Faith, Hope, and Love in the Light of Phenomenological Existential Analysis

From St Augustine onwards, St Paul's triad of faith, hope and charity, which characterises the Christian way of being, is explained using the concept of virtue, which comes from Greek philosophy and is based on its ontological presuppositions. Heidegger criticised the Greek ontology of substance and developed a phenomenological analysis of human existence that foregrounds its dynamic and temporal dimension. This article takes a similar methodological approach, seeking to explain faith, hope and love not as properties (virtues) of human beings but as modes of human existence. In similarity and at the same time distance to Heidegger's existential analysis, faith, hope, and love correspond to three modes of temporality: in faith, man lives his relation to a past that is absolutely before him; in hope, the man reaches into a future beyond any conceivable future; and in love, man exercises his presence in which a transcendent and timeless meaning is revealed. While Heidegger insists on the finitude of time and human existence, an existential analysis of the Christian life shows its relation to infinity and its metaphysical vocation.