Jürgen Moltmann: heaven on earth and my heresy
Jürgen Moltmann is 92 years old. He is of the same generation as the well-known theologians I have posted about recently, such as Karl Barth and Reinhold Niebuhr. Like them, he was born in Germany and came of age in Nazified Germany. Unlike them he stayed, served in the Wehrmacht (Nazi army, not the SS), and seems to have experienced profound guilt and remorse when he learned about the concentration camps after the war. That’s his story, and I have no reason to doubt it.
In some ways he is the most interesting of the five German theologians I have posted about (Barth, Niebuhr, Bultmann, Bonhoeffer, and Tillich). I wish I understood why the most influential Christian theologians in the United States grew up in Nazified Germany, but I don’t.* Moltmann is interesting not because he is right, but because he is different. Moltmann is different not only because he believes in heaven, but in heaven on earth.
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