In his latest book, Thomas Rausch offers an insightful reflection on the eschatological hope of Christian faith, notable for the way it is founded on the resurrection of Christ, is centered on the coming of the reign of God, and engages the worship and mission of the church in the world. He begins by asking how the object of Christian hope shifted from the eschaton (as the new creation) to the eschata (the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell), and how, in piety, salvation came to be understood individualistically as going to heaven or saving one's soul rather than as the second coming of Christ, “bringing the kingdom in its fullness and creation to its completion” (142). Returning to the Scriptures and liturgy of the early church, and in dialogue with a host of recent theological scholars, including Dermot Lane, Elizabeth Johnson, Joseph Ratzinger, Terence Nichols, Peter Phan, Terrence Tilley, Brian Robinette, and Bruce Morrill, Rausch gives a compelling account of the cosmic vision of Christian hope and its implications for Christian discipleship. This fine book is particularly timely as we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Vatican II, inasmuch as it takes up a central theme of one of the council's most important documents, Gaudium et Spes.

In seven clearly written and summarized chapters, Rausch sketches out the challenges of the contemporary context, highlights the essential unity of creation and eschatology in the Old Testament, the centrality of the reign of God for the person and mission of Jesus, the eschatological significance of his resurrection for the new creation, the relationship between the eschaton and the eschata, the eschatological dimension of the liturgy and its relationship to social justice, and the centrality of Christ and Christian praxis for Christian hope.

Particularly welcome is Rausch's recognition of the essential link between the theology of creation and eschatology and his insistence that hope is not fully Christian until it is hope for all of human history and for the whole creation. Such hope is founded on God's action in Christ and the Spirit and is summoned to manifest itself in dedication to the ongoing work of justice and peace that God's coming entails. Rausch rightly calls for a renewal of the eschatological imagination through liturgical practice that manifests the inherent relationship between the eucharistic liturgy and our service of the kingdom in the world. It is God who brings about God's reign, but God “works through human beings who in imitation of Christ reach out to others in compassionate service or reconciling practices” (153).

This is a splendid text for college courses and adult book discussion groups. Readers will become familiar with a variety of important thinkers and benefit from the clear, insightful, and well-balanced writing of the author.