Christ and Suffering

CHRIST AND SUFFERING IN MOLTMANN's THOUGHT MILLICENT C. fESKE Is the world too to learn to die tranquilly, or are there hopes for the world which must be answered in personal and socio-political terms? - Jurgen Moltmann 1he Crudfied God ITlhe Easter appearances of the risen Christ are not covered by the theological answer that he is the presence of the eternal, but require the development of a new eschatology. The resurrection has seen into motion an eschatologically determined process of history, whose goal is the annihilation of death. INTRODUCTION - Jurgen Moltmann Theology of Hope' One of the characteristics that distinguishes political and liberation theologies from the modem theological paradigm is the tum from epistemology to suffering as the central issue of our time. Jurgen Moltmann is one of the first twentieth-century theologians to grapple with this task. The publication of his first foray into Christology, 1he Crudfied God, demonstrated the stakes of such a tum for Christianity in the aftermath of European destruction and the Jewish Holocaust. And it has produced a firestorm of controversy which perdures in some forms even today. This essay will examine Moltmann's understanding of Christ in light of his struggle with human and planetary suffering. It will begin by treating the methodological, soteriological, and political importance of Christ as the "Crucified God'' in Moltmann's thought by outlining his stringent critique of the sacrifice of meaning, feeling, and communal responsibility from the public realm in church and society. It will illustrate his claims regardMillicent C. Feske is an assistant professor of theology at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. THE ASBURY THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL