Faith, Hope, Love—A Primitive Christian Triad.

How many of us realize that 'Faith, hope, love' is probably a very primitive Christian triad and not the creation of St Paul?

Firmly linked, as it is, in our minds with the close of St Paul's sublime hymn in praise of love (1 Cor 13.13) we are reluctant to admit that this triad is not an inspired ipse dixit, an original collocation of the apostle himself. Yet several strands of evidence unite to prove that the triad is not Paul's own coinage, but a piece of pre-Pauline Christianity derived possibly from a saying of Jesus himself.

The triad is found not only in 1 Cor. 13.13, but also in 1 Thess. 1.3, 5.8; Rom. 5.1-5; Gal. 5.5-6; Col. 1.4-5; Eph. 4.2-5; Heb. 6.10-12, 10.22-24; 1 Pet. 1.3-8, 21-22, and once or twice in the Apostolic Fathers.

The following scheme shows how this triadic formula recurs, in various sequences, throughout early Christian literature.

1 Thess. 1.3. Your work of faith and labour of love and patience of hope.

1 Thess. 5.8. The breastplate of faith and love . . . a helmet, the hope of salvation.

Col. 1.4-5. Faith in Christ . . . love to all . . . the hope which is, etc.

Eph. 4.2-5. Forbearing one another in love . . . one hope of your calling . . . one Lord, one faith.

Heb. 6:10-12. And the love . . . the fulness of hope . . . through faith, etc.

1 Pet. 1.3-8. A living hope . . . guarded through faith . . .whom having not seen, ye love.

1 Pet. 1.21-22. So that your faith and hope . . . unto unfeigned love.

Heb. 10.22-24. Fulness of faith . . . the confession of our hope . . . unto love.

Gal. 5.5-6. By faith wait for the hope . . . through love.

1 Cor. 13.13. And now abideth faith, hope, love.

Rom. 5.1-5. Justified by faith . . . the hope of the glory . . . because the love.

Barnabas i.4. Because great faith and love dwell in you in the hope.

Barnabas xi.8. In faith and love and hope for many.

Polycarp ad Phil. iii.2, 3. Into the faith given you . . . when hope follows . . .and love of God and Christ and neighbour goes before.

N.B. In the last five passages culled from the New Testament, the same sequence of the graces is observed by three different writers.

All of this is surely not fortuitous. It strongly suggests that the triad in Paul is not his own creation, but something common and apostolic, perhaps a sort of compendium of the Christian life current in the early apostolic church.

Some incidental features in Paul's method of quoting the triad lend colour to this conjecture.

1. Consider how it crops up in 1 Cor. 13. Three points deserve notice. First, why does Paul drag in faith and hope at all at the end of his hymn in praise of love? The earlier verses of the chapter do not prepare us for their appearance here. The inference is that the mention of love suggested the other two members of what was already a traditional triad.

Second, Paul does not as a rule bracket faith and hope as of equal importance with love.

Third, the words 'these three', following the mention of 'faith, hope, love', suggest that it is a familiar triad. It is as if Paul says: 'Faith, hope, love--you know, the well-known three.'

2. Very significant is the almost tell-tale way in which Paul quotes the triad in 1 Thess. 5.8, 'Putting on the breastplate of faith and love, and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.'

The figure of the spiritual warrior, and his panoply is, of course, old and Jewish. Compare Isa. 59.17, 'He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and an helmet of salvation upon his head.' (Cf. also Wisdom of Solomon 5.18.)

Now notice (in the Greek) the double genitive after 'breastplate' in 1 Thess. 5.8. The figure, to be perfect for Paul's purpose, would have named three pieces of armour--say, the breastplate of faith, the buckler of love, and the helmet of hope. Not finding the second piece of arour in the old metaphor, yet desiring to work in the three elements of his triad, Paul has to write, 'the breastplate of faith and love', and keep his second piece of armour for 'hope'.

But the phrase 'for an helmet, the hope of salvation' points to the same conclusion. The original figure spoke of 'a helmet of salvation' (as indeed we find it in Eph. 6.17). To complete the triad Paul had to work in 'hope'. He did so, quite patiently, by writing 'the hope of salvation' and putting 'for an helmet' in apposition to this phrase.

In fine, we have found that Paul combines the old Jewish figure with the pre-Pauline Christian triad, 'Faith, hope, love', and that it is only with some difficulty hat he achieves the combination.

Our last problem is this: Where, if St Paul did not invent the triad, did it originate?

Most scholars are content to call it traditional and speculate no further. But there is, in my judgment, some reason for thinking that the triad was inspired by a saying of our Lord.

Macarius, in one of his Homilies (xxxvii), has preserved a remarkable agraphon in which I may translate: 'Hearing the Lord saying, Take care of faith and hope through which is begotten the love of God and of man which gives eternal life.' It is rash to find in this uncanonical saying of the Lord the original of the triad?

We do not find anything in the synoptic gospels quite parallel to this saying. There αγαπη (love) occurs only twice. But its use in these two places (as Resch has pointed out), though probably quite accidental, is nevertheless interesting. In Luke 11.42 we find η αγαπη του θεου, love in its Godward aspect, which answers exactly to η φιλοθεος αγαπη, the phrase in Macarius. In Matt. 24.12 we find η αγαπη των πολλων, love in its manward aspect, which again recalls η φιλανθρωπος αγαπη in Macarius.

This is only a coincidence. I do not press it. But I do think that the twofold chain of evidence formed by (1) the recurrence of the triad in Paul, Peter, Hebrews, etc., and (2) the remarkable saying attributed by Macarius to the Lord, strongly suggests that this triadic formula is not only a bit of very early Christianity, but may very possibly be derived from a logion of Jesus.