JACQUES MARITAIN
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| God does not leave man
to the weakness of his fallen nature; grace, before healing and vivifying man anew, is
still present to envelop and attract him, to call him and incite him in anticipation. Our
fallen nature is exposed to grace as our tired bodies are to the rays of the sun. (Maritain, 1953, 73) God does not refuse His
grace to one who acts to the best of his own ability; but it is under the action of grace
that man prepares to receive grace. What is needed first and foremost is a rediscovery
of Being, and by the same token a rediscovery of love. This means axiomatically, a
rediscovery of God. And I see that the universal whole , whose part I
am, is Being-with-nothingness , from the very fact that I am part of it; so that finally,
since the universal whole does not exist by itself, there is another Whole, a separate
one, another Being, transcendent and self-sufficient and unknown in itself and activating
all beings, which is Being-without-nothingness, that is, self-subsisting Being, Being
existing through itself. (Ibid) |
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John Stuart Mill
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| In voluntary action
alone we see a commencement, an origination of motion; since all other causes appear
incapable of this origination experience is in favour of the conclusion that all the
motion in existence owed this beginning to this one cause, voluntary agency, if not that
of man, then of a more powerful being. (Mill, 1969, 437) Among the
facts of the universe to be accounted for, it may be said, is mind; and it is self evident
that nothing can have produced Mind but Mind. I think it must be allowed that, in the present
state of our knowledge, the adaptations in nature afford a large balance of probability in
favour of creation by intelligence. |
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