In 1980 Moltmann published The Trinity and the Kingdom of God, the first in a series of volumes expounding Christian doctrine in a trinitarian framework. This current contribution is a collection of articles written after that volume. Its first part deals with contemporary substantive issues; the second is a series of conversations with other thinkers; while a third consists of a brief essay outlining the author’s theological career. This last contains much that is familiar to those acquainted with Moltmann’s work but includes useful remarks on his relation to ‘political theology’ and provides a pleasantly unpretentious guide to the course of his thought. He sums this up as the attempt to ‘reflect on a theology which has: a biblical foundation—an eschatological orientation—a political responsibility. In and under that it is certainly a theology in pain and joy at God Himself, a theology of constant wonder’ (p. 182).
Moltmann’s is very broadly a theology of liberation rooted in the triune being of God. He treats themes familiar from his earlier work, such as the pain of God and the orientation of the notion of justification to the facts of violence and injustice. The main offering is an adumbration of trinitarian theology that strips the deity of monarchical elements. That includes patriarchal elements. God is no Lord to whom the Son is subordinated and no Father to whom Motherhood is alien. Yet Moltmann seeks a sound interpretation, not a jettisoning, of the traditional language: for example, ‘fatherhood’ denotes intimacy in relationship rather than masculinity in domination. The Trinity is the dynamic community of fellowship whose reality must be reflected in a church purged of discrimination based on hierarchy. In the second part, Moltmann converses with Aquinas, Joachim of Fiore, Rahner, Barth, Bloch and Giordano Bruno. These conversations, taken in conjunction with essays in the previous section on pneumatology and Moltmann’s latest volume in his ‘dogmatics’, tempt one to call Moltmann a theologian of the Spirit, although ‘theologian of the Trinity’ is better.
Students are well advised to leave the essays of the second part to hardened theologians, although in fairness it must be said that these are free of abstruse academic clutter. Again, the first part is most profitable for those who have tackled earlier work—perhaps The Church in the Power of the Spirit alongside The Trinity and the Kingdom of God—for any persuasiveness in these present essays depends largely (though not entirely) on that of the bigger works.
This particular contribution is theologically commendable on at least two scores. Firstly, Moltmann continues to fight against a Christianity that panders to the rich and powerful, and he additionally combats the macho style of spirituality which bedevils many a Western male, many a Western evangelical. There is, indeed, much fleshly love of power around that is common to political authority and male ministry. Secondly, there is much to be said for deducing our idea of person and of relation in the Trinity from the biblical narrative history rather than concentrating more abstractly on logical relations. In this connection one should read the final essay of the first part; I am not sure of: ‘For theologians, a doctrine of the Trinity is the supreme but certainly the most humbling task that is posed to them’ (p. 80), but in context I warm to: ‘Concepts create idols, only wonder grasps anything’, to quote Gregory of Nyssa (p. 89).
Yet there are at least two misgivings. Firstly, some have found Moltmann guilty, since the ‘60s, of a perilously close identification of Christian conviction with strands of secular semi-Marxist humanism. The dialogue with Bloch in the second part does little to allay such fears and I do not think that Moltmann sufficiently distinguishes Christian hope from secular aspirations. Secondly, he is insufficiently alert to the dark side of feminism (or appears to concede too much to what I think is its dark side). Secular atheism has long got rid of the Christian deity; secular feminism wants to raze the male pretension without restoring God. Feminism in the churches may rightly protest and propose certain claims, but the secular spirit is hard to resist and in the end we will find that domination, injustice, oppression or different forms of skewed relationships are the function of spirit as much as of structure.
If these remarks amount to evasion of comment on the Trinity it is because I want to note the broader context and impetus for Moltmann’s treatment; in its trinitarianism there is simply a number of exegetical and logical moves I should resist alongside a number of theological points I should grant. But his work repays steady attention, for it not only contributes to and even pioneers theological reflection over three decades but monitors the social context and climate of theology. It is a window on the world.
