summer moltmann blogging: resurrection hope

from "God in Creation", pp. 92-3. Sexist language included so as not to paint too rosy a picture of Jurgen.

"Does this [resurrection hope] have practical consequences? It does not lead to the kind of optimism that overlooks the negative. But it does offer the strength to hold fast to what is dead, and to remain mindful of those who have died. The hope of resurrection brings the living and the dead into a single fellowship of hope. In this fellowship death is not suppressed, nor are the dead given over to oblivion. The messianic community of the church of the risen Chrsit has always been understood as a community of the living and of the dead.... The protest against the annihilating Nothingness must not lead to the suppression and forgetfulness of the annihilated; and equally, hope for the annihilated must not permit us to come to terms with their annihilation. The first is obviously the danger for revolutionaries; the second is the danger of the religious.
...What accords with this faith is the expectation of the transformatio mundi. The expectation of 'the end of the world' is a vulgar error. Like the expectation of the annhilatio mundi it is gnostic in origin, not biblical. It is the means by which many people would like God to win acceptance at the world's expense. But eschatology is nothing other than faith in the Creator with its eyes turned towards the future. Anyone who believes in the God who created being out of nothing, also believes in the God who gives life to the dead. This means that he hopes for the new creation of heaven and earth. His faith makes him prepared to withstand annihilation, even when there is nothing left to hope for, humanly speaking. His hope in God commits him to faithfulness to the earth.