What is Truth- FINAL EXAM

How does Christian epistemology view the concept of "certainty" as a criterion for knowing? Why?

1 Corinthians 13:12. We can not be certain that our knowledge is true because we are finite creatures in a transcendent reality. We see dimly and we do not see and understand well enough to live into reality properly. It is dim because we are finite and becomes dimmer because of the fall, there is a gap created between us and God. We will know fully because we are fully known and will eventually be able to know as much as were are able to as beings, but we will be able to see and understand as we are present with God, but this does not close the gap.

What is the primary essence of the Fall?

Adam and Eve tried to transcend their creatureliness in order to do things apart from God. We are turning our backs on the grace relationship and living apart from God and using His creation apart from His purpose for it.

What does "and the word became flesh and dwelt among us" mean?

As an expression of the self- giving love that characterizes the Trinity, the Divine Son did not regard His divinity as something to be held dear, but instead emptied Himself, taking the form of a human, He humbled Himself and assumed the human condition unto Himself in order to reconcile humanity and all of creation to God

Explain the role of authority

Authority: All submit to authority of particular narratives. Us trusting in sources we see as reliable to learn about the world. Delusional to think we develop knowledge without twisting or submitting to an authority.

What is beauty?

Beauty: ties into teleology- out inherent desire as human beings to participate in a rightly orders love go God, which then pulls us closer and deeper into the transcendent reality, most intimate.

Who is God?

Beginning of the Narrative, transcendent, good, trinity, love

What are strengths and weaknesses of Humans as Believers?

Believers: We think about the world according to a framework that we put our trust in. We put a belief in a particular narration reality that provides the framework for us to think. Can not only think and believe ourselves to the new telos. You might believe the right things, but desires and telos are still in the wrong direction.

How is Plato's allegory and the Christian Narration similar?

Both assume humans exist in a state of bondage and deception. Learning is painful, gradual, and disorienting; it is deeply formative in a particular character.

Why might recreation be a helpful way of conceiving the fallen world?

By turning away from God and therefore our source of life, we begin to unravel and light drains out of us. God pervades creation because he is giving physical world essence and life so the more that we turn from God the more that we turn away from the source of creation and life. The reason of being disobedient is by disobeying we are turning away from the source of life and existence.

How should Christian affirmations that God is love and that humans are first and foremost 'lovers' affect our understanding of epistemology?

Cannot grow in genuine knowledge without growing in love also. Knowledge puffs up and love builds up. Information and facts are not important as knowledge unless they are used to bring people to greater intimacy with the reality that we are created for.

How have we studies theology in this class?

Christian narration insists that we are finite creatures created by and infinite being. The Church's narration of Truth is compelling of reality, the Christian theological narrative presents an account of the world that is full of mystery and transcendence. Learn all that we can know about God's story that we can inhabit that story as our reality and way of lie.

Explain what it means for the Nicene Creed to describe the Church as APOSTOLIC

Church is anointed by the Holy Spirit and established in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Explain what it means for the Nicene Creed to describe the Church as ONE

Church is as one , just like the relational Trinity, being united in love and self- giving otherness. Created to share in love of God, who is one.

Why do we describe the creation as something inherently good?

Created by God who is good, but is just ravaged by sin and evil. God created something that He must pervade to give it existence, so the world exists within the life of a good God- without Him in the world, it would fall a part.

Why did God create?

Created out of love that is shared between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit

What is the significance of the belief that God has created ex nihilism?

Creation out of nothing- therefore God pervades all of this world to sustain it. Nothing does not owe its existence to God and all is a gift.

How does the concept of 'culture' and conceiving of the history of God's race as 'culture making' help us to better understand the place of Israel in the Christian narrative?

Culture: A community cultivating a way of life together in order to make sense of the world by making something of it. We have the capacity to be creative. God is the first culture maker. Israel is to cultivate a way of life together that leans in to and represents what God has created for humanity for the culture of a rightly ordered love. Israel was a culture to be rooted in what we are created for, it intended to draw humanity back into the relationship with God.

What is the different of the liberal learning of Plato's allegory vs. Christian Narration of reality?

Differences: Plato's narration= our world barely touches the transcendent reality, and the physical world is outside the transcendent reality. Liberation is a look as the shadows of truth, escaping the world and entering transcendence. It is an individual journey into the deep understanding of reality, experiencing it for yourself. Christian Narration= World is immersed in transcendent reality. Liberation is to realize transcendent reality is not separate. Incarnation redeemed cave from the inside out and created new humanity, who are part of God's redeeming of cave.

What is perversion?

Embracing a self- centered love that fractures, distorts, and malformed our relationships with God, others, broader creation, and self

What is the essence of education according to James Smith? How does love factor into the equation? How does such a view of education alter the boundaries of how we think about learning and formation?

Essence of education is formation that forms a desire and makes us certain kinds of people. Liturgies aim our love and form our identities. As lovers, we live out life aimed at a particular goal for love. There is not neutral space.

Why did we spend so much time studying theology in HNR- 170?

Every human being trusts in and inhabits some vision or narration of reality that shapes and determines how he or she views and experiences the world. The more that we understand that the better that we can leave into it. The purpose of liberal education is to liberate human beings from false ways of understanding and inhabiting reality in order to root them more deeply in narration of truth that is consistent with reality. Seeks to liberate students to make sense of the world and live their lives according to the plot and logic of a christian narration of reality.

Describe the basic nature of sin and evil.

Evil is perversion of good. It is parasitic and can not exist without good.

Explain the role of Faith

Faith: Everyone starts off believing/ trusting in a particular framework which they use to understand most logical explanation of reality. Path to knowledge begins with faith.

What does the Nicene Creed affirm once and for all about the relationship of Father and Son?

Father and Son are homoousios, of same essence. We have also confirmed these things in our worship.

Why is the Church described as Apostolic as opposed to Biblical?

It implies biblical in proper context. Christian cannon was developed within community of the church and passed down starting with the Apostles.

As the church sought to make sense of what it means for God to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, why were the following interpretations deemed heretical: Gnosticism, Adoptionist Monarchism, Modalist Monarchism, and Arianism?

Gnostics: World is evil and a prison and Jesus was not human but fully divine. Heresy because the world is reality and is good and Jesus is the revealer and redeemer and fully human. Adoptionist Monarchism: Heresy because Jesus is actually Son of God by nature and God did not just place His spirit on human Jesus to make him a super prophet. Modalist Monarchism: 1 God interacting in 3 modes, God heresy because God is just wearing masks and parading as Son and spirit, suggests God can only be in one place at one time. Arianism: Heresy because it says that Jesus is the 1st creation and a super- creature and below the Father in hierarchy.

What is the fundamental truths that Christians believe that we can affirm about the Trinity?

God is one but He is not alone. God exists in oneness as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The early church reflected on the nature and significance of God's nature as part of their developing experience of the life of the Spirit rooted in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share in an eternal, self- giving, others- centered love; on union of being, love, devotion, purpose, and creativity that is eternally one. The Trinity is the foundation of all reality. It is the source of Truth, goodness, and beauty. The realities of the Trinity will pervade and shape every aspect of the christian theological narrative. The Christian story is essentially an unpacking of our participation in the life of the Trinity.

Grace of Davidic covenant

God meets the people where they are and gives them a king. He uses Kind David as part of the kingship as part of a culture as He continues to work His redemption

What is a sacramental ontology?

God pervades our world; He is immersed in transcendent reality.

What are the thee types of living narratives?

Grand/ ultimate: determines how we live into other narratives based on Grand embedded telos Subplot: little ways that we live into grand narrative localized: family life, occupations, IWU

Why was It necessary for Christ to take on the fulness of human experience? And why for all eternity?

He healed nature. For all eternity because taking on human nature fully meant it was not just a temporary suit.

Why is Jesus referred to as the New Adam?

He is the perfect human being and completeness of what we have been created to become. His humanity is our humanity.

What is Christian Anthropology?

Humans as lovers. Humans are created in the image of God and this affirms that we are lovers created out of an abundance of love. Humans are creative, created for community, and have free will. The human telos is a rightly ordered love of God in our relationships with God, the self, others, and the broader creation. The fall malformed this love/ telos as other things claim our ultimate love. We turn in on ourselves trying to transcend our creatureliness. The hope is Jesus as the New Adam that all humanity can be redeemed and our loves conform back to the intended telos.

Why is the human imagination so critical for the cultivation of knowledge?

In modern society we tend to think of knowledge as factual information. The imagination reminds us that if we set aside the logic of modernity and try to think about reality in a christian narration and know things. Our orientation of the world is growing as we take in reality with all of who were are= imagination growth.

Humanity created "in the image of God"- telos of human existence

In the image of God= why we say that we are first and foremost lovers but also thinkers, and people who are creative. Love the way that we have been created to love. Telos= this rightly ordered love of God, in relationship with God, others, ourselves and the broader creation.

What is truth?

It encompasses how we understand reality: truth is reality: acknowledge how things are and how God intended them to be.

What is the purpose if HNR-170

It focuses on the most central of the big questions of human existence. It challenges students to pursue their collegiate studies as a Christian liberal education that nurtures deeper intimacy with God. It gives students a coherent overview of a Christian narration of reality. It equips and encourages students to inhabit this narration of truth and reality as their chief calling in life as the substance of their everyday life. It also helps students to recognize the theological character of our contemporary society and the visions of truth it inspires in order to develop the discernment necessary to cultivate a rightly ordered love in the face of these competing narrations of reality.

What is goodness?

It is all about how we live into and participate in this transcendental reality-- it is sacramental, "good= living well into God's reality. What reality looks like when 'I' is properly manifested.

What is the purpose of Mosaic Law?

It is the law of Moses- 10 commandments. Sin against God, you sin against others. Law was a gift of God's grace, as guidelines and rules to follow to create and nurture a kind of people that lives in particular ways. Rules of rightly ordered love.

What is the significance of the culture of Israel to Christ's life?

It reminds us that God created a cultural context in which the word was became flesh not simply to bring the cultural fulfillment, but to be shaped by that culture of worship and Hebrew Scriptures of Israel.

Jesus as the Messiah/ Anointed One

Jesus anointed means He has a task to carry out. Anointed with the Holy Spirit is to empower Him to do work that is necessary to help move the culture forward.

Define the Chalcedonian definition of Christology

Jesus is 100% human and 100% divine. He takes on the fullness of humanity in terms of potential God created humanity as apart from sin- bring humanity into fullness. pre-exisitng divinity that took on a different form of existence ad humanity as well as a part of the Trinity. The spirit entered Mary and took on flesh. These two natures remain distinct yet in a union that is not compromised.

What is knowledge according to the plot and logic to the Christian narrative?

Knowledge is formative. Knowledge is more expansive and holistic. Knowledge is intimacy with reality as love and knowledge are inseparable. 1 Corinthians 8 and 13.

What is liberal learning according to Plato's allegory of the cave.

Liberal learning is supposed to be about nurturing lives of genuine truth, goodness, and beauty. Education should be formative, intentionally holistic (that embraces the formative power of practices and habits for shaping who we are as people, developmental), transparent about the visions of truth, goodness, and beauty, reality is transcendent and humanity is made for reality.

What is a liberal education?

Living into the christian narration of reality and how it competes with modernity.

What, according to the Christian Smith, are living narratives?

Living narratives are Storie we tell to make sense of the world around us. It is storied by nature, living narration that we inhabit, define us and become a part of who we are.

How do living narratives help us to make sense of epistemology?

Living narratives shape our "common sense" and our morals to what we consider sacred. We inhabit liturgies that bring the narrative to life. Telos is always the product of a particular narration. You do this as a character in a story that you share with others.

What are strengths and weaknesses of Humans as Lovers?

Love is primary as thinking and believing work within it. Everyone has something that they consider ultimate and it is related to our loves and desires. Everything that we do is pointed to our ultimate desires.

What does it mean to say that the church emerged as a Trinitarian community of faith that is committed to a Monotheistic theology?

Means that as they lived out faith, the Church's understanding of the Trinity was forged in worship and the monotheistic theology affirmed God as one.

Were Adam and Eve perfect?

NO- they were made but still needed to develop a maturity and completeness to be able to love the way that God has created us to love. If they were perfect, they never would have fallen.

What is the basics of Anthropology?

Nature of humans, study what it means to be humans

Why do we describe the creation in terms of grace?

Patron- dependent relationship and gifts are given to dependent, who in turn shows gratitude back through stewarding gifts.

How is the relationship of human and divine in the person of Jesus consistent with the logic of a sacramental ontology?

Physical world naturally exists in the transcendent reality that is the life and love of God.

Why are Truth, Goodness, and Beauty called the "transcendentals"?

They go beyond what we can see.

What is a priestly kingdom, and what country was set aside for this?

Priestly Kingdom: Israel is set apart to be priestly nation because they are to be a blessing to all nations. God did this to try to develop a particular culture in what it should look like to like for all nations. Priest tend the relationship between God and Humanity.

What is Reality?

Reality is rooted in the life and love of God.

Explain the role of reason

Reason: Servant of faith and tradition. Pathway to knowledge begins with faith and trust in a particular narration of reality. Some narration of reality that we can to prove but claim to be true. Reason is inseparable from ultimate love and desires, we reason based on desires and loves and is not authoritative above narration of reality. Reason is to reasonably line up the will and emotions with ultimate love pointed at God.

The Body of Christ= ?

Reinforcement that Christian salvation is a communal reality rooted in Christ as the New Adam. Christians live in and through the death, life, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Explain the essentials of a Christian ontology, including the significance of the Triune nature of God, and the catalyst fir creation, the 'grace of a good creation,; the sacramental' character of reality, and the effects of the fall.

Sacramental Ontology: actively participate in the life and love of God. The Trinity os one in relational love and out of this love, God created. Since God is good, God is IN creation. Nothing exists without God, so God pervades all of creation but is also outside of it. The sacramental character of reality is as such because God pervades creation, we can participate in the life and love of God.

We are still lovers, but how is out love affected with respect to the four relationships that manifest it?

Self: By trying to transcend creatureliness, there is a tendency to look to ourselves as our authority and the one to decide things. Objectification. We begin to see ourselves and others as objects Others: Objects for our own selfish uses Broader Creation: Possessions to hoard and not gifts as means. God: Turn away and instead choose self as authority and fall into idolatry

Explain what it means for the Nicene Creed to describe the Church as HOLY

Set Apart. A community defined by the Spirit. Holy Spirit is present in community and the life of the spirit and the church are combined. To be more holy is to be attentive to what the Holy Spirit is doing. Embodiment of who Jesus became.

Explain what it means for the Nicene Creed to describe the Church as CATHOLIC

Share in oneness that defines all of church. The body of Christ that starts at pentecost until now. Universal.

How do we reconcile Jesus' sinlessness with His developments as a human being?

Sinlessness with development as a human beings is that he lived a human life the it is lived. He is going through this life lacking malformation, but it was not easy.

What does it mean to say that Jesus Christ became the telos of the Mosaic Law?

Telos of the law: became the person that the law tried to create. He fulfilled the prophecy and became a rightly ordered lover. He forms and shapes character and then ultimate love. He becomes righteous.

What is the gospel?

The gospel is a story about the establishment of a new redeemed humanity which, in and through Christ, is able to enter into our created purposes to share in the Triune love of our Creator- Believers grow in the love of God as we share in the character of Christ through the spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit has bestowed on the Church's members for the collective building up of the Body of Christ in a rightly ordered love of God.

Why does truth and reality matter?

The more that we live a life in sync with truth, goodness, and beauty of reality, the better off we will be and flourish. The reason that we turn toward theology and a christian narration of reality is bc a Christian understanding of reality is to look into the plot and logic of what this sort of reality is. We are looking at what the christian narration of reality and truth is and how it competes with other narrations of our society.

What is ontology?

The study of being/ what is the nature of reality? These questions lead into sacramental ontology. Answers the questions of who our creator is and that he did not simply create the world and step away, but actively continues to participate in his inherently good creation.

What is Teleology?

The study of human purposes. As humans, we all have a telos that is forming our ultimate love and our ultimate love also shaped our telos. Our purpose is to share together in the eternally abundant, self- giving, others- centered love or our creator. Embedded in the plot and logic of reality in which we are living. Our telos is shaped by our daily practices.

What is Epistemology?

The study of knowledge. Knowledge is an intimacy with reality, formative, living into the reality of truth, goodness, and beauty as lovers. Telos is a product of specific narration or reality. Cannot grow in genuine knowledge without love. Knowledge is greater intimacy with reality and is a way of talking about how closely we enter into the reality of God's love.

What is Anthropology?

The study of what it means to be humans. Rooted in sacramental ontology, as lovers we all have something that we consider to be ultimate and related to our loves and desires. Love is primary as thinking and belief fall within that.

What is privation?

The turning away from the Divine Gift Giver and treating the Gifts of Creation as possessions to hoard, consume, ignore, and discard, caused by the idea of "scarcity".

What is the purpose of truth, goodness, and beauty, these concepts of traditions of liberal learning?

These are three overlapping ways that we make sense of reality. Truth is a way of talking about what the reality is itself and what it consists of. Goodness is a way of understanding what is loos like when reality is embodied well in our physical world. Beauty is the reminder that we believe reality is good for us and therefore we believe that we are attracted to it- desires become untied with this reality. This reality goes beyond our ability to describe it. These are concepts that the tradition of liberal learning has relied upon in order to talk about what reality is.

Explain significance of saying that Adam and Eve gained knowledge of good and evil

They already knew goodness because they were sharing in God's life and love but trying to grasp it for separation from God and are now intimate with evil. Taking what is good and twisting it. Decreation.

Abraham and his descendants were chosen to become the 'new humanity'.

They were set apart to become a blessing to all nations and gave them land to develop a culture of God's grace to be a blessing of all nations. To eventually encompass all families of Earth.

What are strengths and weaknesses of Humans as thinkers?

Thinkers: while we do think and analyze, we are so much more. It is reductionistic and can not account for the loving relationships that we are in. Does not account for the complexities of the embodied rest of us. We think about the world after we experience it. We are informative learners

Why is Romans 12:2 the motto for this class?

This is Paul calling us to learn to turn away from ignorance, delusion, and vice and being free to learn and live into transcendental transformation of mind. This calls us not to conform to the pattern of this age. It is the overlapping of truth, goodness, and beauty.

What is the purpose of humanity's task to be fruitful and multiply and to become good stewards of the Earth?

To cultivate a world in which our participation the life and love of God can flourish. If we are good stewards than we are trying to find ways to make the world flourish as a place where we can share in God's life and love.

Explain the role to traditions

Traditions: Narrations of reality are traditions handed down within believing communities. It is a way of life.

What is Truth?

Truth and reality are synonymous.

How does thinking in terms of the "four relationships" help us to make proper sense of what it means for us to be a creator in God's world?

We are physical and finite so for us to experience something us to experience it with physically if who we are. We react through the means that we have been given. We utilize God's gifts of creation.

What does it mean to say that humans are "teleological creatures"?

We have and live our love aimed at a particular goal. We are always aimed at our ultimate love, what we most desire, our vision of reality, the "good life", the most important thing in our life. Sanctification= rightly ordered love.