For this paper, imagine someone came up to you and asked you to explain Catholicism in the amount of time that person could stand on one leg. Well, Jesus already provided an answer. Based on what you

Please refer to any of this information as references in essay. Some videos may not show but it is okay! Links have been provided

MODULE 1A:

Read and watch this module's lesson below. Work through the lecture resources & materials below early in the week to help you respond to the discussion board prompt (by Thursday night) and to complete your video assignment (by Sunday night). In case you missed it, be sure to read through the Module overview before getting started on this page.

The contents of this video are drawn from Joseph Ratzinger, What It Means to Be a Christian (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006), 65–69.

Before we look into what it means to love God, neighbor, and self, let's consider the scribe's question.

While some might argue the scribe was just trying to trip Jesus up, it is possible to take him at face value. What if he's being completely earnest. If we do so, then at the heart of his question one encounters a desire. We might say this is a fundamental human desire. A desire for what, you ask? Eternal life. The man who approaches Jesus wants to live forever. Why? What is eternal life?

The root of the word "eternal" means "always." Eternal life means everlasting life, endless life, enduring life.

The desire for eternal life has motivated the efforts of alchemists to discover an "elixir of life" for the sake of immortality, and adventurers to search out the "fountain of youth." The desire for eternal life leads people to "live on" in the lives of their children and their children's children. The ubiquitous motivation to preserve life was on display, recently, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

From generation to generation, human beings act this way—trying to preserve something that everyone knows will end. Still, we try to extend it. Why?

CS Lewis, the great English novelist and Anglican theologian of the 20th century, offers a commentary on this phenomenon in relation to the materialist argument. (The materialist argument regards matter as the only substance of the universe, thus denying the spiritual realm, the existence of God (who is pure Spirit), the human soul, etc. For the materialist, all that matters is matter. There is nothing else. God and eternal life do not exist.) In his discussion with a materialist, CS Lewis says:

"If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don't feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. ('How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up & married! I can hardly believe it!') In heaven's name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal."

CS Lewis wonders why we always find ourselves surprised by time and, though he doesn't mention this explicitly, frustrated by time. Do you ever find yourself wishing you had more time? For us, time is both a tremendous gift and a tremendous source of frustration. We always want more of it or for it to somehow stop so we can really engage in the event that is right before our eyes. We don't want this or that to end (well, sometimes we want a certain circumstance to end), but it does. Time flies. Life moves along. But, the desire to somehow break free of the bonds of time remains. In light of this common experience, CS Lewis wonders if there is something in us that is not temporal—something that longs for the eternal, for more than what the life right in front of us has to offer.

In fact, we see this sort of thing all the time in pop culture. A beautiful example of this kind of longing can be heard in Lady Gaga's "Shallow".

Just listen:

Lady Gaga Shallow

The Religious Sense

In Lesson 1A, we saw that CS Lewis argued there is "something in us that is not temporal." In various approaches to philosophy of religion, this "something" goes by many names. Please watch this video presentation to learn more about two approaches to describing this "something," in the concepts of the homo religiosus and the religious sense.

To further round out your understanding of the religious sense, please watch the following two videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epI6JigO6PU&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fstu.instructure.com%2Fcourses%2F43548%2Fpages%2Flesson-1a%3Fmodule_item_id%3D1546973&source_ve_path=OTY3MTQ

MODULE 1B:

The Existence of God

Let's recall the original story — explaining the essence of a religion in the span of time one can stand on one leg. In the Gospel of Luke, a lawyer stands up and puts Jesus to the test. The Jewish lawyer asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus Christ, himself a Jew, answered this question in accord with the Jewish Law and what we might call a threefold love: God, others, self.

Then, we took a "detour" to consider the source of a question about eternal life. Why do human beings ask about this to begin with? Why are they caught up with life outside, above, or beyond the life that is right in front of their eyes? We answered this by exploring the concepts of homo religiosus and the religious sense.

After this detour, we need to return to the threefold love. Yet, we might be confronted with another necessary detour. We need to consider the reality of God, first. Why?

Here are four good reasons:

1. The whole question about eternal life, the religious sense, and the homo religiosus pushes us into questions about the divine—about gods or God.

2. God is the first person mentioned in the threefold command to love. It is natural to inquire about who this God is that demands such love.

3. The story of the lawyer who stands up to test Jesus appears in Luke's Gospel after Jesus makes a resolute decision to journey to Jerusalem where he would eventually be crucified. Why was he crucified? For identifying himself with God. The scene with the lawyer is one of many instances where Jewish officials "tested" Jesus to see if he was who he said he was or if he was blaspheming (i.e., claiming to be God and, therefore, speaking irreverently toward God). The whole context is wrapped up in a question about who God is and if Jesus is God.

4. The story you engaged with during the "art lectio," the one about the rich young man—did you catch the opening part of the dialogue? The young ruler calls Jesus a "good teacher." Jesus responds by saying, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." Then, he continues on and answers the question. Jesus does not rebuke the man for calling him good, which is synonymous with describing Jesus as God. In other words, this rich young ruler acknowledges Jesus' divinity and Jesus recognizes this.

In many ways, this entire course will address aspects of God's existence. However, let's briefly explore the topic of the existence of God head-on. Is it reasonable to believe in the existence of God?

Let's first consider what we mean by these words: reason/reasonable and belief/faith. Please watch the following lecture presentation:

The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic ChurchLinks to an external site. (which we will simply refer to as the Compendium moving forward) explains that it is possible to "know God" by simply exercising human reason. We can take this a step further and connect the idea back to the religious sense. The religious sense is that aspect of human reason radically open to reality and constantly searching for the ultimate meaning of things. The Compendium notes that reason, in this capacity, can come to know God — or know something about God's existence and identity — by observing two starting points: the world and the human person. Here's what the Compendium (paragraph 3) says:

How is it possible to know God with only the light of human reason?

Starting from creation, that is from the world and from the human person, through reason alone one can know God with certainty as the origin and end of the universe, as the highest good and as infinite truth and beauty.

Now, let's look at a few reasons to believe in God's existence. (Note: These are not intended to illustrate exactly who this God is or what God's characteristics are. These "reasons to believe" simply justify that it is reasonable to believe in the existence of an infinite and eternal Being known as God.)

First, please watch this brief video by Fr. Robert Barron. This video offers a more contemporary series of reasons to believe in the existence of God:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP2rLgrBtTI

Next, watch the following video by Fr. James Brent on St. Thomas Aquinas' Five Proofs. Aquinas was a theologian and philosopher of the 13th century, so these arguments have been around for quite some time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42Eg6UUBqqo

Over time, intelligent people have stood on both sides of the debate about God's existence. Some arguing for the existence of God and others against. This, it seems, is the dilemma of being a human. Since we began this module with a story about Jewish rabbis, it seems fitting to end it with another. This story comes from Martin Buber (1878-1965), a Jewish philosopher from Austria:

An adherent of the Enlightenment, a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him to argue, as was his custom, with him , too, and to shatter his old-fashioned proofs of the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi's room, he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, rapt in thought. The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival. Suddenly, he stopped, looked at him fleetingly, and said, "But perhaps it is true after all." The scholar tried in vain to collect himself—his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold and so terrible his simple utterance to hear. But Rabbi Levi Yitschak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: "My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and neither can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true." The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible "perhaps" that echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance. (quoted in Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 46)

Confronted by the question of the existence of God, both the believer and the unbeliever find themselves united in this unavoidable word: perhaps. Both share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, belief and doubt.

The remainder of this course will explore the belief — more specifically, the Christian belief — of a Catholic.

• Peter Kreeft, "Can You Prove God Exists?"Links to an external site.

• Peter Kreeft, "Argument from Design"Links to an external site.

• Peter Kreeft, "Argument from Conscience"Links to an external site.

• Robert Barron, Catholicism, chapter 3.

On Divine Revelation

Thus far, we have examined the reasonableness of the existence of God based upon various exercises of "reason alone." Yet, there is another way to come to knowledge about God's existence and nature.

Please watch the following videos to learn more about divine revelation:

• Compendium, paragraph numbers 4–24Links to an external site. (Note each question has a corresponding number. We will refer to these as paragraphs. Read the questions and answers for #'s 4–24)

MODULE 2A

Read and watch the lecture resources & materials below early in the week to help you respond to the discussion questions and to complete your assignment(s).

The essence of Christianity involves love of God, neighbor, and self. But, what exactly do we mean by love? Or, more specifically, what is the Christian vision for love? When Jesus affirmed that the path to eternal life is paved by love of God, neighbor, and self, what did he have in mind? Work your way through the videos and reading assignment below as we begin answering these questions.

• "Four Types of Love"Links to an external site.

Now that we have this basic "pre-Christian" understanding of love, let's move into what Christianity itself has to say. Please watch the following videos:

That idea we developed in Module 1, that Christianity can be summarized in three loves (of God, of neighbor, of self), now appears in all its simplicity as something incredibly demanding. Yes, whoever loves is a Christian. But, what does that mean? What does it demand? Joseph Ratzinger puts it this way:

For love, as it is here portrayed as the content of being a Christian, demands that we try to live as God lives. He loves us, not because we are especially good, particularly virtuous, or of any great merit, not because we are useful or even necessary to him; he loves us not, because we are good, but because he is good. He loves us, although we have nothing to offer him; he loves us, even in the ragged raiment of the prodigal son, who is no longer wearing anything lovable. To love in the Christian sense means trying to follow in this path: not just loving someone we like, who pleases us, who suits us, and certainly not just someone who has something to offer us or from whom we are hoping to gain some advantage. Practicing Christian love in the same way as Christ means that we are good to someone who needs our kindness, even if we do not like him. (Joseph Ratzinger, What It Means to Be a Christian, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 69–70.)

This is a critical question. Does the Catholic Church, with its emphasis on agape love end up destroying eros. It’s what is behind a question that lingers in the minds of most people considering Christianity: If I follow Jesus, will my life be fun anymore?

Pope Benedict XVI explains the problem this way:

According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Christianity had poisoned eros, which for its part, while not completely succumbing, gradually degenerated into vice. Here the German philosopher was expressing a widely-held perception: doesn't the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious thing in life? Doesn't she blow the whistle just when the joy which is the Creator's gift offers us a happiness which is itself a certain foretaste of the Divine? (Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est (Citta del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2005), §3.)

Nietzsche’s indictment of Christianity coming out of the Enlightenment is this: Christianity’s emphasis on agape destroys eros. With all of the rules and regulations, moral codes and commandments, doesn’t Christianity kill the sentiment of love and eradicate human (sexual) passion?

At the risk of being too simplistic, we can say this: Christianity has set itself up against the destructive, unchecked, immature form of eros wherein a person takes more and more from the other for solely to satisfy him or herself. Christianity calls for an agape love to purify and mature eros. This prevents the attraction of eros from becoming focused on just one value of the person, rather than the whole person. Prevents the desire found in eros from using the person to satisfy something lacking. Christianity claims you need both agape and eros in a romantic relationship – without agape, eros can become selfish; without eros, agape can become distant or moralistic. In other words, Nietzsche’s critique does not see the full picture, and, in his defense, the Christianity has not always conveyed the full picture with great clarity.

• Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas EstLinks to an external site., paragraphs 3–8

We have taken some steps to understand what love is and what love requires, but how can love be commanded in the first place?

MODULE 2B

Let’s begin this section by reading Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. We will be referring to these creation accounts repeatedly throughout this module

Read:

• Genesis 1Links to an external site.

• Genesis 2Links to an external site.

We need to address the whole debate between science and religion as it plays out regarding the Book of Genesis. Please watch the following presentation as we get started:

When it comes to interpreting Genesis, like any text, we need to try to understand it on its own terms. It would be ridiculous to get frustrated with a piece of poetry because it does not express details in the same way as a science textbook and then to throw the poem out as altogether false. It gets at the truth another way and needs to be understood as such. Similarly, we need to unpack Genesis on its own terms and try to grasp what truth it is attempting to convey, rather than dismissing it outright because it does not meet today's scientific standards or has been supposedly disproven by science.

When it comes to dating the book of Genesis, the traditional view saw Moses as the author based upon internal evidence from Scripture. This would date Genesis (and the other four books that together make up the Pentateuch — the first 5 books of the Bible) as being written somewhere in the 15th-13th centuries BC. However, contemporary scholarship dates the origins of Gen. 2 in the 10th or 9th century BC, and Gen. 1 in the 9th or 8th century BC. These texts were redacted (i.e., edited) over the years, and the common consensus holds that the texts reached their final form in the 6th century in the midst of the Babylonian exile.

The fact that the text of Gen. 1 reaches its final form during the exile is significant. Why? The exile made it seem as if the God of Israel had been vanquished — he could not protect his people. It's in Babylon, then, that the people of Israel see, perhaps, the true face of God. They see that God is not bound to a particular piece of land. In Babylon, they recall that land was promised to Abraham before Abraham dwelt in the land. That means God met Abraham on land outside of the Promised Land. They also recalled that God led his people out of Egypt. God met the people on land that was not the Promised Land. Thus, in Babylon, the people of Israel see that the God of Israel is not like other gods. He is not bound to a particular region. Instead, because he created the heavens and the earth, all of it was his.

All of this means that Gen. 1 would likely have been written and reached its final form in the midst of a region dominated by the Babylonian worldview. Gen. 1 was developed as Israel was “rubbing elbows” with the Babylonian worldview, culture, science, and myth. In order to understand Gen. 1, then, we need to understand how the Babylonians understood the creation of the world. The people of Israel's faith in God — the Redeemer and Creator — needed to address the Babylonian religion, which had apparently defeated Israel.

The Babylonian creation myth is arguably the oldest creation myth in the world. It is known as the Enuma Elish (“When on high” from the opening line) or “The Seven Tablets”. The Enuma Elish would have been prominent in Ancient Babylon (Neo-Babylonian Empire, 626-539 BC), though the oldest extant tablets of the Enuma Elish date circa 1200 BC. However, these might be copies of earlier tablets from the 18th century BC. Regardless, we are dealing, here, with an ancient myth.

Please watch the following video and read a brief article to get a sense of the story:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjyhjXXNXPE

Then, please read this excerpt from "Links to an external site.Enuma Elish - The Babylonian Epic of Creation - Full Text" by Joshua Mark:

"The story, one of the oldest in the world, concerns the birth of the gods and the creation of the universe and human beings. In the beginning, there was only undifferentiated water swirling in chaos. Out of this swirl, the waters divided into sweet, fresh water, known as the god Apsu, and salty bitter water, the goddess Tiamat. Once differentiated, the union of these two entities gave birth to the younger gods.

These young gods, however, were extremely loud, troubling the sleep of Apsu at night and distracting him from his work by day. Upon the advice of his Vizier, Mummu, Apsu decides to kill the younger gods. Tiamat, hearing of their plan, warns her eldest son, Enki (sometimes Ea) and he puts Apsu to sleep and kills him. From Apsu's remains, Enki creates his home.

Tiamat, once the supporter of the younger gods, now is enraged that they have killed her mate. She consults with the god Quingu who advises her to make war on the younger gods. Tiamat rewards Quingu with the Tablets of Destiny, which legitimize the rule of a god and control the fatesLinks to an external site., and he wears them proudly as a breastplate. With Quingu as her champion, Tiamat summons the forces of chaos and creates eleven horrible monsters to destroy her children.

Ea, Enki, and the younger gods fight against Tiamat futilely until, from among them, emerges the champion Marduk who swears he will defeat Tiamat. Marduk defeats Quingu and kills Tiamat by shooting her with an arrow which splits her in two; from her eyes flow the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Out of Tiamat's corpse, Marduk creates the heavens and the earth, he appoints gods to various duties and binds Tiamat's eleven creatures to his feet as trophies (to much adulation from the other gods) before setting their images in his new home. He also takes the Tablets of Destiny from Quingu, thus legitimizing his reign.

After the gods have finished praising him for his great victory and the art of his creation, Marduk consults with the god Ea (the god of wisdom) and decides to create human beings from the remains of whichever of the gods encouraged Tiamat to make war. Quingu is charged as guilty and killed and, from his blood, Ea creates Lullu, the first man, to be a helper to the gods in their eternal task of maintaining order and keeping chaos at bay.

As the poem phrases it, 'Ea created mankind/On whom he imposed the service of the gods, and set the gods free' (Tablet VI.33-34). Following this, Marduk 'arranged the organization of the netherworld' and distributed the gods to their appointed stations (Tablet VI.43-46). The poem ends in Tablet VII with long praise of Marduk for his accomplishments."

We can also read this brief passage from Joseph Ratzinger that summarizes the story in a few sentences:

"It [the Enuma Elish] says that the world arose out of a struggle between opposing forces and that it acquired its actual form when Marduk, the god of light, appeared and split the body of the primordial dragon in two, and it was from these two halves that the heavens and the earth came to be. Together, both the firmament and the earth are the sundered corpse of the slain dragon, and from its blood Marduk is said to have created mankind."

All of this is a necessary backdrop, for, we must remember, as Pope Benedict XVI says, “Scripture is not a meteorite from the sky...Certainly Scripture carries God’s thoughts within it; that makes it unique and constitutes its authority. Yet it is transmitted by a human history. It carries within it the life and thought of a historical society that we call the ‘People of God.’” In other words, Gen. 1 developed within human history. Specifically, it was the Jewish response to the common religious/mythic thinking of the time. It was the Jewish people's contribution to dialogue with the Babylonian culture about the origins of the world.

With this in mind, we can now comment on Gen. 1:

In addition to the insights already identified, we can also see the creation of the world as God ordering and structuring a temple for himself. In this, we see all of creation ordered to God in worship — with all of creation "crowned" with the Sabbath day of rest and worship. Please watch the following video to "see" this (it is recommended that you refer to Gen. 1 as the video progresses):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yom9WYpkqBI

On the creation of earth as a temple, Kimberly Hahn and Michael Barber note the following:

Scripture describes Creation as the building of a home or temple(see Job 38:4-11). Solomon builds the temple in seven years and consecrates it in the seventh month, on the seventh day of a seven-day feast, offering seven petitions (see 1 Kings 6–8). In the temple of the Holy of Holies is truly the dwelling place of God; the Garden of Eden is described in terms similar to those describing the inner precincts of the temple (see Gen. 2:8-14). Once God completes the temple of the world, he calls man to be a priest-king over it. (Hahn and Barber, Genesis to Jesus, 79)

Thus, other parts of Scripture attest to this idea that God is creating a temple-structure when he creates the earth.

At the end of Genesis 2, we see all of creation existing in a state of harmony. This is particularly true for the human person, who exists in a harmonious network of relationships. The Compendium describes this original state of humanity, saying, "a perfect harmony held sway within the human person, a harmony between creature and Creator, between man and woman, as well as between the first human couple and all of creation" (§72).

Harkening back to your "audio divina" at the outset of Module 2, a certain harmony exists within all of creation that is something like the harmonious melody of Sibelius' "Andante Festivo." You can find yourself swept away by the depth of it.

By this point, hopefully we have wrested the Genesis creation accounts free from the grip of science. We have seen that they are getting at questions differently than contemporary science. The stories have to be understood on their own terms and within their own contexts. Beyond that, we have to acknowledge that these mythopoeic pieces engage questions that transcend the field of science. Ultimately, they peer into the origins of all reality, providing humanity with a foothold amid the sands of time. Frank Lane, a priest of the Diocese of Columbus, highlights this point in a profound way:

The greatest crisis for humanity is to forget that its beginning is always present. To forget is to not know who they are....A certain sense of amnesia about the beginnings of our existence sets us adrift in time and leaves us without self-knowledge and without a future....We become creatures adrift in the universe. We have no history and no destiny. All is illusory; all reality is confined to the limitations of human genius that is ultimately nothing for it dissolves and is swept away by time. Time becomes the enemy....The beginning must always be present or we do not know who we are or why we exist. (Lane, Reflections, 56)

After this entire treatment on creation, do you even remember the original question? It had to do with whether or not love can be commanded? How can God command love? Does not commanding love prevent the very possibility of it? Does not commanding love simply result in coercion? Is God coercive?

Ultimately, the creation accounts portray all of reality as the work of a powerful Creator who is also a loving Father. In God, Logos (reason) and Love coincide. God is love, therefore he creates; his creation manifests his love. The created order is an expression of love — it exists under a law of love, so to speak. Consequently, it is also the "playground of freedom," because love requires freedom as its precondition. Thus, we come to an understanding of how love can be commanded. Love can be commanded simply because it is the proper response to—or way to live within—a reality imbued with love. Love is the proper way to live as a person who exists in a network of relationality established by God (i.e., Love itself).

As we reflect on the Genesis accounts, we can say this: the commandment to love is simply expressing the nature of things. It is both descriptive and prescriptive. It is as much explaining how things are as it is how we are to act. We could say this another way: human existence is both a gift and a task. It is a gift in that we have been created, we have been given existence. And, contrary to the Enuma Elish, we have been given the gift of life as a free act of love on the part of God. God lovingly wills us into existence. In this way, human existence is also a task. It is a task, inasmuch as we must receive, embrace the gift of life and love from God and respond to it with love. The proper response to a gift is gratitude and the proper response to love is love. If God is love, and God is the fabric/meaning of all reality, then love is the meaning of life. In other words, the greatest commandment is simply a statement about the reality of things. Viewed in this way, getting upset about the commandment to love would be about as strange as getting upset because someone told you you had to breathe air in order to live. It’s true. If you want to live, you have to breathe air. We could say the same about other laws of nature. Similarly, if you want to live (forever), you have to love. Why? Because relationality is the fabric of all creation.

The early Church Fathers (writing in the first half of the first millennium) understood this reality according to two terms: exitus and reditus. Rather than viewing the creation of human beings as a wholly negative thing whereby they fall from the gods and serve as their slaves (as was the case in the neighboring religions), the Israelites understood the creation of the human being in a wholly positive light. God freely chooses to create human beings — they exit from him and freely choose to return (reditus) to him. Life is viewed as a gift and a task — an exitus and reditus.

• Compendium, Links to an external site.para. 51-72Links to an external site.

Optional Reading Material:

• Stephen Barr, “Retelling the Story of Science.”Links to an external site.

• Ratzinger, “In the Beginning...”,Links to an external site. homilies 1 and 3 (pages 1-18, 41-58)

MODULE 2C

In order to make the reditus (the return to God described at the end of the previous module) possible, in order for God himself to fully entrust to man and woman the task of reciprocating love and mediating God’s love to all creation as his “image,” he has to allow for human freedom. In giving human beings freedom, rather than creating them as slaves (as in the Enuma Elish), the God of the Hebrews does something unprecedented. He subjects himself, so to speak, to human freedom. Because he creates out of love and establishes reality as a nexus of love/relationship, so to speak, his activity will only go as far as human freedom will allow it. In a certain sense, God’s activity is "limited" by human freedom. In Genesis 2, then, we see creation as something of a playground for human freedom. In Genesis 3, we see human freedom exercised.

Read:

• Genesis 3Links to an external site.

• Ratzinger, "In the Beginning,"Links to an external site. ch. 4 (pages 59–77)

Where does all of this leave us? In Module 1, we established that the essence of Christianity is quite simple: love God, neighbor, and self. Earlier in Module 1, we tried to understand exactly what this call means and how far it extends. We discovered that the call to love is a call to love persons (even enemies) perfectly — in every time and in every place. We came to understand that love can be commanded precisely because God is love and God creates out of love and for love. Creation, then, is the playground of freedom, wherein human beings decide if they will receive the gift of life (as an expression of love) and express love as the fulfillment of the task written into their being.

We have seen, however, that the Israelites understand the reality and profundity of sin. That human beings do not live and love as they ought — they do not maintain relationships but damage them through words and actions. In other words, we find relational breakdown at every level: neighbor, self, and God.

Christianity sees the human being as tasked with loving God perfectly. Why? Because God loves humanity perfectly. Therefore, it is only just — it is the right response — to return love for Love. Besides, God does not love humanity with a fraction of his love – he is perfect love, when perfect love loves, it loves perfectly. The problem, however, lies in the fact that human beings do not return love for Love. They do not make a perfect return on the love they receive from God.

We have already discussed how the call to love neighbor is the call to love every person (i.e., God’s creature endowed with the dignity due to his “image and likeness”) who is in need that one encounters. We saw this in the parable of the Good Samaritan. Beyond this, Jesus even makes it known that we are to love our enemies perfect. However, as Joseph Ratzinger puts it, “Who among us can say that he truly, in all simplicity, carries out the service of being kind to others? Who among us would not have to admit that even in the acts of kindness he practices toward others, there is still an element of selfishness, something of self-satisfaction and looking back at ourselves?” Thus, when it comes to loving the neighbor perfectly, we find deficiencies of all sorts.

When it comes to loving the self, we likely need a bit more explanation on what this means (and how it breaks down):

It seems there is no way out of this for humanity. It is a hellish sort of situation, marked by disharmonious relational breakdown (i.e., sin) on all sides.

We get glimpses of this in art. Just think of the discordant sounds of Górecki's 4th. We can also look at the following examples:

• CP Cavafy's “The City”Links to an external site. (please read this brief poem)

• Johnny Mathis' "The Twelfth of Never"Links to an external site.

Please watch this brief personal story about "The Twelfth of Never."

Next week's module will explore Christianity's response to this sin-laden predicament.

MODULE 3A

Read and watch the lecture resources & materials below early in the week to help you respond to the discussion questions and to complete your assignment(s).

By the end of Module 2C, we could see how the basic narrative we have been following is in a rather difficult place. Christianity simply consists of loving God, neighbor, and self perfectly. There is a problem, however. Human beings do not love perfectly — in every time and in every place. Furthermore, we saw that the measure of love of neighbor is love of self. And, as Joseph Ratzinger puts it, the reason why one does not love his neighbor perfectly lies in the fact that he do not love himself perfectly. As Sartre points out, in order to love oneself, one must be loved by another, one affirms (or says "yes" to oneself) himself in light of the affirmation of another. Just when we thought we might have a way forward, the path got blocked off. Why? Because other human beings do not love perfectly. There's always an admixture, of sorts. Thus, we are left with a dilemma: In order to love my neighbor perfectly, I need to love myself perfectly…which I do not. But, in order to love myself perfectly, I need to be loved by my neighbor perfectly…and he does not love me perfectly.

The Judeo-Christian tradition sees this predicament as existing from the time of that first sin (of Adam and Eve). The Judeo-Christian tradition also sees that God, himself, has a plan for dealing with this problem. The first manifestation of God's plan appears in Gen. 3:15. Here, God addresses the serpent directly, and says, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." The Church Fathers, dating back to at least 180 AD, read this as the protoevangelium. This Latin word has Greek roots (Greek for proto—"first" and evangelion—Gospel, good news), and it means: the first proclamation of the Gospel. From the seed/offspring of a woman will come one who will crush the head of the serpent.

Throughout the rest of the Old Testament, we see God preparing his chosen people (i.e., the Israelites) for the coming of his Son, Jesus Christ. For, as Paul's letter to the Galatians puts it, "When the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons" (4:4-5). Jesus appears in the fullness of time to redeem humanity — bringing humanity back into familial/covenantal relationship with God.

We see, then, the whole Old Testament as preparing for Christ, who fulfills it. Therefore, if we are going to understand something of who Jesus is (which is the point of Module 3), we need to understand something of the Old Testament. We do not have time for a complete course on the Old Testament, however. So, for our purposes, a brief overview will have to suffice.

Watch:

Please watch the following presentation by Dr. John Bergsma to the 40:00 minute mark of the video.

What is unique about Christianity? Is it one of many religions? One path to the divine among many? What sets it apart?

We offer many answers to these questions. But, there is one fundamental answer. It is this: Christianity holds that the God of the universe took on flesh, became a human being, so that human beings might be reconciled with God. This is the Christian claim.

There is a famous drawing by Luigi Giussani that tries to capture this fact in a "snapshot," so to speak. Here is a modern rendering of the image:

Starting from the bottom, the arrow moving from left to right signifies time, history. The "X" signifies God. The arrows moving upward toward the X represent various human attempts to reunite with God (i.e., religions). The drawing leaves the arrows coming up just short of ever meeting the X, signifying that the attempts fall short in various ways. Then, there is the arrow moving down from the X toward the line indicating history. This line signifies the Christian event: God took flesh in a particular place and in a particular time. The God who made time enters into time. God has time for his creation. Religion describes humanity's attempt to reach God; Christianity describes God's attempt to reach man. In the vast field of religion, something unprecedented takes place with the Christ event: a man claimed to be God.

We will continue the conversation, here, by turning to two sources (a book chapter and a video):

• Please read: Barron, Catholicism, Chapter 1

• Please watch Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Brant Pitre discuss "The Truth about Christianity and Jesus Christ"Links to an external site.

Who is Jesus?

Who is this Jesus? This is the question the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) try to answer.

When completing the reading/watching assignments below, please read from the Gospel of Luke before watching The Chosen. This will allow your imagination to be free as you read and picture the scenes, without modern cinematography influencing the purity of your own thought.

Read:

• Excerpts from the Gospel of LukeLinks to an external site. (read Luke 1–6 and Luke 19–end of book)

• "The Gospel according to Luke,"Links to an external site. by Antonio Fuentes (this article also has a podcast version, if you prefer to listen to it)

Watch One Episode of The Chosen:

• "Indescribable Compassion"

Alternate link (see around min. 54):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB3QWkTBvr4Links to an external site.

We can say, after reading the Gospel of Luke, the thing the Gospel (all the Gospels, really) tries to convey is that Jesus is God. Let's look at this a bit further and examine three points.

First, the New Testament presents God as Logos. For the Greeks, logos referred to "mind" or "reason" or "meaning." It had to do with the apparently inherent meaningfulness of all reality. For some reason, the human mind can make sense of reality, and that reason for the reasonableness of reality is logos. Yet, for the Greeks, this remained an abstract concept. Meanwhile, as is clear in the Bergsma video regarding the Old Testament, the God of the Israelites is not distant, but close. God is not an abstraction, but real and personal. God enters into relationship. As the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek in the 3rd century BC, these ideas about God converged. The Logos and God were one and the same: both personal and proximate and transcendent and absolute.

This convergence of God and Logos reaches its fulfillment in the Prologue of John's Gospel, where we here: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God" (Jn. 1:1). This is the recapitulation of Genesis 1, and the original Greek uses the word Logos. In Latin, it is translated as Word. Word refers to a meaning that is relationship. God's Word, God's meaning precedes human words and human attempts at meaning. Human words are a response and human thinking is always a re-thinking of what has been thought. What is more, in John 1, Logos is identified with the particularity of Jesus. John says, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (Jn. 1:14). This Jesus is God, Logos. God is not only "out there," but "right here" as well.

This is a radical claim, for it means that the meaning of all reality can be discovered in the Person of Jesus Christ, the author of reality. Said another way: If you want to know the meaning of life, know Jesus.

So, we see how the concept of logos unites the Christian image of God and forms the core of faith in Christ. God is logos, and the Logos is Jesus. But, Jesus is described in another way, a relational way.

Let's begin this section with a brief treatment on the linguistic development behind identifying Jesus:

Here is the important thing to note: by calling himself Son, Jesus was, in effect, calling himself God. As you have seen in Luke's Gospel, this identification with God incites the Jewish leaders (who saw it as blasphemous) and sentence him to death. To call Jesus "the Son" is to call Jesus God. Jesus is God.

But, the word "Son" only makes sense in light of its correlate "Father." The word "Son" depends on the word "Father," and vice versa. So, we see that Jesus is the Logos and the Logos is Son. This means that the Logos exists in relation to the Father. Inherent in God, then, is some sort of fundamental relationality.

We have to address a fact about the mystery of the Incarnation: Jesus is fully God and fully man. The depths of this teaching, the Catholic Church's understanding of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, became clearer and more precise over time.

Following the Paschal Mystery (i.e., passover) of Jesus Christ, his passion, death, resurrection, and glorification, various ways of thinking and explaining Jesus' identity developed as theologians and church officials reflected on the Gospel. The threat in this process, at all times, lay in relaxing the tension that exists between Christ's divinity and his humanity. If one is not careful, he can make Christ out to be one of God's creatures, but not God himself. Or, one can see Jesus as God, with only the appearance of a human body, but not a real one. An erroneous teaching about a Catholic truth is called a heresy. In most cases, a heretical position is mostly true, but the fact that it's not fully true makes all the difference.

Amid the different ways of describing Jesus' divinity and humanity, the Catholic position always maintained that Jesus Christ is one divine Person with two natures: divine and human. Jesus, the Son, is of the same substance as the Father (God) by his divinity, and of the same substance as us by his humanity (see Compendium, 88).

This union of the divine and human natures in the one divine Person of the Word is known as the "Incarnation." This is the Christian event — a moment in time when humanity and divinity were united in one Person in time and space. Thus, faith in the Incarnation is a distinctive sign of Christian faith (see Compendium, 86).

Please watch the following videos for additional explanations of the Incarnation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6XMn-yH71E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX7q3yDoFD0

The next video might be a little too lighthearted. Nevertheless, it will still help to get the point across and start the transition into Module 3C. Sean Forrest, a national Catholic speaker, shares a story that is a weak analogy for the Incarnation, but it is an analogy nonetheless. Please watch this video from the 18:04 mark to the 20:00 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK8nOs3dNvE&t=1084s

MODULE 3B

What does the Christian event mean (for us)? What does the Incarnation mean (for us)? And what does the Incarnate Word's death on a cross mean (for us)?

First, regarding the Incarnation, the Incarnation means that in Jesus, God can do finite things that have infinite meaning. Jesus' human words and actions are not merely finite human words and actions. Instead, they are human words and actions that are infinitely valuable. They are the same as other human words and actions, yet they are different — because the one who utters them or who does them is both God and man. Through Jesus' finitude, God's infinite love becomes accessible for humanity. Jesus' humanity is the "connection point" between our humanity and God's divinity.

Okay, but what does this mean for you and for me? Well, let's get back to our story. Remember the predicament? In order to love my neighbor perfectly, I need to love myself perfectly…which I do not. But, in order to love myself perfectly, I need to be loved by my neighbor perfectly…and he does not love me perfectly.

By saying all of this, we've also backed our way into the Christian response to the problem of evil. Why God allows evil remains a mystery. Yet, God does not stand removed from it. Instead, in the Person of Jesus Christ, he enters into the profundity of evil—to the point of being misunderstood, betrayed, and crucified (though innocent). He enters into the midst of human suffering and abandonment as a Presence. He knows, first-hand, the darkness of human suffering and he meets the human person in the midst of it—transforming it, so to speak, from the inside.

Let’s bring our conversation all the way back around and consider what Christian faith means. Remember, in Module 1, we discussed that basic form of everyday faith — faith in and faith that. The basic formula looks like this: I have faith in you, that what you say is true. Faith is something deeply personal in that it relies upon a trusting relationship. If there is no relationship, no trust, there is no faith.

Furthermore, we attempted to see that life would be impossible without this everyday faith. If I had to start over in every instant, if I didn’t trust anyone, I couldn’t sit on a chair, eat a hamburger from a restaurant, fly in a plane, and so forth. If I didn't trust the testimony of others, I couldn't use my way-finding app, know the formula for the area of a circle, or that China exists (unless I'd been there). In an everyday sort of way, we exercise faith all of the time to function as human beings. We see this sort of faith as reasonable.

Christianity is not about an ideology, but a relationship. Fundamentally, Christianity is this: a relationship with the Creator of the universe. And, what is more, it is about taking on Jesus' identity as one's own. St. Paul expresses this in dramatic fashion in Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." The Christian act of faith puts aside the "I," the "self," the "ego," and takes up Jesus, the "thou," the "Son" as one's own identity. In Christian faith, one becomes a son or daughter in the Son (cf. CCC, §537). It's a whole new identity.

Read:

Please conclude this lesson by reading the following:

• Compendium, paragraphs 79-135Links to an external site.