5.2 Municipio de Guam´a, Cuba
5.2.1 Contexto geogr´afico
In Moltmann’s work, a constant is that God is love. For Moltmann, if a theology moves down a path that would alter this central description of God, then he will avoid it and warn against it.2 Therefore, when he approaches the doctrine of creation, love plays the primary role, and he sees two ways in which this role works out: in the inner relationships of the Trinity and the outward love of God which seeks new relationships.3
There are certainly fewer statements about God’s love specifically related to the initial act of creation in Moltmann’s work than those about an ongoing relationship with creation. Those that do exist, however, are clear: God’s love is the principle that drives this creativity; the Trinity creates ‘out of love’.4 Earlier in his work, Moltmann expressed agreement with Barth that creation flows from the divine love, and soon after he tells us that the overall scheme of creation ‘is in accordance with the love which is God’.5
Moltmann also often uses the word ‘pleasure’ to describe the basis for the world. It is ‘the creation of the divine good pleasure’, ‘for joy’, because of God’s
2As seen in his formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity.
3There are other principles important for Moltmann’s doctrine of creation, such as
‘wisdom’ (TJ, p. 41), although it is not as prevalent as ‘love’ in his work.
4GiC, pp. 75-76.
5‘Creation and Redemption’, in Creation, Christ & Culture: Studies in Honour of T. F. Tor- rance, ed. by Richard W. A. McKinney (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1976), pp. 119–34 (p. 124); TKG, p. 58. This quote refers as well to continual creation and the detail of creation, but
desire.6 God ‘delights in his creation’ in a way that ‘makes it unequivocally plain’ to Moltmann that creation flows out of the divine love.7
Inner Love
In The Trinity and the Kingdom of God Moltmann says that creation does not just flow out of the divine love in general, but specifically out of the loving relationships found within the Trinity, or perhaps more accurately out of one particular relationship: ‘Creation is part of the of the eternal love affair between the Father and the Son. It springs from the Father’s love for the Son and is redeemed by the answering love of the Son for the Father.’8
In what way does creation flow out of this relationship? Is creation a gift from Father to Son that the Son then gives back? Moltmann indeed says that creation simply overflows from this loving relationship, but what exactly does that mean? He speaks of the Trinity’s glorification through creation: ‘free creations of God for the purpose of the self-communication of his goodness, with his glorification as their end goal’.9 From this it appears that creation flows out of the love of the Father and Son for one another in a mutual gift of glorification. For them to create and enter into relationship together with creation would bring further joy to their eternal relationship. Therefore they begin the project of creation because of their love for each other and the results which creation will bring.
Outer Love
However, to consider the act of creation to be only the result of the trinitarian persons’ love for each other would not be the whole picture. This love of God’s also focuses outwards to create a new relationship of love outside the existent divine relations.10 This means creation does not simply benefit the inner trinitarian relationships. Moltmann makes it clear that creation itself is an object of divine love: ‘The love with which God creatively and sufferingly
6Man: Christian Anthropology in the Conflicts of the Present, trans. by John Sturdy
(London: SPCK, 1974), p. 108; FC, p. 98; GiC, p. 72. See also TJ, pp. 40-41; ‘Creation and Redemption’, p. 124; TKG, p. 108.
7GiC, pp. 76, 276 (cf. TKG, pp. 111-14).
8TKG, p. 59 (cf. p. 112). Moltmann’s discussion here omits the Holy Spirit, a more
regular feature of his earlier work (see above, p. 14).
9GiC, p. 207. This means that, for Moltmann, God also creates to self-communicate. 10In Moltmann’s work, the lengths to which God goes to redeem creation suggests that
loves the world is no different from the love he himself is in eternity.’11 And elsewhere: ‘In God’s eyes nothing created is a matter of indifference.’12
The way in which Moltmann presents God’s trinitarian love to be rela- tional makes it unsurprising that he considers the divine love for creation also to be relational. The act of creation is not the creation of a tool (as it might be if no love for creation existed), or the creation of a piece of art which God observes (as it might be if it were simply a case of ‘looking on with love’). It is rather the creation of an ‘Other’ to which God can ‘self-communicate’, and that can respond.13 What the Trinity self-communicates is goodness and love. For Moltmann, this does not include the glorification of power.14 What is desired is a ‘response in freedom’ to God’s search for a new relationship of freedom and love.15 Such a conclusion has implications for the ecological reformation, in that humanity’s loving response must embrace all of God’s creation, not God alone.
The Same Love
It is important to emphasise that, for Moltmann, this inner and outer love are expressions of the same love, not two different loves. Matthew Bonzo discusses at length how Moltmann describes two dynamics of God’s love: love for like (philia, inner trinitarian love) and love for a different ‘Other’ (agape, love for what is not divine). Bonzo discusses this differentiation as found in various areas of Moltmann’s thought.16 His reading is helpful and detailed, yet also overemphasises the differences between the two concepts, and so views them to have different characteristics.17 He also notes another whom Moltmann’s language troubles, citing Henry Jansen: ‘[He] wonders if “Moltmann’s distinction between necessary and free love (philia and agape) is at all helpful in understanding the nature of love. . . it is difficult to understand how such terms would clarify the human experience of love”’.18 While Bonzo’s conclusions may seem inaccurate, the fact that he and others have perceived
11TKG, p. 59. 12GSS, p. 110.
13TKG, pp. 59, 108 (cf. SW, p. 61).
14GiC, pp. 75-76, 207. Moltmann points us here to TKG, pp. 52-60. It seems that he
rejects the self-communication of power because he thinks God will not show the divine glory in that way.
15TKG, p. 59 (cf. p. 106).
16Bonzo, Indwelling, especially Chapter 3, pp. 36-51. 17Ibid., pp. 36-41.
18Ibid., p. 48, n. 27, citing Henry Jansen, Relationality and the Concept of God (Amsterdam:
common problems indicates a need for clarity in Moltmann’s work here. However, despite a certain propensity to be misunderstood, his work on the love of God only describes one love: divine love.19 They are not two different loves, but in different contexts this love can be love for like or love for ‘Other’. If one accepts the idea that humanity can reflect the love of God, then Moltmann’s work gives encouragement to love both that which is like and unlike.20 For the purposes of a focus on an ecological reformation, this love includes non-human creation.