Center for Pastor Theologians Journal 10.1

Hope is a word we use regularly in daily life to describe an aspiration, a wish, or a dream of something we long for in the future. To hope for something is to have a desire for that thing to come to pass. And while this definition certainly resonates with the biblical and theological usage of hope, when we ground our understanding of hope in the narrative of God’s work in Christ and the Spirit, a much fuller picture emerges.

Biblically, hope is not a wish or a dream; hope is a settled conviction that what is not yet will be, that the promises God has made will come to pass. As such, a hopeful life is one lived from this settled conviction. Biblical hope is fundamentally eschatological; it orients our hearts and minds to the reality of God that calls us to live in the world of appearances and suffering as those whose lives are built on the foundation of hope for the promised eternity in God’s presence. The essays in this volume of the CPTJ explore many dimensions of a hopeful Christianity.