Moltmann: Session Two

Exploring Methodology:

You broke some of the rules of German, Protestant Systemology, so tell us what is the normal German way of going about Systematics?:

"Behind all this is the conviction that humanly speaking truth is to be found in unhindered dialogue." Moltmann Intro

How is that different than Karl Barth or others?

Regarding Karl Barth's 8000 pages a critic once said, "The Truth cannot be so long!"

"I resist the temptation to write a system because I am not a systematic person. I had an idea and I wrote about it."

Hidden Universalism in Barth not to reconcile nature to God but people to God.

"Whenever i find something that sounds true to me, i say hello yes, that's fine. that's the way i also think. so don't become narrow minded to defend only your won denomination. Christ is more than one's own denomination."

Elie Wiesel's book Night, three prisoners were hanged and two died with a loud cry of freedom and there was a boy who was tortured because he was so light he wouldn't die. he heard a voice behind him saying "where is god" and the answer: he is hanging up there."

Regarding 911: "God is not punishing New York homosexuals. A God who uses terrorists to punish his own people is a monster and for me, not a god. But maybe we should turn around our thinking of the omnipotence of God. God isn't in control of everything but is carryng and bearing everything. Exodus language: you carried us like a mother is carrying a child in her arms. you are burying us through the desert like a father bury's his own sons. we are carried on eagle's wings. I will carry you until you become old. This patience of god, the carrying of everything gives his word time and this is the omnipotence of god."

Divine impassibility was inherited by Greek philosophy. Is there an epiphany moment when you thought, that's not god. Because you write that an impassible god is not a god it's a demon.: "Aristotle, metaphysics, pope 12... criticism against the many god stories in Greek mythology god is not apathetic he is full of pathos of love and anger (wounded love) for this people. if god is apathetic then his image of us is apathy."

"it's better to be defeated than not to begin. get out of apathy. thus i talk about the passibility of god."

"i try to bring life and death experiences into contact with theological questions but theology that doesn't affect life is only a game for play. the book of my best students, Volf, exclusion and embrace is a good book because of his experiences. life and death are a source of theology, of course!"

You said once we should Read forward and backward what do you think?" "I'm old enough not to fear becoming heretical. i read the bible with a presupposition to meet the divine word in human words and whenever i meet the divine word which became incognate in Jesus Christ then i feel to meet the truth. then i have a criterion over against the human expressions of this proof. Galations 3:28 in Christ there is no male female, lord nor slave, all one in Christ and heirs of kingdom. but then i read that women should shut up in the congregation. what sentence is closest to Christ and my decision is clear. if the women were always silent we would have no knowledge of the resurrection of Christ." (clapping).

"My question for fundamentalists is do you read the bible and if you do, do you understand it?"

"My wife convinced me to change sentences from this is the case to i think this is the case and not to make objective statements. because if i say it in this way, this is my experience, provokes the subjectivity in others to make up their own mind and not to just quote me."

"Luther said theology and politics have nothing in common. We must change our attitude with the death of Auschwitz pulling on our hearts."

John Paul II - He was a good pope.
Pannenburg - He is a very dear friend and componant
Dietrich Bonhoffer - Died too early
Whitehead - Very Complicated to read.
Jaques Dierida - i think post modernity is just another form of modernity. we have universal dangers which we can ready only united we cannot split up in everything goes anwith peoples little narratives or small narr we live under the threat of atomic bomb and the extinction of mankind is all around us so why should we give up thsese universal questions
Stanley Hauerwass - The nt speaks not about a peacable kingdom but a peace making kingdom.
Martin Luther - Great job on reforming but there are two ML and MLK what's the difference.
Augustine - Ask his wife about him There was a wife and a son and he left both of them for his mother but it happens :)
Marx - I like the early Karl Marx had influences from romantic philosphy, the naturalization of human beings and nature his early writings the communist manifest is one of the greatest documents of the 19th century. Even if you disagree with it.
Miraslov Volf - he is a very dear friend and a very gifted theologian he came to me at tuberton to write his dissertation about work and marx but then he was drafted and when he returned and experienced suffering and resistance and i loved him very much when he returned wounded. and then he wrote the book on community and now he is going on writing writing writing. He had a calling to Heidleberg once. Either go there to Christians there or you go to Yale and be an American postmodern theogian. Unfortunately
Pelagious - he is the saint of american christians.