by Stanley Anderson » August 17th, 2007, 5:32 pm
I've never heard of the idea, but it is a nice thought. It reminds me a bit of something I've mentioned here in the past about Lewis' concept of Joy.
The Scriptural concept of Hope, for me, is different from our earthly concept of hope in that our earthly hope seems to have two components -- one, a desire or longing for something, and two, the quality of uncertainty, ie, we "hope" something will happen but we can't be sure it will happen.
It is this second aspect of earthly hope, the feeling of uncertainty, that I think is not really a component of Scriptural Hope (I've had disagreements from others about this -- it is debatable, but not important for my point here). For me, the first quality, the desire or intense longing for God is the key part of Scriptural Hope.
And it struck me at one time that Lewis' concept of Joy is a sort of "pre-conversion" version of Scriptural Hope, since Lewis' definition of "Joy" as he uses it in Surprized by Joy, is an intense longing for "I know not what". Every time he thought (before he was a Christian) he knew what the object of the longing was for, whether a distant hillside or musical strain, or a passage from a book, it turned out that that was not it after all. It was only when he realized that the "longing" was there to guide him to God that the object could be identified.
And it is my contention that this idea of "Joy" is simply what Scriptural Hope "looks like" to us before we are Christians.
Anyway, sidetracking from your question, I realize, but fun to think about.
--Stanley
…on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a fair green country under a swift sunrise.