Unit 2: God

inscrutability

God is always beyond our understanding; Augustine said "If you understand God, it is not God."

The Holy Trinity

God is a relationship; the foundational mystery of Christian faith in God; Father - Son - Holy Spirit

omniscience

God knows all things; not like a data-cruncher, but in the understanding of love and care; "to really know someone."

self sufficiency

God is sufficient and complete in Godself; lacking in nothing, needing nothing

creatio continua

God's ongoing and ever present bringing of the universe into being

mystery

Something that can be known, but is endlessly knowable and never exhausted

transcendence

God is unnameable, unknowable, beyond the world

immanence

God is accessible, present in the common world

paranoia

To be perpetually in a protective stance; habitual suspicion and mistrust

metanoia

To put on a new mind; to live in profound trust

Kataphatic

Is the way of "affirmation". God is revealed in the beauty of the created world.

Apophatic

Means "the way of negation"; a path towards God

God

What is the word we use in English to refer to the mystery at the center of all reality?

Relationship

Fr. Michael Himes says, "God is least wrongly understood as a ____________"

Duns Scotus task of theology

To keep God free and to keep humanity free

Argument from Causality

No conditional thing (like us) can cause itself. There cannot be an infinite number of conditional things. There must be a first, unconditioned cause to bring anything (and everything) into being.