Veracity of claim that a Pope lauded Karl Barth

I received this from Logos via e-mail today:

Described by Pope Pius XII as the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas, the Swiss pastor and theologian, Karl Barth…

That surprised me, so I decided to investigate. From this Logos.com search, it seems that the story appears on the product pages for 15 Barth Logos Research Editions:

14 of Church Dogmatics
Fragments Grave and Gay with the claim attributed to Pius XI instead of XII
∴ one of those two claims is almost certainly wrong (unless two successive popes made the same claim)

Fwiw, Wikipedia has:

this story described as "sometimes claimed"
“Fergus Kerr observes that "there is never chapter and verse for the quotation"”
"and it is sometimes attributed to Pope Paul VI instead."

Before finding the Pius XI vs. XII (typo?), I'd started this as an "Ask a Question" post.

"Is Logos.com correct that a Pope lauded Karl Barth?"
And then, if it is dubious as it seems, could it be corrected or even removed in the spirit of maintaining truth/accuracy in Logos' sales and marketing material (web content, which became e-mail)?

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Comments

NichtnurBibelleser

I asked magisterium.com and it quoted another work. As far as I see, someone applied the phrase from Pope Pius XII (see below) and applied this to Barth:

A fellow Calvinist, though in a tradition all his own, Karl Barth (1886-1968) was, to quote Pope Pius XII, "the most important theologian since Thomas Aquinas." Barth was invited to be an observer at the Second Vatican Council and later published a work of reflections on the documents of the Council entitled Ad Limina Apostolorum: A Reappraisal of Vatican II. In 1966 when he met Pope Paul VI he asked the pontiff what one might colloquially call the billion-dollar question: what does aggiornamento mean, accommodation to what?

NichtnurBibelleser

Asking Study Assistant in Verbum, it claims that the attribution is found in

Timothy Hull, Faith and Modern Thought: The Modern Philosophers for Understanding Modern Theology (New York, NY: Cascade Books, 2020). [Siehe hier, hier.]

which I can't verfiy as I don't own that resource. A google books preview of the book seems to show that the phrase doesn't contain a footnote and/or documented source, though.

HJ. van der Wal

I found the following paragraph in my Logos library:

link: https://ref.ly/logosres/rfrmngrmbrtvtcn?ref=Page.p+11&off=1697

I had heard the anecdote before but here in the Netherlands it is usually pope John XXIII who is said to have lauded Karl Barth. The point of the anecdote is that when Barth was told about the praise he allegedly said: "Is the pope infallible after all?" (e.g.: https://www.karlbarth.nl/haarsma-barthenrome/ )

Don Awalt

For interest I queried ChatGPT, then I realized that output would not be appreciated here.

NichtnurBibelleser

BTW: I'd really love to have the works of Barth in Logos/Verbum in the German original. There is so much lost in translation. The flavour. Allusions. Subtelties.

(And don't forget Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Wittgenstein, Husserl, Edith Stein, Heidegger, Gadamer, Guardini, v. Balthasar, Ratzinger, Benno Jacob, Lohfink, Reiser… )

Pete De Bonte

Don Awalt wrote:

For interest I queried ChatGPT…

Normally I'd appreciate that admission as a warning (yellow flag), but when investigating the veracity of something that is already questionable, querying an LLM seems, well, to be charitable, I'll call it orange.

Please note that I don't mean this in a mocking way whatsoever, but the untrustworthiness of LLMs is well published (and I state that as one who uses them in my employment). If anyone wishes to debate about LLMs, let's start a different thread instead of forking this one. Thanks : )

Dr. Nathan Parker

I thought Church Dogmatics was available in German in Logos. I haven't purchased it yet since my head was spinning reading the English version.

Pete De Bonte

@Don Awalt reduced his post to: "…then I realized that output would not be appreciated here."

/ *Pained oral response from me* : /

It seems that I offended. Sorry : / It might be appreciated in other scenarios. I hope I haven't discouraged you from contributing. The problem with it in this context (in my view, at least) is that we are struggling to verify even the Actual Intelligence.

NichtnurBibelleser

since my head was spinning reading the English version.

@Dr. Nathan Parker I recon that the German version is much more readable.