Theology Of Hope Moltmann Quotes

Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: "Leave behind all hope, you who enter here.

That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.

[Faith] sees in the resurrection of Christ not the eternity of heaven, but the future of the very earth on which his cross stands. It sees in him the future of the very humanity for which he died. That is why it finds the cross the hope of the earth.

For resurrection faith means courage to revolt against the "covenant with death" (Isa. 28:15), it means hope for the victory of life which shall swallow up and conquer life-devouring death. ~ p.14

But the ultimate reason for our hope is not to be found at all in what we want, wish for and wait for; the ultimate reason is that we are wanted and wished for and waited for. What is it that awaits us? Does anything await us at all, or are we alone? Whenever we base our hope on trust in the divine mystery, we feel deep down in our hearts: there is someone who is waiting for you, who is hoping for you, who believes in you. We are waited for as the prodigal son in the parable is waited for by his father. We are accepted and received, as a mother takes her children into her arms and comforts them. God is our last hope because we are God's first love.

The theological foundation for Christian hope is the raising of the crucified Christ.

[Jesus'] resurrection is therefore God's promise of new creation for the whole of the godforsaken reality which the crucified Jesus represents. It is therefore an event of dialectical promise: it opens up a qualitatively new future, which negates all the negatives of present experience. It opens up a future which is not simply drawn out of the immanent possibilities of present reality, but radically contradicts present reality. It promises life for the dead, righteousness for the unrighteous, freedom for those in bondage.

But for us this also means that in place of the spread of our Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Protestant churches we have to put a passion for the kingdom of God. Mission doesn't mean `compelling them to come in'! It is the invitation to God's future and to hope for the new creation of all things: `Behold, I am making all things new' - and you are invited to this divine future for the world!

The longer I have lived with this new hope, the clearer it has become to me: our true hope in life doesn't spring from the feelings of our youth, lovely and fair though they are. Nor does it emerge from the objective possibilities of history, unlimited though they may be. Our true hope in life is wakened and sustained and finally fulfilled by the great divine mystery which is above us and in us and round about us, nearer to us than we can be to ourselves. It encounters us as the great promise of our life and this world: nothing will be in vain. It will succeed. In the end all will be well! It meets us too in the call to life: 'I live and you shall live also.' We are called to this hope, and the call often sounds like a command - a command to resist death and the powers of death, and a command to love life and cherish it: every life, the life we share, the whole of life.

Out of hope for eternal life, love for this vulnerable and mortal life is born afresh. This love does not give anything up. If we had to surrender hope for as much as one single creature, for us Christ would not have risen. The love founded on hope is the strongest medicine against the spreading sickness of resignation. The modern cynicism which is prepared to accept the death of so many created things is an ally of death. But we Christians are what Christoph Blumhardt called `protest-people against death'. That is why out of the deadly depths we cry out for God's Spirit. That is why we cry out for the Spirit who sustains the whole creation, and wait for the Spirit of the new creation of all things. Our cry from the depths is a sign of life - a sign of divine life.

Mission doesn't mean `compelling them to come in'! It is the invitation to God's future and to hope for the new creation of all things: `Behold, I am making all things new' - and you are invited to this divine future for the world! In God's Spirit you can already anticipate now this becoming-new which God will complete on his day. Once a passion for God's future replaces a passion for the spread of the church we shall stop exporting our ugly European and American church divisions, and extending religious denominationalism instead of hope for the kingdom of God.

We shall not be redeemed from this earth, so that we could give it up. We shall be redeemed with it. We shall not be redeemed from the body. We shall be made eternally alive with the body. That is why the original hope of Christians was not turned towards another world in heaven, but looked for the coming of God and his kingdom on this earth. We human beings are earthly creatures, not candidates for angelic status. Nor are we here on a visit to a beautiful star, so as to make our home somewhere else after we die. We remain true to the earth, for on this earth stood Christ's cross. His resurrection from the dead is also a resurrection with the dead, and with this blood-soaked earth. In the light of Christ's resurrection we can already trace the contours of the `new earth' (Rev. ii.i), where `death will be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more' (Rev. 2.1.4).

People who ask for the Holy Spirit to come to us - into our hearts, into the community we live in, and to our earth - don't want to flee into heaven or to be snatched away into the next world. They have hope for their hearts, their community and this earth. We don't pray `Let us come into your kingdom' either. We pray `Your kingdom come on earth as in heaven.' The petition for the coming of the divine Spirit to us frail earthly people implies a great, unbroken affirmation of life.

Gegenwärtiges und Zukünftiges, Erfahrung und Hoffnung treten in der christlichen Eschatologie in Widerspruch zueinander, so daß durch sie dem Menschen nicht Entsprechung und Einstimmigkeit mit dem Gegebenen zuteil wird, sondern er in den Widerstreit von Hoffnung und Erfahrung hineingezogen wird.

Lehrsätze finden ihre Wahrheit in ihrer kontrollierbaren Entsprechung zur vorliegenden erfahrbaren Wirklichkeit. Die Hoffnungssätze der Verheißung aber müssen in einen Widerspruch zur gegenwärtig erfahrbaren Wirklichkeit treten. Sie resultieren nicht aus Erfahrungen, sondern sind die Bedingung für die Möglichkeit neuer Erfahrungen. Sie wollen nicht die Wirklichkeit erhellen, die da ist, sondern die Wirklichkeit, die kommt. Sie wollen die Wirklichkeit, die da ist, nicht im Geiste abbilden, sondern die Wirklichkeit, die da ist, in die Veränderung hineinführen, die verheißen ist und erhofft wird. Sie wollen der Wirklichkeit nicht die Schleppe nachtragen, sondern die Fad\:el voran. Damit machen sie die Wirklichkeit geschichtlich. Wird aber die Wirklichkeit geschichtlich wahrgenommen, so muß man mit]. G. Hamann fragen: "Wer will vom Gegenwärtigen richtige Begriffe nehmen, ohne das Zukünftige zu wissen?

if there is no future, there is also no real history.