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Papal tribute to tradition of Christian philosophy
October 14, 2025
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CWN Editor's Note: In a message to a philosophy conference taking place in Paraguay, Pope Leo XIV warned against “the attitude of those,” such as the Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth, “who, pretending to exalt the Word of God, ended up demeaning the value of human reason.”
Pope Leo also warned against “the claim that transcendent knowledge can be attained through mere rational analysis”—a claim made in various ways, he said, by Pelagius and the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
On the other hand, figures like St. Justin Martyr, St. Thomas Aquinas, and St. Bonaventure have shown that “faith and reason are not only not opposed, but support and complement each other in an admirable way.” Thus, said the Pope, “the Christian thinker is called to be a living reminder of the authentic philosophical vocation as an honest and persevering search for Wisdom.”
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