{"id":32791,"date":"2015-02-17T15:17:20","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T20:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=32791"},"modified":"2015-02-17T15:50:30","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T20:50:30","slug":"for-zion-chapters-2-and-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2015\/02\/for-zion-chapters-2-and-3\/","title":{"rendered":"For Zion – Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"For<\/a>I’m honored to participate in this roundtable on Joe Spencer’s book\u00a0For Zion: A Mormon Theology of Hope.\u00a0<\/em> I’ll be tackling chapters 2 and 3 today; Adam treated chapter 1 here<\/a>. Like many T&S\u00a0readers, I presume, I come at this book as an amateur: I was trained in literature, not philosophy, and the densely analytical style of philosophy can be challenging — though always rewarding — for me to work through. These chapters are full of interesting ideas and new readings. Rather than react or respond to Joe’s theology here, I’m just going to do my best to summarize the argument\u00a0as completely as I can. At my level, that’s always a necessary first step. So here goes.<\/p>\n

Chapter 2: Faith and Hope<\/strong><\/p>\n

In chapter 2 of his book, Spencer takes on the fourth chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which focuses largely on the relationship between faith and hope.\u00a0Paul takes as his starting point Abraham\u2019s faith, as expressed in Genesis 15:6<\/a>: “Abram believed the Lord<\/span>, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (I’m going to link to the NIV\u00a0throughout the post for the reader’s convenience, but Spencer provides\u00a0his own translations throughout, which sometimes differ in important ways from standard translations.) \u00a0Paul glosses this verse in Romans 4: 18-22<\/a>. The crucial points, in Paul\u2019s reading, are that 1) Abraham\u2019s faith preceded <\/i>his righteousness (verse 22), and 2) his particular kind of faith is defined by its relationship to hope (verse 18). Spencer zooms in on the opening phrase in verse 18 that is often translated as \u201cagainst all hope,\u201d but which he renders as \u201chopeless but hoping<\/strong>.\u201d This phrase will be the foundation of chapter 2.<\/p>\n

So what is the relationship between faith and hope? Faith is oriented toward a past <\/i>revelatory event; hope toward the future <\/i>implications of that event. Hope suggests a promise that things can be different. \u201cThe past destabilized the present by showing that, in transition to the future, \u2018the present scheme of things is passing away\u2019 (1 Cor 7:31)\u201d (17). Thus hope entails a sense of movement, process, an \u201cattitude of exodus<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

In verse 20<\/a>, Spencer finds an important qualification: ordinary hope is little more than self-love and wish-fulfillment; but virtuous hope, is, crucially, only hope in God\u2019s promises<\/i>. Here Spencer works out a complicated but insightful mutual relationship between faith and hope:<\/p>\n

HOPE transforms FAITH, because hope\u2019s trust augments faith\u2019s fidelity.<\/p>\n

FAITH transforms HOPE, because faith requires that hope be oriented toward God, not self.<\/p>\n

Another way of stating the latter is that faith \u201cdivides\u201d (ordinary) hope from (virtuous) hope; this division is the implication of the peculiar formulation \u201chopeless but hoping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spencer then draws out a fascinating dichotomy between desperation<\/strong> and despair<\/strong> from the phrase \u201chopeless but hoping<\/strong>.\u201d In desperation, he argues, you believe that there is a way out of your predicament, but are sure that your own impotence prevents you from finding it. In this sense, desperation is \u201cobjectively hopeful\u201d (that is, believing there is actually a \u201cway out\u201d within your power) but \u201csubjectively hopeless\u201d (that is, believing that your own incompentence prevents you from finding it). We might describe desperation, using Paul\u2019s formula, as \u201c(objectively) hoping but (subjectively) hopeless.\u201d<\/p>\n

In contrast, despair is \u201cobjectively hopeless\u201d: that is, despair recognizes that there is no way of deliverance<\/i>, under the present order of things. But despair is \u201csubjectively hopeful\u201d: it recognizes that the objective order of things is passing away, and that God has given you a role in that process of change. Thus we can say, with Paul, that despair is \u201c(objectively) hopeless but (subjectively) hoping.\u201d \u00a0True hope can only originate in despair, never in desperation.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Chapter 3: Hope and Love<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Chapter 3, Spencer turns to Romans 5. This chapter introduces love into the familiar trio of faith, hope and love, and Spencer here focuses on the relationship between hope and love.\u00a0Closely reading Romans 5:1-5<\/a>, Spencer discerns three conceptual stages:<\/p>\n

1) the relationship of faith and hope (verses 1-2)<\/p>\n

2) hope\u2019s relationship to itself (verses 3-4)<\/p>\n

3) the relationship of hope and love (verse 5).<\/p>\n

These three stages will structure the remainder of the chapter.<\/p>\n

Stage 1:\u00a0<\/strong>In exploring the relationship between faith and hope, Romans 5 builds on\u00a0Romans 4: faith not only orients hope away from the self and toward God\u2019s honor, but actually offers the possibility of sharing in God\u2019s honor. Faith offers hope the chance to participate in the \u201cpassing away of the present order.\u201d Thus the \u201csubjective hopefulness\u201d of despair-become-hope: I can be an agent of change.<\/i><\/p>\n

Spencer overlays a temporal scheme on this theology of faith and hope:<\/p>\n

PAST<\/strong>: The Messianic event in which we exercise faith<\/p>\n

PRESENT<\/strong>: the process of change in which we are invited to join, lifting us from despair<\/p>\n

FUTURE<\/strong>: the better world to come in which we exercise hope<\/p>\n

Into this chronology, Spencer inserts\u00a0the Christian \u201cboasting<\/strong>\u201d of which Paul speaks in verse 2<\/a>. Ordinary \u201cboasting\u201d — that is, hope that has not been transformed by faith, hope oriented toward the self — is rooted in and ratified by the present order of things: it is, we might say, the positive, though\u00a0equally mistaken,\u00a0mirror\u00a0of desperation. But Christian boasting, faithfully hopeful boasting oriented toward God\u2019s promises and our role in them, is located at the border of the present and the future. Virtuous boasting is an Exodus state of mind.<\/p>\n

Stage 2<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0What of hope\u2019s relationship to itself? In Romans 5: 3-4<\/a>, Paul describes a process through which the Christian disciple, hoping for a better world, endures difficulty and builds strength of character<\/strong>. This strength of character, in turn, enables the disciple to fully accept her role in the passing away of the present order — that is, in building Zion, the object of her hope. The entire process thus begins and ends in hope. It is in this sense that Spencer suggests that hope is reflexive or \u201cself-augmenting.\u201d<\/p>\n

This process presents a potential danger, however: that the disciple\u2019s newly-won strength of character will foster a false autonomy, alienating her from God and her fellows.<\/p>\n

Stage 3<\/strong>:\u00a0Love arrives on the scene to alleviate this potential pitfall. Love is a kind of affiliative impulse that results from an experience of radical human difference, if<\/i> all parties to the difference remain faithful to it. Love, by illuminating difference and redeeming it, saves the disciple from falling into a false autonomy. Love, that is, is the way we verify <\/i>another person\u2019s existence. As Spencer puts it,<\/p>\n

the hope that marks that journey\u2019s end is anything but self-confidence or independence. The augmented hope one develops by fighting against resistance comes to fruition only because of its connection with love, and love leaves no room for independence<\/strong>. (31)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here Spencer\u2019s impulse to subdivide\u00a0further schematizes hope: if hope without faith leads to dead-end desperation, then hope without love leads to false independence. Conversely, hope + faith leads through a passage of fruitful despair to a new beginning, and hope + love carries the disciple through the Zion-change in true fellowship.<\/p>\n

What begins as a kind of instrumentality — I hope only to be a tool in God\u2019s hands — eventually becomes a very real partnership, ideally bound by covenant. And this brings hope to its most real fruition because hope ceases to be merely a strong but somewhat selfish confidence in the other; hope becomes, instead, a loving confidence in the work to be accomplished by all who share in God\u2019s vision. (34)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Spencer summarizes, \u201cHope, transformed by faith, pursued relentlessly, and then supplemented by love, is what characterizes the life of the Christian\u201d (34). And with that, the stage is set for Romans 8: the time of hope.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m honored to participate in this roundtable on Joe Spencer’s book\u00a0For Zion: A Mormon Theology of Hope.\u00a0 I’ll be tackling chapters 2 and 3 today; Adam treated chapter 1 here. Like many T&S\u00a0readers, I presume, I come at this book as an amateur: I was trained in literature, not philosophy, and the densely analytical style of philosophy can be challenging — though always rewarding — for me to work through. These chapters are full of interesting ideas and new readings. Rather than react or respond to Joe’s theology here, I’m just going to do my best to summarize the argument\u00a0as completely as I can. At my level, that’s always a necessary first step. So here goes. Chapter 2: Faith and Hope In chapter 2 of his book, Spencer takes on the fourth chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, which focuses largely on the relationship between faith and hope.\u00a0Paul takes as his starting point Abraham\u2019s faith, as expressed in Genesis 15:6: “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” (I’m going to link to the NIV\u00a0throughout the post for the reader’s convenience, but Spencer provides\u00a0his own translations throughout, which sometimes differ in important ways from standard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32791"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32793,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32791\/revisions\/32793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}