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Theology and joy
In this provocative study, Dr Moltmann develops his interest in political theology with particular reference to the questions of liberation, joy and the glory of God. How, he asks, can we laugh and rejoice when there are still so many tears to be wiped away and when new tears are being added every day? He cites the recent musical Fiddler on the Roof. Are the Jewish congregation here singing just to forget, or is there really such a thing as freedom in the midst of slavery, joy in the midst of suffering ? The rest of his extended essay investigates the possibility that in playing we can anticipate our liberation and with laughter rid ourselves of the bonds which alienate us from real life. David Jenkins, who writes an extended introduction and comment, takes up two points from Dr Moltmann's work. Moltmann argues that instead of using God to enjoy the world, men can now use the world to enjoy God. Furthermore, this development liberates the concept of 'God' to become what it really is, free and sovereign, instead of an idea enmeshed in our own plans and purposes.
- GenresTheology
90 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1973
1 person is currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Jürgen Moltmann
176 books197 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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November 1, 2024
Many of my colleagues in church leadership lament the lack of joy in our worshiping and witnessing as Christians these days. Their finger is on the pulse of a corrosive dynamic in the life and work of the church. A prayerful read of this delightful little book by Jurgen Moltmann might sow some seeds of a different set of attitudes and behaviours.
The reasons for the pallor of joylessness are many and run deep for many Christian communities. There is, as Alan Roxburgh has pointed out so astutely, an unravelling of the church as we know it amid the unravelling of our culture as we know it. Christian communities are fatigued, confused, and despairing. Repeating the old formulas for believing, witnessing, and being church without reformulating their truths for our own contexts no longer resonate with God’s beloved friends inside or outside our churches. In what John Bunyan, so long ago, called the “Slough of Despond,” we are discouraged and debilitated.
This is a time of reformulating the ways we both understand and express our experiences of the freedom generated by forgiving and reconciling love of our Creator that lies in the embryo of the seeds of the gospel we are called to cultivate. Moltmann invites us to focus our attention on the joy that arises from our Creator’s agency in their world and join in the dance justice with kindness and humility.
That joy begins with a reformulation of our image of God, an image in which and for which we human beings are made. The context for these reflections was the student unrest and uprisings in the late 1960s in Europe. Moltmann engaged in serious conversations with many of those students and brought his colleagues in teaching theology and philosophy, Arnold Albert van Ruler in the Netherlands, Viteslav Gardavsky in Czechoslovakia, and Harvey Cox in the United States of America into the mix. This book emerged from those dialogues.
In the preface to this book, Moltmann admits that we are not adequately aware of “the joys of liberty and the pleasures of existence.” His continues with this insight:
The first thing liberated beings do is to enjoy their freedom and playfully test their newfound opportunities and powers. Why are we seeing so little of this? Have the old pharisees and the new zealots with their conservative and revolutionary legalism scared us away from freedom, from joy and spontaneity? It is unlikely that anything good or just will come about, unless it flows from an abundance of joy and the passion of love. (p.vi)
I find it a bit eerie that these words emerging from the context of the late 1960s still ring true in the mid 2020s.
Moltmann draws a sharp contrast between the freedom that arises from the playfulness of God and the joy that ensues and the roles that leisure and games have in supporting the economic and political constrictions imposed in our Western societies by the morality of achievement. He suggests that a “humanizing emancipation of [humanity]” rejects or reforms the “alienated games” that serve “the ruling interests” and “changes them into games of freedom which prepare [humanity] for a more liberated society.” (pp.35-36) The nature of the games, clearly, will change. Anything that looks and feels like the ‘bread and roses” distractions of the Roman Empire serves the interests of the dehumanizing forces in our societies. Moltmann proposes, as an alternative, “the liberating game of faith with God against the evil bonds of fear and the grey pressures of care which death has laid upon us.” (p.38)
In Moltmann’s theology, God created the world, including humanity, for divine enjoyment. Humans exist to participate freely in and contribute freely to divine delight. Humanity’s playful rejoicing in their existence, then, is “pure unforced pleasure in creative play” and “free self-representation [as] the human echo to the pleasure of God in his creation.” (p.44) God plays a game of grace and urges us to join in. That frees us in this way:
To comprehend this game of all-reversing gracie may well require that we have to give up the last vestige of pride in our own achievement and free ourselves of selfishness and self-pity so that we may join in an affirmation of grace, full of wonder. (p.47)
The freedom to do theology – to talk with and of God – is opened by God’s joy alone, as Karl Barth insisted. It is “an abundant rejoicing in God and the free play of thoughts, words, images and songs with the grace of God.” (p.49) This freedom cannot be forces or coerced. Being aware of and aligning with God is “an art and – if the term may be permitted – a noble game.” (p.49)
Moltmann explores the dynamic of allying with a crucified and risen God. The cross of Christ is the symbol of hope on earth for those who have been freed and are maturing into that gift. Joy germinates amid suffering. Through the cracks of a broken humanity emerges the healing light of our Creator’s forgiveness and reconciliation.
Life as rejoicing in liberation, as solidarity with those in bondage, as play with reconciled existence, and as pain at unreconciled existence demonstrates the Easter event in the world. (p.52)
These dynamics are best (most freely) imagined as creative play.
Moltmann concludes his explorations into divine play by addressing the identity crisis of the church. He sets this in the context of what he calls “the Augustinian reversal.”
When we cease using God as helper in need, stop-gap and problem solver, we are – according to Augustine – finally free for … the joy of God and the enjoyment of each other in God. Purpose-free rejoicing in God may then take the place of the uses and abuses of God. (p.80)
He laments the ways in which the church often accepts a limited role in meeting “religious needs” as its purpose. As a challenge arising from his understanding of our liberty in Christ, he thinks churches (“fellowships of the friends of Jesus”) should experiment with the possibilities of creative freedom. This involves encouraging a productive imagination that looks towards a future that ignites our repressed spontaneity. Worship is a seminal place for this enjoyment:
Worship itself may become a source for this new spontaneity; it no long has to be a place for inhibitions, embarrassments and polite efforts. Christian congregations may then become testing grounds of the realm of freedom … (p.85)
Moltmann advocates a movement from Bonhoeffer’s church-for-others to a church-with-others. Being there with others in the midst of their sorrows and joys is the form which the redeemed and liberated life itself has taken. The church is not just a means to an end, measuring its performance in terms of church membership or finances, but a manifestation of the joy that flows from our freedom in God. It’s not an either/or, obviously, but too often the joy that flows from our Creator’s gift of freedom and playfulness gets lost in our anxiety and fatigue with the unravelling of the church as it was.
There are intriguing provocations in this book that this review does not capture adequately, but I hope it has generated enough curiosity about Moltmann’s antidote to the disorientation and despair in today’s church to convince you to read it.
[Please note that the edition reviewed is published in Great Britain by SCM Press. In the USA, the book was issued by Harper Collins under the title Theology of Play. The British edition has an introduction by David Jenkins, while the American edition has introductions by Sam Keen, David L. Miller, and Robert E. Neale.]
The reasons for the pallor of joylessness are many and run deep for many Christian communities. There is, as Alan Roxburgh has pointed out so astutely, an unravelling of the church as we know it amid the unravelling of our culture as we know it. Christian communities are fatigued, confused, and despairing. Repeating the old formulas for believing, witnessing, and being church without reformulating their truths for our own contexts no longer resonate with God’s beloved friends inside or outside our churches. In what John Bunyan, so long ago, called the “Slough of Despond,” we are discouraged and debilitated.
This is a time of reformulating the ways we both understand and express our experiences of the freedom generated by forgiving and reconciling love of our Creator that lies in the embryo of the seeds of the gospel we are called to cultivate. Moltmann invites us to focus our attention on the joy that arises from our Creator’s agency in their world and join in the dance justice with kindness and humility.
That joy begins with a reformulation of our image of God, an image in which and for which we human beings are made. The context for these reflections was the student unrest and uprisings in the late 1960s in Europe. Moltmann engaged in serious conversations with many of those students and brought his colleagues in teaching theology and philosophy, Arnold Albert van Ruler in the Netherlands, Viteslav Gardavsky in Czechoslovakia, and Harvey Cox in the United States of America into the mix. This book emerged from those dialogues.
In the preface to this book, Moltmann admits that we are not adequately aware of “the joys of liberty and the pleasures of existence.” His continues with this insight:
The first thing liberated beings do is to enjoy their freedom and playfully test their newfound opportunities and powers. Why are we seeing so little of this? Have the old pharisees and the new zealots with their conservative and revolutionary legalism scared us away from freedom, from joy and spontaneity? It is unlikely that anything good or just will come about, unless it flows from an abundance of joy and the passion of love. (p.vi)
I find it a bit eerie that these words emerging from the context of the late 1960s still ring true in the mid 2020s.
Moltmann draws a sharp contrast between the freedom that arises from the playfulness of God and the joy that ensues and the roles that leisure and games have in supporting the economic and political constrictions imposed in our Western societies by the morality of achievement. He suggests that a “humanizing emancipation of [humanity]” rejects or reforms the “alienated games” that serve “the ruling interests” and “changes them into games of freedom which prepare [humanity] for a more liberated society.” (pp.35-36) The nature of the games, clearly, will change. Anything that looks and feels like the ‘bread and roses” distractions of the Roman Empire serves the interests of the dehumanizing forces in our societies. Moltmann proposes, as an alternative, “the liberating game of faith with God against the evil bonds of fear and the grey pressures of care which death has laid upon us.” (p.38)
In Moltmann’s theology, God created the world, including humanity, for divine enjoyment. Humans exist to participate freely in and contribute freely to divine delight. Humanity’s playful rejoicing in their existence, then, is “pure unforced pleasure in creative play” and “free self-representation [as] the human echo to the pleasure of God in his creation.” (p.44) God plays a game of grace and urges us to join in. That frees us in this way:
To comprehend this game of all-reversing gracie may well require that we have to give up the last vestige of pride in our own achievement and free ourselves of selfishness and self-pity so that we may join in an affirmation of grace, full of wonder. (p.47)
The freedom to do theology – to talk with and of God – is opened by God’s joy alone, as Karl Barth insisted. It is “an abundant rejoicing in God and the free play of thoughts, words, images and songs with the grace of God.” (p.49) This freedom cannot be forces or coerced. Being aware of and aligning with God is “an art and – if the term may be permitted – a noble game.” (p.49)
Moltmann explores the dynamic of allying with a crucified and risen God. The cross of Christ is the symbol of hope on earth for those who have been freed and are maturing into that gift. Joy germinates amid suffering. Through the cracks of a broken humanity emerges the healing light of our Creator’s forgiveness and reconciliation.
Life as rejoicing in liberation, as solidarity with those in bondage, as play with reconciled existence, and as pain at unreconciled existence demonstrates the Easter event in the world. (p.52)
These dynamics are best (most freely) imagined as creative play.
Moltmann concludes his explorations into divine play by addressing the identity crisis of the church. He sets this in the context of what he calls “the Augustinian reversal.”
When we cease using God as helper in need, stop-gap and problem solver, we are – according to Augustine – finally free for … the joy of God and the enjoyment of each other in God. Purpose-free rejoicing in God may then take the place of the uses and abuses of God. (p.80)
He laments the ways in which the church often accepts a limited role in meeting “religious needs” as its purpose. As a challenge arising from his understanding of our liberty in Christ, he thinks churches (“fellowships of the friends of Jesus”) should experiment with the possibilities of creative freedom. This involves encouraging a productive imagination that looks towards a future that ignites our repressed spontaneity. Worship is a seminal place for this enjoyment:
Worship itself may become a source for this new spontaneity; it no long has to be a place for inhibitions, embarrassments and polite efforts. Christian congregations may then become testing grounds of the realm of freedom … (p.85)
Moltmann advocates a movement from Bonhoeffer’s church-for-others to a church-with-others. Being there with others in the midst of their sorrows and joys is the form which the redeemed and liberated life itself has taken. The church is not just a means to an end, measuring its performance in terms of church membership or finances, but a manifestation of the joy that flows from our freedom in God. It’s not an either/or, obviously, but too often the joy that flows from our Creator’s gift of freedom and playfulness gets lost in our anxiety and fatigue with the unravelling of the church as it was.
There are intriguing provocations in this book that this review does not capture adequately, but I hope it has generated enough curiosity about Moltmann’s antidote to the disorientation and despair in today’s church to convince you to read it.
[Please note that the edition reviewed is published in Great Britain by SCM Press. In the USA, the book was issued by Harper Collins under the title Theology of Play. The British edition has an introduction by David Jenkins, while the American edition has introductions by Sam Keen, David L. Miller, and Robert E. Neale.]
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