8th Grade Theology Unit 2 Chapter 2 GOD

Stories and language about God are not meant to be looked at but looked through. To make statements about God is also to speak about being human. To speak of one implicates the other.

God is not an object. God is not a character in the stories. God is the plot.

I believe  in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is visible and invisible.

Five themes: Existence of God God is One Creation Trinity Grace

Each theme has an implication: Existence of God – Sacredness of life God is One – Reality is unified: radical interconnectedness Creation – God needs images Trinity – God as relationship Grace – Love is the pattern of life

Theme 1 Existence of God

To make the statement: God exists is not a simple statement about the reality of some object. It is not the same as saying “a teapot exists.” The statement God exists “is a fundamental posture toward everything else that exists… It suggests that the world we see and touch points to a power beyond our own and outside our control…” (Luke Timothy Johnson, Creed, p. 67)

St. Thomas Aquinas saw God as sheer being. God’s very essence is to be existence, to be the ocean of life itself.

The affirmation of the existence of God is the affirmation that there is something that gives existence to everything. The essence of this mystery is to bring things into being.

The other side of this affirmation is the statement that I am not God. This is not a trivial acknowledgement of lack of superpowers, but a spiritual stance toward creation, and toward myself. It is a stance against idolatry, against the idea that somehow the only thing I am responsible to is myself, that the only thing that is real is my life.

Idolatry is granting ultimate importance to something else beyond the ultimate. In our longing to experience ultimate meaning, we give that place to other things – possessions, power, greed.

The Biblical critique of idols is that they only take life – they cannot give it. Idols are things you sacrifice yourself to – but they cannot give you anything back. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knEIM16NuPg

Theme 2 God is One.

We take for granted monotheism. Historically, the revelation of Yahweh to Abraham took place in the context of polytheism.

Polytheism actually seems to create a terrifying world. In practice, it is a universe that is at war, with many gods, or powers, battling for dominance.

To say there is one God, and that God is one, is to affirm the unity of existence. It is this idea that promotes human equality. Acts of the Apostles 10: 34-35 “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.”

The dogma that God is one - called radical monotheism - Reveals to us a radical interconnectedness: One source One destiny We are all related, connected, equal.

This is a very different stance Than that of warring parties – my God versus your God. God is One. There is no my God and your God. There is only God.

Theme 3 God as Creator

Think of being Adam or Eve And waking up in the garden. Looking all around you, you see “every kind of plant and tree, every kind of bird and cattle and beast…”

Why does God create? Why is there life? And why is it the way it is?

Richard Rohr, in his series Great Themes of Scripture, has a segment called God needs images. The energy of the mystery toward uniqueness, toward complexity, toward multiplicity.

Because God created all things, all things are capable of revealing God. The creation story is not a tale about how things came to be in the past, but about how things are now.

All things reveal the sacred by their existence. The mussel and the mountain equally reveal the mystery.

Our life is given. To call God creator is to experience this radical given-ness of things.

Imago Dei Image of God The experience that human beings are reflections of the divine. In the human experience we will see the divine face. This is a remarkable statement about human life.

Theme 4 God is Trinity

The Trinity is not a mathematical formula. It is not some secret confusing code about God, separate from our lives and existence.

The understanding of the Trinity comes out of the life and experience of Jesus. Out of his experience with the ultimate mystery, he calls it “Abba.” To Jesus, the mystery that completely named him was a loving, fathering energy.

For Jesus’ followers, they experienced the full presence of God when they were with him. After the resurrection, they still had this experience, even though he was not fully present with them. Somehow – the relationship between Jesus and the Father was still available. They were still part of it. It was this experience that they called God’s Spirit – or the Holy Spirit.

We often view the dogma of the Holy Trinity as one among many. But if you look at the creed, it is the CENTRAL doctrine. The creed is shaped in Trinitarian terms. Even the word Christian is a Trinitarian word. (Christos = Messiah = Anointed)

St. Augustine used this language for the Trinity: Lover, beloved, and love. The Father is pure love, pure self gift. The Son is sheer acceptance of love, total willingness to be loved. The Spirit is the love between them.

Life is also revealed as utterly relational. There is nothing that exists independently. In physics, all particles exert pull and push on each other. The energy is the space between them.

The idea of being independent is illusion. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh8uZUzuRhk

Theme 5 Grace

Few words have had more importance in Christian theology as the word grace. Himes defines grace in this way: the love of God outside the Trinity.

Theologians have been interested for centuries on how God interacts in our lives. If God is present everywhere (omnipresent) in all things, how can anything be particularly graceful? How can certain things be sacred – like sacred places – or confer grace – like sacraments?

The experience of grace may be best thought of as a revelation in a moment of what is present everywhere. We have sacraments because we need to remember . We need to encounter it.