Jürgen Moltmann remains one of the most prominent theologians of the 20th century, and one of Moltmann’s biggest contributions was a theology in response to suffering and oppression which was relevant to a post-World War II world. In a loose sense of the term, we still are a post-World War II world, although new historical sufferings and oppressions have arisen which continue to warrant Moltmann’s theology and make it fitting that he continue to be our guide. Moltmann’s distinctive is that freedom, he would argue, comes from friendship. One is both liberated in the friendship of Jesus at the cross and also liberated through friendship with other humans. This paper will first examine Christ’s friendship as the basis of human friendship, second, claim that friendship replaces oppression with affection, and third, assert that friendship replaces oppression with public solidarity. In each of these descriptions of friendship, Jesus’s and ours, friendship is the means by which one becomes free.
First, Moltmann contends that Christ demonstrates friendship with humanity at the cross. He reconceives christology in the relational vocabulary of friendship. Moltmann finds the traditional offices of prophet, priest and king denote sovereignty. However, if the three offices are reinterpreted in light of Jesus’s friendship, they better capture the freedom of the cross. As prophet, Jesus intercedes on behalf of people so that humanity might talk to God in prayer as a friend. Moltmann explains, “By bringing the sighs and groans of the world’s misery to God, he claims God’s friendship for those who sigh and groan.”(Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 119). God listens to humankind, demonstrating friendship and solidarity. As priest, Jesus lovingly dies for his friends, for he both makes atonement and is the sacrifice himself (Jn. 15:13). As king, Jesus demonstrates the power to replace one’s human bondage with the freedom of friendship. In the threefold offices, Moltmann reconceives the cross as restoring the freedom of intimate friendship between God and humanity, as being a free and loving gift to friends and as replacing bondage with freedom. Jesus exhibits friendship at the cross.
Jesus’s friendship is the paradigm for societal freedom too. Because of Jesus’ friendship with us, we extend friendship with others. Like Jesus, we listen to others in solidarity, we metaphorically “die” to our own concerns, and we replace oppression in society with liberation. Believers live according to God’s kingdom and participate in God’s nature, even betraying the ethics of their own society. He elaborates, “The Church takes up the society with which it lives – into its own horizon of expectation of the eschatological fulfillment of justice, life humanity and sociability, and communicates in its own decisions in history its openness and readiness for this future and its elasticity towards it.”(Moltmann, Theology of Hope, 328). Those touched by Jesus’s friendship rewrite their own social commitments, pressing for freedom for others. In light of Jesus’s friendship, this paper continues in its assertion that (2) friendship replaces oppression with affection and (3) friendship replaces oppression with solidarity. We will examine both.
Jesus’s friendship replaces oppression with affection. The two are brought together by respect, not possession and control. Since “friend” is not a title of function or a social role, friendship does not burden the other with demands. A relationship bound by domination and demands is oppression, and friendship, its opposite. Moltmann defines “friendship” as “someone who likes you.” Friendship is a relationship between people who simply like one another for themselves, just as they are, different as they are. Affection can occur for another who shares similarities as well as another who is different. There is an “eye-to-eye” mutuality, even among dissimilarity. This experience of friendship opens up the free life. Moltmann notes the German linguistic connection of “friendliness” (Freundlichkeit) to “freedom” (Freiheit). A friend does not restrict one’s individual freedom, but rather, allows it, ushering them into being accepted in difference and loved in community. When one is accepted and loved, they are free. Friendship replaces the previous dynamic of oppression with one of affection.
Friendship replaces oppression with solidarity, or intervention on the behalf of the other. Because of the affection and radical acceptance of friendship that allows one to be free, a friend also ensures his friend’s societal freedom too. Moltmann expresses “friendship” as a political term which denotes faithful and public alliance meriting protection and respect, especially to the one who is different. He states, “Without the power of friendship and without the goal of a friendly world there is no human hope for the class struggles and struggles for dominance." (Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 116). Solidarity means resistance of the domination of the weak, sick, young and old, such as Christians who maintained social contact and friendship with Jews in the German Reich. Solidarity carries risk, for it often places one in opposition to oppressors, who are powerful and rich. For the oppressors, this is a betrayal of one’s own group, whether that be class, race or sex. For the oppressed, however, they are already in opposition to the powerful, merely through their station in life. For either party, the Christian mission is clear to Moltmann. Those who are in friendship with Jesus act in solidarity with the the oppressed in public and social avenues.
Moltmann’s theology continues in relevance today. We still see societal sufferings and oppressions from which we seek freedom. Here Moltmann offers friendship as the key which unlocks liberation. Christ presents the paradigm of friendship as the one who acts in solidarity which establishes relationship, who gives his life for his friends and who exchanges captivity with freedom. We, too, are then on this Christian mission of friendship which feels so great an affection for the other that it launches one into the public sector to act on behalf of the friend. Friendship substitutes oppression with freedom.
Following his 2024 death, Jürgen Moltmann leaves behind the theological idea of friendship, which as the potential to advance freedom amidst today’s sufferings and oppressions. He asserts that Christ’s friendship on the cross is the example for human friendship. Once touched by Jesus’s friendship, one replaces patterns of oppression with the kind of friendship which advances the care and liberation of the other. This paper will argue for Moltmann’s belief that Jesus’s example of friendship spurs the kind of human friendship which creates freedom. First, Jesus’s friendship with us will be examined. Second, the affection inherent in friendship for those who are both the same and different is argued. Third, this work argues that friendship launches one into public solidarity and advocacy for his friend. Human friendship, in the example of Jesus, has the potential to promote a freer society.