Theological Journal – February 17 Moltmann Monday – The Challenge of Ethics

From Moltmann’s The Ethics of Hope (Kindle loc.72) we read:


“The principle behind this ethics of hope is:

-not to turn swords into Christian swords

-not to retreat from the swords to the ploughshares

-but to make ploughshares out of swords.”

I take from this description of ethics that its sharp edge, its interface with the reality of the world we know, love, and anticipate is

-to know it well enough not to be trapped in its reality (“not to turn swords into Christian swords”),

-to love it deeply enough not to leave it to suffer, despair, and die from that reality (“not to retreat from the swords to the ploughshares”), but

-to counter its reality with the strange but true hope of the transformation of the world through the Crucified but Risen Jesus Christ (“to make ploughshares out of swords).

Reflecting on Moltmann’s insight in light of my experience as an American Christian, they say to me that:

-culture wars (of the right or left) are wrongheaded ways to go about living out our Christian faith. They trap us in the world’s reality. And that reality is comprehensively summarized by the logic of winning and triumph. The flip side is that martyrdom (Christian witness) is at best a noble (if futile) example which may tragically befall us but must never define us.

-withdrawal, quietism, non-engagement with the struggles of our world, huddling in the church or Christian fellowship to buffer us from the ugly realities and power of our world in anticipation of rescue and relief from it is an inexcusable lapse of love for all that God has made, indeed a rejection of or questioning of God’s wisdom in creating it in the first place. This a different form of rejecting the martyrdom to which we are called.

-hope for a transformed world, which is always first and finally God’s work to which our work is but a reflection (and not a cause), lies in the logic of martyrdom (witness). This witness trusts the truth of resurrection, that God’s way to victory is through death (of all sorts) to life, neither hoping for nor expecting victory over death or protection from it but new life to bloom through it.   

This is but my reflection on Moltmann’s statement. I don’t know whether he would agree with it or not, though I am bold enough to think he might. At any rate, I find it an enormously stimulating way to think through the shape of Christian witness in America in the times in which we live.