Moltmann God in Creation
I would like to share a few
reflections on Jürgen Moltmann, God in
Creation (1985), http://www.scribd.com/doc/30392808/Moltmann-Juergen-God-in-Creation#scribd
These reflections arise out of two
reading groups in which I have the pleasure of participating. One is a second
reading of Barth’s Church Dogmatics and
the other is “I have forgotten how many” reading of Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology. In both groups, we
are reading about the doctrine of creation. Of course, Pannenberg refers to
this text in a generally positive way, a fact that encourages me to read the
text. My approach will be to make a few comments on what is in each chapter. I
will make comments along the way.
In Chapter 1, Moltmann explores God
in creation. He offers some guidelines for an ecological view of creation.
First, knowledge of nature as the creation of God is participating knowledge.
This simply means that science tends to break down its study to the smallest
particles to its smallest elements, while the theologian will need to focus
upon the complex way the finite things of creation relate to each other. Second
is creation for glory. A Christian view of creation is a view of creation in
light of Jesus as the Messiah. It will focus on the liberation of human beings,
peace with nature, and redemption of the community. He wants to view creation
in light of the future for which God has made it. One can view that future as
the kingdom of glory, which human beings experience provisionally here. If God
dwells in creation, God is already home. Three is the Sabbath of creation. God
rests and enjoys creation. God is in fellowship with creation. Four is the
messianic preparation of creation to be the kingdom. He will want to discuss
nature and grace, with glory completing both nature and grace. Five is creation
in the Spirit. The Spirit preserves life and brings lift to its goal. The
presence of the Spirit in creation means the self-transcendence of the world
that will make it open to its future and achieve its goal. He thinks this
aspect of his theological program will move us away from a domination theme to
a communal theme. Six is God’s immanence in the world. He thinks the separation
between God and world led to a notion of exploitation, while his view will lead
us to relating in a communal way with creation. He wants to bring together the
Jewish notion of Shekinah and the Christian notion of the Trinity in this
project. Seven is the principle of mutual interpenetration. He will part
company with Barth here, saying there is no antithetical relationship of
God/World, heaven/earth, soul/body, man/woman, command/obedience, and master/servant.
I should say that on this point, he conflicts directly with the approach of
Barth is CD III.1. For Moltmann, the affirmation that God created the heavens
and the earth means that earth has an upward thrust, an openness, to the
divine. Here is also a place where Pannenberg and Moltmann are together. Eight
is the cosmic Spirit and the human consciousness.
Chapter 2
explores the ecological crisis. I have read Moltmann on this before. Here is a
place where his politics and mine differ. Even if I agreed, my solutions would
be free market solutions rather than trust government machinery to get the job
done. So, let us skip this. When I consider the theology of Moltmann, I need to
bracket his politics and focus on his theology.
Chapter 3 explores knowledge in
creation. He notes that Barth does not give sufficient attention to the way in
which creation is a sketch or design of the kingdom. Created things are
promises of the kingdom and the kingdom is a fulfillment of both the historical
and natural promise of God. He wants to restore the notion of vestiges or
traces of God in creation. Natural experience is an anticipation that widens to
a future or destiny of fellowship with God. In all of this, I would think Barth
would be horrified, for it could lead down a path of natural theology.
Chapter 4 is an exploration of God
the creator. He will disagree with process thought and preserve the distinction
between Creator and creation. He will also disagree with Schleiermacher in his
attempt to dissolve creation into preservation. He parts company with Barth in
shifting the focus from the freedom of God to the loving expression of the
nature of God. God is free to be who God is. God is creative, and therefore
creates. He considers the notion of Tillich, that creation is identical with
the divine life. He seems to abolish the self-differentiation of God from the
world. He wonders if such a monistic conception is any different from
pantheism. As he sees it, then, the eternal divine life is a life of “eternal,
infinite love, which in the creative process issues in its overflowing rapture
from its Trinitarian perfection and completeness, and comes to itself in the
eternal rest of the Sabbath. It is the same love, but it operates in different
ways in the divine life and in the divine creativity.” (p. 84) He will bring
together the notions of the resolve we find in the divine decrees and the
notion of emanation through these reflections. He will also engage in a
discussion of nothingness, with which God creates by letting-be, by making
room, and therefore withdrawing the divine presence. For him, God overcomes
this nothingness in eschatology, where the creative life and love of God will
end death and sin. God enters this nothingness in the cross. Yet, only in the
resurrection can we have the hope that the intense suffering and violence of
history will find their end. Eschatology is also faith in God as creator in the
sense of bringing it to its fulfillment. Pannenberg will disagree with this
notion of nothingness. The notion rests upon Jewish speculations that sought to
explain the independence of creaturely existence alongside God.[1]
It identifies it as the space that God gives creatures as God withdraws the
divine presence. He finds in it a materially unfounded mystification of the
subject. He wants to replace this notion with a thoroughly Trinitarian
explication of the doctrine of creation. The specifically Christian
contribution to a notion of creation is one we can find in the cosmic Christ
and in the work of the Spirit. Here is a place where Barth is not as clear as
Moltmann and Pannenberg concerning the involvement of the Trinity in creation.
With Barth, although he writes of this involvement, his focus is on the Father
as creator. For Moltmann, the emphasis upon transcendence of God led to deism
and the emphasis upon immanence led to pantheism (Spinoza). The Trinitarian
view leads to panentheism. Pannenberg will not use this term, to my knowledge.
I am not sure why, for as Moltmann describes it, the word describes the
position of Pannenberg as well. For Moltmann, the Creator Spirit suggests that
each individual is part of the whole. Everything finite is a representative of
the Infinite. The Word became flesh; the Spirit dwells in all things. Pantheism
would make everything indifferent; panentheism makes differentiation possible.
This view of creation makes of the universe an open system.
Chapter 5 discusses the time of
creation. He discusses Eliade and the mythical experience of time. He also
discusses Augustine and the disagreement Barth had with him. He then discusses
the biblical notion of fulfilled time, the history of the promise, and the
prophetic experience of eschatology. Jewish apocalyptic separated the past of
sin and death from the future revelation of God. The New Testament focuses on
messianic time. This means that believers do not experience the prison of sin,
death, and Law, but rather, find their definition in the future. Pannenberg
disagrees with the notion of Moltmann of interlaced modes of times. He connects
Moltmann to another author, A. M. K. Muller, who developed this schema based
upon the primacy of the future in the understanding of time. This option
presupposes a view of the constant present that isolates one of the three of
time, the present, from the other two. To understand the eternal present as a
present that comprehends time is not to exclude past and future but to include
them. It is possible only from the standpoint of a future, or its anticipation,
upon which nothing can infringe.[2]
I do not think I am smart enough or insightful enough at this point to
understand the difference. I am open to some help from someone who does
understand the difference.
Chapter 6 discusses the space of
creation.
Chapter 7 discusses heaven and
earth. He disagrees with Barth here in that heaven and earth are not dualities,
but rather suggests the openness of creation to God.
Chapter 8 discusses the evolution
of creation. He explores the theory of evolution in Darwin and others, noting
that it became the basis for a materialistic view of the world. As he sees it,
evolution suggests the interrelation of all things. It becomes participatory,
anticipatory, and open. This openness makes it open to God. All of this
suggests the continuing of creation, rather than its completion, as Genesis 1
might suggest. Here again, Moltmann and Pannenberg join in wanting to bring the
church along in an interaction with the physics and biology of this time. They
are recognizing the philosophical and theological issues involved in some
writers who want to interpret the science in an atheistic way. They want to
suggest that one does not have to read the science in that way. Now, the method
of these two thinkers is quite different from that Barth, who will continue his
exposition of the Word. He will not interact with philosophers like Whitehead
and Bergson, or the contributors to Lux
Mundi, who saw the challenge that the science of the time presented. My
point is that CD III.1 is the first place that we see the impact of the method
Barth stated in CD 1. For myself, here is where I decided that, with as much
regard as I had for his exposition of doctrine and Scripture, which remain to
this day, I could not go with Barth all the way.
Chapter 9 discusses the image of
God in creation as human beings. Moltmann will offer his contribution to theological
anthropology. He will look at it as the original designation of human beings as
the image of God, the messianic designation of the messianic calling of human
beings in the image of Christ, and as the eschatological glory of human beings.
The image of God means human beings are the representatives of God on earth and
therefore to rule. It also suggests fellowship with each other and with God.
Yet, humanity is both the image of God and sinner. If we take the Trinity
seriously here, we also see the social nature of the image of God as duplicated
in humanity. In all of this, Pannenberg and Moltmann are in harmony.
Chapter 10 discusses embodiment as
the end of all the works of God. He will argue against the priority of soul
over body. Pannenberg refers to the ensouled body. He thinks Barth also gives
priority of soul over body. What I find interesting here is that Pannenberg
will part company with Moltmann and defend Barth. Pannenberg says that this
rejection of the rule of soul over the body is due to his notion of rule as
tyrannical perversion of rule. He describes Barth as affirming theological
sovereignty corresponding to his notion of the intratrinitarian order of a
ruling Father and obedience of the Son. He notes that Barth nowhere mentions
any right of the misused body to resist, or any right to feeling to have a
voice in the decisions of the rational soul, or any desirable agreement of the
body with the soul that governs it. Nevertheless, his idea of a partnership of
mutual influencing entails far too ideal a notion of harmony and agreement
without any problems. The aim of all just government is to achieve such an
agreement when it is not self-evident at the outset. He also does not want to
reject out of hand the thought of the rule of the Father, to which the Son
obediently subjects himself. He refers to the New Testament passages one would
have to ignore. In contrast to Moltmann, Pannenberg will affirm the monarchy of
the Father, mediated as it is through the free obedience of the Son.[3]
After discussing the gestalt of the human self, Moltmann goes on to describe
the Spirit as that which provides an anticipatory structure to human existence.
The presence of the Spirit is an affirmation of life. One experiences the
life-giving Spirit in this life as love.
Chapter 11 discusses the Sabbath as
the feast of creation. Sabbath completes, sanctifies, and redeems creation.
I think I would just add that given
my reaction to Barth in CD III.1, I was glad to have someone like Moltmann in
my corner. As Pannenberg put it, theology needs to have the intellectual
courage to affirm that God is the creator of the world that science describes.
Yes, it may mean re-thinking the doctrine of creation, but this is not a bad
thing. For 2000 years, theologians have been re-thinking doctrine in light of
the challenges of their times. Such ability within the Christian tradition is a
sign of its strength. The ability to adapt to new challenges is a sign of
strength. In his autobiography In a Broad
Place, (p. 244-5) Moltmann refers to a collection of essays in 1972 that
for him is an example of how theology then engaged many disciplines, as over
against today, as others leave theology in peace. Neither Pannenberg nor
Moltmann want theology left in peace by other intellectual disciplines. I guess
I do not as well.
Facebook Moltmann discussion group post: I find Barth does well with restoring the orthodox, but can also accept the paradoxical, in spite of his heavy inclination towards systematizing. I never liked his rejection of the need to integrate theology with other disciplines, such as the liberal arts, science, psychology, anthropology etc. Here, Multmann does better. I also like how Multmann integrates Eastern philisophy. I don't think the concept of origins needs to be so heavily synthesized, though. While I reject literalism, I think that the intended meanings of the creation stories provide foundational understandings, including human dignity. Here, perhaps Ignatian spiirituality provides a better alternative. Please feel free to counter or disagree accordingly.
ReplyDeleteI replied: Very well said. I am learning that about Moltmann as well. No need to counter or disagree from this end.