Religion Midterm

What is the definition of the word Catholic?

Universal

What are the two root words in Greek from which we derive the word Catholic?

Kata (“about”) and holos (“whole”)

What is the definition of theology?

Theology means thinking deeply about the God we profess. Theos (“god”) and logos (“an account of”)

How is religious language different from normal referential language?

Religious language is self-implicating, whereas referential language is data-driven. Religious language is not just data-driven.

What are four challenges to engaging deeply with theology, and the four solutions?

Entertainment to participation, commodity to awe, isolation to community, and school to garden.

What is another way of talking about the term "belief"?

it is based in our experience of reality

What is the Magesterium?

The teaching authority of the Church

What do we mean by "culture"?

How God’s creative life is revealed in human culture

What is the Christian traditions answer to the question "Does life have meaning?”

Life is sacred

Human beings can refuse that life has meaning. Three possible reasons

Flattening, Cynicism, Despair

Flattening

Tendency to project stereotypes onto others

Cynicism

Tendency to look for the worst in everything

Despair

Certainty that God cannot be more creative than my existence; a form of pride

What are the three ways of seeing according to St. Bonaventure?

Eye of the flesh (the actual, literal eye), eye of the mind (looking more deeply into things and interpreting them according to Christ), and eye of the soul (God)

What is the haunting question Nicodemus asks Jesus in John 3 (a question of despair)?

How can one be born again if they are already old…

What does the Greek word anothein mean (2 meanings)?

Again and from above

How does this connect to this conversation in John 3?

Jesus was sent by God

What is the central line in this reading? (John 3:16)

God so loved the world that he sent his only son.

What do we mean when we say life is sacred? How does the Christian tradition classically define this?

It means that something is loved by God

What is Chloe Valadry's understanding of the meaning of the word "sacred?"

Life and our hopes, faiths, and belief in God are all inexhaustible; we do not need perfection to be sacred and God will grow with us.

What does it mean that human beings experience their lives as "given"?

As contingent, dependent we were made by God, For God, and in his image, we can always rely on him

What does Imago Dei mean?

“Image of God” and humans reflect God in how we are made

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, what does the understanding of our dependence on God do for us? How can it make us experience life differently?

“ with creation God does not abandon his creatures to themselves… at every moment, he upholds and sustains them in being, enables them to act and bring them to their final end”

What is the purpose of all spiritual disciplines? (Fr. Richard Rohr)

help us to open our eyes

What is a purpose of prayer (from our lecture)?

it reconnects us with inherent value and allows us to seek truth about reality.

What are the two primary word sets that humans can speak, according to Martin Buber?

I and Thou

Mystery

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

Apophatic

“The way of negation”

Kataphatic

“The way of affirmation”

Metanoia

To put on a new mind and live in profound trust

What is the opposite of metanoia?

Paranoia

Creatio Continua

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

What does it tell us about God's presence in our lives?

God is omnipresent or always present to all creation

What does it mean to say God is omniscient?

God knows all things in love and care

What does it mean to say that God is self-sufficient?

God is complete as-is and needs nothing, including us, to exist

How is God both immanent and transcendent? (Moses)

God is present & accessible but also unknowable and beyond the world. Think Moses when God talks to him but is also a mystery