Yesterday’s address by Pope Leo XIV in which he invites theologians to a living and concrete theology, increasingly in dialogue with science and philosophy, embodied in human events.

Pope Leo XIV elaborated on the course in the relationship between faith and reason.

In his yesterday’s address to the seminary of the Pontifical Academy of Theology, he in fact asked theologians not only to know theology but to make it increasingly engage in dialogue with the sciences, such as physics and biology, so that religious reflection is «incarnate in the concrete events of today’s humanity».

A fundamental emphasis that Pope Leo XIV obviously extended also to philosophy, the arts, music, the economic sciences, the legal sciences, literature, music, «to enrich and to be enriched by» the whole human experience.

Theology and the challenges of science and philosophy

This is not rhetoric, but it answers a question that is now urgent: how can theology offer credible answers if it is completely detached from the challenges posed by other human forms of knowledge?

Pope Leo XIV recalls figures such as Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Blessed Antonio Rosmini, who were able to combine faith and reason, abstract reflection and lived praxis, as models for a “sapiential theology” that holds together intellectual rigor and spiritual experience.

 

Living and concrete theology to be credible

In another significant passage, he develops the concept of “theology that goes forth”, which «combines scientific rigor with a passion for history; a theology therefore incarnate, steeped in the pains, joys, longings and hopes of the humanity of the women and men of our time».

It is an invitation to theologians not to respond to abstract problems, but to be even more present to concrete questions: suffering, injustice, the loss of hope, but also to the «digital challenges», those posed by Artificial Intelligence.

And, speaking of challenges, generally to face calmly those created by scientific progress.

 

Friendship among theologians fosters encounter

Another appeal we highlight from yesterday’s intense address is Pope Leo XIV’s request that theology not be an individualistic activity, but the fruit of «encounter and friendship among theologians, a place of communion and sharing in which to walk together toward Christ».

Thus, a theology founded on personal encounter, he adds, is capable of inserting itself «into different cultures» and being leaven for other encounters, such as those «with believers of other religious faiths and with non-believers».

A clear intervention by the Pope exhorting theology not to get lost in abstract and hazy discourses, understandable only by a narrow circle of experts, but to deal with and take an interest, with the rigor of research, in the concrete problems of the world and of humanity. In short: a living theology.

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The Editorial Staff

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