Faith, Hope, & Love

Faith, hope, and love traditionally have been called the three theological virtues. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians speaks of these virtues thusly: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13) Also, 1 Thessalonians 1:3 refers to the “work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I recently read a book (Dark Night of the Soul by St. John of the Cross) that considered these virtues in reference to the three faculties of the human soul: understanding, memory, and will. The book describes how faith purifies our understanding, hope purifies our memory, and love purifies our will. It’s an enlightening discourse on the virtues. The following is what I gathered from it.

Human Understanding: Marred by the Devil, Purified by Faith in Christ
To speak specifically of faith and how it purifies our understanding, it is worth noting that the object of faith is the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ. To have faith is to trust in the risen Jesus who still speaks to us (in Scripture, preaching, teaching, baptism, and communion) and whose Spirit lives within us. Saint John of the Cross describes how our understanding has been deceived by the devil and how we’ve been led to live lives of falsehood. In this state of confusion, our understanding looks to the things of this world for its truth and identity. It chases one thing after another, often according to the spirit of the age or the fad of the day. This only drives us more deeply into confusion and darkness.

When we look to Christ, however, we see the One who is “the light of the world.” (John 8:12) Insofar as we follow him in faith, we “will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12) Though the continual temptation to live in falsehood has its appeal, it leads only to confusion. In contrast, our understanding – of who we are, who God is, and how we ought to live – is purified by faith in Christ, because he is “the truth.” (John 14:6)

Human Memory: Marred by the World, Purified by Hope in God’s Promises
The second faculty of the human soul – memory – has been marred by what St. John of the Cross calls “the world.” Our memories of good times and good things (“the world”) lead us to believe that recapturing those times/things will lead us to a state of blessedness. Thus, we restlessly try to construct our futures according to good memories of the past. This is a mistake. The blessing we sensed during those times was not in the things or circumstances we had, but in the presence of the God who gave them to us. Insofar as our memory leads us into the futile attempt to recapture the past, it needs to be purified by hope in God’s promises.

Those moments in the past when we’ve had a taste of heaven are just that: a taste. Our memory of that taste is purified by hope in God’s promise that we will be raised to heaven, to new life with Christ, and to eternal blessing. As 1 Thessalonians 4:17 says, our hope is that we “will be caught up in the clouds together with them (those who have died) to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.” There is no need to recapture the blessing of the past, because that blessing is the destiny of those who hope in God’s promise to give it.

Human Will: Marred by the Flesh, Purified by Love for God and Neighbor
The third and final faculty of the human soul – the will – is purified by love. St. John of the Cross notes how the human will is self-serving. It aims to satisfy the desires of the flesh, focusing its efforts on self-preservation and self-glorification. Because God created us to love Him and to love our neighbors (the two greatest commandments), our wills need to be purified from the desires of the flesh.

Such purification is the work of God’s Spirit: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:5) The Spirit of Christ living within us turns our wills away from self-preservation and self-glorification and directs us toward self-emptying love and humility. Because “we have the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16), we give ourselves to one another in love. Such love purifies our wills from the desires of the flesh.

The Gifts of God
These three theological virtues – faith, hope, and love – are the great gifts of God to his people. They are the presence of God living within us, and they purify us – our understanding, memory, and will – from sin.