Knowledge Of God Flashcards
What is natural theology?
Attempting to discover truth about God through reason, for example world beauty points to a designer.
What is revealed theology?
When God chooses to reveal himself to humans directly, for example scripture.
What does it say in the catechism of the Catholic Church on revealed theology?
‘The desire for God is written in the human heart because man is created by God and for God’ paragraph 27
What does this suggest?
all humans are made in the image of God and have an inbuilt capacity to desire and know God. Natural theology can be used to discover God.
What is ‘sensus divinitatis’
‘Sense of divinity’
What does Semen religionis mean?
‘Seed of religion’
What does Calvin refer to?
When talking of sensus divinitatis and semen religionis he talks the idea that inbuilt into us are the absolute basics of religious belief and human inclination to pray or engage in rituals.
What does innate knowledge mean?
Innate knowledge links to natural theology and is the ‘point of contact’ between us and God which enables us to use our reason to understand God.
What did Aquinas say in Summa, contra Gentiles?
‘Some truths about God exceed all the ability of human reason but there are some truths which the natural reason is able to reach, such are the truth that God exists, that he is the one and the like’ (Aquinas, summa contra Gentiles, 1.3.2)
What is the human openness to beauty?
The idea that humans have an innate sense of astethics, Christian’s links this back to God and that as a result we can link beauty back to God.
What does the Catholic Church argue?
‘The soul the seed of eternity we bear in ourselves. Irreducible to the merely material can only have its origins in God’ (catechism of the Catholic Church, 33)
What does this mean?
For catholics a sense of moral goodness, human freedom and conscience all make a person ask the ultimate question, making us recognise signs of the soul. Making us capable of coming to know God not just as fact but a personal loving God.
What did Calvin make of humans innate appreciation of astethics?
Calvin spoke of the world as being like a theatre or mirror ‘for the display of divine goodness, wisdom, justice and power’
