Intellectus Spei: Hope as Trusting in the Uncertain. Thinking with Pope Francis’s "Spes non Confundit"

Abstract

This article explores intellectus spei - understanding hope as a rational and existential virtue of openness ­­- situated at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and ethics. Drawing on thinkers such as Paul Ricoeur, Martha C. Nussbaum, Richard Kearney, and Karl Rahner, the author presents hope not as emotional optimism or probabilistic expectation but as a form of rationality grounded in trust and imaginative engagement with the unknown. In response to global uncertainty and technological determinism, this article interprets Pope Francis’s Spes non confundit as a call to reclaim hope as an act of trust, not prediction. This article moves from a phenomenology of hope in uncertainty (Section 2), through its ontological and theological dimensions (Section 3), toward its transformative role in forgiveness and mercy (Section 4). Section 5 critiques the distortions of hope under materialism and nihilism, while Section 6 turns to the eschatological horizon, where hope finds fulfillment in divine justice and eternal life. The article’s conclusion presents Christian hope as a form of life and a “wisdom of uncertainty” - an existential stance that neither escapes reality nor succumbs to it but transforms it through trust in God’s unseen promise. Intellectus spei thus emerges as a structural shift in thought: from closure to openness, from the calculable to the creative, and from resignation to responsibility.