1

The Presence of a Faithful God:

What Jurgen Moltmann and N. T. Wright Tell Us About Christian Hope

Glenn Packiam

[A progress paper of sorts as part of my literature review for a Doctorate in Theology and
Ministry at Durham University, UK]
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1. Introduction: This Paper, the Theologians, and Their Work

The goal of this paper is to put Jurgen Moltmann and N. T. Wright in ‘conversation’ with

one another on the subject of Christian eschatology. The challenge of such an enterprise arises

not least because neither references the other’s work in their writings. Furthermore, each scholar

approaches the subject from the perspective of a different discipline. Moltmann writes as a

systematic theologian, Wright as a New Testament scholar with particular emphasis on Pauline

theology who has written extensively on subjects related to what may be called ‘Christian

origins’. As such, the topic is treated more directly by Moltmann than by Wright, though

eschatology is a key feature in Wright’s reading of Paul in particular and of the New Testament

as a whole.

Moltmann’s first great theological work, for instance, is entitled Theology of Hope, a

manifesto on how the resurrection of Jesus is central to Christian theology. Moltmann would

write even more extensively on eschatology in his work, The Coming of God, focussing on

‘personal eschatology’, ‘historical eschatology’, and ‘cosmic eschatology’. Wright’s most

widely-read work on Christian eschatology, like Moltmann’s, is found in a book about hope and

rooted in the resurrection of Jesus—a general market book called, Surprised by Hope. His most

direct writing on eschatology, however, comes in the context of his exposition of Pauline

theology. Wright outlines the key feature of Judaism as ‘monotheism, election, and eschatology’.

For Wright, Paul sees each of these as being re-shaped and even re-defined around Jesus as the

Messiah and around the Spirit, who has now been poured out. Though they appear in smaller

books on Paul, these three themes provide the main structure of his massive two-volume work,

Paul and the Faithfulness of God. The rest of Wright’s eschatology must be read in his analysis
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of resurrection—both of Jesus and of Christians in the future—in his tome Resurrection and the

Son of God.

2. Overlapping Views

Despite their different disciplines and approaches to the subject of Christian eschatology,

there is considerable overlap in their thinking. One might liken this to two people observing a

city square from the windows of two different buildings; they are looking at the same scenes, but

from different perspectives and angles, thus giving attention to different details and movements.

I will outline six planes on which Moltmann and Wright overlap in their respective

eschatologies.

2.1. The priority of Jewish eschatology over pagan or Greek views of the afterlife

Moltmann builds his ‘Christian eschatology’ on a Jewish one, with the God’s presence as

central to both. ‘The central expectation of Jewish and Christian eschatology has always been the

coming of God to his creation and the coming presence of God in his whole creation.’1

Moltmann differentiates eschatological presence from omnipresence. Richard Bauckham offers

this summary, referencing Moltmann’s The Coming of God:

‘The eschatological presence of God differs from his presence in the present
creation: it is “the indwelling of his unmediated and direct glory” (317). It is the
de-restriction of his omni-presence which had been self-restricted in relation to
the present creation. But whereas the present creation could not bear the
immediate presence of God (306), in the eschaton “we shall be able to look upon
his face without perishing” (317; cf. 295).’2

Moltmann draws on the Jewish theological concepts of sabbath and shekinah to further

delineate God’s presence now from how it will be then. Sabbath is God’s presence in Time, and

1
God Will Be All In All: The Eschatology of Jurgen Moltmann, ed. by Richard Bauckham (Minneapolis, MN:
Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2001), p. 24.
2
ibid.
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Shekinah is God’s presence in Space.3 Creation-in-the-beginning is finished in God’s sabbath;

creation will be created anew so that it may become home of God’s Shekinah.4 Moltmann

expounds on these themes in his ‘cosmic eschatology’. The first creation is rooted in sabbath,

God’s presence in Time; this is what awakens ‘remembrance and hope’.5 The new creation is

rooted in Shekinah, God’s presence in Space; the eschatological indwelling of God will be in

‘our’ space. Furthermore, for Moltmann, sabbath is ‘God’s homeless Shekinah’ while the

eschatological Shekinah is the ‘perfected sabbath in the spaces of the world’.6 Sabbath and

Shekinah thus are ‘related to one another as promise and fulfillment, beginning and completion’.7

Time and space also are connected in this way. ‘Creation begins with time and is completed in

space’.8

Moltmann explores resurrection in a section on ‘personal eschatology’ in The Coming of

God, briefly summarizing resurrection in the Old Testament. Drawing on Isaiah 24-26,

Moltmann sees resurrection as an ‘unequivocal salvific hope’.9 Then, turning to Daniel 12, he

describes resurrection as judgment. The dead must rise so that they can take responsibility; they

must rise body and soul so that they can take responsibility for everything that they have done in

body and soul, and can receive eternal life or eternal shame according to their deeds.’10 In his

view, these two ideas are found ‘side by side in Israelite tradition, unharmonized’.11 Moltmann

includes a brief section on resurrection as it appears in the Apocrypha, specifically the book(s) of

Maccabees. There, resurrection is not a ‘hope for salvation’, but rather a ‘two-edged expectation,

3
Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God, trans. by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers,
1996), p. 266.
4
Moltmann, The Coming of God, pp. 265-6.
5
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 266.
6
ibid.
7
ibid.
8
ibid.
9
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 68.
10
ibid.
11
ibid.
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because one does not know to which side one will be called to account on Judgment Day’.12

Moreover, resurrection is not what is central to the vision of hope; it is ‘the universal victory of

God’s righteousness and justice’.13

A brief mention must be made of Ernst Bloch—a Jewish Marxist philosopher who wrote

The Principle of Hope as an ‘atheistic philosophy of hope’.14 While Moltmann was writing

Theology of Hope, Bloch was his main influence. For Bloch, the biblical God of hope was a

symbol of hope, a ‘projection of the immanent power of history to transcend itself in a hopeful

movement into the future’.15 Bloch’s catchphrase was ‘transcending without transcendence’.

Bloch saw hope as negating the negative and transcending it ‘by turning every “not” into a “not

yet” ’. But Moltmann argued that not every negative has the possibility of becoming a ‘not yet’.

What are we to do with an ‘absolute negative’?16 Moltmann sees biblical eschatology as arising

precisely at the point where ‘immanent possibilities of hope run out, as hope in the God who

creates out of nothing and gives life to the dead.’ Richard Bauckham—whom Moltmann says

knows his theology better than Moltmann!17—expounds on how Moltmann’s eschatology

countered Bloch’s principle of hope:

‘Death has no seeds of resurrection within itself, it cannot become a “not yet”, but
the really transcendent God of hope can negate even its absolute negativity in
giving new life to the dead. Hence precisely the point which Bloch's principle of
hope cannot reach—the resurrection of the dead—is the foundation of Christian
eschatology.’18

Where Moltmann draws on meta-themes in the Old Testament, Wright ‘zooms’ in, as it

were, to specific passages that reference resurrection. Wright argues that resurrection in the Old

12
ibid.
13
ibid.
14
Richard Bauckham, The Theology of Jurgen Moltmann (Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark Ltd, 1995), p. 44.
15
ibid.
16
ibid.
17
God Will Be All In All: The Eschatology of Jurgen Moltmann, ed. by Richard Bauckham (Minneapolis, MN:
Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2001), p. 35.
18
Bauckham, The Theology of Jurgen Moltmann, p. 45.
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Testament functions both as metaphor and metonymy. As metaphor, the ‘belief in resurrection’ is

‘an image for the restoration of nation and land’; as metonymy, resurrection is also a ‘literal

prediction’ of one element in that restoration.19 In Ezekiel, resurrection—God breathing life into

dry bones—is used as a metaphor of the return from exile.

Wright ‘zooms’ back out to sketch several meta-themes in the Old Testament. If Genesis

3 were read as a paradigm for Israel’s own expulsion from the promised land—Wright

acknowledges there is no evidence to confirm such a reading—then it is not a leap to see exile as

death, in the same way that expulsion from Eden was part of the fulfillment of the promised

punishment of ‘death’ for eating of the fruit. Return from exile, then, would be resurrection— a

newly embodied life. Joining the twin Old Testament meta-themes of YHWH as ‘Creator-God’

and YHWH as ‘Covenant-God’, the resurrection passages in the Old Testament—particularly

Ezekiel 37—also echo not only exile and return but creation: from the dust YHWH creates

humans by breathing into them; he will breathe into them once more to bring them to life again.20

Wright turns to the servant passages in Isaiah to focus on the promise of literal bodily

resurrection. In some of the servant passages, it seems that an individual is representing the

nation. Wright suggests this is where ‘the belief that Israel’s god will restore the nation after

exile’ becomes the belief ‘that he will restore the nation’s representative after death’.21 ‘The

earlier national hope thus transmutes, but perfectly comprehensibly, into the hope that Israel’s

god will do for a human being what Israel always hoped he would do for the nation as a

19
N. T. Wright, Resurrection and the Son of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), p. 128.
20
Wright, Resurrection and the Son of God, p. 123.
21
ibid.
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whole.’22 Eventually, this belief is also applied to the Messiah’s people, which Wright grounds in

Daniel 12, ‘where the nation’s representative has become plural’.23

Wright outlines three positions regarding the afterlife as seen in the Old Testament, and

proposes an explanation for how resurrection relates to each. He summarizes it as follows:

A. The dead are ‘asleep with the ancestors’

B. The dead may be ‘received' by YHWH into some continuing life

C. Some at least of the dead can hope for resurrection after any such ‘life after death’

Wright makes five remarks about this. First, C is not so much a development out of B as

it is a ‘radical development from within’ A.24 Secondly, resurrection hope does not deny that the

person goes to Sheol or ‘the dust’ or ‘the grave’ as B does. Thirdly, resurrection hope does not

affirm— as B does— that a ‘non-bodily post-mortem existence, in the presence and love of

YHWH, is the final good’ for which we hope. Fourthly, the ‘theological hope and devotional

belief’ that seems to have generated B may also be behind C— immortality is not in us; it is

granted as the result of God’s love and faithfulness, though not in a disembodied fashion.

Finally, resurrection as ‘bodily resurrection for dead humans’ and resurrection as ‘national

restoration for exiled/suffering Israel’ are so closely intertwined that ‘it does not matter that we

cannot always tell which is meant, or even if a distinction is possible…’25

Wright refutes the claims that the belief in resurrection was an extraneous element or that

it came from ancient Zoroastrianism or from Canaanite mythology. He argues that because the

thrust of the resurrection passages is on Israel’s unique status as the chosen people of the one

creator god, to borrow imagery to say this would be undermining the message. Wright also

22
ibid.
23
ibid.
24
Wright, Resurrection and the Son of God, p. 124.
25
Wright, Resurrection and the Son of God, p. 124.
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points out that a central part of the Old Testament’s depiction of YHWH is how different he is

from other deities: he is not a vegetation god, part of a fertility cult; he is the sovereign over all

of creation. Wright suggests that the reason why Jewish thinkers come to a belief in resurrection

late is because that is when the ‘competition’ was not fertility cult deities but the empires of

Babylon and Syria. Wright finds it highly unlikely that the prophets would predict the end of

exile and the renewal of covenant by borrowing as a central image one from pagan religions.26

2.2. The resurrection of Jesus as the centrepiece of Christian theology

‘Christianity stands or falls with the reality of the raising of Jesus from the dead by God,’

wrote Moltmann in his Theology of Hope.27 For this reason, Moltmann, the systematic

theologian, links Christology and eschatology, placing them in a ‘mutually interpretative

relationship’, where Christology is the beginning of eschatology and eschatology is the

consummation of christology.28

In Theology of Hope, Moltmann notes two fundamental concepts that form the meaning

of the resurrection: identity and divine action. The first—identity—is where Moltmann stresses

the importance of it being the same Jesus who was crucified who is now raised. This is a kind of

‘dialectical Christianity’ where Jesus’ identity is ‘sustained in contradiction’.29 Cross and

resurrection represent total opposites—‘death and life, the absence of God and the nearness of

God, godforsakenness and the glory of God’.30 Yet it was the same Jesus who experienced both.

Thus, by ‘raising him to life, God created continuity in this radical discontinuity’.31

26
Wright, Resurrection and the Son of God, pp. 124-27.
27
Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, trans. by James W. Leitch, First edn (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress
Publishers, 1993), p. 165
28
God Will Be All In All, p. 2.
29
Bauckham, The Theology of Jurgen Moltmann, p. 33.
30
ibid.
31
ibid.
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The second concept—divine action—is the basis for Moltmann’s view of the resurrection

of Jesus as an event of ‘eschatological promise’.32 Moltmann derives this meaning by recovering

the Jewish roots of Christian theology. Because the ‘God who raised Jesus from the dead is the

God of Israel’, his action must be understood against the backdrop of the ‘Old Testament history

of promise’.33 Resurrection ‘represented the point at which Jewish hopes for the future became

thoroughly eschatological, in envisaging a future in which even death will be overcome in God's

new creation’.34 In raising Jesus from the dead, God ‘guaranteed’ his promise by ‘enacting’ it in

Jesus. Yet the promise of God's new creation remains not completely fulfilled because only Jesus

is raised; but ‘he has been raised for the sake of the future eschatological resurrection of all the

dead, the new creation of all reality, and the coming of God’s kingdom of righteousness and

glory. His resurrection entails this universal future’.35 Almost thirty years after writing the above

statement in Theology of Hope, Moltmann underscores it again in The Coming of God: ‘Christian

faith in God is shaped by the experience of the dying and death of Christ, and by the appearances

of the Christ who was raised.’36

N. T. Wright also roots his theology of hope in the resurrection of Jesus. His approach as

a New Testament scholar relies more heavily upon tracing themes through scriptural texts rather

than on identify concepts, as Moltmann does. This is a subtle difference, but nevertheless one

that explains why Wright spends so much time with Old Testament and apocryphal texts. It is

precisely because the resurrection of Jesus becomes the centerpiece of Christian theology that

Wright wants to explore from whence such a belief in bodily resurrection came, and

consequently, what it means.

32
ibid.
33
ibid.
34
ibid.
35
Bauckham, The Theology of Jurgen Moltmann, p. 34.
36
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 69.
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For Wright, Paul belongs on the ‘Jewish map’ not a pagan one.37 Like the Pharisees of his

day, Paul believed in ‘future bodily resurrection of all the true people of the true God’ and that

Israel’s God— as creator of the world and God of justice— would accomplish this resurrection

by the Spirit ‘who was already at work in Messiah’s people’.38 Yet Paul believed two things

which, for Wright, are only comprehensible as mutations within the Jewish worldview and not

combinations of Jewish eschatology and something else. The first is that Paul believed the

resurrection as a historical moment had divided in two: the resurrection (first) of the Messiah,

and the resurrection of his people (at his parousia). Secondly, Paul argued that the resurrection

of the body would be bodily and would involve a transformation.

As a historian, the chief question for Wright is how a ‘lively and many-sided movement’

that grew from within a ‘pluriform Judaism’ and made substantial inroads into a ‘pluriform

pagan world’ had one exclusive belief about what happened to people after death and became the

pivotal aspect of the movement.39 This belief in resurrection, after all, stands over and against the

‘entire world of paganism’ and is a ‘dramatic modification within Judaism’.40 It happened as a

result of early Christian witness that said that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead.

Christian belief in resurrection is a ‘reshaping [of Jewish resurrection beliefs] around the

resurrection of Jesus’.41

Resurrection, Wright contends, is central to the New Testament Christianity. ‘All the

major books and strands, with the single exception of Hebrews, make resurrection a central and

important topic, and set it within a framework of Jewish thought about the one god as creator and

37
Wright, Resurrection and the Son of God, p. 372.
38
ibid.
39
Wright, Resurrection and the Son of God, p. 478.
40
Wright, Resurrection and the Son of God, p. 476.
41
ibid.
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judge’.42 Even in the early centuries, belief in resurrection was ‘foundational to early Christianity

in all forms known to us’ with few exceptions.43 Against the pagan view that death was the

end…Christianity ‘affirmed…the future bodily resurrection of all god’s people’.44 And against

the developed Jewish view of resurrection…Christianity 'affirmed in great detail [a] the belief

that resurrection involved going through death and into a non-corruptible body the other side’;

[b] that the Messiah was raised from the dead ahead of everyone else; and [c] it allowed for an

intermediate state of the denatured person being with the Lord until the resurrection.

Furthermore, it is remarkable that Christianity never seems to have developed ‘even the

beginnings of a spectrum of belief’ influenced by the spectrum in paganism or Judaism.45 It stuck

to one point within Judaism. More remarkable still is the fact that they developed ‘new ways of

speaking about what the resurrection involved and how it would come about’ that could ‘never

have been predicted from the Jewish sources’.46 Why did this happen? Again, Wright concludes

it was because their movement was ‘decisively launched by, and formed around, the resurrection

of Jesus himself’.47

2.3. The resurrection of Jesus as paradigmatic of the resurrection of the dead

For both Moltmann and Wright, the resurrection of Jesus is paradigmatic for the

resurrection of believers; it is how we understand what our resurrection bodies may be like.

Furthermore, both see the future resurrection of the believer as central to Christian hope just as

the resurrection of Jesus is central to Christian theology. Future bodily resurrection is set in

42
ibid.
43
Wright, Resurrection and the Son of God, p. 551.
44
ibid.
45
Wright, Resurrection and the Son of God, p. 552.
46
ibid.
47
ibid.
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contrast to the immortality of the soul in Moltmann’s writing, and in contrast to ‘going to

heaven’ in Wright’s work. With a preacher’s conviction and cadence, Moltmann writes:

‘The immortality of the soul is an opinion— the resurrection of the dead is a hope.
The first is a trust in something immortal in the human being, the second is a trust
in the God who calls into being the things that are not, and makes the dead live. In
trust in the immortal soul we accept death, and in a sense anticipate it. In trust in
the life-creating God we await the conquest of death — “death is swallowed up in
victory” (1 Cor. 15.54) — and an eternal life in which “death shall be no more”
(Rev. 21.4). The immortal soul may welcome death as a friend, because death
releases it from the earthly body; but for the resurrection hope, death is “the last
enemy” (1 Cor. 15.26) of the living God and the creations of his love.48

By contrasting future bodily resurrection with the immortality of the soul, Moltmann

differentiates the locus of trust: one is in God; the other is in self, or the intrinsic qualities of the

human being. One might also add that the first is an active hope—in an active object—while the

other is a passive hope in a passive state of being. The belief in future bodily resurrection

requires a trust that an outside force more powerful than death must act decisively against death

to defeat it; the belief in the immortality of the soul is a passive acceptance of a certain state of

reality: bodies are temporal; souls are eternal. Secondly, by contrasting future bodily resurrection

with the immortality of the soul, Moltmann shows how the first awaits the conquest to death

while the other acquiesces to it.

Moltmann traces the roots of the belief in the immortality of the soul, unsurprisingly, to

Plato. It is Plato who identifies ‘what is truly human’ with the ‘soul’.49 For Plato, the ‘post-

existence of the soul corresponds to its pre-existence: before we are born, our soul is, and after

we are dead our soul is...’50 Moltmann comes closer to home for German scholarship, citing

Johann Fichte as treating the soul as a ‘transcendental subject’, and Ernst Bloch—already

48
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 65-66.
49
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 59.
50
ibid.
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mentioned above as a significant dialogical influence on Moltmann’s work—as viewing the soul

as the ‘kernel of existence’.51

Moltmann is clear that the resurrection of Christ meant the ‘transformation of his whole,

bodily, form’ not the ‘survival of some eternal part of him’.52 Furthermore, if Jesus Christ,

crucified and risen, is the paradigm for the new creation of all things, then his rising from the

dead has a ‘proleptic and representative significance for all the dead’.53 Therefore, eschatology is

‘emphatically not about the transcendence of immaterial and eternal aspects of creation

[soul/spirit] over the bodily and mortal aspects. It is the new creation of the whole of this

transient and bodily creation’.54

Wright gives his clearest exposition of what the resurrection of Jesus means for the

resurrection of believers in Surprised by Hope. His thesis in his section on the redemption of our

bodies is simply this: ‘The risen Jesus is both the model for the Christian’s future body and the

means by which it comes about’.55 Like Moltmann, Wright finds ‘modern Westerners’ to have

more in common with Plato’s dualism of material and immaterial than with Jewish creation

theology which affirmed the physical.

As always, Pauline texts figure prominently in Wright’s sketch of what future bodily

resurrection will be like. The key passage is 1 Corinthians 15, within which there are two crucial

phrases: the ‘physical body’ and the ‘spiritual body’, as the Revised Standard Version renders

them. Wright thinks such a translation is misleading, only further cementing the dualistic notion

51
Moltmann, The Coming of God, pp. 61-5.
52
God Will Be All In All, p. 6.
53
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 69.
54
God Will Be All In All, p. 7.
55
N. T. Wright, Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New
York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008), p. 149.
 14

that the immaterial will one day transcend the material. With the precision of a New Testament

scholar, Wright presents his case:

The contrast is between the present body, corruptible, decaying, and doomed to
die, and the future body, incorruptible, undecaying, never to die again. The key
adjectives, which are quoted endlessly in discussions of this topic, do not refer to
a physical body and a nonphysical one…

The first word, psychikos, does not in any case mean anything like “physical” in
our sense. For Greek speakers of Paul’s day, the psyche, from which the word
derives, means the soul, not the body.56

The deeper point linguistically for Wright is in the ending –ikos, which does not describe

‘the material out of which things are made but the power or energy that animates them’.57 Thus

the contrast is really between the body which the soul powers versus the body which the spirit—

God’s Spirit—powers. As Wright puts it, the contrast is between ‘corruptible physicality’ and

‘incorruptible physicality’.58

When questions of what this future body will be like in relation to our present bodies,

Wright’s only response is to compare the risen Jesus’ body with his body prior to death: ‘his

wounds were still visible, not now sources of pain and death but as signs of his victory’.59

Moreover, there is a strangeness of the resurrection stories about Jesus’ new body—he was

hungry and able to eat, yet also capable of disappearing from one place and then appearing in a

locked room, recognizable yet almost mistaken for a stranger. This, Wright argues, is due to the

fact that the disciples were ‘looking at the first, and so far the only, piece of incorruptible

physicality’.60 Just as there are continuities and discontinuities between Jesus’ corruptible

physical body and his incorruptible physical body, so there will be for us.

56
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 155.
57
ibid.
58
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 156.
59
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 160.
60
ibid.
 15

2.4. The resurrection of Jesus as paradigmatic of the renewal of the creation

The resurrection of Jesus is also paradigmatic, in both Moltmann’s and Wright’s views,

for the new heavens and the new earth. It shapes our understanding of what a renewal or a new

creation of the cosmos constitutes. It speaks of both an ending and a surprising new beginning.

The future bodily resurrection of the believer is linked in Moltmann’s work to the

renewal of the cosmos; one cannot happen without the other. ‘The two sides belong together:

there is no resurrection of the dead without the new earth in which death will be no more.’61

‘Hope for the resurrection of the dead is therefore only the beginning of a hope for a cosmic new

creation of all things and conditions.’62 This forms the bridge in Moltmann’s thought from

‘personal eschatology’ to ‘cosmic eschatology’.63 While personal eschatology might form the

small centre of Christian hope, it is ‘constrained to press forward in ever widening circles to

cosmic eschatology.’64 Failing to push outward would make Christian eschatology a ‘gnostic

doctrine of redemption’, no longer teaching the ‘redemption of the world’ but a ‘redemption from

the world’, no longer ‘redemption of the body’ but a ‘deliverance of the soul from the body’.65

Moltmann cements this inextricable connection between personal eschatology and

cosmic eschatology by the theological doctrines of God as Creator and God as Redeemer. This is

part of what Richard Bauckham means when he describes Moltmann’s eschatology as ‘theo-

centric’.66 The Creator God who rested from work of creation will redeem his creation and renew

it in such a way that his presence can one day fully rest in his creation. The connection between

creation and redemption, as between the aforementioned concepts of sabbath and Shekinah, is

61
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 69.
62
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 70.
63
ibid.
64
ibid.
65
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 259.
66
God Will Be All In All, p. 24.
 16

God himself. Moltmann appeals to the very nature of God—his oneness and his identity as both

Creator and Redeemer—as the foundation of his cosmic eschatology. ‘There are not two Gods, a

Creator God and a Redeemer God. There is one God. It is for his sake that the unity of

redemption and creation has to be thought.’67

Moltmann’s cosmic eschatology may be described in three perspectives: it is the end of

creation; it is really the new beginning of creation that comes from without and not from within;

it is ultimately the completion of creation. Once again, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the

interpretive key.

Just as Jesus experienced a real and true death, so the world must really and truly end.

‘There is no beginning of the world without the end of this old one, there is no kingdom of God

without judgment on godlessness, there is no rebirth of the cosmos without “the birth pangs of

the End-time”. The raising of Christ from the dead presupposes his real and total death.’68 But

Moltmann rejects that this will be a sort of annihilation and re-creation. Instead, this end of the

world ‘hides a new beginning’.69 Yet this new beginning does not develop out of the old; it is a

genuinely ‘new creative act’.70 Just as the Christ was truly dead and his resurrection body did not

develop out of the dead Christ, so the ‘new creation of all things does not issue from the history

of the old creation’.71

The last part of Moltmann’s cosmic eschatology is where Moltmann makes his most

radical claim. He argues that the renewal of creation is not merely restoration but the completion

and perfection of creation. Moltmann presents two scenarios. The first is this: Creation was

perfect from the beginning. It was spoilt by human sin. In this scenario, grace is ‘the divine

67
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 259.
68
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 227.
69
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 234.
70
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 68.
71
ibid.
 17

expedient designed to remedy the predicament of sin’.72 The result is that the ‘goodly, primal

creation will be restored as it in truth always was and will be…’ Hope exists because of sin.

Eschatology in this scenario is restitutio in integrum— ‘a return to the pristine beginning’.

The second scenario is this: Creation in the beginning was ‘very good’, which ‘does not

mean that it was in the Greek sense perfect and without any future’, but rather the Hebrew sense

‘that it was fitting, appropriate, corresponding to the Creator’s will’.73 Hope is beyond

redemption from sin and its consequences. Eschatology is incipit vita nova— ‘here a new life

begins’.

Even though the first scenario is the interpretation of cosmology that has been passed

down by the theological tradition of the Western church, Moltmann finds it lacking. It has a

circular sense to it. But if one took that to be strictly true, ‘the circle of Christian drama of

redemption would have to repeat itself to all eternity. The restoration of the original creation

would have to be followed by the next Fall, and by the next redemption— the return of the same

thing without end.’74 Furthermore, Moltmann raises the question of how such a cyclical view

would correspond to Paul’s teaching that where sin abounds, grace abounds more. (Rom. 5:20).

Moltmann argues that the ‘added value of grace is its power to end, not just actual sin, but even

the possibility of sinning, not just actual death but even the being-able-to-die, as Augustine

said.’75 Hope, then, is ‘not directed to the “restoration” of the original creation’…but rather to

‘creation’s final consummation’. The ‘end is much more than the beginning.’76

Wright might offer a hearty amen. The early Christians, in Wright’s view, looked back at

the first Easter with great joy. And yet, ‘precisely because of their very Jewish belief in God as

72
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 262.
73
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 264.
74
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 263.
75
Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 264.
76
ibid.
 18

creator and redeemer, and because they had seen this belief confirmed in the totally unexpected

event of Jesus’ resurrection, they also looked forward eagerly to an event yet to come in which

what began at Easter would be completed’.77 The resurrection of Jesus as a paradigm of the

renewal of the cosmos is clear in Wright’s mind: ‘…what God did for Jesus at Easter he will

do…for the entire cosmos.’78

While Moltmann in Coming of God moves from personal eschatology outward to his

cosmic eschatology, Wright prefers to begin with the wide angle lens of what Easter means for

the cosmos, working his way inward to personal hope. Moltmann begins with bodily resurrection

and then argues for a new kind of world in which a new kind of body could inhabit; Wright

begins with the new creation and then asks what sort of human can rule it. Both see the bridge

between resurrected bodies and a renewed creation, but they work toward the bridge from

different sides, as it were.

Once again, a Pauline text is Wright’s foundation, and once again, it is 1 Corinthians 15.

Wright links Paul’s ‘firstfruits’ language to the Jewish festivals of Passover and Pentecost to

demonstrate that the resurrection of Jesus was his own defeat of the ‘slavemaster’ of sin and

death as he came through the ‘Red Sea of death and out the other side’.79 Exodus—like

resurrection—is ‘an act of pure grace’, which Wright sets in contrast to the notion of progress.80

This has resonance with Moltmann’s argument that the new did not emerge out of the old as if it

were there the whole time. The renewal of the cosmos is ‘an act of new creation, parallel to and

derived from the act of new creation when God raised Jesus from the dead.’81

77
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 79.
78
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 99.
79
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 98.
80
ibid.
81
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 99.
 19

Wright sees the renewal of creation as addressing three problems of its current state.

First, ‘the world is created good but incomplete’. This is, as seen above, an area of agreement—

even in language and perspective—with Moltmann. A nuance, though, is that Wright sees death

as not being part of the original good creation, but rather as an enemy that has its role as the

result of sin. This view is in keeping with Christian tradition, and belongs in Moltmann’s

‘Scenario 1’. Secondly, Wright reads Romans 8 as the basis for seeing creation as being

subjected to slavery. Here again there are resonances for Wright with the children of Israel in

Egypt. Creation’s moment of freedom will come ‘when God’s children are glorified’, which is

where cosmic eschatology meets personal eschatology for Wright. He does not, of course, use

Moltmann’s phrases, opting instead for Pauline texts: ‘This is where Romans 8 dovetails with 1

Corinthians 15’.82 Thirdly, creation is fragmented: earth and heaven are, for the most part,

separate quarters. What is needed is what Isaiah in the Old Testament and John in the New

Testament saw: a new heaven and a new earth, joined together at last. This is that for which

Jesus taught us to pray, and that which Paul in Ephesians 1:10 said would happen. Wright is

emphatic that this does not mean ‘that God will wipe the slate clean and start again’.83

What it does mean, however, is harder to say. ‘All our language about the future…is like

a set of signposts pointing into a bright mist,’ says Wright.84 Nevertheless, Wright sums things

up with one rather full sentence. ‘What I am proposing is that the New Testament image of the

future hope of the whole cosmos, grounded in the resurrection of Jesus, gives as coherent a

picture as we need or could have of the future that is promised to the whole world, a future in

which, under the sovereign and wise rule of creator God, decay and death will be done away

82
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 103.
83
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 105.
84
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 107.
 20

with and a new creation born, to which the present will stand as mother to child’.85 Creation will

experience redemption and renewal, both of which are ‘promised and guaranteed by the

resurrection of Jesus from the dead’.86

2.5. The insufficiency of both the secular eschatology of progress and the modern Christian

eschatology of escape.

If a common enemy makes two parties allies, then Moltmann and Wright would be

comrades in arms in the fight against anemic alternate eschatologies, specifically, the secular

ideal of progress and the popular Christian notion of a disembodied escape. Moltmann uses the

term millenarianism to speak of the secular vision of progress toward a utopian ideal. It is

unclear what role the so-called ‘millennial reign’ holds for Moltmann, whether literal or

metaphorical. Nevertheless, the notion that humans can bring about a millenarian type of

peace—as Revelation envisions the thousand-year reign to be—is simply a secular vision of

hope to Moltmann. He uses the term apocalypticism to refer to the vision of the inevitable end of

the world as we know it. For Moltmann, both the hope of a better future and the fear of

impending doom are brought together in the Christian hope of death and resurrection, though

neither is complete without the other. Bauckham sums it up this way:

'In relation to human history…the hope of redemption enables the future to be

perceived neither in terms of goal without rupture (the one-sided secularization
of the millenarian hope) nor in terms of end without fulfillment (the one-sided
secularization of the apocalyptic expectation of catastrophe). It promotes neither
then “messianic presumption” of utopian progressivism nor the “apocalyptic
resignation” of fatalistic acceptance of inevitable catastrophe [citing Moltmann in
Coming of God, p. 192.], both of which in their opposite ways aid and abet the
modern historical project in deadly and destructive progress. By awakening hope
in the power of God’s redemptive future, it enables resistance to the power of
history, anticipates a different future, alternative to that which the trends of past
and present project, and in this way proves redemption already.’87

85
ibid.
86
ibid.
87
God Will Be All In All, p. 20.
 21

Wright uses the terms ‘progressivist’ and ‘dualist’ to denote the two traps of progress and

escape. The progressivist believes that things are going to get better by means of a kind of

evolution. The fittest will survive, the strongest will conquer, and the best will win out. This can

become a way to justify empire, but it cannot account for evil. Wright cites the surprise of the

Western world at acts of terrorism like September 11, 2001, to argue that we are still easily

seduced by progress and not sufficiently convinced of the reality of evil. The dualist, on the other

hand, does not believe that we can do much to change the world, that all will continue in its

wicked state until the Lord returns. This thinking, Wright says, breeds paranoia.88

In rejecting the fear of an inevitable end of the world, Wright is more explicit in

criticizing the popular Christian vision of hope as being disembodied and escapist. Simply ‘going

to heaven’ is, for Wright, not enough. As a proponent of what he calls a ‘two-stage post-

mortem’, Wright finds the hope of heaven to be not the full picture. Wright also takes the time to

dismantle the largely American fixation on a ‘rapture’ with a blow-by-blow exegesis of the

misunderstood texts.

2.6. Eschatology as way of making sense of the mission of the Church.

One of the reasons both Moltmann and Wright argue that eschatology matters is that both

believed that eschatology has an effect on the Church’s sense of mission. Far from being a

speculative subject with little to no bearing on the ‘here and now’, both theologians allowed their

eschatology to form the basis for a sort of political theology, and, for Wright, ethics.

In fact, Richard Bauckham argues that Moltmann's interpretation of eschatology became

widely influential precisely because of its ‘strongly practical thrust’. Moltmann’s eschatology

‘made Christian hope the motivating force for the church's missionary engagement with the

88
N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p. 106.
 22

world, especially for Christian involvement in the processes of social and political change. By

opening the church to the eschatological future, it also opened the church to the world, casting

the church in the role of an agent of eschatological unrest in society, whose task is to keep the

world on the move towards the coming kingdom of God’.89 This has been criticized by those

who oppose liberation theology or who are uncomfortable with what they may perceive to be too

much emphasis on the social over the moral or personal dimensions of salvation. Nevertheless,

what must be noted is how action and vision are connected for Moltmann. If one knows what is

coming, one is compelled to work in anticipation of it.

Wright makes a similar case in Surprised by Hope. Framing mission in the context of the

redemption of space, time, and matter, he writes: ‘Living between the resurrection of Jesus and

the final coming together of all things in heaven and earth means celebrating God’s healing of

his world not his abandoning of it; God’s reclaiming of space as heaven and earth intersect once

more; God’s redeeming of time as years, weeks, and days speak the language of renewal; and

God’s redeeming of matter itself, in the sacraments, which point in turn to the renewal of the

lives that are washed in baptism and fed with the Eucharist’.90 Mission cannot be split between

‘saving souls’ and ‘doing good’; justice and evangelism belong together when mission is shaped

by anticipation of the future.91

In an appendix critiquing what he believes are the two typical Easter sermons, Wright

offers hints of what an Easter sermon should say, and, by doing so, suggests how Christian

mission might be reimagined in light of a more robust hope. It is a mission shaped by the

conviction that ‘every act of love, every deed done in Christ and by the Spirit, every work of true

creativity—doing justice, making peace, healing families, resisting temptation, seeking and

89
Richard Bauckham, The Theology of Jurgen Moltmann (Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark Ltd, 1995), p. 30.
90
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 264.
91
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 265.
 23

winning true freedom—is an earthly event in a long history of things that implement Jesus’s own

resurrection and anticipate the final new creation and act as signposts of hope, point back to the

first [resurrection] and on to the second [resurrection]’.92

3. Notable Differences

The overlapping of two ages and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God.

Both Wright and Moltmann believe in an ‘inaugurated eschatology’, a Kingdom of God

that is both ‘now and not yet’. But for Moltmann, the rule of Christ from resurrection to new

creation happens in two stages: the messianic rule now, and the millennial reign then.93 During

the millennial reign, two key things will occur: the martyrs who have died with Christ will live

with him; and Israel will be raised and redeemed and form the messianic people of the messianic

kingdom— along with Christians.94 Moltmann sees this as a ‘transitional kingdom leading from

this transitory world-time to the new world that is God’s; it is not yet the ‘kingdom of glory’

which Christ will hand back to the Father. Moltmann argues that the ‘transitional role of the

millennium in historical eschatology’ is parallel to ‘the intermediate state (between death and

resurrection) in personal eschatology’, though it must be noted that Moltmann rejects a

‘purgatory of any kind.95 Moltmann also has no such parallel of a transitional role in cosmic

eschatology as he does for his ‘personal’ and ‘historical’ eschatologies.

Wright is largely silent on a millennial period, leading many to conclude that he is an

amillenialist. The best one could infer would be that Wright reads the description of a millennial

reign in Revelation as ‘symbol’ and not ‘code’—a metaphor for living in the in-between that

92
Wright, Surprised By Hope, pp. 294-5.
93
God Will Be All In All, p. 22.
94
Moltmann, The Coming of God, pp. 195, 198-9.
95
God Will Be All In All, p. 23.
 24

does not have a concrete referent.96 Wright’s refusal to map out anything that might resemble a

timeline is a significant difference from Moltmann whose ‘process theology’ is as developed as it

is controversial.

Universal Salvation

One other place of disagreement between Moltmann and Wright is the fate of the human

race. Though it is not overtly expressed, Moltmann at the very least leans toward a belief in

ultimate universal salvation. In his view, God’s redeeming act must be as comprehensive as his

creative act, if we are to see God as being faithful and gracious to his creation. God, Moltmann

argues, would cease to be the creator if he left parts of his creation to perish; he would be a

destroyer. (Richard Bauckham offers a rebuttal of this in his summary of Moltmann’s

eschatology God Will Be All In All.)

Wright, however, does not even leave the door open for such a hope. Judgment, Wright

says, is the ‘sovereign declaration that this is good and to be upheld and vindicated, and that is

evil and to be condemned’; furthermore, judgment is ‘the only alternative to chaos’.97 Yet Wright

is uncomfortable with the traditional view—or distortions of it—that judgment is a sort of eternal

torture chamber. He argues that when a being made in the image God ceases to worship God, he

or she gradually ceases to reflect the image of God. What results is a being that is less than

human, and therefore not only ‘beyond hope but also beyond pity’.98 He acknowledges the

ambiguity about what this state of being would be. What is not left unclear, however, is the

tragedy that some will in fact reject God’s redemption and receive judgment as a result. This is

not a contradiction to Christian hope, but is, in a sense, a corollary to it.

96
N. T. Wright Revelation and Christian Hope: Political Implications of the Revelation to John;
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/revelation-christian-hope/id447840163?i=167437316&mt=2 [accessed 4
October, 2014]
97
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 178.
98
Wright, Surprised By Hope, p. 182.
 25

4. Critiquing the Giants

One should not be too quick to challenge theological giants such as Moltmann, and to a

lesser extent, Wright. Nevertheless, there are a few challenges to be made to each. To begin with,

the use of Scripture for each has some weaknesses. Moltmann relies heavily on a philosophical

or conceptual reading of Scripture, drawing meta-themes out of key stories, rather than

examining a text in its particularities of context and culture. The sitz im leben of Exodus, for

instance, means less for Moltmann than the theme of liberation. But this decontextualized

reading can be hazardous, resulting in concepts that are treated like universals. I suspect it is this

sort of reading that results in Moltmann’s rather sweeping claim that the redeemer must

redeemer all creation or else he would be unfaithful to his creation. A closer reading of the

Exodus narrative might force one to grapple with judgment and evil and the finality of justice.

Wright, on the other hand, explores texts deeply, but is not wide enough in his Scriptural

scope. This might be excusable, since as a Pauline scholar he would predictably focus on

passages like Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians 15. Wright, however, is not content to stay within the

Pauline corpus. His readings of the eschatological passages in the Gospels are emphatically

preterist, though he does not use this term. Found in his ‘For Everyone’ commentaries on the

Gospels and his other more academic volumes (see, Resurrection and the Son of God), Wright

directs passages like Mark 13 exclusively toward the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. Such an

approach, however, does not take with sufficient seriousness that quality of prophetic and

apocalyptic passages that refers predictively to events in the immediate future and figurally to

events in the later future.

A critique that is frequently levelled against Wright specifically is that his description of

how to live in light of Christian hope comes very near to an ‘over-realized’ eschatology—that is
 26

to say, too much of a ‘now’ and not enough of a ‘not yet’. Though Wright would deny such an

accusation, many of his practical suggestions—such as forgiving debt in the Global South,

condemning war as a response to global terrorism, and more—have been criticised as too

idealistic. Not many would disagree with his premise that Jesus has indeed ascended to the

throne room and is reigning over the earth; but there are questions as to how much that rule has

come to bear upon reality at present. Wright’s apparent belief that it is the Church who must

bring Christ’s rule to bear upon the events of this world, saying little about our limits to act in

this age, adds fuel to the critique.

One final challenge might arise from an admittedly speculative exploration of the

sociological dimensions of both Wright and Moltmann’s thought. For instance, Wright might be

called an ‘establishment man’, as a former Bishop in the Church of England; Moltmann might be

considered an ‘anti-establishment man’ as one who fought in a war he did not agree with, a war

that his ‘state church’ endorsed. Could this be why Wright stays squarely in line with his

tradition with regard to final judgment, while Moltmann freely questions it? Wright’s status as a

‘public figure’ in Western evangelicalism might further prohibit how controversial he can be.

5. Contributions to the Field

When one thinks of the field of Christian eschatology, Jurgen Moltmann is the name that

comes to mind first. Moltmann made eschatology no longer marginal but central to Christian

theology. Because of Moltmann’s work, eschatology could no longer be ignored. Even if one

does not give it the place of eminence that Moltmann does, one can no longer teach theology

without giving proper attention to a robust, historic eschatology. It may be that Wright has

accomplished a parallel achievement in non-academic Christian circles. Wright redefined

eschatology at the popular level from being about end-times charts and enigmatic codes about
 27

current events to being the hope of resurrection and new creation. Wright’s most significant

contribution, however, may be the way he organized Paul’s thought as a re-working of the three

pillars of Judaism—monotheism, election, and eschatology—around Jesus as the Messiah, and

around the Spirit. In doing this, Wright reinforced eschatology as a key feature not only of

Christian theology but in Jewish theology as well.

At the risk of over-simplifying their perspectives, I want to suggest that Moltmann

focuses on the presence of God while Wright stresses the faithfulness of God. Moltmann, by

approaching eschatology from a conceptual angle, places the stress on the coming of God. It is

the great ‘shekinah’ that will fill the cosmos. Moltmann’s book on Christian eschatology is

entitle The Coming of God; Bauckham’s book on Moltmann’s eschatology is called God Will Be

All In All. The focus is on the presence of God—his coming and his filling of all things. The

cosmos will be completed and renewed to be fit for such a filling. Wright, by approaching

eschatology with a Pauline lens, places the stress on the faithfulness of God (See, for example his

two volume tome, Paul and the Faithfulness of God). The covenant narrative is paramount for

Wright. It is within that narrative that he finds God being faithful not only as YHWH but on

behalf of unfaithful Israel as well. It is this faithfulness that is good news for the whole world:

God does not scrap his project (creation), forget his promise (the covenant with Abraham to bless

all nations through his family), or abandon his people (Israel). While he certainly draws out

themes like victory (see Jesus and the Victory of God) from the resurrection, when Wright talks

about eschatology, he does so in such a way as to demonstrate the ‘end’ as the ultimate

manifestation of God’s faithfulness. In the end, both theologians have given us two very

compelling views from their ‘windows’ of the same bright horizon—a horizon on which projects

the great hope of Christ’s resurrection.

 28

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart, Hope Against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of
the Millennium (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1999).

Richard Bauckham, Moltmann: Messianic Theology in the Making (Hants, UK: Marshall
Morgan and Scott Publications Ltd, 1987).

Richard Bauckham, The Theology of Jurgen Moltmann (Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark Ltd, 1995).

Jurgen Moltmann, The Coming of God, trans. by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg
Fortress Publishers, 1996).

Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, trans. by James W. Leitch, First edn (Minneapolis, MN:
Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1993).

God Will Be All In All: The Eschatology of Jurgen Moltmann, ed. by Richard Bauckham
(Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2001).

N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006).

N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, Parts III and IV (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg
Fortress Publishers, 2013).

N. T. Wright, Resurrection and the Son of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003).

N. T. Wright Revelation and Christian Hope: Political Implications of the Revelation to John
(lecture given on Oct. 8, 2010, at Duke Divinity School)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/revelation-christian
hope/id447840163?i=167437316&mt=2 [accessed 4 October, 2014].

N. T. Wright, Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the
Church (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008).