A Life in Christ Test 2
Gentile- Someone of non-Jewish ethnicity
Messiah- The Hebrew word for "anointed one" and the title given to the savior God promised to the people of Israel
Father of the Church- The bishops and teachers of the early church
Pagan- A person who practices polytheism, or the worship of many gods
Creed- A brief summary or profession of our Christian Faith, such as the Nicene Creed and the Apostles' Creed.
Scholasticism- An intellectual method originating in Medieval Europe that sought to intergrade classical philosophy and Christion thought in order to understand and explain revealed truths
Five proofs for the existence of God- Arguments developed by St. Thomas Aquinas that use human reason and observation of the created world to conclude that God exists. Also called the "five ways"
Ecumenical Council- A meeting of all the world's bishops together in union with the pope
Enlightenment- A philosophical movement in eighteenth-century Europe that denied the value of faith and maintained that reason a love leads us to truth and hold potential to resolve the problem of evil
Relativism- A dangerous philosophy that says moral principles are a matter of individual preference based on personal experience, socioeconomic status, education, and particular culture, rather than based on absolute objective moral truths
Incarnation- The ultimate example of God coming to us, making himself totally known to us, and asking us to join him in happiness
Genesis 3:15- Protoevangelium - First good news, talks about Eve and Mary
God accepts Abel’s offering - gave his best
Cain is envious - murder (Gen 4:9)
3rd son - Seth - “Son of the promise”
St. Paul lore
St. Francis lore
God has revealed himself to us through the created order
Natural revelation is available to everyone
St. Paul and the early church fathers appealed to knowledge of God through creation as means of telling people about God
St. Thomas summarized 5 arguments for the existence of God that are rooted in human reason and what can be observed in the world around us.
The Catholic Church teaches that God can be known with certainty by the light of human reason by means of created things.
The first way God reveled himself to us through the created world.
St. Francis is known for loving creation
Creation is God’s handiwork and observing it tells us about God
Nature is a form of God’s self-expression
God is knowledgeable through a created world
Even non-Christians understand natural revelation
The evidence of creation is not to be worshipped, rather it is evidence of God and leads us to him
Natural revelation took a new meaning in the New Testament as the apostles preached to the Gentiles
5 Proofs
Argument from motion
Argument from causation
Argument from contingency
Argument from degrees of perfection
Argument from design
God prepared Israel to receive Jesus by promising them the Messiah
God can be known in his creation, so St. Paul could appeal to it as he preached to Athens
Fathers of the church appealed to natural revelation in their discussions with pagans
Crafted things don’t show us all beauty, they make us turn to the source, God
St. Thomas Aquinas explains truth through reason
His method was called Scholasticism
He shows human reason in the 5 proofs
Whatever is in motion was put in motion by another. The universe is in motion. Therefore the universe must have been put in motion by another.
Everything that began to exist was caused by another. The world began to exist. Therefore the world was caused or exist by something else.
The world does not depend on humans.
All created things have various degrees of perfection. In order to have degrees of perfection, a perfect being must exist
Anything that shows order and intricacy either exists because
Someone designed it
Chance