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Reviewed by Patricia Farris, Senior Minister, Santa Barbara United Methodist Church, Santa Barbara, CA Though the Fig Tree Does Not Blossom: Toward a Responsible Theology of Christian Hope by Ellen Ott Marshall “Hope has a job to do.” These opening words of Ellen Ott Marshall’s work on a “responsible theology of hope” immediately draw the reader into her framework and approach. For Marshall, Associate Professor of Ethics at the Claremont School of Theology, hope, far more than a virtue or a feeling or an attitude, is an agent, an active player in the life of Christian faith or rather in the faith of Christian life. It is to be engaged as a partner and practiced intentionally. And distinct from sentimentality or superficial optimism, this strong, active hope engages the world with eyes wide open to the suffering, loss and sorrow of the world and of the Christian experience. This is hope “practiced as ongoing negotiation between the promising and sobering aspects of life and faith.” It is what Marshall calls “responsible hope.” Responsible hope is at work in the world in all its wonder and complexity. It engages the world, takes into account the labor of others, grapples with powerlessness, and engenders engagement and action. Responsible hope is relentlessly realistic and inherently transcendent, “accountable to things experienced and things envisioned…to peril and to promise.” Marshall draws on a wide range of sources to inform her work. The book was written, she explains, moving back and forth between two Picasso paintings, “The Charnel House” and “First Steps,” one a depiction of violence and human cruelty, the other an image of a mother bending to tenderly support her child. Responsible hope, she explains, involves looking back and forth between the two, grieving, shouting, protesting, resisting, while never forgetting all the possibilities of growth and love. Moving from art to careful academic analysis, Marshall examines the work of Jürgen Moltmann, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul Tillich, Aquinas, Aristotle, Ernst Troeltsch and H. Richard Niebuhr. These sections of the book ask for careful and close attention from the reader, who will not be disappointed. Pastors, preachers, and chaplains will benefit greatly from this careful examination of the theology and work of “responsible hope,” in ways that will undergird sermons and pastoral care with a reflective and comprehensive articulation of Christian hope that moves far beyond platitude and placating. Marshall refuses to ignore “all of our contradictory experiences of God” and pushes the reader to see hope not as an achievement or end, but rather as an active partner in faithful living. Marshall also engages the work of social gospel adherents, liberation theologians, feminist, and ecofeminist perspectives as well as process thinkers. This trajectory pushes Marshall to strongly affirm “hope for this life” and “hope for this world.” This hope is engaged and critical, “accountable to tragedy and to the hopes of others that do not necessarily coincide with my own best interest.” This is God “at work in the world clearing space for freedom.” The experience of two miscarriages while writing this book ground Marshall’s work on “responsible hope” in the honesty and truth of very real pain and often inexplicable suffering of this life. When she returns to Tillich’s work and his sense of hope as “the seed-like presence of that which is hoped for,” we know that we can trust this professor’s insights and affirmation. The practice of responsible hope requires that we “discern and join the life-giving movement of God within this death-dealing world.” And time spent with Though the Fig Tree Does Not Blossom will prepare us for a season of unfolding depth and scope.
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