Hope in These Troubled Times Jürgen Moltmann Hope in These Troubled Times HOPE IN THESE TROUBLED TIMES Translated by Margaret Kohl and Brian McNeil Copyright © 2019 WCC Publications. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in notices or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: [email protected]. WCC Publications is the book publishing programme of the World Council of Churches. Founded in 1948, the WCC promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. A global fellowship, the WCC brings together more than 350 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches rep- resenting more than 560 million Christians in 110 countries and works coopera- tively with the Roman Catholic Church. Opinions expressed in WCC Publications are those of the authors. Unless otherwise noted, scripture quotations are from the New Revised Stan- dard Version Bible, © copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Educa- tion of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. Cover design: Beth Oberholtzer Design Cover image: Hope, by Sharon Cummings, 2010. Book design and typesetting: Michelle Cook / 4 Seasons Book Design ISBN: 978-2-8254-1713-3 World Council of Churches 150 route de Ferney, P.O. Box 2100 1211 Geneva 2, Switzerland http://publications.oikoumene.org Contents Preface vii Part One: Facing the Future 1. A Culture of Life in the Dangers of This Time 3 2. The Hope of the Earth: The Ecological Future 15 of Modern Theology 3. A Common Earth Religion: World Religions 33 from an Ecological Perspective 4. Mercy and Solidarity 45 5. The Unfinished World: Nature, Time, and the Future 57 6. Terrorism and Political Theology 69 7. Is the City a Place of Hope? The Urbanization 81 of Humankind – A Challenge for Christianity Part Two: Learning from the Past 8. God and the Soul, God and the Senses 95 9. The Unfinished Reformation: Ecumenical Answers 123 to Unresolved Problems 10. Persevering in Faith: Roots of a Theology of Hope 139 11. The Passibility or Impassibility of God 159 12. The Mystery of the Past 173 Notes 207 v Preface We live in troubled times, one can affirm without exaggeration. Yet what are the roots of our troubles, and what might be the realistic basis for hoping that we can surmount them? How can we, as Christians, frame an honest and theologically tenable world- view to guide our lives and work in this perilous context? In this volume, I attempt to answer these questions by offering a set of recent reflections on such topics as the ecological challenge, interfaith relations, solidarity and compassion, and terrorism in the name of religion. I focus on the upcoming ecological reformation of Christian theology and spirituality. The path goes from the earth into the city, from the soul into the senses, in order to encourage new expe- riences of God and new human self-experiences in earth’s community. I also explore, in a second part, some of the underlying theologi- cal issues raised by these concerns and the roots of our difficulties and dilemmas in modernity itself. “Thinking hope” requires but also enables a reassessment and reappropriation of these legacies, in both their promising and problematic elements. So Part One focuses on renewing theology and reasserting hope today, while Part Two explores the historical and theological sources of our situation and our future.Though drawing on my recent vol- ume Hoffen und Denken for this volume, I have also added essays and selected chapters that most directly address our contemporary situa- tion and its roots in the Christian tradition and, most particularly, in vii viii Preface the ambiguities of modernity. Sources are listed following the notes in this volume. I am grateful to the late Mrs. Margaret Kohl, with whom I worked for many years, for many of the English-language drafts of these chapters, as well as to the Rev. Dr Brian McNeil, for revisions of some translations and new translations of others. Christian hope draws the promised future of God into the present day, and prepares the present day for this future. As Immanuel Kant rightly said, thinking in the power of hope is not the train-bearer of reality: instead, it goes ahead of reality and lights its way with a torch. The historical-eschatological category is the category of the novum, that which is new: the new spirit, the new heart, the new human being, the new covenant, the new song, and ultimately, the promise: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5). I hope that readers will agree: in light of our faith, as Christians we can honestly assess and face the full force of humanity’s contemporary challenges yet also experience and instil a realistic hope of transcend- ing them. PART ONE Facing the Future Chapter 1 A Culture of Life in the Dangers of This Time In this chapter I grapple with what have been my most urgent concerns for some time: a culture of life that is stronger than the terror of death, a love for life that overcomes the destructive forces in our world today, and a confidence in the future that overcomes doubt and fatalism.1 These issues are for me most urgent because with the poet Friedrich Hölderlin I believe strongly: Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst Das Rettende auch. [But where there is danger Salvation also grows.]2 We should inquire whether and to what extent this hope bears weight as we explore the possibilities of a culture of life in the face of the real annihilations with which our world is threatened. I will begin by addressing some of the dangers of our time in the first section, and in the second section offer some answers by considering dimensions of a world capable of supporting life and in a quite literal sense a world that is worthy of love. At the end I return to the first verse of the poem by Hölderlin: “Near is God, but difficult to grasp.”3 3 4 Hope in These Troubled Times The Terror of Universal Death The unloved life Human life today is in danger. It is not in danger because it is mortal. Our life has always been mortal. It is in danger because it is no longer loved, affirmed, and accepted. The French author Albert Camus wrote after the Second World War, “This is the mystery of Europe: life is no longer loved.” I can attest to this. I remember the experiences of the war with continuing horror. My generation was destined for a murderous war in which it was no longer a matter of victory or peace, but only of death. Those who suffered in that monstrous war knew what Camus meant: a life no longer loved is ready to kill and is liable to be killed. The survi- vors experienced the end of terror in 1945, but we had become so used to death that life took on a “take it or leave it” atmosphere because it had become meaningless. The 20th century was a century of mass exterminations and mass executions. The beginning of the 21st century saw the private terrors of senseless killings by suicidal assassins. In the terrorists of the 21st century, a new religion of death is confronting us. I do not mean the religion of lslam, but rather the ideology of terror. “Your young people love life,” said the Mullah Omar of the Taliban in Afghanistan, “our young people love death.” After the mass murder in Madrid on 11 March 2004, there were acknowledgments by the terrorists with the same message: “You love life, we love death.” A German who joined the Taliban in Afghanistan declared, “We don’t want to win; we want to kill and be killed.” Why? I think because they view killing as power and they experience themselves as God over life and death. This seems to be the modern terrorist ideology of the suicidal assassins. It is also the mystery of crazed students who in the United States and Germany suddenly shoot their fellow students and teachers and end up taking their own lives. I remember that we had this love of death in Europe some 60 years ago. “Viva la muerte,” cried an old fascist general in the Span- ish Civil War. Long live death! The German SS troops in the Second World War had the saying “Death gives, and death takes away” and A Culture of Life 5 wore the symbol of the skull and bones. It is not possible to deter sui- cidal assassins, for they have broken the fear of death. They do not love life anymore, and they want to die with their victims. Behind this terrorist ideological surface a greater danger is hidden: Peace, disarmament, and nonproliferation treaties between nations share an obvious assumption, namely, that on both sides there is the will to survive and the will to live. Yet what happens if one partner does not want to survive but is willing to die, if through death that partner can destroy this whole “wicked” or “godless” world? Until now we have had to deal only with an international network of suicidal assas- sins and individual students overcome by a death wish. What happens when a nation possessing nuclear weapons becomes obsessed with this “religion of death” and turns into a collective suicidal assassin against the rest of the human world because it is driven into a corner and gives up all hope? Deterrence works only so long as all partners have the will to live and want to survive.