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Finding Hope in a Weary World · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, it is the central Schwenkeler Church's podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle woman, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology of the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Our topic today is finding hope in a weary world.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: And we're very pleased to be joined by Dr.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Steven van de Human, who works as Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Evan Gaelischen, Teologische Faculty in Leeuven, Belgium.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: He not only is a professor of systematic theology and associate professor of systematic theology at the school, but he's also the director of the Institute of Leadership and Social Ethics, which is a research institute there at the university.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: One of his research photos on is the topic of Hope.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: And since 2016, he has been involved in the Hope Project, an interdisciplinary project with regard to Hope, which is financially funded and supported fully by the Gold Schmidting Foundation for People, Work and Economy based in the Netherlands.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: In the context of his involvement in this project, he has edited two volumes, the 2018 book Driven by Hope, Economics and Theology and Dialogue, and the 2020 book Historical and Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Hope.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: David, welcome to the show.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: We're glad to have you here.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for the welcome, Dream.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: David, we talked about two years ago about your work on the Hope Project.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I know many of our listeners enjoyed that at the podcast very much.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: Can you restate for our listeners what the Hope Project is all about and what you've been up to in the meantime?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: We have been studying Hope since 2016 in the form of a joint research project between us at the Institute of Leadership and Social Ethics and the Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organization based at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: And as you mentioned, this work is supported by the Goldsmanning Foundation.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And in our project, we study hope in a multidisciplinary way.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we take insights on board from theology, philosophy, psychology, and economics, and also other disciplines.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: And we do that to get a full understanding, a full picture on a conceptual level of what hope is.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And secondly, we also want to contribute to the measuring of hope.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: And to do this, we have developed the hope barometer, a seven-dimensional instrument by which we conduct yearly surveys among the Dutch population.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then thirdly, and finally, we also publish the results of our research, indeed, as you mentioned, in academic volumes, but also in publications in the popular media, through videos, through these podcasts, etc.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's wonderful.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure it's very fascinating finding these different ways that people are approaching hope within Western Europe and Netherlands, Belgium, and them putting this all together and finding uh tangible ways to define it more clearly for a population.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: So, in that light, maybe you could share with us what is a definition of hope.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: You have something that you would say maybe to the person on the street.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: What's the definition of hope for an average person?
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, actually, it can be very easily and simply defined.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: The hope psychologist Adriana Martin has defined hope simply as a desire, a probability between zero and one.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's a desire for something that you hope will occur, but you do not yet have the certainty that it will occur.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's you something that you want, but you're not sure if it will come to pass or not.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Be very likely, it can be very unlikely, or anything in between.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a very simple definition and at the same time very all-encompassing.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, if you have such a very wide-ranging definition, it's important to make further distinctions in between.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: So you can discern between an unlikely and a likely form of hope.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: For example, the hope that I win the national lottery is very unlikely, but the hope that the sun will rise tomorrow is much more likely, though not certain, you don't know.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Both are possibilities.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's also passive hope and active hope, and that has to do with the matter of agency, how involved you are as a person in coming about of the thing that you hope for.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I guess there are a variety of different words that might overlap with that, such as wishing or expecting.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: You're not expecting to win the lottery, maybe wishing, perhaps that would be the right way to think of it.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: They both define something of what hope is, but they point to different attitudes toward it.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: If you invest, let's say, in a lottery ticket, the chances are very small.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's very little agency involved from your side in coming about the wish-for result.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: But when it's something much more tangible, let's say, about making it on time for the train.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's very much in your own head, not entirely, but to a great extent you have.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: It all has to do with do you leave your home on time?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Are you sure that your bicycle or your car, whatever you use, is ready to get to the station, is fueled up and ready to go, etc.?
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: There's a whole range of activities that you can do yourself.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that speaks to the distinction between an active and a passive form of hope.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, well, then this makes the exploration of this word and this idea so very, very important.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: Can you perhaps go a little bit more in depth, helping us to discern between various sorts of hope?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, of course.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: A very illuminating contribution has been made by the American hope psychologist Anthony Scioli, particularly in his 2009 book, Hope in the Age of Anxiety.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And there he makes a distinction between four types of hope.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: He distinguishes survival hope, mastery hope, attachment hope, and meaning hope.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm gonna say a few words about each of these forms.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Survival hope, it occurs when you're suddenly confronted with a crisis, let's say a natural disaster, such as a storm, or more personal perhaps news about a threatening illness.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: What happens then is an immediate marshaling of your own hope resources.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: You become focused, you set achievable goals, and you set about pursuing these in an active fading manner.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say you hear about an approaching storm, it's threatening your land, your house, your hope for survival activates you.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: It means that you go out, you gather resources, you become focused, you board up your house, taking loose items indoors, or you deem the risk of destruction to be too great.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: You focus your energies on fleeing the scene of the storm, let's say.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now, the second form, mastery hope, is another form of hope, not so much directly linked to a crisis, but it is the desire to become good at something, to gain control of something can be very, very easy.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: You could, for example, do so by learning a craft or by completing a degree in education, through education, gaining a lot of money through honest artwork in the business.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Those are all forms of mastery hope.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's also attachment hope.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is really the social dimension of hope because hope is not just something you do on your own, as the examples that I just gave seem to indicate, but hope is really a social activity.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: You often hope together with others, and the hope of others is also contagious and affects you as well.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we are deeply relational beings, and when you deal with a crisis or you hope to achieve something, you seldom do so alone.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Often you are supported by friends, family, colleagues, and the attachment form of hope speaks to that, and of course, it also gives its own hope calls.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: You hope to live in good communion with others, with friendships, relationships, etc.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Fourthly, and finally, there is then meaning hope.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: We not only hope for mundane things, but ultimately and on a fundamental level, we hope for our lives to matter, we hope to experience meaning and significance in the world.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And here also, of course, religious, theological hopes can be located.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: And this distinction of four times of hope I find very helpful of understanding the way that hope functions.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: And what I particularly value about this is that it makes room for an understanding of the social and the meaning dimensions of hope, which speaks to me as a Christian theologian.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: So hope really can be rather complex, can't it?
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: Most of the people that I deal with one way or the other just are not thinking about all the different types of hopes.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um they might be hoping that their favorite sports team wins tonight, or as you said, a survival hope and hope to escape the storm that's bearing down on us.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: There really are multiple other things going on with hope.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: Since I've spoken with you a couple of years ago, you've now developed a new avenue for thinking about hope, this interplay between hope and environmental ethics.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't talk about that a couple of years ago, but maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that now.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's a strong link between hope and ecological action.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: From the very beginning of the ecological crisis, there was the understanding that human survival was underlying, that this was a crisis that called for an immediate solution.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And this activated people and brought first environmental legislation, brought a lot of positive change.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I think increasingly, in light of the magnitude of, let's say, the climate crisis, people are succumbing also to negative forms of hope, namely despair.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And many ecologists and activists who care deeply about what's going on in the world often experience a sense of panic, which often translates also in their messaging and in their activism.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well known here in Europe, I'm not sure about the US, but here in Europe, Greta Sundberg is well known, a Swedish teenager who became famous because she stopped attending school, striking for the climate.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: And in 2019, she told world leaders at the World Economic Forum, and I quote, I don't want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic, end of quote.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is an example of this kind of, let's say, despair-motivated messaging, which is of course accompanied by a lot of reports and charts which predict that the crisis is indeed very severe.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it's understandable.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: But what my research indicates is that actually this messaging based on despair is counterproductive in the effort of enlisting people in the fight against, let's say, the climate crisis.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because it is not rational to engage in environmental stewardship if it is likely that it will not benefit you anyway.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Also, while it is indeed a dire crisis, it is not sure either that all roads to actions are closed off.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the messaging of despair, apart from let's say the pragmatic consideration that it doesn't motivate people, also has other problems.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: It may not be true.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: So there is room for action, and there is therefore also a necessity for a positive, hopeful message about the climate, not an hopeful message in the sense that there is no problem, don't worry, walk on, live your life, etc.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: No, but a hopeful message can definitely identify the crisis and the seriousness of the crisis, but still say we can do something as a community.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: If we pull together, if we marshal our resources, if we become aware that this is a significant problem, we can take meaningful action and to sort of tap into that resource of hope in the context of the particularly of the climate crisis, that has been the focus of some of my research indeed.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's very interesting.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so much of the climate crisis seems to be out of despair, but I guess turning it towards hope and being able to get beyond it does make it the more amenable for people to get behind actually doing something about it.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: Would you say that that could transfer to other things, let's say other problems in the world, whether it be let's say the crisis in Ukraine or the crisis within the economy?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Do you think that would be fair?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I think that many people experience a sense of being overwhelmed by crises that are complex and in which we feel very little agency.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that is a threat to action because then the danger of resignation is there, that you think, oh, well, you know, what can I do?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm small, my means are limited, I cannot influence these major involvements.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a danger, let's say, of a sort of resigned attitude.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, some of this is understood, you cannot cope with all the crises, you cannot solve every problem, certainly not as an individual.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: That to say so would imply that you have some kind of a messiah complex.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's simply not doable.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you only have 24 hours in a day, so you are limited in what you are able to achieve.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: That is a given.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: But it is important to say, okay, I cannot cope with everything, but here's something that I can, and that's what I want to do because it's in line with my values, etc.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: And there a hopeful attitude is significant, and it's certainly positive and able to get people behind it rather than negative and leading, as you say, to despair.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and I think that as Christians and as theologians, we have a unique vantage point that helps us.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think that our faith encourages us to be hopeful with regards to the world.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: This may seem a bit counterintuitive.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: We all know about the book of Revelation in scripture, which seems to forward a version where the world will end in a lot of pain and disaster, and it does, but that's not the end of it either.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a strong inclination towards scripture to say that yes, Christ will come and complete his coming to the world, but he will bring in a new world, and in that new world, somehow elements of the old world will be retained, and it matters how we deal with creation, how we cope with businesses, how we conduct our affairs on this earth, on this side of eternity.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that is a crucial Christian message that I think has significance.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, very much so, very much so.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Besides your work now with ecological action, you're also editing the Oxford Compendium of Hope for Oxford University Press.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: When did that come about?
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: Can you tell us more about this project?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, indeed.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I am editing this compendium with my colleague Anthony Scioli.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: I already mentioned him.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's the Hope Psychologist.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: He's actually also based in the US in Massachusetts, and we connected in 2020 about this idea of putting together all the hope research that's being done in various fields.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's quite a lot of it in various fields, and provide a sort of an overview of that in the form of a compendium because we saw that that was missing.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of hope research is happening in various disciplines in recent decades, but there's quite a lot of different understandings of what exactly hope is, various hope definitions are in use.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we therefore feel that the field of hope studies as such is in need of a more commonly shared understanding of what hope is, what's happening in other disciplines, bring them together so that we can learn from one another and also see what's out there.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, we contacted Oxford University Press, prepared a proposal, which was accepted, also the Oxford name, and we're very happy with that.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's going to be quite a large work.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: We have 58 chapters, which will appear in 12 parts.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: It will be about a thousand-page documents.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, uh rather large project.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: When are you hoping to complete this, Steven?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: The hope is to complete uh the manuscript by December of this year.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: Is that survival hope, mastery hope, attachment hope, or meeting hope?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: The moment all of them combined.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: All of them combined.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see what happens.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then we are we don't know exactly when it will be published, but we're hoping 2023.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: The good news that I have is that it will be published as an open access publication.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's freely available to everyone to download.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: You've edited other things with the Institute of Leadership and Social Ethics, such as Driven by Hope and the Historical Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Hope.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: And you pointed to hope coming from a variety of other arenas.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: Perhaps you could make a point about hope having a social dimension.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: How does a social setting support or suppress hope?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thank you for asking that.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: That really speaks to, let's say, the attachment dimension of hope, which we were talking about.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we actually also contributed a bit about the understanding of how this works through our work with the hope barometer, which we developed.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: We came to some very interesting findings in the context of the COVID crisis.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: When we discovered that in that crisis, in the early phase of it, people's expectations, among others about economic outlook, were very low, but their social hope was up.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: They trusted one another much more than before across the board, be it neighbors, family, governments, agencies, etc.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Very significant.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that goes to show that in times of need, people draw on one another, literally go to one another and draw strength from one another.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: And you also saw that during COVID times.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: All kinds of surprising neighborhood supporting initiatives uh sprang up, creatively dealing with the mandatory restrictions which were in place, not breaking these restrictions, but respecting them, but still in doing so in a way that allowed room for human-social interaction.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that was beautiful to see.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: And a good example of how important this social dimension of hope is.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: You mentioned, as you were just answering, about the hope barometer as well.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think people find that rather interesting.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: Can you tell us about this hope barometer and the components that are within it?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it has a number of components, it's seven dimensions, namely the cognitive dimension of hope, and the emotional dimension of hope, the ethical dimension of hope, social dimension of hope, which you talked just talked about, and the institutional trust dimension, a dimension of expectations about the future, and then also lastly, a spiritual dimension.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that that last is about you know how faith that people have, let's say in God or good duty for the world, relates to their hope, and the other dimensions as well.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so we measure hope as it relates to these components.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: So cognitive hope is all about you know what kind of rational expectations do people have?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Emotional hope is to do with how they experience that, and social hope is also to do with that institutional trust.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Do you believe and let's say that the government is conducive to that kind of hope formation, etc.?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's all there.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: And where can people view this hope barometer?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have a spot online where they can see it?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: We have a spot online indeed, the hopeproject.nl, where you can also do a self-test.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: The site is available in English, and then you can get a glimpse of how hopeful you are.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_02: The hopeproject.nl.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Earlier we were talking about how the hope project has been funded by the Goldschmidting Foundation for People, Work, and the Economy.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, they see your research as being reflective of uh broader societal needs.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_02: How do you see people in need of hope today?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's a great need for hope.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: You just mentioned a minute ago a few crises that the world is growing through.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's the climate crisis, though there's now a crisis with war, there's an economic crisis, other crises as well.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: And the older ones are still around too.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: And there is therefore the danger, which we also talked about, of resignation, of giving up of despair, and of just not feeling that you have any agency over what's going on.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's an understandable fear, but it's crucial that we retain this feeling that we can do something and that small actions can do matter.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: It does matter how much I as an individual fly for the climate in a very small way, but it matters.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: It matters how you relate to others on your streets and what little you can do to foster a kind of social hope that is important to cope with these crises.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I assume that you feel that hope is even more necessary now, uh, considering what is happening in the world with COVID and now the war.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: Might you wish to say anything about the COVID crisis and hope?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think that the COVID crisis has taught us the enormous value of hope.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: We saw that we saw the various forms of hope that we just outlined earlier.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: In the beginning was very much the survival hope.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: The hospitals were overflowing, something needed to happen.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Urgently, we saw great examples of human bravery and sacrifice in that crisis.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Really examples of survival hope.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: There was also an immediate investment in mastery hope.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Remarkable work has been done in developing these vaccines in a relatively short amount of time and then distributing them and administrating them.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's really a feat of human mastery hope, so to say.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's also attachment hope.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: People instinctively realized that they needed others and that they needed to relate others to others in a different way because of the restrictions, and people went for that in various ways.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning hope is very interesting.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think that not necessarily in Western Europe, this crisis has given people a new zest, let's say, for revisiting the churches again.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: We have not seen that en masse, but every crisis is an opportunity to examine your worldview in light of what's going on and perhaps find new sources of meaning there.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that many Christians have found new ways of understanding the Bible and their faith through this crisis.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, and I think that your point about meaning and hope is very important from a Christian perspective.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm wondering if you could say something about hope from a Christian perspective for those that might be lacking hope today.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: What I think is crucial about the Christian understanding of hope is that it is open.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Jürgen Moldman, the famous Protestant theologian of hope, made a crucial distinction in his work between what he calls an apocalyptic hope and an eschatological hope.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: An apocalyptic hope, as he defines it, is a essentially a closed view on the future of the world.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: A certain set of things will happen regardless of human agency.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we are essentially relegated to the part of passive observance.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's an apocalyptic hope, which you see in in religions, but you also see it, as I was outlining in some sectors in the current ecological movement.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that is essentially not really conducive for the hope of people.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: He contrasts that, Nortmann contrasts that with what he calls an eschatological hope, which he sees as the true biblical understanding of what hope is all about, which is an open future from which God invites us to participate in his kingdom through Jesus Christ.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And which is not, we don't know exactly how the future will look like, because there's lots of discontinuity between this world and the new heaven and the new earth.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And because we are so mired in our fallen world, we cannot yet see the glories of what is to come.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: But we have been given a pre-taste through Christ, through the Holy Spirit, through the church community which is active in this world, and that gives us a hope that it is meaningful to work towards that future, although we do not yet see what it is, and it makes us creative in exploring various options.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, David, is there something special about hope from a Christian perspective that those who are lacking hope would find very beneficial?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think there is.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think that a lot of the despair that we talked about stems from an understanding of the world that is essentially closed, what you could say an apocalyptic form of hope.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: Ecological crisis, war, etc., other problems that are on the horizon are deemed to be insurmountable and are deemed likely to destroy our life.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: The Christian perspective on hope is a promising one because it knows that disasters, etc., are not the end, but that God, on the other side of history, will bring about a new heaven and a new earth.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: And through Jesus Christ, He has already provided a pretaste of that.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And through the Holy Spirit and in the Christian community, we can celebrate that pre-taste, talk about it, and be encouraged by it.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: And what it means concretely is that we are called upon to mirror some of this new life, which we as Christians also are very much in the dark about how exactly it will look like.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: But we know there is a good future ahead because we know that there is a good God who will bring about a new heaven and a new earth through tribulations and problems, etc.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: But he has given us a compass, a hopeful compass, which points towards the good that is to come.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: That is, as I see it, the nature of Christian hope.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: And in the church, of course, we express it regularly as we profess certain creeds like the Apostles' Creed or the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, this being a certain hope for us in the future.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: And a very positive message, too, which also I would think would fit in line with hope as well.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: Steven van der Hovel, thank you so much for joining us for this session of Essentially Speaking.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: And we certainly wish you the best in your research and hope that you'll let us know when your Oxford compendium on hope is being released.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: We'd be happy to release that link to the public.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll do that.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much, Steven.