[CS-FSLUG] OT: Potter, Halloween and Philipians 4:8

Tue Mar 7 19:47:22 CST 2006

On 3/7/06, Timothy Butler <tbutler at ofb.biz> wrote:
>
>         Well, I think everything points to God to some extent, it is just
> a
> question of precisely how corrupt the image of God is in a given
> work. The sacred/profane distinction isn't always useful.
>
> > I may be well-equipped to separate the gold from the dross
> > but I find efforts to generalize that Bible-like literature
> > is generically acceptable/Biblically inoffensive as recommended
> > reading theologically sloppy, at best.
>
>         I wouldn't say Bible-like literature is generally Biblically
> inoffensive or a good source of theology.
>
>         Ok, let me explain. Personally, I am of the camp that believes
> there
> is general revelation. I think everyone has at least some access to
> revelation from God, and that likely you will find this in societies
> never contacted by Christians. The World Religions all address
> certain concerns for good reason. However, this knowledge of God is
> *not* a saving knowledge -- I wouldn't ever tell people to close thy
> Bible and open thy Vedas. As a member of the Theology of Crisis
> school of thought, it is entirely the wrong to approach a knowledge
> of God from a method other than His special revelation to us in
> Christ Jesus.
>
>         However, I see the usefulness of studying other texts for various
> reasons -- apologetic, academic/critical, etc.
>
>

Tim, I find myself in line with your thinking here. You know ... the very
first chapter in the universal Catechism of the Catholic Church, published
in the mid 1990s, explores and develops such ideas in a most wonderful
manner.  Then, in the next chapter, the same ideas are linked to the gift of
God's revelation to man in the Sacred Scriptures and in Jesus Christ. It's
such cool stuff that I'll post Chapter 1 and just a bit of Chapter 2 in this
message, and leave you to explore the rest as your time and interests
allow.    :-)

http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c1.htm

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH
SECOND EDITION

CHAPTER ONE
MAN'S CAPACITY FOR GOD

I. THE DESIRE FOR GOD

27 The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created
by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God
will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:

The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to
communion with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man
as soon as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has
created him through love, and through love continues to hold him in
existence. He cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely
acknowledges that love and entrusts himself to his creator.(1)

28 In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given
expression to their quest for God in their religious beliefs and behavior:
in their prayers, sacrifices, rituals, meditations, and so forth. These
forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with
them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being:

>From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he
allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where
they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him
and find him - though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For "in him
we live and move and have our being."(2)

29 But this "intimate and vital bond of man to God" (GS 19 § 1) can be
forgotten, overlooked, or even explicitly rejected by man.(3) Such attitudes
can have different causes: revolt against evil in the world; religious
ignorance or indifference; the cares and riches of this world; the scandal
of bad example on the part of believers; currents of thought hostile to
religion; finally, that attitude of sinful man which makes him hide from God
out of fear and flee his call.(4)

30 "Let the hearts of those who seek the LORD rejoice."(5) Although man can
forget God or reject him, He never ceases to call every man to seek him, so
as to find life and happiness. But this search for God demands of man every
effort of intellect, a sound will, "an upright heart", as well as the
witness of others who teach him to seek God.

You are great, O Lord, and greatly to be praised: great is your power and
your wisdom is without measure. And man, so small a part of your creation,
wants to praise you: this man, though clothed with mortality and bearing the
evidence of sin and the proof that you withstand the proud. Despite
everything, man, though but a small a part of your creation, wants to praise
you. You yourself encourage him to delight in your praise, for you have made
us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.(6)

II. WAYS OF COMING TO KNOW GOD

31 Created in God's image and called to know and love him, the person who
seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also
called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the
natural sciences, but rather in the sense of "converging and convincing
arguments", which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These "ways"
of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the
physical world, and the human person.

32 The world: starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world's
order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the
end of the universe.

As St. Paul says of the Gentiles: For what can be known about God is plain
to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the
world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been
clearly perceived in the things that have been made.(7)

And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth,
question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending
and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these
realities. All respond: "See, we are beautiful." Their beauty is a
profession [confessio]. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them
if not the Beautiful One [Pulcher] who is not subject to change?(8)

33 The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of
moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his
longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about
God's existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The
soul, the "seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely
material",(9) can have its origin only in God.

34 The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither
their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate
in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different
ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first
cause and final end of all things, a reality "that everyone calls God".(10)

35 Man's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the
existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real
intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him
the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of
God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see
that faith is not opposed to reason.

III. THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD ACCORDING TO THE CHURCH

36 "Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first
principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the
created world by the natural light of human reason."(11) Without this
capacity, man would not be able to welcome God's revelation. Man has this
capacity because he is created "in the image of God".(12)

37 In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man
experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason
alone:

Though human reason is, strictly speaking, truly capable by its own natural
power and light of attaining to a true and certain knowledge of the one
personal God, who watches over and controls the world by his providence, and
of the natural law written in our hearts by the Creator; yet there are many
obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this
inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and
man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and, if they are
translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender
and abnegation. The human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of
such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but
also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So
it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what
they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful.(13)

38 This is why man stands in need of being enlightened by God's revelation,
not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also "about
those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the
grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human
race, they can be known by all men with ease, with firm certainty and with
no admixture of error". (14)

IV. HOW CAN WE SPEAK ABOUT GOD?

39 In defending the ability of human reason to know God, the Church is
expressing her confidence in the possibility of speaking about him to all
men and with all men, and therefore of dialogue with other religions, with
philosophy and science, as well as with unbelievers and atheists.

40 Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally
so. We can name God only by taking creatures as our starting point, and in
accordance with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking.

41 All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man,
created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of
creatures - their truth, their goodness, their beauty all reflect the
infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his
creatures" perfections as our starting point, "for from the greatness and
beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their
Creator".15

42 God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our
language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if
we are not to confuse our image of God--"the inexpressible, the
incomprehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable"--with our human
representations.16 Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God.

43 Admittedly, in speaking about God like this, our language is using human
modes of expression; nevertheless it really does attain to God himself,
though unable to express him in his infinite simplicity. Likewise, we must
recall that "between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed
without implying an even greater dissimilitude";(17) and that "concerning
God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other
beings stand in relation to him."(18)

CHAPTER TWO
GOD COMES TO MEET MAN

50 By natural reason man can know God with certainty, on the basis of his
works. But there is another order of knowledge, which man cannot possibly
arrive at by his own powers: the order of divine Revelation.(1) Through an
utterly free decision, God has revealed himself and given himself to man.
This he does by revealing the mystery, his plan of loving goodness, formed
from all eternity in Christ, for the benefit of all men. God has fully
revealed this plan by sending us his beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and
the Holy Spirit.

ARTICLE 1
THE REVELATION OF GOD

I. GOD REVEALS HIS "PLAN OF LOVING GOODNESS"

51 "It pleased God, in his goodness and wisdom, to reveal himself and to
make known the mystery of his will. His will was that men should have access
to the Father, through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and
thus become sharers in the divine nature."(2)

52 God, who "dwells in unapproachable light", wants to communicate his own
divine life to the men he freely created, in order to adopt them as his sons
in his only-begotten Son.(3) By revealing himself God wishes to make them
capable of responding to him, and of knowing him and of loving him far
beyond their own natural capacity.

53 The divine plan of Revelation is realized simultaneously "by deeds and
words which are intrinsically bound up with each other"(4) and shed light on
each another. It involves a specific divine pedagogy: 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.

St. Irenaeus of Lyons repeatedly speaks of this divine pedagogy using the
image of God and man becoming accustomed to one another: The Word of God
dwelt in man and became the Son of man in order to accustom man to perceive
God and to accustom God to dwell in man, according to the Father's
pleasure.(5)

Chapter 1 Notes ::

1 Vatican Council II, GS 19 § 1.
2 Acts 17:26-28.
3 GS 19 § 1.
4 Cf. GS 19-21; Mt 13:22; Gen 3:8-10; Jon 1:3.
5 Ps 105:3.
6 St. Augustine, Conf. 1,1,1:PL 32,659-661.
7 Rom 1:19-20; cf. Acts 14:15,17; 17:27-28; Wis 13:1-9.
8 St. Augustine, Sermo 241, 2:PL 38,1134.
9 GS 18 § 1; cf. 14 § 2.
10 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I,2,3.
11 Vatican Council I, Dei Filius 2:DS 3004; cf. 3026; Vatican Council II,
Dei Verbum 6.
12 Cf. Gen 1:27.
13 Pius XII, Humani generis, 561:DS 3875.
14 Pius XII, Humani generis, 561:DS 3876; cf. Dei Filius 2:DS 3005; DV 6;
St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I,1,1.
15 Wis 13:5.
16 Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Anaphora.
17 Lateran Council IV:DS 806.
18 St. Thomas Aquinas, SCG I,30.

Chapter 2 Notes ::

1 Cf. Dei Filius:DS 3015.
2 DV 2; cf. Eph 1:9; 2:18; 2 Pt 1:4.
3 1 Tim 6:16, cf. Eph 1:4-5.
4 DV 2.
5 St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 3,20,2:PG 7/1,944; cf. 3,17,1; 4,12,4; 4,21,3

In Christ,

Michael Bradley, Jr.

--
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life . . ." (John 14:6)

My home on the Net ::
   http://www.michaelsbradleyjr.net/

IC XC NIKA
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