Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars
| PentecostalTheology.com
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 21
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 28, No. 1, Spring 2006
In Appreciation of Jürgen Moltmann: A Discussion of His Transformational Eschatology
Peter Althouse
Four books have had the power to stir my passions to the point of tears. One was Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman, in which Willy Loman, the father of a family in crisis, is faced with apparent failure, loss of hope and ultimately commits suicide. Another was Ulrich Körtner’s The End of the World: A Theological Interpretation, which explores the very real possibility of human annihilation and the existential fallout this creates for human life.1 The other two were Jürgen Moltmann’s The Crucified God, which I first read in 1993, and The Coming of God (1996). The power of Moltmann’s writing is such that I was once again brought to tears while reading his newest publication In the End—The Beginning: The Life of Hope (2004).2
I must confess that my wife and I have suffered serious losses over the past few years. My father-in-law passed away after a battle with leukemia. This debilitating disease took a physically strong and spirited man who loved life and family and stripped him of his dignity. The week of his death my own father was hospitalized and required open-heart surgery. While waiting for surgery, his elderly mother (my grandmother) was rushed to the hospital, diagnosed with pancreatitis and informed by the doctors that they could do nothing for her because her heart was too weak. My wife, knowing that her father was dying traveled three hours north to be with him in the hospital, while I remained in Toronto to be with my father. The night after my father had his surgery, my father- in-law passed away. Thankfully, though, my father’s surgery was suc- cessful and he recovered rapidly. As I prepared to drive north for my father-in-law’s funeral I decided to stop in and see my grandmother for a few minutes. I held her hand for those brief minutes. She did not want to let me go, but knew that I had to prepare for my father-in-law’s funeral. This was the last time I saw her alive. During this time, my wife and I
1
Ulrich Körtner, The End of the World: A Theological Interpretation (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995).
2
Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), and In the End—The Beginning: The Life of Hope (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004).
© 2006 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden pp. 21–32
1
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 22
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 28, No. 1, Spring 2006
were drained of energy as we became emotionally, physically, and spiri- tually exhausted.
Why this brief excursion into a painful time in my life? How is this related to Moltmann’s recent publications, Passion for God: Theology in Two Voices (which is co-authored with his wife Elisabeth Moltmann- Wendel), Science and Wisdom, and In the End—The Beginning: The Life of Hope?3 Throughout his career, Moltmann has consistently argued that there is hope in the face of despair, a new beginning with every ending, love that makes us vulnerable. One of the components in hope is the process of grieving: “. . . love also makes us vulnerable for disappoint- ments and hurts, and ultimately death. Love doesn’t give us joy in life without the pain of death.”4 To excuse or suppress grief over the loss of those we love is to suppress our humanity and betray the memory of our loved ones who have died. Moltmann writes:
Anyone who is profoundly affected by death… is generally subjected to pain of such violence that even those who are spiritually strong lose their footing and are overwhelmed. In this situation it is only out of the soli- darity of suffering that they can be talked to at all. And yet the people clos- est to them must keep their heads above water and look beyond the moment of pain. Often the pain comes over the grieving in waves. If this is so the ability to weep is better than a dumb frozen calm. Even to lose conscious- ness can be a blessing in the pain of mourning.5
The value of Moltmann’s theology is that he balances pastoral con- cerns with scholarly insight. Dealing with grief and mourning is part of the human condition and one of the pastoral concerns in the church. What is refreshing in Moltmann’s theology is that he does not hold out the hope for the future kingdom as an ideal to escape this life and the grief we experience in the death of the ones we love, but tells us to embrace this life, to identify with the suffering in creation, even though the pain of death may overwhelm us. We can hope even in the midst of despair.
Moltmann’s eschatology probes the existential questions of life and hope. This might seem a strange claim given his rejection of Rudolph Bultmann’s existential program, which collapses the apocalyptic into the crisis of faith realized in the “now moment,” in which the individual is
3
Jürgen Moltmann and Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, Passion for God: Theology in Two Voices (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2003), and Jürgen Moltmann, Science and Wisdom (Mineapolis: Fortress Press, 2003).
4
Moltmann, In the End, 120.
5
Moltmann, In the End, 124.
22
2
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 23
In Appreciation of Jürgen Moltmann: A Discussion of His Transformational Eschatology
faced with an ultimate moment of decision.6 However, Moltmann’s exis- tential framework emerges out of the probing questions of the suffering of life, questions such as, What happens when we die? Is there truly life after death? Is the world itself at risk of annihilation? It is one thing to affirm life after death from an abstract point of view, but something com- pletely different when personally faced with the death of a loved one, when the despairing questions of eternal life well up to the surface and challenge our faith to its core. Moltmann’s existential concern moves beyond the question of the individual (a problem that persistently plagues existentialism as a philosophy) but asks about the community of life, and even probes the very nature of God. Reflecting on The Crucified God, Moltmann claims that its writing was a personal struggle to come to grips with human suffering and divine compassion. On the one hand, he com- ments that, “the book was part of my personal ‘wrestling with God,’ my suffering under the dark side of God, the hidden face of God… the god- forsakenness of the victim and the godlessness of the guilty in the human history of violence and suffering”; the existential question looks to “a compassionate God who suffers with us.”7 Moltmann’s own struggle with the dark side of life is rooted in his experiences of being a German sol- dier during World War II. He speaks about his experience of losing his friend in the fire bombing of Hamburg and living as a prisoner of war (1945–1948), when he was given a Bible and profoundly struck by Jesus’ death cry, “My God, why have you forsaken me?” As Moltmann writes:
I began to understand the Christ who was assailed by God and suffered from God, because I felt that he understood me. That gave me courage to live…. True, I had no idea what the Church was about, but I was looking for assurance that would sustain existence, and asked about the truth of the Christian faith…. That was my new beginning, the beginning I arrived at when Hamburg was at its end: in the end was my beginning.8
The experience of suffering and death, the realization of the horrors committed by Nazism, and the shame he felt by the kindness of the Scottish and English during his prisoner of war internment, brought an end to his old life, but a new beginning in Christian faith.
On the other hand, Moltmann thinks the theodicy question is a red her- ring because it presupposes that God’s nature is apathetic and impassi- ble, untouched by suffering, only then to ask why a good God would
6
Moltmann, Coming of God, 19–20.
7
Moltmann and Moltmann-Wendel, Passion, 69–70. 8
Moltmann, In the End, 35.
23
3
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 24
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 28, No. 1, Spring 2006
allow suffering. However, in a triune understanding of the crucifixion, the Father experienced the passion of Christ, though in a different way. To state otherwise would violate the triune nature of God. But does this not suggest a form of patripassianism, the patristic error that attempted to protect monotheism by claiming that the Father did not experience the passions of Christ’s crucifixion? Or is it theopaschite, meaning that this dying represents the death of the Father? Stating that Christ was forsaken by God is a relational abandonment that allows Christ to identify with all suffering, and not an ontological rift in the triune nature of God. “In the forsakenness of the Son the Father also forsakes himself. In the surrender of the Son the Father also surrenders himself, though not in the same way. For Jesus suffers dying in forsakenness, but not death itself…. But the Father who abandons him and delivers him up suffers the death of the Son in the infinite grief of love.”9 The suffering experienced by the Son and that experienced by the Father is of a different order. “The Son suf- fers dying, the Father suffers the death of the Son. The grief of the Father here is just as important as the death of the Son. The Fatherlessness of the Son is matched by the Sonlessness of the Father, and if God has con- stituted himself as the Father of Jesus Christ, then he also suffers the death of his Fatherhood in the death of the Son.”10
Thus Moltmann prefers the more biblical, messianic concept of “Christ’s suffering as the passion of the passionate God.”11 Divine suffering is an “active suffering,” God’s willingness to open himself up to the pain of love. The very nature of love means that to love one must also be will- ing to be vulnerable, and vulnerability opens one up to the possibility of suffering. However, God’s suffering is not from “deficiency of being” as is the case with human creatures, but from the “superabundance of God’s divine being.”12
Moltmann’s mature theology not only views salvation as Christ’s “pref- erential option for the poor,” in which Christ identifies and sides with the victims of oppression and seeks to overcome all forms of oppression, but also offers the hope of reconciliation for the perpetuators of oppression and violence, to restore them to the family of God. He writes: “God is also already present where injustice is suffered. If God brings about jus- tice for those who suffer violence, then he also identifies himself with the
9
Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1974), 243; my italics.
10
Moltmann, Crucified God, 243.
11
Moltmann and Moltmann-Wendel, Passion, 74.
12
Moltmann and Moltmann-Wendel, Passion, 74–75.
24
4
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 25
In Appreciation of Jürgen Moltmann: A Discussion of His Transformational Eschatology
victims of violence, putting himself on their side. What is done to the poor and helpless is indirectly done to him too.”13 But he simultaneously states that, “The forgiveness of the guilt of the perpetuators is no more than their precondition for their rebirth to true life.”14 Thus Moltmann consistently advocates a liberationist impulse in order to overcome all explicit and implicit forms of oppression and violence, but also affirms that reconciliation must be realized between neighbors as well as with God. In retrospect, Theology of Hope and The Crucified God provided the impetus for the liberation theologies in Latin America, even though liberation theologians wanted to break with European theologies. Yet Moltmann wants to argue that salvation is not simply for the victims, but also for the perpetuators. Otherwise, divine reconciliation is insufficient.
The hope of the Christian faith, for Moltmann, is hope in the resurrection of the crucified Christ. In death, Christ identifies with humanity and all creation, which suffers under the finitude of life. One cannot simply bypass the crucifixion to taste the resurrection, lest a triumphalist attitude develops. However, the resurrection of Christ is the first-fruits of the transformation of the world into the new creation. Eschatological hope is the hope of the world and Christ is the one who brings that hope. Moltmann’s entire theo- logy is founded on eschatological hope. These newest publications are no exception, though Science and Wisdom broaches the issue from a more scientific perspective than Passion for Godand In the End—The Beginning. As Moltmann states, “[Christianity] is a universal hope for the future which embraces the history of human beings and the history of the world. The Christ event of the resurrection is ‘historical’ in that it confers his- tory by opening up new future: through this event of the past—which is nevertheless not a past event—the present is thrown open for the future, as a time of hope.”15
For Moltmann, creation and eschatology are intricately entwined. Yet theology does not begin with the “protological understanding of escha- tology,” which understands creation and redemption in the context of the Fall, otherwise creation is a closed system and there is no possibility for the novuum (the new)—it is a deterioration of what has already been cre- ated, a decay that follows the second law of thermodynamics. Rather, the- ology begins with the “eschatological understanding of creation,” which sees creation in the context of the new creation. Although creation is an unrepeatable, sovereign and free act of God (creatio ex nihilo), it is not
13
Moltmann, In the End, 62–63. 14
Moltmann, In the End, 74. 15
Moltmann, Science and Wisdom, 17.
25
5
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 26
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 28, No. 1, Spring 2006
merely a past event or fact of history. Creation is also continuing in divine acts of salvation that bring the new out of the old, in which God labors for the nations and the whole of creation. Creation in the beginning is an open system of time and potentiality, but sin is the self-closing of those potentialities and the collapse of the future into the now. Creation itself will be consummated into the kingdom of glory, at which time God will indwell his creation. In the new creation, heaven and earth will be the dwelling place of God, in which the hiddenness of God in creation in the beginning will be made manifest. The human being in creation will not simply be restored to the image of God, but will be “glorified.” Human beings and creation as a whole will still be finite but no longer mortal, temporal but no longer transitory.16
Thus Moltmann’s concern is not simply the future state of the soul in heaven, but the future of the cosmos as a whole. “Christian eschatology cannot be reduced to human eschatology, and human eschatology cannot be brought down to the salvation of the soul in heaven beyond. There are no human souls without human bodies, and no human existence without the life system of the earth, and no earth without the universe.”17 Moltmann argues for a thoroughly developed cosmic eschatology. The temporal world is transitory and chronologically ticking away, but the eternal world brought in by God is aeonic (eternal time), not in the sense of end-less time or timelessness, but in terms of God’s power over time: “the eternity of the Creator is to be seen in his pre-temporality, his simultaneity and his post- temporality. His eternity surrounds the time of the created worlds from every side, and by doing so confines it to finite time… so there is a past future, present future, and future future.”18
Earlier in God in Creation, Moltmann defined this tripartite under- standing of creation as creation-in-the-beginning (original creation ex nihilo), the ongoing process of creation (continuing creation), and the con- summation of creation, which is the eschatological transformation of this creation into the new creation.19 Apocalyptic, in Moltmann’s theology, then, is not the annihilation of the world in which the very substance of creation is destroyed, but the transformation of the world which “embraces both the identity of creation and its newness, that is to say both continuity and discontinuity.”20 The apocalyptic is the purging of sin and death from
16
Moltmann, Science and Wisdom, 45. 17
Moltmann, Science and Wisdom, 71. 18
Moltmann, Science and Wisdom, 80. 19
Moltmann, God in Creation, 88 and passim. 20
Moltmann, Science and Wisdom, 77.
26
6
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 27
In Appreciation of Jürgen Moltmann: A Discussion of His Transformational Eschatology
the finite order (the negation of the negative in Moltmann’s terminology), so that the transformation of humanity and the end of world history can participate in the transfigured glory of the new creation, when God will be all in all.
Generally, the advantage of these publications is that the diverse themes of Moltmann’s theology previously scattered throughout his numerous writings are drawn together into single volumes. Both In the End—The Beginning and Science and Wisdom are excellent recapitulations of Moltmann’s entire theological project. But instead of critiquing his theo- logy at this point in our essay—one could question, for instance, the egal- itarian basis of his theology as the universalization of Western liberal democracies (Simon Chan), or the assumption that the eschaton is an eter- nal, non-changing state in God’s presence rather than a continuation of time (John Polkinghorne), or if his panentheism ends up becoming a type of process theology and a form of pantheism (Brian Walsh)21—I want to highlight Pentecostalism’s influence on Moltmann’s theology and then offer suggestions as to how and why Moltmann’s work can be appropri- ated and used to strengthen Pentecostal theology as the discussion relates to these newer works.
Although the influence of Pentecostalism on Moltmann is not explic- itly stated in these latest publications, one can observe a general back- ground correlation. Moltmann has expressed an interest in dialoguing with Pentecostals. His first exposure to Pentecostal worship occurred early in his career while giving a lecture in a Missionary Alliance Church in Linköping, Sweden. A person in the congregation gave a message in “tongues,” which could not be translated into German.22 Since then he has been open to the charismatic practices of Pentecostals and Charismatics, making room for them in his theology. In terms of his theology, Moltmann has articulated an eschatological understanding of healing, charisma and tongues,23 which is difficult to explain within the context of his Reformed heritage, suggesting an influence from Pentecostal and Charismatic sources.
21
Simon Chan, Spiritual Theology: A Systematic Study of the Christian Life (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1998), passim; John Polkinghorne, The God of Hope and the End of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 118–20; and Brian J. Walsh, “Theology of Hope and the Doctrine of Creation: An Appraisal of Jürgen Moltmann,” Evangelical Quarterly 59 (1987): 53–76.
22
Miroslav Volf, “An Interview with Jürgen Moltmann,” in G. McLeod Bryan, ed., Communities of Faith and Radical Discipleship: Jürgen Moltmann and Others (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1986), 7.
23
See for instance Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (London: SCM Press, 1977), 289–336.
27
7
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 28
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 28, No. 1, Spring 2006
Moltmann has officially dialogued with Pentecostals on a number of occa- sions, including the Brighton Conference on World Evangelism in 1991, the co-editing of a Concilium publication Pentecostal Movements as an Ecumenical Challenge, and the publication of multiple essays in the Journal for Pentecostal Theology and Pneuma.24
The most obvious similarity between Moltmann and Pentecostals is the value they place on eschatology. Although the phenomenon of tongues was (and is) of particular importance to Pentecostals, the expectation of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ was central to and the context for the theological relevance of speaking in tongues. For early Pentecostals, speak- ing in tongues was both missional and eschatological—missional in the sense that tongues speaking was understood as the Spirit’s empowerment for spreading the gospel through the entire globe in a final, end-time revival preceding the Second Coming, and eschatological in the sense that tongues proleptically anticipated the kingdom of God as a foretaste of the kingdom of glory. This “latter rain” eschatology was later supplanted by fundamentalist dispensationalism, a speculative eschatology that proposed a premillennial rapture, seven-year tribulation, God’s triumph of evil in the battle of Armageddon, and millennial reign of peace. Although the specifics of this type of eschatology varied, it represented a shift from hopeful anticipation to passive resignation for Pentecostals.25 Recently, Pentecostal eschatology is shifting once again from the passivity of fun- damentalist dispensationalism to an emphasis on the already/not yet of the kingdom. The kingdom is already here in the power and presence of the crucified and risen Christ (though Pentecostals tend to avoid crucifixion language except to emphasize vicarious atonement), but not yet here in its fullest manifestation. In other words, elements of the kingdom are pre-
24
See, respectively, Harold Hunter and Peter D. Hocken, eds., All Together in One Place: Theological Papers from the Brighton Conference on World Evangelism, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement 4 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993); Jürgen Moltmann and Karl-Josef Kuschel, eds., Pentecostal Movements as an Ecumenical Challenge (London: SCM Press, 1996); Journal Pentecostal of Theology 4 (April 1994), passim; Frank D. Macchia, “The Spirit of Life: A Further Response to Jürgen Moltmann,” The Journal of Pentecostal Theology 5 (October 1994): 121–27; Jürgen Moltmann, “A Pentecostal Theology of Life,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 9 (October 1996): 3–15; Moltmann, “The Blessing of Hope: The Theology of Hope and the Full Gospel,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 13:2 (April 2005): 147–61; and Jürgen Moltmann, “The Hope for the Kingdom of God and Signs of Hope in the World: The Relevance of Blumhardt’s Theology Today,” Pentecostal Theology 26:1 (Fall 2004): 4–35.
25
Gerald T. Sheppard, “Pentecostalism and the Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism: The Anatomy of an Uneasy Relationship” Pentecostal Theology 2:2 (1984): 9.
28
8
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 29
In Appreciation of Jürgen Moltmann: A Discussion of His Transformational Eschatology
sent in the world in hidden form (and therefore demand our attention and action as Christians in service to the King), but the kingdom itself will break into the world only through a sovereign and free act of God.26 This understanding of the kingdom better situates Pentecostal theology to allow for active social, political, and environmental engagement as our service to God, while also insisting that eschatology is a soteriological orientation of personal, social, and cosmic dimensions. Regardless, Pentecostal theology has a tendency to focus on the future of the individual (an out- come of its revivalist heritage). Concern for a more social understanding of the eschaton can be traced, however, in William J. Seymour’s under- standing of Pentecostal tongues as an analogy for racial integration, real- ized in the reconciliation of races in his own context of post-bellum America and in anticipation for the harmony of peoples in the eschaton. Nevertheless, the social and cosmic elements of the kingdom have gen- erally been under-developed.
Moltmann’s eschatology has been influential in the latter half of the twentieth century on Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals alike. For Moltmann, eschatology is not just one element in systematic theology, but the core on which all theology is based. His emphasis on the continuity/discontinuity of the kingdom, an emphasis that correlates with the already/not yet of the kingdom, allows him to maintain the tension between the immanence of the Spirit (as with God in Creation) and the transcendent vision of its complete transformation (as with Theology of Hope).27 Moltmann also distinguishes the various depictions of eschatology as individual, social or historical, cosmic, and divine. The concern of individual eschatology is the future of the person, but Moltmann wants to maintain that this future state includes both the blessedness of the soul and the resurrected body that is guaranteed in the resurrection of Christ.28 Social or historical escha- tology insists that although the history of the world will come to an end, the history of God’s interaction with his people will find its fulfillment in the kingdom of God.29 Cosmic eschatology maintains that there is no per- sonal or historical eschatology without the transformation of creation into
26
I flesh out these issues in more detail in Peter Althouse, Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Conversation with Jürgen Moltmann, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement 25 (London: T & T Clark International, 2003).
27
Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: An Ecological Doctrine of Creation (London: SCM Press, 1985), and Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and Implications of a Christian Eschatology (London: SCM Press, 1967).
28
Moltmann, Coming of God, 49ff.
29
Moltmann, Coming of God, 131ff.
29
9
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 30
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 28, No. 1, Spring 2006
the new creation, because human life (body and soul) is embedded in the webs of nature.30 Divine eschatology suggests that in God’s triune being there will be an eschatological self-glorification of God realized in the ultimate purpose of creation, when God will be all in all.31
Secondly, what can Moltmann’s discussion of suffering and grief offer Pentecostalism? The question is pertinent on an historical and existential level. Historically, Pentecostalism was birthed among poor working and oppressed African-American peoples. Much has been made about the early Pentecostal lower class status,32 but I agree with Gerald Sheppard that early Pentecostalism was submodern, meaning that at a time when the middle and upper classes were enjoying the benefits of modernity, those constituting the early Pentecostal movement had little or no access to these benefits.33 Faith in God for healing is a more pressing concern when the limits of medicine are exhausted or when treatment is beyond one’s financial means. The quest for divine presence in the experience of tongues and charismatic gifts was a cry amidst the misery of daily life. Early Pentecostals had no lofty cathedrals, no modern day conveniences at the turn of the century, but used whatever resources were available—old barns, tents, open fields, etc. In a word, suffering and oppression were part of the ethos of early Pentecostalism, but the presence of God’s Spirit brought hope to overcome suffering and oppression.
Existentially, and at this point I want to shift to the present context, the experiences of healing, speaking in tongues and the charismatic gifts are positive experiences of the presence of God in the believer and the church, and have immediate personal (inward) and social (outward) con- sequences in the ongoing growth of the kingdom through the presence of Christ in the power of the Spirit. Negatively, however, these experiences can sometimes be construed in such a way as to downplay or even bypass the very real conditions of human suffering and grief. When one is encour- aged to deny sickness in order to “claim” God’s healing, or excuse a loved
30
Moltmann, Coming of God, 259ff.
31
See especially Moltmann, Coming of God, 323ff.
32
See for instance, Robert M. Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979). For a discussion that questions the lower class status of early Pentecostalism, see Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 197–216.
33
Gerald T. Sheppard, “Pentecostals, Globalization, and Postmodern Hermeneutics: Implications for the Politics of Scriptural Interpretation,” in Murray W. Dempster, Bryon D. Klaus, and Douglas Petersen, eds., The Globalization of Pentecostalism: A Religion Made to Travel (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 1999), 289–312.
30
10
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 31
In Appreciation of Jürgen Moltmann: A Discussion of His Transformational Eschatology
one’s death because she is in a better place, this does little to comfort our present grief and ends up denying a part of our humanity. The Christian hope is in the future life of resurrection and glorification in the presence of Christ, in which healings, tongues and the charismata are proleptic foretastes of the kingdom in this present life. Yet authentic hope is some- times replaced by consumer optimism, in which we expect life to get bet- ter through the use of scientific or pragmatic technique. At times, the lack of healing, tongues, or the charismata are uncaringly viewed as evidence of a lack of faith. This kind of thinking poses a danger to Pentecostal churches, in that believing that God’s presence is evident in the kairos moments of tongues, healing and charismata risks triumphalism by col- lapsing the eschaton into the already fully present. Here is the irony of current Pentecostal eschatology. It formally holds to the doctrine of the Rapture and Tribulation,34 but lives as though these doctrines are irrele- vant. Many Pentecostals today are more concerned with building suc- cessful churches with large congregations in which God is believed to be (exclusively?) present, and they use corporate management techniques to do so. Yet the kingdom and the church are not identical. The church re- presents the kingdom to the world, in which the gospel is preached to the poor, the needy, and the brokenhearted, but in a way that seeks the imme- diate, contextual changes and ultimate overcoming of these conditions.35 Moltmann’s theology can help Pentecostals work through these issues.
What then does Moltmann’s theology offer Pentecostals? Both Moltmann and Pentecostals hold eschatology as primary to the Christian faith. Moltmann articulates a theology of hope that includes personal, historical, cosmic, and divine dimensions. Yet he does not want to bypass the human condition to arrive triumphantly at the eschaton, but insists that the suf- fering and grief we experience in this world must be acknowledged in order to be overcome. Pentecostals articulate a theology of healing, tongues, and charismata within the context of eschatology that ultimately protests the misery of the present, but they must be careful not to claim these gifts
34
This type of Fundamentalist Dispensationalism is not held uniformly by North American Pentecostals, and tends not to be a doctrine affirmed by developing countries. Moreover, numerous North American Pentecostals are calling it into question, because it is incoherent with the theology of tongues.
35
What I have in mind is the missional understanding of the church that is under the process of being constructed within Evangelical circles. See, as representative, Craig Van Gelder, The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000), and Darrell L. Gruder, ed., Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998).
31
11
Pneuma 28,1_f4_21-32II 3/16/06 4:20 PM Page 32
Pentecostal Theology, Volume 28, No. 1, Spring 2006
as a way to escape the finitudes of life. The continuous/discontinuous understanding of the kingdom would help Pentecostals understand that the Spirit’s gifts are foretastes of the future creation guaranteed in Christ’s resurrection, and therefore we live, as it were, with one foot in the pre- sent and the other foot in the future.
32
12
