I’m wondering what you FH think (or someone else thinks) of the CCC explanation of Hope:
Quote:
1817 Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.”
Do you think i’m correct in thinking that
(a)
Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness
is defining what Hope is, and
(b)
placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.
is actually defining the cause of Hope, which is Faith? My thought is that “trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength” is synonymous with Faith.
After perusing the Catholic Encyclopedia, I believe the following to be a pretty fair assessment:
Faith is a supernatural endowment whereby we gain the ability to believe in things we can’t see (God, heaven, eternal life, the resurrection e.g.). Hope is a supernatural endowment whereby we desire and look forward to those things
coming true-seeing “face to face.” Protestantism, I believe, often mixes faith and hope, using the term “faith” to include hope, or perhaps more specifically trust, in an object.
In Catholicism, believing something to be true is still different from hoping and trusting that it will be true. The former has to do with supernatural knowledge granted while the latter is to rely or trust in the objects of that knowledge, desiring that they be true
for us. Again, in Protestantism the Catholic concept of hope may actually be looked upon as a weakness, useless if one believes in the assurance of their salvation.
It’s interesting that the intellect cannot, by it’s own power, believe in these things, but the will, moved by grace, can cause the intellect to assent and we become confident in them even though we don’t fully comprehend . Perhaps due to the fact that the intellect will continue to question and seek to understand better despite its powerful conviction, hope plays its part until we’re in the immediate presence of the Lord.
At any rate, hope would not be a weaker form of faith but rather a virtue which follows from faiths’ understanding. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for…”. So the trust referred to in the CCC when defining hope is not like the overconfidence of the Reformers-it’s part of the desire-a “hopeful trust”. Anyway, that’s the best I came up with, FWIW.
