The phrase ‘opening Pandora’s box’ continues to be in use today as a way of describing a plan of action that has unexpected and calamitous consequences. However, most persons are unaware of where this phrase comes from.
The origin of the phrase lies within the story told by the Greek poet Hesiod (circa 700 BC) in his poetic work Works and Days. In it he tells the story of how Zeus was offended that Prometheus had given human beings the gift of fireplace and having first punished Prometheus decided to punish humanity further.
To do that he sent Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus a wife, Pandora, and a sealed jar (‘box’ is a later mistranslation) which Zeus had told her to not open. However, as Zeus foresaw, curiosity got the higher of her. What occurred next is described by Hesiod as follows in section 90 of Works and Days:
‘For ere this the tribes of men lived on earth distant and free from ills and hard toil and heavy sickness which bring the Fates upon men; for in misery men get older quickly. But the lady took off the nice lid of the jar along with her hands and scattered all these and her thought caused sorrow and mischief to men. Only Hope remained there in an unbreakable home inside under the rim of the nice jar, and didn’t fly out on the door; for ere that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by the desire of Aegis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds. But the remaining, countless plagues, wander amongst men; for earth is filled with evils and the ocean is full.’
The key query raised by scholars about this story concerns the importance of the proven fact that hope remained within the open jar. One view holds that what the story is saying is that hope is thing and that human beings can and will hang on to hope even within the face of all of the evils that they face on this planet. The opposite view holds that hope, like all the pieces else in Pandora’s jar, is to be viewed as an evil. In this view the cruellest punishment imposed by Zeus is that humans struggle on into old age, through sickness, pain, and toil in the continual hope that things will recover, though they never will.
On one level this scholarly dispute is a linguistic argument. It is an argument concerning the meaning of the Greek word elpis which the English word ‘hope’ translates to. Does it mean hope within the positive sense which it now has in English, or did it originally mean a blind and delusive expectation?
Behind this linguistic argument, nonetheless, there may be a more fundamental disagreement about what form of a world we live in. Do we live in a world during which hope is at all times a delusion which in the long run will only ever end in disappointment? Or will we live in a world during which we are able to hope for things to permanently recover despite the evils with which the world is currently beset?
The British twentieth century philosopher Bertrand Russell gave eloquent expression to the primary of those views in his ‘Litany of despair.’ Russell held to an atheistic and materialist world view and on this basis declared that every one right-thinking people needed to just accept:
‘…that man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the tip they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs are however the outcomes of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve a person life beyond the grave; that every one the labours of the ages, all of the devotion, all of the inspiration, all of the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction within the vast death of the solar system, and that the entire temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all this stuff, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to face.’
If Russell is true, there may be nothing we are able to hope for in the long term. Everything we enjoy, all the pieces we try to realize, indeed the entire world and solar system during which we exist, will at some point come to nothing as ‘death the destroyer of worlds’ has the last word.
The Christian faith takes a completely different view of the matter. It declares that we live in a world during which we may, and will, have hope not only for ourselves as individuals, or for the human race as an entire, but for the entire created order.
The classic expression of this Christian word view is given by Paul in Romans 8:18-25 during which he declares:
‘I consider that the sufferings of this present time aren’t value comparing with the glory that’s to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager eager for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the desire of him who subjected it in hope; since the creation itself will likely be let out from its bondage to decay and procure the fantastic liberty of the youngsters of God. We know that the entire creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and never only the creation, but we ourselves, who’ve the primary fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For on this hope we were saved. Now hope that’s seen is just not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.’
As Tom Wright explains in his Paul for Everyone commentary on these verses, what Paul tells us on this passage is that:
‘The human race was put in command of creation (as so often Paul has Genesis 1-3 not removed from his mind). When humans rebelled and worshipped parts of creation as an alternative of God himself (Romans 1:21-23), creation fell into disrepair. God allowed this state of slavery to proceed, not since the creation desired to be like that but because he was determined eventually to place the world back to rights in accordance with the unique plan (just as when Israel let him down he didn’t change the plan but sent finally a faithful Israelite). The plan had called for human beings to take their place under God and over the world, worshipping the creator and exercising glorious stewardship over the world. The creation isn’t waiting to share the liberty of God’s children as some translations imply. It is waiting to learn splendidly when God’s children are glorified. It is waiting on tiptoe with expectation in actual fact for the actual freedom it is going to enjoy when God gives his children that glory; that sensible rule and stewardship which was at all times intended for many who bear God’s glorious image.’
He also tells us that as the youngsters of God, Christians live eager for the day when they’ll receive their full redemption and the “promised resurrection bodies”. As such they live in the stress of the long run promise and today’s reality. The Spirit is already at work in us and yet our full renewal has not yet been accomplished.
‘We have the ‘first fruits’ of the Spirit’s life,’ says Wright. ‘Paul uses the harvest image of early sheaves offered to God because the sign of a terrific crop still to come back. We are left with a striking evaluation of the Christian hope, hope that like faith is just not seen (or it wouldn’t be hope in any respect), but hope that is definite nonetheless.’
In the Christian world view set out by Paul and expounded for us by Wright, the world is just not the product of powers that didn’t know what they were doing (as Russell claims) neither is it because it is due to the malevolence of gods jealous of human progress (as within the Greek mythology reflected by Hesiod). Rather, an all sensible and all good God created the world, and the world is because it is due to human revolt against him.
This revolt didn’t surprise God, neither is he powerless within the face of it. He has a plan to fulfil his original intention that human beings should rule over the world to its profit in obedience to God. This plan has been put into motion through the history of Israel and the obedience of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, the second Adam who overcame the harm attributable to the primary one (Romans 5:12-21), and it is going to reach its completion on the day when Jesus is available in glory to usher within the renewed creation (Revelation 21:1-4).
As Wright notes in his book Into the Heart of Romans, this hopeful Christian world view is usually challenged, because it was by Russell, on the grounds that it goes against the findings of science which predicts that the created world will either cool down and expand into space or heat up and fall back in on itself, neither of that are excellent news for humans.
‘The big chill, or the large crunch! How can we then imagine that God will renew and restore it?’ asks Wright. The answer, he explains, is that God will do for all of creation what he did for Jesus at Easter: ‘Science studies the conventional repeatable evidence inside the old creation That’s its job. But the resurrection is the beginning of the brand new creation.’
If the God who created the entire universe got here in person to start the brand new creation within the person his Son and gave proof of this by raising him from the dead, then there may be nothing irrational or ‘anti science’ in believing that he’ll finish the job by raising other humans and renewing the entire created order. We simply have more evidence that the natural sciences don’t learn about.
If the Christian world view is true, then this shows us that hope is just not necessarily delusional. Some of our hopes inside this world may indeed become a delusion. As a long-term Arsenal supporter, I hope that the Gunners will win the Premier League this season, but this hope could also be unfounded. However, the general Christian hope is not going to deceive us. We may be confident that God will complete his work of re-creation because he has the facility to achieve this, because he has shown himself to be a God who’s faithful to his guarantees, and since we experience in our own lives the primary fruits of the brand new creation because the Spirit works in our hearts to shape us into people who find themselves able to share within the lifetime of the world to come back.
The Church’s season of Advent, which runs in the course of the 4 weeks leading as much as Christmas, is the season when Christians have traditionally celebrated their belief that hope is just not delusional. The English word Advent, just like the Latin word adventus from which it comes, means ‘coming’ and Advent is the season when the Church recalls and declares that the Jesus who got here in great humility as a baby in Bethlehem will come again in glory to usher within the resurrection of the dead and the lifetime of the world to come back, and subsequently we can have hope that sin, evil and death is not going to have the last word.
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