Benedict XVI: "The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life."

Spe Salvi (English: Saved in Hope), referencing the phrase from Romans 8:24, "Spe salvi facti sumus" ("in hope we were saved"), is an encyclical letter by Pope Benedict XVI promulgated on November 30, 2007 about the theological virtue of hope. The title comes from St. Paul's letter to the Romans.^[1] This is Benedict's second encyclical, following the 2005 document Deus Caritas Est, meaning "God is Love."

The encyclical contains over 18,900 words, divided into fifty paragraphs, and organized into an introduction and eight chapters.

Title[link]

As is customary for papal encylicals, the Latin title of Spe Salvi, comes from its incipit which quotes St. Paul's Letter to the Romans: "For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeth, why doth he hope for?"^[2] In the introduction of the encyclical, Benedict sets the tone of his text by asking about the relationship between hope and redemption.

In paragraph seven, he proceeds to link these two Christian concepts to the theological virtue of faith by analyzing the Greek and Latin translation of: Est autem fides sperandarum substantia rerum, argumentum non apparentium. With this, Benedict has systematically touched upon the three theological virtues: love in Deus Caritas Est and in this encyclical, hope and faith.

Summary[link]

Benedict traces relationship between the Christian concept of hope and redemption.

The first six chapters are theological in nature, but often use historical examples to highlight applications to daily life. Benedict starts by quoting St. Paul's reminder to the early Church community that before converting to Christianity, they were "without hope and without God in the world".^[3] Benedict describes Christian hope as transformative because it offers assurance that "life will not end in emptiness". Benedict relates the story of Josephine Bakhita as an example of the contrast between a prior, pagan way of life and the new "hopeful" Christian life. Josephine, an African saint who lived her early life as a slave, converted to Catholicism after finding "the great hope" which had "redeemed" her. She spent the rest of her life as a nun, preaching throughout Italy and was canonized in 2000.^[4]

Paragraphs four, five, and six describe a series of contrasts that serve to clearly define Christ's role as revolutionary in the Roman empire and its implications for Christians. Benedict draws clear distinction between the failed socio-political revolutions or liberations of Spartacus, Barabbas, and Bar-Kochba with "the new (non-political) hope" of Jesus. He concludes that Jesus brought "an encounter with the Lord of all lords, an encounter with the living God and thus an encounter with a hope stronger than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which transformed life and the world from within", something that these revolutionaries could not. These paragraphs recall Benedict's persistent rejection of Marxism and Liberation Theology throughout his teachings and specifically in Deus Caritas Est.^[6] Benedict then draws on early Christian sarcophagi representations of Jesus as philosopher and shepherd to illustrate that Christian hope extends beyond life on earth.

In the chapter "Eternal life – what is it?" Benedict deals with the topic of eternal life, explaining that it is not a mere prolongation of existence but the blissful completion of life. In the next chapter, "Is Christian hope individualistic?", he mentions theologians like Henri de Lubac and such mystics as Augustine of Hippo, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Benedict of Nursia. In the chapter "The transformation of Christian faith-hope in the modern age" Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx appear with respect to the relationship between faith and reason.

In the chapter "The true shape of Christian hope" Benedict cites Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, and Theodor W. Adorno, while in “Settings for learning and practising hope" he mentions with reference to, among others, Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, the philosopher Max Horkheimer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Plato. The encyclical closes with the chapter "Mary, Star of Hope".

References[link]

External links[link]

• Full text of the encyclical in English
• Full text of the encyclical in other languages
• Benedict waxes lyrical on hope in National Catholic Reporter
• Audio recording of Spe Salvi The recording can be downloaded on H2onews website and is available in Spanish, English, French, Italian, German and Portuguese. And it is soon to be made available in Chinese and Arabic.

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The acronym SPE may stand for:

In science and technology[link]

• Serum protein electrophoresis
• Solar proton event, in which protons emitted by the Sun become accelerated to very high energies
• Solid phase extraction, a separation process used to isolate compounds from a mixture
• Solid-phase epitaxy, a method for forming crystalline materials from amorphous precursors
• The Sound Pattern of English, in phonology, a book by Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle; also, a method of notation of phonological rules described in that book
• Stanford Prison Experiment, in psychology, an infamous study of prisoner and prison guard roles
• Subgame perfect equilibrium, in game theory, a refinement of a Nash equilibrium used in dynamic games
• Synchronous payload envelope, in telecommunications, related to synchronous optical networking

In computer science[link]

• Stani's Python Editor, a multi-platform IDE for the Python programming language
• Synergistic Processing Element, part of the Cell microprocessor used in the PlayStation 3 video game console
• Software performance engineering
• Signal-Processing Engine

Businesses and organizations[link]

• Supervisory Patent Examiner, United States Patent and Trademark Office
• Schlumberger Limited, formerly Société de Prospection Electrique, the world's largest oilfield services corporation
• Sigma Phi Epsilon, a fraternity for male college students in the United States
• Societas Privata Europaea, a Europe-wide form of a limited company
• SPE, a Belgian energy company
• Sony Pictures Entertainment, an American-based entertainment company owned by media corporation Sony
• Special purpose entity, a legal entity created to fill a narrow or temporary objective

Professional societies[link]

• Society for Photographic Education
• Society of Petroleum Engineers
• Society of Plastics Engineers
• Society of Professional Engineers UK

Other uses[link]

• Supervisory patent examiner, an employee, usually a civil servant, working at a patent office
• Special Police Establishment, predecessor of Central Bureau of Investigation, India
• The Sound Pattern of English, a 1968 work on phonology (a branch of linguistics) by Noam Chomsky.

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