Jurgen Moltmann's Crucified God

Jurgen Moltmann’s essay “The ‘Crucified God’: God and the Trinity Today” in the book New Questions on God (ed. Johannes B. Metz) focuses especially on the problems of suffering and evil. He is less concerned, however, with discussing why God created suffering than he is in asking what is God’s response to it. Does God suffer? Wouldn’t a God who is incapable of suffering also be incapable of love? He finds answers in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Here we have an example of God intentionally choosing to suffer. Here we have an example of God intentionally choosing to be abandoned. He does this to himself, performs this transaction within himself, and it is an act of love. It is thus the Cross through which Moltmann understands all of theology.

Moltmann is aware that the doctrine of God’s abandonment of Jesus on the cross is somewhat problematic because traditionally God is incapable of suffering. He is “unchangeable,” according to the creeds. Moltmann agrees that God is unchangeable in the sense that an outside force cannot compel him to change. However, he argues that God is capable and free to voluntarily change himself. God’s unchangeability is not absolute. Similarly, he distinguishes between “passive” suffering and “active” suffering. The former, suffering imposed from without, is impossible for God. He cannot be made to suffer against his will. The latter is what Moltmann calls “the suffering of love, a voluntary openness to the possibility of being affected by outside influences.” In other words, God chose to be able to change and suffer, and thereby to also be able to love. He chose to be abandoned and he chose to abandon himself on the cross. Both Father and Son willed it, and both Father and Son suffered because of it. From this transaction proceeded the Spirit of self-sacrifice and suffering love. This, then, is the Trinity. It is unclear whether Moltmann thinks the Trinity began at this point, or whether he believes there are really three distinct persons. He seems to say that to speak of three persons is simply the easiest way we can express what happened on the cross, and that it does not actually reveal anything about God’s own being. Whether I am understanding him correctly, I don’t know.

In the end, Moltmann says, none of this provides any explanation for why there has to be suffering, but neither does it object to the existence of suffering. In fact, it sees suffering almost as a good thing, because it is connected to love. The more one loves, the more one suffers. The more one suffers, the more one loves. This is why God himself chose to suffer; because God himself chose to love. One who suffers should neither resign himself to atheistic protest nor make theistic excuses; rather he should reconcile with the pain of love and see himself as a part of the story of God.

I am not sure what my response to Moltmann’s assertions are. I like the fact that he does not dramatically redefine the God of classical theism in order to make excuses for him. He does not try to separate God from the creation of evil or to claim he has no power to stop it. He does not make God the powerless observer that process theology makes him. That God is capable of interacting with the world is not a result of his being a finite creature, but rather of his own free choice to engage in self-limitation. He affirms God’s sovereignty while at the same time affirming his immanence. And he finds something good in suffering, so that we are not left with the disturbing feeling that a God who created suffering cannot be worthy of our devotion. In fact, that God chooses to partake of suffering seems to indicate that he thinks it is sufficiently valuable for himself as well as for us; he does not simply impose suffering from above. This God is certainly worthy of devotion. Yet I still find myself wondering why it had to be suffering. Why couldn’t God create a universe where love was possible without suffering? If this is the only difficulty in Moltmann’s position, however, then it is a solid one indeed.