3. How is it possible to know God with only the light of human reason? (part 2) (continuation)
(Comp 3 repetition) Starting from creation, that is from the world and from the human person, through reason alone one can know God with certainty as the origin and end of the universe, as the highest good and as infinite truth and beauty.
“In Brief”
(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 (cf. Vatican Council I, can. 2 § 1: DS 3026).
To deepen and explain
(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" (GS 18 § 1; cf. 14 § 2), can have its origin only in God. (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, STh I, 2, 3).
On reflection
(CCC 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: DS 3004 cf. 3026; Vatican Council II, Dei Verbum 6). 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" (Cf. Gen 1:27).
(Next question: Is the light of reason alone sufficient to know the mystery of God?)
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