According to Murdoch, the thoughtful modern person can no longer conceive of men and women as rational creatures who are slowly expunging evil from their midst; instead, it is necessary to think of human beings as «benighted creatures sunk in a reality whose nature we are constantly and overwhelmingly tempted to deform by fantasy.» (religion-online.org)
What the reader, or at least this reader, retains of the novel is not a pattern of Christian belief but descriptions of the three kinds of rational creatures who inhabit the planet and of the fantastic shapes and smells and pastel colors of the beautiful land. (religion-online.org)
He is thus against natural law theory but for a DCT in which God, by creating rational creatures, is bound to make their highest end a relationship with the divine persons, but free to pursue that end via any number of routes. (firstthings.com)