Abstract

Braaten is correct when he argues that "the Christian Gospel can expect to get a hearing in modern culture only when it has some important news to bring about our human future, when it is really concerned about the world's tomorrows". The theology of hope is about the Christian's attempt to speak in terms congruent with the Left's demand for a new heaven and a new earth. It is the attempt on the part of the Christian community to relate New Testament eschatological notions to recent demands for radical social change and even revolution. Braaten's book is a good introduction for the American audience to this latest innovation in Protestant theological thought. He relates the theology of hope directly to the particular American cultural and political environment. He includes a brief chapter on "Toward a Theology of Revolution," and urges others who are proto-insurrectionists to have a go at fleshing out his skeletal ideas. Braaten has interpreted the whole of Dogmatic Theology in the light of the eschatological hope of the Bible. For Braaten, theology is Eschatology--and therefore everything is changed, and Braaten can write easily of "Hope and the Human Condition," "The Mediation of Hope through History," "Jesus and the Power of the Future," "An Eschatological Concept of the Trinity," "The Future of the Church Mission," etc. It is to Braaten's wisdom that he has made us all see again how essential hope is in the theological game.--W. A. J.