Christian Faith-The Story of God_Exam A Preparation

True/False • The meaning of Michelangelo's ninth Sistine Chapel painting of Noah (The Story DVD)

The meaning of Michelangelo's ninth Sistine Chapel painting of Noah (The Story DVD) • Focusing on the meaning of 'The Flood' there is a view that it is looking to provoke the observer into thinking about the desperation of those in danger from the flood. • It looks to make the viewer question God's justice in wiping out humanity to erase the sins of the wicked but saving Noah and his family. Because the figures in the painting are small and tightly grouped, some believe that it undermines its emotional impact and makes the story tougher to follow.

Multiple Choice • The three historic traditions of the historic Christian Faith p. 26

The three historic traditions of the historic Christian Faith p. 26 • There are three main streams that feed this river: Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy (Greek, Russian, and others), & Protestantism. • Specific aspects of these three: the particular Christian tradition that forms and informs the book in your hands is a tributary of the Protestant stream. • It's the Wesleyan tradition—that's, the interpretation of Protestant Christian faith derived primarily from the teaching of John Wesley (1703-1791)—that will provide our lens for reading and telling the Story of God.

True/False •Primary character of Genesis, p. 15

True/False • Primary character of Genesis, p. 15 a. If we keep in mind and heart these two convictions arising from the very opening of Genesis—that God is the primary Character. And that this Character operates time-fully, within the rhythms of creation itself.

Multiple Choice • Teleological argument for God's existence p.35

Teleological argument for God's existence p.35 • The second argument for God's existence, a relative of the first, is the teleological argument (GR., telos = goal, aim). • The teleological argument points to the evidence of order, harmony, complexity, and beauty in the world we observe. • This could include everything from a breathtaking sunset to a mother nursing her child, from the symbolic oxygen-carbon dioxide relationship between plants and animals to the complexities of the human brain, from the earth's seemingly perfect spatial relationship to the sun to the ant colony in my garden.

True/False • Abraham is unifying figure for what faith traditions...beginning of chapter 12 p. 99

"Father Abraham had many sons, / Many sons had Father Abraham...." They did not know the half of it. • It's fascinating, indeed almost unbelievable, that a remote figure shrouded in mystery has been the groundspring of three great streams of monotheistic (lit., "belief in one God") faith. • Father Abraham indeed had many sons and daughters, and what a sibling rivalry flourishes among them! • Jews, Christians, and Muslims all vie for the honor of being Abraham's children, his true heirs. • The narrative of Abraham, interpreted in differing ways, provides a crucial component for each of these faiths. They are all grounded in the ancient root story of this wandering Semite.

Matching • Anselm's argument for the existence of God p. 36

Anselm's argument for the existence of God p. 36 • The ontological argument (Gr., ontos = being) is the most readily associated with Anselm (1033-1109), one of the greatest theologians of the medieval church, though the argument in a similar form had been offered much earlier by Augustine (354-430). • This, then, is why the atheist is a fool, according to Anselm: he or she denies the existence of being who, by definition, must be—for God is Perfect Being. The very idea of God demands the existence of God.

Multiple Choice • Know content of II Timothy 3:16

• "All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. • It convicts us of our need of a Saviour and teaches us about the eternal plan of the Creator and what He expects of His children. It guides us along the road of righteous living, it trains us in the path of patient endurance, and it furnishes us with examples of lives that are lived in humble obedience to our Father in heaven. • It corrects our skewed human perceptions; it highlights prideful attitudes and exposes false presumptions. It alerts us to the pitfalls of sinning and explains our inherited sin-nature.

True/False • "lower story" (The Story DVD)

• "Lower Story" - the one thing written and told from a six-foot perspective—horizontal and linear viewpoint. o Dealing with conflict, paying bills, getting over a cold, finding a job, winning a race, stubbing your toe and what you say after you stub your toe. The Lower Story is our story. • Cain and Abel—In the Lower Story of the dark side of unnamed sibling rivalry. Cain takes the life of his brother Abel out of jealousy from his brother's success. • Noah—In the Lower Story we learn of a crazy man who hears from God and builds a boat in the middle of dry land. We learn of God's regret that he made humans and his punishment upon them. In the Lower Story we learn about faith.

True/False • "upper story" (The Story DVD)

• "Upper Story" - the one being written and told from above, from God's perspective - a vertical, holistic viewpoint. • In the Upper Story we discover what God is up to; how he is weaving our story into his one divine love story. The Upper Story is God's Story. • Cain and Abel—In the Upper Story, the sin nature that was injected into the life of Adam and Eve that got them booted from the garden is automatically and verifiably transmitted to their offspring. Adam's choice becomes our choice. • Noah—In the Upper Story, God wants to get us back into the garden. Plan A is too start over with the best guy humans have and see if this doesn't fix the problem. It didn't work. Plan B is to have a relationship with God and to love one another.

True/False • Explore God's covenant with David in 2 Samuel 7:16

• 2 Samuel 7:16 o "And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before you. Your throne shall be established forever." • Davidic Covenant - The Seven Blessings The Davidic Covenant represented God's promises to David, ensuring an everlasting pledge that contained seven blessings: o A sure land for Israel forever o No more affliction from nations forever o A Davidic kingdom forever o The fatherly care of God forever o A Davidic house forever o A Davidic throne forever o An eternal covenant

Multiple Choice • Prophets experiencing pathos p. 120-121

• Abraham Heschel - a twentieth-century Jewish philosopher of religion who arm in arm with King, led in many civil rights marches during the 60s, has characterized the prophets' power as a sharing in the "the divine pathos," or the pain of God. • Heschel argued that "this notion that God can be intimately affected, that He possesses not merely intelligence and will, but also pathos, basically defines the prophetic consciousness of God." • Heschel's powerful analysis would suggest that the prophets were enabled by God to share in the divine pathos, in God's own compassion for those who suffer. • It is God's own compassion, rather than simple humanism, that fueled the prophets' deep concern for social and economic justice. • It was also this sharing in the "pathos of God" that empowered the prophets to address Israel's religious, political, and social circumstances not simply from the divine perspective, but from within the divine heart!

Matching • Synergism p. 46

• Again in Wesley's words, "Conscience... is that faculty whereby we are at once conscious of our own thoughts, words, and actions; and of their merit or demerit," with the necessary proviso that, far from speaking with one universal voice, the judgment of conscience "varies exceedingly, according to education and thousand other circumstances." • This is an expression synergism (Gr, syn = together with; erg = work), the idea that God is pleased to cooperate with human beings where we are—in all our textured humanity, in all of our social and historical particularity—as the Spirit begins to move us toward where we ought to be. • Applying to Wesley's reflection upon conscience as the synergistic work of God's Sprit impinging upon the human consciousness within its own social, historical, and religious context (its "thousand other circumstances"), we can see the possibilities for affirming the relative authenticity of people's awareness of God in religion traditions other than Christian.

True/False • Composition of the Synoptic Gospels p. 27

Composition of the Synoptic Gospels p. 27 • Each of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke; syn = together with; optic = to see) tells in differing narratives the absolute importance of Jesus attached to the commandments of Moses to love God and to love one's neighbor. • These dual commands were for Jesus the greatest of all God's commandments, the linchpin for "all the law and the prophets" (Matthew 22:40), the fulfillment of which is life eternal. • This is the perfection for which human beings are created: to love as God, whom Wesley called "the great ocean of love," has loved us.

Matching • Special Revelation p. 33 • General Revelation p. 33

General Revelation (God's existence revealed in creation) is to as Natural Theology (human discourse about this God) Special Revelation (God's character revealed in historical Acts of Scripture) is to Dogmatic theology (human discourse about this God's saving works)

True/False • God big idea (The Story DVD)

God big idea (The Story DVD) • God's big idea is to be with us.

Multiple Choice • John Wesley's Aldersgate Experience p. 41-42

John Wesley's Aldersgate Experience p. 41-42 • During the experience f Wesley's heart being warmed is not the main thing; the trustworthiness of Christ is. For that matter, even the language Wesley employed in his journal about his "heart strangely warmed" is lifted from Emmaus road story in the Gospel of Luke 24:32. • Helped Wesley testify his confidence that it was the living Christ who brought to him this heartwarming assurance of salvation. • Wesley again framed it in Biblical terms: "The Sprit itself bore witness to my spirit that I was a child of God, gave me an evidence hereof, and I immediately cried, 'Abba, Father!'"

True/False • Connecting Noah and Jesus p. 93-94

Noah: God's Covenant with Creation • "How could a loving, caring God destroy everything in a flood, including all those innocent children? o From the New Testament Book of 1 Peter: For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark...And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you...through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right and of God. (1 Peter 3:18-22) • It is difficult for commentators to settles on an agreed interpretation of this passage, but one principle stands out: the Early Church interpreted the story of Noah, and all of the Old testament Scriptures, for that matter, within the context and through the prism of the story of Jesus Christ.

True/False • What sin is NOT... p. 83...paragraph beginning... "But if God creates us for, and towards"

What sin is NOT... p. 83...paragraph beginning... "But if God creates us for, and towards" • But if God creates us for, and toward, a life of self-giving and other-receiving love, it becomes clear that sin is not essentially an aspect of human nature as created and willed by our Maker.

True/False • Strengths of narrative theology, p. 14

a. Attempt at a narrative theology on the introductory level—not simplistic, yet communicating narrative theology to people who are not professional theologians. b. Also attempt to show how various doctrines, concerns, and issues of theology become closely related go one another as they are gleaned from both the Bible and Christian tradition. c. Introduction to Christian theology, responsive especially to the Wesleyan tradition, and set within the mode and milieu of narrative-shaped reflection. d. Also calls and challenges its reader and hearers to locate themselves in the Story.

True/False • Augustine's ideas on unmitigated human freedom p. 85

• As debates generally do, this one polarized the contestants' ideas to extremes. • Augustus's ideas on original sin and predestination tended to make human beings into little more than enslaved pawns on a cosmic chessboard. • We do not have to tale Augustine's extreme position on order to recognize that Pelagius did not do justice to the reality of our solidarity. Augustine did not see clearly that what each of us says, does, and thinks profoundly impacts and influences those around us, and they deeply influence those around them, ad infinitum. • And in reality, of this influence, continues death.

Matching • Anthropomorphic p. 87

• At least Genesis 6 suggests that things had gotten much worse than even God had anticipated. • Theologians throughout history have attempted to sidestep passages such as these, calling them anthropomorphic (Gr., anthrōpos = humanity; morphē = shape orform), or thinking about God in human terms. • Anthropomorphism might be permissible for ancient peoples, but it is hardly worthy of sophisticated theists! Or o the argument goes. • Even while we grant the anthropomorphism of a passage such as this, it does not necessarily follow that the passage cannot rightly suggest anything to us about God!

Matching • Inspiration p. 23

• Bible testifies faithfully to Jesus' words and deeds, and thus reveals the nature and purpose of our Maker. Biblical interpretations of history are inspired (in-spire = breathe into). It is to believe in divine revelation • Inspiration does not at all necessitate the idea of a word-for-word dictation from God to the biblical writer. The Bible own evidence tends strongly to indicate otherwise. • Inspiration most obviously refers to the living presence of God's Spirit (GR., pneuma = breath, air in motion) offering divine insight to the writer to interpret God's saving activity without negating or undoing the writer's real humanity.

True/False • Explore the meaning of co-creation

• Co-creation - dynamic that the very heart of our own self-expression is activated—we get to reveal who we are to the universe. • Aligning ourselves in the plans (or ways) of God leads us into that glorious undertaking of building the manifestations of Heaven on earth. This is indeed possible. There is a spiritual energy living in each being and the planet itself that connects us to our Creator Source. • The co-creative partnership we share with God is a dance between human and Spirit, with the divine plans leading and the human will gracefully being led in a rhythm uniting both human and Spirit into ONENESS. • Doing the Will of God Alignment is the key word to consider in co-creation with Spirit. The mind of God over-arches the universe, and the universe is the physical domain wherein the plans of God are manifested

True/False • David and the building of the temple p. 115

• God condescends to David's idea—for the Temple is David's idea, not God's command. But God, through the prophet Nathan, indicates that it will be a son of David who will build a temple. "It is your son Solomon who shall build my house and my courts, for I have chosen him to be a son to me, and I will be a father to him." (1 Chronicles 28:6). • Before David died, he offered a prayer of dedication prior to the beginning of the Temple's construction. o Blessed are you, O LORD, the God of our ancestor Israel, forever and ever. Yours, O LORD, are the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty; for all that is in the heavens and on the earth is yours; yours s the kingdom, I LORD, and you are exalted as head above all... But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to make this freewill offering? For all things come from you, and of you own have we given you. For we are aliens and transients before you, and tenants, as were all our ancestors. (1 Chronicles 29:10-11, 14-15) • It is all of grace that God seeks us out for fellowship and service—we who are, in David's imagery, vagabonds, transients, temporary tenants in a world on loan.

True/False • Cain and Abel story p. 81-83

• God intervention is not an intrusion upon Cain's moral agency no a negation of his freedom; God simply is portrayed as gently but persistently probing Cain with a series of questions: o Why are you angry, why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; it desires is for you, but you must master it" • God, the Bestower and Encourager of human responsibility, will not overrule Cain's murderous intentions. God simply speaks to Cain, attempting to lure him to exercise his power in a different, less destructive way. o God is with Cain, whispering to him, questioning him, attempting to draw him away from hatred and murder. But God will not coerce Cain—and therefore allows human bloodshed to break loose. • Cain was still responsible, but his act is more understandable in a world in which rivalries, jealousies, mistrust, and animosity are already woven into the complex of human relationships. • And while God's holy presence confronted Cain with the possibility of choosing against his developing animosity toward Abel, God could do nothing to prevent it while maintaining a world in which human agency and responsibility, necessary as they are to true and authentic relations, contribute their part. • In Genesis 4 God did not violate Cain's freedom, but did at least attempt to sway him to exercise that freedom in a positive and constructive direction.

True/False • David and the building of the temple p. 111

• God's willingness to labor together with human beings in covenantal relationship than in the stories of David and his processor, Saul. • Scripture bears witness to God's promise to David to establish his throne forever (2 Samuel 7:16). • Ironically, though, the very idea of a human king over Israel was apparently not even God's foremost intention for the covenant people. • It is interesting that the biblical narratives of Israel's quest for authentic kingship contain several such instances of God's power to compromise (lit., "promise together with") with God's people for the sake of redemption.

True/False • Hamartiology defined p. 75

• Hamartiology - Anthropology to the doctrine of sin (Gr., hamartia = missing the mark), we shall find that we have already anticipated some of the problematics of this area Christian though in chapter 5. • There, in grappling with the problem of evil, the freewill defense goes a long way towards a solution. • Essentially, the freewill defense states that many, if not most, of the world's ills are due to the human misuse of freedom. The implication of this line of argument is that God is willing to grant us a measure of agency, even with the risks this agency creates. • We may properly speculate that this sort of moral agency is necessary to authentically responsible relations to God and neighbor.

Multiple Choice • How histories reshaped p. 18-19

• Histories are shaped by the perceptions and memories shared by communities: a. (Nations, tribes, religious denominations), and usually written by people who represent such community (the historian) b. In which a pattern or succession of events is selected and interpreted to tell that people's story from a particular perspective and for a particular reason.

True/False • Isaac means...? p. 101

• In Scene Three: Thirteen whole years later and Abram's pushing 100. God, apparently in no hurry, appears and repeats the promise. It's like a running joke that Abram simply does not get: "I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you" (17:6) • The Lord God, Creator of heaven and earth, will give Abraham the promise child through his wife, Sarah. • "Come on now, Lord! You really don't have to go to all that trouble! I mean, let's be reasonable. Sarah's 89, and I'm no spring chicken. Why don't you just work your plan through Ishmael? • But God is determined to use his own material. "No, old Sarah is going to have boy next year, and you'll name Laughter (Isaac). Get it?"

True/False • Free will defined p. 88-89

• In so creating, God apparently does place limitations upon divine power and knowledge in the very act of extending to every human being the real possibilities of choosing. • A further illustration of God's willingness to yield to human freedom in the process of moving into an open, undetermined future occurs not much later in Genesis. • To miss the very truth that this Story of God can teach us: human faith in God is a living relationship that must find expression in this world through human decisions and action. Promises of commitment, pledges of allegiance, are insufficient. • Faith in God is a faith tested, tried, and stretched in the crucible of everyday existence in this world, in the realm of real sacrifice, rather than simply in some inner sanctum of the heart... Relationship to God is measured in concrete actions, in our actual response to God's known will. • The New Testament Book of James, in fact, draws upon this Genesis story to emphasize the place of human works within faith. • But this implies that the God who is Love is eternally ready and willing to love and to be loved, to be loved, to be engaged and involved and at risk in the creation and for the creatures. • God's decision to share freedom with human being (and perhaps analogously with all of creation), to create beings who can and quite often do act against the divine purposes, is apparently in some mysterious way a profound self-limitation. • Thus, as Genesis 6 tells it, God is sorry and grieved and, in response to the sinful depth into which humanity has fallen, prepare to let all chaos break loose again.

Multiple Choice • Covenant defined p. 92

• In the Bible's stories of the covenants (Lat., co = together; vene= come) that God initiates. • God is the God of covenant, of pacts or agreements, is much too often ignored in theology to its own detriment. • God is the covenantal God is to suggest a divine interest in our cooperation, a divine commitment to partnership, a divine power that is empowering and affirming of the other. • A biblical theology of covenant relationships would suggest that God is not interested in performing solos. • Our Creator invites our participation, our cooperation, in the task of creation and redemption. • God's very act of creating the universe as other, and of creating us as others-than-God, is what makes covenantal relations possible.

Matching • Moral Evil p. 57

• In the beginning in Christian tradition has made b/w moral evil and natural evil. • Moral evil - includes all suffering that's a result of human agency, or more effective in dealing with moral evil, since essentially it argues that evil is in the world because of human sin, not because of divine will or doing. • God cannot be directly faulted for occasions in which one person suffers or dies at the hands of another, for God does not will that beings so treat one another. • Of course, God still is finally responsible for having created moral agents who are capable of sin, but at least in this case God is only indirectly responsible for evil. • God is bestowing human beings with a measure of agency, has also created the potential for evil in creation.

True/False • Wesley's "exist and to love" formula p. 70

• John Wesley anticipated a good deal of this understanding of theological anthropology when he wrote that God created human beings "to exist and to love." • To exist means, literally, to "stand forth," which implies a sense of identity, an awareness of agency and responsibility. Wesley suggested that God creates us not to be puppets on a string; the paradox of being human is that while we are entirely dependent upon our Maker in each moment for our very being, God sustains us in each moment precisely to "stand forth," to be able to make choices and to be answerable for them. • Without the first half of Wesley's formula, "to exist," it is impossible to have the second half, "to love." For to commit ourselves in love, whether the object of love be God or neighbor, it is necessary that we stand forth as persons who are other than, distinct form, the loved one. • Relation to God and neighbor ("to love") cannot occur without a string sense of agency and responsibility ("to exist").

Matching • Deism p. 106

• Obviously this truth would not be that God has done mothing since creation. That is the belief of deism (Lat., deus = God), i.e., that God created the universe, set its laws and conditions into place, and has since retired from active duty. • Mainstream biblical faith has never embraced this "absentee landlord" notion of deity. The fasts belie the notion of a static, completed creation. • An example literally "closer to home" is the creation of new life, human and otherwise, which is an ongoing process in our world. God continues to call forth new beings into existence; hence, creation is a continuing process. • More important, in the Scriptures we read of a God who continues to labor by upholding creation, interacting creatively with creaturely agencies, and redeeming the world.

True/False • Omnipotence defined p. 55

• Omnipotence - all potency or power is inherently God's. There is no other power against whom God must complete, no other source of being or energy. • God is, in the little phrase of the Jewish theologian Emil Fackenheim (1916-2003), Sole Power. Taken to a simplistic extreme, the doctrine of omnipotence could suggest that anything and everything that happens does so because God, who after all is omnipotent, causes, wills, or directly makes it happen. • To be sure, there have been Christians who have indeed held such a doctrine of divine omnipotence.

Matching • Omnipresence p. 55

• Omnipresence - God is present to every point in the entire universe at every moment. There is no place where God is not. • The doctrine of omnipresence affirms that God is truly and fully present—even down to the most infinitesimal subatomic particle. • Thinking in the other direction, God is more than and larger than the immensity of the universe in its entirety, embracing and sustaining it.

Multiple Choice • Intentions of the opening chapters in Genesis p. 63- 64

• Our creator has created with purpose, a telo, which the Hebrew prophets most often called shalom. This is an all-embracing sense of well-being that will permeate all creation, a vision of peace that sustains God's people in this fallen, suffering world. Whether or not God will at some point in the future overrule creaturely agency in the interests of universal shalom is speculation; but the indication of Scripture are that the Holy One would prefer our active cooperation to accomplish a fulfilled creation. • In the confidence in divine sovereignty the apostle Paul celebrated in the following passage. o "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies... [I]n all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angles, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor power, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:22-23, 37-39)

Multiple Choice • Prevenient grace defined p. 92

• Part IV, we shall attempt to tell the story of divine grace—that is, of God's stubborn and persistent desire yet to love and redeem this fallen creation—in the history of the covenants. • These covenants are established by the divine will rewinds us that they are all grounded in grace, and not in ourselves. • The Wesleyan tradition has tended to call this grace prevenient (Lat., pre = prior to; vene = come) to emphasize particularly that it is always God who makes the first move toward us in covenantal relationship. • All grace is by the definition prevenient, but it never hurts to be reminded.

Multiple Choice • What Pelagius believed p. 85

• Pelagius's ideas on unmitigated human freedom tended to make human beings into isolated units of individual freedom. • Pelagius did not recognize that no one comes into this world with a clean slate because the world we live in is already filled with sin, manifested in war, bloodshed, slavery, abuse, torture, fear, and a thousand other nightmares. • There are good things we inherit but when dealing with hamartiology, the emphasis correctly falls upon a world in which rejection of God's love and God's way of love is a pronounced reality, already before us, waiting for us in the very moment of our conception. • We are members of one another, and thus the sin of our ancestors continues profoundly to affect, even to infest, us all. It is this reality, already there before us into which we are thrown at birth, that Pelagius apparently failed to appreciate.

Matching • Sin p. 77

• Sin - an intruder, an interrupter, an interferer in God's good purpose. • The Bible is clear that human disobedience truly is a tragedy, for it brings destructive consequences upon not only the sinner but upon other people and, finally the rest of creation. While the possibility of disobedience must be real in order for authentic responsibility ("response-ability") to thrive, Scripture never accepts sin as an unavoidable consequence of human freedom. • Sin - a misuse, a perversion, of God's intentions and God's creation. • We often have told the Story as though it were all "Adam's fault," without recognizing that disobedience to God's good will is an always-lively possibility for us humans, who are constantly exercising agency. • Sin is simply too accessible to creatures of choice—and once sin's domino effect gets started, it is not easily stopped.

True/False • Original Sin defined p. 81

• Sin - wields the power to corrupt, or even to destroy, our relations with God, neighbor, and the rest of creation. Ironically, it is precise because we are relational and social beings—precisely because we are created for relation to God and others—that sin can exercise such power. • Sin - the distortion of our very being, for it name the situation in which we have turned from our Creator toward idolatry, thereby poisoning the very relations without which cannot truly live. And to poison our relations is to poison all those others with whom we exist. • Paul wrote "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned," and that "by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners" (Roman 5:12, 19)—because no human deed, word, thought, or even state of mind transpires in isolation. • Surely it is this relational situation of sin that is described further in the narrative of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4). In this story we find the rawest of human emotions laid bare: siblings rivalry giving way to jealousy, jealousy to hatred, hatred to violence and murder, and all followed by a casual and cavalier denial of the whole thing. • Cain and Abel are brothers; they are kindred—but this kinship does not prevent sin's growing. It may, in fact, encourage its spread.

Matching • Sin p. 84

• Sin is an intruder. Sin is not to be identified with natural human limitations, finitude, or shortcomings; rather, it is essentially the fundamental act of rebellion against the God who is Love. • And that act of rejection is basis of estrangement (of being a stranger) from God. • This does not mean that God sees human beings as strangers, but that we can, through our rejection of Love Divine, estrange ourselves from the One who made us, the One who knows us better than we know ourselves.

True/False • John Locke p. 47

• The English, empiricist philosopher John Locke (1632-1704), was constantly trying to be closely attentive to all of experience. It is fascinating to read Wesley's work and discover just how carefully he observed life and people, including, and perhaps especially himself. • He also believed so profoundly in the universal presence of God's Spirit to human lives in all their relations, his attentiveness to lived experience took on a religious depth.

True/False • Observations by Friedrich Nietzsche p. 100

• The atheistic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once observed that he might be more inclined to believe that Christians were once deemed if they looked a little more redeemed. o These followers of Christ, he said, seemed always to wear such long faces. • Nietzsche revolted against what he perceived to be a stuffy, somber pietism that apparently regarded with suspicion even the simplest of this life. To him, their humorless faces bespoke a humorless God. • Christianity tends to foster an image of God as an old stern, gray-bearded hermit who has forgotten to smile, let alone to laugh. • There can be no doubt that God is serious about the creation and has covenanted to redeem this risky venture into creaturely agency and answerably. • In the Noah story how God's heart may be broken by our refusal to cooperate with the divine version at the peak at the God who is free to laugh as well as to weep.

Multiple Choice • The problem of evil p. 57

• The problem of evil - usually called natural evil. We deal not with obvious results of misdirected human agency but with occasions such as hurricanes such as hurricanes, volcanoes, deadly diseases, and drought. • Human choice wisely invested can and does reduce much of the suffering inflicted by natural evil: victims of drought, famine, or other disasters of nature can be sent food and water to relieve their need; cures can be discovered or developed for diseases. • For that matter, such phenomena as hurricanes, volcanoes, and earthquakes are usually considered evil only when they threaten or destroy human lives or societies. • In many cases, then, one could extend the freewill defense by pointing out that people might have chosen to live elsewhere than where disaster struck. This does not mean that it's their fault.

True/False • Evolutionary theory p. 67

• The status of evolutionary theory in a Christian understanding of the world as God's creation continues to stir controversy among many. The point is, the validity of the theory is a scientific issue, to be settled as surely as possible by appeal to the observable data our world offers (such fossil and DNA evidence), rather than to the Bible, for that is not Scripture's function. • Evolutionary theory - religiously neutral; the scientist who mistakenly believes that such a theory decisively does away with God has moved from science into philosophy. • Granted, most evolutionists have been naturalistic evolutionistic, believing that the world is best explained entirely on the basis of nature's own capabilities.

Multiple Choice • Nefesh defined p. 71

• The text announces that, with this, the human became a nefesh, a "living being". The King James Version's translation, "And man became a living soul," has exercised considerable influence upon the way Christian have though about what it means to be human. • But it is permissible to translate the Hebrew word nefesh into the English term soul only if we are prepared to see that Genesis uses this word to refer to other animals, so that all living creatures are "souls"; the word nefesh means "living thing." • Genesis 2, accordingly, states simply that the human creature became alive, animated by the breath of God. • The Greek philosophical notion of the soul as an imperishable, eternal substance unique to human beings tends to mislead us in our attempt to piece together a theological anthropology rooted in the Story of God.

Matching • Creatio Ex Amore p. 54

• The traditional language for this belief is creation ex nihilo (creation out of nothing), and it underscores the biblical affirmation that there is one sovereign God who is God alone. Some modern theologians have suggested that creation ex nihilo sounds somewhat barren, as though God simply conjured the universe from nothing out of sheer caprice. • Perhaps the suggestion of theologian Paul van Bureu (1924-98) that it is more appropriate to speak of creation ex amore (creation out of love) comes closer to the nature of the biblical narrative. • It certainly resonates with the Wesleyan tradition's focus on od as holy Love. • The phrase creation ex amore implies that the God who speaks the word of "letting be" does so out of a love for that which is other than God, and a nurturing desire for the other to be.

True/False • Theistic Evolution p. 67

• The universe they argue for is built purely on blind chance and natural selection. • An evolutionary story of the universe does not and cannot automatically exclude the possibility of theistic evolution. • Theistic evolution - God's way of creating and sustaining the universe is through the processes described as evolutionary.

Matching • Predestination p. 85

• The world we live in is already filled with sin, manifested in war, bloodshed, slavery, abuse, torture, fear, and a thousand other nightmares. • Augustine's doctrines or original sin and divine predestination, on the other hand, led to an extreme understanding of God that would later show up in the Protestant Reformation: God decrees certain individuals for salvation, since human beings, enslaved to sin, can have no real choice in the matter. • Both for Augustine and the theologies of Luther and Calvin over a thousand years later, God is merciful even to save anybody at all, since all of humanity is a "damned mass" (massa perditionis).

Multiple Choice • Theodicy defined p. 56

• Theodicy - (Gr., theo = God, dike = justification), God's ways in the world. Theodicy has to do most specifically with the theological task of defending belief in God in the face of extreme pain and senseless suffering. • While belief in the one sovereign, personal Creator satisfies the religious longing for one ultimate Cause of being, it also paves the path to this most troubling problem for people of faith. • "The Plague" By: Albert Camus has answered questions with an "atheism of protest." o An omnipresent god would certainly be aware of the presence of evil. o An omniscient God would certainly know how to overcome that evil. o An omnipotent God would certainly be able to enforce victory over evil. o A God of love presumably would desire to be rid of evil. o Yet evil continues to plague us all.

Multiple Choice • Torah defined p. 104

• This Hebrew term torah is probably better translated "way," as in a way to walk, than as "law." For centuries of Judaism, Torah has not been seen or experienced as an excessive burden; it is, rather, God's gift to Israel as a way to live as God's people in the world. • The divine revelation to Moses is not that of a harsh taskmaster, but of "the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousand the generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" (34:6-7), and who is just, or fair, in punishing the guilty.

True/False • Define inerrant p. 65

• This proclamation that God is Creator of everything is, in fact, the fundamental message of Genesis 1. In other words, the creation account is making a theological point. • Those who attempt to reconcile the creation account with pet scientific theories, or who use it as a weapon against evolutionary theory, are missing that theological point. The weight of theological opinion is that Genesis 1 is not a scientific statement as such; it is, rather, a theological polemic against the idolatry of Israel's neighboring cultures. • It cannot today be used as a scientific polemic against any particular cosmology (theory or origins), whether ancient or modern.

Matching • Yetzer hara p. 96

• Through created in God's image, we human beings are also dust (Gen. 2:7)—poor, finite, threaten creatures striving to survive and thrive in an often-savage world. • It is in recognition of this, in fact, that God concedes to human beings that "every moving thing that lives shall be food for you," when prior to this point the only divinely ordained food was "the green plants" (9:3) • Again, this should be seen as a divine concession to the violent impulses un derlying much of human behavior, or what the rabbis would later call the "evil inclination" (yetzer hara). • In this context, we can understand covenanting as evidence of God's gracious willingness to love and sustain us in all our weakness and frailty, accepting us for what we are while nurturing us toward what we become. "For he knows how we were made; he remembers that we are dust" (Psalms 103:14).