Mark French Buchanan and Jürgen Moltmann, Embraced: Many Stories, One Destiny: You, Me, and Moltmann (Eugene, Or: Wipf and Stock, 2015), xiii + 100 Pps., $15.00.
Mark French Buchanan is a Presbyterian pastor specializing in multicultural ministry in the Los Angeles area. He has been an enthusiastic student of Jürgen Moltmann’s theology since encountering Dr. Moltmann as a seminarian at Princeton Seminary. He currently resides in Pasadena, California, with his wife and children. In what follows, I shall cursorily cover salient entailments of the text.
Buchanan notes that it was through the thick tomes of life that he found hope, just as Moltmann himself had, in the groaning of the sufferings of the world. Moltmann’s theology indwelled hope into Buchanan on a grand scale that encompassed all things. After decades of trudging paths that led him out into the world and others that led inward, he discovered there was an interpenetration of hope by reading and reflecting upon Moltmann. Moltmann’s theology taught him that the very existence of hope itself is evidence of God’s life dwelling within and around the people of God’s creation. The theology of Moltmann and the stories in this book help Buchanan make sense out of life as it is linked to the life of God. Buchanan’s stories illustrate the central insights of Moltmann’s theology and narrate what is fundamental to his work: that God dwells in every person as an inward guide, and that God encompasses everyone and everything. The stories illustrate how by indwelling and encompassing all things, God is drawing all things into his future. Buchanan is convinced that every time a hopeful story is told, God is the unseen storyteller, whispering, as it were, his empathy, encouragement, and guidance for life. As Buchanan shares these stories, he invites the reader to hear God whispering words of hope into their own lives and thereby find their place in God’s larger story. He encourages us to identify parts of our lives with portions of the stories and then perceive how we are being beckoned to God.
As we recognize analogous parts of our own stories to that of the greater story of God’s coming kingdom, we begin to find our place in the story of salvation. Yet the actual rescue is fictional until we discover that the Rescuer is dwelling in our own desperation, and even in the desperation of all those who are held down and back in this world. This power in weakness is its own witness and produces anticipation of what could be, instilling hope and eventually trust in a future fulfillment.
In recounting the story of his son and he swimming with the dolphins at the Big Island of Hawaii, Buchanan note that he was therein taught the wisdom of God: that in being found, known and indwelt are prerequisites to finding, knowing, and indwelling God. As we as humans are found, known and indwelt, we taste a way of life beyond what our own abilities can create or sustain (13). As we experience hope, we discover that it is not something that we take hold of, but rather is something that takes hold of us. Hope within an individual provides an image of the immanent embrace of God in human life.
In telling the story of Moltmann’s capture and subsequent POW status in chapter three, Buchanan contends that Moltmann understood that the very circumstances which rendered him helpless before death’s destructive door and hopeless before his own life were precisely where God was present and is to be found. While such companionship in suffering caught Moltmann’s attention, fulfilled hope remained out of reach until he experienced God’s assurance through human forgiveness. Moltmann testifies in his autobiography that he received such kindness of strangers and unexpected mercies of other Christians while he was a POW.
In describing a seven-day road trip of he and his son to Utah exploring the canyons of Zion and Bryce National Parks, Buchanan reminisces on a conversation that he had with a young lady over coffee that left him encompassed by God’s life-full presence. Buchanan notes that for Moltmann, this life-giving power is the creative livingness of God through which the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead into God’s eternal life. What distinguishes Moltmann’s understanding of the life-giving power of the Spirit is that this power is the life of God (41).
Through acts of self-sacrifice, Buchanan avers, all three persons of God resolve to set people free and to create room for them within their Trinitarian fellowship. As believers are drawn into the fellowship of God by the appearance of hope and love, they taste what Moltmann describes as the three persons of God existing with one another, for one another, and in one another. They witness that there is space for the “unfolding” of the new creation within and among them as they experience the mutuality of care, which the three persons provide. Such care is transformative, for it is the exchange of the life-giving love of God (48).
In an interesting story about river walking in Zion National Park, Buchanan notes that he has discovered the power of Christ’s own life and love welling up in him, strengthening him to not to resist the currents, per se, but to remain in him and go with the currents instead. In Christ’s life and love, Buchanan experiences Christ as the wounded companion, sympathetic to his fears, and empathetic to his sufferings. In Buchanan’s life, the Master River Walker strides through the dangerous currents downstream, headed not across the river, but toward the final destination of the union of all things in the life of God (66-67).
All in all, this is a lively collection of stories by Buchanan. Herein, he interweaves personal stories with the theology of Jürgen Moltmann in a powerful narrative. I recommend to all who have interests in modern theology.
Bradford McCall
Regent University