Hope Dr. John F. Wilson Institute for Spirituality and Health at the Texas Medical Center 8100 Greenbriar, # 220 Houston, TX 77054 March 29, 2012.

Hope

Dr. John F. Wilson

Institute for Spirituality and Health at the Texas Medical Center

8100 Greenbriar, # 220

Houston, TX 77054

March 29, 2012

Death

“Carl Jung remarked that he had observed most over forty had a fear of death. What had been removed for the early Christians was the fear of death (Smith 1991: 319-338).”

ReligionHinduism Buddhism

ConfucianismTaoism

Islam

JudaismPrimitive Religion

Christianity

Scientology

Astrology

Pantheism

Panentheism

Shinto

Religion

“Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they consider the divine (James 1994: 36).

The Myth of Progress

Enlightenment thought shunned the apocalyptic and viewed the world as upward-moving progress. The events of the twentieth century shattered that view (Migliore 1991: 234-238).

Hope or Meaning?

Ernst Bloch – The Principle of Meaning

Viktor Frankl – Man’s Search for Meaning

Harold Kushner – When All You Ever Wanted…

Jürgen Moltmann – Theology of Hope

John Polkinghorne – The God of Hope…

N. T. Wright – Surprised by Hope

Hope

Does Religion Matter?

Does Religion Make a Difference?

Does It Empower Life?

A Technocratic World.

Hope in the Abrahamic Religions

The Historical Record.

God Shows Up.

Jesus Personifies God.

Hope – John Polkinghorne

Crucifixion and Resurrection

Incarnation - Kenoticism

Resurrection Appearances – Reassurance

God Stood Alongside

Then and Now - Throughout

Eschatology – Continuity and Discontinuity

Christian Hope and Suffering

Christian Hope Rests in Trust in a Loving and Faithful God.

Christian Hope Does Not Eliminate Evil and Suffering.

Christian Hope Rests in Resurrection.

The Biblical RecordThe Exodus

Martha and Mary

The Pauline Corpus

The Promise – Matthew and John - parakaleh'o

Piety

Hope

You will eventually be confronted with the question of Hope approaching the end of life.

How will you answer that question?

Paul answered it with the assurance of the resurrection: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life…will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. ”

Selected BibliographyBloch, E 1995a. Plaice, N, Plaice, S, Knight, P, trans. The Principle of Hope. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

Brueggemann, W 2001. The prophetic imagination, second edition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Frankl, V E 1968. Man’s search for meaning. New York: Washington Square Press.

Hall, D H 2001. Lighten our darkness. Lima, Ohio: Academic Renewal Press.

Hick, J 2007. Evil and the God of love. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Hill, C C 2002. In God’s time. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company.

James, W 1994. The varieties of religious experience. New York: The Modern Library.

Koehn, D 2005. The nature of evil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kushner, H 1987. When all you’ve ever wanted isn’t enough. New York: Pocket Books.

Moltmann, J 2001. God’s kenosis in the creation and consummation of the world. John Moltmann. J 2000. Is there life after death? Polkinghorne, J and Welker, M eds. The end of the world and the ends of God. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 238-255.

Moltmann, J 1993. The Crucified God. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press.

Selected Bibliography, continuedMoltmann, J 1965. Theology of hope: On the ground and the implications of a Christian

eschatology. New York: Harper and Row.

Polkinghorne, J 2000. Eschatology. Polkinghorne, J and Welker, M eds. The end of the world and the ends of God. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 29-41.

Polkinghorne, J and Welker, M 2000. Introduction. Polkinghorne, J and Welker, M eds. The end of the world and the ends of God. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1-13.

Polkinghorne, J 2001. Kenotic creation and divine action. Polkinghorne, J (ed). The Work of Love. Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company/Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2001, 94-96.

Polkinghorne, J 2003. Living with hope. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.

Polkinghorne, J 2002b. The God of hope and the end of the world. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Polkinghorne (ed). The Work of Love. Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company/Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 137-151.

Selected Bibliography, continuedRahnerl, K 1965-1991. Ernst, C et al, trans. Theological investigations, 22 Volumes. London: Darton, Longman & Todd.

St. John of the Cross 1991. Kavanaugh, K and Rodriguez, O, trans. The collected works of St. John of the Cross. Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications.

Smith, H, 1991. The world’s religions. New York: HarperOne.

Swinburne R 2010. The coherence of theism revised edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Tillich, P 1990. The right to hope. The Christian century. 107(33): 1065.

Welker, M 2000a. Realistic eschatology. Polkinghorne, J and Welker, M eds. The end of the world and the ends of God. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 205-208.

Welker, M 2000b. Resurrection and eternal life. Polkinghorne, J and Welker, M eds. The end of the world and the ends of God. Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 279-290.

Wittgenstein, L 1958. Philosophical investigations. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prenctice-Hall, Inc.

Wright, R 2001. Nonzero. New York: Vintage Books.

Yannaras, C 2004. Postmodern Metaphysics. Brookline, Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press.

Appendix

Somehow Richard Swinburne seems a proper point to end when he quotes D. Z. Phillips who says: “When deep religious believers pray for something, they are not so much asking God to bring this about, but in a way telling him of the strength of their desires. In prayers of confession and in prayers of petition, the believer is trying to find a meaning and a hope that will deliver him from the elements in his life which threaten to destroy it. (Swinnburne 2010: 94).