A Critical Consideration of Jurgen Moltmann's Theology of Hope

Jurgen Moltmann (1926-) is one of the first generations of the post-world war theologians who existentially experienced the ominous consequences of despair in the Christian society and made his best efforts, alongside the Confessional Church, to resurrect “hope” among the Christians. Utilizing the Liberal and the Existential Theology and demythologizing of the Christian history reserve, he stated that the resurrection of “hope” is the result of human existential capacity along with his/her knowledge and decision. Applying dialectical method, Moltmann put the “eschatology”, which was an aphotic subject at the end of all Christian theology books, as a practical principle at the center of the Christian theology, besides “cross” and “resurrection” of Christ. Influenced by Ernst Bloch and away from theistic and pantheistic God, Moltmann borrowed the “panentheistic” view of Pannenberg about God and by a new interpreting of the “cross” and the “resurrection”, distinguished from Martin Luther, Karl Barth, and Rudolf Bultmann’s, he made God with His “covenant” the most watchful figure in the human being’s sufferings and challenges and the most active being in the fate of man and cosmos. In this documented, critical and analytical article, emphasizing on the first book of Moltmann; i.e. Theology of Hope, we have tried to answer the question of importance of “hope” in Moltmann’s theology in comparison with Bultmann’s liberal and existential theology, Barth’s neo-orthodox theology, and Bloch’s Marxist philosophy of hope. Moltmann could accomplish the presence of the Holy Book in the Christians’ daily life, and make a comprehensible key for solving the problems of the Christian society by resurrecting of the eschatological hope instead of remaining at the present or the past.