The Time of Hope in the New Testament

Extract

The selection of hope as the central theme of the Evanston J. Assembly in 1954 has already prompted an intensive world-wide examination of the Church's mind and the Biblical witness. It has provoked the publication of many essays which bring the basic issues into sharper focus. Among these issues is the problem of grasping aright the connexions between the present activity of God in history and the eschatological future. As the Advisory Committee has expressed it, the question has to do with ‘the relative emphasis to be laid upon the witness to the coming Christ and upon the witness to the present Christ’. A few participants in the discussion argue for an exclusive stress on one or the other; in reaction, others call for maintaining a balance between these two accents. The flaw in both of these solutions is that they assume a dichotomy or even a contradiction between the two witnesses. They treat Christ as if He were divided, as if His present activity were not being empowered and directed by the same eternal purpose, the same Spirit, as His future activity. Others have seen a polarity in the Christian message at this point, that is productive of a necessary and fruitful tension. To illustrate this tension we might instance Paul's confession: ‘I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brethren, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but one thing I do … ’.