Jan Paulsen

Ryan Bell and I were having a discussion last week with some friends about whether or not the General Conference President of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Jan Paulsen, is a former student of Jürgen Moltmann. We’d heard rumors that Paulsen attended Universität Tübingen in Germany where Motlmann was a professor for many years.

We now have confirmation. Yes! Yesterday Ryan sent me an article he found by Paulsen, titled “Christ’s Healing in a Changing World”, where the president writes:

Quite simply, we cannot express our faith—our desire to imitate Christ—in seclusion; our values and our beliefs find their true meaning only within the context of human relationships. In the words of my former teacher Jürgen Moltmann, “Likeness to God cannot be lived in isolation. It can be lived only in human community” (J. Moltmann, God in Creation, p. 222). [italics mine]

You can read the entire article Adventist World. It’s worth the read.