Jan-Heiner Tück: Der Zorn – die andere Seite der Liebe Gottes

Generally, shocking propositions about God’s anger will not be found in textbooks of Dogmatic Theology. However, there have been attempts to reestablish the rights of these propositions recently. Yet they tend to throw dark shadows on the New Testament keynote: “God is love” (1 Joh 4, 8.16). Thus, theology is called to find the right way of speaking about God’s anger, i.e. to introduce a responsible hermeneutical approach. This paper takes a first step in this direction by recalling the biblical account which proves to contain a great variety of aspects (1). The positions of Lactantius, Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther will be remembered as still relevant testimonies from the history of theology (2). Finally, the proposal to interpret all propositions about God’s anger in view of God’s definite decision to reveal himself as love will provide the perspective from which all anger can be recognized as the other side of God’s love (3).