Theological Journal – January 20 Moltmann Monday

"God does not become a religion, so that man (sic) participates in him by corresponding religious thoughts and feelings. God does not become a law, so that man (sic) participates in him through obedience to a law. God does not become an ideal, so that man (sic) achieves community with him through constant striving. He humbles himself and takes upon himself the eternal death of the godless and the godforsaken, so that all the godless and the godforsaken can experience communion with him."

— Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 276.


No religion, no moralism, no idealism, in short, no human way to God. Bonhoeffer called for a “religionless” Christianity. Moltmann answers that call here. Only God can make his way to us and through us to the world around us. And the good news is God has done just that!

-Not through the highest and holiest

-Not through the best and most admirable

-Not through the hardest working and most sincere

Instead of offering a way out and a way up through our best efforts God chose the way down and in to our reality, our godlessness and godforsakeness, to find us and join his life to ours there. God cut through the bluster and bluff we generate to buffer and protect ourselves from him and those around us who remind us of our true plight. Solidarity with others, communion with God, will be found among those will not and cannot deny this plight.

-Religion makes us feel right.

-Moralism makes us feel good.

-Idealism make us believe we can be better than we are.

Faith joins us with God in his hiddenness from all we imagine divine and in embrace of who we truly are before him. It remains true for as it was for Paul that “But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Rom.4:5).  

“Without works,” the religion, moralism, and idealism we noted above, we, the “ungodly,” trust a God who sets and makes right just and only such people (“justifies”) and in such trust find our communion with the One who made us and redeemed us from our pretentions and “perfections” to find life as and with whom God intended.

Thanks be to God!