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Hope Against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium
The hopes by which the modern West has lived are widely understood to have failed. At the outset of the third millennium, we see the ideology of historical progress for what it is -- a myth that can no longer provide humanity with grounds for true hope. In Hope against Hope Richard Bauckham and Trevor Hart present a way forward -- through a radical faith in a global future that is in God's hands.
Using the present failure of secular hope as the context for a renewal of the Christian vision for the future, Bauckham and Hart seek to re-source Christian hope from its rich heritage of biblical promises and their interpretation in the Christian tradition. In a fresh and skillful way they explore the major images of eschatology -- the Antichrist, the millennium, the last judgment, the kingdom of God, and others -- proposing the category of imagination as the key to understanding their significance today. The authors insist throughout on the cosmic scope of Christian eschatology, writing of God's future not just for human individuals but for the whole creation, and they explore the relevance of such an eschatology for Christian living in the present.
A thoroughly interdisciplinary work that integrates biblical study, systematic theology, and astute analysis of contemporary Western culture, Hope against Hope is unique in offering a heartening look at the future from the perspective of life today.
Using the present failure of secular hope as the context for a renewal of the Christian vision for the future, Bauckham and Hart seek to re-source Christian hope from its rich heritage of biblical promises and their interpretation in the Christian tradition. In a fresh and skillful way they explore the major images of eschatology -- the Antichrist, the millennium, the last judgment, the kingdom of God, and others -- proposing the category of imagination as the key to understanding their significance today. The authors insist throughout on the cosmic scope of Christian eschatology, writing of God's future not just for human individuals but for the whole creation, and they explore the relevance of such an eschatology for Christian living in the present.
A thoroughly interdisciplinary work that integrates biblical study, systematic theology, and astute analysis of contemporary Western culture, Hope against Hope is unique in offering a heartening look at the future from the perspective of life today.
233 pages, Paperback
First published June 21, 1999
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October 9, 2012
This book is about “hope in the transcending possibilities of God the Creator who gives his creation future, against hope in the merely immanent possibilities of human history” (page xi). Hence the title: Hope against hope.
In the first chapter the authors describe the decline of secular hope. Highlighting that progress itself has turned threatening (page 8), pointing to the future of the planet being in balance. The myth of progress is unmasked for its immanent tendency towards utopia (page 14), faced with an inability to control and predict the future (referred to as the ‘terror’ of history) and the inability to explain the ‘horror’ of history – World Wars, Holocaust, Stalin etc. etc. (page 15). Technology, on which so much hope is pinned, and the idea of progress are itself implicated in the horror (page 16). The project to master nature brought wide-spread ecological destruction. An American standard of living is and remains unachievable for all (page 19). The authors further point to several ‘anti-metanarratives’ that have been formulated in opposition to the myth of progress, referring to Nietszche, Walter Benjamin and Jean-Francois Lyotard.
In the second chapter the authors describe false hopes of an ending (pointing to Hegel, Marx, Comte and Fukuyama) and contrasts it to the Christian meta-narrative with an eschatological conclusions. The Christian meta-narrative they argue is the biblical story of the world from creation to consummation. It is the story of the trinitarian God’s relationship with his creation. It sees God as the beginning and end of all things, their source and their goal, Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Renewer, the one who was and is and who is to come (page 35-36). They rightly point out that the myth of progress cannot be explained as a development from this Christian meta-narrative, nor can modernity be legitimised by claiming that its main characteristics, such as liberal progressivism, is based on Christian premises. It is not Christian to lose transcendence and to reduce eschatology to the immanent goal of human history (page 38), a promethean eschatology which failed to recognise the limits of this world (page 39). Christian eschatology instead means that the end of history happens to all of history (page 39), not one live as a means to greater good of people in the future (page 40). The horrors of history are fully acknowledged, crying out for redemption. This story has not yet finished which will not happen as a product of history, but by a conclusion given by God (page 41). The story can and may not be prematurely closed – there is the indispensable element of transcendence (page 42). The authors conclude the chapter by pointing to what Christian hope really is:
Christian hope is thus neither promethean nor quietist. It neither attempts what can only come from God nor neglects what is humanely possible. Sustained by the hope of everything from God, it attempts what is possible within the limits of each present…It does what can be done for its own sake, here and now, confident that every present will find itself, redeemed and fulfilled, in the new creation.
In chapter 3 the tragedy of hope in the western world is linked as the authors argue not so much in the abolition of deity as in its efficient relocation within the boundaries of immanence…’God’ was no longer ‘up there’ but ‘in here’ identified with the processes and principles of natural and human existence (page 46). This has left society with little option but to either worship Nature as a source of cosmic hope or face the spectre of meaninglessness, purposelessness and hopelessness (page 47). The latter, however, humanity finds deep down impossible. To hope is to be human (pages 52-61). It is God who awaits us at the end of history itself, a future that contradicts the patterns we discern in nature and history (page 50). We may imagine the unimaginable. God makes everything new (Rev 21:5), not by some natural process or human programme of works (page 69). This does not mean to wait passively, but genuine hope has the capacity to transfigure our perceptions and experience of the present, and to transform our ways of being in the world (page 70). This is made possible by the promises of God as they are made known in Jesus’ death and resurrection (page 72).
In chapter 4 the authors steer beyond literal and mythological eschatological readings to an interpretation of hope that is vested in a decisive activity of the God who in the beginning called this same order into being out of nothing, and who promises is a transformation of our situation so radical as to be pictures under the figure of a wholly new creative act on God’s part (page 77). The radical newness of this all derives from God’s creative power itself (page 79) (Isa 65:17; 66:22, Rev 21:5) which implies a considerable degree of discontinuity. Although we cannot talk about all that will happen this is not an excuse to be content with what the authors call agnostic silence (page 82). Christian faith means to talk about God’s future, to move forward towards the realisation of God’s Kingdom (page 84) in imagination. The virginal conception of Jesus and His life on earth give notable examples of disruptions of the ordinary. With reference to Sabbath legislation, the hypocrisy of the religious observant, mixing with sinners, healing the sick, a meal for the multitudes, calming the wind and waves, the authors observe that Jesus was forever disrupting the comfortable conventions and expectations of the day (page 102). The pinnacle is Jesus’ resurrection from the death, more than anything else a breach of the ‘orderliness’ of the world (page 103). This is a triumph of life over death and salvation is to participate in life in all its fullness (page 105). Life is the gift of the Spirit at work in God’s world. The appeal is to shake of the banality of religious pretention and hypocrisy, to life in hope, and to see the wonder of God’s new creation all the time. Things are not just the same, an order that has to be maintained at all costs. The appeal is to be faithfully aware of God’s great acts of new creation that has already started. Great things are made possible by the disruption of orderliness by a resurrected Jesus. Christ has brought a new moral order, one that transfigures our lives in the here and now.
The authors go on in Chapter 5 to provide a series of images of our hope. These are: the Antichrist, the parousia (‘coming’) of Jesus Christ, resurrection, new creation, the millenium, the last judgment, garden and city of God, Sabbath rest and marriage feast, the Kingdom of God, and a vision of God. Each of these themes play a role in our imagination of the future. In the end, while modernity brought a hope for a perfect human society, and lately one that reconciles human society with nature, real healing of society requires the recovery of the alien desire for God (page 173).
In chapter 6 re-emphasises that the ’last things’ cannot be tested scientifically; it is finally a matter of faith. This has implications for living in the here and now:
Belief in the purpose, the telos, the end of this world lies beyond itself in another, continuous with it in some respects yet incommensurable in others, is closely related and shares a similar status and function, directing our imagining beyond the ambiguities of the here-and-now and thereby offering a meaningful framework for the living in the here-and-now. (page 175).
Salvation lies not in technology, politics, culture or nature, but in God’s promises to make all things new (page 176). Not concerning oneself for the here and now is partly due to influence from classical philosophy, for example Socrates saying that companionship with the body ‘disturbs the soul and hinders it from attaining truth and wisdom’ (page 178). The authors point out that it is also sometimes argued that it is God’s sole responsibility for realising Christian hope, undermining personal commitment to the common good (page 181). In contrast, hope of a properly transcendent sort, is the most adequate source of and resources for action to transfigure the here-and-now. How? There is a possibility of progress and it is worth striving for. Moral goals are ends in themselves and not to achieve salvation at all (Page 182). The authors argue that feeding, healing, comforting, protecting etc. is worth doing and which ought to be done because we truly value life in the here-and-now (page 182). These are anticipations of God’s Kingdom, the new creation, and if we see them otherwise we miss the radical newness of God’s promised future and to fall in (personal, political and ecological) works-righteousness (page 183). Identified as a participation in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit (page 183). Progress towards ‘life in all its fullness’, in all dimensions is then possible. The vision to be ‘holy as I am holy’ proves impossible for anyone to achieve and is a vision of humanity which constantly transcends or lived actuality (page 191). When such a vision appears unattainable, evoking fear and self-concern as motivating forces (with reference to the philosophy of Kant), it is on contrast to the holy love reflecting God’s own character in the world (page 192). It lifts the tremendous burden of responsibility from our shoulders and liberates us to serve God in love, because we want to do so and because the good is something worth doing in itself (page 193). The Holy Spirit sets us free from the bonds of the past and empowers to move forward in hope (page 198). The limits of nature as we know and experience it (what is ‘natural’, what ‘comes naturally’ to us, or what Jesus calls ‘the flesh’) are broken open into conditions for something wholly new. Radical involvement in the world is what counts, not in anxiety and fear, but set free from the false security of earthly possessions.
In the first chapter the authors describe the decline of secular hope. Highlighting that progress itself has turned threatening (page 8), pointing to the future of the planet being in balance. The myth of progress is unmasked for its immanent tendency towards utopia (page 14), faced with an inability to control and predict the future (referred to as the ‘terror’ of history) and the inability to explain the ‘horror’ of history – World Wars, Holocaust, Stalin etc. etc. (page 15). Technology, on which so much hope is pinned, and the idea of progress are itself implicated in the horror (page 16). The project to master nature brought wide-spread ecological destruction. An American standard of living is and remains unachievable for all (page 19). The authors further point to several ‘anti-metanarratives’ that have been formulated in opposition to the myth of progress, referring to Nietszche, Walter Benjamin and Jean-Francois Lyotard.
In the second chapter the authors describe false hopes of an ending (pointing to Hegel, Marx, Comte and Fukuyama) and contrasts it to the Christian meta-narrative with an eschatological conclusions. The Christian meta-narrative they argue is the biblical story of the world from creation to consummation. It is the story of the trinitarian God’s relationship with his creation. It sees God as the beginning and end of all things, their source and their goal, Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Renewer, the one who was and is and who is to come (page 35-36). They rightly point out that the myth of progress cannot be explained as a development from this Christian meta-narrative, nor can modernity be legitimised by claiming that its main characteristics, such as liberal progressivism, is based on Christian premises. It is not Christian to lose transcendence and to reduce eschatology to the immanent goal of human history (page 38), a promethean eschatology which failed to recognise the limits of this world (page 39). Christian eschatology instead means that the end of history happens to all of history (page 39), not one live as a means to greater good of people in the future (page 40). The horrors of history are fully acknowledged, crying out for redemption. This story has not yet finished which will not happen as a product of history, but by a conclusion given by God (page 41). The story can and may not be prematurely closed – there is the indispensable element of transcendence (page 42). The authors conclude the chapter by pointing to what Christian hope really is:
Christian hope is thus neither promethean nor quietist. It neither attempts what can only come from God nor neglects what is humanely possible. Sustained by the hope of everything from God, it attempts what is possible within the limits of each present…It does what can be done for its own sake, here and now, confident that every present will find itself, redeemed and fulfilled, in the new creation.
In chapter 3 the tragedy of hope in the western world is linked as the authors argue not so much in the abolition of deity as in its efficient relocation within the boundaries of immanence…’God’ was no longer ‘up there’ but ‘in here’ identified with the processes and principles of natural and human existence (page 46). This has left society with little option but to either worship Nature as a source of cosmic hope or face the spectre of meaninglessness, purposelessness and hopelessness (page 47). The latter, however, humanity finds deep down impossible. To hope is to be human (pages 52-61). It is God who awaits us at the end of history itself, a future that contradicts the patterns we discern in nature and history (page 50). We may imagine the unimaginable. God makes everything new (Rev 21:5), not by some natural process or human programme of works (page 69). This does not mean to wait passively, but genuine hope has the capacity to transfigure our perceptions and experience of the present, and to transform our ways of being in the world (page 70). This is made possible by the promises of God as they are made known in Jesus’ death and resurrection (page 72).
In chapter 4 the authors steer beyond literal and mythological eschatological readings to an interpretation of hope that is vested in a decisive activity of the God who in the beginning called this same order into being out of nothing, and who promises is a transformation of our situation so radical as to be pictures under the figure of a wholly new creative act on God’s part (page 77). The radical newness of this all derives from God’s creative power itself (page 79) (Isa 65:17; 66:22, Rev 21:5) which implies a considerable degree of discontinuity. Although we cannot talk about all that will happen this is not an excuse to be content with what the authors call agnostic silence (page 82). Christian faith means to talk about God’s future, to move forward towards the realisation of God’s Kingdom (page 84) in imagination. The virginal conception of Jesus and His life on earth give notable examples of disruptions of the ordinary. With reference to Sabbath legislation, the hypocrisy of the religious observant, mixing with sinners, healing the sick, a meal for the multitudes, calming the wind and waves, the authors observe that Jesus was forever disrupting the comfortable conventions and expectations of the day (page 102). The pinnacle is Jesus’ resurrection from the death, more than anything else a breach of the ‘orderliness’ of the world (page 103). This is a triumph of life over death and salvation is to participate in life in all its fullness (page 105). Life is the gift of the Spirit at work in God’s world. The appeal is to shake of the banality of religious pretention and hypocrisy, to life in hope, and to see the wonder of God’s new creation all the time. Things are not just the same, an order that has to be maintained at all costs. The appeal is to be faithfully aware of God’s great acts of new creation that has already started. Great things are made possible by the disruption of orderliness by a resurrected Jesus. Christ has brought a new moral order, one that transfigures our lives in the here and now.
The authors go on in Chapter 5 to provide a series of images of our hope. These are: the Antichrist, the parousia (‘coming’) of Jesus Christ, resurrection, new creation, the millenium, the last judgment, garden and city of God, Sabbath rest and marriage feast, the Kingdom of God, and a vision of God. Each of these themes play a role in our imagination of the future. In the end, while modernity brought a hope for a perfect human society, and lately one that reconciles human society with nature, real healing of society requires the recovery of the alien desire for God (page 173).
In chapter 6 re-emphasises that the ’last things’ cannot be tested scientifically; it is finally a matter of faith. This has implications for living in the here and now:
Belief in the purpose, the telos, the end of this world lies beyond itself in another, continuous with it in some respects yet incommensurable in others, is closely related and shares a similar status and function, directing our imagining beyond the ambiguities of the here-and-now and thereby offering a meaningful framework for the living in the here-and-now. (page 175).
Salvation lies not in technology, politics, culture or nature, but in God’s promises to make all things new (page 176). Not concerning oneself for the here and now is partly due to influence from classical philosophy, for example Socrates saying that companionship with the body ‘disturbs the soul and hinders it from attaining truth and wisdom’ (page 178). The authors point out that it is also sometimes argued that it is God’s sole responsibility for realising Christian hope, undermining personal commitment to the common good (page 181). In contrast, hope of a properly transcendent sort, is the most adequate source of and resources for action to transfigure the here-and-now. How? There is a possibility of progress and it is worth striving for. Moral goals are ends in themselves and not to achieve salvation at all (Page 182). The authors argue that feeding, healing, comforting, protecting etc. is worth doing and which ought to be done because we truly value life in the here-and-now (page 182). These are anticipations of God’s Kingdom, the new creation, and if we see them otherwise we miss the radical newness of God’s promised future and to fall in (personal, political and ecological) works-righteousness (page 183). Identified as a participation in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit (page 183). Progress towards ‘life in all its fullness’, in all dimensions is then possible. The vision to be ‘holy as I am holy’ proves impossible for anyone to achieve and is a vision of humanity which constantly transcends or lived actuality (page 191). When such a vision appears unattainable, evoking fear and self-concern as motivating forces (with reference to the philosophy of Kant), it is on contrast to the holy love reflecting God’s own character in the world (page 192). It lifts the tremendous burden of responsibility from our shoulders and liberates us to serve God in love, because we want to do so and because the good is something worth doing in itself (page 193). The Holy Spirit sets us free from the bonds of the past and empowers to move forward in hope (page 198). The limits of nature as we know and experience it (what is ‘natural’, what ‘comes naturally’ to us, or what Jesus calls ‘the flesh’) are broken open into conditions for something wholly new. Radical involvement in the world is what counts, not in anxiety and fear, but set free from the false security of earthly possessions.
May 16, 2015
Dense. Which being interpreted means: you have to work at reading but it's worth it. There are though provoking gems on every page. Bauckham and Hart summarize the death of progressivism/modernism as neatly as I've seen. That perspective permeated the arguments throughout the remainder of the book. After describing apocalyptic/imaginative language, 10 key themes are developed.
Hope becomes the only legitimate alternative to the pessimism of postmodern thought. The section on the kingdom of God is worth the effort involved in working through it. The final development of why eschatological hope allows for Christian "progress" caps off the book. We seek to develop on earth what will eventually be our circumstances when hope is finally realized.
Hope becomes the only legitimate alternative to the pessimism of postmodern thought. The section on the kingdom of God is worth the effort involved in working through it. The final development of why eschatological hope allows for Christian "progress" caps off the book. We seek to develop on earth what will eventually be our circumstances when hope is finally realized.
March 9, 2019
Published in 1999, Bauckham and Hart make a case for the necessity of transcendence in Christian hope. 'The dominant myth by which the whole modern age has lived - the idea of historical progress - has not only failed us but turned against us' (pp.8-9), but its ghost still haunts us as we no longer know what to replace it with. Postmodernity has seen the collapse of metanarrative, creating an eternal present void of past or future. And without a future there is no hope. The argue that Christian eschatology meets both the horror of history with the resurrection of the dead, and the terror of history by being open to God's transcendent future. They detail the importance of narrative, imagination and fantasy for hope, the emphasis always being that the future of creation relies on God, and not on human ingenuity or any potential within creation itself. A very helpful, readable and inspiring book. Chapter 5 on eschatological imagery in the Bible is particularly helpful.
September 14, 2013
Really good treatment of the Bible's view of the last things.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews