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Such attitude can have different
causes: revolt against evil in the world; religious
ignorance or indifference; the cares and riches of
this world; the scandal of bad example on the part of
believers; currents of thought hostile to religion; finally,
that attitude of sinful man which makes him hide from God
out of fear and flee his 398 call.4
30 ‘Let the hearts of those who seek the LORD
rejoice.’5 Although man can forget God or reject him,
He never ceases to call every 2567, 845 man to seek him,
so as to find life and happiness. But this search for God
demands of man every effort of intellect, a sound will,
‘an upright heart’, as well as the witness of
others who teach him to 368 seek God. You are great, 0 Lord, and greatly to be praised:
great is your power and your wisdom is without measure. And
man, so small a part of your creation, wants to praise you:
this man, though clothed with mortality and bearing the
evidence of sin and the proof that you withstand the proud.
Despite everything, man, though but a small a part of your
creation, wants to praise you. You yourself encourage him to
delight in your praise, for you have made us for yourself,
and our heart is restless until it rests in you.6 II. 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.
32 The world: starting from movement, becoming,
contingency, and the world’s order and beauty, one can
come to a knowledge of 54, 337 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 itto them. Ever since the
creation of the |
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