Chapter One: Man's Capacity for God

Catechism of the Catholic Church · Part One › Section One · Chapter One (§§27–49)

Paragraphs · 23

The Catechism's text is under copyright, so each paragraph is quoted briefly here with a link to the full text at vatican.va.

§27 — The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself.vatican.va
§28 — In 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.vatican.va
§29 — But this "intimate and vital bond of man to God" (GS 19 # 1) can be forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected by man. Such attitudes can have different causes: revolt against evil in the world; religious ignorance or indifference; the cares and riches of…vatican.va
§30 — "Let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice." Although man can forget God or reject him, He never ceases to call every man to seek him, so as to find life and happiness.vatican.va

§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…vatican.va
§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.vatican.va
§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.vatican.va
§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.vatican.va
§35 — Man's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. (so) the proofs of God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.vatican.va

§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.va
§37 — In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone:vatican.va
§38 — This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God's revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also "about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in…vatican.va

§39 — In defending the ability of human reason to know God, the Church is expressing her confidence in the possibility of speaking about him to all men and with all men, and therefore of dialogue with other religions, with philosophy and science, as well as with unbelievers and atheists.vatican.va
§40 — Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. We can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point, and in accordance with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking.vatican.va
§41 — All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. the manifold perfections of creatures - their truth, their goodness, their beauty all reflect the infinite perfection of God.vatican.va
§42 — God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, imagebound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God --"the inexpressible, the incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable"-- with our human representations.vatican.va
§43 — Admittedly, in speaking about God like this, our language is using human modes of expression; nevertheless it really does attain to God himself, though unable to express him in his infinite simplicity.vatican.va

§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.vatican.va
§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.vatican.va
§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.vatican.va
§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 (cf.vatican.va
§48 — We really can name God, starting from the manifold perfections of his creatures, which are likenesses of the infinitely perfect God, even if our limited language cannot exhaust the mystery.vatican.va
§49 — Without the Creator, the creature vanishes (GS 36). This is the reason why believers know that the love of Christ urges them to bring the light of the living God to those who do not know him or who reject him.vatican.va