Jürgen Moltmann – Theology of Hope (1964)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Eschatology as Center
Jürgen Moltmann (b. 1926), developing in parallel with Pannenberg but with different emphases, elaborates a historical theology. His breakthrough was Theology of Hope (1964), which understands eschatology (the doctrine of last things) not as an appendix but as the center of theology.[1]
Moltmann’s engagement with Hegel is dialectical in the precise sense: he adopts Hegel’s thinking of history, negates its supposed closure, and transforms the result into a theology of promise. History is not the self-realization of spirit that comes to itself in the end, but the field on which God’s promises are issued and still await fulfillment.
Here too, the critique of Hegel’s “closure” possibly hits a caricature. Hegel never claimed that history was complete or that reason automatically prevailed. (-> Ch. 8.7, Thesis 2)
The Influence of Ernst Bloch
Moltmann’s reception of Hegel is substantially mediated by Ernst Bloch (-> Chapter 11). Bloch’s The Principle of Hope (1954-1959) had developed a Marxist eschatology: the “not-yet” as an ontological category, the future as the horizon of the possible, hope as the driving force of history.
Moltmann translates this theologically: the biblical promises open up a horizon that points beyond everything that presently exists. The resurrection of Jesus is not the end of history (as absolute knowledge is for Hegel), but its new beginning – the promise of a future that surpasses everything that has come before.
Political Theology
Moltmann’s later works – The Crucified God (1972), The Church in the Power of the Spirit (1975), The Trinity and the Kingdom of God (1980) – develop a political theology that combines Barth’s prophetic critique with Bloch’s utopian impulse. The church is not accommodation to the state (against the German Christians), but neither is it withdrawal from politics (against a quietistic Barthianism). It is an “exodus community” – on the way toward the promised future.
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Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope, Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1964. ↩︎