Quotes from Jurgen Moltmann

Capitalism, racism and inhuman technocracy quietly develop in their own way. The causes of misery are no longer to be found in the inner attitudes of men, but have long been institutionalized.

Personal, inner change without a change in circumstances and structures is an idealist illusion, as though man were only a soul and not a body as well.

The knowledge of the cross brings a conflict of interest between God who has become man and man who wishes to become God.

The problem of modern man is no longer so much how he can live with gods and demons, but how he can survive with the bomb, revolution and the destruction of the balance of nature. He usurps more and more of nature and takes it under his control. The vital question for him, therefore, is how this world which he has usurped can be human- ized.36 His main problem is no longer the universal finitude which he experiences in solidarity with all other creatures, but the humanity of his own world.

The crucified Christ has become a stranger to the civil religion of the First World and to that world's Christianity.

God does not suffer out of deficiency of being, like created beings. To this extent he is 'apathetic'. But he suffers from the love which is the superabundance and overflowing of his being. In so far he is 'pathetic'.

The Spirit is more than just one of God's gifts among others; the Holy Spirit is the unrestricted presence of God in which our life wakes up, becomes wholly and entirely living, and is endowed with the energies of life.

with Christ in faith a wholly new life begins. It is not a restored life, and it is not a rejuvenated life either. It is not even a life reborn out of its origin. The resurrection of Christ has no historical prototype. It is something completely new in history. It is the beginning of the new creation of everything.

True Easter faith is the work of the Spirit, for believing in Christ's resurrection doesn't mean affirming a historical fact, and saying `Oh really?' It means being seized by the life-giving Spirit and experiencing `the powers of the world to come' (Heb. 6.5) in our own living and dying.

Anyone who believes in the power of God and the power of Satan can surely not be viewed as a pure monotheist.

The Holy Spirit does not `proceed from the Father and the Son', as the Western church's Nicene Creed maintains. The Spirit proceeds from the Father, rests on the Son, and from the Son radiates into the world.

But for us this also means that in place of the spread of our Orthodox, Roman Catholic or Protestant churches we have to put a passion for the kingdom of God. Mission doesn't mean `compelling them to come in'! It is the invitation to God's future and to hope for the new creation of all things: `Behold, I am making all things new' - and you are invited to this divine future for the world!

You only live once!' we are told. `You might miss out on something!' This hunger for pleasure, for possessions, for power; the thirst for recognition through success and admiration - that is the perversion of modem men and women. That is their godlessness. The person who loses God makes a god out of himself. And in this way a human being becomes a proud and unhappy mini-god.

The same Christ Jesus is not the same for everyone, because people are different. He has one profile for the poor and another for the rich, one profile for the sick and another for the healthy.

As Christians understand it, creation is a trinitarian process: God the Father creates through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. So all things are created `by God', are formed `through God' and exist `in God'.

The new is preceded by the destruction of the old, that which has become guilty, and not out of the possebilities which we possess, but in the impossible situation which confronts us, that the new shows itself as God's creative act. God's new reality is always like a novum ex nihilo . When all hopes have died, there comes the wave of the future like a spirit of resurrection into the dead bones (Ezek. 37), creating hope against hope.

To discover the 'traces of God' in nature does not indeed save us, but it does mane us wise, as tradition says; for we discover in the memory of nature a wisdom of existence and life which mirrors the wisdom of God, and for human civilization it is wise to co-operate with nature and to become integrated in it, instead of exploiting and hence destroying it in the interests of human domination.

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.

Our social and political tasks, if we take them seriously, loom larger than life. Yet infinite responsibility destroys a human being because he is only a man and not god." ~ p.23

The ordination of women is not a matter of adaptation to changed social conditions. It has to do with new fife from the beginnings of the Christian church: life out of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

God does not suffer out of deficiency of being, like created beings. But he does suffer from his love, which is the overflowing superabundance of his being. And in this sense he can suffer.

The freedom to talk with God and of God is being opened by God's joy. It cannot be forced. For true awareness cannot be coercive; it does not come about by either authoritarian pressure or the force of logic. It presupposes liberty. Being aware of God is an art and--if the term may be permitted--a noble game.

We experience what life and death really are when we love, for in love we go out of ourselves, become capable of happiness and at the same time can be hurt.

Christian theology] awakens pain over the present internal and external enslavements of human beings