Moltmann on God's future for the earth

When the Eternal One comes to "dwell" on the earth, the earth will become God's cosmic temple, and the restless God of hope and history will come to his rest. That is the great biblical -- Jewish and Christian -- vision for this earth. It is the final promise: "Behold, the dwelling of God is with [human beings]. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people" (Rev 21:3 RSV, following Ezek. 37:27). The ultimate Shekinah, this cosmic incarnation of God, is the divine future of the earth. In this expectation we shall already treat the earth as "God's temple" here and now, and cherish its creatures as sacred. We men and women are not "the masters and possessors" of the earth, but perhaps we shall one day become its priests and priestesses, representing God to the earth, and bringing the earth before God, so that we see and taste God in all things, and perceive all things in the radiance of his love. That would be a sacramental view of the world which would be able to take up and absorb into itself the worldview held at present in science and technology.

Jürgen Moltmann, "Progress and Abyss: Remembrances of the Future of the Modern World," p. 26 in The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition amid Modernity and Postmodernity, Miroslav Volf and William Katerberg, eds. Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2004.

Christianity or Religion?

Christianity is not a religion. For whatever is human about it, all the manifestations in which it may resemble a religion, are merely the echo or reflection of a movement that does not proceed from man or have to be carried out by him, but happens to him and has to be responded to by him, a movement by a being of an entirely different kind. Alone among all the religions, Christianity is essentially a pointer, pointing backwards and forwards and in either case upwards ... a movement that differs from all religions, all human leaps and superstructures, and is indeed opposed to all religion.

If Christianity is properly understood, that is, on the basis of the historical sources, the documentation of its origins in the Old and New Testaments -- and that, incidentally, is the task of theology -- it is impossible to shut one's eyes to the realization that, in contrast to religion, its essence is not man's arising to go to God, but God's arising to go to man....

"Christian", properly understood, means being governed by the message of Jesus Christ, the liberating discovery of God's gracious move towards humanity. But such discovery is an event, not a condition or institution, and thus is not an attribute with which human creations can be endowed or by which they can be distinguished.

Karl Barth (1963)