mind based on an unconditional faith in God's redemptive purpose. Genuine hope is, therefore, as free and absolute as the act of faith itself. Both hope and faith are Christian virtues of Grace. The reasons for such an unconditional hope and faith cannot rest on rational calculation of their reasonableness. Hence hope can never be refuted by so-called facts; it can neither be assured nor discredited by an established experience." His analysis of the relationship between faith and the observable events of history is one of absolute disconnect, which is an idea he seems to adopt from Kierkegaard's similar argument in Practice in Christianity. Lowith's answer to the change of modernity is to say that Christianity has nothing at all to do with history or reason, rather it is about being given faith, which becomes hope in the God-man. He writes, "The question is therefore not the justification of absolute hope and faith by their relative reasonableness, but whether such an unconditional hope and faith can be put into man instead of God and the God-man. Hope is justified only by faith which justifies itself." So, whereas the "liberal" Christianity of his contemporaries tried to accommodate or assimilate faith with reason, Löwith maintains that faith justifies itself. Bibliography References External links 1897 births 1973 deaths 20th-century essayists 20th-century German male writers 20th-century German non-fiction writers 20th-century German philosophers Christian philosophers Continental philosophers German expatriates in Italy German expatriates in Japan German expatriates in the United States German male non-fiction writers German male writers German military personnel of World War I German Protestants Hegelian philosophers Academic staff of Heidelberg University Historians of philosophy Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United States Jewish philosophers Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni Nietzsche scholars People from the Kingdom of Bavaria Phenomenologists Philosophers of culture Philosophers of history Philosophers of religion Philosophy writers Social philosophers University of Freiburg alumni Academic staff of the University of Marburg Writers from Munich