Hope

So we must define more accurately what it is to hope. In ordinary speech we often call something hope that is not hope at all but a wish, a longing, a longing expectation now of one thing, now of another, in short, an expectant person’s relationship to the possibility of multiplicity. When hope is understood in that way (when hope actually means only expectation), it is easy enough for the youth and the child to hope, because the youth and the child themselves are still a possibility. On the other hand, it is quite in order when one sees how possibility and hope, or the sense for the possible, usually decline in people over the years. This in turn explains why experience speaks deprecatingly about hope, as if it were merely something for youthfulness (which the child’s and the youth’s hope certainly is also), as if hoping, like dancing, were a youthful something for which older people have neither the liking nor the lightness. Well, yes, to hope is indeed to make oneself light with the help of the eternal, that is, with the help of the possibility of good. And even though the eternal is far from being youthfulness, it has still much more in common with youthfulness than with the moroseness that is frequently honoured with the name of seriousness, the slackness of old age that in moderately fortunate circumstances is moderately calm and contented, but above all has nothing to do with providing hope, and in unfortunate circumstances would rather grumble peevishly than hope. In one’s youth a person has plenty of expectation and possibility; they develop by themselves in the youth just like the precious myrrh that drips down from the trees of Arabia. But when a person has become older, his life usually remains what it has now become, a dull repetition and paraphrasing of the same old thing; no possibility awakeningly frightens; no possibility rejuvenatingly enlivens. Hope becomes something that belongs nowhere, and possibility something just as rare as green in winter. Without the eternal, one lives with the help of habit, sagacity, aping, experience, custom, and usage. Indeed, take all this, put it all together, cook it over the slow or the merely earthly blazing fire of passions, and you will see that you will get all kinds of things out of it, a variously concocted tough slime that is called practical sagacity. But no one ever got possibility out of it, possibility, this marvellous thing that is so infinitely fragile (the most delicate shoot of spring is not so fragile!), so infinitely frail (the finest woven linen is not so frail!), and yet, brought into being and shaped with the help of the eternal, stronger than anything else, if it is the possibility of the good!

People think that they are speaking with ample experience in dividing a person’s life into certain periods and ages and then call the first period the age of hope or of possibility. What nonsense! Thus, in talk about hope they completely leave out the eternal and yet speak about hope. But how is this possible, since hope pertains to the possibility of the good, and thereby to the eternal! On the other hand, how is it possible to speak about hope in such a way that it is assigned to a certain age! Surely the eternal extends over the whole of life and there is and should be hope to the end; then there is no period that is the age of hope, but a person’s whole life should be the time of hope! And then they think they are speaking with ample experience about hope – by abolishing the eternal.

Just as in a drama, by shortening the time and condensing the events, one is enabled to see the content of many years in the course of a few hours, so also one wants to arrange oneself dramatically within temporality. God’s plan for existence is rejected, so that temporality is entirely development, complication – eternity the denouement. Everything is arranged within temporality, a score of years devoted to development, then ten years to the complication; then the knot is tightened for a few years, and then the denouement follows. Undeniably death is also a denouement, and then it is over, one is buried – yet not before the denouement of decomposition has begun. But anyone who refuses to understand that the whole of one’s life should be the time of hope is veritably in despair, no matter, absolutely no matter, whether he is conscious of it or not, whether he counts himself fortunate in his presumed well-being or wears himself out in tedium and trouble. Anyone who gives up the possibility that his existence could be forfeited in the next moment – provided he does not give up this possibility because he hopes for the possibility of the good – anyone who lives without possibility is in despair. He breaks with the eternal and arbitrarily puts an end to possibility; without the consent of eternity, he ends where the end is not, instead of, like someone who is taking dictation, continually having his pen poised for what comes next, so that he does not presume meaninglessly to place a period before the meaning is complete or rebelliously to throw away his pen.

If one wants to help a child with a very big task, how does one go about it? Well, one does not set out the whole task at one time, because then the child despairs and gives up hope. One assigns a small part at a time, but always enough so that the child at no point stops as if it were finished, but not so much that the child cannot manage it. This is the pious fraud in upbringing; it actually suppresses something. If the child is deceived, this is because the instructor is a human being who cannot vouch for the next moment.

But now eternity, surely this is the greatest task ever assigned to a human being, and on the other hand it surely is able to vouch for the next moment; and temporality’s child (the human being) relates to the infinite task as a little child! If eternity were to assign the human being the task all at once and in its own language, without regard for his capacities and limited powers, the human being would have to despair. But then this is the wondrous thing, that this the greatest of powers, eternity, can make itself so small that it is divisible in this way, this which is eternally one, so that, taking upon itself the form of the future, the possible, with the help of hope it brings up temporality’s child (the human being), teaches him to hope (to hope is itself the instruction, is the relation to the eternal), provided he does not arbitrarily choose to be severely disheartened by fear or brazenly choose to despair – that is, to withdraw from the upbringing by possibility. The eternal, in the proper sense, continually assigns in possibility just a small part at a time. By means of the possible, eternity is continually near enough to be available and yet distant enough to keep the human being in motion forward toward the eternal, to keep him going, going forward. This is how eternity lures and draws a person, in possibility, from the cradle to the grave – provided he chooses to hope. Possibility, as stated previously, is a duality and for that very reason is the true upbringing. Possibility is just as rigorous, or can be just as rigorous, as it can be gentle. Hope is not implicit in possibility as a matter of course, because in possibility there can also be fear. But with the help of hope, possibility will bring up to hope the person who chooses hope. Yet the possibility of fear, the rigorousness, remains secretly present as a possibility, if it should come to be needed, for the sake of the upbringing, in order to awaken, but it remains hidden, while the eternal lures with the help of hope. To lure is continually to be just as near as distant; in this way the one who hopes is always kept hoping, hoping all things, is kept in hope for the eternal, which in temporality is the possible.

This is what it is to hope all things. But lovingly to hope all things signifies the relationship of the loving one to other people, so in relation to them, hoping for them, he continually holds possibility open with an infinite partiality for the possibility of the good. That is, he lovingly hopes that at every moment there is possibility, the possibility of the good for the other person. This possibility of the good signifies ever more glorious progress in the good, from perfection to perfection, or rising from a falling, or a rescue from being lost, etc.

It is easy to see that the loving one is right, that at every moment there is possibility. Alas, but many would perhaps more easily understand it if we let despair say the same thing, since in a certain sense despair does say the same thing. The person in despair also knows what lies in possibility, and yet he gives up possibility (to give up possibility is to despair) or, even more correctly, he is brazenly so bold as to assume the impossibility of the good. Here again it is manifest that the possibility of the good is more than possibility, because when someone is so bold as to assume the impossibility of the good, possibility dies for him altogether. The person who fears does not assume the impossibility of the good; he fears the possibility of evil, but he does not conclude, he is not so bold as to assume the impossibility of the good. “It is possible,” says despair, “it is possible that even the most sincere enthusiast would at some time become weary, give up his struggle, and sink into the service of baseness. It is possible that even the most fervent believer would at some time give up faith [Tro] and choose unbelief [Vantro]. It is possible that even the most burning love would at some time cool off and freeze. It is possible that even the most upright person could still go astray and be lost. It is possible that even the best friend could be changed into an enemy, even the most faithful wife into a perjurer. It is possible; therefore despair, give up hope, above all do not hope in any human being or for any human being!”

Yes, it certainly is possible, but then the opposite is also possible. “Therefore never unlovingly give up on any human being or give up hope for that person, since it is possible that even the most prodigal son could still be saved, that even the most embittered enemy – alas, he who was your friend – it is still possible that he could again become your friend. It is possible that the one who sank the deepest – alas, because he stood so high – it is still possible that he could again be raised up. It is still possible that the love that became cold could again begin to burn. Therefore never give up on any human being; do not despair, not even at the last moment – no, hope all things.”

So, then, it is possible. To this extent the one who despairs and the one who loves are united in the same thing, but they are eternally separated because despair hopes nothing at all for others and love hopes all things. Despair collapses and now sometimes uses possibility as a diverting stimulant, that is, if one can be diverted by the inconstant, futile, weird phantasmal flashes of possibility. It is quite remarkable and shows how deeply hope is grounded in a human being that precisely among people who have frozen in despair one finds a dominant tendency to play and flirt with possibility, a wanton misuse of the powers of the imagination. Coldly and defiantly the person in despair refuses to hope with regard to the other person, even less to work for the possibility of good in him; but it amuses the person in despair to have the other person’s fate flutter in possibility before him, no matter whether it is the possibility of hope or of fear. It amuses him to play with the fate of the other person, to imagine one possibility after another, to seesaw him in the air, so to speak, while he himself, haughty and unloving, scorns the whole affair.

Yet with what right do we say that someone who gives up on another person is in despair? After all, it is one thing to despair oneself and something else to despair over someone else. Ah, yes, but if what the loving person understands is indeed true, and if it is true that someone, if he is a loving person, understands what the loving person understands, that at every moment there is the possibility of the good for the other one – then to give up on another as hopelessly lost, as if there were no hope for him, is evidence that one is not oneself a loving person and thus is the one who despairs, who gives up possibility. No one can hope unless he is also loving; he cannot hope for himself without also being loving, because the good has an infinite connectedness; but if he is loving, he also hopes for others. In the same degree to which he hopes for others, he hopes for himself, because in the very same degree to which he hopes for others, he is one who loves. And in the very same degree to which he hopes for others, he hopes for himself, because this is the infinitely accurate, the eternal like for like that is in everything eternal.

Oh, wherever love is present, there is something infinitely profound! The one who truly loves says, “Hope all things: give up on no human being, since to give up on him is to give up your love for him – in other words, if you do not give it up, then you hope; but if you give up your love for him, then you yourself cease to be one who loves.” Ordinarily we speak in another way, in a domineering and unloving way about our relation to the love within us, as if we ourselves were the masters and autocrats over our love in the same sense as we are over our money. When someone says, “I have given up my love for this person,” he thinks that it is this person who loses, this person who was the object of his love. The speaker is of the opinion that he himself retains his love in the same sense as someone who has assisted another person with money and says, “I have stopped giving this assistance to him” – so now the giver keeps the money himself that the other received previously, he who is the loser, since the giver is of course far from losing by this financial shift.

But it is not this way with love. Perhaps the one who was the object of love loses, but the one who has “given up his love for this person,” he is the loser. He perhaps does not detect this himself, perhaps does not even notice that the language mocks him, since he says, “I have given up my love.” But if he has given up his love, then he has of course given up being loving. Admittedly he adds: my love “for this person,” but this does not help. With money it can be done this way without loss to oneself, but not with love. I am not entitled to the adjective “loving” if I have given up my love “for this person,” although, alas, I may even imagine that he was the one who lost.

It is the same with despairing over another person – it means to be in despair oneself. Yes, it is somewhat detaining, this observation. Unfortunately it is a quick and easy matter to despair over another person – and presumably to be sure of oneself, full of hope for oneself; and the very people who in complacency are most sure as far as they are concerned are usually the quickest to despair over others. But however easily it may go, it cannot actually be done – except in thoughtlessness, which no doubt is easiest for many people. No, here again is eternity’s like for like – to despair over another person is to be in despair oneself.

The one who loves hopes all things. Moreover, what is said by the one who loves is true, according to his understanding, that at the last moment there is still the possibility of the good, even for the most lost – therefore still hope. It is true, and it will be true for everyone in his relationship with other people if he will keep his powers of imagination quiet, undisturbed, and unbefuddled by unloving passions, with the eternal sight upon the reflection of the eternal in possibility. Therefore, if someone cannot understand what is understood by the one who loves, it must be because he is not one who loves; it must be because there is something that prevents him from keeping the possibility pure (because if possibility is kept pure, everything is possible) while he lovingly chooses the possibility of the good or hopes for the other person; it must be because there is something that weighs him down and gives him a tendency to expect the other person’s discouragement, downfall, perdition. This weighing down is the worldly and thus the earthly passion of the unloving disposition, because worldliness is in itself heavy, ponderous, sluggish, slack, despondent, and dejected and cannot involve itself with the possible, least of all with the possibility of the good, neither for its own sake nor for the sake of another.

There is a sagacity that, almost with pride, thinks that it has a special elemental acquaintance with the seamy side of existence, that everything indeed ends in wretchedness – how should one who already early in the day begins to look forward to and prepares for the downfall of another person be able even at the last moment to hope lovingly for him!

There is an anger and a bitterness that, even if it does not get a murder on its conscience, hopelessly gives up on the detested person, that is, it takes possibility away from him. But is this not murdering him spiritually, hurling him spiritually into the abyss – insofar as anger and bitterness have their way!

There is an evil eye. How would an evil eye be able lovingly to catch a glimpse of the possibility of the good! – There is envy. It is quick to give up on a person, and yet it does not actually give him up as if to let him go – no, it is on the go very early to assist in his downfall. And as soon as that is certain, envy hurries home to its murky hole and calls to its even more loathsome relative that goes by the name of malice [Skadefryd] so that they are able to rejoice together – to their own detriment [Skade].

There is a cowardly, timorous small-mindedness that has not had the courage to hope for anything for itself; how could it hope for the possibility of the good for others – it is too small-minded and too closely related to envy for that! There is a worldly, conceited mentality that would die of disgrace and shame if it were to experience making a mistake, being fooled, becoming ludicrous (the most terrible of all horrors!) by having hoped something for another person that did not come about. The worldly, conceited mentality protects itself by hoping nothing at the outset and finds hoping everything in love to be infinitely fatuous and infinitely ludicrous. But in this the world’s vanity makes a mistake, because what is fatuous is never infinite. Indeed, it was the very consolation of the one who, while he lived, had to put up with a great deal of the world’s fatuousness, that he could always say: Infinite it is not – no, praise God, it will end. Neither is experience right in saying that the most sagacious thing is not to hope all things for another person – and yet, of course, experience is right, otherwise it would have to learn over again and learn how foolish it is to love others for the sake of one’s own advantage; and only to the extent that one does this is it ill-advised to hope all things.

When all this, this sagacity, this anger and bitterness, this envy and malice, this cowardly, timorous small-mindedness, this worldly, conceited mentality, when all this or some of this is in a person and to the same degree in which this is present – then love is not present and to the same degree is less in him. But if there is less love in him, there is also less of the eternal in him; but if there is less of the eternal in him, then there is also less possibility, less of a sense of possibility (because possibility indeed appears in this way, that in time the eternal touches the eternal in a human being; if there is nothing eternal in this person, the eternal’s touching is in vain, there is no possibility). But if there is less possibility, there is also less hope, just because and to the same degree as there is less love that could lovingly hope for the possibility of the good. In contrast, the loving one hopes all things. No indolence of habit, no pettiness of mind, no hairsplitting of sagacity, no quantities of experience, no slackness of the years, no bitterness of evil passions corrupt for him his hope or counterfeit the possibility for him; every morning, yes, every moment, he renews his hope and refreshes possibility, while love abides and he in it.

Even if the one who loves was unable to do the slightest additional thing for others, was unable to bring any other gift at all, he still brings the best gift, he brings hope. There where everything seems so hopeful and is so rich in expectation for the promising youth, love still brings the best gift – hope – but also there where people for a long time already feel that they have held out to the limit, there, too, love hopes to the limit, yes, to the “last day,” for not until then is hope over. If you have seen a physician going around among the sick, then you no doubt have noticed that he brings the best gift, better than all his medications and even better than all his care, when he brings hope, when people say, “The physician has hope.” Yet a physician deals only with the temporal; therefore it must happen again and again that the moment comes when it would be untruthful for him to deny that he has given up the patient, that the sickness is unto death. But one who loves – what a joy for the one who loves that he always dares to hope; what a joy for him that eternity vouches to him that there always is hope. The one who loves, the one who truly loves, does not hope because eternity authenticates it to him, but he hopes because he is one who loves, and he thanks eternity that he dares to hope. In this way he always brings the best gift, better than congratulations on the best of luck, better than any human help in the worst of luck, because hope, the possibility of good, is eternity’s help.

When all misfortunes befell the human race, hope still remained. In this paganism and Christianity agree; the difference is this, and it is an infinite one, that Christianity has an infinitely smaller conception of all these misfortunes and an infinitely more blessed conception of hope. But the hope that did remain remained only with the one who loved. If there is no love, hope would not exist either; it would just remain lying there like a letter waiting to be picked up. If there is no love, hope would be like a letter whose contents are – yes, they are blessed – but there would be no one to carry the letter away. Then love, although greater than hope, would take it upon itself, as its service and its work, to bring hope.

But is there not something obscure, something unclear, in this entire deliberation, so that one cannot really grasp what the subject is, since “Love hopes all things” can mean that the loving one hopes all things for himself, and it can mean that the loving one lovingly hopes all things for others? But these are indeed one and the same; and this obscurity is the clarity of the eternal, if someone fully understands that they are altogether one and the same. If love alone hopes all things (and Paul does not say that hope hopes all things but that love hopes all things, simply because, as he says, love is greater than hope), then it follows (from its being love and from what love is) that the one who loves hopes all things for others, since his love indeed conditions his hope for himself. Only earthly understanding (and its clarity is certainly not to be recommended), only earthly understanding, which is no judge of what either love or hope is, thinks that they are two entirely different things, to hope for oneself and to hope for others, and that in turn love is a third thing by itself. Earthly understanding thinks that one can very well hope for oneself without hoping for others and that one does not need love in order to hope for oneself, whereas one certainly needs love in order to hope for others, for the people one loves – and why should one hope for others than these. Earthly understanding does not perceive that love is by no means a separate third thing but is the middle term: without love, no hope for oneself; with love, hope for all others – and to the same degree one hopes for oneself, to the same degree one hopes for others, since to the same degree one is loving.

Blessed is the one who loves – he hopes all things. Even in the final moment he hopes for the possibility of the good for the worst reprobate! He learned this from eternity, but only because he was the loving one could he learn from eternity, and only because he was the loving one could he learn this from eternity. Woe to the one who has given up hope and possibility with regard to another person; woe to him, because he himself has thereby lost love!

Love hopes all things – and yet is never put to shame. In connection with hope and expectancy, we speak of being put to shame; we think that someone is put to shame if his hope or expectancy is not fulfilled. In what is the shame supposed to lie? Presumably in this, that one’s calculating sagacity has not calculated accurately and that it has become apparent (to one’s shame) that one has injudiciously miscalculated. But, good heavens, then the shame would not be so perilous; after all, it actually is so only in the eyes of the world, whose conceptions of honour and shame one should still not honour by making them one’s own. What the world admires most and honours exclusively is sagacity, or acting sagaciously; but to act sagaciously is the most contemptible of all. If a person is sagacious, in a certain sense he cannot help it; nor should he be ashamed of developing his sagacity, but he should be all the more ashamed of acting sagaciously. If people do not learn to scorn acting sagaciously (it is especially necessary to speak of this in these sagacious times when sagacity has actually become something that has to be conquered with the help of Christianity, just as brutishness and savagery once were), if they do not learn to scorn it as much as we despise stealing and bearing false witness, then the eternal is ultimately abolished altogether and with it everything that is sacred and worthy of honour – because acting sagaciously is bearing false witness against the eternal with one’s whole life, is simply stealing one’s existence from God. Acting sagaciously is, actually, a halfway approach, whereby one undeniably gets furthest ahead in the world, wins the world’s goods and advantages and the world’s honour, because, in the eternal sense, the world and the world’s advantages are half-measures. But neither the eternal nor Holy Scripture has taught anyone to aspire to get ahead or furthest ahead in the world; on the contrary, it warns against getting too far ahead in the world in order, if possible, to keep oneself unstained by the defilement of the world. But if this is so, then aspiring to get ahead or furthest ahead in the world does not seem commendable.

If we are to speak with truth about being put to shame in connection with hope and expectancy, then the shame must lie deeper, must lie in what one hopes. Therefore one is essentially put to shame just as much whether one’s hope is fulfilled or not; the difference will be only that if the hope is not fulfilled it perhaps will become apparent in one’s bitterness and despair how firmly one was attached to that for which it was a shame to hope. If the hope were fulfilled, this perhaps would not become apparent, but the shame would remain essentially the same.

Yet if one hopes for something for which it is a shame to hope, regardless of whether the hope is fulfilled or not, one does not really hope. It is a misuse of the noble word “hope” to bring it into connection with something like that, because to hope relates essentially and eternally to the good – therefore one can never be put to shame by hoping.

One can be put to shame by hoping (to employ wrong language usage for a moment) for some earthly advantage – if it does not materialise. But the shame is actually not that it did not come to pass, that one’s hope was not fulfilled; the shame is that it now becomes apparent, on the basis of the disappointed expectancy, how important such an earthly advantage was to one. Therefore this is not hoping either – it is wishing, craving, expecting, and therefore one can be put to shame. One can be put to shame by giving up hope for another person – if it now becomes apparent that he nevertheless is saved or perhaps even that his downfall was in our imagination. Here one is actually put to shame, because to give up on another person, regardless of the outcome, is a dishonour. – One can be put to shame by hoping evil for someone – if it becomes apparent that everything turns out for the good for him. The vindictive person sometimes says that he hopes to God that vengeance will fall upon the hated one. But truly this is not hoping, this is hating, and it is brazen to call it a hope and blasphemous to want to make God one’s collaborator in hating. The vindictive person is not put to shame because things do not happen as he expected, but he is and would be put to shame no matter what happens.

But the one who loves hopes all things and yet is never put to shame. Scripture speaks of a hope that shall not be made ashamed. This suggests most immediately the hope that pertains to the hoping one himself, his hope for the forgiveness of sins and becoming blessed someday, his hope for a blessed reunion with those from whom life or death has separated him. Only in connection with this hope, which is the hope, could there be any question of being put to shame, since truly one would not have shame by having this hope, but rather honour, and therefore it could seem that the shame would come if the hope is not fulfilled. Holy Scripture is very consistent in its use of language. It does not name as hope any and every expectancy, the expectancy of a multitude of things; it knows only one hope, the hope, the possibility of the good; and of this hope, the only one that could be put to shame because to have it is an honour, of this hope Scripture says that it shall not be made ashamed.

But when the hope of the one who loves is for another, would it then not be possible that the one who loves could be put to shame if this hope is not fulfilled? Is it not possible for a person to be eternally lost? But then if the one who loves had hoped all things, had hoped the possibility of the good for this person, then he would indeed be put to shame by his hope.

How, then? If the prodigal son had died in his sins and therefore was buried with shame – and the father, who even at the very last moment hoped all things, stood [stod] there: would he not be put to shame [stod i skamme]? I should think that it was the son who had the shame, the son who disgraced the father – but in that case the father, indeed, must have the honour, because it is impossible to disgrace someone who is put to shame. Alas, surely the concerned father is thinking least of all about honour, but he indeed stood there truly with honour! If there were no salvation for the prodigal son beyond the grave, if he were eternally lost – and the father who as long as he lived continued to hope all things and even in his hour of death hoped all things – would he then be put to shame in eternity? In eternity! No, eternity certainly has eternity’s conception of honour and shame; eternity does not even understand, it purges as something disgraceful the sagacity that wants to talk only about the extent to which one’s expectancy was fulfilled but does not at all consider what the expectancy was. In eternity everyone will be compelled to understand that it is not the outcome that determines the honour or the shame, but the expectancy in itself. In eternity, therefore, it is the unloving one, who perhaps turned out to be right in what he small-mindedly, enviously, hatefully expected of another person, it is he who will be put to shame – although his expectancy was fulfilled. But honour belongs to the loving one. Moreover, in eternity there will be no busy gossip about his having made a mistake – perhaps it was also making a mistake to become blessed; no, in eternity there is only one mistake: to become shut out from salvation along with one’s fulfilled small-minded, envious, hateful expectancy! And in eternity no mockery will wound the loving one for being fatuous enough to make himself ludicrous by hoping all things, since in eternity the cry of the mocker is not heard, even less than in the grave, since only blessedly happy voices are heard in eternity! And in eternity no envy will tamper with the wreath of honour that the loving one wears with honour – no, however far it extends, envy does not extend that far; it does not extend from hell to paradise!