I believe, therefore I act. For out of hope in God’s coming kingdom, the believer also finds worldly hope for the future which we ourselves will have to make. Hope is the motive of all action. However, clear hope in God’s coming kingdom has obligated hope to a specific course of action. For in view of the coming kingdom of freedom, of peace, of justice, and of love, the one who hopes recognizes what is to be done and what is to be left undone, given the conditions of the world. He or she hopes to be able to make plausible for human reason at least distant—very distant—parables of the kingdom of God on earth as goals of human activity, and is determined to work for the realization of these goals as much as possible. . . .
Thus because those who hope know themselves to be responsible for differentiating between God’s activity and their own, they will not demand anything that is impossible. But the theology of hope has a political ethos that commands the believer to do his or her utmost for what is possible. Because I as a believer have a foundation for hope, therefore I act.
—Eberhard Jüngel,
Theological Essays II, ed. J. B. Webster (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1995), 16-17.
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