The Church in the Power of the Spirit was first published in 1975, and it complemented the two books that had preceded it—The Crucified God (1972) and Theology of Hope (1965). In these three volumes I had tried to interpret the theological traditions in a way that would make theology a driving force for the renewal of the church, for men and women, society and our common life in the world. Because Christian traditions are kept on the move by their hope for the coming glory of God and the coming new creation of all things, this actualization of theology is continually necessary and is necessary in continually new ways. In each of these three books I had tried to draw together the whole of theology into a single focus. In 1965 my focus was the hope that is born from the resurrection of Christ; in 1972 it was the suffering in which the fellowship of the crucified One is experienced; and in 1975 the experience of the divine Spirit, the giver of life. These three books, then, belong together as a kind of trilogy, although they were not originally planned as such.
While I was writing The Church in the Power of the Spirit, my intention was to argue for church reform, and today this concerns me more than ever. By reform I mean the transformation of the church from a religious institution that looks after people into a congregational or community church in the midst of the people, through the people and with the people. This means moving away from an impenetrable, large-scale organization to an accessible small-scale community. It is a path that can be followed only if we are prepared to break away from passive church membership and to make a new beginning by entering into active participation in the life of the congregation. In our society, affiliations that are imposed are losing their power to shape people’s lives and lend them significance. Forms of community that are accepted personally and entered into voluntarily are becoming more important. This is especially true of churches. The old established ‘national’ or regional churches, which were supposed to care for all the people, are losing members, while the new charismatic pentecostal churches are growing everywhere. In a surveyable congregation people feel that they are personally addressed and taken seriously. Their individual talents and gifts are needed in the community. Free decision in faith, voluntary sociality, mutual recognition and acceptance of one another and a common effort for justice and peace in this violent society of ours: these are the guidelines for the future of the church.
In 1975 I turned to experiences of the ancient congregational churches, hoping to learn from their past in outlining the future of Protestant churches. I drew on the Waldenensian congregations, the Mennonites and the Moravian Brethren, as well as the new basic communities. Meanwhile discussion has gone forward about ‘building up congregational structures in the established church’ (the Volkskirche, as it is called in Germany). But I do not believe that we can cling any longer to the ancient concept of the Volkskirche, the ‘established’ church, which is thought to include everyone. ‘Building up congregations’ requires the concept of the ‘congregational’ church and means re-orienting church structures so that they are based on the congregations. The church will have no future if it simply extrapolates into the future the path it took in the past. It will have a future only if it anticipates the kingdom of God in Jesus’ name and is prepared to be converted to his future, freeing itself from imprisonment in its past.
This book sets the doctrine of the church and the sacraments in the perspective of the Holy Spirit. But in spite of keeping that unifying theme before me, I did not succeed in gathering everything together into a single focus as wholly as I had in the two previous books, because this doctrine of the church had to cover too many different themes. It was important for me to convey my sense of the church’s own understanding of itself in the context of the church’s relation to Israel and not apart from that. It was also important for me to present the church’s understanding of itself as Christ’s church by holding ‘Jesus’ own people’ steadily in view—that is, the poor and humiliated, the sick and the handicapped. Not least, in the doctrine of the sacraments, worship and the ministries I tried always to proceed from the idea of the church as a social community and to reformulate these doctrines afresh in light of that view.
Thus in 1975 my theological intention in this book was to rediscover the dimensions of pneumatology. After the West committed itself to the filioque in the Nicene Creed by separating itself from the Eastern church in 1054, and after the persecution of the so-called Enthusiasts by both the Protestant and the Catholic churches at the time of the Reformation, the experience and theology of the Spirit of God ceased to play much of a part in our churches. But new openness toward charismatic experiences of the Spirit presupposes openings in theological systems. The doctrine of the Holy Spirit is part of the doctrine of the Trinity. So the doctrine of the Trinity will have to be newly formulated in such a way that the personhood of the Spirit and the Spirit’s independent workings in concert with the Father and the Son can be seen and grasped. I began work on the doctrine of the Trinity in 1975 in this book on the church and continued it in 1980 in The Trinity and the Kingdom. Throughout, my purpose was to understand the triune God as the God who is community, who calls community into life and who invites men and women into sociality with him. The community of Christ is permitted to see itself as an earthly reflection of the divine Triunity.
In 1975 I failed to discuss two complex problems because they had not yet fully entered my awareness. The first is the cosmic dimension of the church of Christ in the face of a growing and threatening ecological crisis; the second is the new community of women and men in the community of Christ as a community of sisters and brothers. I tried to answer the first of these questions in my book God in Creation (1985). Together with my wife, Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, I treated the second question in a joint lecture entitled ‘Becoming Human in a New Community’, given at the Ecumenical Consultation in Sheffield, England, in 1981. (Cf. C. Parvey, ed., The Community of Women and Men in the Church. A Report of the World Council of Churches, Sheffield, 1981.) I should also like to draw attention here to my essay ‘I believe in God the Father, Patriarchal or Non-Patriarchal Talk of God?’ Gateway, Drew University, Spring 1990.
Jürgen Moltmann
Tübingen, Germany
May 1990