Overcoming the Skepticism of the Scribes

If God as Creator attracts a human being through that instinct in man which is the natural desire of his spirit, how much more intimately does God as Person attract and call me through the new desire which he himself instills in me ... God himself, by virtue of his grace, prepares me to believe.  In the end it is God who will have brought me by his grace to the act of assent.  It must be said, in strict accuracy: "It is God who causes faith in the believer by prompting his will and enlightening his intellect."

In this, moreover, lies the ultimate explanation of that leap into another world, which is faith.  Man does not take this leap by himself, and consequently he does not act against his reason; he crosses the gulf and transcends the limits of his reason, through his reliance on his guide .... Man takes the hand held out to help him, he knows that he is not throwing himself into a void, but into arms which are ready to close round him in welcome.  And because each human being is a sinner, this call is at once a call to renunciation and to giving.