Minority Report: Reconsidering Jürgen Moltmann's Turn to a Theology of the Cross

According to virtually any set of criteria, Jürgen Moltmann's first two programmatic books, Theology of Hope and The Crucified God, are strikingly different. The differences are due to his turn to a theology of the cross in the intervening years. Yet Moltmann, with the vast majority of scholars concurring, argues that the two works form a continuous argument. This article investigates the problems with the consensus judgement and calls for a revision of the relationship between the two works, based on the nature of the cross–resurrection dialectic inherent to his programme and also on both the necessity and timing of the turn.     

The Nouvelle Théologie and the Patristic Revival: Sources, Symbols and the Science of Theology

Abstract: A historical survey of the various controversies between thinkers associated with the nouvelle théologie and the Roman Catholic hierarchy suggests that three matters were particularly at stake. First was an ecclesiology, whether the church was to be understood primarily as a historically‐continuing structure of authority and obedience, or in more sacramental and spiritual ways. Second, the nature of theological language was at stake: is theology merely a set of logical deductions from divinely revealed, but universally accessible, propositions, or is faith and commitment necessary to any serious grasp of the import of theological claims? Finally, and undergirding these two issues, is a disagreement about the reception of the biblical witness, and so the recovery within the nouvelle théologie of patristic and medieval modes of figurative, typological or spiritual exegesis can be seen to be central to the movement.