Midterm - Q's from the reading Flashcards
What is the meaning of the Anselmian “faith seeking understanding?”
Faith is the starting point, goal of theology is seeking God is work out the truth about God.
p. 87 “I do not try, Lord, to attain your lofty heights, because my understanding is in no way equal to it. But I do desire to understand your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves.”
How does Jacquelyn Grant characterize theology in her article “Subjectification as a Requirement for Christological Reflection?”
Based on this reading, theology is the practice of each population group collectively and individually naming “Who Jesus Is” to them. She tackles this in addressing who Jesus is to black people, who Jesus is to feminists, and to womanists, arguing that each one of these groups has a different experience with the world, and difference experience with the Christ, and subsequently a different theology.
On what basis, per Aquinas, does “sacred doctrine” qualify as science?
Theology is a science, a participation in the knowledge that God has of himself
~ Thomas Aquinas (summary, not a quotation)
Under this definition, a science has to be based on a solid foundation of fact, and then you can
build on that with logic
The solid foundation in this example is that God has total and complete understanding of
God’s self, and the TELLS that to us via scripture, saints, etc. We build off of that in our
pursuit of theology.
Added 8/27: We can add to this with God’s revelation, knowledge he gives us
What does Althaus-Reid mean by the statement, “theology is a sexual act?”
p. 99 “theology as a reflection on God closely related to loving arts of intimacy with the Beloved.”
p. 100 “any metaphor of intimacy with God is a metaphor of mutuality, pleasureable activity and freedom after which neither we nor God are meant to remain the same.”
Who, according to Gregory of Nazianzus, should be permitted to philosophize about God?
p. 129 “it is permitted only to those who have been examined, and are past masters in meditation, and who have been previously purified in soul and body, or at the very least are being purified.”
“free from all external defilement or disturbance”
p. 130 “They to whom the subject is of real concern, and not they who make it a matter of pleasant gossip.”
What does McFague say that it means to have a “vocation of sainthood.” And who has this vocation?
Each Christian is asked to examine his or her life with the God of discerning the action of God in it and then to express God’s power and love in everything. Each of us is expected to have a working theology that makes a difference in how we live our lives and conduct ourselves at a personal and professional level. Christian saints focus on making all of creation fully alive.
What does McFague mean by a relative absolute in theological method?
p. 29 “a relative absolute is a central conviction that is neither a foundation nor the essence of Christianity, but a deeply held, abiding insight into God’s relation to us.”
“The value of a relative absolute is that it gives unity and coherence to a theology, but in a flued, open, changing way.”
What reason does Baker-Fletcher give for not being a liberation theologian?
pg. x “I find that God librates but that God does not always liberate, at least in terms of liberating from oppressive institutions like slavery, racism, etc.”
“God is omnipresent in creation’s struggle for life abundant and for the full realization of freedom, justice, love, and the wholeness of earth and heaven.”
- What, according to Sang Hyun Lee, is the distinction between marginality and liminality?
(ix) Asian Americans were said to have a marginalized experience. “Being marginalized has two aspects, 1. negative aspects of being excluded by the dominant group, and 2. the positive aspect of being a potentially creative condition.” Marginality is the term he uses for the negative aspects of being excluded, liminality for the creative aspect of that exclusion. “Liminality is the situation of being in between two or more worlds, and includes the meaning of being located at the periphery or edge of a society.”
p. 7 Creative aspects of liminality are 1. openness to the new, emergence of communities, 3. and creative space for prophetic knowledge and action
- What, according to Namsoon Kang, are the three characteristics that a transethnic feministy theology will have?
(124, 125)First, it should be a discourse and practice of social and geopolitical criticism. Second, should be a discourse and practice of “world-travelling” through which one acknowledges and experiences multiple locations and realities. Third, should be a discourse and practice of geopolitical alliances across the globe, transcending borders between nations, cultures, and ethnicities, not merely changing the narratives of our histories but transforming the sense of what it means to live in other times and different spaces.
What, according to McFague, are the three main household rules of the ecological model?
hree household rules for living in the ecological model
■ Take only your share
■ Clean up after yourselves
■ Keep the house in good repair for future members of the household
- What, according to Cyril of Jerusalem, is the role of the creeds?
“In order that the soul may not perish through ignorance, we summarise the whole doctrine of faith in a few lines. This synthesis of faith was not made to be agreeable to human opinions, but to present the one teaching of the faith in its totality, in which what is of greatest importance is gathered together from all the Scriptures. As a mustard seed contains a great number of branches in its tiny grain, so also this summary of faith brings together in a few words the entire knowledge of true religion contained in the old and new testaments.”
REMEMBER: This was 350 AD, a time when most were illiterate and copies of scripture were phenomenally expensive.
- What is Descartes’ argument for God’s existence?
Thinks reason is a great source for theology
On the existence of God
God is the supremely perfect being
Existence is a perfection
Therefore, God exists.
As existence is a perfection, God must have the perfection of existence, otherwise he would not be perfect.
What reasons does von Zinzendorf provide for insisting that religion must be “able to be grasped through experience alone without any concepts?”
“If this were not so, someone born deaf or blind or mentally deficient, or a child, could not have the religion necessary for salvation. The first could not hear the truth, the second would lack the mental ability to think about and understand matters, and the third would lack the ability to grasp concepts to put them together and test them.”
Anybody who does not have intellect or certain senses could not be saved.
- In what form, according to Baker-Fletcher, does God’s revelation come and how ought they to be ordered in one’s theological work?
God’s revelation is present in experiences of scripture, tradition, and reason (15). Scripture is the primary source for Christian theology, the church is not the church if it is not grounded in Christ as revealed in scripture (25). Scripture is the “norming norm” of Christian faith, but was written by humans in a context (26). Tradition is secondary (22). Traditions reveal strengths and weaknesses in interpretations of scripture in the global body of Christ (22). Reason is an authoritative source for reflection on tradition and scripture, without it we cannot communicate our experience of God to each other (27), cannot separate reason from experiential knowledge or knowing, which is needed to claim to understand God (27).
