What kind of blessedness is it that luxuriates in revenge? (Jurgen Moltmann)

There are certainly many other movements, and much fervent zeal for the liberation of the masses.  It certainly sounds more realistic for people in darkness to dream of God's day of vengeance, finding satisfaction in the hope that at the Last Judgment all the godless enemies who oppress us here will be cast into hellfire.  But what kind of blessedness is it that luxuriates in revenge and needs the groans of the damned as background to its own joy?  To us a child is born, not an embittered old man.  God in a child, not as hangman.  That is why he prayed on his cross: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."  It sounded more heroic when, forty years ago, in 1934, Hitler's columns marched through Tubingen, singing with fanatical zeal: "One day, the day of revenge.  One day, and we shall be free."  It was a zeal that led to Auschwitz and Stalingrad...

-Jurgen Moltmann, The Power of the Powerless (taken from Watch for the Light)

The Creator God is the One Who Raises the Dead (Jurgen Moltmann)

It isn't enough to say that the Creator God is the one who fashions matter, the reason that there is something rather than nothing.  This is significant, but it is not enough.  "Creation" is more than the act of giving dead stuff it’s dead stuff-ness, to author a lifeless cosmos.

What is this God like? 

For Moltmann, the God who is Creator is inseparable from the God who raises the dead:

“The God who raises the dead is the same God who as creator calls into being the things that are not; and the God who called the world into existence out of nothing is the God who raises the dead.  Beginning and end, creation and resurrection, belong together and must not be separated from one another; for the glorification of creation through the raising of the dead is creation’s perfecting, and creation is aligned towards the resurrection of the dead.”

-Jesus Christ for Today’s World

Creatio ex Nihilo and The Cosmic Christ (Jurgen Moltmann)

Ever since reading God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo by David Bentley Hart, the theological idea of creation ex nihilo has become an important one for me.  Subsequent readings, along with a few other essays (Theodicy, Hell, and David B Hart by Brian Moore being a notable one) have cemented it as foundational and formative.  The eschatological themes of heaven, hell and the destiny of creation, the connection between protology (beginnings) and eschatology (ends), the moral themes of theodicy and suffering, and the ultimate question of 'Who is God?' are all intimately germane to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.

For me, this doctrine (as implication of the Gospel) provides reason for hope and the occasion for faith.

I came across the same themes recently in the work of Jurgen Moltmann.  Moltmann, however, doesn't explicitly use the language of creation "ex nihilo".  Not here anyways.  For Moltmann, this line of thought falls within his theological expositions on "The Cosmic Christ".

The connection is amazing.  When we are talking about the meaning of Creation ex nihilo, we are talking about the cosmic Christ, the Alpha and the Omega.

Both of the citations below are taken from Chapter 6 (section 3) of Jesus Christ for Today's World by Moltmann.  The chapter is entitled 'The Cosmic Christ'.  Have a look:

If all things are created by one God, then a transcendent unity precedes their diversity and their historicity. It is not a matter of many worlds belonging to many gods or powers. This is the one creation of the one God. If all things are created by the one God through his Wisdom/Logos, and if they are held together in that, then an immanent unity in which they all exist together underlies their diversity in space and time. Their unity is not the outcome of some subsequent process, emerging from their relationships and the warp and weft into which they are bound. Everything has its genesis in a fundamental underlying unity, which is called God's Wisdom, Spirit or Word. The fellowship of all created beings goes ahead of their differentiations and the specific forms given to them, and this is consequently the foundation underlying their diversity. If God withdraws this foundation, everything disintegrates and becomes a nothingness. If God lends it fresh force, the various forms are renewed (Ps. 104.29f.).
--(Kindle Locations 996-998).


The Hebrew word roach is often translated Spirit, as it is here; but a better translation is 'wind' or 'breath'. The Hebrew word 'rahaph' is generally rendered 'hover' or 'brood'. But according to Deut. 32.11 and Jer. 23.9 it really means vibrating, quivering, moving and exciting. If this is correct, then we shouldn't just think of the image of a fluttering or brooding dove. We should think of the fundamental resonances of music out of which sounds and rhythms emerge. So in thinking about 'creation through the Word', we shouldn't think primarily in metaphors of command and obedience. A better image is the song of creation. The word names, differentiates and appraises. But the breath is the same in all the words, and binds the words together. So the Creator differentiates his creatures through his creative Word and joins them through his Spirit, who is the sustainer of all his words. In the quickening breath and through the form-giving word, the Creator sings out his creatures in the sounds and rhythms in which he has his joy and his good pleasure.
--(Kindle Locations 1004-1010).

What is the 'Kingdom of God'? (Jurgen Moltmann)

In the summings-up of Jesus’ message we are also told again and again: “The kingdom of God is at hand – repent.”  But what does the word ‘repent’ really mean according to these parables?

A sheep has gone astray and is found and the finder is delighted that his search has not been in vain.  The lost coin could do nothing about either its loss or its finding: the joy is solely and entirely the woman’s.  The lost son, finally, was not merely ‘lost and found; he had actually been ‘dead and was alive again’.  So if we look at these parables, what is the kingdom of God?  It is nothing other than God’s joy at finding again the beings he created who have been lost.  And what is the ‘repentance’ which the sinner has to ‘perform’?  It is nothing other than the being-found, and the return home from exile and estrangement, the coming-alive again, and the joining in God’s joy.  We are experiencing God’s kingdom when something like this happens to us, something where we flower and put out fresh growth like the flowers and trees in the spring, and come alive again, because we sense the great in exhaustible loves from which all life proceeds.  When we experience God’s exhilaration in his joy over us, and our own vitality reawakens, the kingdom of God cease to be some remote and alien rule; it is the very source and fountain of life.  Then the kingdom of God is the wide space in which we can unfold and develop, because it is a place without any restrictions.  Once we experience God’s kingdom like this, we discover afresh the wealth of our potentialities for living.

Jurgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ For Today’s World