The Theology of Hope and the Faces of History - Voices, Silences and Possibilities

Abstract

The article analyzes Christian hope within a global context marked by crises, wars, inequalities, and growing collective despair. It is justified by the need to recover hope as a theological category capable of illuminating ethical action amid contemporary challenges. The central question investigates how to articulate human and theological hope without reducing it either to spiritualist escape or to mere sociopolitical optimism. The hypothesis argues that hope, biblically grounded and understood through an eschatological‑praxis lens, becomes a hermeneutical principle for interpreting the wounded faces of history and guiding transformative practices. The study, based on bibliographic and hermeneutical‑theological methodology, engages Spes non confundit, Spe salvi, and authors such as Moltmann, Metz, Gutiérrez, Bloch, and Thomas Aquinas. The results show that hope becomes embodied in marginalized subjects and demands attentive listening to historical silences. The article concludes that to hope is to act: Christian hope calls for responsibility, solidarity, and the construction of signs of the Kingdom in the present.