Louisville Process Theology Network

Harry Emerson Fosdick on Eternal Hope

Apr 01, 2010

Harry Emerson Fosdick was one of the founders of the ?“social gospel?” movement as early as 1918. This segment comes from his Easter Sermon on the ?“The Deep Sources of Eternal Hope?” on April 17,1938. Here he relates the traditional religious view of eternity to the evolution of the universe.

?“If someone says the mere fact that one hopes for life after death is no proof of it, I answer, ?‘Obviously not,?’ but, there is something mysterious and worth consideration in this profound element of hope in life; this ineradicable future tense.

It seems to be built into the universe itself and so to have gotten into us. The whole cosmos seems to have a future tense. What do you make of this evolving life within an evolving universe? Even the noun ?‘evolution?’ no longer serves the purpose of those trying to interpret the facts.

?‘Emergent evolution?’ they call it now. Out of the inorganic, the organic; out of the organic, consciousness, intellect, character, social progress. ?‘All this world,?’ says H.G. Wells, ?‘is heavy with the promise of greater things.?’ When we deal with what we call hope, we are dealing with something vastly greater and deeper than mere individual expectation.

At least, let no one say that the future world is incredible. Upon the contrary, a far more likely proposition is that this present world is incredible. This cosmos now before us, emergent, anticipatory, prophetic, forever unfolding some new and unpredictable thing, a universe where, as Renan said, the truths which science reveals always surpass the dreams which it destroys ?– this is incredible?…

Here again we run upon a cogently important matter. Many people think that faith in immorality is merely a wishful way weak people have of securing comfort through lovely make-believe. Faith in immortality can be so used. It often is so used.

But that is not the great tradition. The great tradition says that this is a universe of open doors ahead and that therefore human life is an affair of open doors ahead, that in life and death alike existence is a great adventure, with eternal meanings in it.

That is not a weak and merely consoling faith. In weak hours, I for one, don?’t want it. In weak hours I am ready to quit. In weak hours I do not mind a bit if life is, as another put it, ?‘a blind brief flicker between two oblivions.?’

It is in strong hours that I should like to try my hand at going on. Ah Christ, it is not feeble and sleazy lives that need this faith so much as souls like you, strong souls with great devotions, who have Gethsemanes to go through and crosses to bear and who inevitably have not only a past and present but a future tense to round out the scope of their courageous purposing.

On Easter, I do not believe that a closed door is the ultimate symbol of this amazing universe or of human souls within it. It seems to be a universe of open doors?… Now abideth hope.

Let us take one step further into our text and note that our strong conviction about a future life springs from a faith that creation at its heart can be trusted. There is something at the pith and marrow of being that we can put faith in. How much of our confidence in life after death depends on that!

Indeed, everything worth while in life, one way or another, depends on that. We could not carry on so fundamental a process as agriculture without faith in the reliability of the recurring seasons. All science is built on faith in universal laws.

In the background of every significant human activity is the discovery of something in the nature of the cosmos that we can rely on, count on, have faith in, and the more we know about the universe, the more we find factors there that answer our trust, so that, we can act upon the basis of their dependability.

How can a man, then, stop short of carrying that principle up into the spiritual world? Can we not trust the Creator to fulfill the promises and possibilities he has put within our souls? That is the central question concerning immortality, to which on Easter with deep and humble confidence the Christian world replies, ?‘Now abideth faith in the dependability of God.?’?”