Jürgen Moltmann discusses how the “the way of Christ” is presented as a symbol that embodies process. The symbol encompasses Christ’s way from his birth in the Spirit and his baptism in the Spirit to his self-surrender on Golgotha. It makes it possible to understand the path of Christ as the way leading from his resurrection to his parousia—the way he takes in the Spirit to Israel, to the nations, and into the breadth and depth of the cosmos.
This symbol makes us aware that every human Christology is historically conditioned and limited. Every human Christology is a “Christology of the way,”not yet a “Christology of the home country;” a Christology of fait, not yet a Christology of sight. So Christology is no more than the beginning of eschatology; and eschatology, as the Christian faith understands it, is always the consummation of Christology.
He asserts that every way is an invitation. It is something to be followed. “The way of Jesus Christ” is not merely a Christological category. It is an ethical category as well. Anyone who enters upon Christ’s way will discover who Jesus really is; and anyone who really believes in Jesus and the Christ of God will follow him along the way he himself took. Christology and christopraxis find one another in the full and completed knowledge of Christ. This Christology links dogmatics and ethics in closer detail than in the previous volumes.
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Interested in more? Be sure to check out Jürgen Moltmann Collection (22 vols.).
An event—this study of ‘Christology in messianic dimensions’ has a massive strength which will secure its place alongside Moltmann’s earlier book. . . This book has a unity and a freshness which will make it a must for fans and a possibility for novices.
—Church Times
Jürgen Moltmann studied Christian theology in England and, after his return to Germany, in Göttingen. He served as a pastor from 1952 to1958 in Bremen. Since 1967 he has been Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen and retired there in 1994. Among his many influential and award-winning books are The Theology of Hope (1967), The Crucified God (1974), The Trinity and the Kingdom (1981), The Spirit of Life (1994), and The Coming of God (1996), winner of the Grawemeyer Award in 2000, all published by Fortress Press.
“The messianic hope was never the hope of the victors and the rulers. It was always the hope of the defeated and the ground down.31 The hope of the poor is nothing other than the messianic hope.” (Page 13)
“There is no such thing as a christology without presuppositions; and its historical presupposition is the messianic promise of the Old Testament, and the Jewish hope which is founded on the Hebrew Bible. We can only truly and authentically understand Jesus if we perceive him and his history in the light of the Old Testament promises and the history of hope of Israel today.” (Page 1)
“The Sitz im Leben for christology—its situation in life—is the community of Christ, with its elemental functions for living, and its tasks for the world surrounding it.” (Page 42)
“ His life history is at heart a ‘trinitarian history of God’.4” (Page 74)
“Calvin already perceived that the Spirit of Jesus was given, not for himself alone, but for the whole community of his followers, whose head he is from the beginning.37 This shows that Jesus was not baptized into the Spirit as a private person, but pars pro toto, representatively, as one among many, and as one for many. He received the Spirit for the sick whom he healed, for the sinners whose sins he forgave, for the poor whose fellowship he sought, for the women and men whom he called into his discipleship. He received the Spirit as the brother of men and women, as the friend of the poor, as the head of his gathered people, and as the messiah of God’s new creation. So in a whole diversity of ways the Spirit constitutes the social person of Jesus as the Christ of God.” (Page 94)