This past Lenten Season my spiritual reading included Pope Benedict’s Second Encyclical Spe Salvi (“Saved in Hope”, November 30, 2007). The title comes from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans “Spe Salvi facti sumus” (“In hope we were saved”; Romans 8:24). Our Faith tells us that St. Paul’s words were divinely inspired; the Holy Father’s authoritative.
Although Spe Salvi is on “hope”, Benedict has much to say about “Faith”. This is not surprising since the theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity are all interrelated. Hope, without Faith and Charity is a shadow of what hope is. “Faith is the substance of hope.” (No.10)
In particular, he explains and corrects erroneous notions that Faith is substance and proof, and not simply a conviction. Basically, Faith is concrete and objective not a subjective feeling or state.
“Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen” (Hebrews 11.1). For the Fathers and for the theologians of the Middle Ages, it was clear that the Greek word hypostasis was to be rendered in Latin with the term substantia. The Latin translation of the text produced at the time of the early Church therefore reads: Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium—faith is the “substance” of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen. Saint Thomas Aquinas, using the terminology of the philosophical tradition to which he belonged, explains it as follows: faith is a habitus, that is, a stable disposition of the spirit, through which eternal life takes root in us and reason is led to consent to what it does not see.
The concept of “substance” is therefore modified in the sense that through faith, in a tentative way, or as we might say “in embryo”—and thus according to the “substance”—there are already present in us the things that are hoped for: the whole, true life. And precisely because the thing itself is already present, this presence of what is to come also creates certainty: this “thing” which must come is not yet visible in the external world (it does not “appear”), but because of the fact that, as an initial and dynamic reality, we carry it within us, a certain perception of it has even now come into existence.
To Luther, who was not particularly fond of the Letter to the Hebrews, the concept of “substance”, in the context of his view of faith, meant nothing. For this reason he understood the term hypostasis/substance not in the objective sense (of a reality present within us), but in the subjective sense, as an expression of an interior attitude, and so, naturally, he also had to understand the term argumentum as a disposition of the subject. In the twentieth century this interpretation became prevalent—at least in Germany—in Catholic exegesis too, so that the ecumenical translation into German of the New Testament, approved by the Bishops, reads as follows: Glaube aber ist: Feststehen in dem, was man erhofft, Überzeugtsein von dem, was man nicht sieht (faith is: standing firm in what one hopes, being convinced of what one does not see). This in itself is not incorrect, but it is not the meaning of the text, because the Greek term used (elenchus) does not have the subjective sense of “conviction” but the objective sense of “proof”. Rightly, therefore, recent Protestant exegesis has arrived at a different interpretation: “Yet there can be no question but that this classical Protestant understanding is untenable.
Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future. (No. 7)
Among other things, Benedict presents a nice quote from St. Ambrose on a “new” perspective on death.
“Death was not part of nature; it became part of nature. God did not decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life, because of sin ... began to experience the burden of wretchedness in unremitting labour and unbearable sorrow. There had to be a limit to its evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing.” (No. 10)
...and also a “new” perspective on life:
Life in its true sense is not something we have exclusively in or from ourselves: it is a relationship. And life in its totality is a relationship with him who is the source of life. If we are in relation with him who does not die, who is Life itself and Love itself, then we are in life. Then we “live”. (No. 27)
If you think that the Pope through Spe Salvi wants to simply inspire more “spiritual ogres” —those with enormously strong souls and deep interior lives but without concrete activities as outlets — then you will be surprised.
The nobility of work, which Christianity inherited from Judaism, had already been expressed in the monastic rules of Augustine and Benedict. Bernard takes up this idea again. The young noblemen who flocked to his monasteries had to engage in manual labour. In fact Bernard explicitly states that not even the monastery can restore Paradise, but he maintains that, as a place of practical and spiritual “tilling the soil”, it must prepare the new Paradise. A wild plot of forest land is rendered fertile—and in the process, the trees of pride are felled, whatever weeds may be growing inside souls are pulled up, and the ground is thereby prepared so that bread for body and soul can flourish. Are we not perhaps seeing once again, in the light of current history, that no positive world order can prosper where souls are overgrown? (No. 15)
Benedict as patient teacher explains “compassion” and “consolation”:
The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through “com-passion” is a cruel and inhuman society. Yet society cannot accept its suffering members and support them in their trials unless individuals are capable of doing so themselves; moreover, the individual cannot accept another's suffering unless he personally is able to find meaning in suffering, a path of purification and growth in maturity, a journey of hope. Indeed, to accept the “other” who suffers, means that I take up his suffering in such a way that it becomes mine also. Because it has now become a shared suffering, though, in which another person is present, this suffering is penetrated by the light of love. The Latin word con-solatio, “consolation”, expresses this beautifully. It suggests being with the other in his solitude, so that it ceases to be solitude. (No. 38)
Either by coincidence or by Providence, I’m also reading Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. So, I was pleased to see Benedict reference this 1880 novel in Spe Salvi:
Grace does not cancel out justice. It does not make wrong into right. It is not a sponge which wipes everything away, so that whatever someone has done on earth ends up being of equal value. Dostoevsky, for example, was right to protest against this kind of Heaven and this kind of grace in his novel The Brothers Karamazov. Evildoers, in the end, do not sit at table at the eternal banquet beside their victims without distinction, as though nothing had happened. (No. 44)
We’ll end with a few shorter, but not less brilliant, quotes from Spe Salvi:
The Christian faith has shown us that truth, justice and love are not simply ideals, but enormously weighty realities. (No. 39)
[T]he capacity to suffer for the sake of the truth is the measure of humanity. (No. 39)
A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope. (No. 42)
As Christians we should never limit ourselves to asking: how can I save myself? We should also ask: what can I do in order that others may be saved and that for them too the star of hope may rise? Then I will have done my utmost for my own personal salvation as well. (No. 48)
Spe Salvi is sure to make a nice Confirmation, Graduation, Mother's Day or Father's Day gift. Hope for only $14.95 ... I'll take it!
Related: Spe Salvi: Marx's Fundamental Error, Deus Caritas Est
Image: Special supplement from The Pilot (Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston)
Tags: Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, Hope
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