  The approach which relates thermal Green functions to forward scattering
amplitudes of on-shell thermal particles is applied to the calculation of the
gluon self-energy, in a class of temporal gauges. We show to all orders that,
unlike the case of covariant gauges, the exact self-energy of the gluon is
transverse at finite temperature. The leading T^2 and the sub-leading ln(T)
contributions are obtained for temperatures T high compared with the external
momentum. The logarithmic contributions have the same structure as the
ultraviolet pole terms which occur at zero temperature.
