Philosophy/Religion Passage
Introduction
This section will apply the DIRECT Method to a CLT Philosophy/Religion passage. Let’s begin with a review of the method. Do you remember what each of the six letters of DIRECT stand for? Test yourself and then check out the spoiler below.
Don’t read the passage first.
Identify important material if there is a stated question.
Read for context.
Examine the structure of the answers.
Choose the answer that best fits the context and, if applicable, the stated question.
Take time to review any questions you’ve flagged as difficult.
The Philosophy/Religion passage will often be taken from an ancient or medieval source–anything from Plato to Thomas Aquinas–though something more recent is also possible. Be prepared to linger over certain sentences to make sure you understand their meaning, since the writing in this passage is unlikely to be modern and easily understood.
DIRECT to the Source: The Philosophy/Religion Passage
In this section, you’ll find a selection from Athanasius’ On the Incarnation of the Word, translated by Archibald Robertson in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 4 (New York, 1892). After each paragraph, you’ll find questions tied to the underlined portions in the paragraph. This format does not exactly mimic the format of the CLT, where the entire passage appears on the left and the questions on the right, so be sure to practice with official CLT materials as well.
1. if a man, who is invisible by nature and not seen at all, should wish to see God,
A. NO CHANGE
B. if, invisible by nature and not seen at all, a man should wish to see God,
C. if a man should wish, invisible by nature and not seen at all, to see God,
D. if a man should wish to see God, who is invisible by nature and not seen at all,
The answer is D. When a long descriptive phrase sits in the middle of a sentence, the issue is often sentence structure: is each modifier placed next to the word it describes? A modifier belongs right beside the word it modifies; put it anywhere else and it latches onto the wrong word. Here the phrase “invisible by nature and not seen at all” describes God, not the man who wishes to see Him. That is Athanasius’ whole point: God cannot be seen directly, so we must come to know Him from His works.
Choice A places the phrase right after “a man,” so the sentence now says that the man is invisible. Choices B and C make the same mistake in other ways. In B the phrase opens the clause, so it describes the subject that follows it, “a man.” In C it sits between “wish” and “to see,” where it again reads as a description of the man doing the wishing. Only choice D puts the phrase directly after “God,” the word it describes.
2. and by death immortality reaching to all
A. NO CHANGE
B. and immortality, by death, to reach all
C. and that by death immortality has reached to all
D. and death being the way immortality reached all
The answer is C. This is a parallelism question. When a sentence lists several items, each item must take the same grammatical form. Athanasius tells the reader to marvel at three things, and he introduces each one with “that.” Laid out like an outline, the list looks like this:
- that by so ordinary a means things divine have been manifested to us
- that by death immortality has reached to all
- that by the Word becoming man, the universal Providence has been known
The pattern is “that,” then a subject, then a full verb in the present perfect tense. Only choice C follows it. Choice A drops “that” and swaps the verb for the participle “reaching,” leaving a phrase where the list needs a clause. Choice B turns the item into an infinitive, “to reach.” Choice D uses “being” and shifts to the past tense with “reached.” Each of these breaks the parallel structure, so the list no longer reads as three matching items.
3. indolence
A. NO CHANGE
B. insolence
C. innocence
D. insistence
The answer is B. This is a word choice question, and the four words look and sound alike, so the context has to decide: “He endured the _____ of men that we might inherit immortality.” To endure something is to put up with something painful or hard. What did Christ have to put up with from men? Earlier in the paragraph Athanasius imagines people who “scoff” and “laugh” at Christ’s works, and the next sentence says that He “was in no way injured” by what He suffered. The word must name some kind of mistreatment.
Insolence means rude, contemptuous disrespect, and it fits exactly. Indolence (choice A) means laziness; nothing in the passage concerns laziness, and putting up with other people’s laziness would not win anyone immortality. Innocence (choice C) is a good quality, not something one suffers. Insistence (choice D) means firmly demanding something, which has nothing to do with the context. When the choices are near look-alikes, define each one in your own words before you decide.
4. in a word
A. NO CHANGE
B. for instance
C. on the contrary
D. even so
The answer is A. This is a logical coherence question: which transition best connects this sentence to what comes before it? Start, as always, by looking for contrast. The sentences before this one list what the Word accomplished by becoming man: He was made man so that we might be made God, He revealed the unseen Father, He endured mistreatment so that we might inherit immortality, and He preserved those who suffered. This sentence does not push back against that list, so the contrast transitions “on the contrary” (choice C) and “even so” (choice D) are out.
Is this sentence an example of what came before? No. Instead of naming one more achievement, it steps back and speaks of all of them at once: they are so many that counting them is like counting the waves of the sea. That rules out “for instance” (choice B). A sentence that sums up what came before calls for a summary transition, and “in a word” means “in short” or “to sum up.” The original wording is correct.
5. them; he
A. NO CHANGE
B. them, he
C. them. He
D. them, and he
The answer is B. When the choices include a semicolon, a period and a comma, use the Clause Test: could the words on each side of the punctuation stand on their own as a sentence? The words after it, “he may be compared to men who gaze at the expanse of the sea and wish to count its waves,” could. The words before it could not. They end with “that if one should wish to enumerate them,” an if clause that is still waiting for the main clause it introduces, and that main clause begins “he may be compared.”
Since one side is incomplete, we cannot use a semicolon (choice A) or a period (choice C); both need a complete thought on each side, and choice C would leave the first part as a fragment. Choice D adds “and,” but a conjunction would join the if clause to the main clause as if they were two equal items, leaving the if clause with nothing to attach to. An introductory dependent clause is followed by a comma alone, so choice B is correct.