7 God’s Patience and Our Work (YDS 18-268) In April 1986, Frei was invited to speak at a conference honoring Jürgen Moltmann and Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel.1 He prepared a two part paper, the first on Moltmann (‘To Give and to Receive’), the second on MoltmannWendel. At the conference itself, he changed his mind at least about the first, and wrote another paper. Here, I reproduce (1) some rough notes for ‘God’s Patience and Our Work’, CPH 1986c(i); (2) the full text of ‘God’s Patience and Our Work’, CPH 1986c(ii); (3) the completely revised paper, ‘Reinhold Niebuhr, Where Are You Now That We Need You?’, written at the conference, CPH1986c(iii) ‘Comments’; (4) the full text of Frei’s paper on Elizabeth Moltmann-Wendel, CPH 1986c(iv).
1. Rough Notes (1) Divine patience (also providence, even impassibility) – allows us time, in fact tells us that ‘time’ is real and good (in contrast to sheer eschatology). (2) Is the Cross – the abandonment of the God who suffers in his abandonment of his Son / the suffering of Christ in all – the focus of all history? And is, therefore, the liberation of all who are suffering, the non-violent violent protest against the crucifixion of Christ in all who are politically and economically oppressed, the focus of all Christian thinking? If so, then ‘critical theory’, the God who is the permanently revolutionary other, the ‘non-identical’, is the clue to Christian thinking and action (Christian theory and praxis) (a) If so then, indeed, God has no patience, i.e., we can’t know that image or motif (and then, Moltmann himself should have no room until after the eschaton for the ‘meditative’ instead of ‘dominating’ knowledge of creation of which he writes so well).2 (b) If so, there is no patience in human situation? Is analogy a principle acknowledged by Moltmann? or only ‘non-identity’ – a dialectical move from present contradiction in human situation as well as selfcontradiction / self-abandonment in God, to a future correspondence between God and us? (c) If so, there is no receptivity, no limited praxis or limit to praxis, only total action. Christian life is only giving, never receiving. And if that is the case, we must always say, ‘Eliminate the barriers!’ before we can grasp the hands of other Christians in other contexts, other situations. There can be no distinction, e.g. between issues of poverty and the 89