RELIGION FAITH THEOLOGY

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RELIGION FAITH - THEOLOGY

• Human Experience
• finitude
• transcendence
• Religious Response
• cultural tradition
• phenomenology
• dimensions
• Truth Claims
• epistemological
• existential

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Augustineof Hippo

• But what was it that delighted me save to love
  and to be loved? Still I did not keep the
  moderate way of the love of mind to mind -- the
  bright path of friendship. Instead, the mists of
  passion steamed up out of the puddly
  concupiscence of the flesh, and the hot
  imagination of puberty, and they so obscured and
  overcast my heart that I was unable to
  distinguish pure affection from unholy desire.
  ...
• I had been deafened by the clanking of the chains
  of my mortality, the punishment for my soul's
  pride, and I wandered farther from thee, and thou
  didst permit me to do so ... and yet thou didst
  hold thy peace, O my tardy Joy! Thou didst still
  hold thy peace, and I wandered still farther from
  thee into more and yet more barren fields of
  sorrow, in proud dejection and restless
  lassitude.

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Karl Rahner

• Have we ever kept silent, despite the urge to
  defend ourselves, when we were being unfairly
  treated?
• Have we ever made a sacrifice without receiving
  any thanks or acknowledgment, without even
  feeling any inward satisfaction?
• Were we ever good to someone without expecting a
  trace of gratitude and without the comfortable
  feeling of having been "unselfish"?
• If we can find such experiences in our life, then
  we have had that very experience of the Spirit
  which we are after here -- the experience of the
  Eternal, the experience that the Spirit is
  something more than and different from a part of
  this world, the experience that happiness in this
  world is not the whole point of existence, the
  experience of trust as we sink into darkness, the
  experience of a faith for which this world
  provides no reason.

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The Religious Impulse

• ... all culture is an effort to ponder the
  mystery of the world and in particular of the
  human person it is a way of giving expression to
  the transcendent dimension of human life. The
  heart of every culture is its approach to the
  greatest mystery the mystery of God.

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A Religious Tradition

• I pledge allegiance to the flag of the USA, and
  to the republic for which it stands, one nation
  under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice
  for all.

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Phenomenology of Religion

• Religion (manifestation)
• ultimate concern
• historical expression in time/space

• Faith (acceptance)
• construct of ideas
• personally valuable

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KARL MARX (1844)

• Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,
  the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of
  soulless conditions. It is the opium of the
  people.

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Truth Claims

• Epistemological (habit of the mind)
• cogent, coherent, consistent
• demonstrable gt opinion
• Existential (habit of the heart)
• reflection, assent, practice
• valuable gt theory

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Pope John Paul II

• If the future is uncertain, one certitude
  remains in our minds. This future will be what
  people make of it, with their responsible
  freedom, sustained by the grace of God. ... We
  can seem hesitant today, at times hindered by our
  own past, anxious about our future, but it is
  also true that a new person is emerging with a
  new stature on the world scene. Our profound
  aspiration is to affirm ourselves in liberty, to
  move forward with responsibility, to act on
  behalf of solidarity. We are at this crossroads
  of history in search of hope .... Its secret is
  Love. This is the primordial need of every human
  culture.