Listening to Moltmann today was amazing. Finally, in the third lecture, I had settled in my preferred seating place, the balcony, and had my mini-laptop working enough to type notes while he spoke.

For the first two lectures, I really couldn’t take notes because I found I had to give him all my attention. I was only able to tweet a few comments, and quickly lost my ability to tweet and listen at the same time.

He began with his life story first thing, being a prisoner of war, seeing his friends die, hearing people lament and cry out, “where is God?” His experience and his testimony is powerful and compelling.

At one point a US military chaplain gave him a bible and he began to read. In the psalms of lament, he found something that he could resonate with–especially psalm 39.

When he got to the New Testament and read Jesus’s words cried out from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he thought, here is someone who knows my pain. And he found great consolation in that.

There is a biography (auto-biography?) about his life, and I’m sure it would be very interesting reading.

For those of you who wish you were here, I am going to include here a few snippet-like notes that I typed up while he talked. A couple of them appeared in tweets I was able to post, but we know that they will soon twitter away as the tweets pour in. Here, at least, they will remain (a residual twitter stream?)

NOTES, Thursday Morning:

God is not in control of everything. God is bearing and carrying everything.

Apathy is an illness. If a child becomes apathetic, you take him to the doctor. God is not apathetic. God is filled with pathos for creation.

God is not impassable.

Theology that is not related to life experiences and death experiences is abstract. It’s nice for play. But it’s just a play of sorts.

Life experiences are a sort of theology, of course.

I read the bible with the Expectation to meet the divine Word in human words.

I’m old enough not to be afraid to be called heretical.

In interpreting the bible, I ask myself, What sentence is closer to Christ? And my decision is clear.

If women were all the time silent, we would have no knowledge of the resurrection of Christ. (Because they were the ones to announce his resurrection.)

Phoebe was the first official of a small congregation, a co-teacher with Paul.

My wife taught me to state things, I think it is this way (instead of making an objective statement). This provokes the subjectivity in others to make up their own minds.

There is no theological dialogue in our house before breakfast.

I think postmodernism is a new kind of modernism. (another form of modernism) [this got a murmur of reaction from the crowd. what does he mean by this? The next note tries to capture what he was saying.-NS]

Universal dangers we can only meet united. We cannot break up into big narratives, small narratives. Atomic bomb, terrorism, the suicide of mankind is a possibility at all times. I don’t see why we should give up the questions we have to face. [So I think he is defining post-modernism as a kind of breaking apart/splintering?-NS]

I have been reading his book, Jesus Christ for Today’s World, and finding it stimulating and engaging. I especially am trying to engage the sections on torture.