The key principle that Polkinghorne uses to construct his eschatological vision is that of continuity/discontinuity. If God is going to bring new life out of this fated-for-death universe, it must be both continuous with what has come before and discontinuous in overcoming the frailties, limitations, and evils of the present universe. The paradigmatic expression of this principle for Polkinghorne is the resurrection of Jesus: it is both the same pre-Easter Jesus who has been raised, but he has been raised to a new kind of life that is qualitatively different from earthly life.

In terms of physical continuity, Polkinghorne attempts to isolate some of the fundamental aspects of the universe. He sees the cosmos as essentially a process, a self-evolving spatio-temporal cosmos that eventually gives rise to intelligent, self-aware beings. This cosmos is also characterized by a deep relationality: everything from quarks to human beings find their identity in relation to other parts of the universe; it is imbued with information: patterns and wholes exert genuine causal effect on what happens; and it displays a deep intelligibility and transparency to mathematical reasoning. Polkinghorne’s suggestion is that these deep features of the present universe reflect the will of the Creator and that we can reasonably expect them to persist in some way in the new Creation.

Hope for a new creation, though, can only be rooted in the faithfulness of God. Consequently, it’s important to discern what we can of the divine nature and character if we are to have hope for the future. In a survey of the biblical material that manages to be both extremely concise and comprehensive, Polkinghorne paints a picture of a faithful, loving deity that emerges from the Old and New Testaments. The Bible, for Polkinghorne, is not “a conveniently divinely dictated handbook in which to look up the answers, but it is the record of the persons and events that have been particularly open to the presence of the divine reality and through which the divine nature may most transparently be discerned” (p. 53). In God’s faithfulness to Israel, in its growing eschatological expectations, and preeminently in his raising of Jesus from the dead, Polkinghorne discerns a God who, because of his loving faithfulness, will act to bring about a state of affairs where God’s presence is made immediately apparent to God’s people and in which the sufferings and limitations of this present life are overcome.