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[Unidentified speaker]: (... S. Eliot, our age is an age of moderate virtue and of moderate vice, when men will not lay down the cross, because they will never assume it. Those of us who know anything about Dr. Rosenstock-Huessy know that his followers, his intellectual disciples, have been willing to become passionately involved in the struggles of their times. Many of his students were involved in the fight against Nazism in Germany, and many of them gave their life, because through him they had seen a vision of how the Church and the university should be prophetic and not merely married to their culture.

(The first time I heard about Dr. Rosenstock-Huessy was when I was a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York. And one of my professors asked if we had ever read his book, Out of Revolution. And he said that we could not consider ourselves educated men until we had done this.

(We are privileged to have Dr. Rosenstock-Huessy giving the 9th Annual Tippett Lectures of which this is the third.)

* * *

Ladies and gentlemen, when the Lord hung on His cross, He still had the power to whisper, "It is finished." T- -- {tellustae} consummatum est."

What was finished? There was no Resurrection at that moment. Pentecost hadn't occurred. And yet He said, "It is finished." If we try to understand what was finished, we may understand that since He hung on the gallow beams in Palestine, you and I are enabled to be -- or to live our true nature. And this true nature comprises in us the child; the man; and the ancestor, the parent. Most of us today have unlearned to live all three generations. Most of us are either hippies or politicians. That's no good, either way. Man is condemned and privileged to live in every moment all three generations. If he doesn't, he'd better surround himself--the older with children, the younger with teachers--in order to represent the whole of mankind. Man perishes as long, or as soon as he believes that he is of the moment.

In these three words, "love," "hope," and "faith"--which I put as a title to this lecture--are no other expressions than the coverleaf -- the clo- -- for these three generations in every man's life. It is lost on us today, because in a strange manner--and that's what's provoked me to speak on this topic today here--in a strange manner in America, faith is obliterated by hope.

When I came to this country, a very great American, Dr. Richard Cabot--he was a professor at Harvard for Christian eti- -- ethics, and for cardiology, for the heart diseases; so he knew something about the human heart, physically and spiritually--and he said to me, "Eugen, now you will -- become an American; you must learn that this country is visited by an exaggerated belief in hope. Hope is the religion of America."

In -- some years later, the older ones of you will remember it, the Council of Churches gathered--I think it was in Chicago or in Toronto; this I do not know anymore--on -- under the topic that Jesus was our only hope: -- Jesus {spes unica}. That's a medieval term. You will find that in {spes unica}--in the hope--then, faith seems to be omitted, or unnecessary. Against this, I wish to state today very bluntly and very energetically that in the four Gospels, the term "hope" does not occur. The four Gospels which describe the message, the meaning, the heritage which we owe Jesus of Nazareth, could be conveyed then to posterity without the use of the word "hope." Therefore, I think it is necessary--that's my task this morning--to convey to you the importance first to know what faith is, before you dabble in hope. Children can be hopeful. A grownup who takes up his cross must have faith, and cannot be hopeful.

Jesus' situation was totally hopeless, and He knew it; and that's why we worship Him. He's the only man who lived without any hope, only on faith.

"What is faith?" and "What is hope?" we'd therefore better ask. On love, everybody seems to be very well an expert. I doubt it, but I am glad you think so. It makes things a little easier for me. If I could succeed in implanting in you the notion that faith is as much needed as hope and love, we might begin again to Christianize America.

The man of hope knows what it -- is worth hoping for. You cannot hope without believing in bigger and better elephants. So you know the elephant. And you hope that one day, you see, you will have bigger elephants. Or with your store, you sell so many things a year, so you hope next year the balance sheet will -- will offer you larger figures on the black side. Hope knows what it is talking about, and projects it into the future. And therefore hope is a secular, Greek virtue. The Greeks were full of hope.

As you know, the Gospel is a blend between Hebrew and Greek faith and tradition. Now you could not learn faith from the Greeks, but you could -- can learn from the Greeks, hope. This is a hopeful country. It is a Greek country. You are in an academic institution, therefore it is easy to teach you, if you base everything on hope. And the teachers do, of course, and they hope against better insights that you will be good students.

What is faith? Why is it not possible to speak of faith in the four Gospels? Because Jesus has planted faith into our hearts beyond anything that seemed possible and feasible at that time. He is the carrier of a new faith, a faith out of despair, a faith where there was nothing to hope. What does "despair" mean? Despair means there is nothing to be hoped for. You have here a rather silly phrase, very popular now. You say that people want something "desperately." Don't use the word "desperately." It's for 17-year-old girls. And you are all already, as I understand, 18. So don't hope desperately for something. And don't believe desperately in somebody. The word "desperately" I think could very well leave our vocabulary. It is one of the -- I think it has to do with the dismissal of the word "faith," that we all speak of "desperately," you see. "I need desperately seeing you." You don't need desperately seeing me at all.

This exaggeration of the words connected with "hope" is obviously no accident. You all talk in your letters of desperately wanting to see me, you, anybody, because you have no faith. Pardon me for being so blunt. But it is a -- very terrible situation that these three great cardinal virtues are out of kilter, out of harmony today.

Faith is that amount of expectation, of coming to know things we have not known, of being led ways we have never been -- trodden, of expecting the article of our faith fulfilled, that God is still creating the world. By faith, we submit to the fact that we have very little knowledge of how and when God is creating, and that we are open to being told, to being informed, to being led into His real world. Don't think that you and I know what the world is like -- God has created. You know a little ounce of this. The full pound hasn't been yet come -- given you.

So faith is our connection with the creative process of the future. And therefore, a man of faith is so remarkable when he is old. The old -- older statesmen in this country, they are the only people I can see who have faith. And this country, time and again, has been saved by these older statesmen. Being already beyond 70, being of course pensioned off at 65, as you now do, they were available in an emergency, unshaken by the outer events of which the hopefuls live. Faith is the greatest gift of the hoary head, of the senators, of the old women in any nation. It is unexpected, I'm sure, that I say that faith is their quality. Well, it's the most difficult quality for old people. Most old people grow suspicious. Most old people have no faith. They say, you see, "I'm from Missouri. I have to be shown." If you should be from Missouri, emigrate. It is not enough to be shown.

The future is embedded in our hearts by faith. And therefore, we -- participate in the creation of God's world tomorrow. Hope connects us with all the good things we have experienced, or we have heard of, or we have seen, and

says -- it says, "They may endure." "They may return." "They may recur." And we will cultivate them. We love them. Ice cream, for example. "Give me more ice cream." Hope always wants additional things.

Only to mention in -- in passing how important this is. In Germany, where the Nazis, as you know, worked havoc among all religious tran- -- traditions, there was a man my age. He was a professor. And he was a socialist, a Marxist, and he went to Russia and thought he could live there. And he became famous by a book called, The Principle of Hope. And he, quite radically, insisted that we didn't need the Trinity; that it was enough to hope. He omitted faith. This man's name is Bloch, and he's quite famous in Germany. He fled Russia, disappointed. It was just not quite that much hope as he had hoped. And -- he lives now in Tbingen, and has a great, great crowd of listeners. He's very influential. And as you see from the title, The Principle Hope -- of Hope, he tries to be a monist, a unitarian. But not like the Unitarians of 150 years ago, who only said the Father was the -- only god to be worshiped, and we didn't need the Son and the Holy Spirit -- the modern principle is: among the three cardinal virtues, we only need hope; the two others are superfluous, or at least they are purely additional spices. It's quite nice, and quite peppery to be in love, but it isn't necessary.

Because of this fact that today hope is bandied around by all the socialists, all the Marxians, all the Communists--and of course in this country, by all the people who want to sell cars--it is quite difficult to explain to you that hope and faith are located in different parts of our abdomen. Faith is stretching out to generations to come. Hope gathers into the -- into your -- into your farmhouse all the treasures of old, all the provisions you can appreciate. And now you can say, "Oh, if only I had this, too: a golden chain, and a silken dress, and glory, and power, and obedience, and loyalty," and so on. You can list all the good things of life which man has experienced, or have mentioned in poetry, in Shakespeare, or in the Hymnal, and then list them all and say, "I hope for them." It's a very impotent and very popular gesture. And I think the impotence of modern man has to do with his exaggerated faith in hope. The faith is misplaced, because faith has to do with the things unseen, unknown to us, undesired, dreaded. Do you think the Lord hoped to go to the Cross? He geh- -- went, and that is His achievement, that He overcame the nostalgia for hopeful things. He was not a Mr. Hopeful.

I'm quite serious that I -- I get quite angry when I see that this fact that the four Gospels could do without the word "hope" is nowhere mentioned in any modern theological book. How can we then be Christians? It's impossible. But once we open the real book of faith, love, and hope, we understand that Christianity is not invention -- an invention on Galilee in a corner. It isn't obsolete. It is

nothing that is something special. Christianity is not the Judeo-Christian traditions. It's the only truth. When I read this word "Judeo-Christian traditions," I always get angry, because it minimizes the fact that Lord of creation has been in- -- has incarnated. And how did He? By distributing the times of man as they must distribute -- be distributed into the three ages: the future, the present, and the beginnings. Hope holds onto all the beginnings, to the first sunrise, and the first rainbow, and we won't forget it, how beautiful they all are. That's hope. Hope for the return of the good things.

If you -- it is not done in this country at this moment. We are heretics, because we think that we can hope for things we don't know. That's to me a contradiction in terms. It's idiotic. How can I hope for something I don't know? The future cannot be hoped for. It -- in -- of the future you can hope the repetition of all the silver, and the gold, and the good food, and the good friends, and your parents, and your sisters, and your brothers, and your sweethearts whom you already have known. "Let them return," you say. That's your hope. If you do not know what's going to happen, it is a self-betrayal if you say you hope for them. You can believe in them. You may have faith that God's finger will point out to you the next corner where you have to turn and go an unknown path in the night, perhaps to Calvary, perhaps to suffering.

But the wisdom of love, hope, and faith is in this: that the man and the woman who have the three rise to their true stature. The true stature of man tha- -- is that he belongs to three generations, that he belongs to the oldest past, to the latest future, and to the full present of all men alive at this moment. He grows into a giant who covers the whole of this little man-pool in a way quite unexpected to the man who talks of hope only. The hopeful thinks of his own interest. Well, that's not interesting, not even to himself, tomorrow. I mean, if you grow up, you will be surprised how indifferent you become to your own hopes of 10 years ago. You may smile at them and say, "I was silly and I hoped for cigarettes."

This isn't good enough for you and me, to be an -- a butterfly of one day duration. This you would if you followed hope in separation, and faith--try to do without faith. Faith, hope, and love, however, connect you, connect you with the day of creation and the Judgment Day, because faith brings in all that has still to be created; and hope holds on to anything you have already appreciated, and you would like to see repeated and renewed. The balance between the three -- the two is charity, is love. And this love enables the person inside yourself to do justice to your own past, as well as to the future. The greatest wisdom is the love that the bride has when she asks her parents to agree to her marrying this scoundrel.

I always feel that the world is created not when a boy runs away -- elopes with his girl, but when the girl prevails on this man to go to his -- her parents, and ask for his -- her hand. At this moment, there is this great reconciliation between the generations. It has to happen. If you elope, you have to come back later. The -- the -- the great act of victory over yourself is not the act of falling in love. That's very easy. And certainly not in eloping. That's easy, too. You see, there are so many motels. The real scene of humanity only opens when the parents are made to agree to the choice of this wild boar.

The reconciliation of the beginning of creation and its end, in this middle part of our existence on earth, is the eternal problem -- or the eternal task, I should say--I try to avoid the word "problem," because it reminds me always too much of physics or mathematics, and I'm against it. You and I are -- if you are problem children, that's too bad. I'm not a problem child. I'm not even a pra- -- problem grandfather. Human beings have no problems, and are no problems, but they are creatures, unfinished creatures. And that's much nicer than to be a problem, I assure you. Because this unfinished creature is now responsible for the harmony of these three great branches of the outstretched cross over our heads, of the divine. This cross is stretched out backward by our hopes, by which we retain the memory of things past. It is stretched forward by our faith. It allows the Creator to enter quite a new page in His book of His creation. And the love holds the two together, as in the case where the parents are asked to agree to the innovation that this girl now has a right to call this wicked man her husband. It's very hard on a mother to do this, to agree to this.

So this is why I took the liberty of asking you to understand that we all outgrow our childish, ephemeral, butterfly state if we dedicate our lives to this balance between faith, love, and hope. As soon as we enter into this secret, that the creative process surrounds us as much from behind as from the future, we understand that faith, love, and hope are one trinitarian stream. We believe in the tri- -- triune God for this very reason. In every one moment, a new passion befalls the heart. And that's the son or the daughter in us, as children of God. In every moment, God must be -- free to change things we have not known, we don't know, we don't expect. And in every moment, the spirit tells -- is in harmony and in peace with the congregation that has already lived these truths.

So faith, love, and hope, it seems to me, express the great miracle that you and I are not as small, as passing, as a 24-hour insect. This is very popular today to treat man as so ephemeral that he's worth nothing. I think we are pretty big. We are giants. We cover the whole story from Adam and Eve to Judgment Day. That's why the Bible can contain the revelation of St. John and the Book of Genesis. What else would this mean? You all participate in the tol- -- whole story. But the condition is that we wisely distribute faith, love, and hope. Faith, into the

-- in the future; hope, gratitude for the past; and love, reconciliation of all things living.

Thank you.

[Hymn is sung.]