In a footnote, James Alison makes an interesting note about how the word “faith” and “hope” are used by different groups of theologians:<\/p>\n
Almost everything that I have said in the previous section could have been said by a Protestant theologian, and probably better than by me, for we have been looking at what they call “justification by faith” and not by works, which is the central axis of their confession and of their protest.<\/p>\n
Footnote: Faith and hope tend to come intertwined in the Reformed presentation, so that what is understood by faith is something much closer to what we understand by hope. That is, they emphasize the element of faith which consists in a confident resting in God’s love, the subjective element of faith. Catholic theologians tend rather to highlight faith in its dimension of the knowledge of the absolute and unambiguous goodnes and loving kindness of God, reserving the more subjective element for the treatise on hope.<\/p>\n
-James Alison, Raising Abel, p.170<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So some of the ideas that reformation Christians (including myself) wrap up in the idea of “faith” are not absent from Roman Catholicism, but rather given a lot more attention when talking about “hope”. This doesn’t mean there are not a lot of significant differences in the definitions, just that the differences are sometimes exaggerated because not everyone is on the same page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a footnote, James Alison makes an interesting note about how the word “faith” and “hope” are used by different groups of theologians: Almost everything that I have said in the previous section could have been said by a Protestant theologian, and probably better than by me, for we have been looking at what they … <\/p>\n