ABSTRACT
The work conducted throughout the foregoing pages has sought to explore, assess and expand upon Jürgen Moltmann’s eschatological theology with the purpose of offering a theological description of the sphere of Christian moral action. In this regard, the work has been more a theological exploration of what makes ethics possible than a piece of ethical research on any one specific moral quandary. Engaging in this sort of doctrinal description is essential to maintain an account of moral action which is properly Christian – that is, constituted and governed by the gospel’s proclamation of God’s work in Jesus Christ. Beginning with the eschatological parameters established in Moltmann’s early account of promise and hope, it was argued that the divine promise found in the cross-resurrection of Christ created history. More specifically in regard to ethics, it created a Zwischenraum of tension within history where the liberating and life-giving movement of God’s work in Christ is made efficacious through the Spirit. The ethical result is that the lived characteristics of the kingdom may be embodied through moral action both within the Church and without. With this analysis, each of the major doctrinal tenets of the Christian faith (Christology, Trinity, pneumatology, eschatology, creation and anthropology) was considered in some depth as Moltmann interacts with them. The cumulative result is a theological account of what makes ethics possible within the eschatological framework described above.
