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Christian Hope: Messianic or Transcendent? A Theological Discussion with Joachim of Fiore and Thomas Aquinas*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Jürgen Moltmann
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Abstract

Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar have criticized my “Theology of Hope” as being written “messianically” in the spirit of Joachim de Fiore and grounded from an Old Testament-Jewish perspective, whereas they claim true Christian hope is “present” in character and oriented vertically: not the future but the heavenly eternity is its fulfillment. Because both of them call upon Thomas Aquinas I have undertaken in this article a dialogue with Joachim de Fiore and Thomas Aquinas in order to elucidate my own position in conversation with them: the biblically grounded Christian hope is directed toward the parousia of Christ and sees in it future for Israel and future for the world. Chiliasm and eschatology designate the immanent and the transcendent sides of this future of Christ. Christian hope is messianic hope in the horizon of eschatological expectation.

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Fall 1985 , pp. 328 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1985

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Footnotes

*

Translated and edited by M. Douglas Meeks, Eden Theological Seminary.

References

1 See Benz, E., “Thomas von Aquin und Joachim von Fiore. Die katholische Antwort auf spiritualistiche Kirchen- und Geschichtsauffassung,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte (1934), 52–116.Google Scholar

2 Grabmann, M., Geschichte des scholastischen Methode, vol. 2, p. 178.Google Scholar

3 My historical research into Joachim and Joachimism as well as the early Spiritual Franciscans is based on the work of Grundmann, H., Studien über Joachim von Fiore (Darmstadt, 1966 [1927]);Google ScholarDempf, A., Sacrum Imperium. Geschichts- und Staatsphilosophie des Mittelalters und der politischen Renaissance (Darmstadt, 1954 [1929]);Google ScholarBuonaiuti, E., Gioacchino da Fiore, i tempi, la vita, il messaggio (Rome, 1931);Google ScholarBenz, E., Ecclesia Spiritualis. Die Kirchenidee des franziskanischen Reformation (Stuttgart, 1934);Google ScholarMottu, H., La manifestation de l'Esprit selon Joachim de Fiore (Neuchätel/Paris, 1977);Google ScholarCrocco, A., Gioacchino da Fiore (Naples, 1960);Google Scholar and others, for example, Storia e Messaggio in Gioacchino da Fiore. Atti del Primo Congresso Inter¬nazionale di Studi Gioachimiti (Naples, 1980).Google Scholar

4 I: de Joachim a Schelling (Paris, 1979);Google Scholar II: de Saint-Simon a nos jours (Paris, 1980).Google Scholar

5 Moltmann, Jürgen, Theology of Hope, trans. Leitch, James (New York: Harper & Row, 1967).Google Scholar

6 Barth, K., Gesamtausgabe V, Briefe 1961-1968 (Zurich, 1975), p. 560.Google Scholar

7 Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift 32/2 (1981), 81–102.Google Scholar Von Balthasar cites in support of this Bloch, E., Das Prinzip Hoffnung (Frankfurt, 1959), p. 712Google Scholar, but he has completely misunderstood the sentence in lines 29/30.

8 Ibid., p. 81.

9 Concordia Veteris et Novi Testamenti (Venice, 1519).

10 Expositio in Apocaiypsim (Venice, 1519).

11 Thomas Aquinas also linked his theological doctrine of the Church with a theology of history: In history there are only two kingdoms, the kingdom of the Old Law and the kingdom of the New Law. The kingdom of glory does not fall within history, but first comes after the end of history. See Seckler, M., Das Heil in der Geschichte. Geschichts-theologisches Denken bei Thomas von Aquin (Munich, 1964).Google Scholar

12 Along with Benz I translate the expression “evacuare,” which Joachim uses for the salvation history sequence, with the Hegelian expression “aufheben” (“subsume under”) because it better describes the relation of final to preliminary which Joachim had in mind than the expression “abschqffen” (“abolish”).

13 The discovery of the connection between the Old and the New Testaments, as well as the way in which the prophetic and apocalyptic promises of the Old Testament are taken up in the New has been historically and is also today the basis for the development of a Christian, real-futuristic eschatology. The realization of the Old Testament's history of promise in the gospel is the basis for eschatological expectation. Conversely, these es-chatological expectations awaken the memory of the not yet invalidated promises of God to Israel. There always exists an interdependence between the relation of the New Testament to the Old Testament and to eschatology.

14 See in this respect Bernard, Ch.-A., Théologie de L'Esperance seion Saint Thomas d'Aquin (Paris, 1961).Google Scholar

15 As stated in verdict E of 1318 on Olivi, Petrus, Apokalypsekommentar, and used by Benz, p. 84.Google Scholar

16 As opposed to von Balthasar, p. 81, who holds that this orientation is “Jewish.” See Metz, J. B., “Gott vor uns. Statt eines theologischen Arguments” in Ernst Bloch zu Ehren, ed. Unseld, Siegfried (Frankfurt, 1965), pp. 227–41;Google Scholar W. Pannenberg, “Der Gott der Hoffnung,” ibid., pp. 209-25; and J. Moltmann, “Die Kategorie Novum in der christlichen Theologie,” ibid., pp. 243-63; for the ET of the latter see, “What is ‘New’ in Christian Theology; The Category Novum in Christian Theology” in Religion, Revolution and the Future, trans. Meeks, M. Douglas (New York: Scribners, 1968), pp. 3–18.Google Scholar

17 Wittram, R., Gadamer, H.-G. and Moltmann, J., Geschichte-Element der Zukunft, Vorträge an der Hochschultagen 1965 der Ev. Studentenge meinde Tübingen (Tübingen, 1965).Google Scholar

18 As Benz correctly puts it, p. 85.

19 This point is made very nicely, albeit unconsciously, by Pieper, J. in Über die Hoffnung (1949).Google Scholar He replaces the exodus of Abraham with the general transitory nature of life in order to determine the status viatoris not through the divine promise of history, but as “the inner structure of the creaturely nature of humanity” (p. 19). The status com-prehensoris is then the “blessed vision of God” in eternity. With respect to his interpretation of hope as a supernatural virtue, one must ask why he bothers to call this virtue “hope” at all since this designation for humanity's endless striving is the only biblical note to be found in this short essay.

20 With respect to the biblical and philosophical idea of time, see Picht, G., “Die Zeit und die Modalitäten” in Hier und Jetzt. Philosophieren nach Auschwitz und Hiroshima (Stuttgart, 1980), I:362ff.Google Scholar

21 Moltmann, J., Theology of Hope; Religion, Revolution and the Future; The Future of Creation (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979);Google ScholarPerskectivien der Theologie (Munich/Mainz, 1968);Google Scholar esp. Theology as Eschatology, ed. Herzog, F. (New York: Herder, 1970), pp. 1–50, esp. p. 13, n. 19.Google Scholar

22 One can also bring in anticipation here as a basic category of historical reason, as W. Pannenberg systematically does. Yet anticipation presupposes a prior giving. If nothing is given (beforehand), nothing can be taken (beforehand). Anticipatory thinking presupposes that history is an element of the promised future.

23 This is the central thesis of my Theology of Hope.

24 I first pointed out these differentiations in the experience of time in The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecciesiology, trans. Kohl, Margaret (New York: Harper & Row, 1977)Google Scholar: “The Kingdom of God in the Future and the Present,” pp. 189ff.

25 1 have adopted Joachim's teaching of the ages (aetas) and states (status) of the history of God with the world insofar as I have understood them as “layers within the concept of freedom” and as “transitions” present in every experience of freedom. See Moltmann, J., The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. Kohl, Margaret (New York: Harper & Row, 1981).Google Scholar I carry on with this thought here. This is also occasioned by Joachim's “idea of the concealment” of the future in the present, which Benz, E. worked out in “Religiöse Geschichtsdeutung Joachims,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte (1931), 80ff.Google Scholar

26 Second Vatican Council, “Constitution on the Church,” VII, 48.Google Scholar

27 See H. Mottu, pp. 204ff. The promise in Jer 31:31ff. of the “new covenant” of the “law written in the heart” has, in Church history, been continually linked to the “age of the Holy Spirit,” as, for example, Lessing, G. E. does in Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts, Par. 88ff.Google Scholar: “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord” (verse 34).

28 The Apostle says nothing about a “Christian, vertical triad of faith-hope-love,” as von Balthasar expresses it, p. 86.

29 I take up here the exegetical discussion compiled by Conzelmann, H., Der erste Brief an die Korinther, 2nd ed. (Göttingen, 1981)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and follow in my own way Bultmann's and Conzelmann's suggestion linking the nyni de with the menein.

30 Benz, E., “Joachimstudien III,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte (1934), 65ff.Google Scholar See also H, Mottu, pp. 292ff.

31 Benz, ibid., p. 98.

32 Scholem, G., Judaica I (Frankfurt, 1963), pp. 72f.Google Scholar

33 Benz, , “Joachimstudien III,” p. 101.Google Scholar

34 On the cover of the second volume of La postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Fiore, one can read: “L'avenir de l'Esprit sans le Christ.”

35 Joachim described this transition from a childlike relation to God to an equal relation with God in sight, like many other mystics before and after him, as friendship with God. In this respect see Peterson, E., “Der Gottesfreund. Beiträge zur Geschichte eines religiösen Terminus,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte (1923), 161–202.Google Scholar

36 Benz, , “Joachimstudien III,” p. 68.Google Scholar

37 Cerchi Trinitari, Repr. taken from Liber Figurarum, Oxford, Corpus Christi College, Ms. 255 A, fol. 7v [Bodleian Library],

38 With respect to the theological and philosophical problems caused by this dichotomy, see Moltmann, J., The Trinity and the Kingdom, “The Trinitarian Doctrine of the Kingdom,” pp. 202ff.Google Scholar

39 Benz, , “Joachimstudien III,” 71f.Google Scholar, does not seem to have clearly seen this distinction. Thus, at one point he speaks of the kingdom as the “state of the consummation” and at another of the Holy Spirit as “the actual Lord of the age of the consummation of the kingdom.”

40 For a detailed exposition of this see Hirsch-Reich, B., “Joachim von Fiore und das Judentum” in Judentum im Mittelalter, ed. Wilpert, P. (Berlin, 1966), pp. 228–63.Google Scholar

41 Quoted in Benz, , ZKG (1931), 70.Google Scholar

42 Quoted in Benz, , ZKG (1934), 60.Google Scholar

43 Quoted in ibid., p. 103.

44 I have expressed my detailed opinion in this regard in Lapide, P. and Moltmann, J., Israel und Kirche: ein gemeinsamer Weg? (Munich, 1980), pp. 24ff.Google Scholar

45 Proof of this is found in his antithesis against Joachim: “Opposing this is what the Lord says in Mt 24:34: ‘Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.’ Chrysostom, directly after the beginning of the 78th homily on Matthew, applies this verse to the generation of Christians. Therefore, the state of the Christians will last till the end of the world.” For Matthew, this verse meant that the kingdom of God and the end of the age would come in the present generation. Thomas and Chrysostom turn this verse on its head by thinking that it means that the generation of Christians will abide to the end.