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Living In Anticipation Of God's Future

Living in Anticipation of God’s Future
Theologians offer different views about the future of humanity. In particular, Jurgen Moltmann offers an eschatology that relates hope and faith with God’s future. In “Theology of Hope: On the Ground and the Implications of a Christian Eschatology” (1967) and Hope and History, Moltmann explains how we should live in hope as we anticipate God’s future. He considers that despite the sufferings we bear in the present world, our hope and faith will be our guide in living life according to the will of God.

In “Theology of Hope”, Moltmann emphasizes the relationship between hope and faith. He implies that the foundation of hope is faith in the resurrection. Because we believe in the resurrection of Christ, we bear hope in God’s future—the life that God promised. Our hope and faith gives us “not only a consolation in suffering, but also the protest of the divine promise against suffering.” (21) The first consolation is the reward we receive from suffering while we live on earth, while the other consolation is the reward that we shall receive beyond life on earth. This promise of an afterlife is one that should make us strive towards God, to live a life, after death, with no suffering.

By his mention of the suffering that we bear at present, Moltmann implies our predisposition to suffering. He presents the “dialectical view” which means that along with hope and anticipation, people experience suffering and despair. (Nazarene Theological Seminary) As we live in the world, we encounter sufferings which could lead to despair. Basically, our belief in the resurrection of Christ is founded on His death. As Eckardt explains in “Luther and Moltmann: The Theology of the Cross”, Moltmann perceives that Christ’s death on the Cross is a way to teach us how we should tolerate the sufferings we encounter. It implies that as a prerequisite to the promise of God, we have to identify with Christ’s suffering. This,...