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This song started as a translation of a Spanish corito: “Has cambiado mi lamento en baile.” But then I used the corito as a chorus and added three verses. Then I also changed the words of the song a good deal. It dates back to April 30, 1995 or even earlier. I think we were already singing it in St. Paul’s in Coney Island before 1992.
Psalm 30 complete Click and hear Josh on drums, Mark on guitar, Peter on trumpet, and all three of us singing!

1. I will exalt you, O Lord, because you lifted me up, lifted me up, lifted me up,

I will exalt you, O Lord, because you lifted me up, out of the dust and ashes.

Chorus: So you have changed my complaining into dancing, my lamenting into rejoicing.

My feathery feet dance the beat of thanksgiving, gone is a truckload of worry.

I will exalt you, O Lord, my God, give you praise now and forever,

because you changed my complaining into dancing, my lamenting into rejoicing.

2. Weeping may spend the hours of the night, hours of the night, hours of the night.

Weeping may spend the hours of the night, but joy comes in the morning.

Chorus.

3. God’s anger endures for the twinkling of an eye, twinkling of an eye, twinkling of an eye,

God’s anger endures for the twinkling of an eye, but God’s favor for a life-time.

In Spanish;

Has cambiado mi lamento en baile

me senistes de alegria.

Por eso a Ti cantare gloria mia

Y no estare callado.

Jehova Dios Mio Te alabare

Te alabare para siempre.

Has cambiado mi lamento en baile

Jehova Dios Mio Te alabare.

Education

Where’s your edge?

The edge of your knowledge

Lies way beyond college.

It’s having faith

in the truth you’ve heard

from the living Word.

It’s by faith that we receive the mind of Jesus,

who from sin and ignorance frees us.

Lift up your thought for all humankind.

Love God with all your heart, soul, and mind.

Study the Word and

Outstrip your teachers,

Overtake your preachers.

Go to school, college, and university,

Life commences into maturity.

Information, knowledge, wisdom,

Christ is the way to freedom.

To know him is sweet,

A lamp for your feet,

A light for your path.

Just do the math and have a laugh,

Because the edge of your knowledge

Lies way beyond college.

Peter Krey June 28, 2009, Education Sunday at Bethlehem

Pentecost III – June 21, 2009 at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Oakland, CA

Job 38.1-11  Psalm 107.1-3, 23-32  II Corinthians 6.1-13  Mark 4.3544

“They Took him Just Like He Was!”

Sometimes an old familiar text has words in it that you never noticed before. A few years ago in this gospel lesson it was “Jesus sleeping on a cushion.” This time it’s “[the disciples] took Jesus [into the boat] just as he was.” Jesus says, “Let’s go to the other side, [that is, of the Sea of Galilee], and leaving the crowd behind, they took him just as he was. And other boats were with him.”

That other boats were with him can easily stand for a little fleet of churches following Jesus, their sails trimmed and trying to stay with him. But perhaps “taking Jesus just as he was” and now, just as he is, brings us to the stormy side, out of our comfort zone and over to a place where we don’t know how to deal with the rising waves of chaos.

On one side of the sea were the Jews, like Jesus and his disciples, and on the other side were all the Gentiles. So there is Jesus taking his disciples out of their comfort zone and now us as well, to people very much unlike us, people who speak a different language, who eat different food, who have other values, that are not like ours. We have to get to the principles underlying them, therefore, to the source of our values to be able to discriminate what is right and saving and what is wrong and destructive.

Well, it is no secret that our churches are like ships. The place where you are sitting is called a nave and navis is a ship in Latin. That’s where our word “Navy” came from. Now we come into our church and we want to be in our comfort zone, but Jesus pilots us into a storm where we feel completely unsafe. As a matter of fact, the wind and the waves start gushing over us and we fear that we will lose our lives and our church will sink.

And that is just how Jesus is. Jesus goes and touches lepers and heals them. Hey, we could catch that disease, just like all the brave souls that helped those with HIV and Aids instead of condemning them. You wish Jesus would see things the way we do, but he calls us to serve those who we feel endanger our lives.

For example, why should Jesus care for all those teenagers, with their baggy pants half-way down their buttocks, who don’t wear belts, because all the men in prisons are not allowed to have them? Ah, sure Jesus could send us to real little children, but try to reach out to teenagers and the young crowd! It will be one storm after another, one crisis after another. Add to that that we are grandparents and somehow mothers and fathers of the children have collapsed – how can Jesus call a church to serve those whose wind and waves wash over us completely and threaten to sink us to the bottom under uncontrollable chaos. That’s something we certainly do not need! But that is the way Jesus is!

A-way outside of our comfort zones are the lost ones who have substance addictions, for example. They are alcoholic or drug addicted, sex addicted, those caught up in drug violence, or just control freaks making our relationships impossible. How can Jesus pilot our church toward them and ask us to rescue them, to put our shoulders under their troubles and not just keep our shoulders under our own. We sing, “I’ve got my troubles you’ve got yours” so you take care of yours. That is not what Jesus had in mind. If we take Jesus into our church with us, the way he is, then their troubles become our own, and that takes us deep into stormy waters that go way over our heads, and we say, “Do you know what? We have to think about our survival, forget Jesus. How can he be just the way he is?”

We heard how God put the ocean into its place and said, “Thus far can your proud waves pound the shore and no further!” That is where you will have to stay. But Jesus bids us take this church right out into the wind and the waves that arise because we follow him and “being just the way he is,” eating with tax-collectors and prostitutes! Going to the side that is filled with the lost, the desperate, the hopeless, the dying – and in their midst, going way to the back of our church and there finding Jesus sleeping on a pillow, completely reposed in his trusting God, so that in all the wind and waves and the deadly danger of the storm, he is fast asleep, checking out his dreams, and completely certain that he is safe in the hands of God and his kingdom is coming.

There was a story about my father that I could tell today. He had his faults, but he was a man of faith till his end. And those that have no faith, even their strengths become curses on their children, while because of faith, even a father’s weaknesses turn into blessings for his children. My father attended a bible school rather than a university and thus he was not accepted as a pastor in Germany. So he was sent as a missionary to German speaking Americans as a pastor of the Gospel. He came over on an ocean liner in 1926 and the ship passed through a dreadful storm. My father slept in the bow of the ship through it all. Like Jonah in his storm – and like Jesus they had to wake him up to pray for the passengers’ survival. My father had been a soldier through some of the most terrible battles of World War I and a storm out at sea was hardly as dangerous as the forces storming their trenches in that mass production of death known a World War I. My father brought every man of his machine gun company back safely. The slogan was that it was a great thing to die for the country. He told his soldiers, it is even better to come back alive and live for your country.

Those who want to save their lives for Jesus, however, will lose them, but those who risk everything and lose their lives for Jesus or righteousness sake, will gain them. It does no good keeping the little ship Bethlehem in peace and calm in order to avoid the wind and the waves of the chaos that Jesus sends us into – way outside of our comfort zones.

Thank God that Carey is hitting us with some different ways of singing our old songs. Even if some of us with our hearing aids and our old ears have to sit out in the car, because the music sounds like a storm in our ears. Really, you haven’t heard anything yet. If you have gone to where young people listen to their music, you will hear it so loud that you can lean into it. The power of the sound waves does not let you fall down. I’ve listened to several of the bands that my sons play in and I’ll tell you, they are way outside a sixty-five year old’s comfort zone. Nora and I had to go all the way to the back of the hall not to get our ear drums blown out by a band that came before the one that we came to hear and even that one was called, “This Bike is a Pipe-Bomb.”

But listen to St. Paul: “I speak to you like children: open wide your hearts, because our hearts are open wide to you.” St. Paul does not allow us to restrict our affections for these young people, and we do have to get some music into our church service that they understand and can respond to; even if it is a service where all us old fogies have to wear ear plugs.

Because St. Paul opened his heart so wide, look at the storms he had to go through: afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger, and he could add ship wrecks out at sea. And I thought having the little window of my car knocked out here at Bethlehem was something!

Jesus sends us to the other side, out of the crowd that shares our comfort zone and into the one that needs to hear the gospel of God’s grace. There they are overcome by the waves of violence and addiction with drugs and alcohol and Jesus can be awakened for them. And he will command the wind and the waves in their lives to be still. And they too will find rest for their souls. People are dying out there and what is this rescue mission called Bethlehem doing? Are we busy saving our own lives? Are we thinking only of our survival?

Churches are sent by Jesus like sailors who go down to the sea in ships, to go into the chaos and become a rescue mission. Like Jesus commanded his disciples, we too are commanded to sail to the other side and that means right through the storm. When the waves wash over us and some of us even get washed overboard, like the “Deadliest Catch” of those crab fishermen on the Discovery Channel on TV, Jesus is back there in our church fast asleep, replete with trust, completely filled by trust in God. Then we say, “Jesus wake up! Don’t you care that we are perishing?”

“O you of little faith!” he’ll answer. And he’ll command the wind and the waves” “Peace be still!” and a whole ‘nother part of chaos will get saved by God’s continuous creation.

Have you ever read Psalm 107 all the way through? Do it! It is a wonderful Psalm. There are four scenarios of people in distress described in the psalm. We only read the one about those who go down to the sea in ships, but there are those lost in the desert, thirsting to death for lack of water; those who are sick and in the crisis of their illness, they stare at the doorway of death already open; and all cry to the Lord in their distress and he answers them and delivers them out of their trouble.

I mentioned the youth mostly in this sermon, but I could have brought up those caught in the great storm of this recession, unemployed, underwater in their mortgage, and newly homeless. I could bring up all the inmates of our prisons and how they are languishing in those isolation cells, the prisons inside our prisons. I could have spoken about gays or the problems of the immigrants in our midst: talk about taking us out of our comfort zones! Or we could bring up all the aged in our senior citizen homes, about whom no one cares and who are just waiting to die.

Now we can choose the mission from these and any number of different scenarios. But there is no question that Jesus commands us to sail to the other side with his mission of the Gospel. With vision, purpose, and leadership, we will brave the wind and the waves, trusting in the one asleep in us, whom when we enter the storm, we will wake up. And he’ll stand up and command the wind and the waves “Peace be still!”

All glory, laud, and honor to our precious Lord Jesus Christ and we thank God that our Savior is gracious, merciful, and filled with steadfast love for us, because that’s just the way he is!  Amen.

For the Children’s Sermon:

Stormy Song

As the disciples were sailing

in the Sea of Galilee,

way, hey, blow them all down.

Jesus was sleeping,

back on a cushion was he.

The storm had some time to blow them around.

The storm it arose

and the waves pounded on them,

way, hey, blow them all down.

The waves beat the boat

and the water poured on them,

there for a while they thought they’d all drown.

So scared they were drowning

and frightened to death,

way, hey blow them all down.

They ran back to Jesus

and gasped out of breath,

“Won’t you wake up, we’re all going down.”

Then Jesus spoke to the wind

and commanded the sea

way, hey, blow the storm down.

Peace! Mind, you waves,

now be still, dreadful sea.

Jesus got up and the storm it died down.

So why are you frightened

and where is your faith?

way, hey he blew the storm down

so trust in the one

Whom the great waves obey

give him some time to make your life calm.

P. Krey June 22, 2003 for Bethlehem Lutheran Church Youth Sunday Oakland CA 94607. The melody from an old sea chantey, “Blow the Man Down.”  Mark and I sang it again for Bethlehem June 21, 2009.

Our family used to love to sing together, I imagine hundreds of songs. I discovered some of them on youtube. Nora has been listening to Spanish ones and I have been listening to these! Here are their adresses:

By Esther Ofarim

Guten Abend, Gute Nacht http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SehtRoDTYsY&NR=1

Weis Du Wieviel Sternlein Stehen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db5R5p5ewPM&feature=related

Schlafe mein Prinzchen Schal ein http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eKcfd0_CsU&feature=related

Friesenlied „Wo die Nordsee Wellen“ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2cTCmOlDJA&NR=1

Lili Marlene by Marlene Dietrich http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjlt0GgVZtI&feature=related

This for Esther: Lolita „Fahre mich in die ferne mein blonder Matrose“

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcpTaEDgUwk

Seeman deine Heimat ist das Meer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me20KYJ8ZJc&NR=1

Das Lied des Nordens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WiLcJ84bII

Auf der Lüneburger Heide http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH4z1qbcFnM

Tief im Boehmer Wald http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLRkyqUuXss

Es war im Boehmer Wald http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr7WsEm74QM&feature=related

Hoch auf dem gelben Wagen (Aber der Wagen rollt)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef-I9AQZVRM&feature=related

Seeman Medley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAxPwC_joPE&feature=related

Ein Jaeger aus Kurpfalz http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXjk02hUIj4&feature=related

Im gruenen Wald wo die Drossel singt

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddTJO0_PhAg&feature=related

Ich schiess den Hirsch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MYAryeWisA&feature=related

Sixteen Tons: We sang this in English and it is funny to hear it as a Schlager with completely different words in German!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1–q9f6fWI&feature=related

These are pieces that Nora and I listen to Sunday mornings and it gives Soli Deo Gloria! Real glory to the day!

Bach BWV #78 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkSmf-_lids&feature=related

Bach BWV # 147 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mn1ibFdXDU&feature=related

When my father led worship in our home, it was all in German. But before going to the Sermon, he had adult Sunday School for the “Big Ones” and we “Little Ones” went into his study with our sister, Tirzah, who was our Sunday School teacher. Just before sending the Little Ones off, he sang two songs, all of us, of course, joining in. Looking through my old books, I found the words to these songs in markers I had placed in an Army and Navy Hymnal.[1] Here they are, and I hope at some point to record them, just so you can tell how they go.

Little Drops of Water

1. Little Drops of Water, Little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean And the beauteous land.

2. And the little moments, Humble though they be,

Make the mighty ages of eternity.

3. So our little errors, Lead the soul away

From the paths of virtue, Into sin to stray.

4. Little seeds of mercy, Sown by youthful hands,

Go to bless the nations, Far in heathen lands.

5. Little deeds of kindness, Little words of love,

Make our world an Eden, Like the heav’n above.

Usually he sang verses 1, 2, and 5. Then he would go right into the next song:

1. God is good, He gives food

To the little birds that fly.

Of them all, none doth fall

Without God on high.

2. Flowers rare he clotheth fair

Like the rainbow in the sky.

Glorious they in array,

Though they soon must die.

It is something going into an old book and finding markers like this that bring back childhood memories. I guess I’m growing old.

Just so that you get an idea how the songs go, I’ve recorded them, but in a more useful updated version. I left in one old word, “clotheth”. I hope it works. “Dresses” could be plugged in for it. I conclude with how my mother used the second song for a lullaby.

Little Drops of Water

1. Little Drops of Water, Little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean And the beauteous land.

2. And the little moments, Humble though they be,

Make the mighty ages of eternity.

3. So our little errors, Lead the soul away

From the paths of virtue, Into sin to stray.

4. Little seeds of mercy, Sown by youthful hands,

Go to bless the nations, In the far-away lands.

5. Little deeds of kindness, Little words of love,

Make our world an Eden, Like in heav’n above.

Usually Father sang verses 1, 2, and 5. Then he would go right into the next song:

1. God is good, Giving food

To the little birds that fly.

Of them all, none doth fall

Without God on high.

2. Flowers rare, God clotheth fair

Like the rainbow in the sky.

Glorious they in array,

Though they soon must die.

[1] Ivan L. Bennett, editor, Song and Service Book for Ship and Field: Army and Navy, (Washington: The United States Government Printing Office, 1942) (On the next page it states: A. S. Barnes and Company, Inc., 1941).  I believe that we must have gotten this hymnal from one of the American soldiers, who visited us regularly when we were in the UNRA Camp in Schwannheim, Germany.

Deriving the Two Expressions of the Exclusive “Or” from each other and showing that “XOR” is the dual of “iff,” that is, if and only if.

I have done the derivation of the exclusive “or” (XOR) in long hand. Here is the scan of my work:

After taking Aristotelain Logic and studying the syllogisms, we went to Truth Functional Logic. At the end of the class I would just give a preview of the more powerful predicate calculus, as well as other kinds of logic. WordPress des not pick up these symbols, therefore I scan the two pages:

dear Readers,

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I know some items are quite long and it would take time to read them. But at some point they might help you answer some questions.

Thanks for visiting,

peter krey

Several weeks ago I finished reading Moltmann’s, Sein Name ist Gerechtigkeit (His Name is Righteousness). I hope it gets translated into English soon. I translated a whole lot just taking notes, but I’m pretty sure the Gütersloher Verlagshaus (publishing house) has its own translator.

I’ve been struggling to write a book about performative declarations and God’s continuous creativity via language. John Searle underscores facts to such an extent in his work, The Construction of Social Reality, that he even emphasizes their existence as “brute facts” in the external reality of his naturalism.

I just read a reflection by Ronald E. Burmeister, “On the Atoll,” in (The Lutheran: January, 2009; page 3) that underscored Moltmann’s contention that nature is not just replete with facts but with signs that amount to speech directed to us. Climbing up an atoll in a gale, a 300 foot high column of rock in the Arctic region, Burmeister felt  a spiritual stirring. Struggling up to the summit represented all of life’s struggles. The sentinel-like rock stood for God’s everpresence, the undulating green tundra for God’s grace, the waters for baptism, the perspective from the summit, God’s promise to be with us always.

Compare my song “Route 128″ with that. Nature’s “resounding sound makes the Word abound, so naturally.” The physicality of nature matches the contour of the physical sound of words, and then their speech is heard. Also read my poem “Mount Chocorua.” It speaks of climbing into maturity.

Then look at Psalm 19:

The heavens are telling the glory of God

and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.

Day by day pours out speech

and night to night whispers knowledge.

There is no language nor are there words,

in which their voice is not heard (verses 1-3).

I found this note I penned after reading the section on Psalm 19 in Artur Weiser’s commentary on The Psalms (Philadelphia: Westminister Press, 1962): “The creation speaks and was also created by what God has spoken. It utters words and was uttered into existence by words.”

I wrote those words a long time ago, but now Moltmann has revived my attention to it and I see how it fits in with my performative declarations book.

Here are my comments and some notes that I took out of Moltmann’s book:

The speech of nature is directed to people (page 175). We divide and conquer nature [via science and torture it for its secrets]. But it is in its composition, it is in its organization as the Book of Nature, by means of our participatory grasp of it in the highest culture and spirit of humans,  that it speaks to us. [This requires] our companionship and connection with nature. We want to know nature and become one with it, connect with it and participate in it. [The scientific enterprise began with the pre-Socratics.] The point, however, is not to understand nature via natural explanations, but through awe and amazement. [I remember reading about Max Weber, Matthew Arnold,  and so many others, who grieved having lost the enchantment which science had taken away from them.] The act of nature toward us is like speech, which is meaningful to us.

As persons we need a relationship with nature, which is like the relationship of our body and soul. “Every environment is filled with meaningful symbols…every meaningful symbol of a subject is at one and the same time a meaningful symbol of the personal/ bodily form (Gestalt) of the subject.”

“Dis-covery or Ent-deckung in German has the same meaning as “revelation” (page 176). [I have often struggled with the distinction between discovery versus invention; for example, was logic discovered or invented by Aristotle?] Moltmann writes, “[for discovery] its object is presupposed, while in an invention, it is produced.”

The genetic code presents us with a universe of signs for interpretation or meaning. “In the human understanding of nature, it becomes conscious of itself.”

[We need a] theological hermeneutic of nature (page 178). Nature is a book whose signs we can learn to read. Like the Holy Book, nature is just as intelligible as the spirit is rational. This metaphor [the Book of Nature], understands the language of nature and calls the “signatures” of nature legible writing. Theologically speaking, all creatures are creations of divine words: God spoke, “Let there be light and there was light.”

As I began reading page 179, I wrote: “Genetic codes could be considered biological performatives, producing the organism that they are expressing, but their language, their speech acts are those of God, the Divine Logos.” To continue my thoughts, then Searle’s brute facts, in so far that they are biological organisms, are also language dependent.

Moltmann continues on page 179 with all the historical, theological concepts of the Book of Nature. Nicholas of Cusa felt that sensual perception was appropriate for nature: “Things are for the book of the senses. In them the wishes of Godly reason are described in sensual pictures.”

He quotes the abbot, Anthony, the third century monk, “My book is created nature, one always at my disposal should I want to read about God’s works.”

Basel the Great thought that our reason was created so perfectly by God that we, “through the beauty of creatures, as if they were letters and words, could read the wisdom and providence of God.”

Augustine called the book of nature, the book of the universe. So alongside scripture, we have the book of nature, universe, and more seldom, the book of creation.

Maximus the Confessor held, “The scriptures and nature were the two garments of Christ, which lit up in his transfiguration, his humanity [for] nature and his divinity[for] scripture.”

The Celtic, John Scotus Eriugena, considered the two books, theophanies, one read by means of letters, the other by forms.

Averroës [influenced by Aristotle] separated faith and reason; he stood against the inner harmony of faith and reason brought to expression by the two books, the Holy Scriptures and the Book of Nature.  [The Holy Book for Averroës would, of course, have been the Qur'an.]

The Book of Nature was always read in the light of scriptures. Through natural understanding of God one became wise but not saved; through understanding revelation one became saved, but sadly, not wise. The direct understanding of revelation founded another communion with God from the indirect understanding of nature, because every understanding founds a community (Gemeinschaft). We can also reverse [this perspective] and read the scriptures in the light of the book of nature. [I have always given an historical account of the progress of science. Back then in the time when the creation story was written, the elements were earth, wind, water, and fire. Now our table of elements has 112 from Helium all the way to Lawrencium.]

Every culture is a universe of signs (page 180) and for its survival dependent on their hermeneutic of interpretation. The stars that we see could have existed in the past and could be long gone and deep in the background there is still the Big Bang. We see the presence of the past. In the building of matter and living forms a memory of nature has accrued, which can be called wise, because connections hostile to life have been thwarted and life-friendly connections were furthered and advanced. There is a history of nature and there are new ways of scientific thinking. Culture and nature inform each other because the cultural code is part of the natural code. The way scientific technical methods have dominated nature has made this historical memory illegible (page 181).

Ultimately modern science belongs to the culture of humanity. Science is culturally conditioned to the highest measure, even to Jewish and Christian religion, as any comparative study with Asian [scientific enterprises] easily demonstrates.

[Now this helps me counter John Searle's emphasis on facts, even brute facts!] We can read the book of nature, only if we do not register it as a world of facts, but as a world of meaning (page 182). There is the speech of nature or nature speaks, where everything is full of signs and everything is full of meaning. [Note: that's where Max Weber and Matthew Arnold's enchantment went!] The hermeneutic of nature is thus the art to be able to interpret the natural world of signs, the signiture of things.

Moltmann quotes Jakob Böhme: “and there is no thing in nature, created or born, which does not reveal its inner form (Gestalt) outwardly, because the internal always works to reveal itself…therefore in the signature is the greatest understanding (Verstand), in which the human being not only knows him [or her]self, but in it can also know the nature of all nature…everything has a mouth for revelation. That is the language of nature.” (We’re still on page 181.)

Moltmann counters Plato’s “everything is an expression of its nature” with “[for] Christians, everything is an expression of its Godly Word.”

A. “The internal dimension of things gives signs for something in them or lying over them.” Natural configurations are read by physiognomy, like the face reveals the particularity of the soul (page 182). In this way the face of nature can also be read.

B. Every natural sign has a directional character, which shows the connections and relationships of things with each other. They point to the relative whole, of which they are a part. The cross-sectional are pointed in networks of relationships, whether bottom-up or top-down in their relative wholeness, and are nested in each other (sind ineinander verschränkt).

C. Not yet last of all, the signs of nature are related to the human beholders and actors, and then the signs become signals, which say what the natural environment means for people. Nature is [actively] giving signals and not only receiving them. It is a sender and not only a receiver from people. That presupposes a stepped-down subjectivity or sentience of nature, its forms, and worlds of life.

[Nature, creation] is not finished yet, but [presents] fragments of what is to come. [We have] anticipated, open signs of the future. As St. Paul states in 1 Corinthians 13: “for we know only in part, we prophesy only in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end” (verses 9-10). and “Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (verse 12).  Moltmann continues that the relation of the fragment to the perfect corresponds to that of the knowledge, prophesy relationship. We know reality and prophesy the future. It is important to realize that, the perfect does not develop out of the fragmentary, but comes to it. Nature is a world of forms and the relationships of nature are not only an exchange of energies, but also an exchange of information. The art of taking up information, interpreting, and working it through, is Hermeneutics. Primal matter of the universe, it is said, is information and reality [and both] are the same. (Here we turn to page 183) Reality is efficacious [as information]. Nature is forma informata and informans. We live in a world of mutual information and participation. We also discover the world of performative anticipations. Reality is formed out of the possible. The creative part of reality as realization is efficacious (Wirklichkeit als Wirksamkeit). “Life is the impressed form that livingly develops” (Moltmann is quoting Goethe).

Moltmann compares the language of signs in nature to reading symptoms for the diagnosis of a disease. We have to register the sign, then interpret it, and then name the disease. Nature can be interpreted that way too.

The theological interpretation of signs went from the kosmos to history, because history becomes the quintessential concept in Europe since the French Revolution. If the stars were no longer signs, then the signs of the times had to be interpreted. The signs of the times were interpreted as the signature of history.

Grace precedes nature (page 184), but now grace precedes history and the interpretation of the signs of the times now became a function of the theologia naturalis (natural theology). But the signs of history were ambiguous; there are the signs of progress and those of catastrophe, signs of the end. “When will that all happen and what will be the sign, when it will all come to an end?” (Mark 13:4)

The coming presence of Christ in Holy Communion is the center of the Christian teaching of signs. In Holy Communion the signs of the presence of Christ are still in culture and nature.

The empirical, sensual, concept of nature no longer relates to the word “essence” from which it was derived (page 185). In science we observe, weigh, measure, etc., but we do not reflect about its nature. The change in the concept of nature came about because of the theological concept of creation. Creation is finite, in time, and contingent, because it is creation and not the Creator. Nature is therefore a necessary expression of God’s nature, but is contingent and depends on observation, not deduction.

These notes are my translation and come from Jürgen Moltmann’s, Sein Name ist Gerechtigkeit (His Name is Righteousness), (Gütersloh, München: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2008). Moltmann overflows with mature wisdom in the chapters of his book and it needs to be translated and studied in the English. peterkrey