METHOD, MOTIVATION AND TRINITARIAN THINKING IN JÜRGEN MOLTMANN

Introduction

Jürgen Moltmann indicates that if he has one, his theological virtue is curiosity.1 This

curiosity inspires an eclectic, non-traditional method. Moltmann’s theological method was not

developed prior to, but emerged as his theological journey encountered new motivations.

Reflecting, he writes, “The road emerged only as I walked it. And my attempts to walk it are of

course determined by my personal biography, and by the political context and historical kairos in

which I live.”

In this paper I will explore the road Moltmann traveled, leading him not to an ethics of

hope as many expected, but to a radical turn to Trinitarian or “perichoretic” thinking. I will

explore his method and motivation resulting in this radical turn, and then shift to an analysis of

what Trinitarian and perichoretic thinking means for him. Finally, I will conclude with a few

remarks regarding the effectiveness of his eclectic methodology and turn to perichoretic

thinking.

Method

Moltmann wrote as late as 1994, “I am often asked about my theological method, but I

seldom respond to the question.” And, elsewhere “In a time when so many colleagues are

concerned solely with questions of method, what interests me are theological ideas, and their

revision and innovation.”2 The roadbed of Moltmann’s journey, however, was prepared in epic

1
Jürgen Moltmann, “The Adventure of Theological Ideas,” Religious Studies Review 22, no. 2 (1996): 103.
Moltmann has also said, “My piety is my theological curiosity,” in Jürgen Moltmann, “Lived Theology: An
Intellectual Biography,” Asbury Theological Journal 55, no. 1 (Spring, 2000): 9.
2
Jürgen Moltmann, “The Adventure of Theological Ideas,” Ibid. Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God:
Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2004, 1996, 1995), xiii. Moltmann also
indicates that the prefaces of each of his “Systematic Contributions to Theology” taken together also offer entry to
 2

pain. At the age of seventeen he survived the bombing of Hamburg, witnessing the firestorm

that took 40,000 souls. He saw his friend blown-up right in front of him. Moltmann writes that

“presumably the root of my theological concerns,” is a need to talk about God when God can no

longer be talked about. Moltmann speaks of Auschwitz and the “oppressive burden of guilt and

cruel meaningless” of his generation.3 Thus, Moltmann’s method is sourced from a deep and

powerful pathos. Further, five years as pastor of a small farming community taught Moltmann

that academic theology becomes “abstract and irrelevant” unless it is grounded in theological

proposals meant to be lived out. Moltmann admits, “under the shell of the professor . . . is

always the pastor.” For Moltmann this explains why he is not so fussy about “correct doctrine”

but rather focuses on “concrete doctrine.” Thus, this powerful pathos always drives his

theological praxis to require a social ethic.4 Theology that does not make a difference in the

world is unfinished business.5

This desire to engage social action led Moltmann to develop a method centered on dialog

and experimentation. Moltmann’s purpose is to foster Kingdom in-breaking via dialog and

consequent action. You cannot merely interpret the Scriptures, confining the theological task to

the transmission of dogmatics in catechesis, rather theology, according to Moltmann, should

transform the world.6

his method. Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms of Christian Theology, trans. Margaret
Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000), xv.
3
Moltmann relives this experience in several places, see especially Moltmann, “Lived Theology: An
Intellectual Biography,” 9. For a fuller treatment of his wartime experience see Jürgen Moltmann, A Broad Place:
An Autobiography, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008, 2006), 13-35.
4
Ibid., 59. Jürgen Moltmann, History and the Triune God: Contributions to Trinitiarian Theology, trans.
John Bowden (New York: Crossroads, 1992, 1991), 166-167.
5
Ibid., 256-263. Robert T. Cornelison, “The Development and Influence of Moltmann’s Theology,” The
Asbury Theological Journal 55, no. 1 (2000): 16-18.
6
Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, xvii.
 3

Moltmann indicates that this dialogical and experimental method was not a prolegomena

to be applied beforehand; rather it emerged as he walked it out. This personal dynamic was

complemented by a corporate dynamic: we walk and talk together. This praxis is not, however,

left to a utilitarian expediency but shaped and driven by faith engendered christopraxy. Theory

and practice cannot be separated, and the centrality of Christ in the eschatologically informed

present always shapes a praxis that inevitably leads to the poor and marginalized. For Moltmann

to stop at inner-coherence or even public debate was insufficient. Thus, neither logic nor

tradition controls, but a christopraxis that facilitates realizing the eschatological Kingdom,

bringing hope to the hopeless.

Further, tradition may inform but not control, because the Greek philosophic worldview

on which patristic assumptions are based no longer pertains. Thus, tradition may be mined but

not uncritically appropriated. For example, Moltmann finds that since love requires passibility

and God is love, he must be passible, contra the patristic impassibility.7 Moltmann also shuns

any form of generalizing. For example, Moltmann rejects any generalizing talk of three divine

Persons as modalist. Consequently, he finds problematic the modern tendency to solve the three-

person problem via a single subjectivity in the Godhead, whether the solution is modeled on the

approach of Karl Barth or that of Karl Rahner.8 Moltmann writes, “neither Barth’s formula of

the ‘one personal God in three modes of being’ nor Rahner’s thesis of the one divine ‘subject in

7
He writes, “in preparation for my theology of the cross, I read for the first time Abraham Heschel’s book
about ‘the pathos of God’ in the prophets and felt confirmed in my rejection of the metaphysical apathy axiom in the
philosophical doctrine of God.” Moltmann, A Broad Place, 270.
8
Jürgen Moltmann and others, “The Unity of the Triune God: Remarks on the Comprehensibility of the
Doctrine of the Trinity and Its Foundation in the History of Salvation with Three Replies,” St. Vladimir's
Theological Quarterly 28, no. 3 (1984): 159. Jürgen Moltmann, “Some Reflections on the Social Doctrine of the
Trinity,” in The Christian Understanding of God Today: Theological Colloquium on the Occasion of the 400th
Anniversary of the Foundation of Trinity College, Dublin, ed. James M. Byrne (Dublin: Columba Press, 1993), 104.
Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress,
1993), 139-148.
 4

three distinct modes of subsistence’ does justice to the history which is played out between Jesus

the Son, ‘Abba’ his Father, and the Spirit.”9

This subordination of logic and tradition to a praxis of hope had significant implications

for Moltmann’s hermeneutic. First of all, theology becomes eschatologically informed. Second,

the Spirit works in believer, church and world, not only to sustain, but to bring about the

Kingdom of God, thus all of life is Pneumatologically informed. Third, valid praxis engages

culture and leads to the poor and the poor to hope. Fourth, God speaks through Scripture

directly, unmediated by the patristic church; yet the living remain in dialog with tradition

because the dead are not left behind but go before them into the future of eschatological

Sabbath.10

Motivation

Method and motivation are almost the same thing in Moltmann. As “the road emerged”

he engaged life theologically. Prior to 1980, Moltmann’s career was virtually free of any

mention of perichoresis. In 1980, Moltmann surprised friend and foe alike with a social doctrine

of the Trinity making the radical turn to perichoretic thinking.11 He notes, “I departed from the

decisional dialectic of my earlier writings, with its Yes or No, and Either-Or, and practiced

thinking in relationships, sociality, and transitions. I called this generally Trinitarian thinking,

and in particular perichoretic thinking.”12

Moltmann identifies three primary influences which motivated this seachange. First, his

entry to the doctrine of the Trinity became the Jewish doctrine of the Shekinah; second, his

9
Moltmann, History and the Triune God, 82.
10
This is my own eclectic summary of a wide array of Moltmann reading. I offer it provisionally.
11
Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God trans. Margaret Kohl
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993). Moltmann, A Broad Place, 231, 292. Moltmann notes that colleagues and friends
expected him to produce an ethics of hope (Ibid., 292).
12
Moltmann, A Broad Place, 287-288.
 5

orientation was that of the Orthodox Trinitarianism towards community; and third, Moltmann

found compelling the tendency of Feminist theology to think in terms of relationships and

networks. Each of these points will be developed below.

First, while participating in unofficial inter-faith dialogues, Moltmann developed a deep

appreciation for Israel. He finds compelling the continuity between promise and gospel rather

than a dichotomy between law and gospel. Further, he finds the concept of Church as successor

to Israel unfruitful, and contends that Israel and the Church are concurrent expressions of the

Kingdom of God, who must respect each other. This leads Moltmann to insist that “the doctrine

of the Trinity by no means has to be formulated by turning one’s back on Israel.” This

predisposition to continuities led Moltmann to turn directly to Scripture, accessed via the

doctrine of the Shekinah, “which perceives God in his indwelling as companion on the way and

fellow sufferer with his people in exile and in persecutions.” For Moltmann, linking Shekinah

with indwelling follows from God’s descent to his oppressed people in Egypt and from his

following his people into exile. What happens to God’s people happens to God. God dwells on

high, but also with the contrite and humble spirit (Isaiah 57:15). For Moltmann, these various

forms of indwelling lead to and inform the Incarnation as Immanuel, God with us.13

Second, working with Orthodox theologians on joint projects in the 1970s, Moltmann

concluded that the West could not ignore Orthodox trinitarianism. The West after Augustine

increasingly developed a psychological doctrine of the Trinity, with an Imago Dei reflected in

every individual human psyche. Working with an Orthodox theologian at the World Mission

conference in Bangkok (1972-73), Moltmann was first impelled toward the development of a

social doctrine of the Trinity. They discussed an immanent Trinity and a classless and casteless
13
Moltmann, A Broad Place, 270, see also 102, 267-268, 270, 272, 289-290. For Moltmann’s
appropriation of Shekinah theology see also Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, 315. And also, Moltmann, The
Trinity and the Kingdom, 27-30.
 6

society. Then in 1978, Moltmann worked with Dumitru Staniloae on a draft ecumenical doctrine

of the Trinity without the filioque. Thus, contra the Western psychological emphasis,

Moltmann’s engagement with the Eastern churches exposed him to and convinced him of the

centrality of a communal orientation in the doctrine of the Trinity.14

Finally, continual dialog with theologian Elizabeth Moltmann-Wendell, had a profound

effect on Moltmann’s perspective. It was the aspect of feminist thinking focused on

“relationships and networks of relationships” that finally prompted Moltmann “to put the ancient

idea of perichoresis in the foreground of the doctrine of the Trinity.” Moltmann writes, “I did not

come to feminist theology. It came to me through the discoveries of my wife, Elisabeth

Moltmann-Wendel.”15 In 1981, Jürgen and Elisabeth gave a joint opening lecture at the

invitation of the World Council of Churches. Egalitarianism centered on Galatians 3:28 was

their focus, they hoped to forge a beginning, a dialog that “preserved differences, respected the

other, while preserving self-respect.” It was in learning to dialogue with Elisabeth theologically

where Moltmann learned that to insist that personal considerations have no place in theology is

to fail to understand that maleness creates the conditions for patriarchy because it is inescapably

sublimated in any male’s approach to objectivity. It is only when men dialog as an “I” that a

gendered view of the world comes to the fore and must be dealt with. For Moltmann this new

self awareness resulted in at least two theological loci of relevance to his adoption of the social

14
Moltmann, A Broad Place, 290-292, 327-328. Further, one of his doctoral students, a member of the
Moravian Brethren, introduced Moltmann to the “motherly office of the Holy Spirit,” which Count Zinzendorf had
developed based on the ancient Syrian Homilies of Makarios (Symeon). Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, 291,
306-308.
15
Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, 268.
 7

analogy. These foci are his rethinking the Imago Dei and his decision to seek a doctrine of God

without the filioque.16

Regarding the Imago Dei, Douglas Meeks summarizes: “For Moltmann, the experience

of God’s Spirit is not limited to the human subject’s experience of the self.” But rather, it is also

a “constitutive element” in the experience of the other, of sociality and of nature. Meeks

continues, “Social experience, for Moltmann, stands in the same correlation to experience of God

as experience of the self did for Augustine.” In fact, the Imago Dei for Moltmann becomes the

Imago Trinitatis,17 mirroring the sociality intrinsic to the community of deity.18

Regarding the filioque, Moltmann detects a distorting masculinity. The Patristic Church,

tied the Spirit to the holders of the episcopal office. In addition, the Western church “chained”

the Spirit to Christology by means of the filioque. The first was done out of fear of the “chaos of

spirits,” the second to combat Arianism. The result of both was to leave too little room for the

creative work of the Spirit by subordinating the Spirit to Christ. This led to a deep mistrust of

the direct work of the Spirit, depersonalizing the Spirit. This tended to subordinate the Spirit to

the Church. Moltmann advocates dropping the filioque, believing the mutual relationship of the

Son and the Spirit will then be evident and make itself felt in Western theology and praxis. The

identifiably unique missions of Son and Spirit in salvation history come to an end in

16
I do not mean to suggest that Feminist theology led Moltmann to focus on the Imago Dei and the
filioque, but rather to emphasize Feminist theology is what funded his motivation, thus these foci are evidence of
Moltmann’s praxis. His purpose was not to revisit intractable conceptual topics, but to effect change in the world
where change was most needed, thus he focused on the topics that would effect change for the “least of these.”
17
Moltmann calls the Imago Dei, Imago Trinitatis, in Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal
Affirmation, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 221, thanks to Douglas Meeks for this
reference.
18
Douglas M. Meeks, “Jürgen Moltmann's Systematic Contribution to Theology,” Religious Studies
Review 22, no. 2 (1996): 98. Moltmann, “Some Reflections on the Social Doctrine of the Trinity,” 110. An
extended discussion of the Imago Dei, Imago Christi, and gloria Dei est homo can be found in “God’s Image in
Creation: Human Beings,” in Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of
God, trans. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), 215-243.
 8

eschatological Sabbath. Dropping the filioque, makes possible a notion of Trinitarian

communion that obviates subordinationist claims to dominion echoed in certain treatments of the

Imago. Moltmann notes that feminist theologians were realizing that the problem was not

gender or fatherhood per se, but the “claims to domination which were associated” with these in

patriarchal society. Feminist theologians were turning to this notion of Trinitarian communion,

and Moltmann’s praxis was to engage in theology that enabled theirs.19

Trinitarian Thinking

The purpose of this new Trinitarian or perichoretic thinking was to “overcome the

monarchical monotheism” of traditional theology in favor of the insight that God is a “God of

community, with a wealth of relationships.”20 Moltmann’s strategy was to obviate the filioque

and develop the full personhood of the Spirit. Moltmann refuses, however, to start anywhere but

from the biblical witness. In dialog with Jewish thought, his entry was via the Shekinah, which

speaks of God’s indwelling among his people. Moltmann constructively engages another

Jewish theological concept; the notion of zimzum or “contraction,” which teaches that for there to

be a creation God had to in some sense make room for it.21 For Moltmann God’s overflowing

love and the openness of the Trinitarian communion result in God “making room” for creation

by withdrawing within himself to create a space for the freedom of truly other being. Moltmann

19
Moltmann, God in Creation, 123-124. Moltmann, History and the Triune God, xv-xvi, 58-59.
Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 306-309. Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 178-187. Douglas Meeks refers to
Moltmann’s work on the filioque as “Moltmann’s preeminent ecumenical act, the agreement with the Eastern
Church that the filioque is superfluous.” Meeks, “Jürgen Moltmann's Systematic Contribution to Theology,” 99.
20
Moltmann, A Broad Place, 328. Moltmann wanted to “put an end to the old thinking in terms of
substances and determining subjects, a method which cannot work without dividing and isolating its objects” (Ibid.,
287).
21
Meeks, Ibid., Moltmann appears to first present zimzum in The Trinity and the Kingom, 237n22,
appropriating the Jewish mystic and metaphysician Isaac Luria (d. 1572) as presented by Gershom Scholem in
Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: n.p., 1954), 244ff.
 9

delineates several principles in his theology of Creation, including “mutual interpenetration.”22

God withdraws, makes room for, yet enters and sustains, his Creation with his Presence by the

Spirit. He thus employs a perichoretic overlay in his Trinitarian and Creation theology.23 The

Shekinah dwelled among Israel, first in the tabernacle, then the temple and finally in Messiah.24

These indwellings are grounded in the self-lowering of God or kenosis. The kenosis begins in

Creation, as the Trinitarian Persons “make room” for the otherness of created being, and

continues in the veil of humiliation of Incarnation and completes in the Cross of Christ.25

For Moltmann the Persons of the Trinity cannot be differentiated merely by the

differences in their mutual relations, for example as the Father being the Father of the Son.

Relations of origin tend in the tradition to be generalized, and Moltmann resists any generalizing

tendency.26 Rather for Moltmann, what God is in his being “is first made manifest by the history

of the Father and the Son and the Spirit.” Consequently for Moltmann, the trinitarian concepts of

“person” and “relation” are central.27 My analysis below will be three pronged: (1) Moltmann’s

22
Moltmann, God in Creation, 16.
23
Perichoretic overlays are discernible also in Moltmann’s Pneumatology, Eschatology and in his
Christology after the publication of The Trinity and the Kingdom.
24
But, not as an ontological perichoresis of the two natures as in John of Damascus. He inherits the
Reformed enhypostatic assumption by the second Person of an anhypostatic impersonal humanity resulting in
incarnation, nevertheless finding this ontology problematic. See Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross
of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, trans. R. A. Wilson and John Bowden
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 231. Jürgen Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic
Dimensions (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 50-51.
25
Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, 315-116.
26
For example, Moltmann writes, “Consequently we have to reject any generalizing talk about the ‘three
Persons’ of the Trinity. The Spirit is different from the Father and the Son. Recent feminist analysis of the
anthropological model for the trinitarian concept of person has shown the andocentric impress of the ‘person’
concept employed by Augustine, and then by Aquinas in the wake of Boethius.” Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 268.
27
Moltmann, History and the Triune God, 85.
 10

understanding of perichoresis itself, (2) the intra-trinitarian communion of persons and relations,

and (3) the trinitarian experience within community.28

Moltmann considers the semantic history of perichoresis well known.29 Moltmann

summarizes: “the noun means ‘whirl or rotation,’ the verb means “going from one to another,

walking around, handing around (for example, a bottle of wine, or of cola if you prefer),

encircling, embracing, or enclosing.”30 Moltmann finds first theological use in Gregory of

Nazianzus, but it is John of Damascus who makes perichoresis “the key word for his Christology

and his doctrine of the Trinity.” John of Damascus employs perichoresis in Christology to unite

the hypostatic union and fund the communicatio idiomatum, while in the doctrine of the Trinity,

“perichoresis is used to capture the mutual indwelling of the equal divine Persons: Father, Son,

and Spirit” in order to conceive the unity of the Son and the Father according to John 14:11.31

Second, for Moltmann the intra-trinitarian communion is not possible without the

perichoresis. As seen before, Moltmann rejects starting with metaphysical unity and then asking

after the threeness of the one God. For Moltmann, this entails rejecting the Sabellianism of

Schleiermacher as well as the Neoscholastic thesis from which Barth and Rahner work, namely

“the one nature, the one knowledge, and the one consciousness in God.” Rather Moltmann starts

28
Regarding “person” and “relation” see Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 171-174. Moltmann
also employs “illumination” as a technical term for his concept of the revelation of the trinitarian history of Father,
Son and Spirit. Due to space constraints I do not analyze his use of this term, although I do suspect perichoretic
thinking impinges on its meaning in Moltmann.
29
Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, 316. Moltmann here follows Ciril Sorc, “Die Perichoretischen
Beziehungen Im Leben Der Trinitat Und in Der Gemeinschaft Der Menschen,” Evanglische Theologie 58, no. 2
(1998). Moltmann references Sorc again, writing that “the semantic history of the word perichoresis is well
investigated.” Moltmann, “Perichoresis: An Old Magic Word for a New Trinitarian Theology,” in Trinity,
Community and Power: Mapping Trajectories in Wesleyan Theology, ed. M. Douglas Meeks, 111-125 (Nashville,
TN: Kingswood, 2000), 113.
30
Moltmann, “Perichoresis: An Old Magic Word for a New Trinitarian Theology,” 113. Moltmann gives
this passage in another place in modified form as “the noun means vortex or rotation; the verb means a movement
from one to another, to reach round and go round, to surround, embrace, encompass.” Moltmann, Experiences in
Theology, 316.
31
Moltmann, “Perichoresis: An Old Magic Word for a New Trinitarian Theology,” 113-114.
 11

with the three biblical protagonists, Son, Father (Abba) and Spirit, and asserts that the doctrine of

God arises from this biblical history, interprets it, and leads into the future of this history. Once

the history of the three biblical protagonists is apparent, the Trinity arises, and only then is it

appropriate to ask about the unity of the Triune God.32

For Moltmann the perichoresis of the intra-trinitarian communion is “as primal as the life

of the trinitarian Persons.” None of the persons precedes the other, but each is equal. This

includes the Father. Thus Moltmann, who is largely favorable to the Eastern position,

nevertheless rejects the Aristotelian metaphysical causal primacy of the Father as arche.33 The

persons remain unique and cannot be dissolved in the relations, nor do the relations precede the

persons, but the persons form a “triadic intersubjectivity, which we call perichoresis.”34 The

subjectivity of each Person is complemented by a shared intersubjectivity. Just so, the

consciousness and will of each is complemented by a shared consciousness and shared will.35

How does Moltmann’s use of perichoresis account for unity while denying tri-theism, if

the Trinity is three conscious willing subjects? Eschewing generic concepts, Moltmann reflects,

“begetting” and “proceeding” are not the same, and thus cannot be subsumed under a generic

32
Moltmann, “Perichoresis: An Old Magic Word for a New Trinitarian Theology,” 116. Moltmann also
rejects the Augustinian view that the unity derived from the Spirit is the bond of love between the Father and Son,
because this robs the Spirit of personhood and reduces the Trinity to a Binity. Moltmann, Experiences in Theology,
317.
33
Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, 317. Moltmann does hold to a form of the monarchy of the Father,
but this is a function of the trinitarian praxis not its ontology.
34
Ibid. Moltmann is contra those who follow Aquinas, who says “Persona is relation.” Moltmann, “Some
Reflections on the Social Doctrine of the Trinity,” 106.
35
Moltmann, “Perichoresis: An Old Magic Word for a New Trinitarian Theology,” 117. Moltmann, “Some
Reflections on the Social Doctrine of the Trinity,” 105. John Meyendorff offers his corrective: “My only problem
with Professor Moltmann’s trinitarianism concerns his interpretation of the “person” . . . It is inaccurate to say, as
Moltmann does, that they ‘are real subjects with wills and intellects’: they indeed possess only one will and one
divine intelligence, (in virtue of their one nature) but they possess it perichoretically.” The emphasis is
Meyendorf’s. Jürgen Moltmann, Jr. John B. Cobb, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, and Fr John Meyendorff. “The
Unity of the Triune God: Remarks on the Comprehensibility of the Doctrine of the Trinity and Its Foundation in the
History of Salvation with Three Replies.” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 28, no. 3 (1984): 187.
 12

“processio” and called two processions. Further, “hypostasis” and even “person” are ultimately

problematic, because they “obscure the concrete differences between the Father, the Son and the

Holy Spirit.” Thus, to use these terms is to equivocate by design, but Moltmann wants to avoid

abstraction and remain concrete. The concept of “divine person” or “hypostasis” inherently

tends to modalism, because it emphasizes the similarities while obscuring the uniquely personal

differences of the biblical protagonists. For Moltmann,“concepts create idols: only wonder

comprehends anything.”36 Thus, the unity lies in the perichoretic “circulation of the divine life”

and not in a general concept of divine substance, because that would obviate the personal

differences.37

Moltmann extends this traditional notion of perichoresis by developing the concept of

zimzum to provide a nuanced view of kenosis, and follows it up with a perichoreticly extended

social definition of person. In God in Creation, the second installment of his “systematic

contributions to theology,” Moltmann expands this concept of “circulation” by extending the

idea of zimzum to inform a more nuanced idea of space. As seen above, zimzum is literally

“contraction” and theologically authorizes the concept of creating something not of divine Being.

This for Moltmann is the primordial space into which God creates ex nihilo. God is no unmoved

mover, but rather first moves inward to make room for his outward creatio ex nihilo. Moltmann

indicates several Christian theologians, including Nicholas of Cusa and Emil Brunner, have

adopted forms of this view.38 Moltmann takes up this idea and extends it: (1) Creation is

36
Moltmann and others, “The Unity of the Triune God: Remarks on the Comprehensibility of the Doctrine
of the Trinity and Its Foundation in the History of Salvation with Three Replies,” 170-171. He is here quoting
Gregory of Nyssa.
37
Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 174-175.
38
Moltmann, God in Creation, 87. Moltmann quotes Emil Brunner: “This, however, means that God does
not wish to occupy the whole of Space Himself, but that He wills to make room for other forms of existence. In
doing so He limits Himself . . . . The kenosis, which reaches its paradoxical climax in the Cross of Christ, begins
with the creation of the world.” Moltmann, God in Creation, 87n28, 334n28.
 13

preceded by a “humble divine self-restriction.” This is the beginning of the kenosis of

Philippians 2. Creation is more than a “letting be,” but first there is a “making room.” (2) Thus,

God makes room for creation by withdrawing his presence in self-limitation or divine negation.

The space that comes into being is the free space for other created being to be, the moral sphere

if you will. This space is in a sense the “God-forsaken space,” and thus sin can be viewed as the

self-isolation of created beings in godlessness. (3) The reality of the creatio ex nihilo is an

outward reality that is still “in” God, who has made this space for the coming to be of truly other

being. The other being is moral being in the “space to be” God has given in his loving kenotic

humiliation. This other being does not dissolve in pantheism, otherwise no truly other being has

indeed been created nor could be. The Nothingness of the nihil of God’s self-limitation is

overcome not by the self-isolation of a existential nihilism or anomie or even in raw death, but in

the travail of the Servant of God of Isaiah 53. The Trinitarian contraction is repeated in the

kinosis. The second Person contracts himself in self-humiliation to dwell with his people in the

Shekinah of Incarnation: “Through his self-emptying he creates liberation, through his self-

humiliation he exalts, and through his vicarious suffering the redemption of sinners is

achieved.”39

Based on this enhanced concept of space, the moral sphere of truly other created being,

Moltmann forges his answer to the question of perichoretic personhood arising from his claim

that the trinitarian Persons are conscious, willing subjects:

39
Moltmann, God in Creation, 87-90. Later Moltman refers to his position as “panentheism,” saying “the
trinitarian concept of creation integrates the elements of truth in monotheism and pantheism. In the panentheistic
view, God, having created the world, also dwells in it, and conversely the world which he has created exists in him.
This is a concept which can really only be thought and described in trinitarian terms.” For Moltmann “monotheism”
is largely Barthian, and thus over-weighted with divine sovereignty and words that relate God and Creation like
“over” and “above.” Whereas Barth established a sovereign Creator, Moltmann assumes this and moves beyond it
to a Creator who cares enough to become involved. Ibid., 98.
 14

The very special suggestion of perichoresis is that the divine persons are
“habitable” for one another, giving one another . . . Each Person actively dwells in
the two others and passively cedes space for the two others–that is to say, at once
gives and receives the others. The perception of their perichoretic unity leads, not
least, to a new version of the trinitarian concept of person. Boethius’ traditionally
used definition Persona est individual substantia naturae rationalismus (‘a person
is an individual existence of a rational nature’) is unusable, because in the
perichoresis the trinitarian Persons cannot be individual existences or individuals
remaining in themselves and existing from themselves. They must rather be
understood as ek-static hypostases. We need a perichoretic concept of person.
This goes even beyond the communitarian concept of person–persona in
communione–because it has to be molded by the reciprocal indwelling.40

Moltmann refers to this concept of person as an “ecstatic hypostasis,” differentiating the

notion of “person,” as the one who “ek-sists” in and for and with the other, from that of

“individual.” However, the boundary between the “I-Thou” is not external as in communitarian

personhood but in perichoretic personhood the boundary is internal and fluid in a mutual and

reciprocal self-giving and other-delineating-of-self. Communitarian personhood allows self to

grow in self-awareness over against the other in community, but perichoretic personhood goes

beyond this in self-humiliating love. The trinitarian Persons derive selfhood not from self-

awareness in themselves over against the Other but rather in complete reciprocal self-giving in

which differentiation arises in the self-delineating-Other. This is why they are inseparable,

because their identities are a function of their givenness. Thus for Moltmann they are

perichoretically one in essence but not in person, they are truly homoousios, but cannot be

simplistically spoken of in terms of a metaphysical divine substance.

I now turn to the final aspect of Moltmann’s deployment of perichoresis: the trinitarian

experience of God in community. The trinitarian experience of God for Moltmann is about

recognizing that the perichoretic community of divine Persons, who have made room for one

40
Moltmann, “Perichoresis: An Old Magic Word for a New Trinitarian Theology,” 114-115. Moltmann,
Experiences in Theology, 318-319. The extended quote is eclectic. Both passages discuss the same topic and arrive
at similar conclusions. The emphasis is Moltmann’s.
 15

another and also made room for Creation, are an open and inviting community. “If sin is the

separation of the creatures from the eternal source of their life, then salvation lies in their

inclusion into the community of eternal life.” The believer is both taken up into God by the Son

and God comes to the believer in the Spirit. Thus, the indwelling is mutual.41

Moltmann makes explicit both personal and corporate applications of this mutuality.

Persons in communion take responsibility for each other, such that “these others exist in a certain

way in us, at least in our solicitude for them.” This is why, according to Moltmann, by faith

Christians recognize Christ, in giving himself to us, is for us, and so Christians say, we are in

Christ. Christians can say: we are there for others and in others just as they are for us and in us.

Moltmann nuances this to overcome weaknesses he perceives in an ecological concept of space,

replacing ecological space with perichoretic space—the space of mutual in-existence, the mutual

inhabitatio. Thus, community on the creaturely level forms the social space of reciprocal self-

development, in which created beings exist side by side and together.42

Having relied on this turn to perichoretic thinking to strategically obviate the filioque and

correct inadequate views of personhood, Moltmann, can now critique all forms of communio

hierarchica as failing to correspond to the unity of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:21. The ancient

monarchical episcopate, the universal episcopate of the pope, and even the Reformation

community of brethren (intended to replace these episcopal polities of power) must all be

rejected as failing to live up to Jesus prayer: “that they also may be in us.” When Jesus prays, “so

that the world may believe that thou hast sent me,” should Christians suppose that the world is

41
Moltmann gives examples of this, appealing to John 17:21 as goal and Acts 4:32 as realization.
Moltmann, A Broad Place, 288. Moltmann makes less explicit appeals to John 17:21 as well: Moltmann,
Experiences in Theology, 328. Moltmann, “Perichoresis: An Old Magic Word for a New Trinitarian Theology,”
117.
42
Moltmann, The Coming of God, 300-301.
 16

sophisticated enough to find a “deep ecclesiology” sufficient to substantiate Jesus’ mission?

Sufficient to believe, “Thou hast sent me”? It seems likely that what Jesus intended was some

form of visible unity that the world would observe and find compelling. Moltmann suggests that

“Today, in the Pentecostal movements and the Pentecostalization of the traditional churches, we

are experiencing hitherto unknown presence of the Holy spirit. . . . This experience of the Spirit

may well become the future of the ecclesial community.” Yet neither will Moltmann allow

visible unity to become a litmus test. Moltmann contends that “this new development is

fascinating but even this does not correspond to the prayer of Jesus.” The unity of the church for

Moltmann is not “the monarchy of the Father, nor the brotherliness of the Son, nor the diversity

of the Spirit’s gifts, each of them on its own; it is there simultaneity.” The church is not meant to

correspond to any one Person but to the eternal perichoresis of the trinitarian community.

Moltmann finds an analog in Cyprian, reinterpreted: “The Church is a people brought into unity

from the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Moltmann finds this to be mystical,

because it does not merely correspond to the trinitarian fellowship but exists in that fellowship.43

Conclusion

A prisoner of war returned to Germany, ashamed. He found hope in Christ, and spent a

career theologizing to extend that hope to all who are hopeless. Never quite satisfied with his

inherited Reformed tradition, he engaged Jewish, Orthodox and Feminist voices as equals,

granting them “space to be” by listening, adopting, extending and ultimately enabling their

voices by bringing them to a wider audience. Moltmann’s method is eclectic perhaps even

opportunistic, while his motivation is sometimes hardly distinguishable. Adopting the Jewish

43
Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, 329-330. Further, Moltmann facetiously writes, “It is certainly
true that our regular, mainline church services display a wealth of ideas and reflections in their sermons, but are
poverty-stricken in their forms of expression, and offer no opportunity at all for spontaneity. They are disciplined
and disciplinary assemblies for talking and listening. But does the body of Christ really consist simply of one big
mouth and a lot of little ears?” Moltmann, The Spirit of Life, 185.
 17

Shikinah and zimzum theology to fund his own Creation theology, he deepened them to explain

the kinosis, and extended them to correct individualist and even communitarian views of

personhood. From Orthodoxy he learned that Trinitarian theology is not necessarily hierarchical

but is fundamentally communal, and from Feminist voices he learned to begin to account for the

maleness of his objectivity, and that to be objective is not enough to escape thinking as a man,

but being and thinking as an “I” among and with and in others is necessary to escape the

inevitable patriarchical tendencies in male dominated theologizing. Further, by strategically

dismantling the filioque and restating the Imago from a perichoretic Trinitarianism, Moltmann

could challenge all forms of monarchical monotheism attempting to address the attendant

communio hierarchica.

His strategy to abolish the filioque is probably a very long term strategy, but necessary.

His engagement with Jewish and Feminist voices opens new doors. Systematicians may be too

quick to find fault and close those doors. Deep ecclesiologies may be attractive in the face of

intractable confessionalism, but after reading Moltmann, they seem a cop out. His engagement

with Personalist philosophic thought is compelling, but I want more. Understanding who we are

as persons, as persons in community, and persons in the life of Christ, seems to me to be central

to the theological enterprise.

Has Moltmann succeeded? He has worked to give voice to the voiceless in order to bring

hope to the hopeless. I think Moltmann deserves a lot of credit for his theological courage in

spite of his sometimes opportunistic, eclectic method, because in the end, to make a difference

now with a “concrete doctrine” is more important to the lives of the hopeless than finding an

academic satisfaction in “correct doctrine.”

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