I was fortunate enough to spend a few days with Professor Moltmann.
We would speak of Germany.
Reading the previous reflection on him, one is struck by the brilliance of his systematic theology—the sweeping arcs of his eschatology and the daring nature of his Trinitarian thought.
Yet, there is a danger in treating Moltmann as a "brain in a vat," as if his conclusions were reached through the sterile exercise of academic dialectics. To truly understand why Moltmann shifted the center of gravity in twentieth-century theology, we must look away from the library and toward the barbed wire. We must look at the young man in the uniform of the Wehrmacht and the captive in the British prisoner-of-war camps.
Theology is rarely a product of pure thought; it is usually a response to a crisis. For Moltmann, the crisis was total. Serving in the Wehrmacht during the Third Reich meant being a cog in a machine of unprecedented systemic evil.
The "God" presented by the nationalist fervor of that era was a God of power, a God of victory, and a God of the state.
When that regime collapsed in a heap of ruins and moral bankruptcy, the God of power collapsed with it. The experience of the soldier is often one of a sudden, violent transition from the illusion of agency to the reality of absolute helplessness. This trajectory—from the hubris of the empire to the silence of the defeated—is the silent engine driving Moltmann’s later work.
It was in the POW camps, however, that the seeds of his most enduring insights were planted. In the camp, the world shrinks to the size of a fence. The prisoner exists in a state of profound suspension, where the present is an agonizing void and the only thing that sustains the spirit is the anticipation of a future that has not yet arrived. This is not the "optimism" of the comfortable; it is the "hope" of the desperate. In this environment, hope is not a vague feeling that things will improve, but a survival strategy—a radical protest against the current situation. When Moltmann later wrote *Theology of Hope*, he was not merely engaging in a scholarly retrieval of eschatology. He was codifying the experience of the captive. For the prisoner, hope is the conviction that the present is not the final word, and that a new reality is breaking into the current one to liberate the oppressed.
This experience of abandonment and suffering fundamentally altered his conception of the divine. The classical tradition often spoke of an "impassible" God—a deity who is unchanging and cannot suffer. But to a man sitting in a POW camp, a God who cannot suffer is a God who is irrelevant. A God who watches the horror of the twentieth century from a distance of divine indifference is a God who cannot be trusted.
This realization led Moltmann to the central thesis of *The Crucified God*: that God is not a distant observer of human pain, but a participant in it. By focusing on the Cross, Moltmann argued that God Himself entered into the experience of abandonment and death. The "Crucified God" is the only God who can meet the prisoner in the camp, because He is the God who has also been stripped, condemned, and left alone.
When we return to the original essay’s analysis of Moltmann’s theology, we see that while the academic points are correct, they lack the visceral weight of this biography.
Moltmann’s theology is a map of his own scars.
His insistence on the suffering of God is an antidote to the cruelty of the state; his theology of hope is a scream against the silence of the camp. By grounding his work in the reality of the Wehrmacht and the POW experience, we see that Moltmann did not just write about hope and suffering—he survived them, and in doing so, he found a God who was finally large enough to hold the horror of the modern world.
Thank you Professor Migliore for such a well written remembrance of Jurgen Moltmann. I appreciate they way you highlighted not only his own unique contributions, but also gave us context for his thoughts and connections with his contemporary colleagues, such as Karl Barth and Karl Rahner. Well done! Thank you.
Dan, amid the constraints of this format, thank you for this eloquent and accurate summary of Moltmann's life and contributions to theology and ethics. Well done, my friend. Jim Kay
I was fortunate enough to spend a few days with Professor Moltmann.
We would speak of Germany.
Reading the previous reflection on him, one is struck by the brilliance of his systematic theology—the sweeping arcs of his eschatology and the daring nature of his Trinitarian thought.
Yet, there is a danger in treating Moltmann as a "brain in a vat," as if his conclusions were reached through the sterile exercise of academic dialectics. To truly understand why Moltmann shifted the center of gravity in twentieth-century theology, we must look away from the library and toward the barbed wire. We must look at the young man in the uniform of the Wehrmacht and the captive in the British prisoner-of-war camps.
Theology is rarely a product of pure thought; it is usually a response to a crisis. For Moltmann, the crisis was total. Serving in the Wehrmacht during the Third Reich meant being a cog in a machine of unprecedented systemic evil.
The "God" presented by the nationalist fervor of that era was a God of power, a God of victory, and a God of the state.
When that regime collapsed in a heap of ruins and moral bankruptcy, the God of power collapsed with it. The experience of the soldier is often one of a sudden, violent transition from the illusion of agency to the reality of absolute helplessness. This trajectory—from the hubris of the empire to the silence of the defeated—is the silent engine driving Moltmann’s later work.
It was in the POW camps, however, that the seeds of his most enduring insights were planted. In the camp, the world shrinks to the size of a fence. The prisoner exists in a state of profound suspension, where the present is an agonizing void and the only thing that sustains the spirit is the anticipation of a future that has not yet arrived. This is not the "optimism" of the comfortable; it is the "hope" of the desperate. In this environment, hope is not a vague feeling that things will improve, but a survival strategy—a radical protest against the current situation. When Moltmann later wrote *Theology of Hope*, he was not merely engaging in a scholarly retrieval of eschatology. He was codifying the experience of the captive. For the prisoner, hope is the conviction that the present is not the final word, and that a new reality is breaking into the current one to liberate the oppressed.
This experience of abandonment and suffering fundamentally altered his conception of the divine. The classical tradition often spoke of an "impassible" God—a deity who is unchanging and cannot suffer. But to a man sitting in a POW camp, a God who cannot suffer is a God who is irrelevant. A God who watches the horror of the twentieth century from a distance of divine indifference is a God who cannot be trusted.
This realization led Moltmann to the central thesis of *The Crucified God*: that God is not a distant observer of human pain, but a participant in it. By focusing on the Cross, Moltmann argued that God Himself entered into the experience of abandonment and death. The "Crucified God" is the only God who can meet the prisoner in the camp, because He is the God who has also been stripped, condemned, and left alone.
When we return to the original essay’s analysis of Moltmann’s theology, we see that while the academic points are correct, they lack the visceral weight of this biography.
Moltmann’s theology is a map of his own scars.
His insistence on the suffering of God is an antidote to the cruelty of the state; his theology of hope is a scream against the silence of the camp. By grounding his work in the reality of the Wehrmacht and the POW experience, we see that Moltmann did not just write about hope and suffering—he survived them, and in doing so, he found a God who was finally large enough to hold the horror of the modern world.
To the memory of the blessed Margaret Pole.
This wonderful, brief essay is appreciated. Thank you.
Thank you Professor Migliore for such a well written remembrance of Jurgen Moltmann. I appreciate they way you highlighted not only his own unique contributions, but also gave us context for his thoughts and connections with his contemporary colleagues, such as Karl Barth and Karl Rahner. Well done! Thank you.
Dan, amid the constraints of this format, thank you for this eloquent and accurate summary of Moltmann's life and contributions to theology and ethics. Well done, my friend. Jim Kay
Thank you for the article. I often feel that I z must choose between Barth whom I love. But love Moltmann as well.