Dist. 26
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/3/d/26/q/bon-sent-III-d26-littera
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### Cap. I. *On hope, what it is.*

Now hope is a virtue by which spiritual and eternal goods are hoped for, that is, awaited with confidence. For hope is a certain expectation of future beatitude, coming from the grace of God and from merits preceding either the hope itself, which charity by nature goes before, or the thing hoped for, that is, eternal beatitude. For to hope for something without merits cannot be called hope, but presumption.

### Cap. II. *Concerning what things hope is.*

And just as faith, so also hope is concerning things invisible. Hence Augustine: «We call faith of those things which are not seen. Concerning hope also it is said: *Hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeth, why doth he hope for»?* As to not-seeing, whether of things believed or of things hoped for, it is common to faith and to hope.

### Cap. III. *How faith and hope differ.*

Yet faith is distinguished from hope, as by word, so by a reasonable difference. «For faith is of evil things and of good, since both good things are believed and evil, and this by a good faith, not an evil one. There is also faith of past things and of present and of future. For we believe the death of Christ, which has already passed; we believe the session, which now is; we believe that he will come to judge, which is future. Likewise faith is both of one's own things and of another's. For each one believes himself to be, to have begun and not to have been at all everlasting, and we believe many different things, not only about other men, which pertain to religion, but also about the Angels. But hope is only of good things, and only of future things and of those pertaining to him who is said to bear hope of them».

### Cap. IV. *Whether in Christ there was faith and hope.*

After these things it remains to investigate whether faith and hope were in Christ; whence this treatise took its beginning. To some it seems not unlearnedly that faith-as-virtue and hope were not in him, just as they are not in the Saints already beatified or in the Angels; and yet the Saints believe and hope for the future resurrection, and the Angels believe the same; nor yet in them is faith or hope a virtue, because they both enjoy God by contemplating him through vision, and behold the future resurrection or judgment in the Word of God not through a glass in a dark manner, but most clearly. For if, because they believe the future resurrection, it is therefore true that they have faith: then, that resurrection being consummated, after the judgment they will likewise be said to have faith also, because they will believe it past. But just as then they will believe, nor yet have the faith which makes the faithful — because they will not believe without knowledge, which will not be enigmatic, but through vision — so also now they believe and hope for the resurrection; nor yet do they have faith, because by believing they know. For there comes to them that which is perfect, and that which is in part is done away; for knowledge comes, and faith is done away; vision comes, and hope ceases. So also Christ, in whom were the goods of the fatherland, did indeed believe and hope for the resurrection that would be on the third day, for which he also prayed to the Father; nor yet did he have faith-as-virtue or hope, because he had not an enigmatic and mirror-like, but a most clear knowledge of it, since he did not know it more perfectly as past than he understood it as future. Yet Christ hoped, as he says in the Psalm: *In thee, O Lord, have I hoped;* nor yet did he have faith or hope-as-virtue, because through vision he saw the things which he believed.

### Cap. V. *Whether the just in hell had faith and hope.*

But concerning the ancient Fathers, who were held among those below until the passion, it can not incongruously be said that they had faith and hope-as-virtue, because they believed and hoped that they would see God through vision, in the manner in which they did not then see him; because the knowledge of God through vision did not lie open to them before the passion of Christ, which being consummated, they passed over from faith to vision.

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