The Theological Virtue of Hope as a Social Virtue

Abstract

Analyses of the theological virtue of hope tend to focus on its interior dispositional structure, shifting attention away from the social dimensions crucial to its formation and exercise. We argue that one can better appreciate the place of hope in Christian thought by attending to communal features that have been peripheral to or excluded from traditional analyses. To this end, we employ resources from the literature on the extended mind and group agency to develop an account of the theological virtue of hope as a socially extended virtue—that is, a virtue scaffolded by and enacted within a community whose practices are ordered toward a shared conception of human flourishing.