Read and write notes over the following passages from the Catechism

1
Read and write notes over the following passages
from the Catechism

• 31
• 35
• 198-200
• 202
• 206
• 213
• 268-274

Then, write notes on Ch. 4 in the Handbook -
Attributes of God (name and description) - Is
God a He? When finished with both, bring them
up to me to look over, then correct your quiz.
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Attributes of God

• Bring Catechisms Tomorrow!

3

• Our Faith and Reason Journey

4
God Exists Absolutely

• God is.
• God is
• All theology consists in finding out what is
  meant by the words He Is. Frank Sheed
• God is the source of being, or existence, for all
  things.
• Looking at the universe we see that in every
  creature there is a distinction between its
  essence and its existence that there is a
  difference between what things are and the fact
  that things are.
• Essencewhat things are
• Existencethat things are (has being)
• For God, existence/being must be inseparable from
  what he is it must belong to him by nature.
• More radically put God must be identical with
  the fullness of being. That is what we mean by
  saying God exists absolutely.

5
God is Mystery 206If you understood him, it
would not be God. St. Augustine
Refusal of a name Hidden Ineffable Infinite Revealed Knowable Close to men
6
God is Infinite

• Latin finis meaning an end or boundary or limit.
• God cannot end, have a boundary, be limited, or
  be finite. In other words, God must be utterly
  limitless, that is, infinite.
• However, since we are finite beings we often get
  tripped up on questions about God that really
  only have to do with finite beings. (age, size,
  place, time, hair color, etc.)

7
God is One

• If God is infinite, can there be many Gods?
  Obviously not. We have already seen that God
  must exist without limit.
• But if he is without limit, there cannot be more
  than one God. For if there were, there would
  have to be some difference between them, and this
  would involve nonbeing (part that is and part
  that is not God) the one could not be what or
  where the other was.
• Trinity?

8
God is Spiritual

• By saying God is spiritual, we mean that God is
  not a material being. To be a material being is
  to be a body of some kind. But a body is always
  limited and subject to change.
• To be subject to change in this way is not to be
  what one will become. And therefore to be subject
  to change involves nonbeing.
• Since God is spiritual he is also unchangeable or
  immutable.

9
God is Eternal

• Since God is not material, he is not spatially
  limited.
• God cannot be subject to time. For God is the
  Creator of everything that changes.
• Eternity does not mean everlasting time but is
  not time at all.

10
God is Transcendent and Immanent

• God cannot be a part of the universe. If he
  were, he would be limited by other parts of it.
• God must be other than his creation. This is
  what we mean by the transcendence of God.
• At the same time God must exist in all things.
  They cannot be set against him, for then he would
  be limited by them. This is what we mean by the
  immanence of God.

11
Not Pantheism or Deism

• Pantheism identifies God with material nature
  (pure immanence)
• Deism - makes God remote from creation, as if he
  could wind it up and let it run on its own.
  Watchmaker Analogy used as a teleological proof
  (argument from design) but then went a step
  further. (pure transcendence)
• Note how this affirmation of Gods transcendence
  and immanence avoids the one-sided pitfalls of
  both pantheism and deism.
• In Christianity, God gets his hands dirty.

12

• Our Faith and Reason Journey

13
God is Intelligent

• See the universe and all that has been created.
  It has an intelligible structure.
• Likewise, what is created intelligibly must be
  created by a being that is intelligent.
• Not just that the universe is smart but that it
  shows thought and can be comprehended by us.

14
God is Omniscient and Omnipotent

• To say that God is omniscient (all-knowing) and
  omnipotent (all-powerful/almighty) means that
  there can be no real barriers to Gods knowing
  and acting.
• Omniscient the knowledge of all that God is and
  does (no contradictions in his nature)
• Omnipotent the ability to do anything (except to
  contradict ones nature, but a contradiction is a
  nothing so it reverts back to anything)
• Nothing is impossible to God.

15

• Is God a He?
• Male?
• Masculine pronouns good or bad?
• Authority
• History
• Safeguards transcendence, illusion of saving
  ourselves
• No feminine attributes?

16
God is Good/Love

• Faith
• 214 God, He who is, revealed himself to Israel
  as the one abounding in steadfast love and
  faithfulness.
• 218 In the course of its history, Israel was
  able to discover that God had only one reason to
  reveal himself to them, a single motive for
  choosing them from among all peoples as his
  special possession his sheer gratuitous love.
  And thanks to the prophets Israel understood that
  it was again out of love that God never stopped
  saving them and pardoning their unfaithfulness
  and sins.
• The kind of love revealed in Jesus is far
  greater than what we could hope to know from
  philosophy. That is precisely why Jesus revealed
  the Father to us. If we could learn all we need
  to know about God from philosophy, we would have
  no need of divine revelation. p. 34 Handbook

17
God is Good/Love

• Reason
• We recognize good and evil.
• A thing is good of its kind (and that
  qualification is important) if it succeeds in
  being that kind of thing to the fullest.
• It is bad if it fails.
• God is the source of all being. Therefore God
  cannot be evil in any way, for whether an evil is
  moral or physical, it is properly understood in
  terms of what should be there but is not.
• Now there can be no question of failure on the
  part of the Creator God is to the fullest. And
  insofar as goodness is one with perfect being
  God is the perfect good.
• PROBLEM OF EVIL.