Theology Notes - Professor Pinnola PDF

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Introduction Religion: a worldview that involves belief in God or gods, or some unseen power or powers, something beyond the human experience.  Monotheistic: belief in one God. o Examples: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam  Polytheistic: belief in many gods. o Examples: Hinduism, Shintoism, and most tribal religions  Agnostic: unsure about the existence of God or gods.  Atheistic: denying that God or gods exist.  Jewish, Christian, and Muslim tradition are the most influential in the western world, believe god to be personal, all-knowing, all-powerful, just, loving, and the creator of everything that exists. Revelation: deliberate self-disclosure of God (or the gods) to humanity. Christian Faith: a response to revelation, begins with belief in God and in God’s son, Jesus Christ. It also involves trust in God and Jesus. Theology: the study of God; discourse concerning the divine; God talk. For Anselm “faith seeking understanding.” Age of Enlightenment  The age of enlightenment was a decisive turning point for all the study of religion, resulting in entirely new approaches to religious questions and even new kinds of questions. o Represents the beginning of modern period of history and the emergence of entirely new ways of thinking about God, creation, and the human person.  Immanuel Kant and Rene Descartes turned people’s attention to the value of reason and the necessity of empirical evidence as proof for statements of belief. o Reason and empirical evidence began to dominate discussions about the characteristics of truth, even challenging long-standing religious assertions about the nature of God and God’s interactions with the created world.  The age of enlightenment threatened the existence of religion and religious thinking. Samuel Preus  Seminal writer in the religious studies movement  Described the positive benefits of academic discipline, compared to theology in his 1987 publication, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud Modern approaches to the study of religion  Theology: focuses on God and spiritual realities as its subject.  Religious studies: focuses on humanity and humans’ experience of the divine. o An umbrella term that encompasses a variety of social-scientific and philosophical approaches to questions concerning humanity’s engagement with religion and religious phenomena. Seth Kunin  Offered a way to map out the areas under religious studies umbrella in Religious Studies and Theology: An Introduction, coedited with Helen Bond and Francesca Aran Murphy. o Surveyed the historical development of religious studies in four areas, known as Theories of Religion.  Psychological o Focuses on the individual and the individual’s experience of religion as a social institution.

Scholars see religious emotions as similar to other emotions except that the object of the emotion is religious  Some acknowledge the existence of an external “other” who exert control on the believer’s life  Most argue that this “other” contains collective unconscious archetypes (inherited memories or symbolic objects) that become the basis of all religious experiences. o Notable Figures: William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell  Phenomenological o Described the study of things as they are perceived by the senses. o Scholars used this approach to look for patterns of ideas or structures of religion. o Notable Figures: W. Brede Kristensen, Mircea Eliade, and Ninian Smart Ninian Smart’s Seven Dimensions of Religion:  Experimental/Emotional: encountering natural or supernatural forces that produces a sense of fear or awe  Social/Institutional: people who have these experiences seek out others with similar experiences and form groups for support  Narrative/Mythic: people pass on their experiences in stories  Doctrinal/Philosophical: as people ask questions about the experiences and stories, they explain them rationally  Practical/Ritual: the group formalize ways of relating to people and things that are part of their daily lives  Ethical/Legal: the group decides what actions and way of life are appropriate to their experiences  Material/Artistic: the group produces material things that are expressive and appropriate to their experiences  Anthropological o Describes the study of humankind with special attention to human culture and the process or development of human society. o Most significant: ritual, rite of passage, myths, and religious symbols. o Gives more attention to social dimensions of religion. o Take on appearance of comparative studies. o Notable figures: Edward Taylor, James Frazer, Lucien Levy-Bruhl, Emile Durkheim, E.E Evans-Pritchard, A.R Radcliffe Brown, and Claude Levi-Strauss.  Sociological o Focus on the practice of religion, what people do when they put their religious beliefs into action and relate to others in society. o Give attention to the ethical dimension. o Concerned about religious effect on group order and group identity than the individual’s religious experience. o Pluralism: the presence of different religious or cultural groups within a single society. o Secularism: the belief that religion has no place in the civic or political realm. 

Theology as an Academic Discipline  Central concept to Christian Theology o Revelation: the deliberate self-disclosure of God or gods to humanity.

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Faith     

General Revelation – given to all human beings  Nature: the people and things with whom we have contact In the world is said to reveal God in a general sense  Human conscience: intuitive inner sense of what is right and wrong, or recognition of a fundamental moral law  Revelation given through nature and through conscience is partial and imperfect. Special Revelation – given to particular groups of human beings  Prophecy: refers to God’s communication through a chosen spokesperson: the prophet  Mystical experience: describes the direct and individual contact that a human might have with a transcendent power (God, angel, or other heavenly being) o May be expressed in visions, locutions, and dreams.  History: special revelation is understood to be communicated through human history because it is the site of God’s contact with and intervention on behalf of humanity.  Personal revelation: private revelation granted to a single individual to fulfill a specific need or address a particular issue. o Most important source sacred scripture  Contains special revelation that has been handed down to later generation both by word of mouth and in written form

Belief in or acceptance of a set of truths Trust Action or practice Personal insight or experience of the divine Christian faith is a response to revelation, begins with belief in God and in God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

Subdivisions of Christian Theology  Biblical studies  Historical theology  Systematic theology o Theological anthropology: pertains to the study of human beings in relation to God and God’s creation  Moral theology o Focuses on the values arising from the bible and Christian belief and practices and attempts to identify the behaviors that are congruent and incongruent with these values. Other categories of Theological Inquiry  Pastoral theology: trains people to minister to communities of faith through activities like preaching, teaching, spirituals direction, and counseling and advocacy for persons in need.  Sacramental theology: also known as liturgical theology, focuses on the study of Christian worship.  Spirituality: investigates various forms of prayer and religious practice that orient persons toward God (or the divine) and that direct the way they live in the world.  Comparative theology Reasons to study religion and theology:  Most people throughout history have been religious  Many students identify as Christians

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Western civilization has been formed and shaped by Christian theological tradition We will come in contact with people who believe in the existence of God and who commit themselves to a particular religion.

Theological anthropology: pertains to the study of human beings in relation to God and God’s creation. Soteriology: pertains to the study of salvation. Key themes of Christianity  God  Creation  Revelation  Jesus  The church

The Theology of Revelation [Dei Verbum] by Cory

The Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, known as Dei Verbum (The Word of God)   

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Understanding of how God’s revelation is transmitted o Two channels, one written and the other oral are called scripture and tradition. Dei Verbum is recognized even though the one revelation had not changed. o the understanding of that revelation had changed over the course of time. Dei Verbum recognized the role of human authorship in the biblical books. o The books written needed to be studied according to ancient literary forms if their meaning were to be rightly understood. Dei Verbum asserted that the teaching authority of the church o Exclusive task of authentically interpreting scripture and tradition, which constitutes “the one deposit of faith.” Dei Verbum strongly recommends greater attention to the Bible in every aspect of the church’s life o Faithful; preach and preside in the liturgy, and in theology itself....