Moltmann Quotes

“In Christian terms, evangelization and humanization are not alternatives. Nor are the 'vertical dimension' of faith and the 'horizontal dimension' of love for one's neighbor and political change.”

“In the cross of Christ God is taking man dead-seriously so that he may open up for him the happy freedom of Easter. God takes upon himself the pain of negation and the God forsakenness of judgement to reconcile himself with his enemies and to give the godless fellowship with himself.~ Theology of Play, p.33”

“Well, first I would ask them if they had read the Bible; then I would ask them if they had understood it.”

“Judgement immobilizes, only hopeful love leaves an opening for God's alternative future.”

“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”

“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 motive that impels modern reason to know must be described as the desire to conquer and dominate. For the Greek philosophers and the Fathers of the church, knowing meant something different: it meant knowing in wonder. By knowing or perceiving one participates in the life of the other. Here knowing does not transform the counterpart into the property of the knower; the knower does not appropriate what he knows. On the contrary, he is transformed through sympathy, becoming a participant in what he perceives.”

“Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: "Leave behind all hope, you who enter here.”

“...the triune God will indwell the world in a divine way - the world will indwell God in a creaturely way.”