Here's Jason's contribution to the Moltmann series.
"Moltmann will always be for me a theologian of hope, not pie-in-the-sky
hope but hope grounded in the being of God revealed in Jesus of
Nazareth, and especially in Jesus' journey into hell and subsequent
resurrection":
‘Hope does not only give the power to break
out of oppression, like Israel,
and to seek the promised land of liberty. Hope also alienates people from their
native land, their friendships and their homes, and makes them ready to let
these go and to seek something new. By this I mean that hope for an alternative
future brings us into contradiction with the existing present and puts us against
the people who cling to it. The contradiction to existing reality into which
the Christian hope brings believers is nothing other than the contradiction out
of which this hope itself was born: the contradiction between the world of the
resurrection and the world in the shadow of the cross. If we had before our
eyes only what we see, then we should come to terms with things as they simply
are, either cheerfully or unwillingly. The fact that we don't come to terms
with them – that between us and the existing reality there is no harmony,
either friendly or resigned – is the unquenchahle spark of hope for the
fullness of life, for righteousness and justice on the new earth, and for the
kingdom of God. That keeps unreconciled, restless and open for God’s great day’
–
Jürgen Moltmann, A Broad Place: An Autobiography (trans. Margaret
Kohl; Minneapolis:
Fortress, 2008), 103–4.
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I'm currently re-reading Moltmann's Church in the Power of the Spirit. Nigel Wright once suggested that this volume is the best account of a Baptist ecclesiology by a non Baptist. I'd like to keep the Moltmann series going for a few days more. So if you want to send an excerpt for posting just email it to me. We'll have one every other day for a wee while longer.
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