Limping but Blessed: Jurgen Moltmann's Search for a Liberating Anthropology

397 Pages·2004·1.5 MB·English

by  Ton van Prooijen

Limping but Blessed
CURRENTS OF ENCOUNTER
STUDIES ON THE CONTACT BETWEEN
CHRISTIANITY AND OTHER RELIGIONS,
BELIEFS, AND CULTURES
GENERAL EDITORS
REIN FERNHOUT
JERALD D. GORT
HENRY JANSEN
LOURENS MINNEMA
HENDRIK M. VROOM
ANTON WESSELS
VOL. 24
Limping but Blessed
Jürgen Moltmann’s Search
for a Liberating Anthropology
Ton van Prooijen
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2004
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 90-420-1664-7
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2004
Printed in the Netherlands
We read: ‘So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with
him till daybreak’ (Gen. 32: 24). Do you know of any more
salient description of the lot of human beings? Of their lot in
its full extent? Not only in life but also in death? Whenever
people ask about the meaning of life, human life, then the
answer must be that it exists in the search for a blessing.
(O. Noordmans, Gestalte en Geest, Amsterdam: Holland
Uitgeversmaatschappij, 1955, 14f.).
The publication of this volume was made possible by the Haak Bastiaanse
Kuneman Foundation, the Dr. Hendrik Muller’s Vaderlandsch Fonds,
Stichting Zonneweelde and the Stichting Het Scholten-Cordes Fonds.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ........................................ xi
Abbreviations of Works Cited ............................... xiii
1. Introduction .............................................1
2. Towards the Homeland of True Humanity: Exercises in
Imaginative Anthropology ..............................9
2.1. One of the Many Who Come Home—
and Do not Come Home ...........................9
2.2. Limping but Blessed: Wurzelerfahrungen ..............16
2.2.1. Two Iron Rings ............................17
2.2.2. Wrestling with God ........................19
2.2.3. Hope Against Hope ........................22
2.3. Centre and Horizon:
Theologizing in Wirtschaftswunderland .............24
2.3.1. Trümmertheologie and Beyond ...............24
2.3.2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
and the Way to True Worldliness .............31
2.3.3. The Perseverance of the Saints
or the Re-historicization of Theology ..........38
2.3.4. In the Horizon of Christ’s Reign:
A Midterm Review ........................55
2.4. The Revelation of the Hidden God
and Hidden Human Beings ........................63
2.4.1. The Problem of Transcendence ...............64
2.4.2. Spero Ut Intelligam:
Interweaving the Blochian Tapestry ...........78
2.5. Contemporaries of God: Evaluation and Preview .......105
2.5.1. Fundamental Perspectives on Human Beings....105
2.5.2. The Apocalypse of the Hidden Human Being?
The Problem of Identity ....................108
2.5.3. Missio and Pro-missio:
The Issue of Relevance ....................112
2.5.4. Anticipatory Questions .....................113
3. Singing the Lord’s Song in a Foreign Land:
Exercises in Critical Anthropology ......................119
3.1. The Transcendent Freedom
of Two Quarrelling Aunts........................119
3.2. True Humanity in the Messianic Intermezzo:
A “Critical Theory of God” ......................127
3.2.1. Facing the Identity-Involvement Dilemma ......128
3.2.2. Vicious Circles of Death....................133
3.2.3. The Purposelessness of Life:
On the Justification of Human Beings .........136
3.2.4. Identity in Non-Identity ....................151
3.2.5. In the Counter-History of the Triune God ......154
3.2.6. The Church as “Messianic Intermezzo” ........161
3.3. A Christian Perspective on Human Rights?
A Case Study .................................170
3.3.1. The Position Paper ........................171
3.3.2. The Concluding Paper .....................177
3.3.3. The Universal and the Particular .............184
3.4. Long Marches into Freedom:
On Universal and Particular Liberation ........186
3.4.1. The Growing Conflict......................190
3.4.2. The Open Letter ..........................195
3.4.3. The Exodus of Oppressors?
Looking into the Mirrors ...................202
3.5. Exercises in Critical Anthropology:
Evaluation and Preview .........................212
4. In the Spacious Place of the Triune God:
Exercises in Sabbatical Anthropology ...................213
4.1. The Point of No Return:
Flowing Harmony and Faith in History .............219
4.2. The End-Times of Modernity:
Towards a Revaluation of Values? .................228
4.2.1. The Crisis of Modern Messianism ............230
4.2.2. Once Again:
A Theological Rehabilitation of History .......235
4.2.3. Once Again:
A Theological Rehabilitation of the World .....240
4.2.4. Exodus and Sabbath: A Preview .............244
4.3. The Liberating Indwelling of the Triune God:
A Divine Ecology ..............................245
4.3.1. Trinitarian Hermeneutics:
How One “Knows” God Once Again .........245
4.3.2. Christology After Chernobyl:
Cross and Resurrection Once Again ..........255
4.3.3. The Home of the Trinity:
The Revelation of the Inhabitable God ........260
4.3.4 Gloria Dei on Earth:
Revealing True Humanity ..................269
4.4. Towards a Habitable Existence: A Divine Therapy ......276
4.4.1. The Sabbath-Sunday as Paradigm of
Christian Identity .........................277
4.4.2. Priests and Priestesses
in the Community of Creation ...............286
4.4.3. Unity in Diversity and Diversity in Unity:
Charismatic Fellowship ....................293
4.5. In the Spacious Place of the Triune God:
An Evaluation .................................307
5. Re-embedding the Disembedded?
Concluding Debate ..................................313
5.1. In Search for a Liberating Anthropology ..............313
5.2. A Theological Anthropology in Eight Perspectives ......329
5.2.1. The Human Being and the Deus Absconditus ...331
5.2.2. The Human Being and the Revelation
of the Wholly Other .......................334
5.2.3. The Human Being in Christological
Perspective ..............................335
5.2.4. The Human Being in Pneumatological
Perspective ..............................337
5.2.5. The Human Being in Eschatological
Perspective ..............................339
5.2.6. The Human Being in Ecological Perspective ....342
5.2.7. The Human Being in a Eucharistic
Perspective ..............................344
5.2.8. The Human Being in the Perspective
of the Apostolate .........................349
5.3. Re-embedding the Disembedded?
Concluding Remarks ...........................354
Bibliography ............................................359
Index ..................................................371