Theopedia

Hope

— Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. (1 Peter 1:3)

Hope is the confident expectation, wrought by the Holy Spirit, of the good God has promised in the gospel, chiefly the fullness of salvation and glory not yet seen. It is not a bare wish but the inseparable companion of saving faith: faith believes God’s promise is true, and hope expects that in due course he will make it good.1 Because it rests on Christ’s resurrection rather than on the believer’s own performance, hope anchors the soul beyond present trial, in what God has already secured (Heb. 6:19).2

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession of Faith has no chapter devoted to hope on its own. What it says about hope appears inside chapter eighteen, “Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation,” which promises that a true believer “may in this life be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace, and may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, which hope shall never make them ashamed,” echoing Romans 5:2 and 5.3 The confession folds hope into assurance rather than treating it as a separate grace: both rest on the same three grounds it names, “the blood and righteousness of Christ revealed in the Gospel,” “the inward evidence of those graces of the Spirit,” and “the testimony of the Spirit of adoption.”4

Biblical Basis

Paul grounds the Christian’s confidence directly in hope: “we are saved by hope” (Rom. 8:24). Calvin reads this as meaning that hope does not add a second object of trust alongside faith but keeps faith itself from faltering: “hope is nothing more than the expectation of those things which faith previously believes to have been truly promised by God.”1 The ground of that hope is Christ’s own resurrection. Commenting on 1 Peter 1:3, Calvin writes that “it is not by his death only, but by his resurrection, that we are said to be begotten again to a living hope… because, as he, by rising again, became victorious over death, so the victory of our faith consists only in his resurrection.”5

That hope also has a fixed future object: “that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13).6 Paul extends the same hope to the whole created order, not only to believers: creation itself, “subjected to futility,” waits for the day “the creation also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:19-21). Bavinck notes that believers “are saved in hope (Rom. 8:24) and know that if they suffer with Christ they will also be glorified with him,” so that “along with the entire groaning creation, they wait with eager longing for the future of Christ.”7

Hebrews grounds this hope not in the believer’s own constancy but in God’s, appealing to his oath to Abraham “so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us” (Heb. 6:17-18). Barrett draws out the force of this: “the soul’s ‘sure and steadfast anchor’ is found in no one else but Jesus,” so that hope’s reliability rises or falls with God’s own unchanging character.8

Historical Development

Augustine’s Enchiridion (c. AD 421) is, in Bavinck’s judgment, the closest thing the early church produced to a dogmatic system, and its material is organized entirely around one triad: it “treats subjects of dogmatic theology and ethics under the headings of the three Christian virtues: faith, hope, and love,” following 1 Corinthians 13:13.9 That triad carried into medieval scholastic theology as the three “theological virtues,” formally distinguished from the natural or “cardinal” virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance) because their object is supernatural rather than human. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) codified this scheme for Rome: baptism confers infused grace, and “added to this infused grace are the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and love,” which are “not human but superhuman, or divine, virtues,” by which the baptized can “merit an increase of grace, eternal life in the vision of God, and… a lower or higher degree of glory.”10

The Reformers kept the pairing of hope with faith but stripped it out of that scheme of merit. Calvin’s Institutes (1559) defines hope strictly in relation to faith rather than as an independently infused habit: faith is “the foundation on which hope rests,” and hope in turn “nourishes and sustains faith,” restraining it “from hastening on with too much precipitation” and confirming it “when it might waver.”1 English Particular Baptist divinity kept the same pairing after Calvin. John Gill’s Body of Doctrinal Divinity (1769), in its chapter “Of the Perseverance of the Saints,” lists faith, hope, and love among the “abiding” graces of 1 Corinthians 13:13 and ties hope directly to 1 Peter 1:3, “begotten again to a lively hope,” as evidence of the security of a regenerate soul rather than a virtue the believer might still forfeit.11

Opposing Views

Rome holds hope to be one of three virtues infused at baptism alongside faith and love, “not human but superhuman, or divine,” distinct from the natural virtues and capable, together with the rest of infused grace, of increase through the believer’s own cooperation; by these virtues the baptized “merit an increase of grace” and ultimately “a lower or higher degree of glory.”10 On this scheme, hope is bound up with the same system of congruent and condign merit that governs Rome’s doctrine of justification, and, like any infused grace, it can be diminished or lost through mortal sin.

Reformed theology holds instead that hope is an unearned fruit of the Spirit’s work rather than an infused habit awaiting the believer’s cooperation. It rests entirely on what Christ has already done and on God’s own unchanging character, not on any increase of the believer’s own merit.1

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t relying on hope for anything add a second ground of salvation alongside faith, and so compromise faith alone? Calvin’s own account of the relationship rules this out. Hope does not add a further object of trust; it “is nothing more than the expectation of those things which faith previously believes to have been truly promised by God.” It sustains the faith that already rests on Christ alone, rather than supplementing it: “faith is the foundation on which hope rests; hope nourishes and sustains faith,” steadying it against fatigue and temptation.1

If hope is about what is not yet seen, how can it be more than a guess about the future? Hebrews answers by locating the ground of hope outside the believer altogether, in God’s own character rather than in the believer’s power of prediction. God confirmed his promise to Abraham with an oath “so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie,” his people “might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us” (Heb. 6:17-18). As Barrett puts it, that hope’s reliability depends “entirely on the unchanging nature of [God’s] holy character,” not on the believer’s own foresight or constancy.8

Related Doctrines

References

  1. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 3, chap. 2, sec. 42. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 20, “Justification, Sanctification, and Perseverance.” ↩

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 18, “Of the Assurance of Grace and Salvation,” para. 1. ↩

  4. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 18, para. 2. ↩

  5. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 2, chap. 16. ↩

  6. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 3, chap. 25, “Of the Last Resurrection.” ↩

  7. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged, chap. 24, “The Return of Christ.” ↩

  8. Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), chap. 6, “Does God Change? Immutability.” ↩ ↩2

  9. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged, chap. 1, “Dogmatic Theology as Science.” ↩

  10. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged, chap. 20. ↩ ↩2

  11. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity (London, 1769), book 6, chap. 15, “Of the Perseverance of the Saints.” ↩