Let me start with a good story about customer service. I started to read Jurgen Moltmann seriously in the late 1970's. I used the SCM Study editions, those sturdy not quite paperback books were intended to survive heavy use and repeated reading. My volume of The Crucified God split in several places before I finished the first reading. No, I didn't bend it back, or try to flatten it on the desk. The glue had dried - it was a first edition paperback. These were the days long before Amazon and no quibble returns.
I phoned the publisher (only landlines in those days!) in London and spoke with a helpful Services Manager. He apologised and promised to send a fresh copy there and then. It arrived later that week, by which time my original volume was reduced to a series of several chapter sized pamphlets. But what a book! It was during Lent and I was working through The Crucified God while preparing for a series of 5 Holy Week Services.
I had never encountered such powerful writing. Reading Moltmann was a form of extreme theological diving into waters of unknown depth, at times dark, and utterly exhilarating. Not an easy read, how could it be with such a title: The Crucified God.
The problem intrinsic to every christology is not merely the reference to the person called by the name of Jesus, but also the reference to his history, and within his history, to his death on the cross. All christological titles presumably express what faith receives, what love gives, and what one may hope. But the critical point for them comes when, faced with the 'double conclusion of the life of Jesus, they have to state what it means for the Christ, the Son of God, the Logos, the true man or the representative to have been crucified. (86)
For more than 40 years I've continued to read Moltmann, have used his books in teaching, and have gone back often to re-read, especially passages I have marked, and to which for me at least, intellect assents, and heart affirms. As a Christian and theologian, thinking the faith can never be an exercise of intellect unharnessed to personal experience of Jesus Christ - Moltmann exemplifies faith seeking understanding, that is, a way to love the crucified God with heart, mind, strength and all that makes us who we are.
The underlined words above, are underlined in my copy, still that SCM Study Edition which has indeed proved durable, as has the impact of that first reading. It has survived recurring reference and reading all that time, several house removals, multiple spells on the desk, and still hasn't split into pamphlets. A true study edition.
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