- Belief in God is the first and most important aspect of Faith.
- We know God from both Faith but also from reason.
- Faith tells us more about God than reason can determine.
- What we know from reason: a. God exists. The book goes into some depth on this. It is not important to remember how we know that God exists. It is important to understand that we can do so. Each student should pick one way that particularly resonates with him/her and try to remember that one. a. God must be intelligent. In class we went further, God must be all knowing (omniscient). a. God must be very powerful. In class we went further, God must be all powerful (omnipotent). a. God is outside of time. As a side note, his is compatible with what science tells us of the "Big Bang" theory. a. God is unchanging. a. God is good. a. In class we talked about one more: God is one.
What we know from Revelation (Faith): a. God is a Trinity of three Persons in that one God. a. God desires relationship with us. a. God gave us a Church with the gifts of authority and infallibility to preserve and spread His Revelation. - The authority of the Bible depends on the authority granted to the Church. - From the previous Section, we know this authority is called "Magisterium".
a\. God is both just and merciful. a\. God is love. - In class we discussed how this belief makes us very different from Islam, which believes that God's fundamental nature is that of Lord. - This revelation unifies the two data points, that God is Trinity (from Faith) with God is one (from both Faith and reason). a\. God is transcendent, a big word that means that no matter how we describe God, He is always more and greater than our description. a\. God has a name, and the nature of that name.- Alternatives to God a. agnostics believe that nothing can be known about God, including whether or not God exists. This is contradicted by divine revelation - God has interacted with us. a. atheists believe that God does not exist. Not only does divine revelation contradict this, but even if you reject that revelation, this is ultimately contradictory to human reason. a. polytheists believe in multiple Gods. This contradicts the fact that God must be one. a. pantheists equate God with all of creation. "God is everything and everything is God." This also contradicts human reason. a. deists differ from agnostics in that they believe that we can know that God exists. However, the deist believes that God is utterly remote from and disinterested in creation, and thus cannot be known.
