Finding God & Being Found by God

Document #: TX001070

Notes August 24, 2015

Notes / Background

• Where you see “Notes” at the top of the slide – write it in your Notes.

• Where you see “Background” at the top of the slide – you do not need to write it down.

Background

• Where We’ve Been:• What is the Bible• How the Bible Came to Be• Introduction to the Timeline

Background

• Where We Are Headed:• The Story of Salvation History

Background – Where We Are Now

• How Do We Know About God?• Natural Revelation and the 5

Proofs for the Existence of God

Notes: The Thirst and Desire for God

• Within all people there is a longing for God.

• That longing itself is from God, who desires and initiates a relationship with each person.

• Only in God can lasting joy and peace be found in this life and in the next.

Background: God Desires…

• God constantly calls us to relationship with him.

• We are invited into communion with God in order to experience the grace of his saving love.

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“We don’t ‘find’ God, rather we find God finding us.”

– Fr. Larry Gillick, SJ

1. What does this quotation mean?

2. How does God find us?

Background: Finding God or Being Found by God?

Quotation is from a free, downloadable audio retreat at onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/AudioRetreat/AudioRetreats.html.

Notes: God reveals himself in many ways1. Natural Revelation

Natural Revelation is attested to in Sacred Scripture

-Old Testament references, including Genesis and Wisdom

-St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Notes: Natural Revelation Continued

-Patristic Testimony Patristic = Those who studied and

taught about God for the past 2,000 years in the Church

Scholastic Theology’s Arguments for the Existence of God

Saint Thomas Aquinas and the 5 Proofs for the Existence of God

Theology Notes – August 28th, 2015

Where you see “Notes” at the top of the slide – write it in

your Notes.

Where you see “Background” at the top of the slide – you do

not need to write it down.

Notes: God Reveals Himself to Us

Revelation (from Latin) “to unveil or disclose”

Thought & Reason

Creation

The Bible

Love

Search for Happiness & Meaning

Notes: God Reveals Himself To Us

© Bragin Alexey/Shutterstock.com 1. How have you experienced God?Briefly describe.

2. Are any of these means of revelationunfamiliar to you?

3. Why do you think these are unfamiliar to you?

Background: Encountering God in the Search for Happiness and Meaning

How do you find God finding you?

Songs, art, movies, literature, and poetry often contain themes of human recognition that there is more to life than what is experienced through the five senses only.

•Notes –

•God is our first origin and our ultimate goal.

•God is our beginning and our destiny.

•Thus, happiness is found only in a life fully committed to God.

Notes - Encountering God in the Bible

How do you find God finding you?

Notes - The Holy Spirit inspired the Bible’s human authors in writing what God wanted to reveal for our salvation.

© Margaret M Stewart /Shutterstock.com

Notes - Encountering God Through Love

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) proposed four “objects” that we should love:

•God deserves love above all created things.

•Love of neighbor is inseparable from love of God.

•Self-love knows God is imprinted on our hearts.

•Our body is one of God’s masterpieces.

How do you find God finding you?

• How can someone not believe in God when he or she sees this or hears that or looks here?

• Church Fathers saw God through “natural revelation” with humanity as the summit.

Background - Encountering God in Creation

How do you find God finding you?

According to Saint Augustine, nothing created by God is insignificant, not even the tiniest insect.

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How do you find God finding you?

• During the Middle Ages, especially during the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, new ways of proving the existence of God emerged.

• Great thinkers held that humans could use their minds and logically develop “converging and convincing arguments” (CCC, no. 31) to attain truth and certainty about God and the human experience. ® Monika Wisniewska/Shutterstock.com

Background - Encountering God Through Thought and Reason

Background - Saint Anselm of Canterbury’s Proof for the Existence of God

• God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought.”

• It is greater to exist in reality than to exist merely in the mind.

• Then God must exist in reality, not in mind and understanding only.

Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109)

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Review/Background - Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Five Proofs

Saint Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274)

• First Mover – everything moves in the universe; something started the motion. The First Mover is God.

• Causality – everything is caused by something else, but there must be an Ultimate or First Cause. This First Cause is God.

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Review / Background - Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Five Proofs for Existence of God (cont.)

• Contingency – humans cannot exist without a Necessary Being who creates all but is not created. This Necessary Being is God.

• Perfection – we know perfection because there is one all-perfect being, God. All-perfect God sets the infinite standards for wisdom and truth.

• Intelligent Being – there is a remarkable order to all of creation. Because of this order, an intelligent designer must be behind the universe. This Designer is God.

With which of these do you most identify?

Background - The Church Defends the Truth That God Can Be Known Through Natural Revelation

Vatican I Council said we can grasp with certainty the existence of God through human reason. In Dei Filius (1870): When people listen “to the message of creation and to the voice of conscience, [they] can arrive at certainty about the existence of God” (CCC, no. 46).

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Background – Two Great Thinkers on Natural Revelation

Convergence of Probabilities: Many “hints” point to the existence of God. When combined, they produce a powerful argument for God.

With which of these do you most identify?

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John Henry Cardinal Newman(1801–1890)

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905-1988)

Beauty as revealing God: “Beauty is the word that shall be our first.”

On Beauty in the Natural World and in the Human Person -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LOFX87yLYM

Notes - Jesus Christ is God’s Perfect Revelation• Because God wants a deep

relationship with us, the Word became flesh in the person of Jesus the Christ.

• Through Jesus Christ, God has “provided the definitive, superabundant answer to the questions that man asks himself about the meaning and purpose of his life” (CCC, no. 68). From what you know

about Jesus, what do you know about God?

Incarnation (from Latin) “to become flesh”

Notes –

Jesus Christ, the first and the last, the definitive Word of Revelation, the one to whom all Scripture bears witness, is God’s only Son.

Notes

The Transmission of Divine Revelation

A. Apostolic Tradition – What the Apostles and the Bishops who were appointed after them have taught

B. The relationship between Tradition and Scripture – the Church develops in Tradition what is taught in the Bible

C. The Deposit of Faith and the role of the Church – the Church passes on what Jesus taught and lived

Review / Background - God Reveals Himself

The Transmission of Divine Revelation is always in process.

Thought & Reason

Creation

The Bible

Love

Search for Happiness & Meaning