Faith, Hope, Love

by Josef Pieper

This volume, three separate books in one edition, is a collection of Josef Pieper's famous treatises on the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love. Pieper is perhaps the most popular Thomist philosopher of the twentieth century.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology, Religion, Catholic, Nonfiction, Christian, Christianity

299 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1997

About the author

Josef Pieper was a German Catholic philosopher and an important figure in the resurgence of interest in the thought of Thomas Aquinas in early-to-mid 20th-century philosophy. Among his most notable works are The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance; Leisure, the Basis of Culture; and Guide to Thomas Aquinas (published in England as Introduction to Thomas Aquinas).

Reviews

[Luke Stamps · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most insightful and deeply moving books I have ever read--and I don't say that lightly. It's sort of a phenomenology of the three Christian virtues, examining faith, hope, and love from every vantage in order to elucidate their essential meaning and implications. After I finished it, I immediately wanted to start over from the beginning.

[Reagan Dricken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Faith: blue square
Hope: blue square
Love: double black diamond

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book, but rating it is difficult because of the diversity of these three essays which were written at the beginning (Hope), middle (Faith), and end (Love) of Pieper's career. All of them are thought-provoking, and elements of all three are fabulous. Pieper mostly approaches the three theological virtues from a philosophical perspective, which is particularly interesting for the first essay on faith. He portrays faith in terms of believing a person who it witnessing about some truth that you don't know firsthand, which is very Johannine. Hope ended a little disappointingly because he unsurprisingly argues that no Christian should have real assurance of their destiny as an heir of salvation because this would compromise the virtue of hope and our status as pilgrims: the Roman Catholic position through and through.
Love is the masterpiece of this book. The way Pieper reflects on this infinitely complex and wonderful virtue is exquisite; his intellectual prowess is at its prime. It's like love is a diamond that he holds up to the light and keeps turning in increasingly small degrees so as to explore different shade and truths that appear. This book in general felt exploratory and exciting. His main idea with love is that love says "It's good that you exist; how wonderful that you are!"
If there is one main problem in the book it is that God's identity is strangely absent. Of course, Pieper is self-professedly approaching from a philosophical point of view, but not all of the book is strictly philosophical (is it too clumsy to remark that his chief citation is Aquinas' Summa Theologica?). Indeed Christ and the Spirit are barely mentioned in the book at all(!) which gave me at any rate a final unsatisfactory feeling. God as Triune has no real impact on his presentation. Christ is the object of our faith, the primary person we believe; he is the substance of our hope and the fulfillment of all God's promises; the Spirit is the love of God 'in se' and has been poured into our hearts.
All in all an excellent book whose virtues outshine any shortcomings.

[Fr. Nicholas Blackwell, O. Carm. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Note, this is really three books in one. Now, he offers many dense things that make a demand of the mind to stew on them. For example, the topic of Eros in the part on love. His wondering style can be tiring but he always brings the reader back to his key and necessary points. The book on hope is utterly superb and I know I’ll be going back to it for years to come.

[Janet Perez]

this book has forever altered my life! 10/10 would recommend! my heart, a totally different place now:)

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pieper stretches me and makes me think deeply and I love it. He quotes and interacts with philosophers from Plato to Sartre, concurring or dissenting, always thoughtfully. I don’t always agree with him - he is Catholic, I’m Presbyterian - but even then he makes me consider my beliefs more carefully.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pieper is an outstanding linguist as he clearly defines with laser-precision the definition and meanings of words such as belief, hope, and love. His treatise on love is the best of all. Noteworthy is his dedicated resolve to challenge the notion that "eros" and "agape" are somehow mutually exclusive and opposed; rather, he marries these two expressions of love as being in unison under the all-encompassing "amor". Hence, "eros" is not evil as the Puritans and Freudians, among others, would have it, but it is right to say that a correct ordering of even self-love and love of another, in the erotic sense, is ordered toward and gives fuller expression to the love of God. In short, he argues against an emotionally detached way of "loving" God and neighbor. Charity is not aloof. Worth at least another two reads to try to really grasp what he's saying.

[Václav Kubíček · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neskutečně přínosná kniha, dlouho jsem nečetl něco podobně kvalitního. Pieperovy traktáty o víře, naději a lásce, jakožto božských ctnostech, jsou psány s delším odstupem, což je na stylu poznat. Mladší Pieper (víra) je exaktní scholastik, nejstarší Pieper (láska) pak již zkušený profesor s lidštějším stylem.

Čtenář po prostudování těchto traktátů dokáže sebevědomě definovat tyto tři ctnosti a nadto tyto definice přesvědčivě obhájit.

Ochutnávka (vlastní formulace):

Víra: Volní přitakání (vylučují pochybnost) souboru pravd skrze osobu prostředníka (svědka) těchto pravd.

Naděje:
Neochvějné přivrácení se k pravému bytostnému naplnění, tedy k dobru.

Láska:
Volní uznání existence milovaného za dobrou.


Celkové vyznění knihy vyjadřuje pregnantně její podtitul: Víra, naděje a láska jsou jedinou odpovědí, která je přiměřená skutečné existenciální situaci člověka.

[MyLan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love>hope>faith

At least in this book. But we all know the greatest of these is love.

[Anna Snader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will never think about life outside of status viatoris

[Dan Snyder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Along with Pieper's book on the four cardinal virtues (Wisdom, Courage, Justice, and Temperance), this affords dilation on the classical virtues. Faith,Hope, and Love being the spiritual virtues, a study of these books will set a ready well on their way to grappling with these themes in classical literature as well as scripture.

Oddly, Pieper avows that he doesn't propose a theological book (in some of the chapters), but a purely philosophical discussion.

[Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything Pieper writes is worth reading. Sweet to see how highly he regards C.S. Lewis, especially on Love. Very compelling take on despair and the connected vices, what he calls a demonic constellation. Other notable mentions, Barth, Rahner, Goethe, Luther, Jansen, the Secular City, etc. Looking forward to reading this again someday.

[Erin Cowen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely a book that I want to read again. Peace and love brothers and sisters

[Daniel Stepke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pieper never disappoints.

[Nolan Mandelino · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good, difficult to dissect prose at times and he inserts Latin without any translation at times

[Anne-Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant philosophical book that is profoundly insightful and needs careful reading. My favourite section was on hope, although I was extremely impressed with the section on love. It was so deeply rooted in the theology of the body it was amazing - and I am assuming he wrote this long before St John Paul II started giving the Wednesday audiences on it back in 1979.

[Kevin W · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Joy. Where does it come from? How is it to be explained? Certainly, there are many factors at work here. But in my view, the crucial one is this certainty, based on faith: I am wanted; I have a task in history; I am accepted, I am loved. Josef Pieper, in his book on love, has shown that man can only accept himself if he is accepted by another. He needs the other’s presence, saying to him, with more than words: it is good that you exist.”
-Pope Benedict XVI

[Daniel Massett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pieper—Faith, Hope, Love

1. Faith—first, Pieper talks about the logical end and step necessary in any belief. At a certain point, we must accept we can’t know, but trust in a person and have belief in them. So, he gives as an example, a person may say they were with my long-lost brother in a POW camp. This person gives some true characteristics of my brother, explains their interactions, etc. The mind is then in a state of anxiety b/c it cannot know. It has not seen the brother in the POW camp. But considering the things this person has said, along with the person seeming trustworthy, we come to believe them (or the opposite). Similarly, though I know next to nothing about quantum physics, I believe that it’s knowable by specialists, and I believe what I hear from them even though I in no way am qualified to confirm or deny their knowledge. I trust them, and I trust the scientific method, and so on. Religious belief is then not a step like this, but a leap, in which we must contemplate the nature of man. The main source of belief is the Bible, God’s revelation of himself through human writers, God granting these writers a “vision” through inspiration that they otherwise would not have been able to “see”, namely, the Scripture as it deals with God, God’s words, God’s actions through history. The questions then are—are these “revelations” worth believing, do they improve man’s lot, and if they do, do we believe the writer and through the writer, believe in the Person who revealed these things? The closest analogy to this in life is when a person tells another “I love you,” making clear their interior state, trying to communicate it to another, and that other can only benefit by this if they accept it and internalize the love that they recognize in another person for themselves, recognizing they are beloved. This is the relationship between God and man.
2. Hope—Hope is the thing with feathers which perches on the soul. But no, on Pieper’s view, Hope is something that comes from God, similar to ultimately Kierkegaard’s view (which Pieper references), Hope is basically an essential quality for man on his journey through life (status viatoris—the life of the pilgrim). We must keep our destination in mind and journey toward it, not giving in to despair and falling away from it. Knowledge of God is essential then, as He is our final destination, our ultimate goal, and choices leading away from Him lead to despair, of casting oneself into nothingness, the refusal to be your true self
3. Love—love is very complicated. First, he goes through a few languages to try and understand the different words for love, not unlike CS Lewis. Love has a lot of nuances…being bewitched by the beautiful, love as a gaze, love needing an object, God’s love for man, etc. The chapter on different words for love in various languages is super interesting. He tries to find some commonalities. First, love has some aspect of an assent of the will, the will essentially assenting to the thing loved, saying “It is good that you exist!/I want you to exist!” He then summarized his great distinction of the minds ability to think vs to know, thinking being grasping toward something not known, intuiting being something already known with the gaze of the mind then being able to simply contemplate/rest within it. Similarly, this aspect of the will with love isn’t a willing-to-do something, but rather an assent of the will to something that already exists. It affirms it. This leads to a larger fact: intuition/knowing is the basis for all further striving in knowledge. We have to already have a basis of understanding to build upon. So too, love is the basis for any other act of striving in the will. We do things because at bottom we love, and our acts of the will spring forth from our love. So when God wills us into creation, it is the same as saying He loved us into being. What we love then is the core of what we are, the innermost part of everything we will to do and be.
Ok, so I’m some sense that’s love. The next chapter focuses on what it is to be loved, to be the object of someone’s love. When someone loves you, they tell you all sorts of wonderful things about you, and a strange feeling that comes from that is shame. We know we’re not those things, but the lover thinks we are. Are they simply mistaken? Pieper (and Alice von Hildebrand) think otherwise. No, what the lover sees is in some sense your true self, the self you could be if you actualized yourself. Being loved becomes a call to be better than you are. Ultimately for the Christian, we recognize a desire to be loved, not by the prehistoric father figure of Freud, but by God himself, seeing in ourselves the glory he sees for us and in a childlike, unashamed way, rising up to that call.
He then goes on to say that Protestants have a real problem with Catholics combining Eros and Agape. Protestant theologians often think Agape is the only true love, their old fear of anything material rearing its ugly head. The Catholic response is grounded in being as a creature that was created and God saw as “very good.” So in loving someone or something, we are fundamentally recognizing that thing’s reality: God created it; it is good; it is “good that you exist.” All love comes from the core of man’s being and his innate desire for happiness.
Through this, Pieper (and the Catholic tradition) locates our love for everything else in the act of self-love by which we seek the ultimate ends of our own existence, the fullest realization of our own individual being.
Ultimately, in a true marriage of loving communion, there is no separation of Eros and agape—the full life unfolds in every possible angle “embracing and permeating all the dimensions of existence.” No separation is needed between Eros and agape here. In fact, Eros is the hinge point between human and divine, and without it, Eros would just become loveless sex, and reaching the divine agape would be impossible. Finally, when united with God, perfected

[David Haines · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an absolute joy to read. I would expect nothing less from an author such as Josef Pieper. The book is divided into 3 separate (though certainly related) treatises. The first is a masterful explanation of faith. It will be hard to find a better work on the subject. The second is a short treatment on the notion of hope which is quite inspiring and thought provoking. The last is on love, and is a deep and thought provoking look at the notion of love. It should be read along side of C. S. Lewis's work "The Four Loves" which Pieper quotes frequently. All in all a book that should be read over and over again.

[Ali Stinchfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another Pieper writes, I will read. This is a collection of works that brings together understanding of faith, hope, and love throughout the centuries from all the great minds quoting across generations and thinkers in a neat paragraph into a neat message that makes everything make sense. I suggest reading up on a philosophical topic from all the greats and then ending with Pieper. He will lock in your understanding and leave you with what you already knew but didn't know how to put into words.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pieper is always worth reading. I read these in chronological order (Hope, Faith, Love) because I am super dorky like that. Luckily, that works well: Pieper's own development is striking, and the later essays are far, far more readable and compelling than the hope essay. Unless you're a nihilist, and then maybe you just really need to read the Hope one first anyway.

[Danna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do find Pieper to be too long winded and heady for my taste, BUT I really like how he breaks down the linguistics in each of these words: Faith, hope, love. There is much more power behind each than is typically portrayed in colloquial usage, and that’s a convicted thing to read about. I felt the same in his essays on the cardinal virtues

[Trevor Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually love Pieper, but I feel like his strength is in short form writings. This long form book was tough to get through, mostly because he got bogged down in defining each of these virtues as nauseam. There are some great thoughts on the book, but not my favorite Pieper.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible series of reflections, not so much a book as three essays written at very different times in the author's life. So many great references to longer works, almost every single page is quotable.

[Carole Duff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Three books in one, Pieper’s theological treatises on the virtues of faith, hope, and love. Pieper stands on the shoulders of those who thought about such things before, especially Thomas Aquinas. Meaty, thought-provoking, fundamental.

[Sturmius · Rating 5 out of 5]

Especially the book on love is outstanding. Even better than C. S. Lewis "Four Loves".

[Stephen Terry · Rating 5 out of 5]

All three books are great, but there's no denying the book on love is Pieper's best!

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Extremely clear treatise on the foundational definitions of faith, hope, and love, specifically from Augustine, Aquinas, and C.S. Lewis.

[Hogan Hurley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The addiction to Pieper remains strong, and this book puts him on the map as one of my favorite authors; and he is beginning to rival Lewis in the inability to write a boring sentence.

[Aidan McIntosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I re-read this book after going through his treatment of the Four Cardinal Virtues, which is also quite good, but this is Pieper at his best. In some sections, it's incredibly dense, and you're trying to take notes and remember which thinker said this and which poet wrote this, and in others, it's richly applicable to the spiritual life. To understand faith as an entrustment of the intellect and will freely given to a someone, to a person, to understand hope in the context of man's destiny, and to understand love as something ontological, affirming the goodness of existence and the desire to perfect it - a brilliant work.