SRELED 2 MIDTERM REVIEWER

Faith and Imagination

Faith

• complete trust or confidence in someone or something

• strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion

• based on spiritual apprehension

Imagination

• the act or power of forming a mental picture of something not present and especially of something one has not known or experienced.

• "the action of forming ideas or concepts not present to the senses."

• Imagination visualizes what faith knows to be true.

• In the business world they would call this as "casting a vision."

• Creatives call it "art." Art is always something imaginative, because it envisions and executes things which is hard to believe.

how imagination changes us

• when it is biblically developed, we see people and things the way God sees them.

• Christians are called to imagine what could be and what will be while living in the present

Imagination with faith

Values of applying our imagination to faith

1. Creative thinking - encourages lateral thinking, which helps people reach beyond what they see, have already experienced and beyond tradition, and value what they find in other traditions.

2. Imagination - helps us explore understanding of mystery'; it can take us further than 'knowledge' can.

3. Imagination - gift of God that has advanced human culture. Eccles.3 "God has set eternity in the human mind".

4. God is 'unknowable' but he is ' imaginable' not as an image, but through concepts and metaphors.

5. We can relate to God through our imaginations and the metaphors and symbols we use to convey our understanding of God's actions and qualities

6. Imagination is part of our intercession - believing in God's abilities & trusting what God could do.

7. Imagination - essential for effective evangelism and teaching: We need to be able to convey the abstract, unknowable' qualities of God and the values of faith in ways that bring them alive to others and enable them to engage their own imaginative faith in response.

Formation of the four gospels

Gospels - accounts of faith experiences of Jesus followers who witnessed his deeds and listen to his words

1. First Stage: The earthly Life and Teaching of Jesus

• It is what He taught us, from His Baptism in the Jordan River to His Public Ministry to His Passion, Death, Resurrection, Ascension to His Father in heaven, and sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost

• It is a summary of what He did while He lived on earth, starting from His incarnation and birth in Bethlehem to the proclamation of His Mission in Nazareth

2. Second Stage:Oral Tradition

• The disciples' faith in the Risen Christ moved them to an ardent proclamation of the Good News.

• The descent of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, the fiftieth day after His resurrection, empowered them to go out and fulfill the task of preaching that Jesus had given them.

• This preaching resulted in the formation of early communities from Jerusalem to Rome, Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia and out to the Mediterranean world.

3. Third Stage: The Written Gospels

• With the existing materials that were available at the time, such as the epistles of St. Paul, the Evangelists gradually composed the Gospels. The task was great: the preservation of the words and works of Jesus, especially His Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

• The Gospels faithfully and without error give us the life of Jesus, His words and works that reveal God's love and ultimate meaning of our experiences and uplift and give hope to the life of all Christians

God’s Revelation

God Comes to Meet Man

• By natural reason, man can know God with certainty, based on his works, But there is another order of knowledge, which man cannot possibly arrive at by his powers: the order of divine Revelation.

Revealing the Mystery

• Through an utterly free decision, God has revealed himself and given himself to man.

• God has fully revealed this plan by sending us his beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.

God Reveals His Plans of Loving Goodness

• By revealing Himself God wishes to make them capable of responding to him, of knowing him, and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity

• God communicates himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome by stages the supernatural Revelation that is to culminate in the person and mission of the incarnate word, Jesus Christ.

Stages of Revelation

1. First Revelation: In the Beginning, God makes Himself known

2. Second Revelation: The Covenant with Noah

3. Third Revelation: God Chooses Abraham

4. Fourth Revelation: God forms his people

5. Fifth Revelation: Christ Jesus-Mediator and Fullness of all Revelations

• Even if the revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit; it remains for Christian Faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of centuries

God’s Images

Man is God’s Glory

• Man is the glory of God in his creation as a work of art brings glory (praise and honor) to the artist so is with the creator.

Old Testament

• • Humans are made in Gods image (Genesis 1:26-27).

• This command also shows that human life is valued above animal life in God's eyes.

• God values human life and will not allow the taking of life to stand without the killer giving an account.

New Testament

• Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Man of dust

• speaks of the image of Adam we all carry, the natural body we are all familiar with, yet corrupted by sin and temporary.

• Every human being bears the image of Adam; our features, both external and internal follow the pattern God established when forming Adam out of the earth.

3 Images of God

1. God as a mother

2. God as a lover

3. God as a friend