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Themes of St. Paul St. Paul on Faith, Hope, and Charity the Mystery Of Association of Hebrew Catholics Lecture Series The Mystery of Israel and the Church Spring 2009 – Series #4 Themes of St. Paul Talk #10 St. Paul on Faith, Hope, and Charity © Dr. Lawrence Feingold STD Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy Kenrick-Glennon Seminary, Archdiocese of St. Louis, Missouri Note: This document contains the unedited text of Dr. Feingold’s talk. It will eventually undergo final editing for inclusion in the series of books being published by The Miriam Press under the series title: “The Mystery of Israel and the Church”. If you find errors of any type, please send your observations [email protected] This document may be copied and given to others. It may not be modified, sold, or placed on any web site. The actual recording of this talk, as well as the talks from all series, may be found on the AHC website at: http://www.hebrewcatholic.org/Studies/MysteryofIsraelChurch/mysteryofisraela.html Association of Hebrew Catholics • 4120 W Pine Blvd • Saint Louis MO 63108 www.hebrewcatholic.org • [email protected] 10. St. Paul on Faith, Hope, and Charity In this talk we shall focus on the theological virtues— grace. Charity is directed to God as the Beloved, whom faith, hope, and charity (love)—as presented by St. Paul we are to love above all things for His own sake. in his letters. St. Paul constantly makes reference to faith, All three theological virtues are pure gifts of God, hope, and charity as the essence of the new life in Christ. infused into the soul through the action of the Spirit, as For example, in 1 Thes 5:8, St. Paul exhorts Christians to St. Paul frequently stresses. In Eph 2:8, he says: “For by “put on the breastplate of faith and love, and for a helmet grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not the hope of salvation.” In Rom 5:1-5, the Christian life is your own doing, it is the gift of God.” With regard to hope, shown as moving from faith through hope to culminate Rom 8:23-24 shows it also to be the gift of the Spirit: “We in charity: ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan Therefore, since we are justified byfaith , we have inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved.” Charity, him . we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of finally, is likewise not something we can acquire for our- God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, know- selves, but “has been poured into our hearts through the ing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance Holy Spirit which has been given to us” (Rom 5:5). Gal 4:6 produces character, and character produces hope, and and Rom 8:15-16 state that the supernatural love for God hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has our Father, by which we cry “Abba, Father,” is worked in 2 been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit us through the Spirit of God, which has been given to us. which has been given to us. Because the theological virtues cannot be naturally The three virtues are intimately bound together because acquired but are infused into the soul directly by God, it faith engenders hope, and faith and hope engender char- follows that they can only be known by divine Revela- ity. Together they form the fabric and foundation of the tion and not by philosophy. The classical philosophers Christian life. knew nothing about them. The Ethics of Aristotle treats of numerous moral virtues, with pride of place given to the Very often St. Paul uses the word faith to encompass cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude and temper- all three virtues. For example, in Gal 2:20, he describes ance. The theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, the Christian life by saying: “It is no longer I who live, however, are nowhere to be found. The same absence can but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the be observed in the works of the other classical philoso- flesh I live byfaith in the Son of God, who loved me and phers. The contrast with St. Paul could hardly be greater. gave himself for me.” Clearly “faith” here also is meant to include Paul’s hope in Christ, and his love for Him. This absence of a treatment of faith, hope, and charity in Faith can be used to stand for the other two because it is classical philosophy should not surprise us. The theologi- their foundation and presupposition. In Rom 4:18, St. Paul cal virtues belong to the supernatural order and cannot be speaks of Abraham’s faith in terms of hope: “In hope he known by philosophical reason alone, nor produced by believed against hope, that he should become the father of human power. They vastly transcend the horizons of human many nations.” Likewise, the faith that justifies the Chris- nature, human reason, and even human desire. tian is said to be “faith working through charity” (Gal 5:6).1 In 1 Cor 2:9, St. Paul says: “Eye has not seen, nor ear These three virtues are referred to by theologians as theo- heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things logical virtues for three reasons: (a) because their object is God has prepared for those who love Him.” God Himself; (b) because, unlike the natural moral virtues What God has prepared for us is heaven: eternal life they are caused in us directly by God; and (c) because their with the Blessed Trinity. This transcends the reach of existence is known only by divine Revelation. human reason and human promises. Hence he says, “Eye Each of the theological virtues has God directly as its has not seen nor ear heard.” The human intellect cannot object, but in three different ways. The virtue of faith has conceive the beatitude proper to heaven. It also transcends God—insofar as he is the living Truth—as its object, to the horizon of human desire. We all desire perfect hu- whom we must conform our minds and give the obedience man happiness, but the human heart, on its own, would of faith. The virtue of hope is directed to God as the source not dare aspire so high as to share in God’s own infinite and content of our beatitude, to be attained through God’s beatitude. But eternal life is a precisely a share in God’s own beatitude. Hence St. Paul says that “nor has it entered 1 See also 1 Tim 1:14, which speaks of Paul’s own justification 2 See Gal 4:6: “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit through “the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.” of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” 2 AHC Lecture Series 4: Themes of St. Paul –– Lecture 10: St. Paul on Faith, Hope, and Charity into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for less, who God is remains unknown and unseen even by those who love Him.” philosophy’s loftiest heights. Reason does not enable us Since heaven transcends human reason and human desire to see God in His personal reality, and so the things of or hope, God needs to expand our powers of knowing and God are things hoped for and not seen, about which there desiring, if we are to be able to direct ourselves towards can be faith. “the things God has prepared for those who love Him.” Because of the fact that divine faith is of things unseen, Therefore, with regard both to the intellect (symbolized it requires a fundamental conversion of the whole person, by the “eye” and “ear”) and to the will (the “heart”), “some- who must turn from the primacy of this sensible world to thing needs to be supernaturally added to man to order him the primacy of the unseen God and the demands of His to a supernatural end.”3 The intellect needs to be perfected love. This conversion requires a certain kind of death to by the habit of faith in order to know the end to which we self to live for God. The great models of this conversion are ordered and the means by which to arrive. The will or of faith from the visible to the invisible mystery hidden heart needs to be ordered to that end in two ways. in God are Abraham and Mary. First, it must tend to that end as to something possible In order to better understand supernatural faith, let us to attain, for no one can intend to reach an end deemed to look at the nature of faith in general. Faith is a firm assent be impossible. In the case of our supernatural end, this is of the mind to things unseen: “the evidence of things that given by the virtue of hope. are not seen.” It is an act of the mind characterized by firmness, on the one hand, and by an unseen object, on the However, this intention in itself is insufficient to fully other. If either one of these two ingredients are lacking, order the will to the vision of God, because nothing tends we cannot speak of faith. Another way to say the same to something that is not similar to itself, and God in His thing is to define faith as the assent of the mind to truths, inner life is maximally dissimilar to us.
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