The Abraham Narratives

The assigned reading is composed of excerpts from the story of Abraham. On one level, these passages are a narrative history of actual events, but they also help characterize God.
In this reading, Abraham’s interactions with God are described; God’s promise of a great nation, the births of Ishmael and Isaac, and the testing of Abraham. For the most part, these stories are historical. That is, Abraham was indeed a real person. However, it seems that this history was probably written down sometime after it occurred (For example, the mention of anachronisms in the side notes suggests that it was written around the time of the Patriarchs). So, while not perfectly accurate, as a history, this story explains the origin of both Judaism and Islam.
More important, however, is how God is described. In these passages, God is someone who often speaks to humans, which is a rare occurrence nowadays. The God of Abraham is also one that demands animal sacrifice. Yet, even stranger things are attributed to God; e.g., when he tells Hagar to go back to Sarai to submit to her abuse (16:9), or when God tests Abraham (22) though God is omniscient. Now, from these events, we could suppose that the God of Abraham is one that supports slavery, or even that the God of Abraham is not the same God as the one in the New Testament. However, considering the culture of the time and the fact that these stories were written well after the events occurred, we could reach the more likely conclusion that ancient Jewish culture plays a major role in the personification of God. Ancient ethics do not correspond to modern concepts of equality, so the actions of God in the lives of Abraham and of Sarah would not seem incongruous with the culture of the time; rather, the audience probably understood God’s actions.
Sincerely,
Caleb Capozella

Genesis 1-3: Creation Stories

When reading the Bible it seems we are faced with choices. We can believe it as truth or choose not to. We can read the passages and ask ourselves did God intend this to be taken literally or is the meaning symbolic? What we choose to believe depends on what we as individuals bring to the readings. In The Book of Genesis the first half presents the Creation of Heaven and Earth, the second half presents the Creation and fall of man. This six-day account of creation raises its own set of questions for us to think about. We may wonder if the idea of a day is equal to our twenty-four hour day or was it a longer? We may also question how to accept the Bible's account with the scientific knowledge we have been exposed to. For me it doesn't matter whether the days are literal days equaling twenty-four hours. What matters most is that I acknowledge God as the Creator who recognized his creations as good.

Carolyn Spero

I understand the creation stories to be true insofar as they portray God as the master and creator of the universe and show the order he put into his work. Literally, I think it’s really impossible to take them as true. Given current cosmological, paleontological, and evolutionary data it seems impossible to adhere to the creation stories down to the very letter. Rather, it seems the creation stories are true by what they really tell God’s people not by what they particularly say. For instance, they show God as the source of all reality. They also set a standard for a day of rest, the Sabbath. Further, they establish the idea of human dignity; humans are God’s last and greatest creation. They give humans authority over creation as stewards of God’s wonderful work. They establish the concept of male and female in God’s eyes. Finally, they show humans who they are and what they come from. We are imbued with the Breath, of Spirit, of God and we are crafted in His image. All of these things I just listed are undeniably true and revealed to us by the creation stories. In that sense, the creation stories are fundamentally and entirely true. However, this truth does not dictate that birds must have existed before cattle or some minute tidbit from the story. Rather it speaks of deeper chords of truth that transcend time and context.

Nathaniel

Dei Verbum and Karen Armstrong's Introduction to A Case for God

Do you think the Bible (or parts of it) is true? If not, why not? If so, why? Is all truth the same?

Alright well after doing the two readings my opinion is still relatively the same. I personally believe that only parts of the Bible are true. The reasoning behind my belief is that even through it is stated multiple times that the Bible is influenced by the Holy Spirit and God, it was written by human hands and humans are notoriously flawed and corrupt. Also, a lot of the language written within the Bible is up to interpretation and should not be taken at the literal meaning. Finally, the last reason I believe this is that I believe the Bible(like many other religious texts) was written primarily as a set of written morals. This pattern is repeated in the majority of the world’s religions and mythology; a story is constructed in order to teach people morals.

            As for the second question, there has to be one ultimate truth. However, the majority of the time, what we consider to be truth is usually relative to a specific point of view, with the possible exception of science.

I look forward to checking out everybody’s own view on these questions!

Charlie Clunk


The ways people regard the Bible are very different. Some consider it the absolute divine word; the total authority over how one should live his life. He takes it very seriously, following the exact wording. Some other people look at the Bible as more like a book of suggested guidelines, stories, and curious explanations for why Christians believe what they believe. Ultimately, though, the Bible is a written work meant not only to explain the Christian faith, but also to amuse, inspire, and at times guide Christians through their lives.

That being said, the Bible was not written by God. It was inspired by God, but written by man, who (as Karen Armstrong says) is not perfect, and subjected to inherent flaws. Therefore, Christians cannot look at the Bible as the most perfect word. Instead, as Dei Verbum explains, individuals are supposed to interpret the Bible in a way that helps explain God’s message to them. Understanding is possible, but a translation of the Word is necessary for that understanding to happen.

I would have to agree with this view, mostly because religion has become more about individual’s interpretation now days. Not all Christians believe the exact same thing, down to the most minute of details; this is because each Christian, while accepting Christ as their Savior and God as their Father, also has their own opinion of what kind of life they are supposed to live. That comes from individual interpretation of the Bible, and accepting that those interpretations might be inaccurate or different on occasion. These differences should be celebrated, however, because the entire nature of the Bible is human and unique in each story.

Alexa

Darwin's God

In light of our class discussion today on the relationship between science and theology, I thought you might be interested in this article, which appeared a few years ago in the New York Times Magazine. Enjoy!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/magazine/04evolution.t.html

Thomas Aquinas and Sacred Doctrine

The main points I took away from the article were:

1) It seems that, besides philosophical science, we have no need of any further knowledge. For man should not seek to know what is above reason: "Seek not the things that are too high for thee" (Sirach 3:22)."  upon first reading that statement I completely disagreed. We, as humans, all strive to learn more about not only our faith, but things outside of our faith. We need all forms of knowledge, not strictly just one. We are curious, born curious, and it is in our nature to want to learn more and constantly ask questions.

2) That sacred doctrines are in fact a science. His explanation as to why in objection 2, and his reply to objection 2 fully support his claim as to why sacred doctrines are a science or "sacred science"

In response to the question on the syllabus ( I couldn't remember if you said we had to respond to that or not, my apologies!) Is that, yes, it is very important to study theology. Why? As we said in class, and these are my thoughts as well, is that we need to grow in our faith so we can understand more about life and our faith.

Kate Shannon

1. Aquinas quotes Scripture saying that all Scripture is profitable to teach, reprove, correct, instruct in justice. He then goes on to say that philosophy doesn't deal with Scripture. Therefore, he reasons because Scripture is too useful to just leave out of our study altogether, we should have another science that deals with it. From my perspective, it seems like he should have explained WHY Scripture was so useful - all we have here is a statement without backing, which is sort of leaving me confused. While I agree that it's true, it doesn't give me a good grasp of the argument as a whole if I have to project my own interpretation of what he's telling me onto what I'm reading. But... that aside...

2. Revealed knowledge necessary for salvation. It makes sense that certain things would be above our intellect, since our intellects are finite and God's is infinite, and, chances are, one of the things we need to know for our salvation (which is a complex subject) is something we may not be able to arrive at on our own.

a. God is men's end, and surpasses human reason. Humans need to have some knowledge of this end to reach it (and therefore reach heaven), so it was necessary for God to reveal some things. Even those things which we could figure out on our own God revealed, because if not, only a few would know them after a very long time, and they would be intermingled with many errors. This all seems reasoned out well - we discussed in philosophy last semester that these doctrines are so complex that it would take a while to reach them, during which time we might error.

3. St. Thomas also discusses that,  although we are not permitted to seek what is above reason on our own (he doesn't explain why beyond explaining that the objection is based in Scripture), we are obligated to believe certain doctrines once they are revealed by God. This isn't really essential to his central argument, so I'm not going to comment... he seems to be responding to an objection that may have been an issue at the time he was writing.

4. Finally, he discusses that there is no reason why things revealed by philosophy should not also have the study of theology to look into them. Fairly self-explanatory - why not?

Chelsey Sterling

A Cre@tion Story for Naomi

As I mentioned in class, here is information on the play that you may attend for extra-credit. Once you have gone to the play write a one-two page (double-spaced) reflection and submit it to me by February 1.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=127193590676509&index=1

Anslem's Proslogion

St. Anselm coins the phrase "faith seeking understanding." In order to begin thinking about his text, how do you answer these questions: Is there a relationship between faith and understanding? If so, how do you understand this relationship? If not, why not?