CHAPTER 3: POWER, PRESTIGE AND POSSESSION: TWO APPROACHES TO HOPE
1.1 Christian hope
While the Judea-Christian history has hope at its core, Christian hope is diverse and complex and changes according to context. Religious hope is more than “hope for the reunion of a disembodied soul with a personal Saviour in heavenly bliss” (Nurnberger 1994:148) as many would suggest, and this section seeks to present only a few aspects of this complex subject.
Rex Chapman suggests that there are two aspects of hope which are relevant to
spirituality, first a personal experience of hope for the future as an attitude of mind and way of approaching life in expectation of a future goal, and second the nature of hope as a goal or object that is hoped for and awaited in confidence (1983:195). He states that the two emphases are linked because experience of hope is based on confidence that goal can be achieved (:195). The aspect of hope which is added by religion is that human hope is not just a hope based on human potential, but is a hope which transcends the limitations of this world. Nürnberger:
Hope does not only serve to conquer our destructive desires and challenge our human initiative to move forward constructively, to conquer social evil and mobilise for social reconstruction, to arrest the deterioration of the environment…
it also serves to conquer our desperation where human capacities and earthly possibilities are finally and totally exhausted. It reassures those who have stared into the abyss of death and destruction that the power centre of reality is located beyond this reality, namely in its divine Source (1994:147-148).
This idea is described by Moltmann not as a hope of something which is to come in the future, but rather as the hopes of the anticipated future already at work transforming the sufferings of the present (1968:371). In this way the coming power and presence of God reaches into the present from the future and in so doing transforms that which is to come.
By future we do not mean a faraway condition, but a power which already qualifies the present – through promise and hope, through liberation and the creation of new possibilities. As this power of the future, God reaches into the present. As creator of new possibilities he liberates the present from the shackles of the past and from the anxious existence of the status quo. Thus God becomes the power of the protest against the guilt that throws us into transiency and produces death, and he also becomes the ground of the freedom that renews life (Moltmann 1968:376-377).
In other words, the anxiety brought about by the knowledge of one’s own death and concern for present troubles are overcome by the hope of new possibilities for the future as noted by Fredrickson above.
While Moltmann and others see hope for the future having a largely positive influence on the way people live today, and hold in their minds a positive picture of the fulfilment of all things, described by Migliore as the “final victory of the creative, self-expending, community-forming love of the triune God, hence triumph of love of God over all hate;
justice of God over all injustice, God’s freedom over all bondage, community of God over separation, life with God over power of death. (1991:238), there is also a view which paints the future in far more negative terms. Migliore uses the term
“fundamentalistic apocalypticism” which describes “dark and terrible pictures of the future, transfixed by the destruction of the earth and a coming dystopia which feeds on the fears of the people” (:235). As noted further in this chapter Buchan touches on this type of theology in which hope for the Christian is not the reconciliation of all things, but the avoidance of the dark and terrible apocalypse.
As mentioned above one of the key struggles in defining hope is the tensions which one finds. As will be seen in chapter five, the respondents expressed a tension between understanding hope as something promised in the future or something experienced in the present. Moltmann traces this struggle back to Franciscan spiritualists following Joachim of Fiore in the thirteenth century who were concerned with God’s future, and Enthusiasts and Baptists in the sixteenth century who were actively seeking to transform their oppressive present (1983:272). He further identifies tension between the fulfilment of earlier promises and the arousing of new hopes (:271) and the difference “between hope and experience, between vision and reality” (1968:378). He notes that hopes are always greater than what can be fulfilled in reality but believes that the new,
experienced reality causes hope to be reinterpreted. (:379).
Ultimately, though, says Chapman, “hope that is rooted in the gracious activity of God removes as a reason for hope either anxiety over the future or the participation for personal rewards” (1983:196) and so Christian hope depends on God and God’s activity and presence in the world rather than human endeavour for its fulfilment, and it is faith in this God that enables the Christian to live in hope, as Tasker says:
Hope [in the biblical sense] is not a matter of temperament, nor is it conditioned by the prevailing circumstances or any human possibilities. It does not depend on what a man possesses, upon what he may be able to do for himself, nor upon what any other human being may do for him… biblical hope is inseparable… from faith in God… The existence of this hope makes it impossible for the Christian to be satisfied with transient joys; it also acts as a stimulus to purity of life and enables him (sic) to suffer cheerfully… (1982:489).
According to Macquarrie, Christian hope is therefore not escapist in nature but has to do with “where we are now, in the midst of this world… how we cooperate now with
God’s work” (1977:347-348). For the Christian, God is revealed in Jesus Christ and Christians find the foundation of their hope in the cross and its message of victory over death.