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Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Visit us online at faith. yale. edu. I'm Evan Rosa, this is For the Life of the World. And today we're sharing a previously released conversation between Miroslav Volf and his mentor and friend, the celebrated German theologian, Jürgen Moltmann.

Moltmann passed away on June 3rd, 2024, at the age of 98 years old. This episode first aired in April 2021, and it includes Moltmann's conviction that quote, Without living theologically, there can be no theology. Miroslav and Jürgen explore the meaning of joy and its connection to anxiety, fear, wrath, hope, and love, and Professor Moltmann shares about the circumstances in which he came to faith as a 16 year old drafted into World War II by the German army, enduring the bombardment of his hometown of Hamburg, and being held for three years in a Scottish prison camp, where he read with new eyes the cry of dereliction from Jesus in the Gospel of Mark.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It's a beautiful conversation between two old friends, and we're airing it today out of appreciation for the life and theological contributions of Jürgen Moltmann. Before we roll that conversation, here's Miroslav with a remembrance of his dear friend and teacher.

Thanks for listening today. 

Miroslav Volf: Two days ago, on June 3rd, Jürgen Moltmann died. He was one of the greatest theologians of our time. I met him for the first time in April of 1979 on my way from California back home to Yugoslavia. I stopped in Germany to inquire whether I could do doctoral work under his supervision.

In the summer of 1980, I moved to Tubingen where he taught from 1967 until his retirement in 1994. And in the fall he became as German, say, my doctor, father, doctoral father, or we would say supervisor. We soon became friends. His influence on my life and my theology has been profound. Moltmann had become world famous some 15 years earlier.

Publication in the English translation of his Theology of Hope was front page news in the New York Times. Many people in the United States read it as a response to the so called death of God theology. At the time, Death of God theology seemed like a tsunami in the ocean of theology, but turned out to be no more than a small ripple.

Moltmann's work, however, left a major mark on modern theology. Eloquent witness to his influence are more than 500 doctoral dissertations on his theology written thus far, and I know at least of one being written right now. He was a brilliant theologian, and a highly creative one as well. The great attraction of his theology was that it is fresh, close to the pulse of life.

He wrote about things that move people, about suffering and joy, about exploitation, discrimination and solidarity, about travails of God's creatures under human greed, about life and death. And he wrote about life by exploring the great themes of the Christian faith, God, Christ, Spirit, creation, redemption, and new creation.

Moltmann acquired a reputation of being a political theologian, and that he certainly was. But he was a champion of the church as well. Especially those churches which he saw pulsating with new life. He himself was a convert to the Christian faith, and for him the gospel always was a message of life giving hope.

Incongruous as it may sound to many, he was a friend of both Paul Yonggi Cho, the pastor of the largest Christian congregation in the world. End of Robert Schuller, so flamboyant in his TV presence. Moltmann preached in both Yeouido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea, and the Crystal Cathedral in California.

My last contact with Moltmann was nine days before he died. On May 25, I sent him an email inquiring how he was doing and giving him a bit of an update on what was happening in my life. The very next day, I wrote to him. I received a longish response which started with, Es geht mir gut, I am well. He was positive and full of hope until the very end.

Last April, I received from him a copy of his talk at the celebration of his 97th birthday. In it, he reflects about his impending death. He writes, Every morning, I'm amazed that I'm still alive. To die means to let go. I'm preparing myself for this. To die means to give one's life over to God. I'm preparing myself for that, too.

The rising to eternal life is my hope in life and in death. The eternal life is my hope. will also be lived. This is the life of God's new creation. Death is like a birthday to new life in God's kingdom. Every morning of every new day, that hope gives me new courage to live. But I did not invite you here to ponder things with me, but to rejoice with me.

Let us toast to life here And there, I myself am mourning his passing. But perhaps his death is not just an occasion for mourning, but for celebration as well. Let us toast to his life, here and there.

Evan Rosa: Once again, thanks for listening, friends. And here's episode 63 of For the Life of the World, Passionate God, Crucified God, Joyful God, a conversation between Miroslav Volf and me. A

Jurgen Moltmann: prison camp in Scotland. There I read the gospel of Mark. And when I came to the, uh, cry with, uh, which Jesus died. My God, why has he forsaken me? I felt that there is a divine brother who feels the same as my feeling was at that time. And, uh, this, uh, saved me from self destruction and, uh, desperation. Joy is, uh, divine.

It comes from outside into our life in a surprise. In a turning from sadness to goodness, from sickness to health, and from loneliness to communion, you can experience joy only with your whole heart, your whole soul, and all your energies.

Evan Rosa: This is for the life of the world. A podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity.

And I'm Evan Rosa and we are with the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Thanks for listening today. 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: Evan, I wanted to bring this episode today in particular Because yesterday, April 9th, 2021 was the 95th birthday of the German theologian, Jürgen 

Evan Rosa: Moltmann. 95. That's amazing. 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: That's a lot of years. And 

Evan Rosa: beautiful.

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: Uh, Moltmann has like a special place for the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Yes, he does. Because he, uh, was the doctoral supervisor, as they say in German, the Dr. Vater, the, the, the doctor dad of Miroslav Volf, our, our director. at the, at the University of Tübingen in Germany. Something he said to Miroslav way back then, I think has been really determinative of, of what we're trying to do and the kind of stance we're aspiring to take, 

Evan Rosa: um, 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: and when something along the lines of this is, this is what you ought to be doing to, to be, to be a theologian, try to find a place where people's concerns and worries and questions are concentrated, where those things animate them in a particular time and a particular place, in the place where you are in the time where you are, and shine the light of the gospel on that.

Evan Rosa: Yeah. I mean, Miroslav heard that was directly spoken to him when he was a grad student by Jürgen, right? 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: That's right. Yeah. And now this, this is the mission you should take out with you into your, into your theological life. 

Evan Rosa: And that has really animated the work we do at the Yale Center for Faith and Culture.

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: Yeah, that's right. It illustrates for me one of the things that's amazing about Moltmann, which is that he's this far ranging thinker, but he has An incredible knack for distilling things into just these memorable lines that help you navigate your world, that help you see things, and that inspire you to try to live more faithfully.

Evan Rosa: Do you have, yeah, do you have any in mind? 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: Uh, yeah, I, uh, so one, one that comes to mind is, uh, some of us from, from the Center for Faith and Culture were at a meeting related to a grant that we were doing with a bunch of other scholars, um, you know, a dozen or so theologians, ethicists, psychologists, philosophers, and we've just sat down for, uh, one of the sessions of this meeting Miroslav's phone is on the table and it starts to ring as we're getting started talking.

And he picks it up, as one does, in embarrassment to silence it, but sees that on it, it says Jürgen. It 

Evan Rosa: says, You don't hang up on Jürgen Moltmann. Oh, 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: it's Jürgen. And so he picks up. And puts Jürgen Moltmann on speakerphone into the middle of our table, um, which presumably is not what, what Moltmann was calling to do and says, we're here in this meeting and what we're, we're talking about, uh, the question of, of the life of the theologian and what it has to do with the work of theology 

Evan Rosa: just puts him on the 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: spot, just, just right there.

And Moltmann says, ah, yes. Without living theologically, there can be no theology. And everybody in the room just kind of takes a breath and says, that's, that's true. That's, that's where I'm trying to be. 

Evan Rosa: Yeah. Our work is done. Wow. That's amazing. 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: So you can, you can see how, how this, this kind of Uh, this clarity combined with passion yields a sort of theology that has inspired countless young people to dedicate their lives to reflection, uh, and to study.

and to writing and communicating and thinking about God and God's relation to the world in this sort of passionate, engaged way. It has this spark, this passion for God and God's creation for true life in the midst of our death bound world. And, and I mean, I was one of those, those young people. I had this inkling that maybe theology was a direction I wanted to go.

Maybe I was being called even in that direction. 

Evan Rosa: Right. 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: But right after college, I found myself, um, in a little village called Peguche in Ecuador. In the middle of the Andes, and, uh, my wife and I are just out of college. We're, we're there trying to get connected to local indigenous organizations to learn about what they were doing, um, in terms of community development, uh, you know, to chip in, if we could, with our 22 year old, uh, minimal skills, uh, and maximal ambitions.

But I'd brought along some theology books to try to test this, this out. Is this a way I could go? And one of them was Moltmann's Theology of Hope. Uh, and I remember sitting down in the, the kind of kitchen area of this semi abandoned inn where we were living and being shocked to find a theology that was kind of more erudite than anything I had ever encountered before in my life.

Sure. Yeah. But at the same time, didn't shrink from reality. 

Evan Rosa: That's important. That's, that's very important. 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: And spoke in a way that felt credible to me. in that moment of my life, um, and in that context. Um, yeah. And, um, it's the sort of, the sort of theology that I felt like I wouldn't be embarrassed to be found reading where I was by the people who I was interacting with every day there.

And, uh, it's that, it's that kind of theology that, again, I think we're aspiring to do and, and we, we want to kind of offer and invite others into. It's that sort of theological living. 

Evan Rosa: I think that's just such a beautiful example. And both those stories depict the way in which it's the lived theology.

That is the aspiration there. Can you read that quote just one more time for anyone that missed that? 

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: So this is my translation. It was in German originally. But it was, without living theologically, there can be no theology. 

Evan Rosa: I mean, that's about as aspirational as any of us can hope for. But I mean, it depicts Christian flourishing, Perhaps at its best.

Ryan McAnnally-Linz: I think so. I think that's, I think that's Moltmann's genius. And it's why, uh, why we want to present this episode today and just want to say, Jürgen Moltmann, thank you. Peace to you as you embark on the 96th year of your life. 

Evan Rosa: Yeah. Hear, hear. Thanks for listening, everyone. In this episode, Miroslav Volf and Jürgen Moltmann discuss the meaning of joy and its connection to anxiety, fear, wrath.

Professor Moltmann remembers his own story of discovering, of being discovered by, God, as a 16 year old drafted into World War II by the German army, enduring the bombardment of his hometown of Hamburg, and being held in a Scottish prison camp, only to read, in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus cry of dereliction, My God, my God.

Why have you forsaken me? This cry would lay a foundation that led to his most influential book, The Crucified God. Moltmann also explains the centrality of Christ, the human face of God, or not just his theological vision, but his personal faith, which as Ryan explained, is a lived theology. Thanks for listening friends.

Hope you enjoy the wisdom here, earned through a long life of lived theology. 

Miroslav Volf: I'm sitting here with Jürgen Moltmann, one of the foremost theologians in the world today. We're in Tübingen, where he used to teach for many years. We have just finished a small consultation on joy, and that's the occasion why we are talking together.

Jürgen, if I may, uh, you have written a book about joy some 40 years ago. What have you learned in the meantime about joy? 

Jurgen Moltmann: Uh, well, uh, 40 years ago, it was a time of the protest movement against the Vietnam War, and the student unrest everywhere in the world, and, uh, At that time, I was thinking about, uh, how can I sing the Lord's Song in an alien land?

And, uh, 40 years after, I want to understand how to sing the Lord's Song in the broad place of his presence. So it's from the dialectic to the affirmation. And now, hope is for me anticipated joy, as anxiety is anticipated terror. And today, at least in Germany, we live more by anxiety and terror. And, uh, by hope and joy.

Miroslav Volf: And so in anxiety and terror, how does one find way to joy?

Jurgen Moltmann: Well, whenever I feel the presence of God, uh, then I, my heart is lifted up and, uh, I see more positive into the future. of the coming of God. And, uh, thus hope is, uh, awakened in me. Who is God for you? Jesus Christ is the human face of God. And without Jesus Christ, I would not believe in God. Looking at the catastrophes of nature and the human catastrophes of history, I would not come of the truth.

On the idea that a God exists, and this God is love, this was unsinkable for me. As we are. Jesus Christ and his message and his suffering on the cross and his resurrection from the cross.

My The feeling that God is present in the midst of suffering is, uh, a firm, um, Trust of my heart. 

Miroslav Volf: So you're not speaking right now simply as a theologian, you're speaking from personal experience of discovering or being discovered by God. Yeah. When you were, can you say more about that? This experience, which was, which was experience of anxiety, uh, aftermath of terror, a place where joy normally would not, uh, find its, uh, entrance.

Jurgen Moltmann: Well, when I was 16, I was drafted to the German army in 1943. and experienced the destruction of my hometown, Hamburg. In the midst of Hamburg, there was an anti aircraft battery, and we schoolboys had to serve in this battery. And, uh, the operation called by the British was the Operation Gomorrah. The destruction of the sinful city of Hamburg.

And I was in the midst of it. And at that time, I cried out to God for the first time.

And later, I was in prison, in a prison camp in Scotland. And there I read the gospel of Mark. And when I came to the The cry with which Jesus died, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? I felt that there is a divine brother who feels the same as my feeling was at that time. And this saved me from self destruction and desperation.

And so I came up with hope on a place where there was no expectation to come home soon. We were the imprisonment. It lasted for three years.

Miroslav Volf: You have later written a book that, uh, I've heard you say you consider to be the most important book that you have written, namely The Crucified God. And at the heart of that book, in a sense, uh, is this cry of dereliction. Yeah. Um. How is that book related to the book on hope? How is the cry of dereliction of pain related to the joy of jubilation of resurrection?

Jurgen Moltmann: Well, I started with hope. And the resurrection of Christ, uh, with a, is a ground of hopeful expectation of the coming of Christ and the coming of the kingdom of God. And, uh, when I, uh, I experienced in the U. S. that they took this as a reinforcement of the normally American pursuit of happiness and the American optimism.

I said when I would return, I would only speak of the other side of Christ on the cross. And, uh, so I came from the side of the resurrection to the side of the crucifixion and, uh, uh, the two sides of the presence of Christ. 

Miroslav Volf: You wrote that Christian faith is a unique religion. And you tied that to the key moments in the Christ story, death, resurrection, and then also coming of the Spirit.

Can you say more about this uniqueness? In what ways and why is Christian faith uniquely a religion of joy? 

Jurgen Moltmann: Well, as a center of Judaism, it's a Torah. As a center of Christianity, it's the Evangelion, the Gospel, and this is good news, and, uh, this is the news that, uh, God has raised the crucified Christ, uh, to be the Lord of of the world.

And, uh, therefore, Christianity is unique in this sense, that it is a religion of joy. Uh, Christmas carols and Easter laughter, and, uh, the awakening of Pentecost feelings. Uh, this is, uh, unique in Christianity. Don't mean that, uh, Christianity is absolute, uh, but it is unique in this way. Compare us, compare this with Judaism and the Islam and Buddhism.

They are all unique in their, uh, center, but, uh, the center of the resurrection is, uh, unique in Christianity. 

Miroslav Volf: You've earlier contrasted, um, pursuit of happiness, uh, certain form of optimism. Also, in your, uh, paper, you've contrasted, uh, you spoke about, uh, fund, uh, society and contrast that, uh, all these, um, pursuit of happiness, optimism, fun to to joy.

How are they different? 

Jurgen Moltmann: Well, fun is a superficial feeling, uh, which must be repeated again and again to, uh, to last. Uh, while joy is a deeper feeling of the, the whole existence. Uh, you can have fun, uh, It's a sight, but you can experience joy only with your whole heart, your whole soul, and all your energies.

And therefore, uh, Schiller thought, uh, that joy is, uh, divine. It comes from outside into our life. In a surprise, in a turning from sadness to goodness, from sickness to health, and from loneliness to communion, and these turning points awakens, uh, awakened, uh, joy. 

Miroslav Volf: So, so joy isn't Then a kind of simply a feeling.

Joy is a response to a certain states of affairs that have been changed, created, to which there is a particular way of responding. Is that how would, would that be a way to 

Jurgen Moltmann: express it? Something you cannot make yourself joyful. This is, this would be self satisfaction. But you are always outside of yourself, watching yourself.

Am I being happy or not? And this would be self satisfaction. Never lead to joy, uh, something unexpected must happen, so falling in love, for example, to take it from natural life or, uh, sudden success, uh, I don't know. Or in political life, uh, the unification of Germany, or the coming of Nelson Mandela out of 30 years of prison in, uh, Robben Island.

And he came and everybody expected a civil war. If nothing happened, Nelson Mandela came. This is a reason for surprise 

Miroslav Volf: and joy. So, in a sense, it's not a natural course of events that we expect to happen. It comes to us almost as a gift, as a gratuity from outside. Do you think there are Um, I can think of, uh, of, uh, great events that you were describing, uh, or, and maybe I can give an example with a contrasting, uh, contrasting, uh, one as, uh, also something much more quiet that may be a source of joy.

Let's say a child is born. That may be like the event of Exodus. That may be like the event of something completely new comes, but then, and there's joy and there's joy singing it. But the child is growing, and there's kind of a quieter joy that attends to a relationship to something that's there, but that it's also always experienced as gift.

Or one falls in love, but then love matures, and every morning it's a kind of new. So there may be exhilarating joy, and there may be kind of quieter joy. Does that make sense? 

Jurgen Moltmann: Yes, of course. I think the intention of love is the happiness of the beloved. So love's intention is not to own the beloved. But to have the beloved happy, uh, and therefore, uh, some love sometimes, uh, supports the beloved and sometimes taking oneself back to let the beloved in freedom.

So both actions are actions of love. We are not. Loved because we are so beautiful and good, but we are loved because we We are beautiful and good because we are loved. And this is true for interpersonal relationships and also true with the relationship of God who is love, as we say in the New Testament.

And so he wants to see his beloved children on earth happy and joyful. 

Miroslav Volf: And in a sense, the contrast that you made, we are not loved because we're beautiful, we are beautiful because we're loved, it kind of breaks the cause and effect relationship. If I'm beautiful and I'm loved, I'm beautiful, my beauty kind of elicits the love and it's expected.

But if I'm not, the love comes to me always as a gift, as a surprise, and lifts me up precisely in those terms. And that is a cause of joy. So is there, do you see a connection between joy and gratitude

Jurgen Moltmann: for something that helps? Yes, yes, of course. Uh, every child knows this at Christmas. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. 

Miroslav Volf: So, stance of, uh, perceiving oneself as having been blessed and therefore grateful is, uh, in other words, it may not be enough to have a child at Christmas. It's not enough for a child to get the present, right?

They have to, you know, Receive that present as a gift and be grateful for it, for joy to occur, they may, they may be dissatisfied because they didn't get quite the present they wanted and then joy is gone, right? But if, when it works well, then the present gratitude and joy form a kind of a, kind of a But 

Jurgen Moltmann: every child and every person knows that anticipated joy is the best joy.

But if you always anticipate only, there's a certain melancholy of the second day of Christmas. Yeah. If you get what you anticipated, 

Miroslav Volf: what then? There, but if you never get what you anticipate, if you only anticipate, right? So it's a kind of dialectic between, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, at one point you have also connected the kind of the character of the God.

As Christian faith embraces or believes in God, who is love, but God, who is kind of passionate God, God, who is engaged with the world with the question of with with the issue of joy, so that the passion of God becomes the foundation of joy. Yes, 

Jurgen Moltmann: and I feel at one with, uh, Abraham Heschel from Judaism who spoke of the pathos of God.

Uh, a passionate God, uh, is on every page of the Hebrew Bible, or, uh, the Hebrew Bible The Old Testament, as we say, but we in the Christian tradition have still to wrestle with the absolute God of the Greek metaphysics, who is apathetic. By nature, God doesn't feel joy, God doesn't feel pain, he is above pain and joy.

So the apathetic God makes a

man apathetic. This is the sovereignty of the soul, which is above feelings of joy and pain, and the pathos of God, or the passion of God, makes it possible. The believers compassionate, they participate in the suffering of others and participate in the joy of others. Sometimes it seems to me that compassion with the suffering of others is easier than the suffering of others.

Compassion with the joy of others.

We feel so good if we can have mercy with somebody else. And we feel, uh, some, uh, envy if, uh, somebody else, uh, feel joy and success, at least in the academic world. This is 

Miroslav Volf: the case. The rest of the world is spared from that temptation, I'm sure. Um, the joy of God, it's, uh, It's almost like a revolutionary idea, right, that the God, the creator of all that is, would rejoice, right?

At least against the backdrop of some of the Greek philosophical thinking and much of the Christian tradition, too. 

Jurgen Moltmann: Yeah. How can we speak of the love of God if We don't dare to speak of the joy of God, because God loves somebody's joy and participates in the joy of his creation, and, uh, in the New Testament, we have Luke, chapter 15, where the There's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99, uh, just people, uh, which is not, uh, true, uh, according to the parables.

given in this chapter because the lost coin could not repent, and the lost sheep could only make a noise, but not repent. Only the potter's son repented, but his father was lost in interested in his confessional sin. He loves him as soon as he saw him. So it's God's finder joy in these parables. 

Miroslav Volf: You have, I think yesterday, if I listen to you rightly, you have connected Joy of God with love of God, but you've connected, or love of God with joy, but you've also connected love of God with wrath of God.

So that joy and wrath and love would go together. Well, 

Jurgen Moltmann: I interpret the wrath of God as God's wounded love.

If you feel the wrath of another person, you feel also the interest of another person in you. Only if said person turns away and turns back to you, then you feel indifference. And this is the most important thing. terrible thing we can experience of God that he has turned his continents away from us.

Jews call this Hesta Panim, the dark face of God. That is the The contrary or the opposition to the shining continence of God from where the blessing comes, according to the Our Night Blessing formula. But let shine your continence over us and give us peace. But joy 

Miroslav Volf: is more lasting and stronger than ra.

Um, 

Jurgen Moltmann: yeah. We have, uh, certain testimonies for this, even in the Old Testament. My wrath is only for a moment, and my grace is everlasting.

Miroslav Volf: So joy, in the end, wins. Yeah, I'm convinced of that. Thank you, Jürgen.

Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured Miroslav Volf with Jürgen Moltmann. Production assistance by Alexa Rollow and Kacie Barrett. I'm Evan Rosa, and I edit and produce the show. For more information, visit us online at faith.

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