T H E T H E O L O G Y OF H O P E By G E R A L D
O'COLLINS
o LOOK SACK on our theological past is to see how much christian theologians and philosophers have neglected the exploration of hope. Charles Peguy once suggested that while her two 'sisters', love a n d faith, were the concern both of medieval and of reformation thought, hope has remained the neglected little sister out in the cold. What has in fact been written on hope in this century has often been affected by individualism and quietism. In the essay on hope in his Homo Viator, Gabriel Marcel analyzes hope as 'I hope in you for us'. Here the community aspect 'for us' is added almost like an incidental afterthought. Bultmann's study of hope in Kittel's theological dictionary of the New Testament is affected by a spirit of quiet trust which interprets biblical hope as a patient waiting on God.
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There are, however, signs that hope is being restored as the robust, responsible community spirit of God's pilgrim people. In this restoration, the marxist, Ernst Bloch, a man who describes himself as an atheist for the sake of God, has already played a considerable part. More than any other philosopher, Bloch has deeply influenced the recent renewed interest of catholic and protestant theologians in the theme of hope. Born in Ludwigshafen in 1885, Bloch studied in Munich, Wtirzburg, Berlin and Heidelberg. During World War I his pacifist views led him to migrate temporarily to Switzerland. After attacking the Hitler regime in an article, he fled Germany in 1933; and from 1938 to 1949 he lived in the United States, where his greatest work Das Prinzip Hoffnung (The Principle, Hope) was in large part written. He returned to Germany to take up a professorship at the university of Leipzig. In the aftermath of the hungarian revolution he fell into disgrace with the east german authorities who had come to view Bloch's form of marxism as dangerously unorthodox. While on vacation in West Germany in 1961, he heard of the building of the Berlin wall and refused to return to the East. Since then he has been living in Tiibingen, where he has lectured and given seminars in philosophy.