FAITH (Handout 3)

I. What is Faith?
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Old Testament
o neeman - God does not deceive
Abrahams obedience and fidelity
o heemin to say Amen to God
Davids gratefulness to God (he is always sinning yet God still
chose him)
o The appropriate response to Gods faithfulness to his covenant
promises Avery Dulles
New Testament
o Pistis belief, obedience, trust, hope
o Pisteuien to believe; an acceptance of the kerygma (verb form)
o Pisteuien eis - Jesus calls people to believe in him
Raymond Brown
o Woman with Hemorrhage
If I touch even just his garments, I shall be made well
The desire toward Jesus
Faith represents an activity of the believer, an energetic,
importunate grasping after the help of God C.E.B.
Cranfield
clinging heaven by the helms Francis Thompson
o Hebrews 11:1
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of
things not seen

II. Dimensions of Faith

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Structure of Faith
o Orthodoxy proper understanding of faith
Doctrine
Faith personal knowledge of Jesus as my Lord and
my God
o Assurance that God is there
Believing - involves a deep knowing (can be like how
we know we love our family and friends)
Revelation is a complex of truths which are offered to
us through the grouping of concepts which are bound
together by Christ, the prophets, and the apostlesIt
goes without saying, however, that faith is not
terminated with the simple conceptual or verbal
statement, but rather with the reality, the mystery
itself. Doctrine, as conceptual signs, is the means for
the believer to give assent to doctrine understood as
the realities signified by the signs. What is revealed....
is God himself, His eternal decreed [and] mysteries.
Rene Latourelle

Gail: In the web structure, at the heart of faith is

Gods revelation. From there, everything
traditions, teachings, beliefs, practices starts.
When that center is taken away, the web
crumbles. (lol this is more on for revelation tho)
Orthopraxis proper practice of faith
Morals
Love Good Samaritan action
Faith is Doing re-enacting Gods ideals
Worship
Hope waiting for the Lord hopeful trust in the
future
Faith is Trusting God Abraham and Moses
o

III. Paradoxes of Faith

-

The very word paradox is paradoxical. Let the paradox be. Remember
after all, that the
Gospel is full of paradoxes [eg. polar reversals like The first will be the
last], that man is himself a living paradox, and that according to the
Fathers of the Church, the Incarnation is the supreme Paradox. Henry
de Lubac
1. Certain yet Obscure
a. Certain
i. Because of revelation God reveals himself to us through
miracles and Jesus
ii. Show me one who loves, and he or she feels what I am
saying. Show me one who desires or is hungry, or one who is
thirsting in the desert, sighing for the fountain of the eternal
homeland; show me one such, and that one will understand
what I am trying to say Treatise on John by Augustine
iii. Gods absolute love: Faith is, first of all, the belief that there
is absolute love. Beyond that the believer need posit nothing
else - Hans Urs von Balthasar
1. How we understand is how we experience love
2. Gail: There are many kinds of love family, friends,
workmates, significant others and because of that,
we are aware that it is indeed possible that there is a
love that can go beyond that and that love is
absolute God. In believing that, Balthasar says that you
need not believe anything else.
b. Obscure
i. the profoundly mysterious identity of the God who revealed
himself in that way to Israel alone, yet revealed himself as
supremely hidden: Deus revelatus tamquam absconditus.
Louis Boyer
1. God revealed himself to us but he did not reveal
everything. He dwells in inaccessible light

ii. Like the ocean, the revealed mysteries of God have a visible
surface, beneath which lie hidden and unfathomable depths
John Saward
1. Weve only covered the surface. There is a lot more to
see.
2. Free yet Morally Obliging
a. Free
i. Authentic freedom the capacity to do good
1. We were meant for goodness (made in the image of
God; made with freedom)
ii. Two levels
1. Categorical Freedom freedom of choice
a. Freedom doesnt mean you have a variety of
choices. It just means you decided to choose.
2. Transcendental Freedom freedom as the self
formed by choices
a. Freedom is not indefinite choice but definitive
commitment. It is not the capacity for indefinite
revision, always doing something different, but
the capacity to create something final,
irrevocable, and eternal. It is to become a
particular kind of person Karl Rahner
b. It is our choices, Harry, that show us who we
truly are, far more than our abilities
Dumbledore
iii. Freedom is in the choosing: A choice that defines our whole
vision of life
1. I think freedom - at least what we usually think of it is an illusion. As far as I can tell, absolute freedom
doesnt exist. I think we all have some measure of
freedom, but in the end we have to choose who or
what will be our master. For some people its their
Lexus or their big house or their love of gourmet food
or their music. For some people its their career. For
some people its their family. Its a question of what
you want to give your life to, or for. Michael
Enright
iv. faith...cannot be ranged side by side with other choices,
however momentous these may be.... Of its nature, it is
architectonic and claims to engage, to shape, to evaluate the
whole life. Furthermore... faith is a facing of eternal destiny;
not the selection of one among many possibilities, but the
option for my only ultimate destiny. All other choices are
made between Gods creatures; faith is a choice of God.
John Coventry
b. Moral Obligation
i. The will is drawn by love.... You have only to show a leafy
branch to a sheep, and it is drawn to it. If you show nuts to a
boy, he is drawn to them. He runs to them because he is

drawn, drawn by love, drawn without any physical

compulsion, drawn by a chain attached to his heart.
Augustine
ii. Freedom does not mean the right to do whatever you
please, but the right to do whatever you ought Fulton
Sheen
1. Gail: Faith is moral obligation, but in a way, it makes us
more free because it makes us more human. Moreover,
freedom is not measured by how many indefinite
choices you have, but by the act of choosing itself.
3. Supernatural yet Reasonable
a. Supernatural
i. Faith is a mystery. When you understand something about
it,you realize there is more to know about it.
ii. There are just some truths that are beyond the sphere of
natural reason (The Trinity & incarnation)
iii. Some infinities are greater that other infinities John
Green
1. There are things we cant explain; things greater than
ourselves
2. Gail: There are things that go beyond reason and no
matter how much we try to get it or look for it, just like
reaching the horizon, you wont actually get there.
b. Reasonable
i. Faith is reasonable, not reasoned. John Coventry
1. Gail: There is a logical flow to faith. We are able to
describe and explain it, and this logical structure leads
to valid conclusion. It is not reasoned, however,
because like what John Saward said about the
obscurity of faith, we might know a lot, but compared
to the bigger picture its just a small portion.
ii. There is logic behind the way our doctrines and truths are
reasoned out. There is even a science of faith (theology).
iii. There is a structure in our belief: doctrine as a complex of
truths
4. An Act yet a Process
a. Act
i. There is always an initial faith experience or a conversion
experience.
b. Process
i. Like a graph, there are high and low points to faith (between
faith and time)
1. Part of a process. The decision to profess faith must be
repeated endlessly (because there will be times
wherein faith will be hard to find)
5. A Gift yet our Doing
a. Divine Gift
i. God has given human beings the gift of the capacity for
God (capaxdei).

ii. Everything that allows us to have faith (human reason,

freedom, will) are all gifts from God
1. Revelation is from God
2. Revelation without faith is dangerous
3. Faith is impossible without the divine will
b. Human Task
i. As much as faith is a gift of grace, there is a human aspect to
it.
ii. As long as there is no one to respond to God, faith will not
exist.
1. Revelation without faith is pointless
iii. Sea of Galilee vs the Dead Sea
1. Faith that isnt given away becomes dessicated
2. You receive faith live it out and pass it on. But if you
only accept and not live it out, it becomes something
you just keep uselessly. (Dead Sea: Salts)
6. Personal yet Ecclesial and Social
a. Personal
i. The grace given by God is at once personal and
personalizing; personal because it is directed to an individual
soul in its own determined situation, personalizing, because it
is destined to make the individual soul realize its own unique
vocation. Jean Moroux
ii. Personal God reaches you on your own situation
iii. Personalizing Faith alters our life
b. Ecclesial
i. God did not ask for one person to respond only, but a people
to respond
ii. Faith is done as a community; as a Church: missionaries,
social workers, etc.
c. Social
i. Lived out as a response to society: the fight for Justice
IV. Healthy dose of unbelief
-

I think that this experience you are having of losing your faith, or as you
think, of having lost it, is an experience that in the long-run belongs to
faith; or at least it can belong to faith if faith is still valuable to you, and it
must be or you would not have written me about it. Flannery
OConnor

V. Conclusion
-

Faith is about what is beyond the horizon of the humanly possible. Faith is
exploring into what people could never achieve by themselves. Faith is the
mysterious need in us to get to where we could surely never go. Faith, in
fact, is about what we call God. Faith is the inkling that we are meant to be
divine, that our journey will go beyond any horizon at all into the
limitlessness of the Godhead... Faith is not something we possess. It is
something by which we are possessed. Herbert McCabe

MYSTIC HORIZONS (Handout 4)

I. The Necessity of a Vision
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And in the end, its not the years in your life that countsIts the life in
your years Abraham Lincoln
Mythic vision
o mythological seeing through Stephen Larsen
o Holistic
o Opens imagination beyond the created reality
o light beyond light
o To see mythically... is not just to fantasize richly... The mythically
awake imagination would rather see through the ordinary-seeming
surface of everyday life to discover the secret cause, the mythic
archetypal patterns beneath... Mythical forms light up our world;
they are the self-luminous forms that arouse psychological motives
and incite behavior... Ultimately our mythological seeing through
should transform us, not into cynics, but into believers of a new
kinds - in the reality and ubiquity of spiritual experience and in the
endless creativity of human beings in the face of it.... a whole
psyche perceives a wholesome universe, when one looks into any
mythology one finds a wisdom tradition embedded among its
images.
o Mythology has been discarded in the Hebrew Scriptures. In
mythological thinking, the beings of myth lord it over the lives of
men. But in the Old Testament, the world of mythology has been
exchanged for a world of freedom. Man is a partner of God through
a bond of love and kinship. Thorir Thordarson
Man is not seen as a lower being. The relationship between
man and God is one of freedom

Mythic: that which represents deep truths about the world

Roger Haight
Dark Horizons
o Horizons that refuse to see any light in creation
o Without mythic seeing, we lose both spirit and sense of lifes
endless possibility for meaning
o Reality alone is reliable... Dreams, expectations and hopes serve to
define man only as deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectations
unfulfilled Jean-Paul Satre
Our lives have an eternal dimension to them, and by ever searching the
eternal, we forever wish to transcend ourselves.
Existence = area of reality + area outside (eternal); Dark horizons = A; A
= bh/2
o There is something beyond reality
o

II. The Sense of the Eternal: Grasping the Transcendent

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Sense of Eternal Value

o In the eyes of God, everything has the same value
God assigns this value
o The fact that God sustains each and every part of creation into
existence that he cares for everything
o Birds dont fly because they have wings. They have wings because
they fly
Wings dont give value. It is the value that comes first
Sense of Eternal Purpose
o This stands counter to existentialists (Sartre), absurdists (who say
that efforts to find the purpose of things is impossible), or nihilists
(life has no intrinsic meaning)
o Everyone has a part to play
Sense of Eternal Thou
o Autumn by Rainer Maria Rilke: there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling
Believing things we cannot see.
When we start living for the others (the Thou), that is when
we truly live

III. The Second Creation Story: The Face of the Related God
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A cursory look at Genesis 1 in its historical context will make it clear that
it is written as a vigorous protest against the then accepted notions of
creation. The historical context of the Priestly account of creation is the
Babylonian exile in the sixth century B.C. The exile was a devastating
experience for Israel politically and theologically. Those who survived the
trauma reasserted their belief in Gods power over chaos. They did this by
developing their own creation narrative. Anne Clifford
Following the movement of the text
o Chaos: The sea of reeds; flood story; darkness
World without form
o Kosmos: Light; light beyond light (God)
Ordering of the world

Anthropos: human movement

Ending the creation story with the creation of human beings
is very anthropocentric: the world was created for the human
o True ending: with God
There is a movement to God, marking everything as good
and resting
The very goal of creation is God: Theos
God is the center of creation
The Holiness of Place
o Everything was given a place of dwelling
o Holiness the thing is uniquely set apart from others in order to be
uniquely set apart for God
o Creation of humans: invitation for human beings to find their proper
place in the world
o A Patch of Holiness, Please Robert Morneau
The Holiness of Time
o Historical time normal ime
o Liturgical Time when the light beyond light enters
Time set apart and made holy in the eyes of God
o Ex. Christmas time: not important when. Whats important is we
give time for it
o Day 7: Sabbath day invitation to find our dwelling place in time
Babylonian Exile: No place to meet (tower destroyed) with
the sacred
Without rest, it is possible to be caught up and drown in
creation
Cool off in relationships: Rest naman tayo so I can appreciate
you more
o Nowadays, our time is formless (chaos). We need a little kosmos in
our time.
Story of Creation
o Void no plants or anything
Humans: created to fill the void
adam man; adama ground
Fragile life (we are dust without God)
The fact that God bothers with us means that we are
valuable: eternal value
o Mans vocation is work: find our dwelling: eternal purpose
o LAW given by supernatural God: we are meant for the
supernatural: eternal Thou
o Loneliness curse
ezer helper; God coming to our aid
Bone in times of strength
Flesh in times of weakness
Rib side: halves (man and woman complete each
other)
o ish man
o ishshah woman
Humanity is meant for relationships with others: eternal
thou
o

Gods Relatableness we mirror his likeness in the way we

approach our fellow beings
When all senses are obtained = shalom (wholeness)
o

IV. Reviewing Original Sin: Discovering its Biblical Roots

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The tree of the knowledge

o Interpretations of the knowledge of good and evil
Existential meaning the capacity of discerning what is
useful and what is harmful, in order to choose the first and
avoid the second
Ethical meaning moral sense
Sexual meaning discovery of sexuality
A sense of totality (merism) the knowledge of everything
o Only God knows good and evil
o The discernment of what is good and evil is necessary
o The discernment is characteristic of adulthood
o It is dangerous and harmful to confuse good and evil
o God doesnt forbid knowledge. What he forbids is to eat from the
tree
You shouldnt attain knowledge easily.
You must do it through experience.
Should awake our sense of responsibility
Image of the Snake
o The dark side of human personality
o The snake is connected to the deepest levels of life (the
unconscious)
The Great Hamartology (the great history of sin)
o Cain and Abel
o Lamech
o Noah and the Flood
o The Tower of Babel
o God is sorry that the world was createdbrokenness in
humanity..in each story there are consequences of sin: Cains
exile, the flood, the scattering and confusion of language. But in
each story there is a sign that in spite of sin God continues to care
and to act with grace: God marks Cain for protection, saves Noah,
guarantees the natural order with the rainbow.After the tower of
Babel story, there is no immediate sign of Gods care.Genesis 12
begins the story of Abraham and Sarah.their story begins with a
promise.By beginning with creation and broken creation, the
scripture reminds us that this people is not to be an end in itself but
a means of Gods grace to all the families of the earth Bruce
Birch
Original Sin:
o Adam: old human race penetrated with sin
o Jesus: springs the new race, reborn in the power of grace

V. Defining Original Sin: A Renewed Understanding

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What is original sin?

THE PRESSURE TO SIN

Sin of the world: what we are born into: external factors
Passive aspect
Heart of darkness: disordered desires (involuntary
inclination to sin): internal factors
Active aspect
There is a contemporary face of evil today (corruption etc.) Elizabeth
Willems
In Genesis
o Nakedness: Shame
Sign of brokenness in the openness of relationship between
the man and the woman
o Afraid when God comes: Fear
Sign of brokenness in the trustful relationship with God
o Man blames woman: Guilt
Sign of brokenness within self
o

VI. A Mystical Moral Theology: A Response to the Question of Sin

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Morality
o A Christian way of living
o Mysticism is living the Christian mystery and allowing that mystery
to transform us Michael Stoeber
o We allow our understanding of the Creator God to shape the way we
interact with both the eternal Thou and eternal thou.
o Our reflections on faith help transform our action
The role of imagination
o We respond as we interpret the meaning of actions upon us
Richard Neibuhr
o through imagination we become artists of our moral lives and
must assume responsibility for the lives we are creating Richard
Gula
Judging Moral acts
o Object
o Intent
o Circumstance
Discernment
o Ignatian Spirituality: Is it desolation or consolation?
o The Inner Compass provides steps to take after discerning
whether its desolation and consolation Margaret Stiff
o You are tired (I think) e.e. cummings
o The paradox remains. We must continue to fight suffering, yet we
must also be prepared to see in it a loving principle of renewal. We
come to know our dependence and our helplessness and to
recognize that we cannot save ourselves. When it is our turn, no
one can persuade us that our own pain is not naked and raw. Pain,
whether mental or physical or the spiritual pain of the dark night of
the soul, hurts like hell and anyone who denies it is a fool and a
hypocrite. But we can't run away from it, and in it lies the possibility
of redemption for ourselves and for others if we can say, "For what

it's worth, take it, God, and use it. Use it for those tortured people of
Rwanda or the napalmed children of Vietnam. Use it to make me
grow in compassion. Use it any way you will." We may utter such a
prayer through clenched teeth, it may be dragged out of us, but if
we can hope one day to mean it, we are halfway to humility.
Mary Craig
To find hope and joy in the midst of affliction, rather than stoicism or
mere patient endurance that is the ultimate achievement of faith.
http://www.ignatianspirituality.com/6754/on-suffering/