Margaret (TRN) Kohl

In this remarkable and timely work — in many ways the culmination of his systematic theology — world-renowned theologian Jurgen Moltmann stands Christian eschatology on its head. Moltmann rejects the traditional approach, which focuses on the End, an apocalyptic finale, as a kind of Christian search for the "final solution." He centers instead on hope and God's promise of new creation for all things. "Christian eschatology," he says, "is the remembered hope of the raising of the crucified Christ, so it talks about beginning afresh in the deadly end." Yet Moltmann's novel framework, deeply informed by Jewish and messianic thought, also fosters rich and creative insights into the perennially nettling questions of eschatology: Are there eternal life and personal identity after death? How is one to think of heaven, hell, and purgatory? What are the historical and cosmological dimensions of Christian hope? What are its social and political implications. In a heartbreakingly fragile and fragment world, Moltmann's comprehensive eschatology surveys the Christian vista, bravely envisioning our "horizons of expectation" for personal, social, even cosmic transformation in God.

Theology always has been (and is for Moltmann) not an abstract or otherworldly endeavor but one nourished by, and responsive to, experiences in and with life itself. In this volume, the final in his series of systematic contributions to theology, Moltmann looks ahead from the landmarks of his own theological journey. He searches out those intersections of his own life with contemporary events that have kindled and impelled his theological thinking (part 1). The perspective of hope, the central moment in Moltmann's thought, is freshly explained, while other basic theological themes and concepts are developed and interrelated (part 2). But more than that, Moltmann uses these theological tinders to spark the flames of the chief directions in liberating theological thought today -- black, Latin American, Minjung, and feminist theologies -- (part 3) and the central motif of Trinity (part 4). This volume not only introduces Moltmann's theology, it also utilizes the contemporary religious and political scene to incite ones own theological reflection.