Theology 3: Reviewer

The Trinity: Community of the Three Persons

 Mystery of the Holy Trinity
 Our belief in the Triune God is grounded on our belief in Jesus Christ
- Old Testament = Prophecy; New Testament = Fulfillment
- I AM = Name of God in the Old Testament

 The Word “Trinity”

 Apologist Tertullian
 Latin words “unitas” and “trinus”
 Literally mean “unity” and “three”
- Scientific Example = Water (Solid/Ice, Liquid/Water, Gas/Steam)

 Trinitarian Theology of St. Augustine

 The Trinity
- The Father creates; The Son redeems; The Holy Spirit sanctifies

 The God the Father Movement

 Claims that the Father was neglected in 2000 years of history, in favor of the Son and the
Spirit.

 The Relationship among the Persons

 The Father = Jesus/His Son; Holy Spirit/Love
 The Three Persons are united

 Trinitarian Analogy
 The Trinity is similar to the human mind’s three basic activities:
1. Of (Observing)
2. Knowing
3. Loving
- God reveals himself through
1. Creation
2. Scripture
3. Church
4. Other religion
Proof of God’s Existence
 Summa Theologica
 It is a compendium of all of the main theological teachings of the Catholic Church. It
presents the reasoning for almost all points of Christian theology in the West. The
Summa's topics follow a cycle: God; Creation, Man; Man's purpose; Christ; the
Sacraments; and back to God, written by St. Thomas Aquinas.

 Five Ways of God’s Existence

 By St. Thomas Aquinas. First; Argument of Motion
 Second; Argument from Efficient Causes
 Third; Argument from Possibility and Necessity
 Fourth; Argument from Gradation of Being
 Fifth; Argument from Design.

 Theology
 The study of the nature of God and religious belief.

 Theodicy
 The vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil.

 St. Augustine’s Theodicy

 God is perfect. The world he created reflects that perfection.
 Humans were created with free will.
 Sin and death entered the world through Adam and Eve, and their disobedience.
 Adam and Eve’s disobedience brought about ‘disharmony’ in both humanity and
Creation.
 The whole of humanity experiences this disharmony because we were all ‘seminally’
present in the loins of Adam.
 Natural evil is consequence of this disharmony of nature brought about by The Fall.
 God is justified in not intervening because the suffering is a consequence of human
action.

 Ontology
 The branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being; a set of concepts and
categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations
between them.
  St. Anselm
 He is most famous in philosophy for having discovered and articulated the so-called
“ontological argument;” and in theology for his doctrine of the atonement.
 Anselm defined God as "a being than which no greater can be conceived, and which
exists", and argued that this being must exist in the mind, even in the mind of the person
who denies the existence of God.

 Rene Descartes’ Ontology
 Our idea of God is of a perfect being
 It is more perfect to exist than not to exist
 Therefore, God must exist.

 Blaise Pascal
 He conceded that nobody knows whether or not God exists, but because it's in our own
best interests to behave as if he does, that's the most rational choice. This is what's known
as Pascal's Wager, since it argues that it's your best bet to believe in God.

 Immanuel Kant
 For Kant, the ultimate goal of the nature created by God id man as a moral being: the
world was created according to man's moral needs. This is why it is said that, after Kant,
teleology leads to a moral theology, one that is not about the possibility of proving
rationally God's existence but which is about stating that moral life is possible only if
God exists.

 St. Thomas Aquinas

 Combining the theological principles of faith with the philosophical principles of reason,
he ranked among the most influential thinkers of medieval Scholasticism.
 Summa Theologica
 The Five Ways of God’s Existence

By John Paul Javier (Grade 12 – HUMSS)