I am enjoying Jurgen Moltmann’s In the End - The Beginning: The Life of Hope, but not in the ways I expected. Moltmann always has a pleasant surprise in store.

The early chapters discuss childhood, hope in general, and some examples of ways hope was expressed in the German youth movements after the devastation of WWI and before WWII (Moltmann is German; this book was translated extremely well by Margaret Kohl).

Here are a few tastes of Moltmann’s lucid theological prose:

The biblical apocalypses are not pessimistic scenarios of a global catastrophe which merely disseminate fear and terror so that human beings are paralysed by the corresponding belief in their doom. These apocalypses are messages of hope in danger, an encouragement to see the danger clearly and to resist it. They keep alive hope in the faithfulness of God: “But when all these terrors of the End-time begin to take place, look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21.28) p. 51

This book is very much about eschatology, but not the kind with a rapture or a remnant or a beast. It is about, as the title says, the life of hope, encouraging us, as the biblical apocalyptists do, to stand firm.

I became really impressed when I reached the chapter entitled “Deliver Us from Evil.” Moltmann does not treat evil as something to be merely defeated (if it’s from an enemy) or forgiven (if it’s from us). Instead, he takes a broader perspective on the effects of evil, considering the perpetrator’s need for healing and restoration as well as the victim’s, and the victim’s need for justification as well as the perpetrator’s. In doing this, he is by no means soft on evil.

Justice must be done on both sides: the victims must receive justice, and the perpetrators must be put on the road to justice - must be set right. The way this happens through what God does is the subject of the theological doctrine of justification. Unfortunately the only question asked in the Church’s tradition has always been how the guilty offenders can be set right. The fact that there must also be justice for the victims has received little attention….In experiencing the deliverance from evil, we recognize the creative goodness of God. His justice-creating righteousness allows us to acknowledge his justice, and that makes us free for the new beginning. p. 53-54

Moltmann points to the inner sense I have had for a while now that evil is both a force within us and a force beyond us, but not a force that can’t be overcome with some help:

…evil as “the power of sin” crosses moral bounds, spanning the guilt of the perpetrators, who have become the slaves of evil, and the suffering of those who have become evil’s victims….Sin is a shared “sickness unto death.”

…it is quite inadequate to reduce the power of sin to the guilt of the perpetrators, to limit the force of divine righteousness to the forgiveness of their guilt, and to confine justification to the position of the sinner before God…

The God of Israel does not lay down what is right and wrong in order to repay good with good and evil with evil. He brings about what is right and justice, where there is wrong and injustice. p. 61

When I encounter passages like this, sometimes I find myself praying instead of reading.