Inter-Varsity Press

CONTENTS

1 Hope in Asia
2 The hope of Israel
3 The foundations of Christian hope
4 The last enemy
5 The coming of the Lord
6 The parting of ways
7 A new world coming
8 Living in hope
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Extract from ... Chapter 1 - Hope in Asia

Introduction

This book is about the nature of Christian hope. Hope is essential to human life. Some have compared it with oxygen for the lungs: without oxygen, death occurs through suffocation; without hope, humanity plunges into despair and is overwhelmed by purposelessness and meaninglessness. Hope energizes human life and serves as the essential fuel that empowers humankind’s intellectual and spiritual endeavours. Hope is no less essential for communities than it is for individuals. Politically, hope may be said to be the source of civic consciousness and behaviour because it makes the future of our society, city or country inviting. Without hope, each person will simply recoil to his or her private life and seal himself or herself off hermetically from society and the common life. On the other side of the spectrum, hopelessness may ‘motivate’ a kind of fanaticism that ruthlessly, if despairingly, tries to remove every obstacle that stands in the way of the future. Only with hope will there be forbearance, on which all good human life depends and on the basis of which civility is possible. Hope teaches patience and creates that temperament which enables us to listen and speak to those with whom we disagree. For in hope we know that in the end everything will work out and that we need not fear taking our time. Hopelessness is a kind of death because it opens the door to fear, and fear weakens and immobilizes.

More than half a century ago, the great philosopher Gabriel Marcel wrote these words regarding the nature of hope: ‘The truth is . . . there can be no hope except when the temptation to despair exists. Hope is the act by which this temptation is actively and victoriously overcome.’ These words imply that hope is never abstract but always emerges from a specific historical and cultural context. The context from which I write, South-East Asia, now contains more than 500 million people with diverse cultures and languages, despite their shared history. South-East Asia is also made up of numerous nations, some of which, like Thailand, have histories that stretch across more than a thousand years, while others, like Singapore, are only a few decades old. South-East Asia also represents a diversity of religions, from animism to more philosophically sophisticated religions, including, of course, Christianity. The region is also a rich cultural and intellectual ethos, as traditional cultures and ideas blend and clash with modern Western ones.

In his sobering account of the consequences of modernity, Anthony Giddens argues that modernity brings to the collective psyche a disconcerting sense of ambivalence and anxiety because it introduces such radical discontinuities and fragmentations to society. The sheer pace of change it brings about and the scope of these changes, as different areas of the globe are drawn together in a complex network of connections that brings with it the clashing waves of social and cultural transformation across the globe, are unprecedented in human history. Vast institutional changes result as older institutions are transformed into something different, and new social orders, such as the nation state, emerge. Paradoxically, the clashing of civilizational and cultural waves in the tempestuous sea of modernity bring about a new kind of integration, one that has political, economic and cultural dimensions, and therefore also implications.

Thus, in the modern situation, where ‘countless bits of the world conflict with other bits’, to use the graphic language of Patricia Crone, a new integration is fostered, not by traditional values and outlook, but by the new ‘isms’ – rationalism, pluralism, secularism, individualism and relativism. It is an integration based on the present and not on the past, for it is the tendency of the modern mindset to be preoccupied with the immediacy of the present, thus only worsening its own rootlessness and instability.

Being fragmented, the industrial world is unstable. More precisely, it is kept fragmented because it wishes to be unstable, the expansion of cognitive, technological and economic boundaries being its aim . . . Far from being anchored in a tradition, the modern individual is likely to drift: he has to decide for himself where he is going. (Patricia Crone, Pre-Industrial Societies (Blackwell, 1989))

This dilemma, which characterizes Western societies so well, is not alien to societies in South-East Asia caught in the nexus of the old and the new, and any survey of hope in Asia must give due recognition to it. The sea change brought about by modernity, the new challenges that present themselves in the changing geopolitical situation, and long-standing issues and problems that flood the collective psyche of those in the region give shape to new fears, as well as new hopes. .....

Extract from ... Chapter 7 - A New World Coming

Signs of the end

The Bible indicates that the final consummation of the kingdom of God at the second coming of Christ will be preceded by certain events that will serve as signs of the end of history. These signs have become the source of so much speculation about the time of the parousia that it is important at the very outset to discuss their nature and significance. The best place to begin is to examine the teachings of Jesus in the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24; Mark 13). In these passages, Jesus identifies four general features of the period before his return and the consummation of the kingdom: (1) The decline of faith ...; (2) the persecution and global evangelism of the church ...; (3) wars and rumours of wars between the nations ...; and (4) natural catastrophes and upheavals in nature ... . Although there are similarities between apocalyptic and the Olivet Discourse, the dissimilarities between them are significant. The fundamental motif of the two is different in that while apocalyptic describes unnatural signs, the Olivet Discourse depicts evil in terms of ordinary historical experiences. The apocalyptists predict that evil will intensify and chaos will reign in both human social relationships and the natural order. While in general agreement with this, Jesus expanded this view to include the kingdom of God, which has already dawned in this dark and evil age and that will in the end overcome it as the gospel is proclaimed.

The Olivet Discourse is more complex than it appears to the cursory reader. Overwhelmed by Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the great temple of Herod, the disciples ask their Master, ‘Tell us, when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?’ (Matthew 24:3). There are two questions here: the first is concerned with the time of the destruction of the temple, and the second has to do with the time of Christ’s return. Jesus answered both questions, but in such a way that the first event is tied to the second, thus relating history to eschatology. The ‘desolating sacrilege standing at the holy place’ refers to the introduction of a pagan altar to the holy place of the temple in Jerusalem by a pagan conqueror in 166 BC, which, according to Jesus, will be repeated again. This prediction was
fulfilled in AD 70 when the Romans recaptured Jerusalem, desecrated the temple and burnt it to the ground. Jesus ‘links the coming judgment of God upon impenitent Israel in AD 70 with the final catastrophe at the end of the age which will precede his return (Matthew 23:23–31; Mark 13:21–27)’.

Jesus, however, discourages the ‘signs of the times’ mentality. ...

The new creation

The return of Christ will bring about the new heavens and earth. Our sinful world will be transformed into a glorious reality and creation will finally achieve its telos. The doctrine of the new creation that Scripture clearly teaches is important for our understanding of the nature of salvation and the life to come for two reasons. The doctrine helps us to see God’s redemptive programme in its entirety; that is, it involves not only individuals or humanity but also the whole of creation. It shows that just as sin has a cosmic dimension and disrupts the created order, so God’s salvation extends to the material world. The doctrine enables us to envision the nature of the life to come and is thus profoundly related to the doctrine of the bodily resurrection. Glorified believers do not spend eternity in some ethereal heaven as disembodied spirits. The doctrine of the resurrection emphasizes the fact that humans are embodied beings and that their existence in the life to come will continue to have a bodily character. The doctrine of the new creation emphasizes that in the age to come, God’s creation will not be nullified but be perfected. As Dermot Lane has put it so well, the doctrine of the new creation emphasizes that ‘there is no salvation without the participation of creation, no redemption that by-passes the world, no heaven without earth’.

The doctrine of the new creation is important also because it helps us to understand the nature of Old Testament prophecy. ...

Extract from ... Chapter 8 - Living in Hope

The ground of hope

In the preceding chapters I have constructed a Christian eschatology, but in this chapter, I reflect on the implications of biblical hope on Christian existence in the world. It should be clear from the exposition in the previous chapters that Christian hope is profoundly different – even antithetical – to secular expressions of progress and optimism. Christian hope is not founded upon self-confidence or confidence in the human race. Rather Christian hope is established in God, who, through his Word, has promised the renewal and perfection of humankind and the creation. The profound and inextricable relationship between hope and faith is thus paramount. Because it is so rooted in God, Christian hope must always possess that quality of transcendence. As an expression of faith, which is interpreted here as trust, Christian hope transcends our present circumstances and experience and is anchored in the promises of God in Christ. As such, we should be wary of those philosophies and sciences that claim to explain everything, or that seek to unify life and render everything clear and certain. Such claims signal the loss of transcendence, without which hope in the theological sense cannot be understood.

For the Christian, God is never just the object of hope but is also the basis of hope. ...