The Future of Creation:
Carpenter, James A
The eschatological perspective THE FUTURE OF CREATION COLLECTED ESSAYS Jurgen Mottmann Fortress, $9.95, 208 pp. James A. Carpenter ANYTHING MOLTMANN writes is worthy of serious attention but...
...One might wonder however whether he has not fallen into the "gne-sided stress of man's special position in the cosmos" he so rails against, and has done so by subsuming the whole of nature under salvation history, even if that history is interpreted as the future history of God...
...What is proposed, not surprisingly, is an es-chatological understanding of creation...
...and if man and nature are to survive, Christianity and science have to revise both the picture of man in the traditional belief in creation and the picture reflected in Cartesian science...
...Biomedical progress does not guarantee happiness, for progress is always unequal, non-simultaneous, and uncoordinated...
...The initial creation points towards salvation history, and both point beyond themselves to the kingdom of glory...
...Various other issues are dealt with in this essay, such as death and dying and family planning and birth control, all under the leading idea throughout: "the integration of science in society cannot proceed without the integration of society in science...
...But read and judge for yourself...
...The ecological crisis today, Moltmann says, was brought about by Christianity and science together...
...They are intended not merely to represent stages in his progress but to illuminate the "factual and theological basis" in this progress...
...Hard going in spots because of the topics being dealt with, they are never disappointing, and are probing and challenging at almost every turn...
...Not all readers will find Moltmann's point of view convincing, but all of them will find it provocative in the best sense of the term, opening up areas of thought they will want and perhaps have to pursue, upsetting some of their cherished convictions, and demanding a radical recasting of more than a few...
...Here as elsewhere Moltmann makes a good case for his viewpoint...
...The second new dimension is an increased concern with creation, as the title of the collection suggests...
...The discussions of trends and methods in eschatology, the relation of development and hope, the theology of the cross today, the hope of resurrection and the practice of liberation and the trinitarian history of God are all marked by both precision of expression and theological rigor...
...James A. Carpenter ANYTHING MOLTMANN writes is worthy of serious attention but the essays here are of special interest...
...Indeed, "capacity for suffering is part of health...
...The first has to do with ethics and biomedical progress, to which one of his best essays is devoted...
...Though the essays range widely in concern, they form a unified whole in their insistent emphasis on the essentially eschatological character of Christian faith...
...Their overall design is to deepen and crystallize eschatological thinking...
...challengeable...
...Intrinsically valuable in themselves, they also provide a history of the development of his thought from The Theology of Hope (1964) to The Church in the Power of the Spirit (1975...
...Biology and medicine have liberated us from many natural forces, Moltmann observes, but this very liberation compels us to undertake this social organization of that liberty, which produces a wealth of new forms of social dependencies: "The visions of a pain-free, endless, and improvable life in a germ-free world, are abstract because they do not take the social, political, and ethical costs into account...
...I wager that you will find the book full of teaching, both challenging and challengeable...
...There are dimensions of Moltmann's thought in this book that are new to me, and I suspect, to most of his readers as well...
...The regnum naturae, the regnunt gratiae and the regnum gloriae constitute a fundamental unity when each is viewed eschatologically, and it is in this way alone that they can be properly understood...
...It is with these that I want to deal here...
...Beyond this are other considerations such as the fact that illness can be as important an educative and formative process as healthy, active life...
Vol. 108 • January 1981 • No. 2
