Six decades of Moltmann’s Theology of Hope and tangible hope in South Africa today

HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Six decades of Moltmann’s Theology of Hope and tangible hope in South Africa today
 
Creator Vorster, Jacobus M.
 
Subject — Moltmann’s Theology; Theology of Hope; hope in South Africa; moving God; political theology; political ethics; liberating process; liberation theology
Description Moltmann’s Theology of Hope still resonates in theological discourses 60 years after the publication of his epoch-making book containing this concept. At a time of fading hope among South Africans, a revisitation of Moltmann’s pattern of reasoning holds the promise of reward. This article focuses on the quest for raising tangible hope in South Africa and the possible contribution of the Theology of Hope in this regard. The central theoretical argument here will be that the failure of hope in South Africa is caused by the fact that hope continues to be viewed in terms of the event of liberation (1994), and not in terms of a liberating process as the Theology of Hope proposes. To unpack this hypothesis and provide preliminary responses to the matters raised here and others, the study revisits Moltmann’s Theology of Hope as centred on the recurrent interpretations and applications that it has received in political theologies. The aim is to translate the core idea of the Theology of Hope into tangible hope for desponding South Africans today.Contribution: This research proposes that hope founded in the sign of the reign of the moving God, such as instances of love, goodness, truth-telling, fair jurisprudence and caring for the poor, which are discernible in South Africa today, are valuable and plausible building blocks for the creation of continuous tangible hope. The hope that rests in the actions of the moving God is of greater value than that residing in a single historic event. The 1994 liberation event, lauded by many as the great cause of perennial hope, has faded away in recent years and turned into a pervasive despondency within the South African community.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2023-09-26
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/hts.v79i1.8988
 
Source HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies; Vol 79, No 1 (2023); 8 pages 2072-8050 0259-9422
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/8988/25796 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/8988/25797 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/8988/25798 https://hts.org.za/index.php/hts/article/view/8988/25799
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2023 Jacobus M. Vorster https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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