When Pope Benedict was elected to the papacy in 2005, there was some fear that as he assumed a more prominent role in the Church, his writing might be difficult for some to grasp. Prior to his becoming pope, Joseph Ratzinger (his name before becoming pope) had written extensively. He had served as a professor of theology for many years and also spent almost 25 years as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Both of these positions often required him to write on difficult topics of the faith, and trying to read those writings was sometimes a little difficult, despite the clarity and order with which he wrote.
Just a few months after his election, Pope Benedict issued his first encyclical, Deus caritas est (God is love). Many were surprised to see how easy it was to read this document. Though still packed with profound theological insights, he was able to express his ideas in ways that were generally easily understood and greatly appreciated. I say all of that as a way of preparing us for the next paragraph in Spe Salvi, in which the pope delves into some more technical language about the relationship between faith and hope, specifically as it is expressed in the first verse of the eleventh chapter of the Letter to the Hebrews. As I read through this paragraph again, I found myself struggling a little more than with other paragraphs as the Holy Father offers a short exegesis on this passage which offers the classic definition of faith in the New Testament. He quotes the passage, leaving the word in question untranslated: “Faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen.”(Heb. 11:1) (FYI – the English word used for hypostasis is ‘realization’, ‘assurance’, or ‘guarantee’) The rest of the paragraph unpacks that word hypostasis, considering it’s meaning in Greek, in Latin, and how Martin Luther and biblical scholars (both Catholic and Protestant) have understood it, and how he resolves those various views to express the Catholic interpretation of this important passage.
Feel free to read the paragraph for yourself, but the conclusion that the Holy Father arrives at is insightful and much easier to understand in comparison to the steps leading to that conclusion. He concludes with the following:
Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen. Faith draws the future into the present, so that it is no longer simply a “not yet”. The fact that this future exists changes the present; the present is touched by the future reality, and thus the things of the future spill over into those of the present and those of the present into those of the future. (SS 7)
My somewhat feeble attempt to distill this paragraph is that through faith, which is a gift of God’s grace, a seed is planted within our souls, such that what we hope for in eternal life, is already present in us. It is not something we make up, something we hope to see in the future, but it is an objective reality of life with God, for the beginning of the fullness of that life is already in us through grace, which is a sharing in very Christ’s life. This is an “already” that is present within us, not just a wishful longing for what is “not yet.” It is not either/or, but rather both/and.