Hope

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HOPE

HOPE . If we define religion as the systematic expression of the interplay between traditional faith and transforming hope, then hope is of the essence of religion. It is the impetus of religious renewal, as fear is often behind hardening tradition. Priestly conceptions of religion may accentuate the equation of religion with tradition and the past. Prophetic calls for renewal also may emphasize a return to pristine purity. But each major tradition posits a future leader who focuses the hope arising from past faith. Jewish traditions speak of a messiah, Islam of a hidden imam. Christians look for the second coming of Christ. Buddhists speak of Maitreya (Jpn., Miroku) as the Buddha to come, and Hindus of Vaiṣṇava orientation look for another avatar of Viṣṇu. The hope is for a final realization of what is now only anticipated, in continuity with the patterns of devotion fostered by the central figure or founder of the present community.

Until modern times, the emphasis tended to be on reform rather than renewal. Myths of ending were shaped by myths of beginnings. The biblical motif of a return to paradise lost is a case in point. The conception of the new as better comes in European thought with the inversion of the chain of being, the change from classical, hierarchical conceptions of emanation (typically beginning with the spiritual and settling into the material) to contemporary, developmental conceptions of evolution and revolution (beginning with the inorganic and culminating in consciousness). Whether retrospective or prospective, religious thought, to be religious, must be characterized by the hope that present vicissitudes will be overcome, that faith will be vindicated, and that the group, if not the individual, will realize a joy or bliss of which we now experience only passing intimations. Even those who conceive of eternity as timeless and ever present acknowledge that this realization of bliss remains, for most, a future possibility on the horizon of daily living. However conceptualized, the fact of such hope for the future often makes devotees ready to become martyrs to their cause.

Religious hope is necessarily transforming because of the focus in religion on ways of liberation or salvation, often expressed in terms of a movement from death to full life, error to right knowledge, disease to perfect health, despair to assurance of ultimate satisfaction. Patterns of transformation, or ways to realization of a religious end, were classically conceived in terms of refinement, renunciation, reintegration or resurrection and, more recently, in terms of revolution and reconstruction. Each pattern is generated by different concepts of self and of ultimate reality, although different traditions embody features of more than one means of transformation; as, for instance, in monastic Christian ideas of paradise, where Hebrew visions of restoration or resurrection melded with Hellenistic versions of renunciation.

Refinement is typically of the cultured or cultivated self in repudiation of barbaric, chaotic elements presently disrupting society. The ideal is of the sage, as exemplified in China by Confucius and taken up in the Enlightenment strand of modern Western thought by such thinkers as Voltaire and John Dewey. Renunciation is of material things for spiritual value, or of the demands of the body for the sake of the soul, as in the case of Socrates or the story of Gautama the Buddha. Reintegration is of the whole self as microcosm with the harmonies of earth and heaven as macrocosm, as articulated in the Daoist literature of China and the psychology of C. G. Jung. Restoration may be of the faithful people, as in Israel under King David. But restoration in its Christian pattern, resurrection, is of the individual and corporate self, both body and spirit, re-created by God within a whole new order of being, identified in medieval times with heaven but biblically imaged, especially in the Book of Revelation, as both a new heaven and a new earth. Modern transformations may be described as reconstruction, when the emphasis is on the mechanistic thrust of science and technology, notably through medicine, where it is the material order which is renewed. Or we may speak of revolution, partly technological (as in the industrial revolution or the contemporary movement for women's liberation, insofar as this relates to childbearing and housework) but primarily political and economic, as in the call for collective renewal by Marx and Mao.

As already noted, the different ways of transformation may be blended with each other. The story of Socrates includes motifs of refinement and renunciation. Christian ascetics link renunciation with resurrection, while modern theologies of liberation link resurrection with revolution. Relevant for our topic is the fact that the grounds for hope vary according to the way in question. Resurrection presupposes the reality of transcendent divine power, which can create out of nothing. Revolution comes through human action, whether in solidarity with a wholly human collective or in communion with God. Reintegration affirms the forces of nature in all of us. Thus, religious hope hinges on different conceptions of ultimate transformation—theistic, humanistic, and/or naturalistic—and is not necessarily tied to a particular belief in the existence of a supernatural agent or god. Where classical myths portray gods and goddesses as immortals, modern stories revolve around heroes and antiheroes. What gives each story religious significance is the hope of ultimate transformation, not the reference to god as such.

The subject of transformation is the self; but by self may be meant just a part or principle of life as we first experience it. As mentioned, ways of renunciation deny the physical body but affirm the continuity of a spiritual self. In the extreme case of Buddhism, both mind and matter are identified with the present cycle of miserable existences (saṃsāra), and what is affirmed is a principle (the Buddha nature, which has realized nirvāṇa ). Reintegration is of the whole self, body and mind, with the present cosmos. By contrast, resurrection entails the gift of a new body and an individuating spirit in a new world (whereas immortality implies a true spiritual self, or soul, now trapped in the body and only really at home in a supernatural realm). Both resurrection in the religion of Israel and revolution in modern times emphasize the community, of which a remnant is restored or gains the ideal condition aspired to by all. In tribal this-worldly traditions, hope for the future is focused on the children and succeeding generations as they return to the ways of their ancestors (a variant on refinement, especially in the ancestral cult called Confucianism by Western scholars). Thus, who and what is hoped for varies, according to conceptions of selfhood and the nature of ultimate reality.

Again, while a common religious hope may be for life after death, this is not necessarily the case. If the sense of self is of an individual or of a pattern of characteristics transmigrating through a possible infinite series of bodies, then the expectation of life after death may instill fear, not inspire hope. The Buddhist doctrine of no self (Sanskrit, anātman; Pali, anatta ) was developed in just such a context. Even when life is thought to be singular, not cyclical, the expectation of an afterlife may be fearful if the prospect is of a ghostly loss of place or of torment in hell. Traditional notions of purgatory arose to meet this fear and to give grounds for hope to those who despaired of immediate entry to heaven.

The scope of renewal may be temporary or permanent, partial, individual, communal or cosmic. Renunciation is for the sake of permanent renewal of the spiritual self or permanent realization of nirvāṇa. Reintegration presupposes a permanent process on the cosmic scale, but individual integration within this process may be temporary and partial. Resurrection, in classical Christian and Muslim eschatologies, is of the whole individual with the whole people of God, involving permanent enjoyment of God's enlivening presence for the faithful and perpetual punishment for the faithless. The vision of a new heaven and a new earth includes the whole created order within the compass of the promised renewal. The emphasis falls on faith because it is what God does for humankind, and not unaided human effort, that carries the promise of salvation. By comparison, refinement and revolution are primarily humanistic ways that include the rest of nature only as the setting for human fulfillment.

Reconstruction presupposes the permanence of nature and, through applied science, makes this increasingly available to human beings: for instance, through computerized memory banks, artificial limbs and hearts, and artificial insemination (where hope is concentrated on survival through one's children). In principle, such hope is available to all, but in practice, access is limited to the affluent. Science fiction often illustrates how the current limitations on reconstruction may be overcome, at least in our imagination. In general, it seems fair to say that the dominant global cultures, including their religious systems, are increasingly universal in scope and are expanding the range of human expectations from tribal lands to the whole earth, from the earth to the universe, and from the known universe to all possible galaxies and states beyond the terrestrial.

Symbols of hope reflect the blending of traditions and motifs of transformation. In Buddhism, the tree reflects the rootedness of perfect enlightenment conquering ignorance. The tree of life in images of paradise reflects the garden setting for creation in Mesopotamian cultures. Daoist Chinese images include bowls of life-enhancing fruit. By contrast, the cross of Jesus provides a reverse image for Christians, linking the tree of life to the historical paradigm of suffering and atonement. The evergreen tree in northern climes, combined with images of mother and child, is a Christian example of conflated symbols, whose meaning varies according to the story told. The Buddhist wheel, by contrast, can suggest both abhorrence of the cycles of existence and the teaching that reverses the patterns of alienation. The lotus is a reminder that beauty arises even out of the mud.

Symbols are especially important in expressions of hope because hope is always for what is possible but not yet fully realized. As already noted, the sense of ultimate reality shapes the horizon of hope. Symbols of journeys and arrival at the far shore suggest both present separation and eventual satisfaction. Where this world is all there is, hope through children or through lasting achievements dominates, and hope is linked to memory. Where all possibilities seem closed off, despair sets in. We owe to Søren Kierkegaard the definitive contrast, expressed in modern literature, between despair of ever realizing the authentic self and despair caused by realizing what the self has become. Since Plato, Western religious thought has emphasized being as the ideal end of becoming. Asian thought, by comparison, has often posited an ultimate emptiness of individuating features, such that despair more typically has been despair at continuing to be as one is.

Hope, as the obverse of despair, may be hope for oneself as individual or group, hope for one's world, or hope for the ultimate nature of things. As such, classical thought counted hope a virtue. In Chinese traditions, a world in disarray was evidence of the lack of virtue among earthly and heavenly rulers. The concept of the mandate of heaven for the virtuous gave reformers hope that order might be restored. On the Indian subcontinent, despair over the lack of virtue throughout the hierarchy of being led to expectations of periodic, cosmic cataclysms, followed by renewal. Echoes of this idea appear in biblical stories of Noah and the flood followed by the rainbow. In Christian thought, hope is a theological virtue, along with faith and love. According to Thomas Aquinas (Summa theologiae 2.1.25.3), hope is always for some future good that is difficult but possible to attain. There is no hope for the damned, while the blessed no longer need hope since they enjoy the direct vision of God. It is theological, since the gift of the possibility comes from God, and a virtue, since the gift may be refused.

With regard to hope for oneself, increasing differentiation in the evolution of modern culture has put more and more emphasis on the individual. To live for the reflected glory of an earthly or heavenly lord no longer appeals to those who would be rulers of their own destiny. In The Myth of Sisyphus Albert Camus carries this line of thought to its final point. In existential psychology, the importance of hope was most insisted on by Viktor Frankl. Drawing on his experience in the concentration camps of the 1930s and 1940s, he realized both that while there's life there's hope and that to go on living we must have hope.