Moltmann Wins With 80%

So I ran across this quiz online that will tell you which theologian you most resemble. I have to tell you, I was a little bit disturbed to see that I’m 40% Calvin. But knowing that being like Calvin doesn’t necessarily make you like a Calvinist seems to offer some comfort in a time like this. And luckily, he’s still near the bottom. Perhaps more disturbing is the Anslem thing up there in 2nd place. I’ve read very little Anslem, only cur dues homo. At least Barth is in there next.

Take a minute and do this quiz and post your results in the comments, (it literally takes 2 minutes, so actually…how accurate could be?). I would love to hear who you most closely resemble.

It’s ironic to be 80% Moltmann since I’ve only just begun to read his work. I’m working through The Church in the Power of the Spirit right now. The way I understand it, the trilogy of Theology of Hope and The Crucified God link up with the book about the church and form a pretty accurate picture of his approach. I started with the last in the series because I’ve been chewing on questions of Ecclesiology quite a bit lately. Here are a few highlights from the first few chapters of The Church in the Power of the Spirit.

“It is only where Christ alone rules, and the church listens to his voice only, that the church arrives at its truth and becomes free and a liberating power in the world. The theological concept of the church belongs to this specific tradition of the church’s liberation through the lordship of Christ, and it knows that it is committed to that tradition.”

“A consistent theological doctrine of the church is by its very nature an eminently political and social doctrine of the church as well.”

“It is in the interest of everyone who calls on the name of Christ to subordinate his own particular interests to ‘Christ’s interest’ and hence, as Paul says, to ‘live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised’ (2 Cor. 5:15); and consequently the theological concept of the church serves Christianity as a whole and not only the theologians in the church. In this respect every Christian is a theologian.”

“If theology were to lose its freedom to criticize, it would turn into the ideology of the church in its existing form.”

“What we have to learn from them [the missionary church] is not that the church ‘has’ a mission, but the very reverse: that the mission of Christ creates its own church. Mission does not come from the church; it is from mission and in the light of mission that the church has to be understood.”

“The real point is not to spread the church but the spread the kingdom.”

“The church against world horizons also means: the church’s existence against the background of the world’s increasing interdependence and its growing tension, the struggle for world domination and the fight against exploitation and oppression.”

“Reading the bible through the eyes of the poor is a different thing from reading it with the eyes of the man with a full belly.”

That’s mostly from chapter one, so my guess is that I’ll do some more posting about Moltmann.