Chapter 7 - Further new testament insights

Chapter 7 – Further New Testament insights
I struggled with this chapter, it didn’t grasp me like the previous few have and it was not as clear and ordered in my opinion as the others. Polkinghorne tries to establish a new testament basis for eschatological hope through a series of bible passages and this is achieved.
He examines a variety of themes in this chapter all linked around the concept of hope as expressed in the new testament beginning with the ideas expressed concerning eschatological thinking. He looks at the thoughts of Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer who believe that Jesus deliberately sought his own immolation in an attempt to force Gods hand. C.H.Dodd by contrast developed a point of view that of realised eschatology sees the kingdom as already being in the words and deeds of Jesus’ ministry. Polkinghorne however suggests that the truth s a mixture of the two in that the kingdom is present and is yet to come and that is very much the way I see it. God reveals his kingdom to us through he words and actions of Christ and expects us to make a heaven on earth through our own words and actions that mirror those of Jesus. However at the same time there is a hope that God has a plan outside of our understanding of time and space and that eventually we will know him fully and live with him totally in some Heavenly experience.
Polkinghorne picks up this theme in a section on new creation expressing that through the death and resurrection of Christ we have been made a new creation, it follows therefore that if we are a new creation we should live in the world as if we were living in the kingdom of God, this links in well with liberation theology although Polkinghorne does not make the connection. I would really have liked to have seen him expand on this further rather than just quoting the passages that allude to our re-creation actually make a comment on what the cost to the individual is and how this brings hope to others who have not experienced the new creation.
Polkinghorne ends this chapter with the idea that runs throughout his book that of hope, he uses the words of Hans Weder to point out that the new testament is essentially a gospel of the purification of hope, turning a meticulous desire for marvels or a desire for a purely political deliverance into the new hope that arises from the death and resurrection of Christ.