Hope N Faith

Hope (Elpis) and Faith (Pistis) in the Nag Hammadi Library

The Greek terms pistis (faith) and elpis (hope) provide an important way of examining the spirituality of the Nag Hammadi Library. Yet they must be approached with considerable care. The Nag Hammadi Library is not a single theological treatise, nor does it represent one unified religious system. It is a collection of fourth-century Coptic manuscripts preserving more than fifty tractates representing a variety of early Christian, Valentinian, Sethian, Hermetic, and related traditions. Consequently, neither pistis nor elpis possesses one fixed meaning throughout the collection.

In some writings, faith and hope function as positive spiritual dispositions. They provide the conditions in which a person begins and continues a process of spiritual development. In other texts, faith or hope can be criticized when they are reduced to external religious observance, verbal confession, ritual baptism, or an expectation of salvation that is not accompanied by transformation and knowledge. Elsewhere, particularly in mythological material, Hope can even appear as a heavenly reality associated with Sophia.

This diversity is important because the Nag Hammadi writings cannot accurately be reduced to the simple formula that orthodox Christianity possesses “faith” while Gnostic Christianity possesses “knowledge.” The evidence is considerably more complicated. The texts frequently place faith, hope, love, and knowledge into a developmental relationship. Rather than necessarily opposing faith to knowledge, several Nag Hammadi writings portray faith and hope as stages or conditions through which the seeker advances toward spiritual understanding.

A further clarification concerns the famous title Pistis Sophia. Pistis Sophia is not one of the tractates contained in the Nag Hammadi codices. It is a separate Coptic Gnostic work preserved in manuscripts outside the Nag Hammadi collection. Nevertheless, the concepts represented by the Greek words pistis and sophia, as well as elpis, are found within Nag Hammadi literature. The distinction between the Pistis Sophia text and the Nag Hammadi Library is therefore essential when discussing faith, hope, wisdom, and knowledge.

Faith and Hope as Foundations of Spiritual Growth

One of the clearest positive treatments of faith and hope occurs in the Gospel of Philip. The text presents spiritual development through an agricultural metaphor. Four elements are required for divine “farming”: faith, hope, love, and knowledge.

“God’s farming likewise has four elements—faith, hope, love, and knowledge. Faith is our earth, that in which we take root. And hope is the water through which we are nourished. Love is the wind through which we grow. Knowledge, then, is the light through which we ripen.”

— Gospel of Philip

This passage is particularly significant because it places faith and hope alongside knowledge rather than simply against it. The metaphor describes four complementary conditions of spiritual development.

Spiritual element	Agricultural metaphor	Function
Faith (pistis)	Earth	Provides the ground in which the seeker takes root
Hope (elpis)	Water	Nourishes and sustains spiritual growth
Love	Wind	Enables and carries the process of growth
Knowledge (gnosis)	Light	Brings the seeker toward maturity

Faith is therefore compared with the earth. Earth provides stability. A plant cannot grow without being rooted somewhere, and the same image is applied to spiritual existence. Faith gives the seeker a foundation from which development can begin.

This is important because faith in this passage is not presented as an intellectual substitute for knowledge. The text does not say that knowledge is unnecessary because faith is sufficient. Nor does it say that faith becomes meaningless once knowledge has been acquired. Instead, faith belongs to the entire process of spiritual growth.

Hope has a different but equally necessary function. It is compared with water. Water does not provide the soil itself, but it nourishes what has been planted in the soil. Consequently, elpis can be understood as an expectation directed toward something still being brought to fulfilment. Hope keeps the spiritual life alive while development remains incomplete.

The metaphor also prevents knowledge from being isolated from the other three elements. Knowledge is the light through which the plant finally “ripens,” but the plant has already required earth, water, and wind. Knowledge is therefore the culmination of a process rather than an isolated intellectual possession.

The agricultural metaphor provides perhaps the strongest correction to the simplistic idea that Gnostic spirituality simply rejected faith. In the Gospel of Philip, faith is explicitly described as essential. Hope is also explicitly described as essential. Love is essential. Knowledge is essential. The four operate together.

The sequence can therefore be understood developmentally:

faith provides rootedness → hope provides nourishment → love enables growth → knowledge brings maturity.

This does not establish one universal Nag Hammadi doctrine, but it does demonstrate that at least one major text regards faith and hope as positive spiritual realities.

Faith and Hope in the Prayer of the Apostle Paul

A similarly positive use occurs in the Prayer of the Apostle Paul, preserved as the opening tractate of Codex I. Here the language is devotional rather than agricultural or mythological.

The speaker addresses the transcendent God and seeks redemption, revelation, mercy, healing, and spiritual illumination. The prayer expresses confidence that divine revelation can be received and explicitly associates this expectation with faith and hope:

“…since I have faith and hope.”

— Prayer of the Apostle Paul

The statement is short, but its significance is considerable. Faith and hope occur within a prayer directed toward divine revelation. They are not presented as obstacles to knowledge. Instead, they are part of the disposition through which the petitioner seeks divine illumination.

The context is therefore important. The speaker is not merely expressing belief in a set of propositions. The prayer seeks transformation. It asks for redemption, revelation, healing, and participation in the divine reality.

Faith can consequently be understood here as trust in the transcendent God and in the possibility of divine revelation. Hope represents expectation that this revelation and redemption can actually be received.

The relationship between faith, hope, and knowledge therefore becomes complementary. Faith provides confidence that the divine can be approached. Hope anticipates the divine gift. Revelation then supplies the knowledge toward which the prayer is directed.

This differs from a purely passive understanding of hope. Hope is not simply waiting for a reward after death. It is connected with a present spiritual movement toward revelation and transformation.

The Prayer of the Apostle Paul therefore demonstrates another aspect of pistis and elpis: they can function as conditions of receptivity. The person approaches the divine with faith and hope precisely because the person expects something to be revealed.

When Faith and Hope Become External

The Nag Hammadi material also contains a sharp criticism of forms of faith that remain merely external. The Testimony of Truth is particularly important in this regard.

The tractate criticizes people who identify themselves with Christianity but whose religion consists principally in external confession and ritual. It discusses baptism and describes the expectation attached to it as:

“a hope of salvation,” which they call the “seal.”

— Testimony of Truth

The criticism should not be interpreted as a rejection of hope itself. The author is attacking what is understood as an inadequate form of religious confidence. The problem is that a person can possess the outward signs of religion without possessing the inward knowledge that, according to the author, brings genuine liberation.

The text therefore directs attention away from external identification and toward self-knowledge and knowledge of the God of truth.

This creates an important distinction between hope as spiritual expectation and hope as a substitute for transformation.

A person may hope for salvation while remaining ignorant of the truth. A person may receive baptism while failing to understand its spiritual significance. A person may confess Christ verbally while remaining controlled by ignorance and the powers of the material world.

For the author of the Testimony of Truth, such external religion does not constitute the fullness of salvation.

This is why the text's criticism should not be summarized as “faith is bad” or “hope is useless.” Its argument is more precise. Faith and hope become inadequate when they are disconnected from the knowledge and transformation that the author regards as necessary.

The tractate's damaged condition also requires caution. The surviving manuscript is fragmentary, and important portions of the argument have been lost. At one point the author asks:

“What, then, is this faith?”

The surviving text does not preserve the complete subsequent discussion. Consequently, the tractate should not be treated as though it gives us a complete systematic theory of faith.

Nevertheless, its surviving argument clearly distinguishes external religious identity from genuine spiritual knowledge.

The contrast can be represented as follows:

external faith → confession, ritual, expectation

versus

transformative faith → self-knowledge, knowledge of God, liberation, spiritual life.

The second is what the author considers spiritually effective.

This is an important feature of Nag Hammadi spirituality more generally. The problem is frequently not the existence of faith but faith without awakening.

Knowledge Does Not Necessarily Cancel Faith

The Testimony of Truth is therefore especially useful when placed beside the Gospel of Philip. The two texts approach faith differently, but neither supports the simplistic conclusion that knowledge and faith must always be opposites.

The Gospel of Philip positively incorporates faith into the process leading toward knowledge.

The Testimony of Truth attacks faith when it remains merely external and fails to produce knowledge.

These two approaches can coexist within a diverse collection because the Nag Hammadi Library does not represent one single theological author.

The difference is therefore between faith as a living spiritual reality and faith as an empty external designation.

The same distinction can be applied to hope. Hope can be spiritually productive when it nourishes growth. But hope can become inadequate when it means merely expecting salvation without undertaking the transformation that the text demands.

The recurring concern is consequently not simply whether someone has faith, but what that faith produces.

Does it produce knowledge?

Does it produce self-understanding?

Does it produce freedom?

Does it lead the person away from ignorance?

Does it result in participation in divine life?

These questions are much closer to the concerns expressed by the Nag Hammadi writings than the simple opposition between “faith” and “gnosis.”

Hope as a Heavenly Reality

A particularly interesting development appears in the Second Treatise of the Great Seth. Here “hope” is used in a mythological context rather than simply describing an emotion or spiritual attitude.

The text speaks of:

“…they flee from him who had fled from the throne to the Sophia of hope…”

— Second Treatise of the Great Seth

This passage is significant because “Hope” appears within a cosmological setting associated with Sophia. The term is no longer merely something that a human being possesses. Instead, Hope appears capable of functioning as a designation for a heavenly reality.

A scholarly annotation of the tractate identifies Hope as a heavenly being associated with Sophia. In this context, Hope is connected with the heavenly order and with the spiritual race.

This illustrates an important characteristic of ancient mythological language. Abstract concepts can become personified or incorporated into descriptions of divine realities. Wisdom, Truth, Life, Mind, Grace, and other concepts can function both as theological concepts and as names or characteristics associated with heavenly beings.

This should not be generalized into the claim that every Nag Hammadi author believed Hope was a separate divine goddess or aeon. The collection contains different mythological systems and theological traditions. The significance of the passage is narrower: it demonstrates that Hope could be represented cosmologically, rather than only psychologically.

This is a substantially different use of elpis from the statement in the Prayer of the Apostle Paul:

“…since I have faith and hope.”

In the prayer, hope describes the disposition of the worshipper.

In the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, “Sophia of hope” occurs within a heavenly myth.

The same Greek concept can therefore operate at different theological levels.

Faith, Hope, and the Spiritual Race

The Second Treatise of the Great Seth is also concerned with the distinction between the heavenly spiritual race and the rulers associated with the lower cosmic order. Within that framework, Hope belongs to a mythological structure in which revelation, identity, and salvation are associated with heavenly realities.

This helps explain why words such as faith, hope, wisdom, truth, and life can sometimes appear to function differently in Nag Hammadi texts from the way they function in later Christian theological systems.

The vocabulary is inherited from wider Jewish and Christian traditions, but it can be placed into new cosmological frameworks.

Hope can therefore mean:

1. expectation of salvation;

2. confidence in divine revelation;

3. nourishment of spiritual growth;

4. a condition of continued spiritual development;

5. or, in mythological language, a heavenly reality associated with Sophia.

There is no contradiction in these uses because the collection is not a dictionary with one fixed definition for every theological word. Meaning depends upon context.

Faith, Hope, Love, and Knowledge

The fourfold structure of the Gospel of Philip deserves particular attention because it provides perhaps the most coherent model for understanding the relationship between pistis, elpis, love, and gnosis.

Faith is earth.

Hope is water.

Love is wind.

Knowledge is light.

The metaphors imply that spiritual development requires more than intellectual understanding. Knowledge by itself does not constitute the whole agricultural process. A seed needs somewhere to grow and something to nourish it before it can mature.

The metaphor therefore challenges the idea that “gnosis” means simply possessing secret information.

Knowledge is the light through which the person “ripens.” The image suggests maturation. It is transformative knowledge rather than information accumulated for its own sake.

Faith and hope consequently belong to the same spiritual ecology.

Faith provides the ground.

Hope sustains.

Love causes growth.

Knowledge illuminates.

The four terms describe different aspects of one movement toward spiritual maturity.

This is perhaps the most useful framework for understanding why Nag Hammadi texts can simultaneously criticize ordinary religious faith and preserve positive language about faith and hope.

They are not necessarily rejecting every form of pistis. Rather, they distinguish between uninformed or external belief and a faith that participates in a deeper process of transformation.

The Relationship Between Faith and Gnosis

The relationship between faith and knowledge is therefore better described as developmental than simply oppositional.

Faith can be the beginning.

Hope can sustain the journey.

Love can transform the person.

Knowledge can bring illumination and maturity.

This does not mean that every Nag Hammadi text follows this precise sequence. It means that the Gospel of Philip provides a particularly clear example of a model in which these concepts cooperate.

Other texts modify the relationship.

The Prayer of the Apostle Paul emphasizes prayerful trust and expectation.

The Testimony of Truth emphasizes the inadequacy of external religious confidence without knowledge.

The Second Treatise of the Great Seth uses Hope within a heavenly mythology.

Together these texts demonstrate why it is misleading to speak of “the Gnostic view of faith” as though there were one uniform position.

Conclusion

The Nag Hammadi Library presents a diverse range of approaches to faith (pistis) and hope (elpis). They cannot be reduced either to a later orthodox Protestant model of salvation by faith alone or to the claim that Gnostic spirituality simply regarded faith as useless.

The Gospel of Philip offers the clearest positive synthesis:

“Faith is our earth, that in which we take root. And hope is the water through which we are nourished. Love is the wind through which we grow. Knowledge, then, is the light through which we ripen.”

Here faith and hope are genuine spiritual necessities. They are not enemies of knowledge. They provide the foundation and nourishment through which spiritual maturity becomes possible.

The Prayer of the Apostle Paul likewise speaks positively of the petitioner:

“…since I have faith and hope.”

Faith and hope here represent trust and expectation directed toward divine revelation, redemption, and transformation.

The Testimony of Truth, however, warns against an externalized religious hope:

“a hope of salvation,” which they call the “seal.”

Its criticism is directed toward a form of religion in which baptism, confession, and expectation of salvation remain external and are not accompanied by self-knowledge and knowledge of the God of truth.

Finally, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth presents Hope in mythological language:

“…they flee from him who had fled from the throne to the Sophia of hope…”

Here Hope is associated with a heavenly reality connected with Sophia, demonstrating that elpis could function within cosmological mythology as well as ordinary devotional language.

The evidence therefore points toward a multifaceted understanding of faith and hope.

Faith can mean rootedness, trust, fidelity, or the beginning of spiritual development.

Hope can mean nourishment, expectation, confidence in divine revelation, or the anticipation of liberation.

Knowledge or gnosis can represent illumination, self-knowledge, recognition of the divine, and spiritual maturity.

The decisive issue in many of these texts is not simply whether a person possesses faith or hope, but whether those qualities remain external or become transformative.

The Nag Hammadi writers who criticize faith are often criticizing faith without knowledge, just as they can criticize hope without transformation. Their concern is with a religious existence that stops at words, ritual, expectation, or external identity.

By contrast, the positive passages present faith and hope as parts of a living process.

The Gospel of Philip therefore provides an especially useful image: faith is the soil, hope is the water, love is the wind, and knowledge is the light. The mature spiritual life requires the whole process.

The Nag Hammadi Library should consequently be understood not as a single creed but as a collection in which inherited Christian vocabulary is repeatedly transformed and interpreted within different theological systems. Pistis, elpis, agape, gnosis, sophia, and related terms can operate at devotional, ethical, psychological, mystical, and cosmological levels.

The central pattern that emerges from the passages examined here is therefore not a simple opposition between faith and knowledge. It is a movement from rootedness toward nourishment, from nourishment toward growth, and from growth toward illumination.

Faith provides the ground.

Hope provides nourishment.

Love produces growth.

Knowledge brings the process toward maturity.

In that sense, the Nag Hammadi material does not simply ask whether one has faith. It asks what faith becomes when it is genuinely lived, what hope produces when it is genuinely possessed, and whether both ultimately lead the seeker beyond ignorance toward self-knowledge, truth, freedom, transformation, and participation in divine life.

Primary Texts

Gospel of Philip, Nag Hammadi Codex II.

Prayer of the Apostle Paul, Nag Hammadi Codex I.

Testimony of Truth, Nag Hammadi Codex IX.

Second Treatise of the Great Seth, Nag Hammadi Codex VII.

Important Terminological Clarification

The Nag Hammadi Library should not be confused with the separate text known as the Pistis Sophia. The latter survives outside the Nag Hammadi codices. The presence of pistis and elpis within Nag Hammadi writings nevertheless demonstrates that faith and hope were important concepts within several of the traditions represented by the collection.

The diversity of these writings is precisely why their vocabulary must be interpreted individually and contextually rather than treated as though every tractate subscribed to one uniform “Gnostic” theology.