Plantinga Chapter One

Plantinga addresses the common human experience of a soul's longing and it's innate sense of the Divine; what St. Augustine called the "Supreme Good." Our soul points us to Something beyond this earth, something we are made aware of by those "stabs of joy" we sometmes experience. What I found most interesting in the first chapter was Plantinga's next point on hope and it's relationship with longing. When one hopes, one is longing and yearning and often striving for a certain goal. Hope's three main components are faith, desire (longing), and imagination, according to Plantinga. Certainly I can understand such longings: when I'm alone hiking in the woods, or someone's kindness catches me by surprise, or I wake up with the feeling that the world is at my feet on that certain day, I can feel my soul being pulled towards something that is not attainable in this place and time.

This, of course, is because we are a fallen race, and live in the already-but-not-yet as we await Christ's immanent return. An innate part of each of us as humans recognizes this, and hopes for the return of shalom here on Earth. I find it unfortunate that for so many people, myself included, shalom simlpy means a nice, happy form of peace. Plantinga points out that the true meaning of the word in its original Hebrew context was much deeper than that. It meant wholeness, justice, harmony, joy, complete satisfaction and action under and in and through the love of the Savior himself.

Perhaps it is a difficult word to grasp because it is so hard for us to fathom what true shalom really is and means for us. But it is because we are only given small hints as to what the future has in store for us that we are able to hope, and thus desire, work towards, and anticipate, a New Heaven and Earth where everything is as it should be.