THE German theologian Professor Jürgen Moltmann, who was widely read in English translation, died on Monday, aged 98.

A member of the Evangelical Church in Germany, he was Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology in the University of Tübingen. But his serious theological reading first began in the UK, to which he was brought as a prisoner-of-war at the end of the Second World War.

The books that established his reputation and influence on other theologians, not least in his “social doctrine” of the Trinity and his political theology, with its emphasis on eschatology, are Theology of Hope (English edition), the better known The Crucified God (English edition, 1974), The Church in the Power of the Spirit (1975), and The Trinity and the Kingdom (1981). The last of these was the first in a series of books that formed a substantial theological project, his Contributions to Systematic Theology. His English publisher was the SCM Press.

His wife, the feminist theologian Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel, predeceased him in 2016.

Read an obituary here