Optimism, Pessimism, and the Future

Where is the balanced message that a “future shocked” generation needs to hear?

Rapid technological advances, dizzying change, and uprooting is future shock at work in modern society. This has produced two widely contrasting theological responses: optimism and pessimism.

Early in this century, Walter Rauschenbusch, the optimistic social gospeler, proclaimed: “If at this juncture we can rally sufficient religious faith and moral strength to snap the bonds of evil and turn the present unparalleled economic and intellectual resources of humanity to the harmonious development of a true social life, the generations yet unborn will mark this as that great day of the Lord for which the ages waited.”

This liberal optimism, however, was soon shattered by World War I. Unparalleled technological advances did not lead to prosperity, but to undreamed-of destruction. Progressive social movements did not produce the millenium, but rather a worldwide depression and a second, even more destructive, world war.

Understandably, the neo-orthodox theology, which succeeded the optimistic liberal movements, reacted pessimistically to the accelerated pace of historical change.

Rudolf Bultmann grimly observed that future history might well end in total destruction. In any case, it would be governed entirely by social and physical laws: God would never act directly in the spheres of economics, politics, or nature.

Having abolished hope for history as a whole, Bultmann reduced faith to the isolated individual’s readiness to enter confidently into the darkness of the future; to “freedom from anxiety in the face of nothing.”

The neo-orthodox movement, however, also called for renewed biblical emphases. Despite Bultmann, these theologians often challenged the neglect of, or despair over, history’s future.

Many scholars rightly noted that the biblical God acts through promises and fulfillments. Although the fulfillments (such as Christ’s coming) are brought about by God’s transcendent power, they occur within human history. And promise and fulfillment did not end with Christ. Jesus promised the Spirit, who would renew people in this life, and his own return, which would transform this earth.

Influenced by this biblical motif of promise and fulfillment, Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jürgen Moltmann have insisted that the future will not be governed by alleged scientific laws alone. History, society, and nature remain open to God’s creative, inbreaking power. To be sure, these theologians do not discuss future events—Christ’s return, the millenium, and so on—as precisely as many evangelicals would like. Nevertheless, they provide a theological rationale, developed in dialogue with modern science, for regarding history as being open to God’s transforming activity.

Many other theologians, however, appear somewhat schizophrenic from an evangelical perspective. On one hand, two world wars and the shadow of nuclear annihilation have made a full return to the earlier liberal optimism impossible. This century seems to have confirmed what evangelicals have always held: that apart from a God who can act directly within the social and natural worlds, history moves not toward salvation but toward destruction.

On the other hand, few modern theologians can surrender the biblical hope entirely. Most continue to speak enthusiastically about the future. Yet, if their God is unable to bring about a truly transformed future, how can they really assert this?

While most theology—indeed, most of humanity—wavers between well-founded pessimism and ill-founded (but unquenchable) optimism about the future, the time is propitious for evangelical theology. Evangelicals must speak—and they must do so in understandable language—of the hopelessness of history apart from God, and also of a God who will guide history to a meaningful goal.

Historically evangelicals have tried to do this by stressing that God’s future is both continuous and discontinuous with the present. Evil will be destroyed when Christ returns, but he will also transform whatever is worth saving.

However, today some evangelicals are stressing the heavenly reward of the individual or the godlessness of the present time so heavily that the historical continuity of God’s purpose becomes obscure. They fail to assure despairing humanity that God is active even during the darkest hours, and that Christlike deeds point the way to the coming kingdom.

Yet others have become so involved in social and political activity that the discontinuity in God’s purpose becomes blurred. They fail to caution a superficially optimistic humanity that ultimate solution of its problems depends on a God whose activity utterly transcends ours.

If evangelical theology can realistically face the brokenness of contemporary experience, yet without escaping into exaggerated otherworldliness or pessimism; if it can offer guidance for today’s urgent social tasks, yet without settling for shortsighted, superficial optimism—then we will be able to articulate the balanced message that a “future shocked” generation so badly needs to hear.

THOMAS FINGERDr. Finger is associate professor of systematic theology at Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Lombard, Illinois.

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