The God Who Trusts by Holtzen Wm. Curtis;Sanders John;

Author:Holtzen, Wm. Curtis;Sanders, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: God;doctrine of God;faith;trust;hope;love;open theism;open;openness;relational;relational theology;faithfulness;trustworthy;faithful;trustworthiness;openness of god;the god who risks;Thomas oord;providence;relational god;free will;human free will;process theology;immutable;impassible;unchanging god;open theist
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2019-10-03T11:26:53+00:00

HOPE DEFINED

In the simplest of terms, hope is a positive attitude—a disposition—about how one faces a crisis. Some have equated hope with optimism and confidence, but this may be saying more about hope than is necessary. It seems that one can be hopeful without being optimistic, encouraged without being confident. It is easy to say what hope is not—it is not outright knowledge or even presumption that a good outcome will obtain. What exactly hope is and how hope might apply to God will prove a bit more difficult.

Adrienne Martin is critical of what she calls the “orthodox” definition of hope. According to Martin, the “orthodox” view is “a combination of the desire for an outcome and the belief that the outcome is possible but not certain.”10 Martin argues that this approach is far too reductionist, suggesting that quite often our experiences of hope are “more profound than is typical of desire; hope seems to color our experience in a way that is richer and more specific than does desire.”11 I agree, hope includes desire but cannot be reduced to a particular kind of desire. Whatever it is we feel when we hope, we seem to feel something more than simply attraction plus the possibility of getting what we want.

Romanus Cessario, in assessing Aquinas’s writings on hope, says we find four characteristics of hope. In this section I will show that, while Cessario is only speaking about human hope, these characteristics can apply to divine hope as well. Let us begin by listing the four characteristics:

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