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Jürgen Moltmann’s Theological Positions: A Model for the Foundation of Equality, Rights, and Democracy Gianluigi Segalerba
1. Introduction Faith originating from hope in the renewal of the world is the living force of any theological movement which aims to establish and protect conditions of social justice and democratic equality. Hope in the new creation has, as such, an incomparable revolutionary potential. My paper will show that faith with hope is the liberation of the mind of believers: Faith with hope is constant criticism of the evil in the world and is the foundation of equality. Without faith connected to hope, democratic life and democratic institutions would and will lose their value dimension: they would and will be reduced to valueless institutional and procedural correctness. Furthermore, to consider the dimension of faith with hope as a dimension extraneous to everything which politics should be, as a dimension which should be expelled from political life, means to reduce democracy to a form of institution in which values – religious values too – should be forgotten. There may not be a separation of the mental disposition of the believers consisting in faith with hope from the public life: on the contrary, faith with hope is, as such, for the believers having it, a mental disposition constitutively regarding public life. In this analysis, we shall first see the connection among God’s promise, eschatological tension of the believers, and incompatibility between the world as it is and contents of the Promise. The dimension of faith with hope will prove to be the very origin of the disposition of believers to transform reality: faith with hope will therefore turn out to be the foundation and defence of the values of equality, rights, and democracy. Faith with hope constitutes the very life disposition of the believers: it is a living principle which continuously acts within political institutions and transmits living values to civil life. Believers, independent of the institutions in which they live, are not neutral to values; believers are neither ethically neutral nor ethically indifferent towards the society in which they live. Hope entails a precise ethical and political programme. The eschatological tension is the very possibility of establishing a democracy founded on values, and it represents, within already established democratic institutions, a