GOD’S SELF REVELATION

Fr. Lukasz Misko, O.P.UW Newman RCIA Class

October 16, 2012

It is especially crucial to clarify our definitions of FAITH and REASON because these terms can be used vaguely.

Defining removes vagueness.

FAITH• The act of faith = believing.• The object of faith = what is

believed.• Things that we believe are expressed

in PROPOSITIONS.• However, they are NOT the ultimate

objects of faith: God is the real existing object of faith.

A finger is good for pointing to the moon, but woe to him who mistakes the finger for the moon.

Zen saying

• Without a live relationship to the living God, propositions are pointless, for their point is to point beyond themselves to God.

• But without propositions, we cannot know or tell others what God we believe in and what we believe about God.

FAITH

• The act of faith is more than merely an act of belief. We believe many things:

THE ACT OF FAITH

• But we are not willing to die for these beliefs, nor can we live them every moment.

• Religious faith is something to die for and something to live every moment. It is much more than belief, and much stronger, though belief is one of its parts or aspects.

Four aspects of religious faithfrom less to more important / interior:

• Emotional faith;• Intellectual faith;• Volitional faith;• Heart faith.

• Emotional faith is feeling assurance or trust or confidence in a person. This includes hope and peace.

• Intellectual faith is belief. Stronger than emotional faith in that it is more stable and unchanging, like an anchor. My mind can believe while my feelings are shaken.

• The old Baltimore Catechism: “the act of the intellect, prompted by the will, by which we believe everything God has revealed on the grounds of the authority of the One who revealed it”.

• Volitional faith is an act of the will, a commitment to obey God’s will. This faith is faithfulness, or fidelity. It manifests itself in behavior, that is, in good works.

• Just as a hope deeper than a wish is central to emotional faith, and a belief deeper than an opinion is central to intellectual faith, so a love deeper than a feeling is central to volitional faith.

• The root of this faith is the “heart”.

The intellect is the soul’s navigator, but the will is its

captain.

intellect will feelings

The soul is an Enterprise

• The will can command the intellect to think, but the intellect cannot command the will to will – it can only inform it, as a navigator informs the captain.

• Yet the will cannot simply make you believe. It can’t force the intellect to believe what appears to it to be false or to disbelieve what seems to it to be true.

• Belief is what happens when you decide to be honest and put your mind in the service of the truth.

Faith begins in that obscure mysterious center of our being that Scripture calls the “heart”.

• “Heart” doesn’t mean feeling or sentiment or emotion but the absolute center of the soul, as the physical heart is at the center of the body.

• The heart is where the Holy Spirit works in us. This is not specifiable as a kind of interior object, as emotions, intellect and will are, because it is the very self, the I, the subject.

• “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov 4:23)

• With the heart we choose our “fundamental option” of yes or no to God and thereby determine our eternal identity and destiny.

REASON:

The OBJECT of reason means all that reason

can know: all the truths that can be: (a) understood by reason

(without faith in divine revelation), (b) discovered by reason to be true

and (c) proved logically, without any

premises assumed by faith in divine revelation.

We must distinguish the subjective, PERSONAL act of reason from

the OBJECT of reason.

REASON:The ACT of reason means all the

subjective, personal acts of the mind by which we:

(a) understand, (b) discover or

(c) prove any truth.Classically these “acts of mind” are

called:(a) simple apprehension,

(b) judgment and (c) reasoning.

Object and acts of reason:

UNDERSTANDING DISCOVERING PROVING

By reason alone and not part of revelation

What a star is made of That Pluto exists The Pythagorean

theorem

By reason and by faith in divine revelation

Why the universe is so well ordered

The historical existence of Jesus

That the soul does not die

Not by reason, only by faith in divine revelation

God’s plan to save us

How much God loves us God is a Trinity

The Relation between the Objects of Faith and Reason:

F R

F R

NO

NO

F = R

F R

F R

NO

NO

YES

Reason is relative to truth; it is a way of knowing truth: understanding

it, discovering it or proving it. Faith is also relative to truth; it is a way of

discovering truth. No human being ever existed without some faith. We all know most of what we know by faith,

that is, by belief in what others – parents, teachers, friends, writers,

society – tell us.

Outside religion as well as inside it, faith AND reason are

roads to truth.

God Is the Teacher in Both Faith and Reason

• Justin Martyr, First Apology: • A man seeks the truth by

the unaided effort of reason, and he is disappointed.

• It is offered him by faith, and he accepts.

• And, having accepted, he finds that is satisfies his reason.

But what about all those intellectually brilliant unbelievers?

• If Christianity is so reasonable, why did Celsus, Plotinus, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe, Melville, Jefferson, Shaw, Russell, Franklin, Satre, Camus, Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, Skinner, Dawkins ALL REJECT IT?

• Well, Christianity IS reasonable, but it is not obvious. It is more like E=mc² than like 2+2=4.

• If Christianity is so IRRATIONAL, why have so many brilliant minds accepted it? The assortment of unbelievers mentioned above can be easily overcome by Paul, John, Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm, Bonventura, Scotus, Luther, Calvin, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Berkeley, Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Newman, Lincoln, Pasteur, Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, Dante, Chesterton, Lewis, Solzhenitsyn, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Tolkien, da Vinci, Michelangelo, T.S. Eliot, Dickens, Milton, Spenser, Bach…

There are many rational arguments for the existence of God… But there’s also THAT

desire!

• Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for these desires exists. A baby feels hunger, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire; well, there is such a thing as sex…

• If I find in myself a desire that no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for ANOTHER WORLD (C.S. Lewis).

• Aquinas: “the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. Whereas man’s whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth.

• Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation”.

GOD COMES TO MEET MAN

THE STAGES OF REVELATION

God, who created the world, invited our first parents to intimate communion with himself and clothed them with

resplendent grace and justice.

This revelation was not broken off by our first parents’ sin. After the fall, God buoyed

them up with the hope of salvation, by promising redemption; and he has

never ceased to show his solicitude for the human race. For he wishes to give eternal

life to all those who seek salvation by patience in well-doing.

The Covenant with Noah

• Toward humanity divided by sin of pride God’s divine economy extends the promise of universal salvation.

• The Bible venerates several great figures among the Gentiles: Abel the just, the king-priest Melchizedek, and the upright Noah, Daniel, and Job.

God chooses Abraham• In order to gather together

scattered humanity, God calls Abram from his country and makes him Abraham, that is, “the father of a multitude of nations”. “In you all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”

• His descendants were made the trustees of the promise, called to prepare for the coming of the Messiah and gathering the children of God into one family.

God forms his people Israel

• Patriarchs – Egypt – Exodus – Sinai – Kings, Priests, Prophets.

• Expectation of the new, everlasting Covenant intended for all, to be written on people’s hearts.

• Holy women: Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Judith, Esther, MARY!

Christ Jesus:Mediator and Fullness of All

Revelation• “In many and various ways

God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son” (Heb 1:1-2).

• “In giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word – and he has no more to say… because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son.” (St. John of the Cross)

The “bottom line” of the whole history of revelation:

“I am that I am”Exodus 3:14

I am that I-am-here-with-youGod’s name = PRESENCE