Review for Religious - Issue 31.5 (September 1972)

Issue 31.5 of the Review for Religious, 1972.EDITOR R. F. Smith, S.J. ASSOCIATE EDITOR Everett A. Diederich, S.J. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS EDITOR Joseph F. Gallen, S.J. Correspondence with the editor, the associate editor, and the assistant editor, as well as books for review, should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 Humboldt Build-ing; 539 North Grand Boulevard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to Joseph F. Gallen, S,J.; St. Joseph’s Church; 321 Willings Alley; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19106. + + + REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS Edited with ecclesiastical approval by t’aculty members of the School of Divinity of St. Louis University, the editorial offices beihg located at 612 tlumboldt Building; 539 North (;rand Boulevard: St. Louis. Missouri 63103. Owned by the Missouri Province Educational Institute. Published bimonthly and copyright © 1972 by REVIEW I:OR RELIGIOUS. Printed in U.S.A. Second class postage paid at St, Louis, Missouri. Single copies: $1.25. Subscription U.S,A, and Canada: $6.00 a year, $11.00 for two years; oilier countries: $7,00 a year, $13.00 for two years. Orders should indicate whether they are for new or renewal subscriptions and should bc accompanied by check or money order payable to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS in U,S.A. ~ur-rcllcy only. Pay no money to persons claiming to represent REVIEW I:OR RELIGIOUS. Change ot+ addres~ requests should include l’or nle r address. Rcuewals ~nd new subscriptions should be sent to REVIEW ],’OR RELIGIOUS: P.O. Box 60 70; Duluth, Minnesota 55802. Manuscripts, eO~tori-al correspondence, and books for review should be sent to REVIEW FOR RELIGIOUS; 612 Ilumboldt Building; 539 North (;rand Boule-vard; St. Louis, Missouri 63103. Questions for answering should be sent to the address of the Questions and Answers editor. SEPTEMBER 1972 VOLUME31 NUMBER 5 ~.~e~ JOHN R. SHEETS, S..I. The Greening of Existence: A 3 heology of Hope I John R. Sheets, S.J., is the chairman of the Department oiTheology;Creighton University; 250ffCalifornia Street ; Oma~ha, Nebraska 68131. In current theological writing the subject of h~pg~ is "in." At the same time a heavy haze covers much of the countryside. It is not ~lear what we should hope for ourselves, for others, or for the world. Nor is it too Clear on what we should base our hopes. Is our hope based on other persons, facts, ’our own desire? The effect of hope on our daily lives is also obscure. For the most part people, Christians included, are moved by proximate hopes, garnished perhaps with a tone of ultimacy to pro.vide respectability. As someone has said, it is !difficulkto i._nterest people in what is everlasting. Christia.n hope concerns what is everlasting; therefore, for many, it is not the operative principle in their day-to-day existence. One of our contemporary myths sees the early ages of Christianity moved by ultimate hopes to the detriment and obliteration off proximate hopes. This might have been the case in a few instances. However, if we could take any period of history, we would find that for the most part the ultimate hopes are unreal and inoperative compared with the proximate, and that they seldom override the proximate hopes. Men are moved pretty much by the same needs throughout history. Seldom has hope for everlasting life canceled out the interest in this life. Nietzsche had more than a grain of truth when he plointed out that the Christian, while claiming to speak of grace, is very often moved by instinct rather than grace. If anything~people today tend to see even the ultimhte object of hope as a kind of pale ph6"sphorescent glow around an ideal state of mankind. This is in line with the immanentistic spirit of our times. In this view, the object 0f Christian hope is like the fruit on"a tree. It grows out of all the elements that have made their particular contribution. We have done better than St. Paul: "W~ teach what scripture calls the things that no eye has seen and no ear has heard, tl~ings beyond the mind of man, all that God has prepared for those who love him" (! Co. 2:9). Today we have the feeling we have already had a peek at what God has l~repared. We have to recall that the future we hope for as Christians goes beyond arid even contradicts our present experience. This thought is expressed well by Jiirgen Moltmann: "God’s hoped-for future continually conflicts with the forms of earthly life available to experience. Christians must recognize this contradiction between what they hope for and what they experience. They must endure it patiently and obediently" (qu6ted from-The Heart Has Its Seasons, edited by Louis M. Savary, S.J., and Thomas J. O’Connor [New York, 1971], p. 257). What then is Christian hope? How is it related to our daily lives? What is the relationship between the ultimate object of.Christian hope, and all of the lesser things we hope for? What ultimately is the basis of Christian hope? These are questions we would like to pursue. While not claim!ng to answer them completely, hopefully we shall’provide some helpful reflections. 694 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/5 We shall proceed in three stages: first, we would like to look at hope itself; secondly, to consider Christian hope explicitly; thirdly, to reflect on the special characteristics of Christian hope. The Nature of Hope We use the expression, "Where there is life, there is hope." Life is both the source of hope, and a gr~eater life is the goal of hope. Hope is not found in those things which are dead, or in those things which are already complete. Hope always has to do with life on the way, as it is emerging. Hope draws the future out of the present. The past becomes a springboard for the future. Hope turns the wh, ole of life into a project where there is continuity of past, present, and~ future. It is a kind of perpetual springtime surrounding each action: "But look thee here, boy. Now bless thyself: thou mettest with things dying, 1 with things new born" (Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act 3, Scene 3). As long as there is hope our daily actions are not being embalmed in the formaldehyde secreted by time. On the~ contrary, there is a fringe of green around every action. Where there is hope, freshness seeps through every pore of life no matter how routine it might seem. When, on the other hand, hope disappears, there is nothing but d~rkness, despair, Staleness, loneliness, aimlessness, hell. Hope is the greening of the world. Without hope, the world is a wasteland. We could define hop as the power a person has to open himself to the future, as that future depends not only on himself but on other persons and things. In this definition there are four elements: first, that hope is a power; secondly, that it is a power for the future; thirdly, that it has certain objects; and fourthly, that the realization of hope depends on the cooperation of other persons and things. Let us comment briefly on.each of these points. In the first place hope is a power. It is spiritual power, not a phySical-power. It manifests the mysterious power of man as incarnate spirit to open himself to the future through Conscious and deliberate choice. Man does not move toward the future because he is pushed from behind by history or jostled from all sides by mer~ physical forces. Man is pfilled ahead from in front. God still bieathes His Spirit into man’s clay. But now he does so from in front, from ahead, drawing man forward, by offering him the complete fulfillment that lies beneath the "partial satisfactions 6ffered by things. This power to respond to the future involves man’s whole being, not just his will. It takes in memory, imagination, conscious and subconscious desires, knowledge, values. In one sense this spiritual power is passive in the sense that hope is always a response to a summons from the future. The person-who-will-be is summoning the person-who-is. It is not just any kind of future, but a, human future which summons, that is, a fully human existence. This future is in continuity with the past and present, but goes beyond them, beckoning to a fuller life. This spiritual power is also an active power insofar as it the power that moves the whole of human existence to greater and greater realization, of what lies within its hidden potential. This spiritual power gathers up all the interior and exterior forces in order to realize the goals that beckon. At the same time it is a humble and dependent powe~r because it leans on the good will and help of other things and other persons to realize its goals. In the second place, hope is directed to the future. While this is commenting on the obvious, it is necessary to call attention to it. The future that a person hopes for Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/5 695 is a contingent future. It does not flow automatically and necessarily from the immanent principles that form the life of plants and!animals~ Non-spiritual reality has a future only in the sense that its reality takes~, a different form within the spatio-tem~5oral~ world. The future of non-spiritual realities is predictable because it depends on the physical forces at work. ~ On the other hand the future of man who is incarnate spirit is always a construct achieved through the creative response that man maizes to his future. Man’s future is not present in the same way that the future of a ~ose is present in the rosebush. Man’s future is present in the way that a’work of artds present in the mind~ heart, desires, capabilities, resources of.. an artist. The work ~f art is original, coming from personal creativity and at the same time having the nature of.a response to a summons which the.artist answers, through the ass’istance of other persons and things.,~ ~ In the third place hope has certain objects. In ger~erai a .person hopes for those things which will bring him happiness, the vita beatalwhich Augustine speaks of so often.. He hopes for a fuller personal’~ life in terms bgth of being freed from those things which threaten this fullness and of possessing algreater degree of life. There are many levels within this one general objeCt of happiness. The things we hope for could be classified as primary or secondaryl, depending on their relation-ship to the happy life. Again, they could be classified as unconditioned or conditioned, depending on the degree of abSoluten~ess with which we hope for them. ~’ ~ One can hope, for example, for the satisfaction of one’s senses, mind, imagina, tion, social instinct. On a deeper ~level, however, he Can hope for the fulfillment of himself, going beyond any partial satisfaction. ~ As there are different levels within the :objects ofihope, there are also different degrees of intensity with which a person pursues th~se objects. Intensity of hope depends first of all on the hunger a person has for something. He does not. begin to hope until he experiences desire, But he cannot exp~erience desire until he feels a need. He has to experience, therefore, an absence in.t.he first place, and the sense of emptiness, together with the desire to fill that 6mptiness. Intensity of hope depends, therefore,~in the first place on the vehemen.ce of desire, and in the second place, on the strength of the assurance one has in the help of other persons and things whose assistance is necessary for the realization of the ho~eS. In this connection it is important to stress theirole that image plays in the intensification of hope. The objects of hope that move us most strongly are those embodied in strong and attractive images. The more~abstract hope is, on the~other hand, the less~powerfu! it is. For this reason a person can be moved more by a human love thfin by the love of God, more by money than charity. Certain objects of hope captivate because they are incarnated in an image that gives a powerful affective charge to the imagination. A disincarnated h[ape is a wishy-washy hope. To the extent that an object of hope sets fire to the im,agination will it move a person to walk or to.run. ~ :- ~ The fourth element in our definition of hope hadlto do.with the cooperation of other persons and things~ We hope for something because we hope in someone or in somethings. In this way hopeois based on the assurande that other persons and other things promise us something. ,Things and persons, in whom we hope all offer something of a promise on which to base hope. T~his promise may not be made explicitly. It is a judgment (often spontaneous) one makes about the cap~city things have to fulfill our hopes, and in the case of hope in persons, it is a judgment 696 Review for Religious, Volume 31; 1972/5 both about their willingness and their ability to fulfill our hopes. All hope is based on promise. A farmer, for example, plants only seed that is promising, in soil which is promising, at a season which is promising. A student goes to a school which is promising, takes a teacher who is promising, and~ so forth. Hope is the heart’s response to the promise in persons and things. Hope lives off promise, whether the promise embodied in things by the Creator, or the promise in the lives of other persons. The promise that is inherent in non-spiritual reality is fulfilled when we put the necessary conditions. For example, food fulfills its promise to nourish when we fulfill the conditions for it to nourish. If the proper conditions are present, the effect follows necessarily. Persons, on the other hand, fulfill their promise through conscious fidelity. Promise becomes the focus drawing together every aspect of their lives. Summing up these remarks, we can say that hope is a spiritual power opening us to the future through both desire and trust. Desire is the hunger and thirst. Trust provides the assurance that the hunger and thirst will be satisfied through our positive response to the promises of other persons and things. Christian Hope We turn now more specifically to the nature of Christian hope. We spoke above of hope as a spiritUal ~ power for the future where what we hope for is the fulfillment of our desires through our own efforts in response to the promises of other persons and things. Christian hope is essentially different from any other form of hope. There is a new power to hope, with a’new future, new objects 6f hope, and new p’romises. To do complete justice to any oneof these points would take us beyond the limits of this article. We shall content ourselves with a few observations. Christian hope is based upon a new spiritual power, the undeserved gift of the Holy Spirit. The human spirit does not have a new power, as if a new engine were put into an old automobile. His whole being is taken up into a new power. The whole meaning of the Christian dispensation can indeed be summed up in the unreserved gift of the Spirit. . The presence of the Holy Spirit in the Christian has manifoid effects, making us new creatures, conformed to the image of the Son, children of God, heirs with the Son, strengthening us, teaching us to pray, giving us the freedom of the children of God, consoling us. One of the effects of the presence of the Spirit, however, that we tend to overlook is the expansion of our power to hope. The Holy Sp.irit gives us a new power to hope beyond the limits of the human spirit: "May.the God of hope bring you such joy and~peace in your faith that the power..of the Holy Spirit will remove all bounds to your hope" (Rm 15 : 13). The Holy Spirit breaks the bonds limiting human hopes and expands our power to hope so that our hopes become as large and boundless as God’s promises. The Holy Spirit unlocks the human heart not to a dream world, but to the future willed by God, realized already in Christ. Christian hope, then, is a new power to hope through the gift of the Holy Spirit who effects a certain dynamic proportion between God’s promise, realized in Christ, and our hopes. The Holy Spirit raises our hopes to be commensurate with the promise. Forthe Christian, the future has two stages, a state of process, and a state 6f possession, or, putting it in other terms, a state of courtship and a state of Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/5 697 consummation. Time is the state of process and couriship. However, through faith we know that we are not made for process but for plossession. Time as perceived through faith, becomes a period of courtship where!God is constantly soliciting man’s freedom to elicit a response of faith and love. However, man is not made for the courtship but for the consummation of love and faith in eternal life. This brings us to the question ~of the objects, of Christian hope. What does he hope for? He hopes for the fullness of communioniwith the Father, in the Son, through the Spirit. This communion has already begu~n. It is present in process, in courtship; The goal of the process is eternal life or salvation. Salvation, if we understand it correctly, is a rich word ~describing the fullness of communion God wills for us. Our ultimate fulfillmen’t is not found in anything or in any human person, but it comes from being immersed in the very mystery of God Himself. When that fulfillment is reached, it c~eates a state of communion which is beatific, in which we are whole and holy, kept safe forever because we are preserved by a love everlasting. The hope for salvation is the Christian’s primary and unconditioned hope. He also hopes for other things in a secondary and conditioned way. Every :partial hope is hoped for within the vital tension of the hope for tl~e fulfillment’ of who we are, a fulfillment realized in ultimate communion. The Christian, however, hopes for the realization o’f the same human values that any person wants who is genuinely interested in the well-being of his fellow-man: peace, prosperity, justice, health, mutual understanding, and so forth. But his hopes go beyond these limited goals: The limited g6als i~re footpaths leading to the summit. It goes against the whole theological and cultural mo/od, of our times to establish a hierarchy of hopes where the hope for everlasting~life is seen as the one thing necessary. Such hope we feel instinctively denigrates ~he limited hopes. Yet anyone who understands the relationship between our unlimited hope and the limited hopes sees the contrary. Limited hopes have their fo’~ot~ng only in what is bey6nd their own limitations. Limited hopes are like a iadder lone has tO climb the rungs of the ladder to get to the top. ffut the ladder has to restlon something higher than the rungs, if one is to climb to the top. If limited hopes are cut away from ultimate hope, they are like rivers that continue to flow for ~ time, but that will eventually dry up because they have dried up at the source. Perhaps one of the signs of lack of genuine hope iri our times is the fact that,few concern themselves with salvation but content thems61ves with striving more or less intensely for limited goals. This is the gospel of secularistic humanism. According to this gospel, there is no need for ultimate hope beyon, d that of continuing to better humanity. This secularistic gospel is not only a matter of thegry. It is lived out in practice by many, if not most,:people, who work for limited g6als, and find their meaning in striving for them. Camus’ The Plague is a graphic po[’trayal of life lived within the perspective of proximate meaning to the denial of ultimate meaning. Most people hardly even ask the question about ultimate meaning. If the question does occur at a critical moment in life, it quickly disappears, swallowed up by more proximate concerns. There are others, however, whoi are haunted by the question. Is man’s life like a falling star’which lights up the sky for a moment, then disappears into darkness? Is man’s lot to light up a tiny sectidn of space and time, then snuffed out like a candle? Is it worthwhile spending one’s whole life on a garden which will die, when he realizes that he himself is put back into the garden to 698 Review for Religious, Volume 31, 1972/5 become.the material, for future gardens and gardeners? , ~ Most men are like the gravedigger in Hamlet who causes Hamlet to wonder because,he sings while he does his job: "Has this fellow no feeling of his bu~siness, that he sings at grave-maKing. Horatio answers, "Custom hath made it in him a property of easiness." Hamlet is led to muse out loud on this mystery of human existence: "Alexander died, Alexander was buried; Alexander returneth into.dust; the dust is earth; of earth we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he was Converted, might they not stop a beer-barrel? Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’t to clay, might stop a hole to keep the wind away: O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw!" (Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1). All that a person do~s, he does out of hope. If he plants, he hopes to harvest; if he harvests, he hopes to sell; if he sells, he hopes to buy; if he buys, he hopes to live; if he lives, he hopes to... to do what? To begin the, whole process all over again? planting, harvesting, buying, and so forth? ls there no reality which fulfills .the person, and only reality which fulfills individual actions? Is it possible that individual words in a sentence make sense but when they are put together the whole sentence is non-sense? Limited hopes that are not rooted in an unlimited hope, are like broken ci’sterns which can hold no water. One can pour everything into them, but it all seeps out. They promise more than they can give, unless they are rooted in ultimacy: "So now, Yahweh Sabaoth,says this: ’Reflect carefully how things havre,gone for you. You have sown much and harvested little; you eat but never have your fill, put on clothes but do not feel warm. The wage earner gets his wages only to put them i