There are two ways of talking about the future. One is the method of extrapolation. The other is the method of anticipation. All researchers into the future and all planners for the future extrapolate, inferring the future from data and trends of the past and present. For them the past and the future lie along one and the same straight, temporal line. There is no qualitative difference between past and future. So they are not really investigating the future at all. They are simply prolonging into the future their own present … they repress the future’s new possibilities. The future is what is going to be, not what is going to come.
The method of anticipation works quite differently. Anticipation means expectation and an advance realization of what is coming. Anticipations are advance pictures and pre-conceptions (in the literal sense) of what we are looking for and expect. They are creative imaginations of what is to come … For the method of anticipation there is a qualitative difference between past and future. The past is the reality, the future is possible, and the present is the front at which potentialities can be realized or thwarted.
From Jesus Christ for Today’s World, by Jurgen Moltmann, Pg 138-139
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