saw a great many different hopes, which collapsed in resignation or anger or violence under the pressure of the first opposition. Genuine hope is not blind optimism. It is hope with open eyes, which sees the suffering and yet believes in the future. It is only out of disappointment that hope can become wise. At the end of the 60s Johann-Baptist Metz and I tried to develop a political theology out of ‘the theology of hope’, so as to arrive at hope in action out of the hope of faith. I also tried