Part 2: Why secular hope struggles to promote taking responsibility for the long-term future, and how Christian faith can help.

by Peter Wygnański, edited by Vesa Hautala; image: Midjourney

In this and the previous post, we are sharing a talk given by Peter Wygnański at the EA for Christians Academic Workshop that we have abbreviated for the blog (the editor takes responsibility of any shortcomings that may have resulted from this). A recording of the talk is available here.

Here I can begin to outline how a Christian worldview can help. A belief in objective good suggests that hope for the future is bound to a commitment that what one values, what makes life worth living, should endure. The right question is not which needs future human beings will have, but which needs they should have. It is for us to advocate the apparent regress from modern secular interpretations of history to their ancient religious pattern. This is justified by the realisation that we find ourselves more or less at the end of the modern rope which has worn too thin to give hopeful support. Anyone concerned with the unity of universal history and with its progress toward an ultimate goal or at least toward a "better world" is still in the line of prophetic and messianic monotheism, however little they may think of themselves in those terms.¹ As Christians we recognise in the desire to safeguard the future a manifestation of that part of human nature that needs a future. We are made in such a way that we cannot live without a future.² What, then, happens when we draw fully on the grounds of our future hope, on our faith, when we approach the question of motivating care for the future?

Christianity, especially in more traditional denominations, has a well-developed lens by which to attribute meaning to the past, turning that lens towards the future expresses how the Christian faith offers long-standing foundations on which a meaningful relationship with future generations can be found. God is future orientated, he gives very little that is present; all the important things are given in the category of promise of what is to come. This means faithful people have to live outward, beyond the present moment, and live in a state of reaching out towards something else, something greater, and this has both heavenly and earthly dimensions.³

As a Christian, I flourish in a community that transcends my own lifetime. My faith refutes the false god of a freedom unencumbered by the freedom of others. Through the Trinity, we come to know that freedom flourishes when it is closely knit in a union with other persons. Being a Christian, being like the Son, means not standing on my own, but living completely towards, being for, others.⁴ A Christian recognises that they do not belong to themselves, fullness of life comes to itself by moving away from itself and finding its way back as relationship. The lines between egoism, altruism, and collectivism are blurred by faith in what Jesus Christ reveals to us about the human person in light of what it is to be Divine.

God ‘guides the course of all history’ and so there is an inherent future aspect of our faith, in which the present is made relative to a wider horizon that runs far beyond the moment, indeed beyond the whole world.⁵ Comparable to the compass which gives us orientation in space, the eschatological compass gives orientation in time by pointing to the Kingdom of God as the ultimate end and purpose. Sailors of the ancient world needed the rising sun to orient their maps. A river needs a hill to flow. Morality needs a framework that transcends it, to carry connections across generations, across time, to allow meaning to flow; to point us outwards, beyond our immediate relationships; to draw us forward, towards humanity’s future. When such bonds between generations are undermined, the casting off the apparent chains of past generations, there is little left to mediate meaning to us from humanity’s future, so that we can feel it today.

But with that orientation, I see how my blessedness today depends on passing on my faith, and the conditions of living that faith out, to others; in acting in charity to the most vulnerable, those who God now knows before forming them, who have no voice with which to defend themselves today. The fulness of life that Jesus came to give me rests on becoming like him, which points me outside of myself, with a hopeful gaze towards the future, which involves a deep love for all my brothers and sisters. We seek to become one another’s hope and to set upon the future the seal of Christ’s features, the features of the coming city that will be completely human because it belongs completely to God.⁶ In short, the nature of our Christianity is such that it involves us deeply with humanity’s future.

More practically: The Christian faith has a firm set of values to inform a widely shared vision of humanity’s future, evading the paralysis of uncertainty, and avoiding the tragedies that could arise in building a future for humanity without a sense of the human person. The Christian faith has sources of moral growth, building up people of faith as a living stone in the brotherhood of the Church, a fraternity which draws me close to the suffering or flourishing of the future Christian family. The Christian Faith dares to speak to secular power in a way that is increasingly scarce and so could play a unique role in promoting civilisational virtues, and a moral conversion towards greater care of future generations. The Christian Faith rejects the priority of freedom and self-determination that gives rise to temporal parochialism, restoring connections with future generations as it treasures its past. The core of the Gospel message is to love all of humanity as one would the closest family. Why could this not include future generations? The situation is new, but the potential is significant; the unique contribution an authentic Christian imagination offers for motivating care for humanity’s future, that is lacking in alternative accounts.

1. Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History, 1957.

2. Ratzinger, Faith and the Future, 2019.

3. Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, 2004.

4. Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 2004.

5. Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance, 2004.

6. Ratzinger, Faith and the Future, 2019.