Section Presenters Systematical Theology

Hope and Hopelessness: When Systematic Theology Meets Lived Experiences of Pastoral Care 

In the realm of pastoral care practices, theologies of hope face a critical test. When engaging with care seekers and their narratives of hope and hopelessness, pastors convert their systematic theologies of hope into conversational attention, theological diagnosis, and compassionate interventions. This paper endeavors to delineate a theology of hope capable of embracing and empowering pastoral care practices. Essential questions addressed include: What constitutes hope, how does it manifest in dialogical interactions, and is it always welcome? 

Methodologically, this paper engages in a hermeneutical and critical dialogue, juxtaposing two distinct sets of materials: 1) Selected systematic and pastoral theologies of hope, and 2) A qualitative investigation into the reflections of educated and experienced pastoral caregivers within the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Denmark regarding their conversational engagement with hope and hopelessness.  

Through a systematic exploration of the theology of hope in the context of pastoral care, this paper offers insights to enhance a crucial ecclesial practice, particularly during times of numerous global and local crises, which underscore both the promise of hope and the challenges inherent in its imposition. 

Mikkel Gabriel Christoffersen is an assistant professor of Practical Theology at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. From 2019 to 2021, he served as a postdoctoral fellow at UCPH, working on the project „Ambiguities of Shame: Interdisciplinary, Contemporary Theology,“ which was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation. In 2017, Christoffersen obtained his PhD with the dissertation "Living with Risk and Danger: Studies in Interdisciplinary, Systematic Theology," which was published by Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht in 2019. For this work, he was honored with the Manfred Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise. Currently, Christoffersen is involved in various research projects within Practical Theology, specifically related to digital pastoral care, negotiations of values in pastoral care, and public theologies of climate shame. 

The Regime of Futurity: On the Political Eschatology of Democracy
[Das Regime der Zukünftigkeit: zur politischen Eschatologie der Demokratie]

The thesis of a radical democratic theory is that democracy revolves around an empty place or an empty signifier that enables it to constantly transcend itself and move towards futures that cannot be planned but—critically stated—therefore also provide no security and no stability in crisis. In this view, democracy has an inherent political theology: It revolves around the sublimity and unavailability of power instead of idolizing it and can therefore only exist as a regime of futurity. It cannot and must not be the “end of history” but can only exist as a culture of inner unrest and not as in an intrinsically saturated form of existence for self-assurance. If democracy, unlike what liberal ethics assumes, is therefore itself a form of political eschatology and theology, then the demand of liberal ethics to finally release democracy as a secular form of existence for freedom from theological paternalism is, at minimum, theologically and politically blind. Even the attempt to avoid participation in the debate on the dysfunctionality and criticism of democracy in order to “stand on the right side of history this time” (Arnd Henze) can then be described as an undemocratic attitude. In the theological sense, the true democrat can only be a critic of democracy when keeping its inner unrest alive and constantly challenging its central convictions and values. But how can the political eschatology inherent in democracy then be further developed theologically? And should it really—even if beyond a critique of liberal ethics—simply be affirmed theologically?

Rebekka A. Klein is Professor of Systematic Theology with a focus on Ethics at Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main. Her research focuses on political theology and democratic theory, the powerlessness of God, charity and altruism, as well as vulnerability and bodily subjectivity as paradigms of a new, interdisciplinary anthropology. Rebekka Klein is co-editor of the collected volume In Need of a Master: Politics, Theology and Radical Democracy and author of the monograph Sociality as the Human Condition: Anthropology in Economic, Philosophical and Theological Perspective. 

On the Advantage and Disadvantage of Hope for Life
[Vom Nutzen und Nachteil der Hoffnung für das Leben]

Theologies of hope have lost traction following significant breakthroughs in the second half of the 20th century. Alongside theological, ideological, and intersectional critiques, historical disillusionment have also played a role in this. This lecture takes up important impulses of current theologies of hopelessness, explores their potentials and limits, and examines the conditions of a future theological discourse on hope.

Hanna Reichel is Associate Professor of Reformed Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary (USA). Since the publication of After Method: Queer Grace, Conceptual Design and the Possibility of Theology (Westminster John Knox, 2023), Reichel has been working on a theological anthropology that engages with recent anti-humanisms.

The Future of Hope: On the Transformation of Future Eschatology
[Die Zukunft der Hoffnung: Zur Transformation futurischer Eschatologie]

Hope has a difficult standing, even theologically. There are reasons for this, but none of them are good. In a brief history of problems, I explore these backgrounds and worlds in order to examine certain aspects that are essential for a future eschatology. The genitive of the title is therefore resolved in both directions here—with two questions: What does the future look like when life is lived in a hopeful manner? And what does it mean for hope when it is clear that we must be interested in the future? For one thing is certain: We will spend the rest of our lives in it.

Hartmut von Sass is Honorary Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy of Religion at the University of Zurch and is a Heisenberg Scholar at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His publications include Atheistisch glauben: Ein theologischer Essay (2022, 3rd ed. 2023) and Außer sich sein: Hoffnung und ein neues Format der Theologie (2023). 

The Extension of Life is Not Transformative and Fulfilling? On Transhuman and Theological Hope for the Body
[Lebensverlängerung ist nicht transformativ und erfüllend? Über transhumane und theologische Hoffnung für den Körper]

Networks of standardization can be seen in the body. In the context of Christianity, one such standardization seems to suggest that we must accept aging and not delay it or even, if possible, technically transform it completely. A distinction should therefore be made between “aging” and “age.” Aging is associated with processes of decline, while old age is associated with maturity, which is something that transhumanist thinking dares to ponder without comorbidities. Academic voices from theology and philosophy are critical of, or even hostile to, the project of an old age without aging in the aforementioned sense or a somatic hope that is not affected by the limits of nature. Despite reference being made to images of hope shared with Christianity, transhumanism has a rather negative reputation in theology and ethics. A hope for the body that wants more future than a basic minimum in a distant future seems to be normatively forbidden. Sacred art, on the other hand, runs counter to this trend in offering implicit images of near-transhuman hopes for the body—depictions of great figures from church history whose faces point to a long and old life but whose athletic and muscular bodies are presented without signs of senescence. In such paintings and sculptures, we therefore encounter futures of bodies that, in such a way, bid farewell to the fate of decay. These are not based on a radically different religious future, which means that moments of continuity that make hope for the future something personal need not be left out. The hybrid bodies in significant Christian artwork of various kinds point to a certain kind of combined integrity upon which transhuman attempts to radically halt aging rely but are considered anthropologically misguided, especially in theological and ethical discourse. It is seen not as transformative and fulfilling but as homogenizing and existentially disruptive to extend life phases and lifespans with technology and pharmacology. In contrast, this presentation aims to consider the future with theological means that allow hope for very concrete bodies.

Mathias Wirth is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology with an emphasis on ethics at the University of Bern. The main areas of his research include medicinal ethics, alterity and recognition thinking, transgender and (theological) ethics, transhumanism and (theological) ethics, sexual violence in interdisciplinary perspective, as well as medial humanities. He is co-editor of the Zeitschrift für Evangelische Ethik and member of the Academy for Ethics in Medicine.