Browsing by Author "Moss, Rodney Leslie."

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Eschatology and the political order : a comparative study of Moltmann and Augustine's "City of God".
(1985) Moss, Rodney Leslie.; Pitchers, Alrah Llewellyn Major.; Krige, Willem Adolph.
Moltmann's political theology and Augustine's City of God provide a suitable eschatological basis for a critical approach to the political order. Though separated in time by one thousand five hundred years, a comparative study of their respective approaches to the world makes for a credible critique of final political solution. Eschatology is the key to their analyses of society. Partial realities are evaluated from the fullness of truth unveiled in the eschaton. Augustine's City of God sought to counter the anti-Christian propaganda occasioned by the impending fall of the Roman Empire. Augustine's apologia provides for a church freed from a necessary dependence upon the secular and political milieu. Thus any social theory is provisional and haphazardous. However, Augustine has no constructive social criticism. The Christian is a stranger in a disordered, fallen, earthly city. The social manifestations of sin are not clearly identified for they do not affect man's eternal destiny. So Augustine left the world disordered without a constructive divine redemptive plan that would be partially anticipated within the saeculum. His weakness lay in identifying the "negative" within society with the fall. Moltmann's political theology, however, identifies the "negative" with the Cross. The crucified Jesus reveals what is wrong with the world. He identifies the sinful, Godforsaken forces within creation. The "promise" of God is validated within history in the event of the Resurrection, that is, the anticipation within time of the eschaton towards which history is moving. Although the Resurrection is the eschatological event within history, "creative acts" that are the "negation of the negative" (the "negative" is identified by the Cross) are anticipations of the eschaton. These "creative acts" open up the "closed systems" of the world. Thus history is not a return to the "golden age" of the beginning but an "opening up" to the "promise". This promise is contradicted within the "closed systems" of history by the crucified One. Yet, it is confirmed and anticipated in the resurrection of Jesus. The eschatological nature of Moltmann's theology lays stress on both the distinctiveness of the Christian faith and its relevance as a solution to the problem of "unfree" creation. Eschatological faith is distrustful of any "final solution"; for Moltmann, political theology destroys the idols of contemporary and future society. Society absolutizes partial solutions and thus retards the creative transformation of the world. Moltmann speaks of five "vicious circles of death" that he identifies with political oppression, economic inequality, cultural discrimination, ecological death and personal apathy. In the spirit of Christ and by the believer's missionary outreach, the progressive transformation of the world is achieved. The eschaton is God's gift anticipated within history in the resurrected Christ and foreshadowed by progressive "creative acts" that overcome the "vicious circles of death". Both Moltmann and Augustine's City of God permitted no final secular solution. The secular political order is assessed from beyond not merely from within. Augustine assesses almost exclusively from beyond; Moltmann both from beyond and within. In this respect they provide a valuable critical corrective to the dogmatism of final political solutions.
Truth as anticipation : Moltmann and Popper on the concept of openness.
(1992) Moss, Rodney Leslie.; Pitchers, Alrah Llewellyn Major.
Theology and Science need dialogue since they are interdependent areas of human experience and enquiry. Each discipline needs to be open to the discoveries and insights of the other. Mutual agreement on fundamental issues is not a point of departure; we must rather ask whether what one discipline is doing can have any. relevance for the pursuits of the other? The theologian, Jurgen Moltmann, and the philosopher of science, Sir Karl Popper, find in "openness" a common methodology. By openness they mean that present realities are partial; that truth lies ahead anticipated within systems that "complexify" in evolutionary openness and transcendence. Moltmann sees the fullness of truth unveiled in the eschaton. The Resurrection of Jesus is the anticipation in time of the eschaton towards which history is moving. Within history, creative acts open up the closed systems of the world for they transform present reality. These closed systems are revealed by the Cross which identifies the negatives (political oppression, economic inequality, cultural and sexual discrimination, ecological abuse, personal apathy) within history. In the "negation of the negatives" such creative acts are real antcipations of the eschaton. However, the roots of openness in the world lie in creation. Creation in the beginning is a creation with open possibilities involving the evolution of complex open systems marked by growing indeterminacy of behaviour. These systems are in communication with the transcendent future into which they are evolving. This transcendent future is the trinitarian God: open to creation, to history and to man in suffering but creative love. The trinitarian life is identified with worldly processes through the openness of the Cross. The completion of the creative process lies in the kingdom of glory. Here there is participation of transcendent creation in the unlimited freedom of God. Evolutionary openness is the overall Popperian methodology. It pervades the entire spectrum of Popper's thought: from physics, through epistemology and social theory to biological and evolutionary theory. Critical rationalism is the bedrock of Popper's thought. The search for certainty becomes the enemy of truth, since rationalism rejects any dogmatism. Rather, rationalism means open critical discussion and experiential learning. For this reason Popper rejects induction and replaces it by the logico-deductive method. Here justification is replaced by falsification: knowledge is conjectural, constantly threatened by refutation and progressing to problems of increasing depth and complexity and hence to greater truth-likeness. Even animal evolution begins with a problem - the problem of survival. Human evolution, however, develops outside the human person. It is applied knowledge. With the development of human language, the self-conscious mind (World 2) emerges and with it the autonomous world of the products of the human mind, World 3. (World 1 is the physical world of nature). In these later developments something new emerges which can interact with the lower levels by a process of downward causation. A picture emerges of a creative, expanding, evolving, indeterminate universe. Indeterminism, itself, lies somewhere between perfect chance and perfect determinism. Lastly in his rejection of holism, historicism and utopianism, Popper has eschewed the collective and replaced the responsible individual at the social centre of his openness. The struggle for rational openness needs the individual response, the individual initiative and mutual critical discussion. This means that piecemeal social engineering is the practical model for the reform of the open evolutionary society. Moltmann and Popper both envisage an evolutionary struggle towards truth: truth is but anticipation. The growth of truth leads to increased complexity, greater openness and eventual transcendence. These insights may, indeed, aid the dialogue between theology and science.