Catholic Theology Essay Highlights

*Sense experiences/depth experiences: not limited by the empirical data-the really “real” is not necessarily able to be seen.

*Religious Experience (depth experience): Not just a sense experience, an experience that causes people to change, always touches on the “other” (the transcendent)-that which goes beyond our understanding (anything that we can come up with) (ie..who can really explain the sunset?).

*Orthopraxis (Right-practice): The process of doing the right things.

*Orthodoxy: Believing the right thing.

*Sacramental Approach: Sacraments use the world around us as a way/event in which we encounter God: The way we do that is being involved with life/experiences in this world-that we are able to reach God in the afterlife (ex: eating is a way of being joined w/ God).

*The things of this world matter-it becomes the way we reach God on the road to reaching eternal happiness (meeting God).

*Foundation Theology/Fundamental Theology: Explains what theology is all about.

*Theology: “Faith seeking understanding” – we need faith 1st before understanding can be reached.

*Determining the “cannon” (cannon of scripture): list of writings that adequately express the faith of the community.

*Apacal Writings: didn’t make it onto the list (cannon) because they didn’t adequately express what the community expressed as far as their understanding of faith.

C.Rahner: Sees theology as the science/study of faith (it has excepted way of doing things).

*Theology has a special subject matter: the act & content of faith

*Act: what it means to be a believer/a person of faith

*Also sees faith as the goal of theology

*We have to have faith 1st (it’s a gift given to us by God)

*Theology doesn’t assume faith, it produces it. Theology is a practical science, it impels us to put what we know into action-practice what you preach.

*Christian faith is a community based function, not an individual function.

*Revelation: The historical passing over/on of beliefs (the interpretation of faith).

*Catholic Theology: Lives build on faith in God who has been mediated to human beings through Jesus Christ.

*Formative Factors in Theology (Macquarrie): where we get our theology from

1. Experience

2. Revelation: God making himself ...

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...esus as the definitive revelation of God in the world.

*Christ accepted as the center of the universe and the hope of humanity.

*Christ as both the way to realization of full humanity and the disclosure of the true face of God.

*Act of faith embraces:

*Orthodoxy (Creed)

*Orthopoiesis (Code)

*Orthopraxis (Cult)

*Difference between religious faith and primordial faith in the nature of the act of religious faith:

*Object of religious faith is transcendent and transcendental.

*Interior grace: first grace, supernatural existential, unrestricted desire to know and love (love doesn’t know boundaries)

*Exterior grace: second grace (based on message for community), God’s revelation in Christ.