1965

Moltmann, Theology of Hope: eschatology at the center of theology

Weiss and Schweitzer showed that apocalyptic occupied a central place in Jesus' preaching, but Schweitzer held that the unfulfilled expectation of an imminent end discredits the New Testament, while Bultmann reinterpreted it existentially: eternal life by faith is a present reality. Jürgen Moltmann, having read Ernst Bloch's The Principle of Hope, asked why theology avoids a theme that should be its own, and in Theology of Hope (1965) restored eschatology to the center: it is not a final chapter about the last events but what the Church hopes for and the very hope by which it lives – "from first to last Christianity is eschatology, is hope." Revelation for him is promise, grounded in the resurrection of Christ, and God is not above us or within us but ahead of us, as the power of the future; the Church "is like an arrow shot into the world and aimed at the future," and therefore eschatological faith is necessarily political. Together with Pannenberg, Metz and Braaten, Moltmann began a movement that answered Kant's question "What may I hope?"; the theology of hope influenced the World Council of Churches and liberation theology.