from a tradition communicated by God directly to man from the first day of human existence. This tradition is partly recorded in writing in the books of the Old and New Testament. We call this the Judaeo-Catholic tradition. For it is the tradition that is faithfully preserved first among the people of Israel, as long as they accept the rule of Yahweh, and then in the Roman Catholic Church, especially in its public magisterium. Strictly speaking, this tradition predates the existence of the Jewish people, which begins with Abraham and Moses. The Judeo-Catholic tradition to which we refer is that of the great patriarchs of humanity, that of Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We call it Judeo-Catholic and not Judeo-Christian in order to avoid the misunderstanding to which the name 'Christian' is subjected in modern language.

We also say that this Judeo-Catholic tradition contains both natural and supernatural truths. We call natural truths those truths which can be arrived at by the rational nature of man by the proper use of his reason. These truths have been expounded in detail by Claude Tresmontant in a series of valuable works and are the existence of a transcendent, personal, intelligent and free God, who has created the world, not out of its substance but out of nothing, and the existence of a strictly spiritual soul, created at the moment of the animation of the human composite and which, at death, separates from the body to render an account to God for its earthly actions. Strictly speaking, these truths are part of the metaphysical heritage of humanity. We argue, then, that the Judeo-Catholic oral tradition contains a metaphysics, i.e. the natural metaphysics of human intelligence.