wfn.org | Moltmann's hopeful look at 'last days' earns $200,000 award

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Nov. 30, 1999  News media contact: Thomas S. McAnally (615) 742-5470 10-71B
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. (UMNS) - The eve of a new millennium brings with it concerns
about "the end times," judgment, death and the afterlife. German theologian
Jurgen Moltmann, however, looks toward the last days with optimism rather
than dread.

That message of hope, delivered through his book The Coming of God:
Christian Eschatology, has earned Moltmann the 2000 Louisville Grawemeyer
Award in Religion.  The $200,000 prize presented by Louisville Presbyterian
Seminary and the University of Louisville recognizes outstanding and
creative works that promote understanding of the relationship between human
beings and the divine.

Moltmann is professor emeritus of systematic theology at the University of
Tubingen in Germany, where he taught since 1967. He was the Robert W.
Woodruff Distinguished Visiting Professor of Systematic Theology at United
Methodist-related Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta
for 10 years beginning in 1983. 

In his book, published by Fortress Press and translated from German by
Margaret Kohl, he argues that customary ideas of last days are contradictory
and dysfunctional, even dangerous. Moltmann provides a renewed eschatology
that is anchored in hope, informed by Jewish and messianic thought and
oriented toward the coming reign of God.

One of the world's most renowned theologians since the 1967 debut of his
book Theology of Hope, Moltmann has been described as a "pastor's
theologian" who has the ability to make the complex simple. His latest book,
the fifth in a series, brings to communities of faith a new understanding of
a classical theological theme at a time when the tough questions about
events of the past 1,000 years are being asked.

The award was named for the late Charles Grawemeyer, an industrialist,
entrepreneur and University of Louisville graduate who had a lifelong
passion for music, education and religious studies. He created the award
program in 1984.
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Information for this story was provided by the information office of the
University of Louisville.  

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