Salvation History

Salvation History

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Overview In this chapter you'll learn: 1. The "big picture" overview of Salvation History-which will be explored step-by-step later in the course 2. The definition of "covenant" and how it is the key concept that links the Old Testament stories to • the mission of Christ and • the continuing mission of the Catholic Church 3. How to understand the Genesis stories of creation 4. How fundamental Catholic doctrines on marriage and the family are logically based on a proper understanding of the covenant with Adam

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Why study Bible history from the perspective of God's covenants with mankind? 1. With a better understanding of Scripture, today we as Catholics can enter into more fully the liturgical worship of the family of God, the Catholic Church. 2. The Old Testament can be understood as a sequence or series of covenants that God established down through the ages leading up the coming of Christ.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah The Mind of the Church: • The Old Testament is an indispensable part of Sacred Scripture. Its books are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value, for the Old Covenant has never been revoked. (CCC 121)

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah The Five Old Testament Covenants

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah How to understand "covenant" "Covenant" is NOT interchangeable with the word contract: "Contracts" exchange property, goods, and services; "covenants" exchange persons In a covenant you say, “I am yours, and you are mine." * Covenant creates what type of bond? A sacred family bond

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah • In ancient Israel, there was no word for family. so it is suggested that the word used was covenant.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah • What is God doing in the series of covenants? • He is "fathering” His family. • He is trying to reunify this family, which has been broken by sin. • When Jesus comes, He does NOT abolish the Old Covenant law, • He completes and perfects it.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah • The Greek word for international is "Catholic.“ • Jesus transforms David's national, political kingdom into an international, spiritual kingdom, which is the Catholic Church.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah The Catholic Church is the sacramental family of God. It will accomplish what? The supernatural reunification of God's family. How the sacraments unite us in the Catholic family 1. Baptism gives us the family name of the Trinity which is the eternal, original family. 2. The Eucharist perfects and strengthens the family bond by feeding us the flesh and blood of Christ, the second Adam. 3.In the Church, we become adopted members of the Trinity as our family

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Mind of the Church: • God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life. (CCC 1) • [God's] plan...unfolds in the work of creation, the whole history of salvation after the fall, and the missions of the Son and the Spirit, which are continued in the mission of the Church. (CCC 257)

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah The creation accounts—Genesis What is the Catholic teaching regarding the Bible? • The Bible is inspired by God, meaning God is the principal author and the human authors are instruments that God uses. • The Bible has no error even in the history that it teaches, but Hebrew/religious history is expressed differently than we do today.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Differences between Biblical history and modern Western history include: • Western history is sequential or in chronological sequence. • Hebrew (or "religious") history is elliptical, circular-not always in the order events occurred. • Religious history uses symbols and figures to express the meaning behind historical events. • Religious history uses different literary types (poetry, etc.).

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Mind of the Church: "To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words. In order to discover the sacred authors' intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking, and narrating then current." (CCC 109-110)

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah The Word of God: John 1:1-3 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made." Col 1:16-17 [In Jesus Christ] "all things were created, in heaven and on earth ... all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together."

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah The Mind of the Church: • The New Testament reveals that God created everything by the eternal Word, his beloved Son. (CCC 291)

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah The 6 Days of Creation FormlessEmpty Day 1Day 4 Separate Create Light/Dark Sun, Moon, Stars Day 2Day 5 Separate Create Waters Above/ Flying Creatures & Waters Below Sea Creatures Day 3Day 6 Separate Create Water/Land Land Animals & Humans (Plants) (Plants for Food)

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah DIGGING DEEPER - Church Doctrines that come from Genesis 1 . The Doctrine of Creation 2. The Doctrine of Man 3. The Doctrine of Marriage

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah I. The Doctrine of Creation • Evolution vs. creation • Can a Catholic believe in evolution? Yes • Why? Because creation tells us where matter came from and evolution tells us howit developed to become what it is today. • The "evolutionary" theories can't tell us the origin of matter, just how matter developed after it was created.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Mind of the Church: • Wherefore, the magisterium of the Church does not forbid that the teaching of evolution be treated in accord with the present status of human disciplines and of theology, by investigations and disputations by learned men in both fields; insofar, of course, as the inquiry is concerned with the origin of the human body arising from already existing and living matter... (Pius XII, encyclical Humani generis (1950): DS 3896) • God declares that all creation is very good.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Word of God: • Genesis 1:31 "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." • Therefore, it is wrong to believe that flesh is evil and just the spirit is good. • In fact, God through Jesus Christ used our bodyto redeem us and restore us to relationship with Himself.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Mind of the Church: • The human body shares in the dignity of "the image of God": it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit: Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity... For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. (CCC 364)

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Word of God: • Genesis 1:26-28 God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness....So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them... • Genesis 5:3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image and he named him Seth. • Therefore, when God created us, He created us in a father-son relationship so we are truly children of God. • What does "image and likeness" mean in Gen 5:3? To father a son. • Therefore, when God created us, he created us in a father-son relationship, so we are truly children of God.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah • Why are there two creation stories? • The two stories — Gen 1 and Gen 2 — are complementary • First, God transforms the cosmos into a home and the creatures into His children (Genesis 1) • Then, God fashions man into a married couple (Genesis 2)

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Four truths the creation accounts in Genesis teach us 1. We learn that all human life has sacred dignity from pre-born to the natural end of life, because each person is formed in the image of God. Mind of the Church: • Every human life, from the moment of conception until death, is sacred because the human person has been willed for its own sake in the image and likeness of the living and holy God. (CCC 2319)

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah 2. We learn that human labor has a certain value, because work is not a curse but a blessing. We work in imitation of God for six days and rest on the seventh. Mind of the Church; • The sign of man's familiarity with God is that God places him in the garden. There he lives "to till it and keep it." Work is not yet a burden, but rather the collaboration of man and woman with God in perfecting the visible creation. (CCC 378) • God's action is the model for human action. If God "rested and was refreshed" on the seventh day, man too ought to "rest" and should let others, especially the poor, "be refreshed." (CCC 2172).

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah 3. We learn the centrality of worship as a part of human nature. Mind of the Church: • The celebration of Sunday observes the moral commandment inscribed by nature in the human heart to render to God an outward, visible, public, and regular worship "as a sign of his universal beneficence to all." (CCC 2176) 4. We learn that all mankind is one family of God.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah III. The Doctrine of Marriage How many of the world's religions require "strict monogamy" (just 1 husband and 1 wife)? One -Christianity Marriage is divinely instituted — strict monogamy is rooted in the nature of man at the moment of our creation. Word of God: Genesis 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (28) And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." Genesis 2:24 Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah • Jesus was asked by the Pharisees about divorce and He made clear that marriage is indissoluble. Word of God; • Matthew 19:3-6 And Pharisees came up to Him [Jesus] and tested Him by asking, "Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" He answered, "Have you not read that he who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." • Marriage becomes indissoluble — meaning, permanent — when consummated with sexual intercourse.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Mind of the Church; • The married couple forms "the intimate partnership of life and love established by the Creator and governed by his laws; it is rooted in the conjugal covenant, that is, in their irrevocable personal consent." Both give themselves definitively and totally to one another. They are no longer two; from now on they form one flesh. The covenant they freely contracted imposes on the spouses the obligation to preserve it as unique and indissoluble. (CCC 2364) Marriage has two purposes: • 1. We are in a sense co-creators with God in the act of marriage, helping build up God's family. • 2. Marriage also has a "unitive" purpose, so the two become one flesh.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Summary • The "Doctrine of Creation" teaches us that our bodies are good and that our sexual instincts can be harnessed to serve glorious ends. • The "Doctrine of Marriage" teaches that we are created to be in an indissoluble covenant with our spouse and that the covenant is made by God to be fruitful. • Contraception - violates God's blessing to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28 - above) • All the Protestant denominations taught that contraception was wrong until only the last 70 years.

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah Mind of the Church; • The regulation of births represents one of the aspects of responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception). (CCC 2399)

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah The Church is also the family of God in the eternal, everlasting sense. • Mary - our Mother • Pope - our Holy Father • Priests - sacramental father • Saints - older brothers and sisters • Eucharist - family table

One Holy Family: From Adam to Noah • Satan doesn't directly lie, but uses the truth in a deceptive way • Satan emphasizes the negative in God's prohibition • Satan twists meaning of the word “die” to refer to “physical” death when God meant “spiritual” death

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Chapter Two - One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob In this chapter you'll learn: • How the scope of the covenants gradually expands from Adam through Noah to Abraham • The repercussions of repeated infidelity to the first (marital) covenant which continue to plague the Jews even today • How the three promises made to Abraham will be fulfilled in the remaining covenants • A thorough explanation of how the first 22 chapters of Genesis all fit together and are fulfilled with the coming of Jesus Christ

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob God's response to the Fall of Adam and Eve Word of God Genesis Chapter 3 - (14) The LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you above all cattle, and above all wild animals; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. (15) I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob The hinge on which the rest of salvation history will turn What are the two "seeds"? - The line of Satan is the line of Cain - The line of the woman is Seth Eve's firstborn is named Cain, who is the first Old Testament example of a "wicked firstborn" who succumbs to pride of place in the family. God will have to pass over the firstborn in order to get to the righteous son who will live out God's righteousness.

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Cain kills Abel due to envy. - Jealousy is trying to get for yourself the same advantage someone else has; - Envy is trying to destroy the other person's advantage

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob • Word of God • Genesis Chapter 4 – (23) Lamech said to his wives: "Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; you wives of Lamech, hearken to what I say: I have slain a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. (24) If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold." • (23) This is the first example of bigamy in the Bible • (24) Satan's family reaches its (a)completeness in Lamech.

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob • (25) And Adam knew his wife again, and she bore a son and called his name Seth, for she said, "God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, for Cain slew him." (26) To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time men began to call upon the name of the LORD. • (26) "to call upon the name" means worship.. • The Hebrew word for name: "Shem."

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob The lines of Seth and Cain before the Flood Word of God Genesis Chapter 6 (1) When men began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, (2) the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose. (3) Then the LORD said, "My spirit shall not abide in man for ever, for he is flesh, but his days shall be a hundred and twenty years." (4) The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men that were of old, the men of renown. (4) In Hebrew, these are "men of Shem" (who are trying to make a "name" for themselves)

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob • Who are the sons of God in Genesis 5? The Sethites • The men of the line of Seth were marrying with the women of the line of Cain. • The text also implies these marriages were polygamous. • Marital infidelity in the Old Testament is what always brings God's curse • God's judgment in this case is the flood.

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob The covenant with Noah Word of God Genesis Chapter 9 (8) Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, (9) "Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, (10) and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. (11) I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. (8-10) Covenant made with Noah and the family under his authority

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob • Genesis Chapter 9 (20) Noah was the first tiller of the soil. He planted a vineyard; (21) and he drank of the wine, and became drunk, and lay uncovered in his tent. (22) And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside. (23) Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it upon both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; their faces were turned away, and they did not see their father's nakedness. (24) When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, (25) he said, "Cursed be Canaan; a slave of slaves shall he be to his brothers."

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob • (22) "to look upon the nakedness" is a Hebrew idiom for incest • (25) Canaan is the son resulting from Ham's incestuous union with his own mother • This sort of incest was common as part of Canaanite religious worship and fertility cults. • See Leviticus 18:7..." You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother; she is your mother, you shall not uncover her nakedness." • Why did Ham do this? He was trying to overthrow his father. Throughout the Old Testament, if you want to topple your father, you sleep with his wife or his concubines.

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob The Land of Canaan • Shem was Noah's righteous first-born son. • The Promised Land that the Jews were supposed to enter was not supposed to be known as "Canaan." It was supposed to be Shem’s land. • That's why God gives the Jews the order to take it back from the Canaanites. • The sons of Ham are the nations that are the worst enemies of Israel: Egypt, Canaan, Assyria, Babylon, and the Philistines.

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob The Tower of Babel Word of God Genesis Chapter 11 (1) Now the whole earth had one language and few words. (2) And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. (3) And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. (4) Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." (4) "make a 'Shem'" in Hebrew - meaning they are repudiating the crown prince, Noah's firstborn Shem

One Holy Tribe: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob God's response to Babel: the "rescue mission" for the world Word of God Genesis Chapter 12 (1) Now the LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. (2) And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. (3) I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves." (2) "make your 'Shem' great" in Hebrew

Salvation History