Metz and Moltmann: their starting points and their objectives

The political theologies of Metz and Moltmann begin with the view that the self-revelation of God takes place primarily in the reality of the history of Jesus Christ. As this history is coextensive with the history of the world, political theology believes that the self-communication of God to man cannot be some timeless, acultural and theologically impartial entity, but has to be inextricably bound up with the discussion of the historico-political expression of faith.

It is, thus, the intention of Metz and Moltmann to counter the tendency to take the discussion of faith and theology out of the realm of the historico-political experience of man. That is not to say that theology before them is not interested in the human pole of God's self-communication. Rather they are adding a corrective to the reaction of theology's previous attempt to answer the challenge of the Enlightenment in Europe. The dualism of faith and history that emerged from that reaction is contributory to the crises of identity and relevance for Christianity. (9)

In Moltmann, we find a re-emphasis on the eschatological dimension of the gospel message. God is not a being totally detached from the world. He is the eschaton, the future which has come near drawing us forward. This imminence of the eschaton means, for Metz, that faith is not a flight from the secular world into the realm of individual piety. Rather, it is within the socio-political reality of this secular world that God encounters man (and woman). To return to an 'authentic' response to this divine condescension, Metz advocates a "de-privatization" of faith.

Thenceforth, Moltmann arrives at the positiion that the God who draws near in history is the revelation of the history of Himself. That is, theology's task in discerning God in history leads us further on to an insight into the history of God. For him, the challenge of political theology can be justified and sustained only because of what it reveals in the trinitarian history of God. Metz, on the other hand, finds that political theology is complete only if it leads to a completely different way of doing theology. He rejects the transcendental-idealistic approach because it fails to exercise its critical function as demanded by the gospel message it proclaims. As an alternative, Metz proposes a "praxical" approach to theology which expresses itself in narratives of painful memories in the history of human liberation and salvation.

9)Apart from the two articles on "Political Theology" by Metz and Moltmann mentioned above, see also T. W. Ogletree, "From Anxiety to Responsibility: The Shifting Focus of Theological Reflection", in New Theology No. 6, ed. by Marty & Peerman, Macmillan, NY, 1970.