Date of Award

8-1969

Degree Type

Master's Essay - Restricted

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Theology

Abstract

One of the more creative efforts made by theologians in the last fifteen years in their attempt to be faithful both to contemporary man's self-understanding and to the dynamic thrust of historical Christian belief, is hope theology. When I use the term "hope theology", I intend to evoke the names of such theologians as Juergen Moltmann, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Johannes Metz and Edward Schillebeeckx. These men are rather arbitrarily lumped together not because their thought is by any means identical but because the over-all thrust of their theology evinces, first and foremost, an interest in the future. This interest in the future leads them to an eschatological understanding of faith in God and to a centering of their theological writing on the virtue of hope. Metz states the core of their entire project rather cryptically: The horizon of the future "reveals the world as history, history as final history, faith as hope and theology as eschatology. This horizon characterizes the attempt of theology to surpass and to go beyond the modern, transcendental, personalistic and existential theology without disregarding its valuable insights."

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