Alongside love, faith and hope form the three Christian theological virtues. In multiple epistles, the apostle Paul groups these three qualities together as the three virtues that, granted to us by God, enable us to live as Christians (I Cor 13:13; Col 1:5; I Thess 1:3, 5:8). While Paul does state that love is the greatest of these three virtues (I Cor 13:13), he also notes that love springs from hope (Col 1:5). And, of course, it is impossible to love God without having the faith to believe in God and to know Him. In reality, faith, hope, and love are all interconnected. One cannot truly have one without having the other two.
Faith and hope are closely related, but are distinct. By faith, we believe the truths God has revealed to us through His word. We believe the truth about who God is and what He has done in salvation history. By hope, we look forward to the perfect goodness and happiness from God that He has promised us.
What is Faith?
Human beings have faith in many different things. Indeed, since we are finite creatures, faith is a necessary part of all our knowledge. Human reason by itself cannot give us 100% certainty about anything. In order to believe and to know, we must be willing to accept things as true by faith when we judge that we have sufficient reasons to believe them.
The theological virtue of faith, however, is distinct from this general concept of “faith.” It is not merely a matter of becoming intellectually convinced that there are sufficient reasons for believing that Christian doctrines or the Christian worldview are true, and then intellectually accepting that they are true. Faith, in a Chrisitan theological sense, is not a natural human possibility (at least not for Fallen human beings). Rather, faith is a gift from God, infused into us by His Holy Spirit (Eph 2:8-9). This means that only genuine Christians can have the virtue of faith. Unbelievers must put faith in Christ in order to become Christians in the first place, but this is only possible because of God’s prevenient grace, as the Holy Spirit works in their hearts, granting them the possibility of faith.
We often think of faith in binary terms. Either we have faith, and are Christians, or we do not have faith, and are nonChristians. According to the Protestant understanding of salvation, simply putting faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior makes us saved and justified before God (Rom 3:28, Gal 2:16); either we have this faith and are saved or we do not.
However, there are indications in Scripture that faith does exist on a spectrum. Twice, Jesus remarked upon someone’s “great faith” (Matt 8:10, 15:28). A number of times, Jesus refers to His followers as “you of little faith” (Matt 8:26, 14:31, 16:8; Luke 12:28), implying that they have some faith, but should have more. The apostle Paul lists “faith” as one of the spiritual gifts possessed only by some Christians (I Cor 12:9). This implies that, though all Christians have saving faith, some are especially gifted by God with great faith. Faith is thus a virtue that all Christians should seek to cultivate within themselves. The prayer of all believing Christians should be, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief” (Mark 9:24).
What is Hope?
All human beings have things which they hope for. Hope is a natural human feeling that helps us keep going during difficult times. We all hope for certain things to happen within our lifetimes. And many nonChristians have (false) hopes for good things beyond their deaths, according to their own particular religious beliefs. Typically, people regard such hope as uncertain, or even as irrational, wishful thinking.
Christian hope is quite different. It is not uncertain, nor is it based on wishful thinking. It is based on the knowledge of what God has told us in His word, and on our trust in the promises of God, whom we know to be trustworthy and faithful. Christian hope is certain. It looks forward to the benefits that we know God has promised for His faithful covenant people. Of course, only Christians can have this hope.
Hope, St. Thomas Aquinas points out, “is a mean between presumption and despair.”[1]St. Thomas Aquinas. The Summa Theologica, Volume II. Translated by Father Laurence Shapcote. Great Books of the Western World, Volume 18. (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1990), page 459. If we fall into either of these two sins, we have strayed away from the genuine Christian virtue of hope.
Despair is a state of a lack of hope. It consists in believing that we cannot be forgiven, that we cannot be saved, no matter what. When we despair, we turn away from God. We cease having faith in what God’s word says about God always being ready to forgive and have mercy on the genuinely repentant. And we cease loving God because we cease believing that we can be united with Him and that He can be a source of goodness to us. Thus, despair is a sin.
Presumption lies on the opposite extreme from despair. It goes beyond genuine Christian hope, leading us to expect to be forgiven and to be saved no matter what. God’s word never suggests that we can be forgiven and be saved without repenting from sin. Believing this is exactly what the sin of presumption entails. When we commit the sin of presumption, we delude ourselves into thinking that we have hope in God, when in fact it is a false and empty “hope.” As Aquinas notes, “presumption is, properly, a species of sin against the Holy Ghost, because, namely, by presuming thus a man removes or despises the assistance of the Holy Spirit, by which he is withdrawn from sin.”[2]Summa Theologica, 478. The sin of presumption is especially prevalent in the modern Western church, which has to a significant extent lost any sense of God’s Holiness and God’s wrath.
Faith, Hope, and Ethics
Many people in our culture would strongly object to the idea that faith and hope are virtues. For many, “faith” means being irrational and believing things for no reason; far from being a virtue, it indicates a serious lack of intellectual virtue. For many, “hope” means arbitrarily believing that the world will magically be made better in the future because believing this makes us feel better; far from being ethical, it is unethical because it distracts us from working to improve the world in the here and now.
It is when we consider the virtues of faith and hope that we can see most clearly the radical difference between Christian ethics and the ethics of our surrounding society. If the Gospel is not true, if Jesus is not Lord, if God is not making all things new through Jesus, then, of course, the Christian virtues of faith and hope are meaningless. If, on the other hand, the Gospel is really true, if Jesus is truly Lord, if God really is making all things new through Jesus, then the Christian virtues of faith and hope are absolutely essential for living a genuinely ethical life.
Faith does not mean being irrational. There is nothing irrational or incoherent about Christian doctrine, and there are good reasons to believe that the Gospel is true. Not all Christians may have very good intellectual reasons for believing Christianity is true, but God wants all kinds of people to be saved, not just well-educated, intellectual people. He grants the gift of faith to people who believe for aesthetic, emotional, or other reasons besides intellectual ones.
Without faith, it is impossible to be truly virtuous. The theology taught in God’s word forms the foundation for Christian ethics. Unless we know and understand the story of the Gospel and our place in it, it will be impossible to be wise, just, courageous, self-controlled, and loving, because we will fail to understand what these things mean in a Christian sense.
Christian hope is not arbitrary; we have good reasons to trust God and to look forward in hope to the resurrection and to God’s New Creation. Nor does Christian hope distract us from working to improve things in the here and now. On the contrary, our knowledge that there is hope for us and for all of God’s creation motivates us to work as hard as we can, whatever the cost, to make the world a better place in the here and now. Our knowledge that we are the firstfruits of God’s New Creation demands that we live out this identity by being agents of justice, healing, truth, beauty, life, and hope now, in the midst of a Fallen world.
On the other hand, Christian hope means that we will refuse to try to make the world a better place by “any means necessary.” If we truly hope in God, believing that He is the One who has already won the victory over all the powers of evil and who will bring this victory to completion when Christ returns, then we will refuse to believe that “the ends justify the means.” We will refuse to use evil, violent means in an attempt to achieve a good outcome by our own power. It is vitally important that we cultivate the virtue of hope within ourselves, so that we can resist the temptation to use evil means for the sake of the “greater good.” Secure in our hope that God is making all things new, we can remain focused on our primary ethical task of showing the world what God’s Kingdom looks like and inviting them to join us as agents of God’s reconciling Kingdom work.