Hope for the World: A Christian Vision of the Last Things (Christian Doctrine in Global Perspective)

EAN/UPC/ISBN Code 9780830833054


Hope is an ethereal concept that we grasp tightly. Hope propels the forward progression of every story, even stories where hopelessness holds sway.Indeed, in the contemporary cultural climate throughout the globe, hopelessness appears to reign supreme. A general sense of uprootedness, a vague disillusionment in the aftermath of modernist hubris, and an unseen yet ubiquitous, violent enemy haunt our hopes and test our faith. As Roland Chia writes, "terror has become our narrative."And yet hope characterizes the biblical narrative from its opening lines, through its first disappointments, to its final promise: Christ will come in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.In Hope for the World, Chia reviews the eschatological vision of the Christian faith: a personal God seeds the resolve of the people of God through both the pages of the Bible and their lived experience throughout the millennia. Our understanding of the last things forms our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. Our ethics are shaped and our witness emboldened as we trust in God"s great and precious promises: that we shall be raised up on the last day into a fully realized kingdom of God.