The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology

407 Pages·2004·19.73 MB·English

by  Jurgen Moltmann

JÜRGEN MOLTMANN
The Coming of God
CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY
SCM PRESS LTD
Translated by Margaret Kohl from the German
Das Kommen Gottes: Christliche Eschatologie
published by Chr. Kaiser Verlaghaus Gütersloher 1995
Translation © Margaret Kohl 1996
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may
be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher,
SCM Press Ltd.
0 334 02635 0
First published in English 1996
by SCM Press Ltd
9-17 St Albans Place, London Nl ONX
Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd, Lymington, Hants
and printed and bound in Great Britain by
Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn
CONTENTS
Preface x
Abbreviations xviii
Translator's Note xx
I The Coming God 1
Eschatology Today
§ 1 The Transposition of Eschatology into Time 6
1. Prophetic Theology 7
2. Albert Schweitzer 7
3. Oscar Cullmann 10
§2 The Transposition of Eschatology into Eternity 13
1. KarlBarth 13
2. PaulAlthaus 16
3. Rudolf Bultmann 19
§3 The Eschatology of the Coming God 22
1. The Coming God 23
2. Future or Advent? 25
3. The Category Novum 27
§4 The Rebirth of Messianic Thinking in Judaism 29
1. Ernst Bloch: 'The Spirit of Utopia' (1918) 30
2. Franz Rosenzweig: 'The Star of
Redemption'(1921) 33
3. Gershom Scholem: 'The Messianic Idea
in Judaism'(1959) 36
4. Walter Benjamin: 'Theses on the
Philosophy of History' (1940) 38
5. Jacob Taubes and Karl Lowithi 'Western
Eschatology' (1947) - A Theological
Continuation or an Ecological Farewell? 41
vi Contents
6. The Redemption of the Future from the
Power of History 44
H Eternal Life 47
Personal Eschatology
§1 Loved Life and Death 49
1. Is Death'the Finish'? 49
2. Was this life all there is? 52
3. Suppressed Death - Reduced Life 54
§2 The Immortality of the Soul or the Resurrection of
the Body? 58
1. The Immortal Soul and the Unlived Life 58
(a) The soul as divine substance 58
(b) The soul as transcendental subject 61
(c) The soul as the kernel of existence 63
2. The Raising of the Body and the Life
Everlasting 65
3. The Immortality of the Lived Life 71
§3 Is Death the Consequence of Sin or Life's Natural
End? 77
1. Biblical Experiences 78
2. The Church's Doctrine about the Death of
the Sinner 85
3. The Modern Notion about a 'Natural
Death' 87
4. The Mortality of Temporal Creation 90
5. Violent Death 93
§4 Where are the Dead? 96
1. The Doctrine of Purgatory 96
2. The Doctrine of the Soul's Sleep 101
3. Is there a Resurrection at Death ? 102
4. The Fellowship of Christ with the Living and
the Dead 104
(a) Do the dead have time in the fellowship
of Christ? 105
(b) Do the dead have space in the
fellowship of Christ? 106
(c) The community with the dead 107
5. Do we Live on Earth only Once ? 110
Contents vii
6. The Future of the Spoiled Life: Some
Personal Thoughts 116
§ 5 Death, Mourning and Consolation 119
1. Experiences of Mourning in Modern Society 119
2. Mourning and Melancholia: A Discussion
with Sigmund Freud 122
3. The Rebirth to Life 126
IE The Kingdom of God
Historical Eschatology 129
§ 1 The Apocalypse of History 131
1. Political Eschatology 131
2. Apocalyptic Eschatology 134
3. Eschatological Orders of Time in History 141
§2 Messianic Eschatology: 'The Thousand Years'
Empire' 146
1. Pre-millenarianism and Jewish Messianism 147
2. Christian Millenarianism 150
3. The Post-Reformation Rebirth of Messianic
Eschatology 156
§3 Political Millenarianism: 'The Holy Empire' 159
1. The Messianic Turn from Persecution to
Domination: Constantine and the
Consequences 159
2. Political Millenarianism:'The Holy Empire' 161
3. Millenarian Christianity and its Mission of
Violence 165
§4 Political Millenarianism: 'The Redeemer Nation' 168
1. 'The Chosen People' 170
2. The Rebirth of the Nation out of Sacrificial
Death 171
3. 'The Manifest Destiny' 172
4. The Great Experiment 175
§5 Ecclesiastical Millenarianism: 'The Mother and
Preceptress of the Nations' 178
1. Romaaeterna 178
2. Societas perfecta 181
3. 'Ruling with Christ' 182
§6 Epochal Millenarianism: The Birth of 'Modern
Times' out of the Spirit of Messianic Hope
§7 Is Millenarian Eschatology Necessary?
1. Historical Millenarianism No -
Eschatological Millenarianism Yes
2. The Sufferings and Future of Christ
3. Hope for Israel
4. What is'Timely'Today?
§ 8 End-Times of Human History: Exterminism
1. The Nuclear End-Time: Methods of Mass
Extermination
2. The Ecological End-Time: The Destruction
of the Earth
3. The Economic End-Time: The Impoverish
ment of the Third World
4. Is Exterminism Apocalyptic?
§9 'The End of History': Post-historic Prophets
§ 10 Is Apocalyptic Eschatology Necessary?
§ 11 The Restoration of All Things
1. 'The Last Judgment' and its Ambivalent
Outcome
2. The Return of the Doctrine of Universal
Salvation
3. The Dispute about the Bible: Pro and Contra
Universalism
4. The Theological Argument about Universal
Salvation and the Double Outcome of
Judgment
5. Double Predestination or God's Universal
Election?
6. Christ's Descent into Hell and the
Restoration of All Things
New Heaven - New Earth
Cosmic Eschatology
§ 1 The Future of Creation - Sabbath and Shekinah
§2 The Annihilation of the World or its
Consummation?
Contents ix
1. The Annihilation of the World 268
2. The Transformation of the World 270
3. The Deification of the World 272
4. The Good Earth: Ecofeminism 275
5. The New Earth: Eschatological Ecology 277
§3 The End of Time in the Eternity of God 279
1. The Time of Creation 280
2. The Times of History 284
3. The Fulfilment of Time 292
§4 The End of Space in the Presence of God 296
1. The Space of Creation 296
2. Historical Spaces of God's Indwellings 302
3. The Fulfilment of Space in the Presence of
God 306
§5 The Cosmic Temple: The Heavenly Jerusalem 308
1. The Earthly and the Heavenly Jerusalem 308
2. Jerusalem and Babylon/Rome 311
3. The City of God: Crystal Temple and
Garden City 313
4. The Peoples of God 315
5. God's Cosmic Shekinah 317
V Glory
Divine Eschatology 321
§1 The Self-Glorification of God 324
§2 The Self-Realization of God 326
§3 Interactions between Divine and Human Activity 330
§4 The Fulness of God and the Feast of Eternal Joy 336
Notes 341
Index of Names 385
PREFACE
In the end is the beginning: Eschatology is generally held to be the
doctrine of 'the Last Things', or of 'the end of all things'. To think
this is to think in good apocalyptic terms, but it is not understanding
eschatology in the Christian sense. To think apocalyptically means
thinking things through to their end: the ambiguities of history must
sometime become unambiguous; the time of transience must some
time pass away; the unanswerable questions of existence must
sometime cease. The question about the end bursts out of the
torment of history and the intolerableness of historical existence. To
echo a German proverb: better a terrifying end than this endless
terror.
Eschatology seems to search for the 'final solution' of all the
insoluble problems, as Isaiah Berlin indignantly remarked, playing
on the phrase used at the Wannsee conference in 1942, where the SS
decided for a 'final solution' of the Jewish question in the camps of
mass annihilation. Theological eschatology seems to present the
'Endgame' of the theodrama World History. This was Hans Urs von
Balthasar's view, when he took over this title as a legacy from
Samuel Beckett. If we look back to the history of eschatology, we see
it pictorially represented as God's great final judgment of the good
and the wicked, with heaven for the one and hell for the other. Is the
Last Judgment God's final solution for human history? Other people
have dreamed about Armageddon, the final duel in the struggle be
tween Christ and Antichrist, or God and the Devil - whether the duel
be fought out with divine fire or with modern nuclear armaments.
Eschatology is always thought to deal with the end, the last day,
the last word, the last act: God has the last word. But if eschatology
were that and only that, it would be better to turn one's back on it
altogether; for 'the last things' spoil one's taste for the penultimate
ones, and the dreamed of, or hoped for, end of history robs us of our
Preface xi
freedom among history's many possibilities, and our tolerance for all
the things in history that are unfinished and provisional. We can no
longer put up with earthly, limited and vulnerable life, and in our
eschatological finality we destroy life's fragile beauty. The person
who presses forward to the end of life misses life itself. If eschatology
were no more than religion's 'final solution' to all the questions, a
solution allowing it to have the last word, it would undoubtedly be a
particularly unpleasant form of theological dogmatism, if not
psychological terrorism. And it has in fact been used in just this way
by a number of apocalyptic arm-twisters among our contempor
aries.
But Christian eschatology has nothing to do with apocalyptic
'final solutions' of this kind, for its subject is not 'the end' at all. On
the contrary, what it is about is the new creation of all things.
Christian eschatology is the remembered hope of the raising of the
crucified Christ, so it talks about beginning afresh in the deadly end.
'The end of Christ - after all that was his true beginning', said Ernst
Bloch. Christian eschatology follows this christological pattern in all
its personal, historical and cosmic dimensions: in the end is the
beginning.
That is how Dietrich Bonhoeffer took leave of his fellow prisoner,
Payne Best, in Flossenbiirg concentration camp, as he went to his
execution: 'This is the end - for me the beginning of life.' That is how
John on Patmos saw the Last Judgment of the world - not as
annihilation, a universal conflagration, or death in a cosmic winter.
He saw it as the first day of the new creation of all things: 'See, I am
making all things new' (Rev. 21.5). If we perceive it in remembrance
of the hope of Christ, what is called the end of history is also simply
the end of temporal history and the beginning of the eternal history
of life. Christ can only be called 'the end of history' in the sense that
he is the pioneer and leader of the life that lives eternally. Wherever
life is perceived and lived in community and fellowship with Christ, a
new beginning is discovered hidden in every end. What it is I do not
know, but I have confidence that the new beginning will find me and
raise me up.
Because of this, I have deliberately avoided calling this book about
Christian eschatology 'The Last Things' or 'The End of All Things',
but have given it the title: The Coming of God. In God's creative
future, the end will become the beginning, and the true creation is
still to come and is ahead of us.