Simple things, axiomatic, are not defined but denoted! That is, they must be experienced, they cannot be transmitted to another by word. A complex thing or phenomenon, if you know all the details, can be described. Example: rain with hail can be imagined when you know what ‘rain’, ‘hail’ are. Knowledge about the color green cannot be transmitted to someone (even for rational, intellectual knowledge), who has never seen it. Bright green can somehow be imagined, provided knowledge of the components (bright, green). Forgive such a long and boring introduction. So what is Holy Scripture, to whom is it addressed, and how should it be read?
‘For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope’ – says one of the authors of the Biblical books. Everything written has a purpose, that through the mediation of the Scriptures we might preserve hope. The word ‘hope’ in this statement is key. What does this word mean? Modern interpretive dictionaries and even everyday usage of the word ‘hope’ carry such semantic load: ‘forecast, wish, expectation’. For example: I hope they will bring the pension tomorrow – I do not know whether it will be so, anything can happen, but I would very much like it to be (spent the last penny last week – V.A.); or, I hope that tomorrow will be nice weather – unknown how it will be (or maybe it will not be at all, remember the parable of the foolish rich man – V.A.), though meat is bought and the grill is ready, and friends have been informed – I hope that all will be well… In such a secular, secularized meaning, the word ‘hope’ accompanies and represents action as movement – into the unknown, undefined, into the darkness of linear future.
In the mouth of the apostle Paul, the word ‘hope’ has a diametrically opposite meaning to the above. For an etymological hint, let’s take the Slavic equivalent – ‘надєжда’, the root of which ‘жд’ from the word ‘ждати’, ‘wait’, ‘expect’ (hence: expect the resurrection of the dead – V.A.). You can only wait for what you know, in which you are sure, convinced and have no doubts, that is, what has already happened, is already in the past. That is, ‘hope’ is a reference to movement not to what is ahead, in linear future, but to what is already in the past (ontological eternal now – V.A.), not linear, but such that, having happened, can no longer not be (for example: God incarnate, Jesus Christ resurrected, Man sits at the right hand of God in Heaven, etc. – V.A.). ‘Hope’ in the mouth of Paul is an existential category that refers to the hypostatic being (as the ability of the human person to step out of space and time, from the realm of necessity into eternity, the realm of absolute Divine Love and freedom, the Kingdom of God, which is within us and among us – V.A.), not rational forecasting and making doubtful plans for the future. In the spiritual life, Hope follows Faith, which, in turn, is the realization of the expected and the assurance of the unseen (faith, hope in this context – is a divine gift of communion with the Eternal Life of the Triune God, the introduction of the communicant into the Mystery of the Personal Life – V.A.). Faith here is presented in two senses: as being in the experience of communion with God and as memory (existential, not only rational; the entire being is introduced into the flow of hypostatic, integral being – V.A.) of the experienced experience of the Kingdom of God (memory: for example, apostle Paul was in Eternity, on the third heaven, and returned to the body of earthly existence; now he is no longer there, because on the third heaven he did not remember himself – whether in the body or out of the body Paul was there God knows, but the integral memory of the experienced remains – V.A.). Forgive us, we should have stopped and talked a little, superficially, about ‘hope’, ‘faith’, ‘memory’, without which we will find it difficult to understand the essence of the Scripture. Let’s give another example for a clearer understanding of the word ‘hope’, as used by apostle Paul: a little one-year-old boy’s father gave him a car – the car is the boy’s property, but in order for him to be able to use it, he needs to grow up, wait, endure until 18 years, or when he can drive independently (this is Orthodox dialectic, antinomy: ‘already and not yet’, ‘at home and still on the way home’, ‘saved and still being saved’, ‘deified and called to deification’). Now, to not be unsubstantiated, let’s listen to what apostle Paul himself says (of course, listening in the integral context of Tradition – V.A.): ‘… He (God the Father – V.A.) has put his seal on us and given the earnest (deposit, this is a reality that can be ‘touched’ sensibly, not just a promise – V.A.) of the Spirit in our hearts’. Elsewhere in Scripture, it is said that God does not give the Holy Spirit by measure. That is, each is given fullness, but each contains according to their readiness and spiritual measure – directly proportional to godlike humility. ‘The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, from which grows a tree’. The tree – everything is in the seed, but the seed is not yet a tree. ‘The Kingdom of God is like leaven, which leavens the dough until all is leavened’.