The Christian Hope

A subject much under discussion, not only in a theological but in a practical way, is that of Christian hope. It is not difficult to see why this should be so. The general gloom of the times is enough to account for a return to a much neglected aspect of Christianity. A further urgency is given to the discussion by the fact that Christianity is not alone in offering men a hope, but has a powerful rival in the Communist faith which derives much of its influence from the fact that it also has a messianic element in it, the promise of a time of deliverance for the poor and despised of the earth, the promise that all who rally to it are espousing a cause which is bound to triumph on this earth within human history and, according as men labor earnestly for it, within a measurable space of time. What the Christian has to offer as an alternative in the way of hope is scoffed at as so much “pie in the sky when you die.” Certainly it would be difficult to find Christians who now preach a gospel of unlimited compensation for hard work, low pay and bad conditions, in a sweet by-and-by. That kind of interpretation of Christian hope belonged to an era when economic laws were thought to be as immutable as the law of gravity. It was a response to economic fatalism.

It sometimes looks as though Christians are beginning to make the same sort of response to a widely prevailing international fatalism. It is difficult both to believe that atomic war is inevitable and to hold on to an expectation of a Kingdom of God on earth. Some Christian propagandists in this country have already been heard to say that Christianity is a faith which enables men to live without earthly hope. The question whether men can live without any hope in this world, of whether God has made us beings capable of or intended for such living, when He endowed us with astonishing powers of looking and planning ahead, is one far too big for discussion here. Another question, whether the interpretation of Christian hope as an other-worldly promise is true to the teaching of the Bible, is a subject of age-old debate, raised again with urgency by the circumstances of our time. Both these questions about the nature of Christian hope carry within them the huge problems of the Christian doctrine of history, which again is coming to the fore and is exciting in some quarters even more interest than the debate between religion and science. We have obtained from Professor Butterfield, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, the promise of four Supplements in the New Year on Christianity and History, a subject on which he has been lecturing to crowded audiences in Cambridge this autumn.

The question of Christian hope is not, therefore, to be disposed of in a few lines of a News-Letter, but one aspect of it is illuminatingly touched upon in Canon M. A. C. Warren’s book, The Truth of Vision. One does not expect exhaustive treatises from authors who leave home before seven every morning to come to London to deal with the practical affairs of a great Missionary Society. The question he tackles in practical fashion and out of a wide experience of, and a profound belief in, the missionary activity of the Church, is the relationship of the Christian hope to the task of the Church in the world. “Is hope,” he asks, “an active and dynamic sense of expectation, which looks for and finds a divine activity everywhere and then identifies itself with that activity, or is it, in fact, an attitude of resignation, genuine in its piety but quite incapable of making any kind of challenging impact upon the earth?” He suggests that part of the reason why we find it so difficult to answer the question, what is Christian hope, is that we have lost faith in the on-going mission of the Church, or, not being sure what that mission is, are disappointed at the Church’s failure. History takes its course: it is not being directed by the Church, and it is sheer illusion to say so. But Canon Warren has not lost faith in the Church’s mission. The Church, in his view, “is in the world to redeem the world, by preparing the world for the coming of the Kingdom.” The Church is everywhere a minority; nor can Canon Warren find any warrant in Scripture for the hope that it will ever be anything else. Nevertheless, when as a faithful minority it has performed its task of preaching the Gospel throughout the length and breadth of the inhabited globe, it has done what its Lord commanded—it has made the necessary preparations for Him to bring the promised Kingdom. His point of view is expressed with simplicity and has at least the merit, lacking in so many attempted expositions of the nature of Christian hope, of tying together the practical obedience of the Church daily in the world with the eschatological expectation of the end of history and the return of our Lord.

*From The Christian News-Letter No. 327, 22 December 1948, edited by Kathleen Bliss.