Pilgrimage of Love

Moltmann on the Trinity and Christian Life

In Pilgrimage of Love Joy Ann McDougall offers an original reading and critical analysis of German Protestant theologian Jürgen Moltmann's social trinitarian theology. She identifies the driving theological impulses, methodological convictions, and practical concerns that shape the author's evolving trinitarian vision. She uncovers the narrative of divine love in Moltmann's early trilogy and shows how its conceptual trajectory shifts and deepens in his six-volume Systematic Contributions to Theology. Building on her analysis, McDougall advances a compelling case for the concept of trinitarian fellowship as the structuring theological principle in Moltmann's later work. She demonstrates how this concept of divine love unifies the author's theological anthropology, theology of grace, and the practices of the life of faith. Finally, she shows how this "social trinitarian analogy of fellowship" serves as an elastic rule of faith in the personal, political, and ecclesial realms of human existence. While McDougall highlights the prophetic potential of Moltmann's trinitarian theology for Christian praxis, she also challenges the author's underdeveloped doctrine of sin and theory of theological language. Pilgrimage of Love offers one of the first comprehensive interpretations of Moltmann's mature trinitarian theology. It introduces, systematizes, and clarifies the thought of one of the most significant Protestant theologians at the turn of the twenty-first century. This study will be an invaluable resource on Moltmann's thought for scholars of modern Protestant theology, and for all those interested in the current renaissance of trinitarian theology.