Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God

"Anyone who suffers without cause first thinks that he has been forsaken by God.  God seems to him to be the mysterious, incomprehensible God who destroys the good fortune that he gave.  But anyone who cries out to God in his suffering echoes the death-cry of the dying Christ, the Son of God.  In that case it is not just a hidden someone set over against him, to whom he cries, but in a profound sense the human God, who cries with him and intercedes for him with his cross, where man in his torment is dumb."

 

Moltmann, J. The Crucified God  (London: SCM, 1974) 252

 

 

"Read Moltmann's The Crucified God for the first time in 1979 and was transformed particulalry by chapter 6 which has continued to shape my life and all my theological thinking."  (Graeme Clark)

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Like Graeme, and I suspect many, many others, I too was theologically reoriented by the power and boldness of Moltmann's The Crucified God. In an unpublished lecture on Atonement, James Denney urged his students to read and become familiar with those books on the death of Christ which had forced the Church to rethink and to think better - books in which, as he said elsewhere, you could hear "the plunge of lead in fathomless waters". The Crucified God is that kind of book, and perhaps one that could only be written by one who so painfully and fruitfully appropriated the terror and suffering of a young German soldier who survived allied bombing when many of those standing closest to him were obliterated before his eyes. Moltmann tells of those experiences in his autobiography A Broad Place. Amongst other things, that volume shows the essential connection between biography and theology, life experience and theological understanding. 

Comments

[Tony Maude]

Jim,
As you know, this book profoundly affected my theological thinking when I was at Scottish Baptist College, and it still does. Reading Moltmann really encouraged me to take risks in my theological thinking, and not to be too scared to share my thoughts. Takes me back to my dissertation ... again.

[lynn]

Moltmann, though not easy for me to read, challenged my whole thinking on Trinitarian issues. I can't sing that Stuart Townend song about the wrath of God being satisfied (!) (thoughts - anyone??)without thinking about this book. Absolutely must be on reading lists.

[Agness Lungu]

I am still reading the book entitled "The Crucified God" a very challenging book indeed and would not love to stop reading it especially that it touches "God's Death on the Cross" Meaning the Three in one are inseparable, even in death, there on the Cross they were together, experienced such great humiliation for the truth. Word incarnato, Jesus - the 'image of the invisible God', 'This is God, and God is like this'. I am a bit confused, what type of a God to face such humiliation?