4. Ways of coming to know God

Ways of coming to know God

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 4

AVE MARIA Series

4.  Can we know the existence of God by our reason?

Yes.  Human reason can know God with certainty.  [31-36, 44-47]

On my first visit to the Grand Canyon (1966) I hiked the North Rim Trail down some 4,000 feet to Roaring Springs.  The downward trek brought successively older stratified rock layers with fossilized life forms that had lived in eons past….. processes that unfolded over unimaginable time in God’s creation. --Photo by US Dept. Interior, Caters News …..4

The world cannot have its origin and destination within itself.  In everything that exists, there is more than we see.  The order, the beauty, and the development of the world point beyond themselves toward God.  Every man is receptive to what is true, good, and beautiful.  He hears within himself the voice of conscience, which urges him to what is good and warns him against what is evil.  Anyone who follows this path reasonably finds God.

They (men) should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after him and find him.  Yet he is not far from each one of us, for “In him we live and move and have our being.”  (Acts of the Apostles 17:27-28a)

[31-36, 44-47]

WAYS OF COMING TO KNOW GOD

31 Created in God's image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of "converging and convincing arguments", which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These "ways" of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical WORLD, and the HUMAN  PERSON. --Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

32  The WORLD: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world's order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe. --CCC

As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made (Romans 1:19-20; compare Acts of the Apostles 14:15,17; Acts 17:27-28; Wisdom 13:1-9.).⁷ --CCC

And St. Augustine issues this challenge: “Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: "See, we are beautiful." Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change? (St. Augustine, Sermo 241, 2:Patrologia Latina 38,1134. )⁸ --CCC

33 The HUMAN PERSON: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God's existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the "seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material can have its origin only in God. (Gaudium et Spes 18 § 1; compare 14 § 2.)",⁹ –-CCC  

   

34 The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality "that everyone calls God".(St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I,2,3)^{10 --CCC}

35 Man's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.—CCC

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD ACCORDING TO THE CHURCH

36 "Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason."(Vatican Council I, Dei Filius 2:Denzinger-Schönmetzer 3004; compare DS 3026; Vatican Council II, Dei Verbum 6)¹¹ Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God's revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created "in the image of God".(compare Genesis 1:27.)¹² --CCC

IN BRIEF

44 Man is by nature and vocation a religious being. Coming from God, going toward God, man lives a fully human life only if he freely lives by his bond with God. –CCC

45 Man is made to live in communion with God in whom he finds happiness: When I am completely united to you, there will be no more sorrow or trials; entirely full of you, my life will be complete (St. Augustine, Conf. 10, 28, 39: Patrologia Latina 32, 795). --CCC

46 When he listens to the message of creation and to the voice of conscience, man can arrive at certainty about the existence of God, the cause and the end of everything. --CCC

47 The Church teaches that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty from his works, by the natural light of human reason (compare Vatican Council I, can. 2 § 1: Denzinger-Schönmetzer 3026). --CCC