The most popular source of theological hope for American Christians is that of Jurgen Moltmann. Preachers, teachers, and lay people reflect Moltmann's influence, with their hope in a this-worldly eschatology and a suffering God. However, an exclusive reliance on that hope deprives the church of crucial resources in the face of global economic, environmental, and military crises. This book explores Moltmannian hope and considers its costs before looking elsewhere for additional contributions, from Thomas Aquinas's theological virtue of hope to nihilism and beyond, in order to encourage the church to sustain and practice hope in Jesus Christ, our only hope.

Gary R. Habermas begins his apologetic for Christianity by demonstrating the historicity of the resurrection of Christ. He then connects the resurrection to several key tenets of Christian theology, through paths not only historical, but also philosophical, counseling, and experiential.

This book develops a thorough account of the sphere of human moral action in sustained dialogue with Jürgen Moltmann. By examining God's role as promise-giver, particularly in the Christian understanding of resurrection, this work describes the occupancy of both history and space in moral terms. This leads to an understanding of Jesus' description of 'the kingdom of God' to feature prominently in describing both the possibility and content of human moral action. By offering an account of each of the main doctrines found in Moltmann's corpus - the role of the future, the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and anthropology - this book locates how each contributes to the understanding of ethics from a Christian perspective and subsequently applies these findings to the contemporary issue of poverty and global economics.

After more than twenty years since the fall of the USSR, the evangelical movement in post-Soviet society has entered a crucial phase in its historical development. Setting out a transformative vision of mission and theological education, this book makes an important contribution towards the renewal of the church in this fascinating--but deeply troubled--part of the world. After the violent and disruptive events that followed the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity and Freedom in 2013/14, the evangelical movement in post-Soviet society now has an unprecedented opportunity to become a shining example of a "church without walls." Searle and Cherenkov reflect on the political, social, cultural, and intellectual legacy of the Soviet Union and offer bold and innovative proposals on how the church can rediscover its prophetic voice by relinquishing its debilitating dependence on the state and, instead, expressing solidarity with the people in their legitimate aspirations for freedom and democracy. Notwithstanding the pessimism and lament expressed on many pages, the authors conclude on a positive note, predicting that the coming years will witness a flowering of evangelical ecumenism in action as Christian solidarity flourishes and overflows denominational boundaries and parochial interests.

Far in the future, human beings have learned to use ninety percent of their brains. Although the population is greatly decreased, due to things like war, famine, and disease, death is no longer a problem. Humans have evolved and can now exist as nothing but pure energy. The world is no longer a place of boundaries, and human beings can no longer be hurt. They have no need of internal organs or food, and they do not fear death. Some stay on Earth, but most travel through space by the power of their minds. They seek other planets, other species, and other places to live in case Earth should fail. The inhabitants of other worlds are a constant surprise to humans, and they soon realize there is always more to learn. People travel to experience new things but also to spread the message of peace. Earth has found harmony; when humans seek it elsewhere, will it be found, or are other planets not ready to evolve?

Democracy is struggling in America. Citizens increasingly feel cynical about an intractable political system, while hyper-partisanship has dramatically shrank common ground and intensified the extremes. Out of this deepening sense of political despair, philosopher of education Sarah M. Stitzlein seeks to revive democracy by teaching citizens how to hope. Offering an informed call to citizen engagement, Stitzlein directly addresses presidential campaigns, including how to select candidates who support citizens in enacting and sustaining hope. Drawing on examples from American history and pragmatist philosophy, this book explains how hope can be cultivated in schools and sustained through action in our communities -- it describes what hope is, why it matters to democracy, and how to teach it. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

An introduction to the theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg.Pannenberg's extensive works, especially his recently published Systematic Theology, are increasingly regarded as of major importance. Professor Mostert here provides not only a general introduction to Pannenberg's theology, and many keys to enable the serious reader of theology to access Pannenberg's individual works, but also sets Pannenberg's complex thought in the broadest context of contemporary philosophical and theological thought.

Few reference works in philosophy have articles on hope. Few also are systematic or large-scale philosophical studies of hope. Hope is admitted to be important in people's lives, but as a topic for study, hope has largely been left to psychologists and theologians. For the most part philosophers treat hope en passant. My aim is to outline a general theory of hope, to explore its structure, forms, goals, reasonableness, and implications, and to trace the implications of such a theory for atheism or theism. What has been written is quite disparate. Some see hope in an individualistic, often existential, way, and some in a social and political way. Hope is proposed by some as essentially atheistic, and by others as incomprehensible outside of one or another kind of theism. Is it possible to think consistently and at the same time comprehensively about the phenomenon of human hoping? Or is it several phenomena? How could there be such diverse understandings of so central a human experience? On what rational basis could people differ over whether hope is linked to God? What I offer here is a systematic analysis, but one worked out in dialogue with Ernst Bloch, Immanuel Kant, and Gabriel Marcel. Ernst Bloch of course was a Marxist and officially an atheist, Gabriel Marcel a Christian theist, and Immanuel Kant was a theist, but not in a conventional way.

An understanding of what we mean by the present is one of the key issues in literature, philosophy, and culture today, but also one of the most neglected and misunderstood. Present Hope develops a fascinating philosophical understanding of the present, approaching this question via discussions of the nature of historical time, the philosophy of history, memory, and the role of tragedy. Andrew Benjamin shows how we misleadingly view the present as simply a product of chronological time, ignoring the role of history and memory. Accordingly, discussion of what is meant by the present disappears from philosophical concern. To draw attention to this absence, Andrew Benjamin introduces the notion of hope and asks what this concept can tell us about the present. At the heart of the outstanding work is an emphasis on the relation between hope and the Jewish tradition. Through discussions of philosophical responses to the Holocaust, the work of Walter Benjamin, Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Present Hope shows how we must look beyond the purely philosophical horizon to understand the present we live in.