In the End -- The Beginning: The Life of Hope;

''In my end is my beginning,'' wrote T. S. Eliot, and Jrgen Moltmann's new book is a powerful testament to personal hope in chaotic, even catastrophic times. As Moltmann's award-winning volume The Coming of God laid out the systematic framework of eschatology (the doctrine of the ''last things''), so here he explores the personal meaning of that fundamental affirmation for Christians. Debunking the classic images of Christian apocalyptic scenarios, the final struggle between God and Satan, Christ and the Antichrist-Armageddon-Moltmann instead shows that Christian expectation of the future has nothing to do with these but everything to do with new beginnings and a horizon of hope. Three parts explore three particular beginnings: birth (childhood and youth), rebirth (failures and defeats), and resurrection (death, judgment, afterlife). This brief volume promises to be one of Moltmann's most personal and compelling books.