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Resurrection as surplus and possibility: Moltmann and Ricoeur

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2008

Devin Singh
Devin Singh*
Affiliation:
Yale University, 451 College St, New Haven CT 06511, USAdevin.singh@yale.edu
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Abstract

Though Moltmann and Ricoeur have a history of interaction, little attention has been paid to this relationship and its implications for their respective programmes. These thinkers have much in common, however, and the Ricoeurian categories of surplus and possibility elucidate critical aspects of a theology of hope, serving to strengthen its contemporary implications. Nuance is provided for the resurrection's role in redemption, and an existential mode of hope is delineated. Focusing on Moltmann's interactions with Ricoeur concerning the resurrection elevates these latent themes and demonstrates the fruitfulness of a continued conversation between these two thinkers. Furthermore, examining Moltmann's thought in Ricoeurian perspective opens new directions for conceptualising resurrection hope and praxis in a postmodern context.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , August 2008 , pp. 251 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2008

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References

1 Moltmann, Jürgen, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology, tr. Leitch, James (London: SCM, 1967)Google Scholar.

2 Lyotard, Jean-François, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, tr. Bennington, Geoff and Massumi, Brian (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984)Google Scholar. Cf. Bauman, Zygmunt, Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1992)Google Scholar and Harvey, David, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990)Google Scholar.

3 At one end of the spectrum of responses one might place Fukuyama's resigned vision of the triumph of capitalism. See Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992)Google Scholar. The opposite end might be characterised by Hardt and Negri's utopian hope concerning the revolutionary potential of the ‘multitude’. See Hardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000)Google Scholar, and idem, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin Press, 2004). For a survey of current cultural, political and theological challenges in a postmodern context see Rieger, Joerg, ‘Introduction: Opting for the Margins in a Postmodern World’, in Rieger, Joerg (ed.), Opting for the Margins: Postmodernity and Liberation in Christian Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 3–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For a discussion of Moltmann's relationship to modernity see Volf, Miroslav, ‘After Moltmann: Reflections on the Future of Eschatology’, in Bauckham, Richard (ed.), God will be All in All: The Eschatology of Jürgen Moltmann (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), pp. 233–57Google Scholar.

5 Attention is given primarily to the earlier work of both thinkers. In addition to providing a workable scope for this inquiry, such a limitation is appropriate for two reasons: 1) the themes addressed in this study appear more prominently in earlier works and 2) certain of these works are the context for explicit exchanges between Moltmann and Ricoeur.

6 Central for this study is Paul Ricoeur's essay ‘Freedom in the Light of Hope’, tr. Robert Sweeney, in Ihde, Don (ed.), The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 402–24Google Scholar. See also Ricoeur, Paul, ‘Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems’, in Wallace, Mark (ed.), Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, tr. Pellauer, David (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), pp. 203–16Google Scholar.

7 Despite Moltmann and Ricoeur's history of dialogue, few studies have undertaken a comparative analysis. See e.g. Stewart, David, ‘In Quest of Hope: Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Moltmann’, Restoration Quarterly 12 (1970), pp. 31–52Google Scholar, and Jasper, David, ‘The Limits of Formalism and the Theology of Hope: Ricoeur, Moltmann and Dostoyevsky’, Literature and Theology 1 (1987), pp. 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In addition to Moltmann and Ricoeur's direct interactions, clear commonalities exist in their reactions to the ‘desert’ of post-Enlightenment criticism, and in their projects of thinking through theology or philosophy, respectively, as spes quaerens intellectum. For discussions of Ricoeur's relationship to theology more broadly construed see Stiver, Dan, Theology After Ricoeur: New Directions in Hermeneutical Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Vanhoozer, Kevin, Biblical Narrative in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: A Study in Hermeneutics and Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wallace, Mark, The Second Naiveté: Barth, Ricoeur, and the New Yale Theology (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

8 Moltmann, Theology of Hope, pp. 109–12, 258–61.

9 Moltmann does make a distinction between history conceived of as simply linear and a more nuanced view which incorporates rhythms and cycles into an overall linear progression, preferring the latter. See The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, tr. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), p. 138.

10 Cf. the discussion in Jürgen Moltmann, Experiences in Theology: Ways and Forms of Christian Theology, tr. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), pp. 98–108.

11 Moltmann, Theology of Hope, pp. 45–68; cf. Moltmann, The Coming of God, pp. 13–21.

12 Moltmann, Theology of Hope, pp. 107–8.

13 Ricoeur, ‘Freedom in the Light of Hope’, p. 405, n. 2.

14 Ibid., p. 405.

15 Ibid., pp. 405, 407.

16 Ibid., p. 410.

17 Ricoeur, Paul, The Symbolism of Evil, tr. Buchanan, Emerson (Boston: Beacon, 1967), p. 272Google Scholar.

18 Ricoeur, ‘Freedom in the Light of Hope’, p. 411.

19 See Ricoeur, Paul, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), pp. 46–52Google Scholar.

20 Moltmann, Jürgen, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, tr. Kohl, Margaret (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991), p. 116Google Scholar.

21 Moltmann, Jürgen, The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions, tr. Kohl, Margaret (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1990), p. 186Google Scholar.

22 Moltmann, Jürgen, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, tr. Wilson, R. A. and Bowden, John (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), p. 182Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., pp. 184–5.

24 Moltmann, The Way of Jesus Christ, p. 186.

25 Moltmann, Theology of Hope, p. 226.

26 Ibid., p. 227.

27 Ricoeur, ‘Freedom in the Light of Hope’, p. 407. Kevin Vanhoozer suggests that this Kierkegaardian notion informs Ricoeur's overall philosophical program; see his Biblical Narrative in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur.

28 See Ricoeur, Paul, ‘What is a Text? Explanation and Understanding’, in Thompson, John B. (ed. and tr.), Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 145–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note that elsewhere Ricoeur speaks instead of the ‘world in front of the text’ with similar intimations.

29 Ricoeur, Paul, ‘Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation’, in Mudge, Lewis (ed.), Essays on Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), p. 102Google Scholar.

30 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Manifestation and Proclamation’, in Figuring the Sacred, p. 58.

31 Ricoeur, ‘Freedom in the Light of Hope’, p. 412.

32 Moltmann, Jürgen, ‘Introduction to the Theology of Hope’, in Meeks, M. Douglas (ed. and tr.), The Experiment Hope (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), p. 50Google Scholar.

33 Moltmann, The Coming of God, pp. 25–9.

34 Ricoeur, ‘Freedom in the Light of Hope’, p. 411.

35 Moltmann, Jürgen, On Human Dignity: Political Theology and Ethics, tr. Meeks, M. Douglas (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), p. 106Google Scholar.

36 Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. 26; cf. Moltmann, Experiences in Theology, pp. 118–33.

37 Vanhoozer, Biblical Narrative in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, p. 71.

38 Ricoeur, ‘Freedom in the Light of Hope’, p. 408.

39 Moltmann, The Coming of God, p. xiv.

40 Cf. Moltmann, Theology of Hope, pp. 329–38.

41 Davis, Stephen T., Risen Indeed: Making Sense of the Resurrection (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), pp. 34–6Google Scholar.

42 Note that, for Davis, ‘real’ indicates an objective, historical event, broadly defined.

43 Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory, pp. 57–63. Cf. McFague, Sallie, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), pp. 13–18Google Scholar; and Tillich, Paul, ‘The Nature of Religious Language’, in Kimball, Robert C. (ed.), Theology of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 53–67Google Scholar.

44 For a full discussion of these concepts see Ricoeur, Paul, Time and Narrative, tr. McLaughlin, Kathleen and Pellauer, David, 3 vols (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, 1985, 1988)Google Scholar, and Ricoeur, Paul, Oneself as Another, tr. Blamey, Kathleen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992)Google Scholar.

45 Ricoeur's critique of Bultmann's project deals less with its existentialist posture than with the manner through which it is reached. Bultmann's move to demythologise travels ‘too quickly’, not dealing in depth with the texts but asserting an unmediated self-awareness, problematic in its Cartesian orientation. See Paul Ricoeur, ‘Preface to Bultmann’, tr. Peter McCormick, in The Conflict of Interpretations.

46 Moltmann's interactions with Käsemann, whose own project of historical retrieval was in part a reaction to Bultmann, have certainly played a crucial role as well.

47 Cf. Harvey, Van, ‘Secularism, Responsible Belief, and the “Theology of Hope”’, in Herzog, Fredrick (ed.), The Future of Hope: Theology as Eschatology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1970), pp. 135–8Google Scholar. For a contemporary appraisal of Moltmann's views on the resurrection see George Hunsinger, ‘The Daybreak of New Creation: Christ's Resurrection in Recent Theology’, Scottish Journal of Theology 57 (2004), pp. 163–81.

48 Ricoeur, Paul, Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay, tr. Blamey, Kathleen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. 152Google Scholar.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid., p. 156.

51 It remains to be delineated to what extent Ricoeur's views have changed since his initial interactions with Moltmann on the resurrection. The more hopeful, future-orientated perspective coming through in Ricoeur's early works appears to have shifted to an emphasis on suffering solidarity in the present.

52 Bauckham, Richard and Hart, Trevor, Hope against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 212Google Scholar.

53 It can be argued that capitalism accords more with a postmodern emphasis on play and diversity, rather than fixed and predictable modernist logic. See the provocative discussion in Goux, Jean-Joseph, ‘General Economics and Postmodern Capitalism’, Yale French Studies 78 (1990), pp. 206–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Although this is not the place for engagement of this issue, I would argue that the play and multiplicity of capitalism is ultimately an ideological projection of a system fundamentally predicated on the reciprocal logic of the same. Authentic difference need not be co-opted and can be genuinely disruptive.

54 Neusch, Marcel, The Sources of Modern Atheism, tr. O'Connell, Matthew (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), pp. 185–7Google Scholar.

55 Bloch's magnum opus, The Principle of Hope, tr. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice and Paul Knight (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1986), seeks to uncover these traces of hope in literature, history and popular culture.

56 It may be appropriate to debate to what extent Bloch should be categorised as ‘modernist’. His mysticism makes important breaks with post-Enlightenment secular rationality. Nevertheless, these key aspects of his thought exhibit modernist themes that prove problematic in our current context.

57 An important additional avenue for research concerns fleshing out what a hermeneutics of existence in light of hope would entail. Such directions are intimated in Moltmann's recent work. See esp. Moltmann's chapters on promise and history in the section ‘Hermeneutics of Hope’ in Experiences in Theology, pp. 87–133.

58 See e.g. Ricoeur, ‘Freedom in the Light of Hope’, p. 409.

59 See Ricoeur, Paul, ‘Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology’, in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, pp. 63–100Google Scholar. Cf. Ricoeur, Paul, ‘Ethics and Culture’, in Stewart, David and Bien, Joseph (eds.), Political and Social Essays (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1974), pp. 243–70Google Scholar. Reflecting on this debate in his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. G. H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), p. 237, Ricoeur notes that ‘hermeneutics without a project of liberation is blind, but a project of emancipation without historical experience is empty’. The relevance of Ricoeurian themes to such (theological) projects of liberation is evinced e.g. in the Latin American context. See esp. the works of José Míguez Bonino and Juan Luis Segundo.

60 Though sociopolitical concerns retain potency, ways of articulating them will look different, given Ricoeur's hermeneutical method. Numerous creative possibilities exist for articulating a theology of hope along less modernist, metanarratival lines, and instead in conversation with a contextual hermeneutics of existence. A cohesive, overarching political programme may give way to more ad hoc, non-systemic yet no less prophetic articulations of politicised hope. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, ‘The Project of a Social Ethic’, in Political and Social Essays, pp. 174–5, noting that ‘social ethics defines a level of judgment much more than a system constituted or to be constituted. This is the field of varied, multidimensional, discontinuous reflection. The convergence of concrete studies is always better than the false logic of systems.’

61 Special thanks to Travis Ables, Nancy Bedford, Randal Joy Thompson and Kevin Vanhoozer for helpful feedback on earlier versions. All shortcomings that remain are, of course, entirely my own. While completed well before, this article goes to print after the passing of Paul Ricoeur. I offer it humbly in interstitial memoriam.