ABSTRACT
Hope lives through trial, refuses any form of escape through the securities of uninvolvement in the messy business of human life and thought, and risks disappointment and necessary revision. In contrast to the predictively assertive nature of both optimism and pessimism, hope iconoclastically breaks open premature objectivised notions of the whole, and thereby retains a nescience and tentativeness, as well as an active creativity, in its knowing of the details of the future. Karl Barth's hope, and the eschatological soil in which it is germinated and is nourished, is a little treated element. The danger of pinning Barth's thoughts to any single mast is that when one turns around Barth will have slipped free. Barth's theology will be presented as an attempt at an eschatological location of thought which generates consequent ethical engagement. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
