How Catholics Come to Know God: Reason, Revelation, and Grace

Our desire to know God does not necessitate our accepting the object of our desire should he reveal himself. The hungry man may reject the food set before him.

Key Takeaways

↓ Jump to FAQ for quick answers

The Catechism teaches three ways to God. CCC §§31–35 lays out a three-part path: through the order and beauty of the world, through the openness and conscience of the human person, and through God’s own self-revelation in Christ.
These are arguments, not scientific proofs. The Catechism calls them “converging and convincing arguments” that bring genuine certainty, even where they cannot be reduced to laboratory demonstration.
The first move is always God’s. Catholic teaching agrees with Reformed and Arminian Protestants that no one comes to saving faith without prevenient grace. We cannot move toward God unless God moves first.
Grace empowers, but does not override, our freedom. Where Catholic teaching parts ways with Reformed monergism: prevenient grace makes our cooperation possible without compelling it. The Council of Trent (Sess. VI, Canons 4–5) defines this against any view that treats the will under grace as merely passive.
Salvation is by grace, received in faith working through love. Faith is a gift of God (CCC §153), not a human achievement—but it is also a real human “yes” (CCC §§154–155).

Ways of Coming to Know God (CCC §§31–35)

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 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 it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. (Rom 1:19–20)

And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky… question all these realities. All respond: “See, we are beautiful.” Their beauty is a profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?

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. [T]he soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”, can have its origin only in God.

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”.

35 Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man, and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.

Source: Catechism of the Catholic Church §§31–35

How Can We Know God?

Our ability to know God comes through a three-part process. First, we are ingrained with something deep within ourselves that tells us that there is something more, that we are neither our own “first principle” nor “final end.”

The human experience is overwhelmed by concerns for the spiritual, and it has been for all of recorded history. The thing after which we all grope, in all its mysterious uncertainty, we call “God.”

The object of this groping has taken on various manifestations and names through the millennia. Nonetheless, the consistent thread through all the different cultural depictions of the spiritual and supernatural is the search itself. There is a universal search for God.

This ingrained nature within us prepares us to receive the divine should we ever encounter it. Just as hunger pangs prepare us to receive food, so this longing prepares us to receive God should we find him.

And this is where the personal God revealed in Jesus Christ comes to the fore. God was pleased at a specific time in history to reveal himself to us.

All the ways that God has revealed himself to humanity over the millennia are, of course, unknowable, but we see God establishing a foothold, a starting point, in his self-revelation to the Jews. Then we find its full fulfillment when he took on the flesh of a Jewish man.

In this way, God fully and completely revealed himself to humanity and completed the second movement: we desire God, and God reveals himself to us.

God as Initiator

Yet, it is not all that simple. Our desire to know God does not necessitate our accepting the object of our desire should he reveal himself. For a myriad of reasons, the hungry man may reject the food set before him.

So also, those who carry that deep desire for the spiritual within them may encounter God, the object of that deeply embedded hope, and yet reject him nonetheless.

And God gives us the freedom to do just that.

God, however, does not stop his pursuit of us. He has placed within us a desire for him. He has revealed himself to us. And finally, he offers his grace to us, empowering us to accept that which he reveals.

Catholicism and Grace

Fra Angelico's Annunciation, depicting the angel Gabriel announcing the Incarnation to Mary, who sits in quiet attentiveness in a simple cloister. — Fra Angelico, *Annunciation* (c. 1442–1445), fresco, Convent of San Marco, Florence. Mary’s “let it be done to me according to your word” is the paradigm of the Catholic understanding of grace: God’s initiative meeting a free human “yes.” Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

This is an interesting point, particularly for me having come from a Protestant background. The Reformed tradition holds that individual salvation is a matter entirely of divine sovereignty: God alone determines who will be saved and who won’t, and his saving grace, when given, is irresistible.

The Arminian wing of Protestantism, by contrast, argues that God offers his salvation to everyone. Anyone who is not saved rejects God in a real exercise of his own free will.

What both sides agree on is something more fundamental than they often realize: no one is capable of being saved without God’s making the first move toward them. All come to God by God’s grace.

It was, therefore, a bit surprising to find that Catholics believe the same thing. There is such a predominant caricature within Protestantism of Catholicism as a works-based faith—as if Catholics imagine they can pile up enough good works to make their own way to God.

That is absurd. The Catholic too believes, as affirmed here in this section of the Catechism, that we cannot move toward God unless God moves first. The technical name for this is prevenient grace—the grace that “goes before” us, awakening our desire and capacity to respond. Faith itself, the Catechism teaches, is “a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him” (CCC §153).

Where Catholic teaching parts ways with Reformed monergism is on what that grace does to our freedom. For Catholics, prevenient grace empowers our cooperation; it does not override it. The Council of Trent, defining the Church’s teaching on justification, condemned the position that the human will under grace is merely passive or that it cannot resist or dissent (Trent, Sess. VI, Canons 4–5). We are saved by grace, freely accepted—not by grace, irresistibly imposed.

So the Catholic answer is closer to the Arminian’s than to the Calvinist’s, but with its own development: salvation is by grace, received in faith working through love (Gal 5:6; CCC §1814). It is unearned, divine in origin—and yet truly ours, taken up into a real human “yes” (CCC §§154–155).

That is, we cannot believe unless God draws us by his grace—and we are free, by that same grace, to respond.

This is a fundamental Christian principle and fully acknowledges how indebted we all are to God’s goodwill and his infinite, though undeserved, love for us.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does the Catechism mean by “ways of coming to know God”?

The Catechism (CCC §§31–35) names two starting points for human knowledge of God: the physical world (its order, beauty, contingency, and movement) and the human person (his openness to truth, his conscience, his longing for the infinite). From either, the Catechism says, one can arrive at “converging and convincing arguments” for God’s existence—not laboratory proofs, but rational paths that bring genuine certainty.

Can a person come to know God by reason alone?

Yes, in part. The Church teaches that human reason can attain a true knowledge of the existence of a personal God from creation alone—this is the position Vatican I dogmatically defined at Dei Filius and which CCC §§31–35 reaffirms. But the Church also teaches that reason alone cannot bring us into a saving relationship with God. For that, God must reveal himself, and he must give us the grace to welcome that revelation in faith (CCC §35; see also our capacity to know God).

What is prevenient grace, and why does it matter?

Prevenient grace (“grace that goes before”) is the grace by which God awakens in a person the desire and capacity to seek him, receive his revelation, and assent to it in faith. The Catechism teaches that “the grace of Christ is a free gift… a participation in the life of God” and that “the preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace” (CCC §§1996, 2001). Prevenient grace matters because it locates the initiative for salvation in God, not in us. Reformed, Arminian, and Catholic Christians all affirm the doctrine; they disagree on what it does to human freedom.

How does Catholic teaching on grace differ from Reformed (Calvinist) teaching?

Both traditions affirm that God’s grace must come first. Reformed theology, however, holds that this grace, when given to the elect, is irresistible and effects salvation monergistically (God alone is the cause). Catholic teaching holds that grace empowers but does not override human freedom: a person can resist or refuse it. The Council of Trent (Sess. VI, Canons 4–5) defined this against any view that treats the will under grace as merely passive. The Catholic position is therefore closer to Arminianism than to Calvinism on the resistibility of grace, while remaining distinct in how it integrates faith and works in the life of justification.

Is salvation by faith for Catholics, or by works?

By grace, received in faith working through love. The Catholic Church teaches that we are justified by God’s gratuitous grace, accepted by faith—but the faith that justifies is never alone in the believer’s life. It bears fruit in love (Gal 5:6) and in the works of charity that flow from it (Jas 2:14–26; CCC §§1814–1816). The Protestant caricature of Catholicism as a works-based system is a category mistake: works do not earn grace; grace transforms the believer to do works of love.