Straight Dope on Medicine: Hope

Jürgen Moltmann wrote a book on the Theology of Hope.

This wasn’t his only literary effort. He has a coterie of books from which to choose:

The Crucified God

The Church in the Power of the Spirit

The Trinity and the Kingdom

God in Creation

The Way of Jesus Christ

The Spirit of Life

The Theology of Hope grew out of discussions carried on between 1958 and 1964 among the editors of Evangelische Theologie.

Typically categorized as a positive emotion, hope often occurs in the midst of negative or uncertain circumstances. It is decidedly cognitive, yet has a unique affective quality that provides us the motivation to pursue future outcomes.

Other positive anticipatory emotions include desire, wish, want, and optimism.[i] 

As long as we are on definitions, what is the Christian notion?

Like faith and charity, hope is also a “theological” virtue in that its immediate object is God (theos). But whereas faith knows God as first truth and charity loves God as the universal good, hope seeks God as our personal good—namely, as the source of perfect and lasting happiness in eternal life.[ii]

Yes, it’s a virtue. Hope might even be ethical.

The virtues themselves are firm dispositions or habitus to act well. Aquinas quotes his Latin translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics to state that “virtue is that which makes its possessor good, and his work good likewise”.[iii]

God uses the most unlikely people to advance His kingdom. And so it is with Jürgen. He was on trajectory to become a physicist. As a youth he was called into service for Germany in the war effort in 1943. He was in his teens. He survived the bombing of Hamburg, but many of his friends did not. It was a devastating attack and many, many people died. In the aftermath, he became introspective and philosophical.

Why am I not dead? Why am I alive?

The secular answer is that it was an accident.

The Christian answer is that God has a purpose for your life.

Boy, did God have a purpose for Jorgen’s life.

His development of the theology of hope reverberated throughout all Christendom, and even into society itself.

To preface his book, Moltmann surveyed the times: the Czech Republic was descending into socialism and a cult of personality. Martin Luther King Jr. expounded on his dream. Vatican II was made public. The world was rapidly changing, and it was in turmoil.

What will be the end of all this drama?

What is revolutionary?

Jürgen’s insightful concept was that hope in the coming kingdom of God can have influence here and now. It isn’t far off, and exclusively reserved for after we die. That was the prevailing thought and sentiment. This paradigm shift revived the church and infused it with the will to live in troubled times.

Before Moltmann, the church had diminished hope for a tragically long time. It had been reduced, since Augustine, to saving the individual soul in a world beyond death. In defining it this way, it lost its life-renewing and world-changing power. Jürgen shifted the application from only the afterlife and the opium of the masses to something that is vital and active right now, in all situations and circumstances.

Saved people can get off drugs. They can recover from alcoholism, forgive important people in their lives. They can develop their abilities and utilize the intelligence and wisdom that God gave them to improve their lives and even help other people. They can be “salt and light” to the world.

There is a second group that Moltmann is acting as a corrective to. Those are the neo-Orthodox Christians like Bultmann, who say that “Christianity is a theology of the word.” Yes, the Bible is our reference point for what God says. But God also does. We pray because we want God to effect change in our lives and in our world.

To develop his theology, Moltmann focused on the Biblical promises of the new creation and the resurrection of the body. God tells us of the new heaven and new earth. Time is hurtling toward that glorious day when all creation will be renewed or restored. It is in development. This means that the righteousness of God lives right now.

We are not to abandon the earth to destruction.

God isn’t.

In the immediate aftermath of the bombing on Hamburg, Jürgen became a seeker. He wanted to find out what the significance of his survival had for him? What does the death of all these people mean?

Kate Hoffmeister, 19, was trying to escape the furnace her Hamburg neighborhood had become.[iv]

"I struggled to run against the wind in the middle of the street... we couldn't go on across [the road] because the asphalt had melted.

Approximately 20,000 people died on July 27, 1943 in Hamburg in Operation Gomorrah. All told, it consisted of eight days of bombing by the RAF and USAAF.

Jürgen surrendered to his enemies and ended up in a prison camp for 3 years. During that time, he connected with a Christian group. His Christian education commenced. He learned a great deal at Gottingen. He came across intellectuals in the confessing church of Germany. They were the remnant that remained faithful to Jesus and did not align themselves or profess loyalty to Hitler.

He learned such notions as “I hope so that I many understand,” and “I believe so that I may understand.” This is a very messianic theology – taking the word messiah literally. During Jesus’ ministry, he involved himself with the people, and they were better off for it. He forgave their sins now. He healed them now. He fed and taught them now.

Jesus was the living Messiah and he was immediate. He was right there. People could see him, speak to him and touch him.

In the theology of hope, grace triumphs over and against sin. Love triumphs over hatred.

Moltmann was inspired by another fellow who was somewhat off base. Hans Bloch was a Marxist, but he penned the “Principle of Hope.”

There is no hope in Marxism.

In the “Principle of Hope,” Bloch extends his critical history of the utopian vision and a profound exploration of the possible reality of utopia.[v] It also contains a remarkable account of the aesthetic interpretations of utopian "wishful images" in fairy tales, popular fiction, travel, theater, dance, and the cinema. Volume 2 presents "the outlines of a better world." It examines the utopian systems that progressive thinkers have developed in the fields of medicine, painting, opera, poetry, and ultimately, philosophy. Volume 3 offers a prescription for ways in which humans can reach their proper "homeland," where social justice is coupled with an openness to change and to the future.

So you see that it contains a lot of “wishful thinking” and “delusions of grandeur.” Sinful humans cannot achieve a utopia.

Conferences have been held in the United States to discuss Moltmann’s theology of Hope, even in St. Louis.

Not everyone was completely enamored with the entirety of “The Theology of Hope.” Many people saw some shortcomings.

Charges: Moltmann’s emphasis on the compassionate suffering of God might be perceived as limiting God’s power. There was another question on the place of the Holy Spirit in the theology of Hope. Lastly, what is Moltmann’s position on the nature of the Trinity?

Personal side of eschatology: love, death and eternal life.

As a German teenager, growing up in the war years, Moltmann finds addressing the topic of power a bit dicey. He is very unassuming here.

Stephen Sykes says that there is no way that the church, as an institution, can avoid power. The church exercises its power for the poor and on behalf of the outcast. The church has means and abilities it should use to be salt and light to the world. It is supposed to effect change, and it needs power to do it.

Power has to walk hand in hand with love. It also has to walk with morality, true morality and not just good intentions.

In all relationships there are power elements. They exist and they must be dealt with. They cannot simply be wished away. What we aim to fend off is the abuse of power.

When a non-Christian, or novice, looks at the cross, he or she sees profound powerlessness. They do not see the powerful sacrifice, overcoming death and the power of sin and the devil. Jesus submitted to the corrupt powers of His time. Yet, Jesus created the very world that he submitted to.

This is one way to deal with the “compassionate suffering of Jesus,” and not rob him of his power. Moltmann invokes God’s power to self-determination. No one else can limit God or determine God. He defines reality and himself. We might wish to define ourselves, but we can only do so to a degree.

God also enters into the covenant of creation and love out of his own volition. He chose it. No one compelled Him. God also has to have power to deliver on His promises. He can really love because he has power.

Spirit is the unity and ground of the Godhead. One of the problems with conveying the theology of love is Moltmann’s beginning point. He says one must start with the history of God’s love in the world, and how he conducted himself, and what he did, not the Trinity. This worldly perspective is how he pitches Jesus relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He says this is the history of cooperation between Jesus, with Abba and the Spirit.

The unity of God is in the perikoresis, the mutual indwelling of each of the person’s in each other.

He also sees the Spirit as the unifying force, and not the Father or Jesus.

What of the afterlife?

Moltmann contends that Christians and the church are empowered now. To a certain degree. Is he omitting what comes after? Where are the dead? The answer: with Jesus. The living and the dead are in one great community with Jesus. Romans 14:9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living. These dead have not been resurrected. They are disembodied souls.

We cannot be 100% sure of this because we have afterlife bodies of Samuel, Moses and Elijah.

At one point, he really goes off the rails, meaning he is wrong. Love wins and Hell will be empty.

This is the same error that Rob Bell makes. God is love, but he is also just and holy. Sin must be dealt with, and no one gets a free pass.

Hell will be populated, perhaps to a considerable extent.

Matthew 7 ESV

13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

Even Angels are not immune to rebelling and falling from grace.

Revelation 12:7-10 ESV

Satan Thrown Down to Earth

7 Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, 8 but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. 10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.

The judgment of God, the wrath of God is an expression of God’s love. His wrath is an expression of his wounded love. In this point, Moltmann discards God’s righteousness and holiness. He errs in doing so.

If hope were not in effect, what else might be?

Miroslav Volf writes that Fear, more than hope, is characteristic of our time.[vi] Also what we embrace gives away our position. If we choose hope we are optimists. If we choose fear we are pessimists and defeatists. That’s no way to live.

Collectively, we also take a stance.

In the late 1960s, we were optimistic about the century’s hopes for the triumph of justice and something like universal peace, but that has given way to increasing pessimism. “No future” scenarios have become plausible to us.

The Apostle Paul has penned some of the most famous lines about hope ever written: “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience” (Romans 8:24-25). Hope is a strange thing – as Emily Dickinson declares in her famous poem, it’s a “thing with feathers” perched in our soul, ready to take us on its wings to some future good. In fact, hope is a thing that has already taken us to that good with the tune that it sings. In hope – or perhaps by hope – “we were saved,” writes Apostle Paul. In hope, a future good which isn’t yet, somehow already is. A future good we cannot see, which waits in darkness, still qualifies our entire existence. We might be suffering or experiencing “hardship … distress … persecution … famine … nakedness … peril … sword … we are being killed all day long” (Romans 8:18, 35-36), and yet we have been saved and we are saved.

Thus, a key feature of hope is that it stretches a person into the unknown, the hidden, the darkness of unknown possibility. For Paul this can happen because God is with us – God who gives life to the dead and calls into existence things that do not exist.

References:

[i]CHAP Bruininks, Patricia 2012/01/01

[ii] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-46489-9_7#:~:text=Like%20faith%20and%20charity%2C%20hope,lasting%20happiness%20in%20eternal%20life.

[iii] “Virtus est quae bonum facit habentem, et opus eius bonum reddit.” ST I-II 55.3.

[iv] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-43546839

[v] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262522014/the-principle-of-hope/

[vi] https://reflections.yale.edu/article/seeking-light-notes-hope/theologies-hope