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Systematic Contributions to Theology #2
God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God
The title expresses the book's intention: not to go on distinguishing between God and the world, so as then to surrender the world, as godless, to its scientific 'disenchantment' and its technical exploitation by human beings, but instead to discover God in all the beings he has created and to find his life-giving Spirit in the community of creation that they share. This viewwhich has also been called panentheistic (in contrast to pantheistic)requires us to bring reverence for the life of every living thing into the adoration of God. And this means expanding the worship and service of God to include service for God's creation.
384 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 1984
14 people are currently reading
347 people want to read
About the author
Jürgen Moltmann
176 books195 followersJürgen Moltmann is a German Reformed theologian. He is the 2000 recipient of the Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Religion.
Moltmann's Theology of Hope is a theological perspective with an eschatological foundation and focuses on the hope that the resurrection brings. Through faith we are bound to Christ, and as such have the hope of the resurrected Christ ("Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3, NIV)), and knowledge of his return. For Moltmann, the hope of the Christian faith is hope in the resurrection of Christ crucified. Hope and faith depend on each other to remain true and substantial; and only with both may one find "not only a consolation in suffering, but also the protest of the divine promise against suffering."
However, because of this hope we hold, we may never exist harmoniously in a society such as ours which is based on sin. When following the Theology of Hope, a Christian should find hope in the future but also experience much discontentment with the way the world is now, corrupt and full of sin. Sin bases itself in hopelessness, which can take on two forms: presumption and despair. "Presumption is a premature, selfwilled anticipation of the fulfillment of what we hope for from God. Despair is the premature, arbitrary anticipation of the non-fulfillment of what we hope for from God."
In Moltmann's opinion, all should be seen from an eschatological perspective, looking toward the days when Christ will make all things new. "A proper theology would therefore have to be constructed in the light of its future goal. Eschatology should not be its end, but its beginning." This does not, as many fear, 'remove happiness from the present' by focusing all ones attention toward the hope for Christ's return. Moltmann addresses this concern as such: "Does this hope cheat man of the happiness of the present? How could it do so! For it is itself the happiness of the present." The importance of the current times is necessary for the Theology of Hope because it brings the future events to the here and now. This theological perspective of eschatology makes the hope of the future, the hope of today.
Hope strengthens faith and aids a believer into living a life of love, and directing them toward a new creation of all things. It creates in a believer a "passion for the possible" "For our knowledge and comprehension of reality, and our reflections on it, that means at least this: that in the medium of hope our theological concepts become not judgments which nail reality down to what it is, but anticipations which show reality its prospects and its future possibilities." This passion is one that is centered around the hope of the resurrected and the returning Christ, creating a change within a believer and drives the change that a believer seeks make on the world.
For Moltmann, creation and eschatology depend on one another. There exists an ongoing process of creation, continuing creation, alongside creation ex nihilo and the consummation of creation. The consummation of creation will consist of the eschatological transformation of this creation into the new creation. The apocalypse will include the purging of sin from our finite world so that a transformed humanity can participate in the new creation.
Moltmann's Theology of Hope is a theological perspective with an eschatological foundation and focuses on the hope that the resurrection brings. Through faith we are bound to Christ, and as such have the hope of the resurrected Christ ("Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3, NIV)), and knowledge of his return. For Moltmann, the hope of the Christian faith is hope in the resurrection of Christ crucified. Hope and faith depend on each other to remain true and substantial; and only with both may one find "not only a consolation in suffering, but also the protest of the divine promise against suffering."
However, because of this hope we hold, we may never exist harmoniously in a society such as ours which is based on sin. When following the Theology of Hope, a Christian should find hope in the future but also experience much discontentment with the way the world is now, corrupt and full of sin. Sin bases itself in hopelessness, which can take on two forms: presumption and despair. "Presumption is a premature, selfwilled anticipation of the fulfillment of what we hope for from God. Despair is the premature, arbitrary anticipation of the non-fulfillment of what we hope for from God."
In Moltmann's opinion, all should be seen from an eschatological perspective, looking toward the days when Christ will make all things new. "A proper theology would therefore have to be constructed in the light of its future goal. Eschatology should not be its end, but its beginning." This does not, as many fear, 'remove happiness from the present' by focusing all ones attention toward the hope for Christ's return. Moltmann addresses this concern as such: "Does this hope cheat man of the happiness of the present? How could it do so! For it is itself the happiness of the present." The importance of the current times is necessary for the Theology of Hope because it brings the future events to the here and now. This theological perspective of eschatology makes the hope of the future, the hope of today.
Hope strengthens faith and aids a believer into living a life of love, and directing them toward a new creation of all things. It creates in a believer a "passion for the possible" "For our knowledge and comprehension of reality, and our reflections on it, that means at least this: that in the medium of hope our theological concepts become not judgments which nail reality down to what it is, but anticipations which show reality its prospects and its future possibilities." This passion is one that is centered around the hope of the resurrected and the returning Christ, creating a change within a believer and drives the change that a believer seeks make on the world.
For Moltmann, creation and eschatology depend on one another. There exists an ongoing process of creation, continuing creation, alongside creation ex nihilo and the consummation of creation. The consummation of creation will consist of the eschatological transformation of this creation into the new creation. The apocalypse will include the purging of sin from our finite world so that a transformed humanity can participate in the new creation.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 10, 2012
If this were my first Moltmann, I'm not sure what I would think. I'm sure I probably would have been offended by his dethroning of more popular creation theologies that place the human individual at the center. Moltmann is able to reverse this methodology by beginning with a astonishingly simple question: "what does creation mean for God?" As another example of circumventing anthrocentric creation theologies, Moltmann takes questions of theological anthropology by addressing it from a new perspective. Rather than beginning with the question "what makes humans different from animals?", he asks "what makes humans similar to animals?" and only then moves onto differentiation. Although this move can be disorienting, its effect is rewarding. The net result is a trinitarian creation theology that affirms the goodness of God's creation that moves beyond the Western impasse of faith and science by positing the human person as one who exists in a complex ecosystem interpenetrated and held together by God's Holy Spirit of which is awaiting its ultimate consummation.
January 13, 2025
Moltmann has a knack for writing thoughtfully about unexpectedly interesting things in theology, and this book was no exception: reflections on space and time in creation, embodiment and spirituality, gender and symbols of the world as they relate to how humans conceive of themselves, etc.
I found his emphasis on the Spirit in creation - which he writes about in the introductory chapter by saying we have neglected it in comparison to the creation of God or Jesus - insightful, but wanted him to more fully flesh it out in the rest of the book.
I found his emphasis on the Spirit in creation - which he writes about in the introductory chapter by saying we have neglected it in comparison to the creation of God or Jesus - insightful, but wanted him to more fully flesh it out in the rest of the book.
January 15, 2024
Here at last is Moltmann's response to one of the outstanding problems facing contemporary systematic theology, namely the problem of creation. This is, in fact a two-sided problem covering as it does both the relevance of theology to nature and the relevance of the material creation to our understanding of God. The problem has been exacerbated by two features of contemporary theology its Christocentrism and its concordat with 19th century science. In this work Moltmann adds his weight to the increasing number of calls for an expansion of the horizons of theology. Only by regaining its cosmic breadth can Christian theology make a positive response to the present crisis in man's relationship with nature.
Moltmann has chosen to make this work part of his projected Messianic Theology. As such it is organically related to the social understanding of the Trinity developed in the first volume of this project: The Trinity and the Kingdom of God. This is shown clearly by the guiding principles laid out in his opening chapter. His starting point is the assumption that knowledge of the world as creation must be participatory knowledge, i.e., holistic rather than analytic. This is because he understands life in terms of relationships on the model of the perichoretic life of the social Trinity. The Trinitarian approach further requires that creation itself be understood in Trinitarian terms rather than in the monotheistic way of traditional theology. Because of past overemphasis on the Father's role in creation, Moltmann chooses to emphasize the role of the Spirit. This is consistent with his stress on participation as it leads him to focus on God's immanence in the world. However he also wants his doctrine of creation to be distinctively Christian in line with its location within a Messianic theology. To achieve this he emphasizes the divine purpose of creation and the corresponding movement of the world towards God's eschatological goal.
Two more introductory chapters deal with the present ecological crisis (and the complicity of classical Christian theology) and the problem of the knowledge of nature as creation. Moltmann maintains the German dislike of natural theology: only revealed theology is possible in the history of sinful humanity. Revelation is the only means by which we can come to know nature as creation.
The rest of the book concentrates on major themes from the creation narrative of Gen.1. He begins by turning his attention to the subject of Gen.1:1, namely, God the Creator and he attempts to answer the question of the significance of creation for our understanding of God. Moltmann attempts to hold together the two main traditions about the meaning of 'Creator'. For Reformed theology it signifies that God the absolute subject eternally resolves to create whereas in Christian Platonism it refers to the essential creativity of God which is disclosed by its overflow into material creation. Moltmann proposes to mix oil and water by speaking of the voluntary overflow of the infinite divine love.
At times Moltmann's theological speculation verges on the mythological. This comes out most clearly in his discussion of *ex nihilo* and the traditional theological treatment of creation as somehow external to God. In order to avoid postulating a coeternal (and therefore divine) space he adopts the Kabbalistic doctrine of *zimsum* that prior to creation God somehow contracts or withdraws into himself calling into being a literally Godforsaken space in which he can create. This space is both a divine womb and Barth's *das Nichtige* (the threat to creation which is overcome by God's redemptive activity).
His starting point for the study of creation itself is the temporal structure of creation. This is followed by two chapters in which the work of the first three days, the creation of habitats and the duality of creation, is discussed. A transitional chapter on the evolution of creation allows him to move rapidly to a Christian anthropology based on his social analogy for the Trinity. In order to refute the anthropocentrism implicit in treating man as the end of creation, he concludes with a doctrine of the Sabbath as the eschatological rest of all creation.
It has to be said that the points at which Moltmann tries to draw together theology and science are the weakest parts of the book. An attempt to do so is necessitated by his assessment of the relationship between these disciplines. He believes that the era of demarcation between theology and science is drawing to a close. The ecological crisis demands that a new partnership be developed. Having said that, his discussion of time dismisses the mechanistic concept of time and completely ignores contemporary scientific developments. Similarly his treatment of space focuses on the 17th century debate about absolute space and ignores the dramatic revision in our understanding forced on us by Einstein.
His treatment of evolution is a little more satisfactory. Perhaps this is because he sees evolution as having theological implications which are consistent with his general position. For Moltmann its value consists in reminding us that man is an integral part of creation and that creation itself did not cease with the appearance of man. Unfortunately his attempt to formulate a 'hermeneutical' theory of evolution falls completely flat. His intention was to synthesize cosmogenesis, biogenesis, and noogenesis in order to show the universe to be a self-transcending open system. However he lacks the scientific expertise to be able to do this successfully. On the whole he is at his best when he confines himself to the theological issues.
Moltmann repeatedly insists on the importance of understanding creation in Trinitarian terms. However, in practice his doctrine of creation is pneumatological. This is to be expected given his desire to correct past overemphases. Unfortunately he does no more than hint at how a fully Trinitarian doctrine might be developed.
This is quintessential Moltmann. There is much in it that is thought-provoking juxtaposed with elements that are less satisfactory. Like many of his works in translation it is relatively easy to read but at the same time it forces the reader to rethink cherished assumptions. Whatever the lasting value of his theology there is no doubt that this book will join his other major works as a theological bestseller.
Moltmann has chosen to make this work part of his projected Messianic Theology. As such it is organically related to the social understanding of the Trinity developed in the first volume of this project: The Trinity and the Kingdom of God. This is shown clearly by the guiding principles laid out in his opening chapter. His starting point is the assumption that knowledge of the world as creation must be participatory knowledge, i.e., holistic rather than analytic. This is because he understands life in terms of relationships on the model of the perichoretic life of the social Trinity. The Trinitarian approach further requires that creation itself be understood in Trinitarian terms rather than in the monotheistic way of traditional theology. Because of past overemphasis on the Father's role in creation, Moltmann chooses to emphasize the role of the Spirit. This is consistent with his stress on participation as it leads him to focus on God's immanence in the world. However he also wants his doctrine of creation to be distinctively Christian in line with its location within a Messianic theology. To achieve this he emphasizes the divine purpose of creation and the corresponding movement of the world towards God's eschatological goal.
Two more introductory chapters deal with the present ecological crisis (and the complicity of classical Christian theology) and the problem of the knowledge of nature as creation. Moltmann maintains the German dislike of natural theology: only revealed theology is possible in the history of sinful humanity. Revelation is the only means by which we can come to know nature as creation.
The rest of the book concentrates on major themes from the creation narrative of Gen.1. He begins by turning his attention to the subject of Gen.1:1, namely, God the Creator and he attempts to answer the question of the significance of creation for our understanding of God. Moltmann attempts to hold together the two main traditions about the meaning of 'Creator'. For Reformed theology it signifies that God the absolute subject eternally resolves to create whereas in Christian Platonism it refers to the essential creativity of God which is disclosed by its overflow into material creation. Moltmann proposes to mix oil and water by speaking of the voluntary overflow of the infinite divine love.
At times Moltmann's theological speculation verges on the mythological. This comes out most clearly in his discussion of *ex nihilo* and the traditional theological treatment of creation as somehow external to God. In order to avoid postulating a coeternal (and therefore divine) space he adopts the Kabbalistic doctrine of *zimsum* that prior to creation God somehow contracts or withdraws into himself calling into being a literally Godforsaken space in which he can create. This space is both a divine womb and Barth's *das Nichtige* (the threat to creation which is overcome by God's redemptive activity).
His starting point for the study of creation itself is the temporal structure of creation. This is followed by two chapters in which the work of the first three days, the creation of habitats and the duality of creation, is discussed. A transitional chapter on the evolution of creation allows him to move rapidly to a Christian anthropology based on his social analogy for the Trinity. In order to refute the anthropocentrism implicit in treating man as the end of creation, he concludes with a doctrine of the Sabbath as the eschatological rest of all creation.
It has to be said that the points at which Moltmann tries to draw together theology and science are the weakest parts of the book. An attempt to do so is necessitated by his assessment of the relationship between these disciplines. He believes that the era of demarcation between theology and science is drawing to a close. The ecological crisis demands that a new partnership be developed. Having said that, his discussion of time dismisses the mechanistic concept of time and completely ignores contemporary scientific developments. Similarly his treatment of space focuses on the 17th century debate about absolute space and ignores the dramatic revision in our understanding forced on us by Einstein.
His treatment of evolution is a little more satisfactory. Perhaps this is because he sees evolution as having theological implications which are consistent with his general position. For Moltmann its value consists in reminding us that man is an integral part of creation and that creation itself did not cease with the appearance of man. Unfortunately his attempt to formulate a 'hermeneutical' theory of evolution falls completely flat. His intention was to synthesize cosmogenesis, biogenesis, and noogenesis in order to show the universe to be a self-transcending open system. However he lacks the scientific expertise to be able to do this successfully. On the whole he is at his best when he confines himself to the theological issues.
Moltmann repeatedly insists on the importance of understanding creation in Trinitarian terms. However, in practice his doctrine of creation is pneumatological. This is to be expected given his desire to correct past overemphases. Unfortunately he does no more than hint at how a fully Trinitarian doctrine might be developed.
This is quintessential Moltmann. There is much in it that is thought-provoking juxtaposed with elements that are less satisfactory. Like many of his works in translation it is relatively easy to read but at the same time it forces the reader to rethink cherished assumptions. Whatever the lasting value of his theology there is no doubt that this book will join his other major works as a theological bestseller.
July 3, 2021
I just finished "God in Creation," by Moltmann.
Very good. It is a 4 in difficulty but it is very good.
I dont write chapter summaries when I am drinking through a fire hose. This was Moltmann's 1984-85 Gifford Lectures on natural theology.
His weaving of creation with anthropological and messianic themes is quite interesting and it gives life to what has commonly been a topic not quite fleshed out. I also appreciate how he isnt scared to introduce evolution or quantum physics into the dialog. As with all his works, he cant have a platform and not run through liberation themes seen inside of the large picture: the Messiah.
Very good. It is a 4 in difficulty but it is very good.
I dont write chapter summaries when I am drinking through a fire hose. This was Moltmann's 1984-85 Gifford Lectures on natural theology.
His weaving of creation with anthropological and messianic themes is quite interesting and it gives life to what has commonly been a topic not quite fleshed out. I also appreciate how he isnt scared to introduce evolution or quantum physics into the dialog. As with all his works, he cant have a platform and not run through liberation themes seen inside of the large picture: the Messiah.
Read
June 2, 2022Interesting to see the development of Moltmann's thought. A small thing I noticed was that while he is still very critical of natural theology, it is less extreme compared to The Crucified God. I found the stuff on embodiment fascinating and will probably spend the next while critically engaging with it. Also I appreciated his consideration of illness and health in relation to embodiment which is so often ignored.
July 9, 2019
Wow. I think this might be my favourite Moltmann book so far. The chapters on 'The Time of Creation', 'God's Image in Creation' and 'The Sabbath: The Feast of Creation' are particularly powerful, but the whole book is a beautiful outworking of a theology that takes ecological concerns seriously.
October 27, 2020
3.5 stars. Dense at points theologically and philosophically but with some beautiful insights about God's existence in and through creation and what this means for understanding our relationship with the earth and one another.
November 28, 2024
Immensely complicated and could not have been read/understood without prior teachings and lectures on Moltmann’s creation theology.
March 16, 2018
What if we saw the Trinity everywhere around us? Moltmann, in his usual deft, intelligent, and penetrating style, examines this notion in his Gifford Lectures from 1984 to 1985. Moltmann emphasizes panentheism, the doctrine that God is in all parts of our world but also outside time and space as the Creator of everything. Most importantly, Moltmann consistently returns to stressing the importance of the Trinity in each endeavor – that God is no more important than Jesus or the Holy Spirit, and that each has a part to play in creation, salvation, and redemption. Moltmann deftly examines ideas of creation and the cosmos stretching back to the ancient Greeks through the church’s misappropriation of Platonism and the Cartesian shift to humans as subjects who dominate the objects of nature. He suggests that humans’ status as images of God is not as a domineering autocrat but as beings who are relational in their very nature – including relations to the created world. Moltmann emphatically rejects literalist readings of Creation in favor of linking evolution with God’s ongoing creative activity in the world that leads toward total redemption with God. (Whenever Moltmann refers to “biblicists,” you can hear him snorting in the background.) He also rejects both the neo-Platonic worldview of the universe as static and unchanging, and the modernist view of the world as a tool upon which humans must exercise their will. Instead, he uses Scripture and lovely reasoning to urge us to join together with God in creative relationships to redeem ourselves and our world, the Sabbath at the end of time where we can feast with God forever.
September 8, 2015
A wonderful exposition of the First Article, in creatively Barthian form. I particularly loved the emphasis on the sabbath, subject of a too-short final chapter but structurally significant throughout, and the material on what, if anything, it might mean for the imago dei to be lost or impaired.
July 14, 2013
An absolutely amazing book! It gets better and better as you go along. It has to be considered one of the best theological works on creation and anthropology in history. This is right up there with Crucified God and Theology of Hope!
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews