Boersma - Sacred Doctrine Midterm 1

to deny by speaking; via negativa

(exp.: God is transcendent and beyond us; we cannot adequately define him)

You can talk about God in a negative sense more easily than a positive sense because it’s hard to define God

language that can define God; via positiva; God = fullness of the word

(imminence; God’s relation to everything because everything has goodness)

(comes from Scripture, Creation, and Jesus)

faith which the Church believes; objective (something has been revealed to us) (Revelation)

personal faith by which an individual believes; subjective faith; type of knowing and seeing gives us sympathy with God’s Revelation

existence; anything worth mentioning can also be thought of theologically (creation can help us understand God and His goodness)

sacred history; God creates, enters into, and redeems time; moves through time

Scripture; one must have context and a solid understanding of Scripture in order to make any interpretations of it because it is the Word of God

God’s name; both answering and rejecting the question; revealing something but withholding information. reveals His identity and establishes a closer relationship to His people

good is diffusive of itself; whatever God created will spread its goodness; nature of goodness to spread itself

taking on someone else in your writing

God is everything, but He is also Nameless because He just is. God is Being itself.

we can know THAT God is (existence), but not WHAT He is (essence). quid est means what God is; an es is that God is.

same word points to a higher meaning; effects of the word tell us something truthful about the cause; conceptual language that describes His effects and not His being

(God fulfills the word completely in the analogical sense)

speaking about God in the same way as His creations (one word with one meaning) (only metaphorical)

one word, different meanings; homonyms; dog bark vs tree bark, good cake vs good God

(both only metaphorical)

Revelation reveals God’s goodness to us

philosophy is only for the few because it requires a specific type of person; it is with much error; and lots of studying and contemplation are required

relationship with God; a sharing of secrets; God’s participation and union with us

how God reveals Himself

creation, mankind/Adam and Eve/proto-evangelium, Israel (figure and instruction given to them), Christ’s coming

doctrine does not change; it simply reveals more. Our understanding changes.

Jesus is the fullness of Divine revelation and Scripture and is the Word Incarnate

to bring up to date

referring back to own sources and writings of tradition

People share their experiences with us and we can know God through their personal stories; God works through secondary causes a lot

dual authorship = God is the divine author and breathes His word through us

any interpretation of Scripture that builds up charity is correct

Faith and reason beat together like wings on which a person soars to Truth

Fundamentally compatible; harmonious; knowing and loving God helps us to understand ourselves

agnosticism = people can’t decide what’s true and so they don’t believe in anything

relativism = everything is relative and nothing matters; no objective truth; only subjective truth (what each person wants)

skepticism = one can’t be certain about anything

Modern philosophy is now mainly concerned with human knowledge rather than the truth. This is a very limited way of thinking about philosophy.

THAT the thing is; particular - participates in universal

WHAT the thing is; is universal

coming in and out of being

Coming in and out of being; something contingent does not contain within itself the reason for its existence. It is dependent on something else. God is not contingent because He is being itself and exists because He is absolutely essential.

No, because no one can think the opposite of something self-evident, and people do think opposite of God. We don’t know what God is.

God can be demonstrated to us because of natural reason; we can look at the Cross and know that we proceed from the effects.

However, He cannot be rationally proven as He is so transcendent, so we still need faith

1. Motion

2. Efficient causality

3. Possibility and necessity

4. Gradation (of things as we speak about them; more good, less good, etc.; comparative language)

5. Finality (everything works towards an end; humans can also choose whether to cooperate with that)

everything moving has to be moved by something else

all things have something that brings them into existence

contingency; something must be not dependent on another and therefore a higher power must exist

We use comparitive language to speak about things in levels, saying that things are more good, less good, etc. Therefore, something must be the ultimate version of those words.

everything works towards an end; humans can also choose whether to cooperate with that end

from Deuteronomy; states that the Lord is One; confession of God’s transcendence + unity; depicts monotheism

Son’s missions: incarnation and salvation (generation)

Spirit’s missions: spiration (Pentecost)

The Father doesn’t have a mission, but He works to sanctify and redeem us

Will and intellect require that the procession have an ordered relationship

Son is forever coming to be; the Spirit is eternally coming forth

Logic, not chronology

Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father

how the Son is born through God’s eternity

how God the Father and the Son are love and give us the Spirit

The Father doesn’t do anything without the Son. Whatever happens to one is also brought about by the other person.

These operations are distinguished numerically but function inseparably.

mind; consists of memory, understanding, and will; one reality, three operations

Genesis One = everywhere and nowhere simultaneously;

mentions humans’ souls and how we came forth from God’s speech

Genesis Two = names + describes places and creations; depicts God molding, shaping, and sculpting humans

together: Yawist and priestly accounts provide reader with full theological context

literal, tropological, allegorical, anagogical

Each person of the Trinity participates in a mutual indwelling with the others, and each one comes from the other