Faith and hope are closely related. To understand hope, the German Pope argued, we should look at the definition of faith in the “Epistle to the Hebrews.”
by Massimo Introvigne
Article 3 of 5. Read article 1 and article 2.
In this third article of the series, I continue to reconstruct the 2007 encyclical on hope “Spe salvi” of Benedict XVI as if it were a theatrical play in four acts. The first act connected Christianity with the birth of our Western notion of hope. The second act is a pedagogical moment. The main characters are shown to us as they reflect on the question: what precisely is this hope that has appeared in human history with Christianity? It is a reflection that commits Christians, comforted by the gift of hope that Jesus Christ has brought into history, to the confrontation between their faith and reason, between the Biblical heritage and Greek philosophy. Hope had been received as a gift, but it was necessary to realize what it was, through a process that went from the Church Fathers to the Scholastic philosophy of the Middle Ages.
Since faith and hope are closely related, Benedict XVI starts from a famous definition of faith, which was proposed in the “Epistle to the Hebrews” 11:1. He argued that—to set the discourse properly—two fundamental nouns there should be left in Greek and not immediately translated. Faith then in “Hebrews” 11:1 is “the hypostasis of things hoped for, the elenchos of things not seen.” The German Pope implied that those who get their translation wrong will end up getting their theology wrong as well.
“Hypostasis” should be translated as “substance,” a fundamental concept of all Greek and medieval philosophy. Substance is what is most important in any reality. It is substance that makes the computer on which you are reading this text a computer, and makes a computer different from a ship or a cat or a thought. At the same time, it has some essential thing in common with every other computer, even those very distant in time and space. Among many different computers, the substance does not change, but what classical philosophy calls accidents do change.
The substance (hypostasis) “of things hoped for” is thus something very concrete. Not a state of mind, a desire, a passion, an emotion: but a “thing.” Hope, answering Marxist criticism, is thus not an illusion: certainly, it refers in good part to the future but a part of this future is already within us, not as fantasy but as reality. Truly within us there is already “something of the reality we are waiting for,” (no. 7). Only the word “substance” allows us to give the expression “something” its full reality, definitively removing it from the realm of the vague, the indefinite, and the illusory.
Not only that: faith—which at the same time becomes hope—is “the elenchos of things not seen.” “Elenchos,” according to Benedict, must be translated as “proof.” It is the proof that supports a true statement and distinguishes it from a false one. It is also the proof to which legal discourse, of the lawyer and the judge, hangs on to, the one that makes the difference between right and wrong, between guilt and innocence. That makes, again, both faith and hope much more concrete, and less vague and sentimental as possible. The “things that cannot be seen” are not supported by mere subjective aspirations but by evidence.
According to Benedict, the most “substantial” and concrete character of hope emerges from the tenth chapter of the “Epistle to the Hebrews,” as opposed to the eleventh where the famous definition of faith is included. Chapter 10 offers us almost a pun between “substances,” understood in the sense of material goods, and “substance,” that is, hope. To persecuted Christians the Epistle says, “You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions” (Hebrews 10:34). But in the Latin translation of the Vulgate those “better possessions” are rendered with “substantiam,” so that the “substances” of economic and material goods are contrasted with a “substance,” i.e., hope, which may seem less concrete but for those who can see is instead more tangible and longer “lasting.”
Benedict XVI shows how it is not completely satisfactory to define this “something” within us as merely a germ of “eternal life.” For “eternal life,” he argues, is a contradictory expression in itself. Life is not eternal: it has a beginning and an end; therefore, eternity is strictly speaking a different reality from life. There is then a danger of understanding “eternal life” as simply an indefinite and repetitive duration. The perspective may appear as not particularly exciting. “Do we really want this—to live eternally? Perhaps many people reject the faith today simply because they do not find the prospect of eternal life attractive. What they desire is not eternal life at all, but this present life, for which faith in eternal life seems something of an impediment. To continue living for ever —endlessly—appears more like a curse than a gift. Death, admittedly, one would wish to postpone for as long as possible. But to live always, without end—this, all things considered, can only be monotonous and ultimately unbearable” (no. 10).
I doubt that the Pope intends to allude explicitly to this literary reference, but these words capture the essence of one of the great archetypes of modern literature, the vampire myth. Dracula, the character created by Irish novelist Abraham “Bram” Stoker (1847–1912), is not at all content with his “endless living” and, in the depths of his being, aspires to the end of his vampire existence as liberation. But, precisely, the vampire’s “endless” undead life has nothing to do with the mysterious reality alluded to by Christianity when it speaks of “eternal life.” Benedict insists that “to eliminate death or to postpone it more or less indefinitely would place the earth and humanity in an impossible situation, and even for the individual would bring no benefit” (no. 11). Thus, “there is a contradiction in our attitude, which points to an inner contradiction in our very existence. On the one hand, we do not want to die; above all, those who love us do not want us to die. Yet on the other hand, neither do we want to continue living indefinitely, nor was the earth created with that in view. So what do we really want?” (no. 11).
Through an analysis of the writings of Augustine of Hippo (354–430), Benedict XVI shows how what we call “eternal life” is properly “true life” (no. 11). We all somehow perceive that this life, the everyday life in which we eat, drink, sleep, do and suffer violence and sin, is not the true life. “What we call ‘life’ in our everyday language is not real ‘life’ at all. Saint Augustine, in the extended letter on prayer which he addressed to Proba, a wealthy Roman widow and mother of three consuls, once wrote this: ultimately we want only one thing—‘the blessed life,’ the life which is simply life, simply ‘happiness.’ In the final analysis, there is nothing else that we ask for in prayer. Our journey has no other goal—it is about this alone. But then Augustine also says: looking more closely, we have no idea what we ultimately desire, what we would really like. We do not know this reality at all; even in those moments when we think we can reach out and touch it, it eludes us… All we know is that it is not this [present ‘life’]. Yet in not knowing, we know that this reality must exist. ‘There is therefore in us a certain learned ignorance (‘docta ignorantia’), so to speak,’ he [Augustine] writes. We do not know what we would really like; we do not know this ‘true life’; and yet we know that there must be something we do not know towards which we feel driven” (no. 11).
Every now and then, Benedict concludes. another life, more real than “real” life, shines in our awareness, even if only for a brief moment. “There are moments when it suddenly seems clear to us: yes, this is what true ‘life’ is—this is what it should be like” (no. 11). Of this “real life” hope is not mere aspiration, but anticipation. It is a “substantia” that already lives within us, even if only in certain rare moments we perceive its presence and splendor.
