It is an open secret that these post-Covid pandemic years are troubled times. Financial issues, health struggles, lack of jobs, and the list goes on. As a Christian, I have my hope in God and His promises. However, I must admit I am susceptible to stumble when I see the storms of life ranging. By reading Aquinas, I found these illuminating passages on hope and despair, noteworthy of reading.
In his treatment of hope, one of the first aspects Aquinas clarifies is that despite what it looks like, hope is a theological virtue and a habit that has a future good in God. “[W]hen we were treating of the passion of hope, the object of hope is a future good, difficult but possible to obtain,” he writes. Thus, for Aquinas, “the object of hope is the eternal happiness” (II-II, Q.17, A.2). Aquinas’s notion of hope has a theological character because it attains to God himself, who helps us to obtain such happiness. With these words, one notes how Aquinas understands hope as a virtue.
Although Aquinas asserts that hope is indeed a theological virtue because God is the main object of this habit (II-II, Q.17, A.5), he does not preclude understanding hope as a human emotion as well. In fact, Aquinas also defines hope as a “movement [of the will] towards an arduous good” (II-II, Q.17, A.3).
I indeed appreciate Aquinas’s approach when he understands hope in a twofold sense: as a theological virtue and as an emotion.
Noteworthy is Aquinas’s view that hope is the antidote against despair (the opposite movement of hope). While hope moves towards a good, despair moves towards the “conformity with false opinion about God” (II-II, Q.20, A.1). This makes despair to be considered both vicious and sinful. And because despair is a sin, then, it is an aversion of the good. Aquinas writes: “In every mortal sin there is, in some way, aversion from the immutable good” (II-II, Q.20, Reply Obj 1). But the rejection of the immutable good is not the only thing despair does. Despair also transforms such good into a mutable good, turning a person’s soul into those mutable goods. In that regard, for Aquinas, despair is a theological vice because it departs people from God and His goodness (Cf. II-II, Q20, Reply Obj 1).
Aquinas understands that despair is both a sin itself and the source of other sins (q20, a1). By this, he means that after a person enters a state of despair, he or she gives up to other sins or vices such as lasciviousness or covetousness. Since despair turns a person to a false belief about God, it is not strange that such a situation leads a person to believe false statements about other sinful actions as well. Despair is both an aversion and conversion: an aversion of the good and a conversion to a false good (II-II, Q.20, A.1, Reply to Obj 1). In this way, a person in despair not only rejects the true good but embraces a false one.
Unlike despair, presumption is an “immoderate hope” that instead of depending on God to get the good, it depends on a person’s strength (II-II, Q.21, A.1). When a person relies on his or her own strength instead of God’s, he or she is rejecting God. Therefore, presumption is also a sin. But dissimilar to despair, Aquinas considers it is “less grave” (II-II, Q.21, A.1). Noteworthy to mention is that presumption and despair are two opposite vices, but both oppose to hope (II-II, Q.21, A.3).