Christianity is nothing if it is not eschatology: a hope in a promise for the future. This is what Jurgen Moltmann is inviting us to take seriously, in his very important book. It is, however, a difficult book, at least for the non-theologian; and perhaps the best way of giving a fair account of its value is to present, in some detail, the argument of the concluding chapter (the appendix on Ernst Bloch has been omitted from the English edition). The problem is to show how Christianity as eschatology actually happens. What visible form and observable shape does this hope in a promised future, which believers share, actually take in the complicated business which is modern life in an industrial society such as ours? What in fact is the relationship between the Church and the world?

We have to decide whether, as believers in modern society, we form what Moltmann calls an accommodating group, a group capable of being absorbed and assimilated by society, or a group which is inassimilable and non-conformist. We have to ask if this hope in the future which we have, compels us to resist being assimilated and adjusted to modern society. Moltmann is, of course, going to argue that if believers really conduct their lives and their thinking in the context of their hope in God’s promised future, then there will always be tension between the believing community and modern society … whatever modern society may happen to be (Moltmann clearly works in terms of the society to which he belongs: western industrial capitalism).