The Hope of Glory: A Theology of Redemption

The Hope of Glory affirms a Christian hope for life in glory to be conceived as the renewal of this world as opposed to leaving this world behind: it is the same creation that God made “in the beginning” that God glorifies and redeems at the end.

When speaking of the redemption of all things, theology finds itself confronted by various pitfalls. On the one hand, this-worldly eschatologies that define Christian hope in terms of transforming the conditions of human existence in the present pay insufficient attention to the possibility of a wholly new creation. On the other hand, eschatologies that focus solely on the world to come fail to attend how Christian hope is a promise for the present as much as it is for the future.

To avoid these pitfalls, says Ian McFarland, we need to seek the balance struck by Paul in the phrase “the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). Hope is always grounded in present reality; we hope for that which is not yet, but if that hope has no connection to our current experience, it is not hope at all, just wishful thinking. Yet glory is different; it refers to the displacement of the suffering and mortality of present experience with incorruption and immortality—a displacement that transcends every possibility of present existence because it is the utterly gracious gift of eschatological consummation.

Drawing on his previous work on creation (From Nothing) and incarnation (The Word Made Flesh), McFarland demonstrates how, in the resurrection, we see the promise of a final redemption grounded in this-worldly hope yet realized in the glory of a new heaven and new earth.