We all know that oil and water do not mix. The reason they do not mix is that the water molecule is polar– it has a lopsided electrical charge– and the oil molecule is not. Polar molecules have a positively charged end and a negatively charged end, and they can form various bonds that exploit positive/ negative attraction.  Water is a strongly polar molecule, which leads to its myriad exceptional physical properties. Water molecules self-organize according to polarity, creating surface tension, six-sided snowflakes, and a frozen form that is less dense than the liquid form. The strong polar forces in water are also able to tear apart molecules such as salt, which is why water can dissolve so many substances.

When the outermost electrons of a molecule are symmetrically balanced, that molecule is non-polar. Non-polar molecules interact weakly, and it is only quantum fluctuation that allow them to interact at all. Because they have no positive or negative charges hanging off of them, non-polar molecules don’t form crystalline structures like snowflakes, and they rarely form a solid. Like a perfectly smooth marble, these molecules offer nothing to cling to. While non-polar substances are unable to dissolve in water, they can dissolve in other non-polar substances; benzene and toluene are non-polar industrial solvents.

It should be self-evident that a molecule cannot be both polar and non-polar. It is impossible for anything to be itself and be its opposite in the same way at the same time. So it should come as a startling surprise that every cell of every living thing is composed of an impossible combination of polar and non-polar molecules. It is barely an exaggeration to say that a cell membrane is a successful mix of oil and water. Chemically, we call the building blocks of cell membranes phospholipids. Rightfully, we should call them miracles.

Phospholipids are long molecules that are polar at one end and non-polar at the other end. By sandwiching two layers of phospholipids together, we can create a sheet that is impermeable to both polar and non-polar molecules. Polar molecules cannot cross the sheet’s non-polar layer. Non-polar molecules cannot cross the sheet’s polar layers. It is from this stuff that all cell membranes are made. The chemical bonds that make up a phospholipid are all well understood, and in that sense there is no mystery about them. But do not be fooled into thinking that this makes them any less remarkable.

Phospholipids are a profound paradox in the everyday world. They are all but impossible, but they are so common that their paradoxical nature is easily overlooked. They are not the only miraculous combination of opposites that tends to escape our notice; man is a spirtual being with a physical body. Man has the physical needs of food, clothing, and shelter, but man also has immaterial needs like liberty, justice, and love. Man needs these just as he needs food; without them he becomes warped and twisted, he becomes morally sick.

The spiritual and material cannot be combined any more than can the polar and the nonpolar. In the material world, a straight line is, for practical reasons, impossible. Other idealizations don’t physically exist either. ”Justice” disappears if we try to reduce it to strictly material elements. The concept of “now” is something identifiable only by man; physics does not recognize it. These things do not, in a physical sense, exist. Similarly, the second-order differential equations that describe most of the physical processes in our world mean nothing in the face of man’s reaching out in loving charity to his fellow man. In the realm of relations between people, where forces like charity and justice and honesty interplay, technical equations speak nonsense.

The spiritual and material cannot be combined and yet, here we are. In man God has created a creature that can recognize, talk about, and order his life around spiritual ideals, and yet has a physical body that is subject to physical laws. Nothing else in heaven or on earth has this combination. God seems to get a kick out of combining the uncombinable.

A third impossible combination is of history and eternity. The extent to which one considers this paradox meaningful will depend entirely on one’s religious outlook. But let us consider some religions. Judaism is a religion that found inspiration in historical events. The Bible is explicitly a history book, unlike the holy books of other religions. The Jews saw God in these events, and so they wrote the Bible. Judaism’s offspring, Christianity, is similarly a religion that exists in history. The ministry and crucifixion of Jesus were specific historical events, and Christianity draws its understanding of God from those events. Other religions do not do this. Archaeologists have ideas about when the Hebrew exodus from Egypt took place, but nobody seriously tries to ask when the Mahabharata occurred. 

According to the teachings of Judaism and Christianity, certain historical events like the exodus and the resurrection carry with them eternal implications. This should give us pause, because history and eternity are like oil and water; they are fundamentally different from each other, and cannot be combined. In the face of eternity, some momentary event like Christ’s crucifixion happened recently– yesterday, for all practical purposes– and will be long since forgotten by tomorrow. Yet Christianity teaches that we will be around for eternity because of the crucifixion. This transient event in the material world has made a real and permanent change in the intransient, eternal, spiritual world. If we are to believe that, we may as well believe that it is possible to mix oil and water.

What gives this combination its paradoxical force is the role played by time. Time exists in the material world, but I argue that it does not exist in the spiritual world. Change in the spiritual world takes place instantly, by means of a change in definition. Jesus redefined God’s relationship to humanity, and though his activities took time here on earth, they took no time at all to reverberate through heaven. In fact, Jesus’ redefinition became what the relationship had been all along. There is a sequence of events in the spiritual world, but that sequence does not span time. On earth, where matter resists being pushed, changes occupy time.

Time is a material phenomenon. It is because of time that man has to persevere in the face of any difficult endeavor. Were we not in a material world, then any enterprise would be easy; changes would flow effortlessly from the ideas that inspire them, and change would be immediate. But we are in a material world, where mass has inertia, and nothing can change instantly. Physical effort is needed, and patience is required. In a material world, perseverance furthers. 

Perseverance needs a goal, and for Christians this goal is the Kingdom of God. Do not mistake this with personal salvation. Salvation comes through Christ’s death on the cross, and our own efforts have little or nothing to do with it. But we do need to make efforts and persevere, because there is a fallen world to restore, a world which we are one day to run. We have a role to play in its restoration. The new life we are promised after death is not an incorporeal existence in heaven, but a physical existence in a material, yet eternal world. Man is a spiritual creature with a physical body; life after death for us implies a renewed material existence.

When we link perseverance to the goal of the Kingdom of God, we get hope. Hope is one of the three theological virtues (the other two being faith and charity) which, along with the four cardinal virtues, are part of the seven Christian virtues. Hope is perhaps the least understood of the virtues, and it warrants a lengthy discussion.

The first thing is to establish the difference between hope and faith. There is a great deal of similarity between the two, and the definitions that are given often overlap. Some go so far as to say that hope and faith are the same thing. But if they are the same thing, then it would be meaningless to talk seriously about “three theological virtues,” because in fact there would be only two.

Faith is a special trust that we place in God. It has its base in the intellect, where one can reason and understand something of God’s ways and God’s promise. This understanding can carry us through difficult times when God is not so easy to see, when cool reason is not so accessible. Faith is an intellectual activity.

Hope is a special trust that we place in our own efforts. It has its base in the will. Humans are limited, and our trust in ourselves can never be a sure, absolute thing; any one of us might fail at any time. So, there is little rational reason for us to put trust in ourselves, and depending on circumstances, there may be no reason at all. Hope is an exercise of the will; it puts trust in us anyway, even in spite of the unreasonableness of doing so. As G.K. Chesterton said, “At the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable, it begins to be useful.”

For an example of what Chesterton is talking about, consider J. R. R. Tolkien’s novel, The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien was a devout Christian, and his book is an extended meditation on hope. Reason dictated that Frodo and Samwise had no chance at all of destroying the ring; they were hobbits, not mighty adventurers, Mordor was full of nazgul and orcs, and their only guide was a deadly and cunning creature who wanted the ring for himself. Alone in this dark, dark, world, they were surely on a suicide mission. It was hope alone that kept Frodo moving forward.

As a backdrop to this story, there were the larger political developments in Middle Earth concerning men and elves. In the face of Mordor’s evil, the elves chose to retreat across the sea. The elves dressed this up as a grand action of destiny, but the plain fact remains that the elves left. If this novel documents the dawn of the age of men, it is because it was men who chose to fight; the Numenoreans particularly struggled against the rising forces of Mordor, even when they had to skulk about as rangers to do it. These men had hope, the elves did not.

In the logic of Tolkien’s world, as in our own, good is primary and evil is derivative. For this reason, evil ultimately cannot win. There can be good without evil, but there cannot be evil without good. It is easy to lose sight of this fact, but hope is ultimately reasonable, and timely reminders of its reasonableness can restore hope and keep us moving forward. There is a scene in Mordor, late and night when Frodo is asleep and Gollum is lurking about when Sam, troubled by the certain doom that surrounds them stands to look up at the nighttime sky. Through the clouds he sees a single small star.

The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach…. Now, for a moment, his own fate, and even his master’s, ceased to trouble him. He crawled back into the brambles and laid himself by Frodo’s side, and putting away all fear he cast himself into a deep and untroubled sleep.

Stars in Tolkien’s novel nourish hope every time they are seen. Above the transient fray of Middle Earth, they are a signal of the divine order that must eventually prevail.

(It may be worthwhile to point out that the theme of hope does not appear Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of the book. A case in point is the startling decision to have an elvish army aid the men at Helm’s Deep, the implication being that men were doomed without this outside assistance. Such never happened in the book; the men put their trust in the fortress of Hornburg, a product of men’s hands.)

The divine order will eventually prevail, but we must not carry this idea too far. Overassurance leads to the first of two ways in which hope can fail: presumption. When we presume we take an outcome for granted, and put trust in a future that is even more uncertain and fallible than man’s imperfect effort. When we presume we do not hope, when we do not hope we do not try, and when we do not try we fail.

The other way in which hope can fail is despair. Despair is resignation to a bleak future, as opposed to overconfidence in a bright one. Both presumption and despair are a sin, though despair is the worse of the two; the future it presupposes is more greatly removed from the reality God promises.

The origin of despair is interesting, it has its roots in the sin of sloth. Sloth has been terribly misunderstood and has nothing to do with laziness. Sloth is a shrinking back from greatness. The opposite of sloth is not industriousness, it is magnanimity. And magnanimity is not generosity, but a striving towards greatness. The demands of greatness can be intimidating and the temptation to pass them up can be strong. But in a world of time, a world which is continually changing and creation is continually unfolding, there is no holding still. If one refuses to move forward then one will move back. And so if we refuse the call to grow and increase, we can do so only by becoming more small and mean. This shrinking from greatness, this refusal to become more than we presently are, is sloth.

Also among hope’s possible failings is the decoupling of hope from the Kingdom of God. It is only this goal that makes hope a virtue. Hope fixed on some other goal can be corrupted or turned toward sinful ends. Aquinas described virtues as being “so ordered toward good that it cannot possibly turn toward evil.” Justice, for example, is the act of giving a man that which is his due. An act of justice is always a good thing. Hope can be twisted– one might hope for the success of a criminal enterprise– but not when it is properly oriented toward the Kingdom of God. (With this goal itself one needs to be careful– as humans, we cannot build the Kingdom of God, and that is not quite what we should hope for. We should hope to build for the Kingodm of God, a subtle but vital difference. Many thanks to JT for assisting me on this point. http://jteaseblog.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/nt-wright-on-the-whole-kit-and-kaboodle/#comment-625) It is Christianity that makes hope a virtue.

So between the hazards of presumption and despair lies the path of hope. This is the path we are to walk, even when the possibility of it taking us anywhere seems absurd. Following Frodo’s adventures can give us some idea for what this feels like, though there is also much to be learned from people who endure survival situations. The U.S. Army Survival Manual (FM21-76) notes the following:  

It takes much more than the knowledge and skills to build shelters, get food, make fires, and travel without the aid of standard navigational devices to live successfully through a survival situation. Some people with little or no survival training have managed to survive life-threatening circumstances. Some people with survival training have not used their skills and died. A key ingredient in any survival situation is the mental attitude of the individual(s) involved. Having survival skills is important; having the will to survive is essential…

These lines open the first chapter of the book. They come before discussions on finding food, building shelters, purifying water, evading capture, or first aid. In a survival situation, attitude is more important than equipment or skills. This is true whether one is Christian or not, but the attitude that is required for success in this situation is identical to our virtue of hope. When lost in the wilderness, it is very easy to give in to despair. It is less easy, though just as dangerous, to fall prey to presumption. Only a determined and optimistic perseverance– only hope– holds the best chance of rescue. In a survival situation we must trust that our efforts will do us some good.

That hope gets us through a survival situation tells us something interesting about time. Hope, moreso than any of the other of the seven virtues, is concerned with the future. We can have faith in the present moment, but it is not meaningful to say we have hope in the present moment, nor does it make any sense to say that we hope for the past. Hope’s domain is exclusively and preeminently the future. That hope concerns the future but not the present links hope inseprably to time. Survival, meanwhile, is linked to material existence; spiritual beings do not struggle for survival, they simply exist. Only for a material creature is the problem of survival a relevant one. Survival is mediated in part by hope, and hope is inseparably joined to the continual unfolding of time. Thus time, it can be said once again, is a material phenomenon.

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This post is part of a collection of writings on virtue. Click on the ‘Virtue’ page for a directory of all the others.

Leader image is Glow of Hope  by Sawlaram Laxman Haldankar. It is on display at Sri Jayachamarajendra Art Gallery at Jaganmohan Palace in Mysore, India. As best as I can determine, this image is in the public domain.

Water molecules diagram is credited to the following: Frank N. Keutsch, Nir Goldman, Evgeniy N. Karyakin, Heather A. Harker, Maria E. Sanz, Claude Leforestier and Richard J. Saykally, Faraday Discuss., 2001, 118, 79-93, DOI: 10.1039/b008825k – Reproduced by permission of the Royal Society of Chemistry. (I liked the diagram so much, I took the trouble to write to them.)

Snowflake photo is courtesy of http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/

Benzene and phospholipid diagrams are in the public domain.