Hope and prophecy

 Can there be legitimate prophecy about history? This is the question that opens the last chapter/lecture in Josef Pieper's short book Hope and History.

Christianity answers this with a clear yes. For example, among its sacred texts is the prophetic book of Revelation (the Apocalypse), and in it, (although not in it alone) there are assertions about the ultimate future of historical man - not so much, then, about how history will continue but rather about how it will end.

Josef Pieper points out that the acceptance of such a revealed prophecy presupposes that human existence takes place within a framework that reaches beyond what we can immediately sense in this world, and which, in that sense remains beyond an empirical grasp; and in the same sense the beginning and end of human history and individual human biography remain beyond empirical grasp. He also reprises what he has already referred to in previous chapters/lectures that attempts to develop and understanding of the future of human history in terms only of this world fall down in the face of the reality of the death of men.

Josef Pieper gives the following account of the image of history conveyed by the Apocalypse:

Since this conception takes account of human freedom to choose evil and also of "the" evil as a dark and demonic historical force - for that reason alone, dissension, breakdown, irreconcilable conflict, and even catastrophe cannot, in principle, be alien to the nature of  human history, including its everyday course of events.

And yet this is not the last word of apocalyptic prophecy. Its last word and its decisive report, all else notwithstanding, is the following: a blessed end, infinitely surpassing all expectations; triumph over evil; the conquest of death; drinking from the fountain of life; resurrection; drying of all tears; the dwelling of God among men; a New Heaven and a New Earth. What all this would appear to imply about hope, however, is that it has an invulnerability sufficient to place it beyond any possibility of being affected, or even crippled, by preparedness for an intra-historically catastrophic end - whether that end be called dying, defeat of the good, martyrdom, or world domination by evil.

 At one point, Josef Pieper draws attention to the "implicit faith" that St Thomas Aquinas attributes to those who, though not being explicit Christian believers, have some conviction that God will set men free (S Th II, ii, 2, 7 ad 3). Josef Pieper writes:

In precise correspondence to this, one should also, it seems to me, speak of an "implicit hope". Whoever, for instance, invests the power of his hope in the image of a perfect future human society, in which men are no longer wolves to each other and the good things of life are justly distributed - such a one participates, precisely thereby, in the hope of Christianity.

In a not dissimilar way, Josef Pieper also suggests that any efforts towards human fraternity have a link to the hope of Christianity. He refers first to Plato's thought with regard to the dwelling together of gods and men, and their shared banquet:

But Plato would never have been able to dream of the communal banquet in which Christianity recognizes and celebrates the real beginning and pledge of that blessed life at God's table. Since earliest times it has been called synaxis, or communio....

A more profound grounding for human solidarity cannot, it seems to me, be conceived. But the reverse also holds true: wherever true human communion is realized, or even just longed for, this universal table community is, whether one knows and likes it or not, quietly being prepared ...No matter where and by whom the realization of fraternity among men is understood and pursued as the thing that is truly to be hoped for, there exists, eo ipso, a subterranean link to the elementary hope of Christianity.

It is perhaps worth recalling, during this Jubilee Year dedicated to the theme of hope, the significance of the prayer that occurs in the Eucharistic Liturgy immediately after the Lord's Prayer. We can read it against the background of the view of apocalyptic prophecy described above by Josef Pieper: 

Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

 

Hope: in this world alone?

 In what is the fourth chapter of the book Hope and History, Josef Pieper examines in some detail the thought of Ernst Bloch, particularly his work on hope. Josef Pieper suggests three questions that challenge a Marxist view that sees the object of hope as being the final manifestation of a truly socialist transformation of society, or any other idealist or materialist view that likewise sees the object of hope as some this-worldly achievement.

Josef Pieper firstly suggests that these views covertly distort the original sense of the concept of hope.

Is not the aim of describing and elucidating what is to be hoped for supplanted by a program of practical action, of changing and producing things? Not the least objection can be made, of course, to such a program "in itself", which can be something entirely sensible and necessary. And yet it is possible that, through it, precisely that which is intimated to us by the indwelling wisdom of language itself becomes drowned out: namely, that it is obviously characteristic of men by nature, as those who truly hope, to be directed toward a fulfilment of just the kind that they cannot bring about themselves.

Josef Pieper observes, secondly, that these entirely "intra-historical" or "this worldly" perspectives rarely, if ever, address the question of death. In placing their hope in some kind of collective future they leave out something that is part of the experience of each individual person.

What I insist on, however, is this: no conception of a future state of affairs that just ignores the fact of death, that thus simply fails to take into consideration not only the man who lives toward death, who is destined for death, but also those who have already died, the dead - no such image of the future can seriously be put forward as being in any sense an object of human hope! How can one speak of hope when what is hoped for is conceived in such a way that it could not at all be granted to the very being that is solely capable of hoping, namely, the individual, the particular person?

Josef Pieper has earlier observed that only what is really possible can be hoped for, and that there are no limits as to what one might wish for.  He finally suggests that, as far as wishing goes, it is sufficient to ask the question, "What do you wish for?", without giving attention to the grounds for that wishing. He indicates that there is not cogent reasoning to support the expectation that human longing will be satisfied through intra-historical activity of one kind or another. As far as hoping is concerned, the situation is different. The question is not just one of "What do you hope for?" but also "What are the grounds for that hope?" It is in his next and final chapter that Josef Pieper will look at Christian faith in relation to hope.

A paragraph (n.3) from Pope Francis' Bull of Indiction for the Jubilee 2025 describes the grounds for Christian hope:

By his perennial presence in the life of the pilgrim Church, the Holy Spirit illumines all believers with the light of hope. He keeps that light burning, like an ever-burning lamp, to sustain and invigorate our lives. Christian hope does not deceive or disappoint because it is grounded in the certainty that nothing and no one may ever separate us from God’s love: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or the sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:35.37-39). Here we see the reason why this hope perseveres in the midst of trials: founded on faith and nurtured by charity, it enables us to press forward in life. As Saint Augustine observes: “Whatever our state of life, we cannot live without these three dispositions of the soul, namely, to believe, to hope and to love”.

Hope: evolutionary or historical?

 In what was the second of his lectures since published in the short book Hope and History, Josef Pieper moves from attempting to characterise the nature of hope to attempting to characterise the meaning of the word "history". Josef Pieper draws a firm distinction between evolutionary thought, with its suggestion of universal laws to progress and ascent, and what he terms more strictly "history" that comes from the freedom of human actions. He particularly enters into a dialogue with the thought of Teilhard de Chardin on this point (pp.33 ff in my Ignatius Press edition).

Part of the essence of history is that it rests upon freedom and decision - and that it can therefore be marked by the presence of evil, whereas any use of that concept in relation to evolution would naturally be pointless.

Josef Pieper summarises his position as follows:

... in the midst of the evolution of the cosmos, which also shapes the nature of man's being; in the midst of "natural history", which includes that of mankind; alongside and outside of the many other sorts of "development" (more or less pre-determinable as regards direction and pace) of intellectual life, in the sciences as in the arts, in the technological mastery of natural forces - apart from all that and in the midst of it .... there is also a fully different, irreducible, incomparable, and in the strict sense "historical" kind of event that issues from the free decisions of men, comes about through them, and itself participates in the mode of being proper to human acts of the will; which means, for instance, that it cannot be predicted or calculated on the basis of evolutionary or historical laws and above all that it possesses, beyond any mere factuality, the quality of having to be "answered for" and of being "good" or "evil". 

 Josef Pieper's thought has relevance to how we might understand the meaning of the hope that is the subject of the Jubilee Year 2025. If we see that hope as being a naturally occurring part of evolutionary and determinative historical processes, we will experience the Jubilee Year as something that happens to us, not feeling that we need to do anything about it. In appealing to individuals and nations, in his Christmas Urbi et Orbi address, to enter through the Holy Door opened at the initiation of the Jubilee Year, Pope Francis on the other hand suggests that we need to take an active step in the celebration of hope:

Often we halt at the threshold of that Door; we lack the courage to cross it, because it challenges us to examine our lives. Entering through that Door calls for the sacrifice involved in taking a step forward, a small sacrifice. Taking a step towards something so great calls us to leave behind our disputes and divisions, and surrendering ourselves to the outstretched arms of the Child who is the Prince of Peace. This Christmas, at the beginning of the Jubilee Year, I invite every individual, and all peoples and nations, to find the courage needed to walk through that Door, to become pilgrims of hope, to silence the sound of arms and overcome divisions!

The urgency of the question about the meaning and justification of human hope

 Many years ago now, I recall being part of a conversation in which we reflected on how, in some Catholic families, the children grew up to continue practicing their faith into adult life whilst in other families this did not happen. A particular issue that came up was that of how an irregular marriage situation would lead to someone ceasing to take part in the life of the Church. It therefore struck me at the time of the Extraordinary and Ordinary meetings of the Synod of Bishops dedicated to the family, and the subsequent Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia, that Pope Francis had drawn attention to a very significant question for the life of the Church. The theme of the Extraordinary Synod appeared particularly relevant in this context: The Pastoral Challenges of the Family in the Context of Evangelisation.

Looking forward to the Jubilee Year 2025, with its theme of hope, I recently dipped into the first section of Josef Pieper's short book Hope and History, first published in German in 1967, the text of lectures delivered the year before, and published in English translation by Ignatius Press in 1994. He opens the first section by referring to Immanuel Kant's three possible answers to the question of whether or not the human race is progressing towards the better.

Considered quite abstractly, he says, there are obviously three possible answers to the question: (1) "constant ascent", (2) "continual decline", and (3) persistence at a given level, advancement on a more or less unvarying plane.

Kant acknowledges that the second of these possibilities exists in the abstract, but excludes it in the concrete reality of human existence as it would at a certain point lead to the human race wiping itself out. In the time of nuclear weapons and the stand-off between East and West that was the Cold War, Pieper points out that the self destruction of the human race that was inconceivable to Kant and his times, was now very much a concrete possibility. 

Confronting the three possible forms of the course of history that were formulated by Kant, we would be simply incapable of excluding the one - the negative one - from the very start.

 Pieper's lectures were dedicated to the theme of hope and history, and so he ends the first section with the following passage:

...here we encounter, with almost provocative effect, the first of the two basic terms that are conceptually linked in the subject of these lectures on "hope and history". No matter what concrete implications might happen to follow from the question thus formulated, it is at least clear from the start that the mere linkage of these two concepts is of unparalleled relevance in our present-day situation. Here, too, we could speak of unprecedentedness - for the first time, never before, it seems, has it been possible to ask the question about the meaning and justification of human hope with such acute urgency.

In 2024 and 2025, with conflicts raging that justify Pope Francis' description of a Third World War being fought piecemeal, the question of hope for the future is raised once again with an acute urgency. Pope Francis, with the keen pastoral sense shown earlier in his addressing of the challenges to the family, draws the attention of the Church to this question as he asks us to be pilgrims of hope in the coming Jubilee Year.