'In the Beginning...' A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall Quotes

“sin is always an offense that touches others, that alters the world and damages it.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“Despite every distinction that culture and history have brought about, it is still true that we are, in the last resort, the same. The medieval notion characterized in the dance of death that arose during the horrible experience of the black plague, which threatened everyone at the time, was in fact already expressed in this account: Emperor and beggar, master and slave are all ultimately one and the same person, taken from the same earth and destined to return to the same earth. Throughout all the highs and lows of history the human being stays the same - earth, formed from earth, and destined to return to it.”
― Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“The words "God said" appear ten times in the creation account. In this way the creation narrative anticipates the Ten Commandments. This makes us realize that these Ten Commandments are, as it were, an echo of the creation; they are not arbitrary inventions for the purpose of erecting barriers to human freedom but signs pointing to the spirit, the language, and the meaning of creation; they are a translation of the language of the universe, a translation of God's logic, which constructed the universe.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“Thus far it has become clear that the biblical creation narratives represent another way of speaking about reality than that with which we are familiar from physics and biology. They do not depict the process of becoming or the mathematical structure of matter; instead, they say in different ways that there is only one God and that the universe is not the scene of a struggle among dark forces but rather the creation of his Word.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“The universe is not the product of darkness and unreason. It comes from intelligence, freedom, and from the beauty that is identical with love.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“God himself shines through the reasonableness of his creation.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“God is the Lord of all things because he is their creator, and only therefore can we pray to him. For this means that freedom and love are not ineffectual ideas but rather that they are sustaining forces of reality.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“The reasonableness of the universe provides us with access to God's Reason, and the Bible is and continues to be the true "enlightenment," which has given the world over to human reason and not to exploitation by human beings, because it opened reason to God's truth and love.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“The reasonableness of creation derives from God's Reason, and there is no other really convincing explanation.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“This did not have to be the case, because the faith was, from its very beginnings, greater, broader, and deeper. Even today faith in creation is not unreal; even today it is reasonable; even from the perspective of the data of the natural sciences it is the "better hypothesis," offering a fuller and better explanation than any of the other theories.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“Faith is reasonable.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“People were no longer concerned with understanding what a text said or what a thing was from the aspect of its fulfillment, but from that of its beginning, its source. As a result of this isolation from the whole and of this literal-mindedness with respect to particulars, which contradicts the entire inner nature of the Bible but which was now considered to be the truly scientific approach, there arose that conflict between the natural sciences and theology which has been, up to our own day, a burden for the faith.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, In the Beginning…': A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall

“Only if the being of creation is good, only if trust in being is fundamentally justified, are humans at all redeemable. Only if the Redeemer is also Creator can he really be Redeemer. That is why the question of what we do is decided by the ground of what we are. We can win the future only if we do not lose creation.”
― Pope Benedict XVI, 'In the Beginning...' A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall