Nature in Theology

“The apprehension of a frog or a muskrat, [. . .] is inseparable from the implicit identification of a good in whose light the functional parts are intelligible as parts .”

“[T]he metaphysical framework that rendered matter intelligible disintegrated and with it the notion of nature itself.”

“The parts of an organism bear a kind of responsive creativity within the given auspices of the whole creature’s identity.”

“Learning to do well means learning to acknowledge what is given well.”

“Being’s face manifested in the smile has an ontological depth at the same time that it reveals personal, concrete love.”

“God is not denied on the basis of some newly acquired scientific knowledge or metaphysical argument; rather, God cannot exist, because if he existed man could not be free.”

“Our fluidity is meant to be an imitation of the triune self-gift that subsists.”

“[T]o be sexual is to be the kind of being that owes its very existence to others. It is to be always already in relation to the opposite sex.”

“[T]he horrendous experience through which the gods make the young Orestes pass contains in reality a paradoxical gift of grace .”

“Just as art and the rules of skill must both employ human creativity and draw on nature, so too practical reason works with what is given and aims toward an excellence to which a nature is called.”

“[T]he very ‘is’ of human nature already has its ‘ought’ contained within it.”

“The original is enriched, not distorted, by its image.”