These essays reflect on the future of Christian theology in light of the contributions Jurgen Moltmann has made in his prolific career as one of the world's foremost theologians. They are not a prediction of what is coming in the future of theology, since God's own actions, and human history, for that matter, are not predictable. Expressed here is hope for what future theology should take seriously from Moltmann's work. Moltmann broke the mold of 19th and 20th century theology by focusing consistently on God's promises of a new heaven and a new earth. The result was a theological imagination that is utterly realistic, delighting in the creative tension of theology that lives in an unfinished, open field of negations and possibilities. Hope for the promised future of God casts its light on present sufferings that contradict that future. The prominent themes here focus on the contradictions of God's promises and God's justice. The essays see clearly the human domination that leads to the oppression of nature, the hatred of the poor, the dominance of one gender over the other, the migration of those who find no home in their homeland, and the wounds of neocolonialism. For Moltmann, these sufferings do not belong simply to ethics but to the heart of theology. The doctrines of creation, redemption, and new creation are fully engaged in the political, economic, ecological, and social problems of this time. Here lies the way ecumenism will be reborn in the future. The essays argue that theology should not turn aside from Moltmann's main theme of the resurrection of the Crucified One and of the presence of God's future in the present. Hope opens our eyes to the work of God's Spirit of Life and the affirmation of eternal life in the present. The future of Christian theology should not miss the theme of joy in the face of sin, death, and evil and the celebration of God's cosmic, all-inclusive future in which God will be at home in God's creation.

Drawn from the Twelfth Oxford Institute of Methodist Theological Studies in August, 2007, these essays address the ecclesiological deficit of Methodism in relation to vocation and mission, crucial issues that have suffered from theological and practical confusion in the world Methodist communion these last decades. The authors enter into an uncommonly honest dialogue across the global divides and press urgent questions about how world Methodist and Wesleyan churches can regain a biblically sound view of mission and ecumenism without traits of colonialism. The answer from all continents is that this revitalization must and, in fact, is beginning in the congregation around revived practices of vocation and sanctification. The essays are suffused by a sense of realism about the church in a changing world economy and geopolitics and a contagious encouragement through the gospel and Wesleyan traditions that world Methodism can be revived in genuine connection.

Contents

1. M. Douglas Meeks: A Home for The Homeless: Vocation, Mission, and church in Wesleyan Perspective
2. William Willimon: What If Wesley Was Right?

3. Lung-Kwong Lo: Ecclesiology from the Perspective of Scriptures within Wesleyan and Asian Contexts

4. Tim Macquiban: Work On Earth and Rest in Heaven: Toward A Theology Of Vocation in the Writings of Charles Wesley

5. Ivan Abrahams: "To Serve the Present Age, Our Calling to Fulfill:: A Different Church for a Different World
6. Marjorie Suchocki: Christian Perfection: A Methodist Perspective on Ecclesiology

7. Robin W. Lovin: , Human Rights, Vocation, and Human Dignity

7. Paulo Ayres Mattos: The World Is My Parish. Is It? Wesleyan Ecclesio-Missiological Considerations from a Contemporary Latin American Perspective"

This collection of provocative essays by one of the world's most distinguished theologians deals with topics as diverse as the right to work, nuclear war, the Olympic Games, Lutheran and Reformed political thought, and the "common hope" of Judaism and Christianity ???????????? all within the framework of human rights. J????????rgen Moltmann believes that the dignity of the human being is the source for all human rights; if this dignity is not acknowledged and exercised, human beings cannot fulfill their destiny of living as the image of God.