The Splendor of Truth in Fides et Ratio

Abstract

Abstract:The lack of what may be termed "metaphysical authority" in [e.g., liberation theology, narrative theology, and hermeneutical theology] makes them ill equipped to render the theological totality of Catholic Christianity, which needs to speak about being as well as meaning and about eternity as well as time. . . . They must find ways of making space for other kinds of theological discourse, and above all, for those which, in their cherishing of ontology, enable the expression of Catholic doctrine as a description of reality—in its two poles, finite and infinite, and the relation between them. At the same time, such other kinds of theology, of which Thomism may stand as the paradigm by presenting human intelligence as above all the capacity for intake of the real, highlight in an irreplaceable fashion the Church's fundamental intuition about truth: namely, that it is not first and foremost an action to be done (cf. liberation theology) or a story to be told (cf. narrative theology) or a text to be interpreted (cf. hermeneutical theology), though it may indeed also be all of these. Primordially, truth is an encounter with what is not humanity's work: the deed of God in creation and salvation.