§28In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given expression to their quest for God in their religious beliefs and behaviour: in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth. These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being: From one ance…

§32The 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. 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 dei…

§287The truth about creation is so important for all of human life that God in his tenderness wanted to reveal to his People everything that is salutary to know on the subject. Beyond the natural knowledge that every man can have of the Creator,124 God progressively revealed to Israel the mystery of creation. He who chose the patriarchs, who brought Israel out of Egypt, and who by …

2. Let no man deceive himself; if any man thinks that he is wise in this world, let him become a fool. As he bids one become, as it were, dead unto the world — and this deadness harms not at all, but rather profits, being made a cause of life:— so also he bids him become foolish unto this world, introducing to us hereby the true wisdom. Now he becomes a fool unto the world, who…

Chapter 10.—That the Excellency of the Christian Religion is Above All the Science of Philosophers. For although a Christian man instructed only in ecclesiastical literature may perhaps be ignorant of the very name of Platonists, and may not even know that there have existed two schools of philosophers speaking the Greek tongue, to wit, the Ionic and Italic, he is nevertheless …

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. Here I learn to know the First Person of the Godhead, namely, the Father, the Creator, who has created me with my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still preserves them. He gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, fields, cattle, …

Chapter 1 In the first book of our answer to the work of Celsus, who had boastfully entitled the treatise which he had composed against us A True Discourse, we have gone through, as you enjoined, my faithful Ambrosius, to the best of our ability, his preface, and the parts immediately following it, testing each one of his assertions as we went along, until we finished with the …

20. Again, when the Bishops said that the Word must be described as the True Power and Image of the Father, in all things exact and like the Father, and as unalterable, and as always, and as in Him without division (for never was the Word not, but He was always, existing everlastingly with the Father, as the radiance of light), Eusebius and his fellows endured indeed, as not da…

He recalls the beginning of his youth, i.e. the thirty-first year of his age, in which very grave errors as to the nature of God and the origin of evil being distinguished, and the Sacred Books more accurately known, he at length arrives at a clear knowledge of God, not yet rightly apprehending Jesus Christ. Chapter 1. He Regarded Not God Indeed Under the Form of a Human Body, …

Is it necessary? Is it a science? Is it one or many? Is it speculative or practical? How it is compared with other sciences? Is it the same as wisdom? Is God its subject-matter? Is it a matter of argument? Does it rightly employ metaphors and similes? May the Sacred Scripture of this doctrine be expounded in different senses? Article 1. Whether, besides philosophy, any further …

In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellows…

God is by nature good, and from His goodness springs all that is good. He is the cause of all things, the ruler of all things, the provider of all things. His providence extends to the least creature. What we call secondary causes are but instruments of divine agency. Nothing falls outside His governance.

Q. What do you understand by the providence of God? A. Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty — all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but…

Q. How does the knowledge of God's creation and providence help us? A. We can be patient when things go against us, thankful when things go well, and for the future we can have good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing will separate us from his love. All creatures are so completely in his hand that without his will they can neither move nor be moved.

We believe that all things in heaven and on earth, and all creatures, are preserved and governed by the providence of this wise and eternal God. For David testifies, saying: "The LORD is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens. Who is like the LORD our God?" Indeed, the same apostle to the Athenians testified: "In him we live and move and have our being." This p…

We believe all things, both visible and invisible, to be governed by the Providence of God; though God is not the author of evil. But evil cometh to pass by reason of the malice of men or of demons, that is, when rational creatures, having received free-will from God, voluntarily turn aside from good. For it is the doctrine of the Church that God, who is the creator of all thin…

Just as the Law was a schoolmaster to lead the Jews to Christ, so Greek philosophy was a schoolmaster to lead the Greeks to Christ. Philosophy did not save, but it prepared the Greek mind for the reception of truth. Clement argues that God in His providence scattered seeds of truth among all nations, so that "in Him we live and move and have our being" is not a pagan error but …