Moltmann

• the traditional view of god 


  impassable
• Impassable 


  means that God cannot experience emotion or suffering or pain and therefore has no emotions similar to human feelings.
• impassibility as an unbiblical concept

  Transcendence seems biblical, but it’s hard to find solid biblical support for impassibility. In fact there is biblical evidence against it it. God seems to feel compassion for his people (Isiah 14:1), wrath against sin (Psalm 38:3) and feels pain when humans reject his love and grace (Luke 19:41-42).
• prayer


  typically thought by Christians to be an action that humans can do which can sometimes prompt God to do something he wouldn’t otherwise have done. Some argue that this shows that God can change.
• how can prayer work if god is impassable?

  Aquinas argues that prayers aren’t directly responded to by God in time, however. “We do not pray to change divine decree, but only to obtain what God has decided will be obtained through prayer”. The function of a prayer is to make people feel psychologically closer to God or in order to gain the benefits that God has already designed the world, through his providence, to be the effect of prayer.
• Moltmann's basis for the crucified god 


  He was reacting to the problem of evil and suffering. He said ‘Jesus Christ is the human face of God. And without Jesus Christ I would not believe in God.’ The catastrophes of history, such as the Jewish holocaust, and nature, would make it ‘unthinkable’ that there is a God were it not for Jesus ‘and his message and his suffering on the cross and his resurrection’. Jesus’ crucifixion gave him the understanding that God is present ‘in the midst of suffering’. This led to Moltmann challenging the traditional view that God is impassable.
• So, God experienced suffering, humiliation and death on the cross. Abandonment of Jesus on the cross by the Father takes place within God. What it means to be Christian and believe in Jesus’ sacrifice is to identify with the crucified Christ. From this, Moltmann drew the insight that God identified himself through Jesus with those that feel abandoned by him. Moltmann illustrates the significance of this with the account of a Jewish boy hanged in Auschwitz. Moltmann states that God was hanging with him on the gallows. His conclusion is that God suffers with those who suffer.
• Jesus: '"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me."'
• This is something humans who suffer can relate to
• Crucified Christ

  Really is God
• Moltmann: 'God is not greater than he is in this humiliation. God is not more glorious than he is in this self-surrender. God is not more powerful than he is in this helplessness. God is not more divine than he is in this humanity.'
• Christ event on the cross

  Is a God event
• True meaning of Christian identifying with the crucified Christ

  Solidarity with those who suffer; the poor and oppressed
• Power of the crucified Christ

  Comes from the agapistic love with which Christ suffers
• The death of Christ

  Protests against suffering
• The Church has attempted to give the cross a superficial attractiveness by stripping it of its true significance
• Concept of the mass as a sacrifice


  • May deny the finality of Christ's death once and for all
• Traditional Christianity is shying away from its responsibility to help the poor and oppressed
• The cross today


  Means the hope of the resurrection
• In the middle ages the cross had a more mystical significance to people
• God recognised in the suffering Christ

  Seen as God suffering with the oppressed
• The resurrection

  Theology of hope, but you cannot have that without the theology of suffering
• There would be no resurrection without the cross
• As humans we suffer and feel abandoned


  We can see that God suffered for us and planned to overcome the suffering and death of the cross with the resurrection