Hope for the World: A Christian Vision of the Last Things (Christian Doctrine in Global Perspective)

Hope is an ethereal concept that we grasp tightly. Hope propels the forward progression of every story, even stories where hopelessness holds sway.Indeed, in the contemporary cultural climate throughout the globe, hopelessness appears to reign supreme. A general sense of uprootedness, a vague disillusionment in the aftermath of modernist hubris, and an unseen yet ubiquitous, violent enemy haunt our hopes and test our faith. As Roland Chia writes, "terror has become our narrative."And yet hope characterizes the biblical narrative from its opening lines, through its first disappointments, to its final promise: Christ will come in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.In Hope for the World, Chia reviews the eschatological vision of the Christian faith: a personal God seeds the resolve of the people of God through both the pages of the Bible and their lived experience throughout the millennia. Our understanding of the last things forms our understanding o

Roland Chia is dean of the school of postgraduate studies and director of the Centre for the Development of Christian Ministry at Trinity Theological College in Singapore.