Moltmann: Session Five

"Unless you confess God cannot bless." Saw this sign but I don't give God the power to forgive me. It's like we've handcuffed God. - Jones

You cannot make as a human being conditions to God. This wouldb eto make God an object an idol. God will bless whom God will bless. The initiave is God's initiative and> God will bless you and then you can confess whatever is on your heart. God is God, not a bargain partner for you and your religion. this is completely heathen. If we do this then God will do this. It's a denial of the freedom of God and it's ot Christian. I am completely opposed to this bargaining for our destiny. This is pure capitalism. - Moltmann

But Jesus' teaching about prayer seems to be all about keep bothering God and you will get what you want. - Jones. "But this is not Jesus' only teaching on this. Whenever you pray you know that God knows already what you need otherwise it would be nonsense to pray. the hearing of God proceeds your prayer." Moltmann

Can we pray for something that's already happened? Is God separated from time so that I could pray for something in the past?:

"There's a long tradition for prayer for the dead because they are included already in the prayer of Christ. i think I am praying for the dead because the dead are not dead. They died but we cannot say that they are dead now. they are sleeping until the day of awakening. they are with us. they are watching over us. they are not in a modern sense dead and gone and annihilated. they are present. if you believe Romans 14 then we have a community with the dead in Christ and a community of hope because we are raised from death together. we need to overcome this modern thought of death is annihilation."

Zimzum: prior to creation all there was was god and in order to create god limited god's self and made space and room for creation. How does that relate to panentheism and does that mean God bound God's self to time?:

"I'm not the first person to take up this kabalistic thought. Christians have been doing this for 300 years now. Before God created the world he decided to become the creator. the first act of creation was inside God. Before He created heaven and earth he needed space and room for creation that another limited and finite reality of heaven and earth can be and can co-exist with God. Normally we understand creation as act but to take oneself back to oneself to let another being develop and flourish is also very creative." Moltmann

"If God as a being by nature is timeless but part of God's self limitation that wie're in that God has bound himself to time so God is experience time with us." Jones "Yes otherwise he couldn't be called the living God. A living God he must be able to have life giving relationship to other living beings." Moltmann

Hegel - God is unfolding history:

"Hegel did not develop an understanding of the trinity. It has nothing to do of the Christian understanding of Jesus, Abba and the Holy Spirit. Hegel had no eschatology. Panentheism everything is in God. But this is only one side of the biblical understanding of God. The other idea is that God is in everything. God dwells in the highs and the lows with the broken hearts. He's dwelling with Israel a cloud by day and fire by down. Shekinah. In the NT you have a mutual indwelling especially in the letters of God. Parousis. Mutual indwelling. So whomever remains in love God is in him. Also in John Calvin. The glory of god is already reflecting himself in all things. but we have no eyes to see it. So was God in the Tsenumi or with the terrorists. This is nonsense."

Theosis - god in each human being. Do you believe in this: "yes."

Martin Luther - God became a human being so that we unhappy gods could become fully human. "So God became a human being to liberate us from our God complex." Moltmann

Original Sin: Judaism doesn't have a doctrine of original sin. Can you comment on Augustine?: "I think these ideas of Augustine is leading to a christian form of gnosticism. Procreating is bad. Original Sin is like AIDS that we deliever from one generation to another. This is gnosticism this is not the OT form of life. We have received life and we should give life to another generation. So original sin ahs notheing to do with sex and procreation. The idea is more collective Guilt. I think this was the understanding of Luther. Everyone is guilty of evreything which happens in the world because everything is related to everything. There is a collective destiny because we share into everything and everything shares in us. But this has nothing to do with Adam or Eve. Did it enter with Adam or eve, this is all speculation. Guilt came into the world through Cain and Able since this time it's one against the other. This is more realistic I think."

"The other people's religion I give so God may give so you must make sacrifices to the Gods so God will give you God's blessing. If you don't do it right the God gets angry and you experience disease or whatever. So you have to look around and figure out who brought the wrong sacrifice to God. Jonah. This is all not biblical. The scapegoat is given by God. He is not asking this from the people but is giving this to Israel so that all the sins can be put on the scapegoat who then takes the sins out into the desert. God doesn't NEED a sacrifice. He GIVES it to the world. The initive is God'sinitiave. They used the Temple language but something completely different is meant."

So God is always the protagonist. The initiator. How is God the protagonist in allowing trinitarian love to overflow?: "Love takes God outside of himself and therefore he creates creatures which can resonate. He is not in need of the creation. The creation is a result of his overflowing joy and love."

"Dispensationalism is not a Christian idea. You can talk about this without mentioning Christ. Jesus was just one part of it. What is lacking is the new beginning that comes in the resurrection of Christ in anticiaption of the general resurrection and the new creation. So the new has already begun and the future is not very far away because it is already beginning. Prophet Isaiah: don't remember the things of old. Behold I create a new thing. Not one dispensation after another."

Will there be a moment in time of Jesus' return?: Yes. We have this linear concept of ttime and this is the time of our clock. In this linear concept he will not come. But we have another concept of time, the kairos. Our life experiences are not according to clock time but to kairos. A good time. This Kairos is an anticipation of the eschatological moment. 1 Cor 15. You can put it in terms of fulfilled time or life. In fulfilled time you don't care about the clock anymore you live in the eternal moment. When you come into the intensity of living you take the clock away.

Do you separate from Reformed Theology when you say we cooperate with God?: "I don't see that putting everything on God is a very Christian understaning of God. God enables us and gives us chances and energy to work in accordance with his will. and to resonate to his tune. and take responsibility which includes response. If God were all in all already then yes. But now it is our responsibility."

Who is the trinitarian God in nature?: "My question for science is: do you understand what you know? We need a hermeneutics of nature. We need to interpret the science. So science explains but we need understanding and interrupting. A doctor measures your blood pressure and your temp and takes all the data he can get from your body if you're not well or sick. So he takes the data and then he takes the data as symptioms of a disease and he interprets this as a disease you have and then the therapy can begin. The data is symptoms and now we must interpret these symptions to understand what we know. For example, to understand the data we get from climate research and economic research and interpret them and react in order to get over the danger which is come. The hermeneutics of nature. We put whatever we know of nature in the transcendant dimension. We can see the H.S. in the transcendant cycle of every human being. More complex life forms are open systems transcending themselves. This is an expression of a transcendance of the Spirit. You must speak of the H.S> herself and the energies of the H.S. Every Christian is filled with energies of the H.S. and therefore they form different communities with different gifts and energies. But only one spirit. The positive energies are from the spirit. The annihilating ones are not from the spirit. In each criminal or negative act of destruction there is energy which much be redeemed. Redeem the sinners, redeem the sin. Turn it into a positive life giving energy."

"If death will be no more. There will be a creation without organic death. ALL the death will disappear. That maybe a brand new biology a brand new physics, etc.
Evolution: nothing new, only evolving.
Emergence: something new; the old is new according to the qualification of the parts.
I think something new is always happening."

"At the end God will be All in All. So the end is not the annihilation of the world (Luther) but the deification (Greek Orthodox) or transformation (Reformed) of the world. "