minority report: reconsidering jürgen moltmann's turn to a theology of the cross

Minority Report: Reconsidering JürgenMoltmann’s Turn to a Theologyof the Crossijst_568 26..43

RYAN NEAL*

Abstract: According to virtually any set of criteria, Jürgen Moltmann’s first twoprogrammatic books, Theology of Hope and The Crucified God, are strikinglydifferent. The differences are due to his turn to a theology of the cross in theintervening years. Yet Moltmann, with the vast majority of scholars concurring,argues that the two works form a continuous argument. This article investigatesthe problems with the consensus judgement and calls for a revisionof the relationship between the two works, based on the nature of thecross–resurrection dialectic inherent to his programme and also on boththe necessity and timing of the turn.

Introduction

Jürgen Moltmann is arguably best known for his first two programmatic works,Theology of Hope1 and The Crucified God.2 According to virtually any set of criteria(focus, tone, theme, resources, context and claims), the books are strikingly different.This is attributable to Moltmann’s turn to a theology of the cross in the yearsintervening. With the vast majority of scholars concurring, he claims continuityin the argumentation. Regardless of any apparent differences between the two works,the consensus has concluded that they are consistent and congruent, with the secondwork representing a continuous argument. This view is so readily and widely

* Religion, Anderson University, 316 Boulevard, #1099, Anderson, South Carolina 29621,USA.

1 Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a ChristianEschatology, trans. J.W. Leitch (London: SCM Press, 1967). Hereafter TH.

2 Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation andCriticism of Christian Theology, trans. R.A. Wilson and J. Bowden (London: SCM Press,1974). Hereafter CG.

International Journal of Systematic Theology Volume 14 Number 1 January 2012doi:10.1111/j.1468-2400.2011.00568.x

© 2011 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

accepted amongst Moltmann interpreters that it has ossified into dogma, operating onthe level of presupposition. After briefly setting the scene by distilling the contentsand contexts of both works, the spotlight focuses on the relationship between them.Reconsidering the consensus judgement, this article reopens the issues involved withhis turn to the cross and advances an argument revising the relationship between thetwo works. The concluding section discusses the relevance and the implications ofthe minority report.3

Summary details of Theology of Hope

Theology of Hope was published in the 1960s (1964; ET 1967), an era Moltmanndescribes as ‘brimming over with movements of hope and experiences of rebirth andrenewal’,4 when ‘a new utopian rejoicing undoubtedly prevailed among us’.5 Indeed,the cultural context seemed to summon it.6 There are many emphases or themes inTheology of Hope: the primacy of eschatology, a proper understanding of revelationand history, God as future and the importance of hope. Yet, one distinctive argumentis most salient: the resurrection of Jesus Christ.7 Reduced to its core, the relentlessargument in the text can be summarized succinctly: in the act of raising thedead Jesus, God guarantees his promise, while simultaneously contradictingpresent reality.8 This overriding claim grounds numerous particular elements in thetext: his view of history (and his then-emerging disagreement with Pannenberg),9

3 For an examination of Moltmann’s wider programme, see Ryan A. Neal, Theology asHope: On the Ground and the Implications of Jürgen Moltmann’s Doctrine of Hope(Eugene, OR: Pickwick Press, 2009); Ryan A. Neal, ‘Jürgen Moltmann’, in Ian S.Markham, ed., Blackwell Companion to the Theologians (Malden, MA: Blackwell,2009), vol. 2, pp. 367–84.

4 Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences of God, trans. M. Kohl (London: SCM Press, 1980), p.12; see also Jürgen Moltmann, History and the Triune God: Contributions to TrinitarianTheology, trans. J. Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1991), p. 155.

5 Jürgen Moltmann, ‘What Has Happened to Our Utopias? 1968 and 1989. A Response toTimothy Gorringe’, trans. M. Kohl, in Richard Bauckham, ed., God will be All in All: TheEschatology of Jürgen Moltmann (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1999), p. 116.

6 Jürgen Moltmann, Umkehr zur Zukunft (Munich: Kaiser, 1970; second edn Gütersloh:Gerd Mann, 1977), pp. 11–12.

7 This is typified perhaps by the physical and theological central chapter of the text, ‘TheResurrection and Future of Jesus Christ’ (TH, pp. 139–229).

8 TH, pp. 139, 223. Richard Bauckham claims that TH ‘might equally well have beencalled a theology of the resurrection’ (Moltmann: Messianic Theology in the Making(Basingstoke: Marshall Pickering, 1987), p. 3); see also Wolf-Dieter Marsch, ‘ZurEinleitung: Wohin – jenseits der Alternativen’, in Wolf-Dieter Marsch, ed., Diskussionüber die ‘Theologie der Hoffnung’ von Jürgen Moltmann (Munich: Kaiser, 1967),pp. 11–13; Hendrikus Berkhof, ‘Über die Methode der Eschatologie’, in Marsch,Diskussion, p. 175.

9 TH, pp. 76–86.

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the importance of promise, the negativity of the present, the primacy of the futureand divine revelation.

Context is crucial when reading theology, but especially with Moltmann,because it often helps to explain a particular text, including the goals, and themethod and manner of reaching those goals. Beyond the optimism of the 1960swhich greeted the text, it is clear that he is reacting to two central figures in thegeneration preceding, Barth and Bultmann, who (he believes) essentially ‘transposedeschatology into eternity’ by insisting on redemption in the category of the futurebeyond history and outwith time.10 Thus, Moltmann sets out to show howeschatology is the centre of theology and has greater significance than its previouslyallocated status of dealing with ‘the last things’.11 Alluding to the atheist, heterodox,Jewish philosopher Ernst Bloch,12 Moltmann asserts that eschatology should not beplaced in brackets as an appendix to theology: theology must ‘make “eschatology”the very medium of its thought! . . . [and make present] a “warm stream” of hope inall articles of the Christian faith’.13 Neither can Christian hope be confined to theexistential present (pace Bultmann), for this removes its horizon.14 Situated in termsof critiquing revelation as an epiphany of the eternal present, Moltmann explicitlyemphasizes the importance of future revelation: ‘It is still outstanding, has not yetcome about, has not yet appeared, but it is promised and guaranteed in hisresurrection.’15

Seeking to ensure that past and present are not aligned, indeed cannot bealigned, with the promised future,16 he takes a decidedly negative stance regardingpresent experience and existence: ‘If the word is a word of promise, then that means

10 This is a debatable view, especially as related to Barth. For a fuller discussion, see JürgenMoltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. M. Kohl (Minneapolis:Fortress Press, 1996), pp. 13–16.

11 He belongs to a chorus of recent voices. For a helpful appraisal, see Colin E. Gunton,‘Dogmatic Theses on Eschatology: Conference Response’, in David Fergusson andMarcel Sarot, eds., The Future as God’s Gift: Explorations in Christian Eschatology(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2000), p. 157.

12 Bloch labels esoteric Marxism the ‘warm stream’ of Marxist thought. Though it need notbe investigated here, Bloch’s atheistic understanding of hope influenced Moltmann’sunderstanding of hope from the beginning. On Moltmann’s early view of Bloch, seeJürgen Moltmann, Im Gespräch mit Ernst Bloch: Eine theologische Wegbegleitung(Munich: Kaiser, 1976). For a lucid critique of Moltmann’s questionable reliance onBloch, see Nicholas Adams, ‘Eschatology Sacred and Profane: The Effects of Philosophyon Theology in Pannenberg, Rahner and Moltmann’, International Journal of SystematicTheology 2 (2000), pp. 283–306.

13 Jürgen Moltmann, The Experiment Hope, ed. and trans. M. Douglas Meeks (London:SCM Press, 1975), p. 41.

14 TH, pp. 26–32, 58–69.15 TH, p. 88; see also pp. 51–3.16 For a summary of Moltmann’s position beyond TH, see Jürgen Moltmann, Religion,

Revolution, and the Future, trans. M.D. Meeks (New York: Scribner’s, 1969),pp. 177–99.


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that this word has not yet found a reality congruous to it, but that on the contrary itstands in contradiction to the reality open to experience now heretofore.’17 Thisunderstanding influences Moltmann’s divine ontology: ‘The God spoken of here isno intra-worldly or extra-worldly God, but the “God of hope” (Rom. 15.13), a Godwith “future as his essential nature” (as E. Bloch puts it).’18 ‘Christian hope isresurrection hope, and it proves its truth in the contradiction of the future prospectsthereby offered and guaranteed for righteousness as opposed to sin, life as opposedto death, glory as opposed to suffering, peace as opposed to dissent.’19 Theresurrection influences all aspects of the work; it is the chief doctrine, the supremelocus of God’s identity and the main source of divine revelation. This changeddramatically eight years later, with the publication of his second programmatic work,The Crucified God.

Summary details of The Crucified God

The differences between Theology of Hope and The Crucified God can beexemplified quite easily by comparing a handful of key statements. In theopening pages of Theology of Hope Moltmann asserts that present and future arebinary opposites: ‘eschatology . . . must formulate its statements of hope incontradiction to our present experience of suffering, evil, and death’.20 Note thatsuffering and present experience were negative and oppositional to hope. Compare,however, the perspective in The Crucified God: ‘God and suffering are no longercontradictions . . . but God’s being is in suffering and the suffering is in God’s beingitself’.21 His way of expressing divine ontology changed dramatically, altering hisnotion of divine revelation. Compared with his earlier reflections, the tone is verydifferent: ‘The cross of the risen one, then, reveals who and where God is.’22 Whilein Theology of Hope the argument relies totally on the resurrection, in The CrucifiedGod that role is reserved for the cross.

17 TH, p. 103.18 TH, p. 16; see also Jürgen Moltmann, ‘Der Gott der Hoffnung’, in Norbert Kutschki, ed.,

Gott heute: Fünfzehn Beiträge zur Gottesfrage (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1967),p. 125.

While space does not allow a full investigation here, following Bloch’s atheistic,Marxist philosophy at this point is problematic. Nevertheless, Moltmann admits (Umkehrzur Zukunft, p. 10) that he intended TH not as Konkurrenzunternehmen, but rather as aParallelhandlung to Bloch’s The Principle of Hope, 3 vols., trans. N. Plaice, S. Plaiceand P. Knight (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986).

19 TH, p. 18.20 TH, p. 19.21 CG, p. 227.22 Jürgen Moltmann, Hope and Planning, trans. M. Clarkson (London: SCM Press, 1971),

p. 43.

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The Crucified God opens with one programmatic and methodologicalpresupposition: ‘the crucified Christ [is] the general criterion of theology’.23 Thisassertion rather simplistically evidences the change that has occurred betweenTheology of Hope and The Crucified God, with the cross displacing the resurrection.And with Bloch’s future-oriented divine ontology evidently holding less sway,Moltmann focuses on the crucifixion as the event that exhibits, determines anddefines the Trinity.24 Reflecting on Luther’s understanding, Moltmann maintains thatChristian theology must be a thoroughgoing theology of the cross, staking out hisposition lucidly and comprehensively:

The death of Jesus on the cross is the centre of all Christian theology . . . AllChristian statements about God, about creation, about sin and death have theirfocal point in the crucified Christ. All Christian statements about history, aboutthe church, about faith and sanctification, about the future and about hope stemfrom the crucified Christ.25

Without equivocation, The Crucified God is a systematic enactment of this statement.The future and present are not held as opposites, but rather history is viewed morepositively, with God dramatically acting in history, and present in suffering.Moltmann has altered his programme quite extensively, especially as related tohistory, the relationship between present and future, and divine revelation andontology.

While Theology of Hope was received in a climate of positive expectation,bordering on optimism, in The Crucified God Moltmann engages protest atheism’scriticisms of the classical metaphysical depiction of God. The relevance of thisdiscussion is attributable, in part, to the then-emerging public discourse concerningthe Holocaust.26 (It would be difficult to overstate the importance that Moltmann’sself-awareness of his ‘after Auschwitz’ context has on his programme.) Christiantheology must answer specific atheistic protests: ‘in the face of Auschwitz andHiroshima . . . how should I believe in the goodness and fatherly rule of a God inheaven?’27 The answer, according to Moltmann, is to overcome such protests bypositing not a God of the future, but a theology of the cross which reveals God. Thisarguably one-sided depiction prevails upon his understanding of divine ontology:God is not future (as earlier); he is present in history. After the turn, the crossbecomes the location of divine revelation, which necessitates an altered view of the

23 CG, p. 4, echoing Martin Kähler’s thesis.24 Moltmann is rightly labelled a ‘post-Hegelian’ who, following Hegel, ‘move[d] from the

crucified Christ to the crucified God’ (Cyril O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel (Albany, NY:State University of New York Press, 1994), p. 219); see also Ronald Goetz, ‘TheSuffering God: The Rise of a New Orthodoxy’, Christian Century 103 (13 April 1986),pp. 385–9.

25 CG, p. 204.26 See CG, p. 278; Jürgen Moltmann, God for a Secular Society: The Public Relevance of

Theology, trans. M. Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), pp. 169–90.27 Moltmann, Umkehr zur Zukunft, p. 19.


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relationship between present and future, especially as related to God’s essentialnature. He argues that God is no apathetic deity, detached and unmoved, but ratheris the suffering, crucified God.

The turn to the cross

The differences in the two works are based in Moltmann’s decision to turn to atheology of the cross in the late 1960s. During that time, he turned to the cross byspelling out the close interrelation between the resurrection and the cross moreexplicitly (and tellingly, in the context of criticizing Bloch’s vision of hope). InOctober 1967 he writes:

Where then does Bloch’s positive hope preserve the negative element? Where isthe cross found in this hope?

Christian theology must go further; it discerns in the crucified Christ the deepestabyss of God-forsakenness and hopelessness on earth. But it also believes inEaster . . . Out of the humiliated, poor, and abandoned Jesus who was crucifiedin disgrace, God makes his Messiah of the future, of freedom, and of life.28

This move to stronger emphasis on the cross is neither an immediate nor a conclusivechange in direction. In his Ingersoll Lecture ‘Resurrection as Hope’ (October 1967)Moltmann states clearly (the title notwithstanding): ‘Christian hope is not foundedon the isolated event of Jesus’ resurrection . . . Cross and resurrection thereforeinseparably belong together and interpret each other.’29 In his paper ‘Theology asEschatology’ (April 1968), along with a resurrection and future-oriented discussion,he begins to show an interest in questions related to atheism, which – coupled withhis self-awareness of his post-Auschwitz situation – is the defining context of hisproposed theology of the cross.30

A few noteworthy events occurred worldwide causing a ‘changeover’ in the late1960s ‘from utopian rejoicing to a bleak apocalypse without hope’:31

the Warsaw Pact put a brutal end to ‘socialism with a human face’ [August1968], when the papal encyclical Humanae vitae [25 July 1968]32 blocked thereforming spirit of Vatican II, when Martin Luther King [Jr.] was murdered

28 Moltmann, Religion, Revolution, and the Future, p. 17.29 Moltmann, Religion, Revolution, and the Future, p. 52; see also Hope and Planning,

pp. 194–8.30 Jürgen Moltmann, ‘Theology as Eschatology’, in Frederick Herzog, ed., The Future of

Hope: Theology as Eschatology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1970), pp. 37–8; see alsoJürgen Moltmann, The Future of Creation. trans. M. Kohl (London: SCM Press, 1979),pp. 45–8.

31 Moltmann, ‘What Has Happened to Our Utopias?’, p. 118.32 Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical on the regulation of birth; for further comment, see Moltmann,

God for a Secular Society, p. 218.

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[4 April 1968]33 and Rudi Dutschke shot, and the carpet bombings of theVietnam war started. At that time we came to understand the future as by nomeans open, or an antechamber of unlimited possibilities, but as occupied bycounter-forces and counter-utopias.34

In retrospect, he regards 1968 as the ‘breakdown of hope’ generally.35 It is importantto realize the extent to which the failures of these hopes were unforeseen byMoltmann. Looking back, he states: ‘at the beginning of the 1960s, we wereconvinced and enthused by hope in action, an active, militant hope, which could allyitself with the friendly tendencies in the world process, in the realm of unlimitedpossibilities, to lead to success’.36

Another significant feature of that year is his concerted effort to begin drawingout the implications of a theology of the cross.37 In ‘God and Resurrection’, hisinaugural University of Tübingen lecture (19 June 1968), Moltmann states: ‘If theEaster faith makes a puzzle of the cross of the forsaken one, then obviously the crossmust first explain this Easter faith. By abandoning him, the God who accepted himsacrifices him.’38 The emphasis is not on God as future; now God is supremelyidentified as the one who experiences history (in The Crucified God this experiencecentres on the cross).39 ‘Jesus’ resurrection is only indirectly, but the meaning of hiscross is directly, the foundation of the Christian hope.’40 In 1970, after the turn,Moltmann writes: ‘I have resolved more strongly than ever to reflect on thesignificance of the cross of Christ.’41 Now he has a more comprehensive vision,encompassing both cross and resurrection. The question now becomes: what is therelationship between these two key texts?

33 Moltmann was attending a conference at Duke University, which was interrupted by thenews of King’s assassination (see Religion, Revolution, and the Future, p. vii; Umkehrzur Zukunft, p. 167).

34 Moltmann, ‘What Has Happened to Our Utopias?’, pp. 118–19; he adds to this discussionelsewhere – see especially Moltmann, Umkehr zur Zukunft, pp. 11–14.

For socio-political information on the Federal Republic of Germany in the late 1960s,see Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, ‘The Role of the Federal German Republic of Germany in theWorld, 1949–1982’, in Charles Burdick, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen and Winfried Kudszus,eds., Contemporary Germany: Politics and Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1984).

35 Moltmann, Experiences of God, p. 13. The year 1968 also represents the ‘peak’ of thecivil rights movement in the United States.

36 Moltmann, History and the Triune God, p. 155.37 Tellingly, it is not until 1968 (noticeably four years after its publication) that Moltmann

faults Pannenberg’s Grundzüge der Christologie (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1964), whichhe otherwise deems ‘magnificent’, for an insufficient theology of the cross (Moltmann,‘Theology as Eschatology’, p. 31 n. 43).

38 Moltmann, Hope and Planning, pp. 42–3.39 Bauckham notes that ‘the role of criticising society, which is vital to Moltmann’s

theology, is largely transferred from hope to the cross’, in CG (Richard Bauckham,‘Moltmann’s Eschatology of the Cross’, Scottish Journal of Theology 30 (1977), p. 311).

40 Moltmann, Religion, Revolution, and the Future, p. 53; emphasis original.41 Moltmann, Umkehr zur Zukunft, p. 14.


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Consensus judgement

Moltmann opens The Crucified God by portraying his focus on the cross asdeveloping and strengthening his work;42 indeed he assures readers that Theologyof Hope and The Crucified God are complementary offerings of the dialecticalrelationship of the cross and resurrection, likening the relationship to ‘two faces ofthe same coin’.43 In secondary works the notion of continuity is presupposed; it is anon-issue, and if prodded by a naïve questioner, a brief answer suffices. The questionof continuity has been asked, answered and set aside: any textual differences signify‘a shift of emphasis only’.44 A host of well-informed interpreters (most recognizably:A.J. Conyers, Harvey Cox, Walter Kasper, M. Douglas Meeks, Peter Momose,Christopher Morse, Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz and John J. O’Donnell) reach thesame conclusion: Theology of Hope and The Crucified God present a continuousargument.45 Because he has considered the issue of continuity most fully, Richard

42 CG, pp. 1–5.43 Teófilo Cabestrero, Faith: Conversations with Contemporary Theologians, trans. D.D.

Walsh (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1980), p. 123; the dialectic was present in TH, but theevidence does not support either an implicit or an explicit intention (in 1964) to follow upthat text with one on the cross. See also CG, p. 1; Moltmann, The Experiment Hope,p. 57; Moltmann, Hope and Planning, pp. 43–4.

44 Richard Bauckham, ‘Jürgen Moltmann’, in Peter Toon and James D. Spiceland, eds., OneGod in Trinity (London: Samuel Bagster, 1980), p. 115.

45 Respectively: A.J. Conyers, God, Hope, and History: Jürgen Moltmann and the ChristianConcept of History (Mercer, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988), p. 94; Harvey Cox,‘Gedanken über Jürgen Moltmanns Buch: Der gekreuzigte Gott’, in Michael Welker, ed.,Diskussion über Jürgen Moltmanns Buch ‘Der gekreuzigte Gott’ (Munich: Kaiser, 1979),pp. 134–5; Walter Kasper, ‘Revolution im Gottesverständnis? Zur Situation desökumenischen Dialogs nach Jürgen Moltmanns “Der gekreuzigte Gott” ’, in Welker,Diskussion, p. 143; Meeks, ‘Foreword’, in Moltmann, The Experiment Hope, pp. ix–xvii;Meeks, Origins of the Theology of Hope (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974), p. 93;Moltmann, ‘Nachwort’, in Peter F. Momose, Kreuzestheologie: Eine Auseinandersetzungmit Jürgen Moltmann (Freiburg: Herder, 1978), pp. 174–83; Christopher Morse, TheLogic of Promise in Moltmann’s Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979),pp. 116–17, 168 n. 30; Geiko Müller-Fahrenholz, The Kingdom and the Power: TheTheology of Jürgen Moltmann, trans. J. Bowden (London: SCM Press, 2000), pp. 63, 80;John O’Donnell, ‘The Doctrine of the Trinity in Recent German Theology’, HeythropJournal 23 (1982), p. 161.

For concurring opinions, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, ‘Zu einer christlichenTheologie der Hoffnung’, Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift 32 (1981), p. 90; CarlBraaten, ‘A Trinitarian Theology of the Cross’, Journal of Religion 56 (1976), p. 113;Heino Falcke, ‘Phantasie für das Reich Gottes: Der theologische Weg JürgenMoltmanns’, Evangelische Theologie 61 (2001), pp. 155–6; Jerry A. Irish, ‘Moltmann’sTheology of Contradiction’, Theology Today 32 (1975–6), p. 22; Kazoh Kitamori,‘Buchbesprechung’, in Welker, Diskussion, p. 108; Ulrich Kühn, ‘Rezension’, in Welker,Diskussion, p. 54; Jan Milic Lochman and Hermann Dembowski, ‘Gottes Sein ist imLeiden. Zur trinitarischen Kreuzestheologie Jürgen Moltmanns’, in Welker, Diskussion,pp. 29–32; Battista Mondin, ‘Der gekreuzigte Gott’, in Welker, Diskussion, p. 94; Paul

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Bauckham best represents this school of thought.46 He judiciously lays out thefundamental elements of the consensus judgement accordingly:

Superficially . . . it might seem that The Crucified God is a fresh start inMoltmann’s theology . . . But in reality this is not the case . . . alreadyin Theology of Hope he maintained that Christian theology must bean eschatologia crucis . . . The dialectic of cross and resurrection in aneschatological perspective remains the determining centre of Moltmann’stheology in both books, and once this is understood, the shift . . . is notonly intelligible, but evidently an inner necessity of Moltmann’s theologicaldevelopment.47

In addition to the textual evidence Bauckham relies on, there are biographical andexperiential reasons that lend support to the consensus judgement. Moltmann hasexperienced intimately extreme instances of suffering and death: his ‘elder brotherwas severely disabled’,48 he was a prisoner of war and his ‘first child inexplicablydied at birth’.49

All Moltmann scholars, save one, subscribe to the consensus judgement.50 On onelevel, there are elements in which the consensus opinion is correct, which explainswhy it is widely held. It is true that a cross–resurrection dialectical pattern is presentin Theology of Hope and The Crucified God, along with the fact that Moltmann in theformer references the cross, even using the term eschatologia crucis,51 and clearlyidentifies the risen Christ as the one crucified.52 These points are not denied, but theiraccuracy does not necessitate the conclusion reached. While one can find the termeschatologia crucis (twice) in Theology of Hope, there is a qualitative differencebetween terminology and the grounding and explication of an argument. The

Ricœur, ‘Der gekreuzigte Gott von Jürgen Moltmann’, in Welker, Diskussion, pp. 17–21.Both Arne Rasmusson, The Church as Polis From Political Theology to TheologicalPolitics as Exemplified by Jürgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas, rev. edn (NotreDame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), p. 51 and James Wakefield, JürgenMoltmann: A Research Bibliography (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002), p. 16perceive the change in direction but make no further comment.

46 Bauckham, ‘Moltmann’s Eschatology of the Cross’, pp. 301–2, 308; Bauckham,Moltmann, pp. 53, 95; Richard Bauckham, The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995), pp. 3–6, 108–9, 218, 222; Bauckham, ‘Eschatology inThe Coming of God’, in Richard Bauckham, ed., God will be All in All: The Eschatologyof Jürgen Moltmann (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1999), p. 29.

47 Bauckham, Moltmann, p. 53.48 Jürgen Moltmann, The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life, trans.

M. Kohl (London: SCM Press, 1997), p. 67.49 Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendell, Autobiography, trans. J. Bowden (London: SCM Press,

1997), p. 38.50 Only Hermann Dembowski questions the continuity of the works, summarily claiming

that ‘scheint die Diskontinuität größer zu sein als die Kontinuität’ (Lochman andDembowski, ‘Gottes Sein ist im Leiden’, p. 38), but expounds no further.

51 TH, pp. 83, 160.52 TH, pp. 198–202.


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dialectical language present in both texts is the strongest reason supporting a closeconnection. Bauckham places great weight on this reason, citing it as justification forarguing that the dialectic is ‘the determining centre’ of the two texts.53 Undoubtedly,Moltmann views the cross and resurrection in dialectical fashion in both Theology ofHope and The Crucified God; yet the dialectic operating ensures that there will be keydifferences, which the consensus has passed over too quickly.

Reconsidering the consensus judgement

Closed is the question of continuity, its answer established and accepted widely. Theissue is not that simple, however. If the issue is appraised in an either/or frame: (1)either Theology of Hope and The Crucified God represent a continuous argument or(2) the latter must be deemed a ‘fresh start’54 in relation to what has come prior, thenadmittedly there are points of continuity in the texts. Thus framed, however, thequestion elicits a deceptively simplistic response, ending the discussion prematurely.This oversimplification is a false alternative, failing fully to understand thediscontinuity central to Moltmann’s early theology.

Specifically, the consensus judgement relies on evidence that is largely surface-deep. Ultimately, it appears that the consensus (including Moltmann, at times) tooquickly seeks to flatten out the differences, marked by a tendency to focus on theunifying elements in the dialectic, while an emphasis on the contradiction inherent indialectical thought leads one to appreciate the uniqueness of each element.55 The turnto the cross is most accurately described as a corrective manoeuvre, and indeed aqualification, of the earlier period and therefore cannot be characterized as merelya subtle shift in emphasis, still fully complementary to his earlier hope theology.Two factors provide the basis: one implicit, one explicit. First, the very need fortheological manoeuvring between the two texts places a question mark on theconsensus judgement. Second, Moltmann’s statements regarding the basis of the turncall into question the consensus judgement. These factors are handled in turn.

First factor: the necessity of the turn

In the opening page of The Crucified God, Moltmann asserts that the cross is, andalways has been, the ‘guiding light’ to his theology.56 One of the purposes of the work

53 Bauckham, Moltmann, p. 53.54 Bauckham, Moltmann, p. 53.55 Admittedly, Bauckham is well aware of the contradiction inherent in the dialectical

argument pursued by Moltmann, but does not bring this out forcefully while arguing forcomplementarity (for example, see Bauckham, The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann,pp. 3–6).

56 CG, p. 1. Braaten writes: ‘Moltmann admits that readers might have missed the theologyof the cross in his former book, especially those who liked it, but he claims that it was the“guiding light” of his theology all along’ (‘A Trinitarian Theology of the Cross’, p. 113).

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is ‘to make the theology of hope more concrete’, consequently producing ‘a moreprofound dimension to the theology of hope’.57 While Moltmann is apparentlyrecasting the ground of his hope, he simultaneously wishes to maintain continuitywith the previous version. It is not clear that he has succeeded in this attempt. Indeed,if his argument is dialectically structured (and it appears he is correct in assertingthis), then continuity would undermine rather than support the proposed dialectic.

The turn itself begs important questions: what does the need to turn to a theologyof the cross imply about the early theology? If the cross were truly the ‘guiding light’to his theology, then why is a turn to the cross necessary? Indeed, the fact that theearly theology has been revised or needed a complementary development seems, insome measure, to be an inherent clue that the cross may not have been as central asMoltmann wishes to convey.58 The turn to the cross is made necessary preciselybecause his early hope theology developed in Theology of Hope is not sufficientlygrounded in the cross.59

Whereas before the sources of hope were found in resurrection, promise and thefuture, in The Crucified God Moltmann evidences his altered understanding of keydoctrines by grounding them directly in the cross. In The Crucified God Moltmanngrounds his arguments not in the resurrection; instead he points to the cross: ‘AllChristian statements . . . about the future and about hope stem from the crucifiedChrist’.60 The cross ‘give[s] future to that which is passing away . . . [and] hope to thehopeless’.61 Thus, what Moltmann describes simply as helping hope theologybecome ‘more concrete’62 is correctly perceived as a decisive emendation of hisprevious focus. He is not developing a continuous argument, moving from A to B. Inhis move to the cross, he is positing B rather than A. That is, in Theology of Hope andThe Crucified God Moltmann posits two vantages of theology, hope and God, whichcannot be read as continuous. To maintain a continuous trajectory of his line ofthinking is to undermine the argument made in both.

While the need for the turn brings up questions regarding the relationshipbetween the works, another set of questions appears regarding why the turn wasnecessary: was it methodologically premeditated and internally necessary? Or

57 CG, p. 5.58 CG, p. 1; Moltmann, Umkehr zur Zukunft, pp. 133–47; Moltmann, Hope and Planning,

pp. 101–29, 130–54.59 Notice the post-turn volte-face he makes when, in 1970, Moltmann, The Future of

Creation, p. 53, asserts:

we shall have to turn back to a theology of the cross, away from the ‘theology ofhope’ which understands the resurrection of Christ in its significance for worldhistory with the help of the idea of anticipation. The anticipation of the comingkingdom of God has taken place in history in the crucified Jesus of Nazareth.

60 CG, p. 204.61 CG, p. 219.62 CG, p. 5.


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did external events cause him to look more closely at the other side of thecross–resurrection dialectic? As the first element in questioning the consensusjudgement points to the second, the second amplifies the first.

Second factor: supplementation or causation?

The second reason to doubt the consensus judgement is based on Moltmann’sexplicit declarations concerning the failed hopes of the 1960s. The relevant questionis: was his turn to the cross caused by the failed hopes of the 1960s, or was it simplysupplemented by them, confirming a pre-set plan inherent in his theologicalprogramme? Bauckham argues for supplementation: ‘Moltmann’s attempt to root histheology of hope more deeply in the cross became the more appropriate in thedisappointments of hope of the late 1960s, when the optimistic movements ofthe 1960s ran into contradiction.’63 By portraying a relationship of supplementation,rather than causation, between the failed hopes and the turn, Bauckham’s paradigmfor understanding the order of events apparently operates under the presuppositionthat Moltmann turned to the cross before the hopes ‘ran into contradiction’, whichthen enhanced Moltmann’s prior move. Plotting the chronology in this order isproblematic based on Bauckham’s ordering of events. Bauckham cites 1969 as thecorrect year of the turn, placing it after the failed hopes of 1968, a chronology thatseems to contradict, or at least largely undermine the consensus judgment. Thesimplest way to argue for supplementation and a continuous argument is to locatethe turn prior to, not after, the failed hopes. Chronology notwithstanding,Bauckham’s view of supplementation is based on his overriding claim that ‘an innernecessity’64 guided Moltmann’s turn:

Moltmann’s political theology of hope is about bringing hope to bear onprecisely the suffering and the injustices of society, but for that reason it led, byits own logic, to a new stage of Moltmann’s theology. This was a politicaltheology of the cross . . .65

If ‘an inner necessity’ or ‘inner logic’ guided Moltmann’s turn to the cross, then theturn to the cross could be attributed to a predetermined plan. This would give greatweight to the consensus view. Moltmann, however, refuses to depict the turn in thisway. Highlighting some of Moltmann’s own enunciations and characterizations fromthe period sheds light and adds weight to the claim that the events of the late 1960scaused, rather than supplemented, the turn.

The earliest indication that there was not in fact ‘an inner necessity’ guiding theturn came only one year after Theologie der Hoffnung was published. In 1965, in a

63 Bauckham, Moltmann, p. 55.64 Bauckham, Moltmann, p. 53.65 Bauckham, The Theology of Jürgen Moltmann, p. 106.

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letter to Barth, he advertised that his next book would be on ethics, not the cross.66

Yet more specific comments related to the reason for the turn are abundant, pointingto causation instead of supplementation.

In Moltmann’s 1968 lecture ‘Hope and History’ he asserts: ‘Hope is not born outof enthusiasm but out of love which liberates us from old bonds and opens up newopportunities.’67 ‘Only through suffering and sacrifice’, writes Moltmann in 1970,‘does hope become clear-sighted and sage.’68 In the early 1970s he comments: ‘Noless than five years ago everyone would have welcomed our conference theme “Hopeand the Future of Man” without reservation. Today, for many of us, it sounds toodeceptive – too optimistic.’69 He continues: ‘A revision of hope theology . . . wouldthus, in a new form, have to take note of the problems of radical evil, . . . of death andthe tragedy of human existence in order to arrive at an expression of solid humanhope.’70

This view is markedly different than the promissory future as the place of divinerevelation and ontology laid out in Theology of Hope. He now seeks a ‘revision ofhope theology’ by addressing perennial human problems of evil, death and tragedy.Notably, these statements are made after a variety of hopes began to fail in the late1960s. He insists that hope needs ‘a new form’, in order to address specific problems,and this ‘new form’ can then fully express ‘solid human hope’.71 Later, however, heis even more pointed:

If the theologians and philosophers of the future do not plant their feet on theground and turn to a theology of the cross . . . they will disappear in a cloud ofliberal optimism and appear a mockery of the present misery of the suffering.72

The prognosis is bleak, but the prescription is obvious: in light of the failed optimismof the 1960s, theologians and philosophers must turn to the cross, so as to avoid blindoptimism and irrelevance to then-current events. This turn, he writes, may require ‘arevision of future-thinking and hope-language’.73 Regardless of how much continuitythe consensus perceives between Theology of Hope and The Crucified God,Moltmann concedes that his shift in focus and perspective was based on events:

66 Jürgen Moltmann, ‘Letter to Karl Barth’, in Karl Barth, Letters: 1961–1968, ed.J. Fangmeier and H. Stoevesandt, ed. and trans. G.W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T. & T.Clark, 1981), p. 348; for a similar comment, see Jürgen Moltmann, ‘Antwort auf dieKritik an “Der gekreuzigte Gott” ’, in Welker, Diskussion, p. 189.

67 Moltmann, Religion, Revolution, and the Future, pp. 214–15.68 Moltmann, ‘Politics and the Practice of Hope’, Christian Century 87 (1970), p. 291.69 Moltmann, ‘Hope and the Biomedical Future of Man’, in Ewart H. Cousins, ed., Hope

and the Future of Man (London: Garnstone Press, 1973), p. 90.70 Moltmann, ‘Hope and the Biomedical Future of Man’, p. 90.71 In the early 1970s, he regards evil as the ‘central question’ for Christian theology; see

Jürgen Moltmann, ‘Response to the Opening Presentations’, in Cousins, Hope and theFuture of Man, p. 57.

72 Moltmann, ‘Response’, p. 59.73 Moltmann, ‘Response’, p. 59; emphasis original.


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At the end of the 60s Johann-Baptist Metz and I tried to develop a politicaltheology out of ‘the theology of hope’ . . . But in the face of growing difficultiesand disappointments in the movements . . . in which I had been passionatelyinvolved, the other fundamental experience came to the fore again, personallyand theologically: the experience of God in the experience of forsakenness anddesolation. I took this up in the form of a ‘theology of the cross’.74

Similarly:

the movements of hope in the 1960s met stiffer resistance than they couldstand, and many abandoned their hope . . . I can only speak for myself, buton my disappointment . . . the centre of my hope and resistance once againbecame . . . the cross of Christ.75

These are telling admissions. He could have argued that his methodology calledfor an explication of the cross since he had already developed his view of theresurrection, and then pointed out how events then helpfully supplementedthe timing of his turn to the cross. He avoids such a characterization. Instead, headmits that the turn was reactionary, impelled by the hopes of the 1960s that wentunfulfilled. According to its designer, then, no ‘inner’ methodological basis exists forthe turn to the cross. It was unplanned, a reactionary impulse due to the failed hopesof the 1960s. And this assessment makes it tenuous, at best, to assert that Moltmann’sturn is rooted in methodology.

Specifically recalling the conference that he was attending at Duke in April1968, he states: ‘I left a few days later [after King’s assassination] for Tübingen, andI promised my American friends that whenever I returned to their country, I wouldnot speak about the theology of hope any more but of the cross.’76 Here, at least, hepits hope theology and the cross as standing in opposition. The failed hopes did notsupplement the turn; they caused it. Only after the early hopes did not reach their fullpotential did Moltmann turn to the cross. At the risk of indulgence, these finalcomments support revising the consensus judgement. In retrospect Moltmannconcedes: ‘When I wrote Theology of Hope I was nursing a certain enthusiasm anda short-term hope that the changes I desired were going to happen soon.’77 As muchas he argues elsewhere that the texts are closely related, he admits: ‘I think that TheCrucified God has more hope than Theology of Hope. The signs of destructionmultiply and our hope must stop being childishly optimistic.’78 Moltmann seems

74 Moltmann, Experiences of God, p. 14; see also Moltmann, History and the Triune God,pp. 168–74.

75 CG, p. 2; see also p. 204: ‘The death of Jesus on the cross is the centre of all Christiantheology.’

76 Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel and Jürgen Moltmann, Passion for God: Theology in TwoVoices (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), p. 71.

77 Cabestrero, Faith, p. 123.78 Cabestrero, Faith, p. 124. See the virtually identical claim in Jürgen Moltmann, ‘An Open

Letter to Jose Miguez Bonino’, Christianity and Crisis 36 (1976), p. 63.

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unsure of the earlier work’s ability to expound a hope that avoids optimism. The finalcomment worth citing comes from the the Diskussion volume on Der gekreuzigteGott, where Moltmann calls into question the continuity between the works:

The relationship of the two books to one another remained for some a riddle[Rätsel], because they had not expected this turn [Wendung] from theresurrection to the cross and from hope to suffering. Does it concern a‘deepening’, a ‘transformation’ or a ‘new commitment’? I myself am notcompletely certain. R. Bauckham, P. Momose, and R. Gibellini have proven thecontinuity and the consistency of the way. Even so, a remnant of personal andtime-conditioned contingence of the ideas certainly remains.79

Moltmann is the one who calls into question the consensus judgement, by pointingout that it was unexpected.80 Moltmann’s early vision of hope failed in the finalanalysis to resist the failure of the Zeitgeist, the optimism of the 1960s, whichsimultaneously caused and required the turn.81

Conclusions and implications

The minority report clarifies three central areas for understanding Moltmann’s widerproject: the role of dialectic, his methodology and his later theology.

First, the report exhibits a high appreciation for the dialectic present in bothworks. Only focusing on the areas of agreement between the texts (which isfundamental to the consensus judgment) occludes the key differences, threatening toallow and even promote a misreading of Moltmann’s dialectical methodology in hisearly work. Once one sees that the dialectic is present in both works, one shouldautomatically presume there will be material differences that constitutively alter histheology, rather than different emphases. While the two elements of the dialecticconstitute a major link between the works, to advance an argument grounded in

79 Moltmann, ‘Antwort auf die Kritik an “Der gekreuzigte Gott” ’, p. 168; no date isprovided, but due to the publication dates of the volume’s articles it was written mostlikely in 1976 or later. Because this assertion is vital to the present argument and does notseem to be widely known (due, perhaps, to the fact that it has not been published inEnglish), the German is quoted in full:

Das Verhältnis der beiden Bücher zueinander ist für manche ein Rätsel geblieben,weil sie diese Wendung von der Auferstehung zum Kreuz und von der Hoffnung zumLeiden nicht erwartet hatten. Handelt es sich um eine ‘Vertiefung’, um eine‘Wandlung’ oder einen ‘Neueinsatz’? Ich bin mir selbst nicht ganz sicher. R.Bauckham, P. Momose, und R. Gibellini haben die Kontinuität und dieFolgerichtigkeit des Weges nachgewiesen. Dennoch bleibt gewiss ein Rest vonpersönlicher und zeitbedingter Kontingenz der Einfälle übrig.

80 Moltmann, Experiences of God, p. 15.81 Writing in July 1968, Moltmann rather cryptically comments that due to revisions in

theology ‘dogmatic systems become obsolete more quickly than the authors of thesesystems would like to admit’ (Moltmann, Hope and Planning, p. viii).


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dialectic methodology without significant material, rather than merely perceived,differences is impossible.

Dialectical thought runs along the lines of disagreement.82 In both texts, then,Moltmann finds resources for expressing divine ontology and articulating therelationship between revelation and history in not merely different ways, but ratherin opposite ways; this is the vital function of the dialectic in his work. And in as muchas his dialectical methodology sets up this extreme contrast, so Theology of Hope andThe Crucified God make different, indeed counterposing, claims. As is readily seenin the summaries of the two works (above), in each text readers are forcefullydemanded to consider God’s activity and presence from opposite vantage points.The dialectic serves to show the opposing views for understanding God’s being andaction, supremely expressed in the life of Jesus Christ.83 Posited along these lines,though, Moltmann has made two arguments which are not continuous andcoterminous, but rather contradictory.84 At the operational level, Moltmann’s use ofdialectic is material and formal, but he never explicitly describes whether he isoperating according to contradiction or resolution, or indeed whether he prefers thenegation of the negation rather than sublation.85 Clarification and qualificationswould help readers clearly situate his aims for this methodology, at this early stage.86

Patient readers, however, will see that formally he operates with a dialectic ofcontradiction in both works. Stated briefly: in the first instance, the future is theessential nature of God, contradicting the present, suffering and death, in orderto overcome the limitations of history. In the second instance, God’s suffering

82 As thesis and antithesis encounter each other, even resolution depends on elements of theoriginal contradiction. This is the case even when Aufhebung is reached. Although manysee Hegel as positing a dialectical three-stage process of thesis–antithesis–synthesis,Bowie rightly corrects this faulty model: ‘the core of the dialectic is rather whatHegel terms “the negation of the negation”’ (Andrew Bowie, Introduction to GermanPhilosophy (Oxford: Polity Press, 2003), p. 84).

83 For a brief discussion of Moltmann’s dialectical epistemology, see Neal, Theology asHope, pp. 53–6.

84 Dialectical thought has a long history and has been presented in different forms (seeAndrew Bowie, Introduction). In theology, depending on its iterations, labels such as‘dialectical theology’, ‘theology of crisis’ and ‘paradoxical theology’ have been appliedto divergent attempts, stemming from radically different quarters, proposing an arrayof positions. In modern philosophy the range is typically confined to Hegel and thosewho react to him (so-called right- and left-wing Hegelians, Kierkegaard and Marx,respectively). Dialectical thought has been offered in support of both idealism andmaterialism. For an insightful look at the role of dialectic in contemporary theology, seeFrancis Fiorenza, ‘Dialectical Theology and Hope: III’, Heythrop Journal 10 (1969),pp. 29–37.

85 Furthermore, he never states on whom he relies for positing the dialectic; there is nomention of whether he prefers Hegel’s, Heidegger’s, Marx’s or Bloch’s version ofdialectical construction, each of which impact his thought over the years.

86 Tellingly, his volume on methodology did not appear until 2000; see Jürgen Moltmann,Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms of Christian Theology, trans. M. Kohl(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), p. xv.

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participation in the cross and history are the essential location of God’s activity,and the supreme exhibition of the divine nature. By issuing two radicallydifferent conceptions of God’s being and action, Moltmann has profferedtwo different, distinct answers to the same question. Who is God, according toMoltmann? Well, on the one hand God is future and on the other God is not future.In the first instance, as future God contradicts present reality, suffering and death,and in the second instance God participates in history, suffers and Jesus Christ iscrucified. This dialectical argument cannot be maintained without a well-structured,finely tuned argument outlining precisely what this means for both theologygenerally and Moltmann’s project specifically.

Second, the report highlights Moltmann’s appreciation for methodologicalopenness. Retrospectively, he points to biographical and contextual influences on histheology, matching his consistent opposition to theology as dogma. His programmehas been an enactment of his perspective that theology is not (indeed, cannotbe) systematically comprehensive, but is rather ‘an adventure of ideas’ open todisruption.87 Indeed, for him, theology lives ‘in movements, dialogues and conflicts’and is ‘thinking without the security of tradition, dogma or authorities’.88 Admittedly,a litany of questions can be posed regarding his enunciations covering a broad rangeof topics; and yet they are irrelevant for the adequacy of the minority report. Thelesson is that he does not seek consistency for the sake of creating a system, somandating continuity, consistency or orthodoxy is problematic (especially so in thefirst decade of his project), ultimately resulting in a misreading of his motives andmethodology.89 His theology did not emerge as a created whole in 1964, with apre-set plan for the next four decades. His views change and undergo refinement overthe years. The early turn to the cross is an expression of the developmental nature ofhis theology. Indeed, in light of his appreciation for alterations and movement intheology it would be surprising if his early work was as consistent as the consensusjudgment maintains. His early move from hope theology to the cross exhibits andmodels the very openness that he prizes in theological reflection.

Finally, the two previous points merge to create a third implication. His entiretheology is grounded in his first two programmatic works and misreading him in theearly stages can alter one’s understanding of his later moves. Moltmann’s early workgrounds his later explications of divine ontology and revelation, history and time,divine immanence, promise and hope, the present and the future, and, mostimportantly, the proper relationship between the cross and the resurrection. Thisdialectical construction funds his later works, and the contradiction so important in

87 Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, p. xv.88 Jürgen Moltmann, ‘Foreword’ to Bauckham, Moltmann: Messianic Theology in the

Making, p. viii.89 Typifying this view, he writes: ‘My theological methods therefore grew up as I came to

have a perception of the objects of theological thought. The road emerged only as Iwalked it. And my attempts to walk it are of course determined by my personalbiography’ (Experiences in Theology, p. xv; emphasis original). See also: Moltmann,History and the Triune God, p. 180.


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the early work is supplanted with elements concentrating on resolution.90 Morespecifically, his later works are modelled on the dual truths of both God’s futurepower and immanent involvement in history.

Throughout his career Moltmann seeks to correct philosophical and theologicalerrors by attending to the biblical narratives. At every point along the way he reliescentrally on the two poles of his early dialectic to surmount a variety of theologicalclaims that he finds unwarranted. The dialectic which marked and governed his earlywork is the capacious source of his theological moves, whether into the social Trinityand his desire for East–West rapprochement, divine immanence in creation,pneumatological advances, political enunciations or his mature eschatology. A closereading of Moltmann’s theology reveals that his project is fully reliant on both crossand resurrection. For over four decades he has shown that Christian theology canonly speak in light of God’s dialectical activity as the one who has experienced thecross–resurrection event.

90 Positive and negative elements emerge as Moltmann’s work matures and developsbeyond his first two programmatic texts. Elsewhere I have covered this development ingreater detail; see: Neal, Theology as Hope, pp. 64–231; Neal, ‘Jürgen Moltmann’,pp. 374–81.

Minority Report 43


minority report: reconsidering jürgen moltmann's turn to a theology of the cross

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