Volume 76, Issue 5

The article presents Jürgen Moltmann as one of the most important contemporary theologians worldwide. It describes the development of his theology as a journey of theological discoveries and explorations which have influenced many central themes of theology in the 20th century and beyond. Moltmann’s Theology of Hope in 1964, which established his worldwide fame, was an important reference point for various liberation theologies in different parts of the world. His book on The Crucified God made clear that hope in a Christian sense always includes a deep theological account of suffering. God in Creation presented his ecological doctrine of creation, which attempted to overcome an anthropocentric theological thinking that ignored the presence of God’s Spirit in non-human nature. In his messianic Christology he describes redemption as something including the whole cosmos and all victims of evolution. Moltmann’s eschatology relates God’s justice and love by developing a notion of judgment as healing and saving judgment

In our days, Western thought has a skeptical attitude towards talk about eternal life. The article first shows that in his famous Theology of Hope Jürgen Moltmann does not only discuss this skeptical position, but identifies a source for a realistic approach to eternal life, namely hope that is inspired by the forces of eternal life and becomes itself a resource of power in ecclesial and political contexts. Secondly the article focuses on the vitality of eternal life and the need for its embodied presence. It addresses the problem that, as a rule, the body is associated with finite corporeal existence; it is not endowed with the soteriological power we associate with eternal life. So what could be a connecting point between finite and perishing bodily existence and saving eternal life? In a third step the article explores the spiritual body and its presence in the existence of the resurrected Christ and his Spirit. We encounter the spiritual body with its saving powers in the hope-igniting presence of Christ not only in word and sacrament, but also in a multitude of received and given diaconal forms of love of one’s neighbor and in prophetic search and care for truth and justice.

The eternal God is not merely an illusion, as traditional atheism claims; God is an undesirable illusion, in fact, an illusion which is, on closer inspection, impossible to desire. This, roughly, is the thesis of Martin Hägglund’s »radical atheism,« one of whose primary claims is the essential temporality of all human desire. To see eternity and absolute fullness as the ultimate goal is to desire nothingness, he argues; this desire as such (and not just its practical outworking) entails denial of care for and joy in ordinary life. This essay is a critical dialogue with Hägglund, a friendly dispute about time and eternity as they bear on the possibilities of care and joy.

In close conceptual proximity to Meister Eckhart, Jürgen Moltmann develops models of thinking, experience and action based on the notion of unlimited time without generally or completely losing the patterns and experiences of temporal (and hence of daily and profane) existence. Temporal experience is not denigrated while contextless (meaning: isolated) experience of »eternity«, although taken into consideration, is not spiritually highlighted. This leads to the concept of a nunc aeternitatis, the presence of eternity. This concept is being reconstructed by means of the practical model of cognitive, emotional and pragmatic allowance, repeatedly taking »realizations«, parallels and equivalents from other religious, philosophical and literary traditions into account.

This contribution explores young peoples’ view on eternity and practical experiences with this topic in high school education. First it analyses the importance of eschatological topics in religious high school education. Then it discusses the necessity and the possibilities of exploring eschatological questions together with high school students. Based on teaching experience with the topics of Christian hope, resurrection and eternal life, the essay concludes with some specific ideas for the practice of teaching

The article discusses the concept of a Confucian religion, which Jiang Qing - one of today’s most famous and controversial Confucians - advances against the rapid growth of Christianity in China. More specifically, the article analyses the movement of Confucian Child Education, which has been initiated through the Yidan School in Beijing since 2000 and the Qufu Church Controversy from 2010. An analysis of those two cases allows us to understand Jiang Qing’s self-understanding of the competitive relationship between Confucianism and Christianity, and explains how he thinks Confucianism can turn from a state ideology into a civil society movement.

For decades the scriptural orientation of Protestant theology so constitutive for the denomination has been discussed as a phenomenon of crisis of fundamental theology under the heading »crisis of the scriptural principle.« While three different strategies to address the matter may be distinguished, the encyclopedic dimension of the »crisis of the scriptural principle«, which becomes manifest in the relationship between exegesis and systematic theology, has received less attention: This historically grown tension results not only in non-related discourses about »Scripture(s)« and hence the lack of a complex theological concept of Scripture, but also in a missing encyclopedically accountable scriptural orientation of theology. An interdisciplinary theory of Protestant scriptural liability is to encounter these shortcomings.