Abstract
The following critical questions are posed: is hope the antidote of dread and despair or a kind of escapism from the harsh realities of anguish and suffering? What is meant by hope in Christian spirituality and how is hope connected to a theology of the resurrection? Is resurrection hope merely a kind of cheap triumphantalism and variant of a theologia gloriae? The basic assumption is that the notion of the resurrection can contribute to ‘the thickening of alternative stories of faith’. A theologia resurrectionis is about the reframing of life by means of a radical paradox: ‘Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?’ If pastoral caregiving is indeed about change and hope, the resurrection describes an ontology of hope by which human beings are transformed into a total new being. Beyond the discriminating and stigmatising categories of many social and cultural discourses on our being human, resurrection theology defines hope as a new state of mind and being. The identity of human beings is therefore not determined by descent, gender, race or social status, but by eschatology (new creation.) Hope care is primarily about a new courage to be. It opens up different frameworks for meaningful living within the realm of human suffering.
Highlights
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The following critical questions are posed: is hope the antidote of dread and despair or a kind of escapism from the harsh realities of anguish and suffering? What is meant by hope in Christian spirituality and how is hope connected to a theology of the resurrection? Is resurrection hope merely a kind of cheap triumphantalism and variant of a theologia gloriae? The basic assumption is that the notion of the resurrection can contribute to ‘the thickening of alternative stories of faith’
A theologia resurrectionis is about the reframing of life by means of a radical paradox: ‘Where, O death is your victory? Where, O death is your sting?’ If pastoral caregiving is about change and hope, the resurrection describes an ontology of hope by which human beings are transformed into a total new being
Summary
Cura animarum as hope care: Towards a theology of the resurrection within the human quest for meaning and hope. It brings about the wisdom that life is not complete and that one should reckon in hope with the fact that within the already, the not-yet is a vivid component of life In existential terminology it means that a human being is fundamentally designed towards future expectations: a homo pro spectans [a human being as an anticipating and future oriented being] (Polak 1968:271). Is the Christian variation of hope, a category sui generis and what is the difference between future as futurum [prophetic projections and temporal forecasts], future as utopia [the notyet of something that does not exist, created by imagination and the creativity of the human mind], and future as parousia [the Second Coming, an eschatological understanding of a messianic expectation – the not-yet – in terms of the essence http://www.hts.org.za and identity of our being human, the ontological category of the already]?.
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