The matter of hope arises as a complex consideration entailing that, at some point, that which is hoped for, desired, trusted, believed, or relied upon will come to be. Not hope alone, however, but the matter of hope in and of time and the time for or of hope is also deceptively confounding and there is great potential in contemplating the inextricable link between hope and time. 

Whilst there is a tendency in life and in scholarship to descend abjectly into the timeless and hopeless conceptual abyss, hope and time offer plentiful resources to avoid this. The world over—across philosophical, religious, theological, scientific and cultural traditions and epochs—thinkers have wrestled and struggled, contemplating and presenting their own thoughts on these two foundational human constructs. Along the way, whether ancient, modern, postmodern, or other, some of the most creative, penetrating, stimulating, and beautiful—but also ambivalent and difficult—cogitations and works of argumentation, prose, poetry, myth, literature, and art have and continue to emerge and populate the diverse and ever-evolving theological and religious landscapes we occupy (and have occupied).

This issue of The Journal of the Oxford Graduate Theological Society, explores "Hope and Time in Religion and Theology."