The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology

181 Pages·1993·1.46 MB·English

by  Jurgen Moltmann

JURGEN MOLTMANN
Works of Jurgen Moltmann
Available from Fortress Press
The Crucified God
Theology of Hope
The Church in the Power of the Spirit
THE CROSS OF CHRIST AS THE FOUNDATION
The Trinity and the Kingdom AND CRITICISM OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
God in Creation
The Way of Jesus Christ
The Spirit of Life
Fortress Press • Minneapolis
THE CRUCIFIED GOD Illustrissimae
The Cross of Christ as the Foundation
Dukianae universitati
and Criticism of Christian Theology
in civitate Carolina septentnonali
ob summum in Sancta Theologia
First Fortress Press edition, 1993
honorem sibi oblatum
Translated by R. A. Wilson and John Bowden from the German Der gekreuzigte hunc libntm
Gott (Christian Kaiser Verlag, Munich, second edition 1973). Preface to the grata devotoque ammo
paperback edition translated by Margaret Kohl. dedicat
Jiirgen Moltmann
Copyright © 1974 in the English translation by SCM Press Ltd. New Preface a.d. III. Id. Mai.
Copyright © 1991 HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. Except for brief
anno p. Chr.n. MCLXXIH.
quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced
in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write to:
Permissions, Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 426 S. Fifth St., Box 1209,
Minneapolis, MN 55440.
Author photo: Thomas Kucharz.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moltmann, Jiirgen.
[Gekreuzigte Gott. English]
The crucified God : the cross of Christ as the foundation and criticism of
Christian theology /Jiirgen Moltmann : [translated by R.A. Wilson and John
Bowden from the German] — 1st Fortress Press ed.
p. cm.
Translation of: Der gekreuzigte Gott.
Reprint. Originally published: New York : Harper & Row, 1974.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8006-2822-5 (alk. paper)
1. Jesus Christ—Person and offices. 2. Jesus Christ—Crucifixion. I. Title.
BT202.M5513 1993
232—dc20
CIP
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984. (op)™
Manufactured in the U.S.A. AF 1-2822
97 3 4 5 6 7 89 10
CONTENTS
Preface to the Paperback Edition ix
In Explanation of the Theme i
i The Identity and Relevance of Faith 7
1. The Crisis of Relevance in Christian Life 8
2. The Crisis of Identity for Christian Faith 18
3. Revelation in Contradiction and Dialectical Knowledge 25
2 The Resistance of the Cross against its Interpretations 32
1. The Unreligious Cross in the Church 32
2. The Cult of the Cross 41
3. The Mysticism of the Cross 45
4. Following the Cross 53
5. The Theology of the Cross 65
3 Questions about Jesus 82
1. Is Jesus true God? 87
2. Is Jesus true Man? 92
3. 'Are you he who is to come?' 98
4. 'Who do you say that I am?' 103
4 The Historical Trial of Jesus 112
1. The Question of the Origin of Christology 114
2. Jesus' Way to the Cross 126
(a) Jesus and the law: 'The blasphemer' 128
(b) Jesus and authority. 'The rebel' 136
(c) Jesus and God: 'The godforsaken' 145
5 The Eschatological Trial of Jesus Christ 160
1. Eschatology and History 160
2. Jesus' Resurrection from the Dead 166
3. The Significance of the Cross of the Risen Christ 178
4. The Future of God in the Sign of the Crucified Christ 187
6 The 'Crucified God' 200
1. The 'Death of God' as the Origin of Christian Theology? 200
2. Theism and the Theology of the Cross 207
3. The Theology of the Cross and Atheism 219
4. The Doctrine of Two Natures and the Suffering of Christ 227
5. Trinitarian Theology of the Cross 235
6. Beyond Theism and Atheism 249
7. Beyond Obedience and Rebellion 252
8. Trinity and Eschatology 256 PREFACE TO THE
9. The Experience of Human Life in the Pathos of God 267 PAPERBACK EDITION
(a) The apatheia of God and the freedom of man 267
(b) The pathos of God and the sympatheia of man 270 The theological foundation for Christian hope is the raising of
(c) The fullness of life in the trinitarian history of God 274 the crucified Christ. Anyone who develops a 'theology of hope'
from this centre will be inescapably reminded of the other side
7 Ways towards the Psychological Liberation of Man 291 of that foundation: the cross of the risen Christ. So after pub
1. Psychological Hermeneutics of Liberation 291 lishing Theology of Hope, the logic of my theological approach
2. Patterns of the Dialogue between Theology and 294 led me to work more deeply on the remembrance of the crucified
Psychoanalysis Christ. Hope without remembrance leads to illusion, just as,
3. The Law of Repression 298 conversely, remembrance without hope can result in resignation.
4. The Law of Parricide 303 Of course I had not planned this. I was led to the theology
5. The Principle of Illusion 308 of the cross through reactions to Theology of Hope and, even
more, through personal participation in the sufferings of those
8 Ways towards the Political Liberation of Man 317 years. Wherever Christian hope makes people active and leads
1. Political Hermeneutics of Liberation 317 them into the 'creative discipleship' of Christ, the contradictions
2. Political Religion 321 and confutations of the world are painfully experienced. 'When
3. Political Theology of the Cross 325 freedom is near the chains begin to chafe'. One begins to suffer
4. Vicious Circles of Death 329 with the victims of injustice and violence. One puts oneself on
5. Ways towards Liberation 332 the side of the persecuted and becomes persecuted oneself. In
the years between 1968 and 1972 I discovered something of this
6. The Transformations of God in the Liberations of Men 335
both personally and politically. At that time the suffering of
A bbreviations 341 friends living under Stalinism in Eastern Europe and under
military dictatorships in Latin America and South Korea moved
Index of Names
342 me deeply. In 1970 I wrote,
As well as developing a political theology, I have resolved to think more
intensively than I have done up to now about the meaning of the cross of
Christ for theologv, for the church and for society. In a civilization that glorifies
success and happiness and is blind to the sufferings of others, people's eyes
can be opened to the truth if they remember that at the centre of the Christian
faith stands an unsuccessful, tormented Christ, dying in forsakenness. The
recollection that God raised this crucified Christ and made him the hope of
the world must lead the churches to break their alliances with the powerful
and to enter into the solidarity of the humiliated.1
IX
Preface to the Paperback Edition
Preface to the Paperback Edition
beyond this axiom, I discovered links about which I had pre
The same thing now happened to me that had happened
viously had no idea. My first discovery was the Jewish concept
when I was writing Theology of Hope. The whole of theology
of the pathos of God, which Abraham Heschel found in the
was drawn as if by a magnifying glass into a single focus: the
prophets; then my attention was drawn to rabbinic and kabbal-
cross. I began to see things with the eyes of the Christ dying
istic ideas about God's Shekinah in the people of Israel, through
on the cross. I often used to sit for long periods of time medi
which God becomes the companion-in-suffering of his perse
tating before the crucifix in the Martinskirche in Tubingen. For
me the crucified Christ became more and more 'the foundation cuted people. I owe these insights to Franz Rosenzweig and
and criticism of Christian theology'. And for me that meant, Gershom Scholem.
whatever can stand before the face of the crucified Christ is true But it was not merely the experiences of the years between
Christian theology. What cannot stand there must disappear. 1968 and 1972 that led me to this theology of the cross. In
This is especially true of what we say about God. Christ died addition, I experienced a very different 'dark night' in my soul,
on the cross with a loud cry, which Mark interprets with the for the pictures of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and
words of the twenty-second psalm: 'My God, why hast thou horror over the crimes in Auschwitz, had weighed on me and
forsaken me?' This cry of abandonment is either the end of every many other people of my generation ever since 1945. Much time
theology and every religion, or it is the beginning of a truly passed before we could emerge from the silence that stops the
Christian theology—and that means a liberating theology. The mouths of people over whom the cloud of the victims hangs
criticism that emanates from Christ's cross exposes us theolo heavy. It was Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and Jewish
gians for what we are, like Job's friends. We want to produce an theologians who opened our lips. The Crucified God was said
answer to the question about God with which Christ dies. But to be a Christian 'theology after Auschwitz'. That is true, in
he dies with this open question. So a truly Christian theology asmuch as I perceived Golgotha in the shadow of Auschwitz,
has to make Jesus' experience of God on the cross the centre of finding help here in 'Jewish theology after Auschwitz' and espe
all our ideas about God: that is its foundation. cially in Elie Wiesel. Ever since then, the question about God
for me has been identical with the cry of the victims for justice
I began with an interpretation of the theologia crucis of the
and the hunger of the perpetrators for a way back from the path
young Luther. I saw that when God reveals himself to us godless
men and women, who turn ourselves into proud and unhappy of death.
gods, he does not do so through power and glory. He reveals At the end of the war the theology of God's suffering had
himself through suffering and cross, so he repudiates in us the already been outlined by the Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori2
arrogant man or woman and accepts the sinner in us. But then and by the theologian of the German resistance movement,
I turned the question around, and instead of asking just what Dietrich Bonhoeffer. 'Only the suffering God can help', wrote
God means for us human beings in the cross of Christ, I asked Bonhoeffer from his prison cell.3 It was only after I had written
too what this human cross of Christ means for God. I found the The Crucified God that I discovered the intense discussion about
answer in the idea of God's passion, which reveals itself in the the passibility or impassibility of God that had been carried on
passion of Christ. What is manifested in the cross is God's in Anglican theology of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
suffering of a passionate love for his lost creatures, a suffering but had been completely ignored by German theology.
prepared for sacrifice. I found the positive influence of my theology of the cross
The idea of the passion of the passionate God contraverts the especially in the christology of Jon Sobrino, who deepened and
fundamental axiom of Aristotelian, philosophical theology, which sharpened it for the Latin American context.41 have learnt from
was God's essential apathy. The impassibility of God was an his theology of the cross, which he not only taught but suffered.
idea cherished by the Greek Fathers (with the exception of A few days ago I received a letter from Robert McAfee Brown,
Origen) and by the mediaeval theologians. When I began to get in which he told me the following moving story from San Sal-
XI
x
Preface to the New Edition Preface to the Paperback Edition
vador. On 16 November 1989, six well-known Jesuits, together
with their housekeeper and her daughter, were brutally mur
NOTES
dered in the university there. The rector of the university, Father
1. Umkehrzur Zukunft, Munich 1970, 14.
Ignacio Ellacuria, was one of them. Jon Sobrino escaped the
2. Theology of the Pain of God, English translation, 1965.
massacre only because he happened not to be in the country at
3. Letters and Papers from Prison, English translation, 1977, 361.
the time. The letter continues, 'When the killers were dragging
4. See his Chnstology at the Crossroads. A Latin American Approach,
some of the bodies back into the building, as they took one of
Orbis 1978.
the bodies into Jon's room, they hit a bookcase and knocked a
book on to the floor, which became drenched with the martyr's
blood. In the morning, when they picked up the book, they SELECTED LITERATURE
found that it was your The Crucified God.' This sign and symbol
P. F. Momose, Kreuzestheologie. Eine Auseinandersetzung mil Jiirgen Molt
gives me a great deal to think about. What it says to me is that
mann. Mil einem Sachwort von Jiirgen Moltmann (Freiburg, 1978;
these martyrs are the seed of the resurrection of a new world. Japanese edition in preparation).
Like Archbishop Oscar Romero, they are the hope of the people: Warren McWilliams, The Passion of God. Divme Suffering in Contemporary
unforgettable, inextinguishable, irresistible. Protestant Theology (Macon, GA: Mercer Univ. Press, 1985).
The translation of The Crucified God into many languages Paul S. Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
brought me into the community of many struggling and suffer 1988).
ing brothers and sisters. The book was read in Korean and Rebecca S. Chopp, The Praxis of Suffering. An Interpretation of Liberation
South African prisons. People working in slums and hospitals and Political Theologies (New York: Orbis Books, 1989).
wrote to me, as well as people who were themselves suffering
under 'the dark night of the soul'. I came into contact with
Catholic orders vowed to poverty and the mysticism of the cross,
and with Mennonite congregations who are following the path
of Jesus. I need not tell it all. What I should like to say is this:
even more than Theology of Hope, this book brought me into a
great company. I believe it is the company of people under the
cross. Beneath the cross the boundaries of denominations and
cultures collapse. The community of the sufferers and the seek
ers is an open, inviting community. It is about this community
that I am thinking, now that this book appears again, for it is
there that I am at home.
Jiirgen Moltmann
Tubingen, Germany
April 1990
Xll Xlll
THE CRUCIFIED GOD
IN EXPLANATION OF THE THEME
The cross is not and cannot be loved. Yet only the crucified
Christ can bring the freedom which changes the world because it
is no longer afraid of death. In his time the crucified Christ was
regarded as a scandal and as foolishness. Today, too, it is con
sidered old-fashioned to put him in the centre of Christian faith
and of theology. Yet only when men are reminded of him, how
ever untimely this may be, can they be set free from the power of
the facts of the present time, and from the laws and compulsions
of history, and be offered a future which will never grow dark
again. Today the church and theology must turn to the crucified
Christ in order to show the world the freedom he offers. This is
essential if they wish to become what they assert they are: the
church of Christ, and Christian theology.
Since I first studied theology, I have been concerned with the
theology of the cross. This may not have been so clear to those
who liked Theology of Hope, which I published in 1964, as it was
to its critics; yet I believe that it has been the guiding light of my
theological thought. This no doubt goes back to the period of my
first concern with questions of Christian faith and theology in
actual life, as a prisoner of war behind barbed wire. I certainly
owe it to the unforgettable lectures on Reformation theology
which I heard from Hans Joachim Iwand, Ernst Wolf and Otto
Weber in 1948/49 in Gottingen. Shattered and broken, the
survivors of my generation were then returning from camps and
hospitals to the lecture room. A theology which did not speak
of God in the sight of the one who was abandoned and crucified
would have had nothing to say to us then. One cannot say, of
course, whether as the result of our experiences we understood
the crucified Christ better than anyone else. Experiences cannot
1
The Crucified God In Explanation of the Theme
be repeated. Moreover, one speaks of personal experiences only more than a short prelude to its internal crisis, for only by Christ
to explain why one is fascinated by what one is trying to com is it possible to tell what is a Christian church and what is not.
municate. It is not the experiences which are important, but the Whether or not Christianity, in an alienated, divided and oppres
one who has been experienced in them. The theology of the cross sive society, itself becomes alienated, divided and an accomplice
which was meaningful to us then, and gave us firm ground beneath of oppression, is ultimately decided only by whether the crucified
our feet, came to my mind again when the movements of hope Christ is a stranger to it or the Lord who determines the form of
in the 1960s met stifFer resistance and stronger opponents than they its existence. The objection has been made that it is still too early
could stand, and many abandoned their hope, either to adapt to raise this question in the churches and ecclesial communities,
themselves, half resigned, to the usual course of events, or to that the churches have not yet achieved the openness to the world
withdraw into themselves in total resignation. I can only speak for which society has achieved, that in their ideology and practice
myself, but on my disappointment at the end of 'socialism with a they have not even admitted the justification of secular freedom
human face' in Czechoslovakia and the end of the Civil Rights movements and the criticisms which they make—and now their
movement in the USA, and at what I hope is only a temporary very basis is being questioned. I admit that this tactical question
halt in the reforms in the ecumenical movement and the Catholic is justified, but do not believe that it leads any further than to the
church which began so confidently with the Second Vatican adaptation of antiquated forms of the church to newer forms. As
Council and the Uppsala Conference in 1968, the centre of my far as I am concerned, the Christian church and Christian theology
hope and resistance once again became that which, after all, is become relevant to the problems of the modern world only when
the driving force of all attempts to open up new horizons in they reveal the 'hard core' of their identity in the crucified Christ
society and the church: the cross of Christ. and through it are called into question, together with the society
The criticism of the church and theology which we have been in which they live. Ideological and political criticism from outside
fortunate enough to experience, and which is justified on sociologi can only force theology and the church to reveal their true identity
cal, psychological and ideological grounds, can only be accepted and no longer to hide behind an alien mask drawn from history
and made radical by a critical theology of the cross. There is an and the present time. Faith, the church and theology must
inner criterion of all theology, and of every church which claims demonstrate what they really believe and hope about the man
to be Christian, and this criterion goes far beyond all political, from Nazareth who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and what
ideological and psychological criticism from outside. It is the practical consequences they wish to draw from this. The crucified
crucified Christ himself. When churches, theologians and forms Christ himself is a challenge to Christian theology and the
of belief appeal to him—which they must, if they are to be Christian church, which dare to call themselves by his name.
Christian—then they are appealing to the one who judges them But what kind of theology of the cross does him justice, and is
most severely and liberates them most radically from lies and necessary today? There is a good deal of support in tradition for
vanity, from the struggle for power and from fear. The churches, the theology of the cross, but it was never much loved. It begins
believers and theologians must be taken at their word. And this with Paul, to whom its foundation is rightly attributed, and then
word is 'the word of the cross'. It is the criterion of their truth, leaps forward to Luther, in whom it is given explicit expression,
and therefore the criticism of their untruth. The crisis of the and is present today in the persecuted churches of the poor and
church in present-day society is not merely the critical choice the oppressed. It returned to life in a distinctive way in Zinzen-
between assimilation or retreat into the ghetto, but the crisis of dorf. It left its mark on the better side of early dialectical theology
its own existence as the church of the crucified Christ. Any outside and on the Luther renaissance of the 1920s. In a famous lecture
criticism which really hits the mark is merely an indication of its in 1912, Martin Kahler described the cross of Christ as the 'basis
inner christological crisis. The question of ecclesiology, however and standard of christology', but unfortunately did not cling to
unpleasant it may be for conservatives and progressives, is no this principle himself. In all the cases we have mentioned, the
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The Crucified God In Explanation of the Theme
theology of the cross was relevant only within the framework of music of Bloch, step by step to the more subdued eschatologia
human misery and of salvation, even though attempts have been crucisV For me, however, this is not a step back from the trumpets
made to take it further. of Easter to the lamentations of Good Friday. As I intend to show,
To return today to the theology of the cross means avoiding the theology of the cross is none other than the reverse side of the
one-sided presentations of it in tradition, and comprehending the Christian theology of hope, if the starting point of the latter lies
crucified Christ in the light and context of his resurrection, and in the resurrection of the crucified Christ. As I said in Theology of
therefore of freedom and hope. Hope, that theology was itself worked out as an eschatologia crucis.
To take up the theology of the cross today is to go beyond the This book, then, cannot be regarded as a step back. Theology of
limits of the doctrine of salvation and to inquire into the revolution Hope began with the resurrection of the crucified Christ, and I
needed in the concept of God. Who is God in the cross of the am now turning to look at the cross of the risen Christ. I was
Christ who is abandoned by God? concerned then with the remembrance of Christ in the form of the
To take the theology of the cross further at the present day hope of his future, and now I am concerned with hope in the form
means to go beyond a concern for personal salvation, and to of the remembrance of his death. The dominant theme then was
inquire about the liberation of man and his new relationship to the that of anticipations of the future of God in the form of promises
reality of the demonic crisis in his society. Who is the true man in and hopes; here it is the understanding of the incarnation of that
the sight of the Son of Man who was rejected and rose again in future, by way of the sufferings of Christ, in the world's sufferings.
the freedom of God? Moving away from Ernest Bloch's philosophy of hope, I now turn
Finally, to realize the theology of the cross at the present day is to the questions of 'negative dialectic' and the 'critical theory' of
to take seriously the claims of Reformation theology to criticize T. W. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, together with the experiences
and reform, and to develop it beyond a criticism of the church and insights of early dialectical theology and existentialist philo
into a criticism of society. What does it mean to recall the God sophy. Unless it apprehends the pain of the negative, Christian
who was crucified in a society whose official creed is optimism, and hope cannot be realistic and liberating. In no sense does this
which is knee-deep in blood? theology of the cross 'go back step by step'; it is intended to make
The final issue, however, is that of the radical orientation of the theology of hope more concrete, and to add the necessary
theology and the church on Christ. Jesus died crying out to God, power of resistance to the power of its visions to inspire to action.
'My God, why hast thou forsaken me?' AH Christian theology and In giving a more profound dimension to the theology of hope, I
all Christian life is basically an answer to the question which Jesus am aware that I am following the same course as Johann Baptist
asked as he died. The atheism of protests and of metaphysical Metz, who for several years has been associating his politically
rebellions against God are also answers to this question. Either critical eschatology more and more closely with the 'dangerous
Jesus who was abandoned by God is the end of all theology or he remembrance' of the suffering and death of Christ. Ernst Bloch
is the beginning of a specifically Christian, and therefore critical too is becoming more and more disturbed by the problem of evil,
and liberating, theology and life. The more the 'cross of reality' is and the failure of both philosophy and theology to give it con
taken seriously, the more the crucified Christ becomes the general ceptual form. Nor need anyone feel comforted that the theme of
criterion of theology. The issue is not that of an abstract theology the 'theology of revolution' is no longer to be found in the chapter
of the cross and of suffering, but of a theology of the crucified headings. The revolution of all religious, cultural and political
Christ. values which proceeds from the crucified Christ will come in due
I may be asked why I have turned from 'theology of hope' to time.
the theology of the cross. I have given some reasons for this. But I have presented individual ideas and parts of this book in
is it in itself a step backwards? 'Why,' asked Wolf-Dieter Marsch lectures in various European and American universities. I have
with approval, 'has Moltmann come back from the all too strident discussed them with my students in lectures and seminars in the
4 5