The Philosophy and Theology of Hope

Hope is the one thing we got on our side

Hope can be salvaged when all else has died.

Hazel O’Connor, If Only from Breaking Glass (1987, A & M)

What do we do with hope? Perhaps we live in a hopeless world, or at least, one where hope is confined to something material. Wallsⁱ suggests that the Enlightenment discarded, without disproving it, the religious version of hope (along with a lot of the rest of religious belief). It is possible that religious hope was jettisoned in favour of hope in science. Progress, in the Nineteenth Century, was scientific and technological. The idea was that all was needed was a science of man and the unification of a rational society with an industrial-technological economy, and all would be well.

Of course, it was not. The horrors unleashed by the technological and managerial efforts of the Twentieth Century have undermined, perhaps fatally, Enlightenment rationality, and hope in progress. Progress in technology only led to more ways of committing mass murder, as did bureaucratic management techniques. The Holocaust was not only the application of science to killing people en mass, it was an exercise in annihilation by paperwork. The hope of science and managerial technique failed humanity.

The damage done to ‘traditional’ hope persisted, however. The secular version of hope, through progress, education, technology and social reform had been decisively disproven, but the clock could not be, and was not, turned back to the Christian view of the world as progressing towards the Kingdom of God. Hope is out of fashion, in a sense.

The goods which the modern person in the Western world can control are material: possessions. Worldly possibilities are the only objects of hope many aspire to. Curtailed expectations are considered to be wise. Every once in a while, of course, a politician or other snake oil salesman comes along and raises people's hopes, at least for increased material wealth and possessions, but usually, those hopes fail. The system of the world, of countries, of consumerism, is not easy to change.

In Western thought, at least, there are two strands of thinking about hope, the theological and the philosophical. As with most other issues located around virtues and concepts, these two intertwine but they can, at least in thought post-Enlightenment, be separated to some extent. At least, philosophy no longer feels the need to play the handmaid to theology. While some philosophers pay attention to the deliverances of theology, not all do. Similarly, theologians do not feel the necessity of attending to philosophical thought, although often, it seems, they are more open to doing so than the other way around.

Hope is a theological virtue. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness (CCC 1817). Hope responds to the aspiration of happiness (CCC 1818). Hope excludes both despair and presumption.ⁱⁱ Lonergan thinks that there is a supernatural solution to the problem of evil, but that humanism will ignore it, and this humanism will therefore exclude hope.ⁱⁱⁱ

Lonergan is a Thomist, and Aquinas views hope as dispensable, at least compared with charity, and unintelligible without faith. Faith, for Aquinas, is not seeing or knowing but hoping, and the object of hope is ‘eternal beatitude’ and divine assistance. The difference between hope and faith is that hope is oriented towards the future.^iv The faithful are also hopeful. Hope is a virtue, which makes its possessor good and their activity sound because hope keeps us in tune with God and God is our ultimate good. This hope is not only for something in the future but a looking forward to what God provides; we hope for God himself.^v

Before Aquinas, Augustine also considered hope. In the Enchiridion: On Faith, Hope, and Love, he says that hope is oriented towards future events and relates to good for the hoper. The theological virtues, faith, hope, and love are seen as interconnected, with love (charity) underpinning the others. If we love the future fulfillment of God’s will, then we will hope for it and obtain the correct form of faith. Love underpins hope which yields correct faith. The faithful have the correct hopes because they love God.^vi By contrast, Augustine argues, ‘The devils also believe and tremble’ (James 2:19), because the devils have neither hope nor love.

Obviously, these theological ideas about hope are founded on the Biblical text. We can only hope for what is uncertain: ‘For in hope we are saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it in patience.’ (Romans 8:24-5). Similarly ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ (Hebrews 11:1). From expressions of hope such as these, Augustine, Aquinas and others have forged Christian hope.

The implication here is that, in a world which has lost its Christian hope and moved to consumerist frenzy or postmodern despair, hope has not been found wanting, it has simply been disregarded. It does not mean that people of faith simply wait for the intervention of God in the world, like some fundamentalist awaiting the ‘great tribulation’, but we recognise the interrelationship of love, hope and faith, and the emphasis on love as the most fundamental.

Without the love and faith foundations of hope, we are left relying on philosophy for our hopes for the future. This might not be a good thing, but to show that we will have to probe the philosophical foundations of hope.

iWalls, J. L. (2012). The Wisdom of Hope in a Despairing World. In P. Moser & M. McFall (Eds.), The Wisdom of the Christian Faith. New York: CUP.

iiLonergan, B. J. F. (1992). Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (5th rev. ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 723-4.

iiiLonergan, Insight, p. 749.

ivDavies, B. (2002). Aquinas: An Introduction. London: Continuum, p. 204-5

vAquinas, T. (1948). Summa Theologica (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.). Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, II-II, 17.2.

viAugustine. (1887). The Handbook on Faith, Hope and Love. In P. Schaff (Ed.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series (Vol. 3). Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing Co, Chapter 8.