A theologian's death offers a chance to think theologically

The recent death at age 98 of German Reformed theologian Jürgen Moltmann (pictured here) offers all of us -- no matter our faith commitment -- to think anew about why the work of theologians is vital, even if sometimes their thinking gets expressed in words that seem next-to-impossible to understand.

Theology, of course, means the study of God. And there is no subject more important to help us understand what in the world we're doing here and why we're doing it.

Moltmann, whom I once heard speak at a dinner at Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, brought with him a personal story of redemption that seemed to shape the work he did to find ways to understand and express not optimism, which can be cheap and phony, but hope, which in serious theology can help explain our purpose and give us the fuel to do the human work of co-creation and love.

As the story of Moltmann's death to which I've linked you notes, "his experiences during the Second World War deeply scarred him, and his three years as a post-war prisoner of war led him first to despair and eventually to conversion, finding God in human suffering."

Moltmann was a prisoner of war in England, Scotland and Belgium and was frankly surprised by the gentle, loving treatment he received as a fellow human being who, despite being an enemy combatant, was cared for as a beloved child who was precious to God. It transformed his life and made him want to devote his life to the study of this God of unending love.

It should have been no surprise that Moltmann found his primary love to be the idea of hope, rooted in the salvific work of God through Christ Jesus. To Moltmann, and to all serious Christian theologians, hope was and is different from mere optimism, which often collapses in the face of human evil. Hope, in Moltmann's view, was and is eternal and rooted in the astonishing and unpredictable resurrection of Christ and what that meant for humanity.

As the Rev. Richard A. Ray wrote years ago in a review of a Moltmann book called The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, "Moltmann's program flat out stimulates strong preaching. . .And it reminds us, with this concluding phrase concerning the 'universal Easter laughter' in the cosmos, that theology must have at its heart a confession that is less like a blueprint and more like a haunting melody of transcendent song."

Years ago, when I found my way back to church after leaving as a young man convinced that church members were mostly just hypocrites (I discovered I was one of them and needed help), I began to pay more attention to the eternal questions with which theologians wrestled.

Eventually, I felt called to help others recognize the importance of those questions and to take seriously the call to explore possible answers for our own lives. So I began to teach a class in various locations that I called "Theology Even the Clergy Can Understand." Over time, I'm betting that I got much more out of that effort than did those who participated in the classes.

It turns out that it's easy to set aside the core and demanding theological questions and, instead, focus on simply trying to lead what people call "a good life." Isn't that, after all, what life is all about?

But, in the end, we seriously shortchange ourselves when we do that. The risk is that we will live an unexamined life, never taking divine matters seriously, never challenging God. As French Reformed theologian Jacques Ellul has said, we are obligated to insist that God speak when we encounter God's silence in the face of human suffering.

"Hope," Ellul wrote in Hope in Time of Abandonment, "comes alive only in the dreary silence of God, in our loneliness before a closed heaven, in our abandonment. God is silent, so it's man who is going to speak. But he is not going to speak in God's place, nor in order to decorate the silence, nor in taking his own word for a Word from God. Man is going to express his hope that God's silence is neither basic nor final, nor a cancellation of what he had laid hold of as a Word from God."

In the end, Moltmann's death can -- and, I think, should -- reinvigorate us to re-explore the eternal questions, to find theologians who can speak to us, make sense for us of the puzzlements of life. At their best, theologians do extraordinarily important work. We'd do well, no matter our personal religious history or current commitments to faith, to shut off our twinkling screens and pay attention to their insights.

Look. Life can be really hard. Trying to get through it successfully without understanding some basic theology seems to me like trying to do calculus without a grasp of basic arithmetic.

(Here, by the way, is a lovely tribute to Moltmann from someone who teaches theology.)

So let me close with these words (written in the masculine style of the time) from Moltmann, found in his book The Source of Life:

"(T)he Christian vision of hope says: 'Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people.' What in history is particular to Israel will become universal in God's future: All peoples and the whole of humanity will be freed and sanctified, because the holy God will dwell with them, letting them share in his eternity and his livingness, as his fellow householders."

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ANOTHER CLERGY DEATH TO MOURN

This will be a two-death blog post. I also need to tell you about the death, at age 95, of the great American civil rights leader, the Rev. James Lawson, whose list of accomplishments and heartaches was long, as you can read in the obit story to which I've linked you. James was not the only Lawson on the front lines of the civil rights movement. His brother Phil, also a pastor, spent part of his also-long career here in Kansas City, and you will find him mentioned in the first paragraph of this Flatland column I wrote in 2017. The old civil rights leaders are mostly gone now -- sometimes via natural causes, sometimes via assassination -- but they leave a legacy that should inspire all of us to continue their work.

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THE BOOK CORNER

Mound City: The Place of the Indigenous Past and Present in St. Louis, by Patricia Cleary. Why am I writing about a just-published book on Indigenous history on a blog that focuses on religion, spirituality and ethics?

One answer is that the cultural and physical genocide committed by white European invaders on Indigenous people living on this land has many religious roots, including the Doctrine of Discovery, about which I've written most recently here.

The author of Mound City clearly is focused on the St. Louis region, though she teaches history at California State University-Long Beach. And there is much to learn about the people who, centuries ago, built amazing and huge mounds just east of St. Louis in Cahokia, Ill., as well as in what today is St. Louis itself on the Missouri side of that state line.

My interest in this information stems from my connection to a committee at my church that is working to improve race relations in the Kansas City area, including relations with area Indigenous residents through a relationship with the Kansas City Indian Center. My ignorance about Indigenous matters was, at the beginning of all this, enormous. Still is, but I continue to learn.

When we don't understand our own history, the present makes little sense to us and the future has no roots. That's no way to live. This book can help fill in some gaps in your own knowledge of history.

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P.S.: The other day here I mentioned the 100th anniversary of the signing of federal legislation that finally made Indigenous people in the U.S. citizens. Here is a good story from Indian Country Today with a helpful look at what has happened since the bill was signed by President Calvin Coolidge.

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P.S.: Speaking of death, as I was above here, last evening the state of Missouri once more covered itself with shame by executing another death row prisoner. The arguments against capital punishment are many and persuasive -- except, of course, to politicians with power who don't want to look weak to constituents who are all gung-ho about revenge. How sad.