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Our Desire for God God’s Revelation to Us. All human societies have a religion, search to know the Divine. This instinct suggests a God designed us this way. “As the deer longs for streams of water, So my soul longs for you, O God. My being thirsts for God, the living God. Ps. 42:2-3.
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All human societies have a religion, search to know the Divine. • This instinct suggests a God designed us this way.
“As the deer longs for streams of water, So my soul longs for you, O God. My being thirsts for God, the living God. Ps. 42:2-3
“Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, O Lord.” - St. Augustine
“In the measure you desire Him, you will find Him.” - St. Teresa of Avila
In the INCARNATION (God becoming man), God makes His greatest effort to reveal Himself and make a relationship with us.
Augustine talks about 4 types of love God Neighbors Selves Bodies
Loving God and neighbor are good, and intertwined: we can show love to God by loving His creations.
Jesus died for us, which shows our great value. • So proper love of oneself and one’s body (your health) is a good thing. • When it becomes excessive, selfish, vane, it is an evil.
Natural Revelation You could know Shakespeare by reading the plays he wrote. You could know Beyonce by the songs she wrote. You can know God by the world and the creatures He created.
Natural Revelation People are foolish “who from the good things seen did not succeed in knowing Him Who Is.” Wisdom 13:1 “Ever since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes fo eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what He has made.” Romans 1:20 “Creation is a great book…[God] set before your eyes the things He had made…Heaven and earth cry out to you ‘God made me’” St. Augustine
God makes himself know to our reason through the created world; we have the capacity to know God by experiencing the world around us • Old Testament: • Creation • Experience of God through interaction with the Israelites • New Testament • Jesus • Experience of the early church
Ye Olde Scholastic Theology • In the Middle Ages, scholastic theologians used PHILOSOPHY’s search for truth to help explain the mysteries of God. • St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was a Dominican friar whose most famous work was the Summa Theologica (The Summit of Theology).
STA was an incredibly wealthy and well-connected man (related to the pope and the Holy Roman Emporor) who instead chose the life of a mendicant – an order who supports itself by begging –greatly upsetting his family. • STA was so smart that 8 scribes were needed to simultaneously write his books.
First Cause • Who was the first to create? • First Mover • Who set the world in motion? • Necessary Being • The chicken or the egg?/You can’t get something from nothing. • Intelligent being • Who directs those things without intelligence to their right end? • Perfection • Who is the standard of perfection? • For everything else to exist there had to have been something in existence first. This something is God. • Life is in motion. for life to be in motion there must have been a "first mover" to get everything going. That mover is God! • An egg cannot just cause itself to be an egg. Something outside of the egg (like a hen and a rooster) that causes it to be an egg. Likewise there must have been something outside of creation that caused creation to come into existence. That cause is God • The order and complexity of nature isn't just a happy accident. An intelligent being must exist who directs all things to their natural end. This being is God • When we measure or rate things there is something we call truest or best against which we measure all things that are true or good. This perfect being is God.
Pascal’s Wager – A believer can gain everything, loses almost nothing. A non-believer can lose everything, gains almost nothing.
Miracles – others have pointed to miracles as proof there is a God. (There have been countless reported miracles. If even one is real, there’s a God.) Fatima • Three kids said the Blessed Mother promised a miracle. • With 30,000-100,000 witnesses, rain was followed by the sun seeming to “dance” in the sky, plummet towards Earth, dry everything, and go back to the sky. (a vision, not an actual movement of the sun) • The Blessed Mother also predicted the end of World War I, a bigger war to follow, Russia’s conversion to communism and return from it, and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II.
Salvation History – the very slow and gradual way in which God fully reveals Himself (divine Revelation) to humanity
Common themes of the Old Testament include • Original Sin: the idea that humanity has a fallen, sinful nature since the sin of Adam and Eve. The entire Bible is about reuniting people and God. • Covenant: God makes solemn promises with His people • Noah: God will never again destroy the Earth by flood • Abraham: If Abraham goes where God leads him, he will receive land + descendents • Moses: Follow the Law and God will be your God and you will be His people.
Wisdom literature: type of writing (Book of Wisdom, Proverbs) which stress the value of wisdom, advising us on how to live a good life • Prophets – NOT fortune tellers. They are people who SPEAK FOR GOD. (We are all baptized priest, prophet, king.)
Analogy of faith The coherence of individual doctrines with the whole of Revelation. In other words, as each doctrine is connected with Revelation, each doctrine is also connected with all other doctrines. • Apostolic origin Being based on the preaching and teaching of the Apostles and their closest companions. One of four criteria the bishops used to determine the canon. • Bible A word that means “books,” a collection of sacred books containing the truth of God’s Revelation. • Biblical exegesis The critical interpretation and explanation of a biblical text. • Biblical inerrancy The doctrine that the books of the Scriptures are free from error regarding the truth God wishes to reveal through the Scriptures for the sake of our salvation. • canon The collection of books the Church recognizes as the inspired Word of God. • Contextualist approach The interpretation of the Bible that takes into account the various contexts for understanding. These contexts include the senses of Scripture, literary forms, historical situations, cultural backgrounds, the unity of the whole of the Scriptures, Tradition, and the analogy of faith. • covenant A solemn agreement between human beings or between God and a human being in which mutual commitments are made.
deuterocanonicalA term used by Catholics to refer to the additional seven Old Testament books in the Catholic canon. • Divine Inspiration The divine assistance the Holy Spirit gave the authors of the books of the Bible so the authors could write in human words the salvation message God wanted to communicate. • dogma Teachings recognized as central to Church teaching, defined by the Magisterium and accorded the fullest weight and authority. • Essenes A group of pious, ultraconservative Jews who left the Temple of Jerusalem and began a community by the Dead Sea, known as Qumran. • Eucharist The celebration of the entire Mass. The term sometimes refers specifically to the consecrated bread and wine that have become the Body and Blood of Christ. • Fundamentalist approach Interpretation of the Bible and Christian doctrine based on the literal meaning of the Bible’s words. The interpretation is made without regard to the historical setting in which the writings or teachings were first developed. • Gnostic Referring to the belief that salvation comes from secret knowledge available to only a select few.
Nag Hammadi manuscripts Fourth-century writings discovered in 1945 near the village of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, that are invaluable sources of information regarding Gnostic beliefs, practices, and lifestyle. Gnosticism was an early Church heresy claiming that Christ’s humanity was an illusion and the human body is evil. • New Testament The twenty-seven books of the Bible written in apostolic times, which have the life, teachings, Passion, death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ and the beginnings of the Church as their central theme. • Old Testament The forty-six books that make up the first part of the Bible and record salvation history before the coming of the Savior, Jesus Christ. • Oral tradition The handing on of the message of God’s saving plan through words and deeds. • Pentateuch A Greek word meaning “five books,” referring to the first five books of the Old Testament. • redact To select and adapt written material to serve an author’s purpose.
redemption From the Latin redemptio, meaning “a buying back,” referring, in the Old Testament, to Yahweh’s deliverance of Israel and, in the New Testament, to Christ’s deliverance of all Christians from the forces of sin. • Salvation history The pattern of specific events in human history in which God clearly reveals his presence and saving actions. Salvation was accomplished once and for all through Jesus Christ, a truth foreshadowed and revealed throughout the Old Testament. • testament A solemn vow and contract to which God is a witness. It is a synonym of covenant. • Torah A Hebrew word meaning “law,” referring to the first five books of the Old Testament. • Universal acceptance Acknowledgment among Christians that a book was useful for worship. This criterion helped the early bishops to conclude whether a book was divinely inspired. One of four criteria the bishops used to determine the canon. • Vulgate Saint Jerome’s Latin translation of the Bible completed in the early fifth century AD. • Written tradition Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the synthesis in written form of the message of salvation that has been passed down in the oral tradition.
