{"id":6161,"date":"2026-04-24T19:27:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T19:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eeit-edu.info\/?p=6161"},"modified":"2026-04-28T22:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T22:53:12","slug":"british-and-ukrainian-theologians-commemorated-moltmanns-centenary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eeit-edu.info\/en\/british-and-ukrainian-theologians-commemorated-moltmanns-centenary\/","title":{"rendered":"British and Ukrainian Theologians Commemorated Moltmann\u2019s Centenary"},"content":{"rendered":"

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of J\u00fcrgen Moltmann\u2019s birth (April 8, 1926), the Eastern European Institute of Theology (EEIT) and the Odessa Theological Seminary (OTS) co-hosted an international online seminar titled \u201cJ\u00fcrgen Moltmann: Remembering the Person, Celebrating the Legacy,\u201d honoring the German theologian\u2019s memory and examining the relevance of his thought for the church and for a country living under conditions of war.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The seminar, held on April 23, 2026, and moderated by Oleksandr Heychenko, Rector of OTS, brought together theologians from the United Kingdom and Ukraine. The organizers described it as the largest event dedicated to Moltmann\u2019s work since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. Simultaneous interpretation into Ukrainian was provided throughout the event.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This seminar demonstrated that, on the 1,520th day of Russia\u2019s full-scale war against Ukraine, the community of Ukrainian theologians and seminary faculty continues to serve the local church \u2013 training a new generation of pastors, chaplains, and theological leaders amid shelling and air raid sirens \u2013 while also learning to serve the global church by reflecting on the hard-won experience of theological work in wartime conditions.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This dual calling was clearly reflected in the audience's diversity: the seminar brought together nearly 100 participants from 36 countries across five continents. The largest group of participants were from Ukraine, as well as from Austria, Australia, Belarus, Belgium, Cameroon, Canada, C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Ethiopia, Germany, Ghana, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Lebanon, Liberia, Mali, Mexico, Moldova, the Netherlands, Nigeria, North Macedonia, the Philippines, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Tanzania, the United Kingdom, and the United States<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The keynote lecture, \u201cJ\u00fcrgen Moltmann: A Leader for Our Time,\u201d was delivered by Professor Paul S. Fiddes, Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Oxford and Senior Research Fellow of Regent\u2019s Park College; a theologian who pursued post-doctoral studies under Moltmann in T\u00fcbingen in the 1970s and whose \u201cCreative Suffering of God\u201d (1988) remains a significant interlocutor with Moltmann\u2019s project.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Fiddes traced Moltmann\u2019s intellectual arc from the flak battery in Hamburg in July 1943, through the Norton Camp POW experience near Nottingham, to the publication of \u201cTheology of Hope\u201d (1964), \u201cThe Crucified God \u201c(1972), \u201cThe Trinity and the Kingdom of God\u201d (1980), and \u201cThe Coming of God\u201d (1996).<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Particular attention was given to an analysis of Moltmann\u2019s Trinitarian theology, his critique of political monotheism, his doctrine of the millennium, and his universal eschatology of joy. At the same time, the speaker offered a number of critical remarks \u2013 particularly regarding certain aspects of Moltmann\u2019s social Trinitarianism and his understanding of eternity.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Two Ukrainian theologians continued the discussion.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Anatoliy Denysenko, research fellow at the Eastern European Institute of Theology, presented \u201cThe Theology of the Cross of J\u00fcrgen Moltmann in the Ukrainian Context,\u201d interpreting Moltmann\u2019s project through the lenses of provocative anamnesis (Moltmann) and dangerous memory (Johann Baptist Metz).<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Denysenko argued that Moltmann\u2019s theology is inseparable from his biography \u2013 the 1943 firestorm over Hamburg, the photographs of Bergen-Belsen shown to German POWs in 1945, and his prolonged confrontation with Auschwitz \u2013 and that the central question of The Crucified God<\/i> is not the abstract theodicy, \u201cWhy does God permit suffering?\u201d but the wartime cry, \u201cMy God, where are you?\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Drawing on the thought of Dostoevsky, Camus, and Elie Wiesel, Denysenko argued that Moltmann reinterprets classical theodicy by replacing it with a \u201cdialectic of love\u201d: God does not justify suffering but enters into it; He is present in the experience of abandonment precisely as the Crucified One.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

He concluded with a clear call to action: Ukrainian theology must develop its own discipline of dangerous memory \u2013 a theology that refuses to treat the deaths of soldiers, children, and civilians as abstract examples of evil, and instead insists on naming, remembering, and honoring each life lost since 2014.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Taras Dyatlik, VSI engagement director for Scholar Leaders in Eastern Europe and a theological education consultant with Mesa Global, delivered a response titled \u201cOn the Centennial of J\u00fcrgen Moltmann\u2019s Birthday: A Theological Reflection amid the 1,520th Day of Russian Aggression against Ukraine.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Speaking on the 1,520th day of the full-scale Russian invasion, and from a family in which five siblings, cousins, and nephews have been killed by Russian forces since 2022 \u2013 including his brother Andriy, an army medic who was fatally wounded by a Russian drone on July 6, 2024 \u2013 with another six relatives currently serving on the front line, Taras offered what he described as \u201cnot a student\u2019s response to a professor, but a fellow prisoner\u2019s response, from another captivity.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

His three-part argument defended Moltmann\u2019s often-dismissed doctrine of the millennium as \u201cthe most morally serious move in twentieth-century theology,\u201d and as precisely what Ukrainian theology has been waiting for. He insisted that God\u2019s justice must be realized on the very earth where injustice occurred: \u201con the soil where Bucha lies, and Izium, and Olenivka, and Mariupol.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Referring to Moltmann\u2019s critique of political monotheism, he applied it as a direct theological lens for analyzing the ideology of the \u201cRussian World,\u201d describing it as a system governed by the logic of \u201cone God on one throne, one patriarch, one emperor, one canonical territory, one holy people.\u201d It is on this theological premise, he argued, that \u201cthe Moscow empire still stands \u2013 and still shells, and still blesses the shelling.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, he proposed supplementing Moltmann\u2019s pastoral theology of presence with the biblical language of judgment and lament, drawing especially on Psalms 137 and 109, the Book of Habakkuk, and Revelation 6:10. In his view, the command in Matthew 5:44 to love one\u2019s enemies does not cancel out the cry of the martyrs: \u201cHow long, O Lord?\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

During the presentation, references were also made to three recent books \u2013 published in collaboration with the British publisher Langham, the Ukrainian publisher \u201cDukh i Litera,\u201d and the Eastern European Institute of Theology \u2013 as real examples of what was described as \u201ctheology written under fire, not after it\u201d: Light in the Valley of the Shadow of Death: Stories of Ukrainian Christians During the War<\/i> (2025), Beatitudes and Terror: A Ukrainian Theological Response to Russian Aggression<\/i> (2025), and the forthcoming Pastoral Ministry During War: The Ukrainian Experience<\/i> (2027).<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The seminar concluded with an image from April 2022 \u2013 tulips sprouting through the ruins of Borodyanka \u2013 which was then symbolically applied to Moltmann himself: \u201cHis theology did not choose Ukraine. It was written in German, in T\u00fcbingen, about Auschwitz and Hiroshima\u2026 And yet it blossomed here \u2013 in our ruins.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

On behalf of the participants, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Kseniia Trofymchuk and Roman Soloviy, whose joint efforts in organizing the event were essential to its realization. Their work stands as a quiet but meaningful expression of the conviction that shaped the seminar as a whole.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Moltmann once wrote that there would be no honest \u201ctheology after Auschwitz\u201d without \u201ctheology in Auschwitz.\u201d Ukrainian theological educators, on the 1,520th day of Russia\u2019s ongoing war of terror against their country, express a similar conviction in their own terms: there will be no honest theology after Ukraine unless theology is being done in Ukraine now \u2013 in seminaries and theological programs, in basements, at funerals, and in ministry to refugees and internally displaced persons, as well as to the families of veterans, the fallen, the missing, and those in Russian captivity.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Supporting the formation of theological leaders during the war is not a luxury to be postponed until peace arrives; it is the very condition for any post-war theology to be possible at all.<\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Taras Dyatlik<\/a> on behalf of the organizers.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n\n\n