DOES GOD EXIST?

MARK STEVEN A. PANDAN

WHY BOTHER?

1. Because truth is a good worth pursuing in itself.

• “Granted that we want the truth:WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance?”
Nietzsche, F.. Beyond good and evil.

2. Because profound truth gives profound joy.

• "[T]o be able to see something of the loftiest realities, however thin and weak the sight may be, is,
as our previous remarks indicate, a cause of the greatest joy."—Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles.

3. Because it is among the preambles of the faith.

• “Acceptance of the Revelation presupposes, according to reason, knowledge of the Revealing God,
and the certain conviction of the truth of His testimony.”—Ott, L.. Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma.
REASON SHOWS GOD’S EXISTENCE IS:

1. Possible
• “[A] coherent statement...is a statement such that we can conceive of it and any other
statement entailed by it being true...”—Swinburne, R. The Coherence of Theism

2. Probable
• “For Newman, truth claims...could be grounded in the convergence … of a multiplicity of
probabilistic evidential bases.”—Spitzer, R.. New Proofs for the Existence of God

3. Provable
• “The versions of the cosmological argument I’ve been defending, by contrast, are all attempts
at strict metaphysical demonstration.”—Feser, E.. Five Proofs of the Existence of God.
GOD’S EXISTENCE IS POSSIBLE.
It is not incoherent.
POSSIBLE

1. If theism is true, then it is possible, for it possibility is a condition for truth.

2. Claims of internal and external incoherence ultimately fail.
• External: A fact outside about something external to God cannot coexist with theism.
• E.g.: “EPICURUS'S old questions are yet unanswered. Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not
able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and
willing? Whence then is evil?’”—Hume, D. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
• Internal: Two or more propositions that follow from God’s nature cannot coexist.
• “One of the central concerns of contemporary philosophy of religion is the coherence of theism, or
the analysis of the attributes of God.”—Moreland, J.P., & Craig, W.L.. Philosophical Foundations for…
POSSIBLE

• "No one can lay God and his Kingdom on the table before another man; even the
believer cannot do it for himself. But however strongly unbelief may feel justified thereby,
it cannot forget the eerie feeling induced by the words 'Yet perhaps it is true.' That
'perhaps' is the unavoidable temptation it cannot elude, the temptation in which it, too, in
the very act of rejection, has to experience the unrejectability of belief.”—Ratzinger, J. An
Introduction to Christianity
GOD’S EXISTENCE IS PROBABLE.
It is more likely true than not.
SOME ARGUMENTS THAT GOD PROBABLY EXISTS

• “The conclusion of this book is that the existence, orderliness, and fine tunedness of the
world; the existence of conscious humans within it with providential opportunities for
moulding themselves, each other, and the world; some historical evidence of miracles in
connection with human needs and prayers, particularly in connection with the foundation
of Christianity, topped up finally by the apparent experience by millionsnof his presence,
all make it significantly more probable than not that there is a God.”—Swinburne, R.. Is
There a God?
SOME ARGUMENTS THAT GOD PROBABLY EXISTS

1. Kalam Cosmological Argument

2. Fine-Tuning Argument
3. Argument from Intelligibility of the Universe
4. Newman’s Argument from Conscience
5. Argument from Desire
KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

• “Even though science cannot be validly used to prove a metaphysical claim (such as, ‘a
Creator or God exists’), it can be used (with the qualifications mentioned above) to
maintain as highly probable a limit to physical reality (such as a beginning).This scientific
evidence for a beginning can be combined with a metaphysical premise (such as “from
nothing, only nothing comes”) to render a metaphysical conclusion that there must be
something beyond physical reality which caused physical reality to exist.”—Spitzer, R. New
Proofs for the Existence of God
KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

From Craig, W. L. & Sinclair, J.. “The kalam cosmological argument” in Blackwell C. to Nat. Theo.:
1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause.
4. If the universe has a cause, then an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who
sans the universe is beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and
enormously powerful.
5. Therefore, an uncaused, personal Creator of the universe exists, who sans the universe is
beginningless, changeless, immaterial, timeless, spaceless, and enormously powerful.
KALAM COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT

• “If we do not call this First Cause God, then what shall we call Him? Even if we do not
call Him God, we should at least call Him the Creator, given that He is personal and the
First Cause of all things in our universe. …The Creator is the answer to the question of
ultimate origins, and the One in whom we may fnd the ultimate meaning and purpose of
existence.”—Loke,A.T. E., God and Ultimate Origins.
FINE-TUNING ARGUMENT

Examples of Constants Fine-Tuned for Life by Luke Barnes cf. Moreland & Craig, Philosophical Found…

• Higgs vacuum expectation value: 246.2 GeV • Cosmological constant: (2.3 x 10-3 eV)4

• Mass of up, down, strange quark: 2.4 MeV, 4.8
MeV, 104 MeV
• Mass of the electron, neutrinos (sum): 0.511
MeV, 0.32 eV
• Electromagnetism coupling constant: 0.00729
• Strong nuclear force coupling constant: 0.1187
• Scalar fluctuation amplitude Q: 2 x 10-5
• Baryon, dark matter mass per photon: 0.57 eV, 3
eV
• Entropy of the Universe: 4 × 1081 J/K
• Number of space-time dimensions: 3 (space) +
1 (time)
FINE-TUNING ARGUMENT

1 to 3 are from Moreland & Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview.
1. The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance or design.
2. It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
3. Therefore, it is due to design.
4. If it is due to design, there must be an intelligent designer of the universe.
5. Therefore, there must be an intelligent deisgner of the universe.
FINE-TUNING ARGUMENT

• “The delicate fine-tuning in the values of the constants, necessary so that the various
different branches of physics can dovetail so felicitously, might be attributed to God. It is
hard to resist the impression that the present structure of the universe, apparently so
sensitive to minor alterations in the numbers, has been rather carefully thought out. …
the seemingly miraculous concurrence of numerical values that nature has assigned to
her fundamental constants must remain the most compelling evidence for an element of
cosmic design.”—Davies, P.. God and the New Physics
FINE-TUNING ARGUMENT

• “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed
with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces
worth speaking about in nature.The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me
so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”—Hoyle, F..
Engineering and Science.
ARGUMENT FROM UNIVERSE’S INTELLIGIBILITY

• “[T]he goal of science, as most scientists see it, is not to impose on the matter and
workings of the universe our human sense of order; but to unveil and discover the
universe’s own order and intelligibility.That means, of course, that scientists have always
had to assume, before they started their investigations, that the universe does have an
inherent order and intelligibility. If they didn’t believe that such order and intelligibility
existed, scientific research would never discover them, and their work would be fruitless
and pointless.”—Lennox, Gunning for God.
ARGUMENT FROM UNIVERSE’S INTELLIGIBILITY

• “[F]inite being, as we experience it, is marked, through and through, by intelligibility, that is
to say, by a formal structure that makes it understandable to an inquiring mind. In point of
fact, all of the sciences—physics, chemistry, psychology, astronomy, biology, and so forth—
rest on the assumption that at all levels, microscopic and macrocosmic, being can be
known. …Ratzinger argues that the only finally satisfying explanation for this universal
objective intelligibility is a great Intelligence who has thought the universe into being. Our
language provides an intriguing clue in this regard, for we speak of our acts of knowledge
as moments of ‘recognition,’ literally a re-cognition, a thinking again what has already been
thought.”—Barron, R. Catholicism.
ARGUMENT FROM UNIVERSE’S INTELLIGIBILITY

• “The God who is logos guarantees the intelligibility of the world, the intelligibility of our
existence, the aptitude of reason to know God [die Gottgemässheit der Vernunft] and
the reasonableness of God [die Vernunftgemässheit Gottes], even though his
understanding infinitely surpasses ours and to us may so often appear to be darkness.
…This surely means that all our thinking is, indeed, only a rethinking of what in reality has
already been thought out beforehand.”—Ratzinger, J.. An Introduction to Christianity.
ARGUMENT FROM UNIVERSE’S INTELLIGIBILITY

Kreeft, P. & Tacelli, R. Handbook of Catholic Apologetics:

1. We experience the universe as intelligible. This intelligibility means that the universe is
graspable by intelligence.
2. Either this intelligible universe and the finite minds so well suited to grasp it are the
products of intelligence or both intelligibility and intelligence are the products of blind
chance.
3. Not blind chance.
4. Therefore this intelligible universe and the finite minds so well suited to grasp it are the
products of intelligence.
ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIENCE

• “As a mature moral person I experience within me the voice of conscience as an

absolute, unconditioned moral imperative:‘You ought to do this good.You ought to avoid
this evil.You should do this, and avoid that.’ It is not a conditional statement or suggestion:
‘If you want to be happy, or avoid punishment, or receive a reward, or if this appeals to
you, do it.’ It is ‘categorical’:‘You ought to do this; do it!’”—Clarke, N. The One and the
Many.
ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIENCE

• “Man has within his breast a certain commanding dictate, not a mere sentiment, not a
mere opinion, or impression, or view of things, but a law, an authoritative voice, bidding
him do certain things and avoid others. I do not say that its particular injunctions are
always clear, or that they are always consistent with each other; but what I am insisting
on here is this, that it commands, that it praises, it blames, it promises, it threatens, it
implies a future, and it witnesses the unseen. It is more than a man’s own self. The man
himself has no power over it, or only with extreme difficulty; he did not make it, he
cannot destroy it”—Newman, J. H.., Sermon no. 64.
ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIENCE

From Kreeft & Tacelli. Handbook of Catholic Apologetics:

1. How can I be absolutely obligated by something less than me—for example, by animal instinct or
practical need for material survival?
2. How can I obligate myself absolutely? Am I absolute? Do I have the right to demand absolute
obedience from anyone, even myself? And if I am the one who locked myself in this prison of
obligation, I can also let myself out, thus destroying the absoluteness of the obligation that we
admitted as our premise.
3. How can society obligate me? What right do my equals have to impose their values on me? Does
quantity make quality? Do a million human beings make a relative into an absolute? Is “society” God?
4. The only source of absolute moral obligation left is something superior to me. This binds my will,
morally, with rightful demands for complete obedience.
ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIENCE

1. What categorically obliges me to obey my conscience is either below me, myself,

someone equal to me, or someone above me.
2. Not below me, myself, someone equal to me.
3. Therefore, what categorically obliges me to obey my conscience is someone above me.
4. If what categorically obliges me to obey my conscience that is someone above me, then
God exists.
5. Therefore, God exists.
ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIENCE

• “If, as is the ease, we feel responsibility, are ashamed, are frightened, at transgressing the
voice of conscience, this implies that there is One to whom we are responsible, before
whom we are ashamed, whose claims upon us we fear. …If the cause of these emotions
does not belong to this visible world, the Object to which his perception is directed must
be Supernatural and Divine; and thus the phenomena of Conscience, as a dictate, avail to
impress the imagination with the picture of a Supreme Governor, a Judge, holy, just,
powerful, all-seeing, retributive, and is the creative principle of religion, as the Moral Sense
is the principle of ethics.”—Newman, J. H., Grammar of Assent.
ARGUMENT FROM CONSCIENCE

• “The feeling is one analogous or similar to that which we feel in human matters towards
a person whom we have offended; there is a tenderness almost tearful on going wrong,
and a grateful cheerfulness when we go right which is just what we feel in pleasing or
displeasing a father or revered superior. So that contemplating and revolving on this
feeling the mind will reasonably conclude that it is an unseen father who is the object of
the feeling.And this father has necessarily some of those special attributes which belong
to the notion of God. He is invisible—He is the searcher of hearts—He is omniscient as
far as man is concerned—He is (to our notions) omnipotent.”—Newman, in Boekraad
and Tristram,Argument from Conscience, citing Newman (unpublished), pp. 14-15.
ARGUMENT FROM DESIRE

• “Thinking that if only he tried another woman, or went for a more expensive holiday, or
whatever it is, then, this time, he really would catch the mysterious something we are
after. Most of the bored, discontented, rich people in the world are of this type.They
spend their whole lives trotting from woman to woman . . . from continent to continent,
from hobby to hobby, always thinking that the latest is ‘the real thing’ at last, and always
disappointed.”—Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity.
ARGUMENT FROM DESIRE

• “What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to
life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the
other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a
stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home
or the hope of a promised land.This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his
setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.”—Camus,A. Myth of Sisyphus.
ARGUMENT FROM DESIRE

• “There is a peculiar mystery about the object of this Desire. In- experienced people (and inattention
leaves some inexperienced all their lives) suppose, when they feel it, that they know what they are
desiring.Thus if it comes to a child while he is looking at a far off hillside he at once thinks ‘if only I were
there’; if it comes when he is remembering some event in the past, he thinks “if only I could go back to
those days.” If it comes (a little later) while he is reading a ‘romantic’ tale or poem of ‘perilous seas and
faerie lands forlorn,’ he thinks he is wishing that such places really existed and that he could reach them.
If it comes (later still) in a context with erotic suggestions he believes he is desiring the perfect beloved.
If he falls upon literature (like Maeterlinck or the early Yeats) which treats of spirits and the like with
some show of serious belief, he may think that he is hankering for real magic and occultism.When it
darts out upon him from his studies in history or science, he may confuse it with the intellectual craving
for knowledge. But every one of these impressions is wrong . . . Every one of these supposed objects for
the Desire is inadequate to it.”—Lewis. Pilgrim’s Regress.
ARGUMENT FROM DESIRE

• “Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby
feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food.A duckling wants to swim: well, there is
such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in
myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable
explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy
it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthy pleasures were never
meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”—Lewis. Mere
Christianity.
ARGUMENT FROM DESIRE

From Kreeft & Tacelli. Handbook of Catholic Apogetics:

1. Every natural, innate desire in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that
desire.
2. But there exists in us a desire that nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can
satisfy.
3. Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can
satisfy this desire.
4. This something is what people call “God” and “life with God forever”.
FACING THE PROBABLE, WE MUST ACT!

• “[L]ife is short and we have to act on the basis of what such evidence as we have had time to
investigate shows on balance to be probably true. We have to vote in elections without having
had time to consider the merits of the political programmes of even the main candidates with
respect to one or two planks of their programmes. And we have to build bridges and send
rockets into space before we can look at all the arguments for and against whether our
construction is safe—let alone be absolutely certain that it is. And in religion too we have to
act (while allowing that, later in life, we may look again at the arguments).

• “The conclusion of this book was that, on significant balance of probability, there is a God. If
you accept it, it follows that you have certain duties.”—Swinburne. Is There a God?
GOD’S EXISTENCE IS PROVABLE
“[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).” (CCC 47)
SOME ARGUMENTS THAT GOD CERTAINLY EXISTS

1. Aquinas’s Proof from De Ente and the Five Ways

2. Leibniz’s Contingency Argument
3. Augustinian Proof
4. Spitzer’s Lonerganian Proof
5. Plantinga’s Ontological Argument
SYNTHESIS OF AQUINAS’S FIVE WAYS PLUS DE ENTE

• “It seems that God does not exist. …On the contrary, It is said in the person of God: I
am Who am (Ex. 3:14). I answer that, the existence of God can be proved in five ways.”—
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, 2, 3.
• “The existence of God, like other truths about God which can be known by natural
reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes
natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature.”—St.Thomas Aquinas, Summa
Theologiae, I, 2, 2.
SYNTHESIS OF AQUINAS’S FIVE WAYS PLUS DE ENTE

1. Something exists that is not pure existence.

2. If no pure existence exists, nothing that is not pure existence could exist.
3. Therefore, pure existence exists.
4. If pure existence exists, then God exists.
5. Therefore, God exists.
SYNTHESIS OF AQUINAS’S FIVE WAYS PLUS DE ENTE

• “[A]ny created being whatsoever can be taken as the starting point in the argument,
ranging from stone to angel, and ending in…subsistent Being itself, whence flow all the
divine attributes.”—Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P., Ph.D., God, His Existence and
Nature,Vol. I.
• “Let us but grant to a bit of moss or the smallest ant its due nature as an ontological
reality, and we can no longer escape the terrifying hand that made us.”—Jacques Maritain,
The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald B. Phelan.
SYNTHESIS OF AQUINAS’S FIVE WAYS PLUS DE ENTE

1. Something exists that is not pure existence. [x = observable existing thing]

1. If x is pure existence, it must be only one, immutable, uncaused, absolutely necessary, and
supremely intelligent.
2. X is not only one, immutable, uncaused, absolutely necessary, or supremely intelligent.
3. Hence, x is not pure existence. (1, 2, modus tollens)
4. If x is not pure existence, then something exists that is not pure existence.
5. Hence, something exists that is not pure existence. (3, 4, modus ponens)
SYNTHESIS OF AQUINAS’S FIVE WAYS PLUS DE ENTE

2. If no pure existence exists, nothing that is not pure existence could exist.
1. If no pure existence exists, nothing could fulfill the condition of any essence-existence
composite to exist.
2. If nothing could fulfill the condition of any essence-existence composite to exist, then
nothing that is not pure existence could exist.
• Anything not pure existence = existence limited by essence = essence-existence composite.
3. Hence, if no pure existence exists, nothing that is not pure existence could exist. (1, 2,
hypothetical syllogism)
SYNTHESIS OF AQUINAS’S FIVE WAYS PLUS DE ENTE

1. Something exists that is not pure existence.

2. If no pure existence exists, nothing that is not pure existence could exist.
3. Therefore, pure existence exists. (1, 2, modus tollens)
SYNTHESIS OF AQUINAS’S FIVE WAYS PLUS DE ENTE

4. If pure existence exists, then God exists.

1. If pure existence exists, then there exists a being that is unique, creator of everything other
than itself, omnipotent, pure act, immutable, eternal, immaterial, intelligent, omniscient,
volitional, personal, spiritual, omnipotent, immanent, transcendent, goodness itself, morally
good, perfect, worthy of worship, absolutely simple, incomprehensible, and the fulfillment for
our natural desire for truth, goodness, and beauty itself.
2. But if there exists such being, then God exists.
3. Therefore, if pure existence exists, then God exists.
SYNTHESIS OF AQUINAS’S FIVE WAYS PLUS DE ENTE

1. Something exists that is not pure existence.

2. If no pure existence exists, nothing that is not pure existence could exist.
3. Therefore, pure existence exists.
4. If pure existence exists, then God exists.
5. Therefore, God exists. (3, 4, modus tollens)
SYNTHESIS OF AQUINAS’S FIVE WAYS PLUS DE ENTE

• “The God proved here by philosophy, though ‘thinner’ than the God revealed in the Bible,
is ‘thick’ enough to refute an atheist.” —Dr. Peter Kreeft, A Shorter Summa, on ST, I, 2, 3.
• “When Saint Thomas makes statements on divine nature and its attributes, which do not
surpass the limits of pure reason, he always accompanies and strengthens these
assertions with testimonials from Sacred Scripture.”—Fr. Battista Mondin, S.X., Ph.D., A
History of Mediaeval Philosophy, 288.
SYNTHESIS OF AQUINAS’S FIVE WAYS PLUS DE ENTE

• “In short, no one who has actually studied Aquinas’ natural theology could think that he
believes the things commonly attributed to him or that the standard objections have any
force at all.” —Dr. Edward Feser,“The God of a Philosopher”, in Besong & Fuqua (Eds.),
Faith and Reason: Philosophers Explain their Turn to Catholicism.
• “I think that the Church’s turning away from Aquinas in the years following Vatican II was
a dreadful mistake.We lost something of massive importance when we set aside his
balance, his deep intelligence, and his sanity.”——Bishop Robert Barron, Seeds of the Word:
Finding God in the Culture.
SOME READINGS ON AQUINAS’S PROOFS

Clarke, W. Norris, S.J.. 2001. The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press).

Feser, Edward. 2009. Aquinas (Oxford: Oneworld Publications).

Fradd, Matt & Delfino, Robert. 2018 Does God Exist?: A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways (St. Louis: En Route Books & Media)

Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald, O.P.. 1939. God: His Existence and His Nature, Volume I (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co.).

Kerr, Gaven, O.P.. 2015. Aquinas’s Way to God: The Proof in De ente et Essentia (Oxford: Oxford University Press)

Knasas, John F.X. 2019.Thomistic Existentialism and Cosmological Reasoning (Washington, D.C.:The Catholic University of Ame rica Press)

White, Thomas Joseph. 2016. Exodus: Brazos Theological Commentary (Brazos Press)

Wippel, John. 2000. The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press).
SOME READINGS ON OTHER ARGUMENTS

Craig, William Lane and Moreland J.P.. 2009. Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (Chichester:Wiley-Blackwell)

Feser, Edward. 2017. Five Proofs of the Existence of God (Francisco: Ignatius Press)
Kreeft, Peter & Tacelli, Ronald, S.J.. 2009. Handbook of Catholic Apologetics: Reasoned Answers to Questions of Faith (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press)

Levering, Matthew. 2016. Proofs of God: Classical Arguments from Tertullian to Barth. (Michigan: Baker Academic)

Loke, Andew. 2017. God and Ultimate Origins: A Novel Cosmological Argument

Spitzer, Robert, S.J.. 2010. New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy. (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans)

Swinburne, Richard. 2004. The Existence of God, 2nd ed, 2004. (Oxford: Clarendon)

Walls, Jerry & Dougherty,Trent (Eds.). Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God.
SO, WHAT’S NEXT?

• Reason could:
1. Prove God exists.
2. Prove God is a trustworthy revealer.
3. Prove miracles are possible.
4. Prove God revealed Himself in Christianity through Jesus’s miracles.
5. Prove that Jesus historically built the Catholic Church as infallible teacher of revelation.

• Faith then reasonably assents to what God reveals for we already know He’s trustworthy
and where such revelation could be found.
FAITH AS INHERENTLY FAR FROM EASY

• “Man’s natural inclination draws him to the visible, to what he can take in his hand and hold as
his own. He has to turn around inwardly in order to see how badly he is neglecting his own
interests by letting himself be drawn along in this way by his natural inclination. He must turn
around to recognize how blind he is if he trusts only what he sees with his eyes. Without this
change of direction, without this resistance to the natural inclination, there can be no belief.
Indeed belief is the conversion in which man discovers that he is following an illusion if he
devotes himself only to the tangible. This is at the same time the fundamental reason why
belief is not demonstrable: it is an about-turn; only he who turns about is receptive to it; and
because our inclination does not cease to point us in another direction, it remains a turn that
is new every day; only in a lifelong conversion can we become aware of what it means to say 'I
believe’.” —Ratzinger, R. Introduction to Christianity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press 1990), 50–52.