The Kingdom and the Power: The Theology of Jurgen Moltmann. .

The Kingdom and the Power: The Theology of Jurgen Moltmann. By Geiko Muller-Fahrenholz. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001. 262 pages. Paper. $15.00.

There is no question that Moltmann has distinguished himself as one of the most important German theologians of the last five decades. His corpus is voluminous. As a thinker he is ever engaging, dynamic, and challenging. Anyone who has sought a readable map of Moltmann's theological career and/or a guide to his writings--themes, trajectories, key ideas, particularly the messianic dimension of his theology, fidelity to the well-being of the earth, the future as God's living horizon, and his theology of politics--will find it in this clearly written book.

The author, a minister of the German Protestant Church, has the mind of a theologian and the artistic skills of an outstanding reporter. He is able to take the complex themes interwoven in Moltmann's thinking and decipher their meanings, making them intelligible and digestible to the neophyte. In this volume, one follows the movement of Moltmann' s thinking as framed by his life experience including his nominal church upbringing, the development of the "Theology of Hope" on the heels of his prison camp experience, his attention directed to the "crucified God," his affirmation of the agency of the Spirit in the church and its liberating consequences, his passion for victims, especially those in the developing world, his understanding the Trinity as a history of love, his view of radical discipleship, the affirmation of creaturely experience, and the power of God as seen in God's "coming."

Moltmann's theology was indebted early on to the Reformation theme of "promise" due to his work with Hans J. Iwand. From that basis Moltmann looks to the future: confessing Jesus' lordship entails his future rule. "Where it calls on the judge, it expects his righteousness. Where it longs for the prince of peace, it thirsts for peace. And all this on earth, in the earthly reality and in the course of time" (p. 49). Moltmann's is a theology that has been sharpened in the examination of suffering, whether that be as a victim or as a homo symparheticus, a compassionate person who responds to suffering--indeed, even the suffering God (p. 74). Hence, Moltmann's eschatological focus entails a fellowship with Christ that includes suffering with him as crucified. With eschatology at its heart, Moltmann reconfigures the divine being as adventus, coming. And this God as coming returns us to genuine community in the church and allows us to accept our life as a fragment of the coming beauty of the kingdom of God. The Tri nity is the summarization, a code word, for this history of God's love with the world. The ethos of these gifts entails liberation for the oppressed.

This guide to Moltmann will be welcomed by all who are interested in the challenge of his thinking.