Jurgen Moltmann meets Jonathan Edwards

The "Which Theologian are You" quiz can be done here. It sets a lot of theological questions and you show how far you agree/disagree. Then it works out which theologian your theological profile best fits. Seems straightforward enough.

I came out as 100% Jurgen Moltmann – and I’m not sure I’ve ever had a 100% for anything before! Here’s the result and the summary of who I am theologically and what matters to me theologically, according to this quiz.

……………………….

You are Jurgen Moltmann.

The problem of evil is central to your thought, and only a crucified God can show that God is not indifferent to human suffering. Christian discipleship means identifying with suffering but also anticipating the new creation of all things that God will bring about.

…………………………………………………………….

OK now for the disclaimers

• The problem of evil is not central to my thought – Christology is central, and the cross and resurrection are definitive of my Christology because the loving purpose of God is revealed in the crucified and risen Christ. The problem of evil is however deeply implicated in my theology, but also in my worldview.
• Thus while I think discipleship involves every follower of Jesus in identifying with suffering it involves much more – for me it also involves what John Swinton would call forming strategies and gestures of resistance to the causes of suffering, based on the call of Christ to follow after him, carrying the cross, in the power of the Spirit, witnessing to the Gospel of God’s love through a ifestyle of hopefulness generated by the resurrection.

Now as for the quiz itself I have a few awkward questions.

1. How come there are no explicit questions about the Trinitarian nature of God, or about the form of Christology that underlies any Christian theology?
2. How come there are no women? I know – most of the big noises are men for well rehearsed reasons – but Julian of Norwich bequeathed to the church her Revelations of Divine Love, one of the most profound, perceptive and doxological pieces of theological reflection in the entire tradition. Does every woman who does this quiz have to end up being a man?!?
3. Where are Aquinas, Wesley, Pannenberg, and for those who know me they’ll expect me to ask also, and where is James Denney, P T Forsyth or Tom Torrance? I know – they aren’t exactly the giants in the field – but who gets to pick the giants anyway, huh? I rate Forsyth well ahead of Tillich – no slight on Tillich, just that Forsyth understood as few before or since, the nature of love as holy, and of God as holy love.
4. Now as one whose theology is a theology of the cross, understood in Trinitarian terms, Moltmann and Luther are not surprisingly top of the list, and followed by Barth. I’ve spent months of my life, over the years reading them, but how did Schleiermacher get way up there? He is the one I have least first-hand knowledge of.
5. And just as intriguing, let me say, if I had to rescue only 10 books from my burning study one of the first would be my (really expensive, but who cares?) Yale Edition of the Ethical Writings, by Jonathan Edwards, containing his sermons on 1 Corinthians 13. This volume contains some of the finest late Puritan moral theology, expressed in language that I still remember on my first reading, bringing a lump to my throat and a never-forgotten heart sense of ‘God’s great ocean of love’. Schleiermacher’s Christian Faith is a Reformed masterpiece in its own right, but in my canon, not before Edwards – so why is Edwards bottom of my list and Schleiermacher is fourth?
6. I’ve thought a bit about this last question and here’s my attempt at an answer. When a quiz asks propositional questions and asks me to indicate degree of agreement, it assumes I want to be the person who thinks most like me. I’m not at all sure of that! There are aspects of Edwards’ theology which I can’t easily agree with – but there is also much in his theology of God’s grace and glory, and in the homiletical and moral reflections on the Bible that expound these, that have shaped my own spirituality at foundational levels. I have learned more from this towering Christian intellect than most of the other names above him on this list, perhaps with the exception of Barth and Moltmann, and maybe not even them.
7. So allowing for the glitches in the way the quiz is set out – and the kind of predicable paths it pushes you into, I am not embarrassed by the prominence of Moltmann, NOR by the position of Edwards – where they are on the list is irrelevant. They are long-time and deep conversation partners of mine, lovers of God in Christ through the Spirit, and within the communion of saints, in which they both believe – but expressed it differently.

I am going to put a few quotations together for a later blog, with Moltmann and Edwards alongside each other – a parallel of opposites who from different perspectives and contexts know a thing or two about theology as doxology, and the theologian’s task of expounding the God of Grace and Glory.