• Book 1: Scripture
  God’s revealed Word, necessary for salvation.
• Book 2: Nature
  Creation itself is a text written by God. It is readable, intelligible, and meant to instruct the human mind. Studying nature is a form of reading God’s revelation.

Didascaliconmed

Quotes

• For the mind, stupefied by bodily sensations and enticed out of itself by sensuous forms, has forgotten what it was, and, because it does not remember that it was anything different, believes that it is nothing except what is seen. But we are restored through instruction, so that we may recognize our nature and learn not to seek outside ourselves what we can find within. "The highest curative in life,"therefore, is the pursuit of Wisdom: he who finds it is happy, and he who possesses it is blessed"

• philosophy is the love and the pursuit of Wisdom, not, however, of that "wisdom" which is deployed with tools, like building and farming and other activities of this kind, but of that Wisdom which is the sole primordial Idea or Pattern of things.

Quotes

• On Learning and Wisdom

  “Learn everything; later you will see that nothing is superfluous.”

• On Studying Creation

  “The whole of nature is a book written by the finger of God.”

• On Contemplation

  “The more the mind is cleansed, the more it sees.”

• On the Ascent to God

  “Man is a great work, but a miserable one if he knows not his Maker.”

• On the Purpose of Study

  “All knowledge is given for the sake of salvation.”

• On Humility and Understanding

  “He who does not know himself cannot know God.”

• On the Material World

  “Visible things are the ladder by which we ascend to invisible things.”

• On Scripture

  “The Scriptures are the mirror in which we see our own face.”

• On Love

  “Charity is the life of the soul.”