576 - God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God

God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God

By Jürgen Moltmann

New York, Harper & Row, 1985. 365 Pp. $25.95.

Moltmann's theological production has followed the course of the incipient systematization of faith in Christ in the New Testament. It began with the hope that is generated by the resurrection and opens the way to the fulfillment of the purpose of God in the world. It moved next to the church as the community which is gathered in the power of the Spirit to attest and pursue this hope. Then it turned to the triune God, which articulates the scope of the divine being. Now he has devoted this book to a study of creation. These volumes, together with several remaining to be written, are intended to offer a comprehensive statement of a theology that does not conform to the traditional form of a system but which he prefers to call "Messianic."

The claim of the English subtitle is well founded. Two features of Moltmann's new approach are especially noteworthy. He approaches the theme from what he calls an ecological perspective (the subtitle of the original is "ecological doctrine of creation"); and by this he intends to move beyond the contemporary environmental crisis to a deeper understanding of creation as the "house" (oikos) provided for God's creatures to dwell in and for God's own indwelling with them. This, he says, demands a new way of thinking, which he calls participative rather than analytical, and which is designed to help us "find a way into the community of creation." It also entails a shift of emphasis from the transcendence to the immanence of God and to the activity of God as Spirit, together with a fuller treatment of anthropology and cosmology than is customary. The second novel feature that stands out is Moltmann's rejection of the traditional identification of creation with origination and his interpretation of it as a continuing process of direction and development culminating in a consummation, which he finds prefigured in the Sabbath.

Moltmann is profoundly concerned to interpret creation as an operation of the Trinity with a special emphasis on the Spirit as the efference of God, in which God not merely acts in creation but is actively present in it. He appears, however, to reduce the role of the Son as mediator of creation to his function as the agent of the consummation, and he fails to note the thought, which is enshrined in the logos christology of the Fourth Gospel and which goes back to the Old Testament notion of the wisdom of God, that we have here an allusion to the orderliness of creation, in which some (for example, Michael Foster) have found a theological basis for the scientific enterprise.

577 - God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God

In his interesting chapters on creation and evolution, Moltmann reviews some of the positions that have been taken, ranging from total irreconcilability, which was characteristic of the initial theological reaction to Darwin and is still prevalent in some parts of America, to some form of peaceful co-existence. His proposals here, however, are somewhat precarious. When he takes up the theme of the evolution of nature and sketches some features characteristic of an historical cosmos in contrast to the mechanistic world-picture of Newtonian physics, readers, who may not themselves be specially trained in science but have a sense of the extreme rigor of scientific method, may find themselves wondering if what they are offered is science or something more like speculation. Moltmann's treatment of the eschatological consummation of the process of creation is strongly reminiscent of Teilhard de Chardin, though his name is not mentioned in this context.

Moltmann argues that a distinction must be made between creating and making (a distinction that lacks support in the Hebrew of the Genesis narratives), referring the former to "the miracle of existence in general" and the latter to its differentiation and development toward its goal. It is difficult to know how this distinction is to be taken. It seems to suggest that creation is to be viewed as a transcendent (or transcendental) act of God, distinct from the immanent action of God in the world which Moltmann emphasizes. As such, it may be suspect as a strategic device to help the theologian cope with the difficult problems of modern cosmology. Views of the origin of the universe put forward by astronomers and other scientists generally press the means and methods of science as far as they can, and then they take a leap into something that may be called "meta-physical," such as the "big bang theory." In this realm, some dialogue between science and theology seems possible. But the most recent scientific development, which has been truly called revolutionary, has broken down this distinction. The "superforce" (which was discovered after the writing of Moltmann's book) is a physical entity that encompasses the four basic forces in the universe, gravity, electro-magnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces, and has been credited with the universe itself and the generation of everything in it out of nothing.

The scientific experiments and calculations that have brought this about are beyond the comprehension of all but the most highly trained specialist in physics. It takes no great acumen, however, to detect the affinity between the superforce and the "will" posited by Schopenhauer over a century ago to account for the universe and all that takes place in it. Schopenhauer's "will" was nothing analogous to the human will, but a force operating blindly and a-logically. It was later described by his disciple, von Hartmann, as "the unconscious." If it can be established by science that the universe is the product of a superforce that operates in the same manner as the forces known by science to be operative within the universe, this presents a most serious challenge to the doctrine of

578 - God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God

creation, which states that God created the world by his Word and Spirit, and that it is a meaningful and purposive project.

GEORGE S. HENDRY

Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey