Hope Against Hope: Christian Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully Written
Review: I'll leave the complex in depth reviews to others. What I love about this book is that I can understand it. It's graceful and lucid and reading it is a pleasure. The words are infused with a kind of joy. As a novelist, I have to make characters, plots, put people in action. It's hard for me to approach theology or philosophy because of the density of abstractions in the writing. I just can't get most of it. But these two highly gifted theologians have written something of great meaning that is accessible to some one like me. As to the premise of the book, it's a convincing testament to the unfathomable and ever increasing power of the Christian Event. It moves us forward. I connect it with Teilhard de Chardin.

Rating:
Summary: Best book on eschatology available
Review: This book is without question the best contemporary book I have ever read on eschatology. Unlike the popular evangelical subculture that tends toward apocalyptic fantasizing and bogus fiction books, this book seriously examines the essence of Christian eachatology: Hope.

Bauckham and Hart chronicle the rise and demise of secular concepts of hope, cheifly the myth of progress. The optimisim of he 19th century has now given way to a culture of despair, suspicion and hopelessness. Against this backdrop, Bauckham and Hart show how Christian eschatology offers a vision of hope that is able to overcome the current culture of despair. Unlike secualr hope(s), Christian hope is grounded in the trancendent possibilities of God and his redemption and not anything within our power. As such, Christian eschatology offers a paradigm of hope that is able to nourish and sustain us in the face of the nihilism of our age.

The chief chapter of the book examines central eschatological "images of hope" such as Resurrection, The Kingdom of God, The Millennium, The Beast, etc. Rather than speculating about how or if these images point to future events, Bauckham and Hart show how they are intended to noutish the Christian imagination, thereby giving us hope.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. In a time where hope is increasingly absent and suspect, Bauckham and Hart's delineation of the power of Christian hope is much needed.