“God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with him.”
Jürgen Moltmann
I am grieving the death of Dr. Jürgen Moltmann. Dr. Moltmann died yesterday, June 3rd, 2024. He was 98 years old. My heart is so full of gratitude for this human being. While I only met Dr. Moltmann in person once, his influence on me and my theological imagination can not be overstated. Not only is my library lined with his innumerable offerings to the world, but my heart, mind, and imagination have been gifted with words, images, hope, and relationship.
Today I found it quite therapeutic to comb my library, and lift each of his titles off my shelves; to flip through each volume, reading some of my underlinings, and margin notes… reading his words which softened me and opened me to more. I was pleasantly reminded that he had signed my copy of Theology of Hope when I got to meet him. Below are his writings that are part of my personal library.
In coming days, many tributes will be offer but here a just a few honoring and remembering Dr. Jürgen Moltmann:
“The truth of human freedom lies in the love that breaks down barriers.”
Jürgen Moltmann
“Believing in the resurrection does not just mean assenting to a dogma and noting a historical fact. It means participating in this creative act of God’s … Resurrection is not a consoling opium, soothing us with the promise of a better world in the hereafter. It is the energy for a rebirth of this life. The hope doesn’t point to another world. It is focused on the redemption of this one.”
Jürgen Moltmann
“The one will triumph who first died for the victims then also for the executioners, and in so doing revealed a new righteousness which breaks through vicious circles of hate and vengeance and which from the lost victims and executioners creates a new mankind with a new humanity. Only where righteousness becomes creative and creates right both for the lawless and for those outside the law, only where creative love changes when is hateful and deserving of hate, only where the new man is born who is oppressed nor oppresses others, can one speak of the true revolution of righteousness and of the righteousness of God.”
Jürgen Moltmann
Rest In Peace Dr. Moltmann, dwight
