Yea, Faith Without a Hope

That is T. S. Eliot in “East Coker.” The trio of faith, hope, and love is straight out of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church. The oddity or intriguing thing about the way Eliot uses that trio is the idea of having one without the others. With no hope and no love, how does faith persist?

G. K. Chesterton’s epic poem The Ballad of the White Horse is a marvelous illustration of the idea in Eliot’s poem. Indeed, once I saw this, I pulled the annotated Eliot off my shelf, fully expecting to see this ballad listed among the sources for “East Coker;” but Chesterton was not mentioned at all. (Oddly, neither was 1 Corinthians.) Did Eliot read Chesterton? I have no idea, but it sure seems like he would have.

The Ballad of the White Horse tells the tale of the 9^th century Saxon King Alfred who beats back the Danish Vikings occupying England. The great battle took place at Ethandune, where a large chalk horse is carved into a nearby hill, hence the White Horse. Alfred’s accomplishments earned him the sobriquet Alfred the Great. This poem was obviously Chesterton’s attempt to write a modern day Iliad. If you like tales of great warriors on both sides of a battle slaying each other while making grand speeches, then you’ll like this poem.

But as fun as it is to read verse describing how a great sword was hurled through the air to strike an opponent over the eye, that wasn’t the part that caused me to spend time in deep reverie. The story opens with Alfred wandering through a wood musing upon the Vikings occupying the land when he suddenly encounters the Virgin Mary.

“Mother of God,” the wanderer said,
“I am but a common king,
Nor will I ask what saints may ask,
To see a secret thing.

“The gates of heaven are fearful gates,
Worse than the gates of hell;
Not I would break the splendours barred,
Or seek to know the thing they guard,
Which is too good to tell.

“But for this earth most pitiful,
This little land I know,
If that which is forever is,
Or if our hearts shall break with bliss,
Seeing the stranger go?

A promising beginning to a tale. If you ran into the Virgin Mary one day, you might well ask if Dante described heaven accurately or something like that. But, Alfred just wants to know if the Vikings will be forever occupying the land (“if that which is forever is”) or if they will one day leave.

With the aid of hindsight, we know what answer Mary should have given; obviously the Vikings leave and we know that Alfred plays a big role in their departure. So, Mary’s reply is a bit shocking:

“I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

“Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?”

Joy without cause I get. But faith without a hope? If you know you will lose, if you have no hope of winning, how do you maintain faith? What does it look like to have faith with no hope? Faith in what exactly?

The shape of faith without hope becomes clear as the story unfolds. Alfred has no hope of beating back the Vikings, but that does not stop him from gathering the chiefs of the land. He then finds his way into the Danish camp pretending to be a wandering minstrel. On his way out of camp, he taunts them thus:

“That though we scatter and though we fly
And you hang over us like the sky
You are more tired of victory,
Than we are tired of shame.

“That though you hunt the Christian man
Like a hare in the hill-side,
The hare has still more heart to run
Than you have heart to ride.

“That though all lances split on you,
All swords be heaved in vain,
We have more lust again to lose
Than you to win again.

That is exactly what faith without hope looks like. Tired of shame; heart to keep running; lust to lose again. Alfred keeps going not because he has a hope of winning the war. Alfred keeps going because he has total faith that this is what he is supposed to do. He does it knowing the sky will grow darker yet and the sea will rise ever higher. He will lose. Then lose again. And the lust to lose one more time will not diminish.

That is faith. Pure unadulterated faith.

Wise he had been before defeat,
And wise before success;
Wise in both hours, and ignorant,
Knowing neither more nor less.

We often think of a test of faith as a time when hope flickers yet we maintain our hope because we have faith. Faith, in other words, is often described as a hope-generating mechanism. Times are tough, but have faith, they will get better. That phrasing though blurs the distinction between faith and hope. Instead: times are tough, but have faith even though they will not get better. That is the real test of faith. Keep going even though you will lose because you have faith that this is exactly what you are supposed to do.

With the constant tales of victory over long odds, we build a culture of hope. Hope is a good thing; it is a theological virtue. Faith can aid in the building of hope; hope can strengthen faith. It is an easy thing to imagine hope without faith. To maintain hope when faith is dead is hard, but we encourage people to do so nonetheless. Flipping the order is equally important. To truly learn the nature of faith, it must be contemplated in the absence of hope. Sometimes in life, faith needs to be practiced in the absence of hope.

Faith, hope, and love. When all else fades, these three remain. They are all in the waiting, in the stillness, in the quiet whispers of God.