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| The Distinction Between Faith and Hope, and the Mutual Dependence of Faith, Hope, and Love.
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Chapter 8.—The Distinction Between Faith and Hope, and
the Mutual Dependence of Faith, Hope, and Love.
Again, can anything be hoped for
which is not an object of faith? It is true that a thing which is
not an object of hope may be believed. What true Christian, for
example, does not believe in the punishment of the wicked? And yet
such an one does not hope for it. And the man who believes that
punishment to be hanging over himself, and who shrinks in horror
from the prospect, is more properly said to fear than to hope. And
these two states of mind the poet carefully distinguishes, when he
says: “Permit the fearful to have hope.”1098
| 1098 Lucan, Phars. ii.
15. | Another poet, who is usually much
superior to this one, makes a wrong use of the word, when he says:
“If I have been able to hope for so great a grief as this.”1099
| 1099 Virgil, Æneid, iv.
419. | And some
grammarians take this case as an example of impropriety of speech,
saying, “He said sperare [to hope] instead of
timere [to fear].” Accordingly, faith may have for its object
evil as well as good; for both good and evil are believed, and the
faith that believes them is not evil, but good. Faith, moreover, is
concerned with the past, the present, and the future, all three. We
believe, for example, that Christ died,—an event in the past; we
believe that He is sitting at the right hand of God,—a state of
things which is present; we believe that He will come to judge the
quick and the dead,—an event of the future. Again, faith applies
both to one’s own circumstances and those of others. Every one,
for example, believes that his own existence had a beginning, and
was not eternal, and he believes the same both of other men and
other things. Many of our beliefs in regard to religious matters,
again, have reference not merely to other men, but to angels also.
But hope has for its object only what is good, only what is future,
and only what affects the man who entertains the hope. For these
reasons, then, faith must be distinguished from hope, not merely as
a matter of verbal propriety, but because they are essentially
different. The fact that we do not see either what we believe or
what we hope for, is all that is common to faith and hope. In the
Epistle to the Hebrews, for example, faith is defined (and eminent
defenders of the catholic faith have used the definition as a
standard) “the evidence of things not seen.”1100
Although, should any one say that
he believes, that is, has grounded his faith, not on words, nor on
witnesses, nor on any reasoning whatever, but on the direct
evidence of his own senses, he would not be guilty of such an
impropriety of speech as to be justly liable to the criticism,
“You saw, therefore you did not believe.” And hence it does not
follow that an object of faith is not an object of sight. But it is
better that we should use the word “faith” as the Scriptures
have taught us, applying it to those things which are not seen.
Concerning hope, again, the apostle says: “Hope that is seen is
not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we
hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for
it.”1101
When,
then, we believe that good is about to come, this is nothing else
but to hope for it. Now what shall I say of love? Without it, faith
profits nothing; and in its absence, hope cannot exist. The Apostle
James says: “The devils also believe, and tremble.”1102
—that is,
they, having neither hope nor love, but believing that what we love
and hope for is about to come, are in terror. And so the Apostle
Paul approves and commends the “faith that worketh by love;”1103
and this
certainly cannot exist without hope. Wherefore there is no love
without hope, no hope without love, and neither love nor hope
without faith.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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