on to the end of dogmatics, but it is the medium of Christian faith as such – the glow that suffucies everything here in the dawn of an expectant new day
F. The minute we turned to despair we instantly stop believing in Jesus – if we believe in Easter, we can’t be people of despair!
G. Why do we hope? What gives us the right to have this hope? Because the way God reveals Godself is by saying “I promise…” and God does. “I promise I will make all things new!” so we are constantly facing that future of hope
H. In America – hope has become the opiate of the masses, a joke that people who can’t get their lives together talk about: Moltmann – hope is not in any sense an opiate for the masses – it is the very thing that makes us feel like we understand the mission of God in the world!!! Hope is what makes us point at an injustice and say – that’s not right! Hope makes us people of protest, because we have not bought into the fact that this is all there is
I. Hope makes us antsy – we can’t feel settled in this world because we have to point out the things that aren’t right and say that there is a day when things will be right.

V. The Crucified God
A. Good Friday and Easter are inseperable realities – so when you talk about hope, you have to talk about what gives us that hope. IMMEDIATE response to the first book.
B. Smackdown moment: soteriology – most theologians only have the sense of thinking about what it does for “sin management” – how does it help me NOT die; cur dues homo – why did God die? However we have to work it, we just want to make sure we are good to go.
1. Moltmann comes and says – hmm, I wonder what the cross meant for God! What did God feel on Good Friday? What was it like for God the Father watch his son die?
2. completely alters the trajectory of soteriology
3. a lot of dialogue with nihilism… at the cross your faith dies, or it should, because look at what really happened
4. but this is where it actually begins Moltmann says… you have to look at Jesus on the cross, as a God who died and suffered among us. You think you understand what it means to look into the abyss? The existential abyss is nothing compared to the abyss of what it means for God to LET God die!!
5. the place where godlessness and godforsakenness comes together
6. godlessness – the killing of innocent life
7. godforsaken – a death you did not deserve
C. Theodicy – God as despot, divine child abuse, God becomes this mean judge; so, we think that is terrible and we try to step in and do something, but then we become despots ourselves and we decide who suffers where and when.
1. God SUFFERS on the cross – there is no impassable God.
2. And God is right in the middle of suffering – God isn’t on the outside listening to his son call for him and not answering, but is also there on the cross calling out not hearing a response
D. Metaphor of intersection – God being in every place “no one can love the cross, it’s awful” But in this place of the intersection, all sorts of separate things fight for one another, atheism vs. theism, death vs. life, hope vs. despair, godforsakenness vs. god-loving, divine vs. human…. All dialectical understandings of our faith collide in this moment
E. Radical break between the reality of the cross where all of these things are fighting and the resurrection. “money move – checkmate!” Because all of those things that were colliding, are answered in the cross – there is a victory! If you go all the way down into the abyss – Easter Sunday encompasses all of creation all victory, all beauty.
F. He took suffering seriously without telling us to go out and seek suffering or without condoning suffering. – this suffering happened only in context of who God is.
G. If we’re going to call ourselves theologians, everytime we come up with something we believe about God, we need to stick it at the foot of the cross – the litmus test for what we understand about Jesus, God, the world, etc.

VI. The Church of the Power of the Spirit
A. Really pastoral and practical, because he didn’t just want to talk about ideas all the time – the mission and act of the people of the faith in the world is VERY important to him = the mission of the church is what this is all about.
B. Hope is not other worldly, I talk about the future, because it’s the only time that makes the present make any sense
C. Giving bearings to the church…. I feel like we are grasping for what our bearings our, lost our sense of the way, lost our direction. I want to help provide some bearings for that course.
D. We have become a people who are too concerned with religious institutions (God, spirituality, Jesus, religion) and have stopped actually living life.
E. Wrote in the hopes that people would live the Christian life again!!! A messianic fellowship. We are the people who get together and actively wait for the coming of Jesus, for the future of God, for the coming of the new creation
F. Sunday: talk about and figure out ways to live out our future reality. And then do it!
G. Church = gathered people who anticipate and work toward coming kingdom 1) before God, 2) before others, 3) before the future…. What will the future say about the Christianity we follow? What will others say about the work we are doing? What will God think about how we are living our faith? (MISSION!!!)
H. God’s glory – the goal of the church = to glorify God. But the deal is, we glorify God by working towards God’s end goal: the redemption and liberation of all creation…. God doesn’t WANT to be glorified unless it’s by the redemption and liberation of all creation…. God doesn’t want to just be glorified for Glory’s sake.
1. Heaven and earth declare God’s glory.. when the shalom of the city is working, then the glory is there!
2. We’ve made God’s glory so far out of our cosmic realm that we don’t even know what we are talking about… but it is something that we practice and work at NOW
I. We tend to ask as theologians really dumb questions in ecclesiology – the more interesting question is WHERE is church? Our job as people of God is not to say what the church is, but to point to where the coming kingdom is. Then we aren’t about the business of protecting “the church” – so if something is happening that is a glimpse of the KOG – and it’s not in church – woo hoo!!!! Celebrate the presence of the church wherever we find it – liberates us to live in the world fully, instead of ghetto-ized Christians.
J. We don’t need to make absolute claims, or totalize belief, we just have to point to hope.

VII. Contributions to Theology Books:
A. Trinity of the Kingdom
1. theology of the social trinity… doesn’t care about the homo usia conversation or the subject conversation…
2. The New Testament talks aobut God by proclaiming in narrative the relationships of F/S/HS – relationships of fellowship open to the world. We know what the trinity is based on the narrative of the story. The story says this – so lets just read the story.
3. These relationship that we see are ones of fellowship – NOT hierarchy – that has been opened to the world.
4. Trinity in the Kingdom – because in this fellowship we are invited into the life of God in the world.
5. UNITY _ we are still monotheists! Ecumenical, pluralistic conversations
6. F/S are one – not one and the same.
7. not numerical unity, but same divine life/goal/love
8. not worried about tasks of the Trinity… in a relational sense, they don’t need work duties/job descriptions… but changing patterns. NOT STATIC
a. The spirit sends and is sent, the spirit is the one who sends Jesus into the world as the Kingdom Come.
b. Not a triangle – but a circle!!!
9. “relationship of F/S/HS is so wide that the whole creation can find space, time and freedom in it”
10. the way that we understand how God makes time space and freedom for all of us to exists and live and move and have our being.
11. perichoresis! =) round dance, mutual indwelling
a. each one always yields to the other in this dance, mutual submission.
12. Isaac Loreas? Zimsum = expanding and contracting, heartbeat of the world where the love of God are constantly expanding and contracting in this perichoretic dance and in this space we are invited and we experience life.
13. eternity breathes itself in between these relationship so as to breathe out the spirit of life.
14. ALWAYS connected to the kingdom. God isn’t just God apart from us – if that is so, in any case, we don’t know it.
15. Moltmann NEVER separates God from the world.

B. God in Creation
1. tension between immanence and transcendence
2. in creation there is a secret hiding of this tension, because God is present and indwelling – as those who have been created by this relational God, God is already present
3. in heaven – relative transcendence, on earth – relative immanence – there is a space between where we wait…. (future of hope!)
4. God is present now, and yet God is not fully present now. 1 Cor. – the promise to end all promises is that God will be all in all.
5. so now, there is this secret (God is dwelling in the world!) but not FULLY – insomuch as we see creation, we can say God is here, but in the future, God will be there even more so.
6. Panentheism – middle ground between Pantheism (God is everything) but also not so radically separate from creation that we cant’ access God here. God indwells in creation by the fact that God made it – we bear the image of the one who created us… all of the cosmos has this indelible image of God
7. World of nature bears the prints of the triune God, so we can access the idea of the day God will be God all in all.
8. $move – we got wrong the way we tell the creation story – God made these things… to get to the part where WE show up… the problem with that way of talking is that it assumes that WE are the crown of God’s creation, but we aren’t… Sabbath!!! IS =) God finished the creation, receded back into who God was and rested, rested as being God over and in creation. “the God who rests in the face of his creation does not dominate the world on this day, He feels the world, he allows himself to be affected, to be touched by each of his creatures”
9. The act of creation did in some sense change God. God could always create – but after having created, he’s different. (isn’t this the reality for parents?)
10. This is not an act of dominance – Sabbath is the eschatological place of HOPE – that reminds us why all of this creating happened. Something inherently eschatological about Sabbath… the day that we rest from our work of trying to make the kingdom come and we trust in the fact that the kingdom WILL come. 6 days we labor and we are the people of promise and on the 7th day we stop, lest we get too big for our britches and we worship God and say, we trust you are the God who will make this happen – that we trust you will make this happen.
11. the way that we recognize our relationship with the presence of God in creation. Not only do we rest in God, but on that day, God is also on the Sabbath resting in us.
12. Ecological issues in 1985 – not just about interpersonal power, but our relationship with the creation itself. Not here to gather information for dominance sake, but so that we can participate in the kingdom through the creation.
13. Jubilee – the Sabbath – when we divest ourselves of things in order to further the kingdom we show that we trust in it enough to be a part of it. The feast of redemption
14. first six days – yet not complete. Sabbath is the crowing moment (good, not complete) God is still creating after the first Sabbath
15. The Fall – he doesn’t think that any fall would take away the imprint of the Triune God that is on creation… no sense of our brokenness takes away the fact that God made us. the broken places are still held up in the life of God, and will not be left untended
16. possibility for Godforsakenness – pulls back so that there is a space for us
17. Time = the future of Christ is truly an unfinished future that is really a question mark – everything is up for debate. When we put our trust in Christ, we are trusting in the hope of the one who has always been faithful to God’s promises. Not because we know exactly what will happen, but because we trust in God.

C. The Way of Jesus Christ
1. really good Christology
2. but does Christology in a really open way… because Jesus is still on the way somewhere! All of our Christilogy has to be a theology on the move towards the coming future
3. life lived out in Christ, with Christ, out of expectation of Christ

D. The Spirit of Life (1991)
1. wholistic pnumatology – we normally put her in a tiny box. And add little tiny things we don’t understand there.
2. we feel embarrassed to talk about the Spirit.
3. The Spirit is not some thing off in some other corner, but every experience of life that is joyful is the presence of the spirit!
4. If you go out to dinner and had a good time – the spirit was there, it was life-giving =) all of life that is lived and experienced and enjoyed is done so because of God.
5. no need to separate “more” and “less” religious experiences. The spirit really did come and stay at Pentecost – no reason not to talk about the Spirit!!!
6. God is bound to creation in love = God created in love, so we are beloved. The problems start to happen when we turn away from being God’s beloved – we become miserable and aggressive and mean and angry and selfish and greedy. Because we forgot that we are beloved. “the whole misery of men and women comes from a love of God that has miscarried”
7. Spirit of Love births life to us – and all those places where that experience isn’t fully birthed is where the love of God has miscarried.
8. Full person of the Trinity – beckoning the future to come forth, showing us what it means to bring the future into the present, who makes the KOG to come in Jesus, Breath and Space…. Ruach and Ruah, (in German too!)
a. Breath calls creation into being, breathed out onto the world (valley of dry bones, creation, etc) but also Space (Ps 31) – a broad place, room to move, liberates us to live our lives with freedom – the creative passion for the possible. Downpayment for what is to come. Anytime we feel moved to do something really beautiful in the world – that’s because it’s what is coming – holds us over – keeps us in that hope – helps us protest in all the right ways.

E. Coming of God
1. homeless Shekinah – God is homeless here, so we celebrate God on the Sabbath, but this is not fully God’s home. At the coming of God, the Shekinah will become fully permanent here. When the temple was destroyed, the spirit is holding us together from Sunday to Sunday, but at the coming of God, the Shekinah will be homeless no longer
2. Four Horizons – for God’s glory, new creation, history of humans with the earth, resurrection and eternal life… we tend to do it backwards

F. Experiences in Theology
1. capped off the last books, discussed method of theology – theology is just experimenting in creativity. He just played in something that captivated his imagination.
2. through his theology, he has come into conversation with so many people that he wants to offer his thoughts – Mirror Theology (black theology for whites, feminist theology for men, etc…)

theological hats

Posted on September 10, 2009Leave a comment

In the few days before this emergent village theological conversation event thingy I was kind of nervous. I was thinking about the fact that it has literally been like two years since I read a theological book. I’ve read… a few books between now and then, but nothing with the kind of depth that we will be discussing here. And I miss it. Desperately. And I’m vowing to get back into those conversations as SOON as I get back.

But having not read for a while, I was concerned about whether or not the theological hat would still fit. Would my head have shrunk? Can I make it work?

We started off the conference with Moltmann 101 – which was AMAZING. We covered his 7 major works in two hours. And it was like it all came back to me. No strange funny words, I got the connections, and I was AMAZED at how quickly I wanted to just jump right back into the conversation. I literally took 5 pages of TYPED notes. I couldn’t absorb it all fast enough – it was thrilling.

I think the big thing that I struggle with being the pastor of a small town church is that lack of theological engagement on a regular basis. I know that kind of community exists online in blogs and discussion posts, but I really haven’t gone there and sought it out. And I certainly haven’t been contributing to that part of the conversation. But I want to!

In particular I’m struck by the idea that our theology comes from the conversations we have and the experiences of God we find in our communities – I’m really wanting to do some diving in my own community and explore what kinds of theology are emerging from our small town. But as Shroyer said yesterday – in her reading of Moltmann – we have to hold any of these theological discoveries at the foot of the cross and see if they fit. And that kind of willingness to take our beliefs and set them before God and see if they are merely idols or truly where God is speaking is so hard!!!