Teacher:In this task, you're given a question, a context passage, and four options which are terms from the passage. After reading a passage, you will get a brief understanding of the terms. Your job is to determine by searching and reading further information of which term you can answer the question. Indicate your choice as 'a', 'b', 'c', or 'd'. If you think more than one option is plausible, choose the more probable option to help you answer the question.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: Question: Which Church Father was alive earlier, Maximus the Confessor or John of Damascus? Passage:In the 1960s, proportionalism was a consequentialist attempt to develop natural law, a principally Roman Catholic teleological theory most strongly associated with the 13th-century scholastic theologian Thomas Aquinas, but also found in Church Fathers such as Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus, as well as early pagan schools of philosophy such as Stoicism. The moral guidelines set down by Roman Catholic magisterial teachings of Natural Moral Law are mostly upheld in that intrinsically evil acts are still classified so. In certain situations where there is a balance of ontic goods and ontic evils (ontic evils are those that are not immoral but merely cause pain or suffering, ontic goods are those that alleviate pain or suffering). Proportionalism asserts that one can determine the right course of action by weighing up the good and the necessary evil caused by the action. As a result, proportionalism aims to choose the lesser of evils. Pope John Paul II rules out the 1960s proportionalism in his encyclicals Veritatis Splendor, promulgated in 1993 (cf. section 75), and in Evangelium Vitae, 1995 (cf. article 68). Instead he offers an account of moral action based on the object of the act (finis operis), the intention of the person performing the act (finis operantis), and the circumstances surrounding the action.
 Links: a. Stoicism b. Evangelium vitae c. Church Fathers d. Ontic
Student:
c