Theological Journal -March 9 (Lent 2020): Moltmann Monday

“When the crucified Jesus is called "the image of the invisible God," the meaning is that THIS is God, and God is like THIS.”
― Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology


This is where so much “Christian” theology fails. We presume we know who, what, and how God is before we get to the human Jesus and then try to fit him into the mold of the God we already believe we know or else we separate the two saying God is one way, Jesus another. And when push comes to shove God trumps Jesus or they stand in tension or opposite one another.

This latter dilemma arises in some atonement theology where God (the Father) stands on the side of justice while Jesus stands on the side of love and forgiveness. Jesus dies out of love to forgive humanity thus blocking the wrath of the Father who must have his offended justice satisfied before he can forgive. The Father and Jesus thus operate out of opposed motivations and leave with a Father we cannot wholly trust to be for us as Jesus is for us.

Another form of this comes in some forms of double predestination theology where God determines from all eternity the eternal destination of each human being – some to eternal life, some to eternal perdition. When Jesus announces the good news indiscriminately to all hearers in the gospels he is either acting in ignorance of the Father’s predestination (willfully or not) or is “crossing his fingers behind his back” in offering to gospel to anyone who repents and believes. Thus the Father and Son in some measure opposed to each other here too.

Karl Barth critiqued this kind of thinking by adopting the criterion Moltmann articulates above and claiming that there is no other God than the one we see in Jesus, no other God behind Jesus’ back whose inscrutable designs we do not know nor whether they mean good or ill for us.

The most decisive and distinctive claim Christians make about God, then, is not how “godlike” Jesus is but how “Jesus-like” God is! Or in the words of A Declaration of Faith says:

“We affirm the unity of God's being and work.

We may not separate the work of God as Creator

from the work of God as Redeemer.
We may not set the Son's love against the Father's jus

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