Faith Seeking
Understanding 1/7/07
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Faith Seeking Understanding 2
How do you get past the Prefaces?
What is theology?
To Migliore, it is a critical reflection on the beliefs and
practices of the faith community out of which it arises.
Also, we need clarity of conviction and purpose and that
God is triune, Jesus has centrality, there is an
appreciation for His work of reconciliation, and that
there is hope in lives of fulfillment in communion with
God and with all others through the Holy Spirit
So, in light of this statement, what is the Christian
theology at BPC?
Faith Seeking Understanding 3
What do you make of “Faith seeks understanding and
does not pretend that it has arrived at its goal”? (top p.
xii)
He says, “ that when religious passion goes awry, it is the
most dangerous and destructive passion of all.”
“Religious communities have a continuing responsibility
to search for what is central in their faith heritage and to
examine all their doctrines and practices in that light.”
What is the “criterion” of Migliore’s theology?
What is “relational understanding”?
Faith Seeking Understanding 4
…”the work of theology is inseparably bound to an
identifiable faith community” and
“(it) goes hand in hand with participation in the
common life of a community of faith, prayer, and
service.”
So, what do these two statements mean for our faith
community?
Where are we at BPC?
What is “liberation” theology?
How does one become “self-critically aware of his or her
own social location and ecclesial context”?
Faith Seeking Understanding 5
Page through the glossary on p. 402
Break into groups of three, study the
glossary, and report on particularly
intriguing words and their definitions to
the rest of the class.
Rely on the glossary.
Faith Seeking
Understanding 1/14/07
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Faith Seeking Understanding 7
The tasks of theology according to theologians:
Provide clear & comprehensive description of doctrine
Translate faith in terms intelligible to a wider culture
Think about important issues from the perspective of faith
Reflect on the practice of faith within an oppressed community
Search for the fullness of the truth of God made known in Jesus(M)
Faith and inquiry are inseparable
Theology arises from the freedom and responsibility of a
Christian community to inquire about its faith in God
So, at BPC, what and where is the freedom to inquire
manifested?
What and where is the responsibility to inquire?
Faith Seeking Understanding 8
The spirit of theology is interrogative rather than
doctrinaire
Read the middle paragraph of page 2
Who was Anselm?
11th and early 12th Century theologian; Abbot at Bec; Archbishop of
Canterbury during the reign of the successor to William the
Conqueror; combated the practical as well as the theological.
Common conviction: Christian faith prompts inquiry
According to Luther, “ That to which your heart clings
and entrusts itself is…really your God.”
Faith Seeking Understanding 9
What is the struggle to find provisional answers to
questions of trust in and obedience to God?
The roots of the inquiry to lead to understanding: the
object of faith and the situation of faith
What is the object of Christian faith?
God is the object of Christian faith, a mystery beyond all
human comprehension
What is faith?
Faith is a relationship to the living God and not to a
dead, manipulable idol
God has been revealed as sovereign, holy love through
Jesus
Faith Seeking Understanding 10
Read the paragraph at the bottom of page 3/top of 4
What is the situation of faith?
The situation of faith is the historical context.
Migliore states, “Precisely as believers they experience
the frequent and disturbing incongruity between faith
and lived reality.”
What does he mean?
And even when they know God’s will, they (Christians)
frequently resist doing it.
What do they resist doing?
What is a pilgrim of faith and how are pilgrims affected?
Faith Seeking Understanding 11
1.
2.
What is the difference between Descartes and Christian theology?
Self-consciousness vs. the reality of a creator and redeeming God
Inquiry is elicited by faith in God rather than a certainty apart from God
Read the bottom of page 5
What does he mean, “Unquestioning faith soon slips into ideology,
superstition, fanaticism, self-indulgence, and idolatry”?
Theological inquiry continually meets resistance from our fears,
according to Migliore…and so?
Read the first 4 sentences of the first paragraph on page 7
Theology must bring meaning to life and make it applicable.
Christian faith must not be reduced to a euphoric feeling or a religious
cliché…and he means what?
Faith Seeking Understanding 12
Migliore, “Faith is a matter of transformation- personal, social, and
world transformation.
What are we to do here at BPC?
M provides another variation on the definition of theology at the
bottom of page 9…
How has your brokenness been addressed?
Read the 1st 2 sentences at the top of page 10
Read the last 3 sentences at the top of page 10
Thoughts?
What are the 5 types of theology?
Biblical
Historical
Philosophical
Practical
Systematic
Faith Seeking Understanding 13
What are the 4 basic questions of systematic theology?
1.
Are the proclamation and practice of the community of faith true to the
revelation of God in Jesus Christ as attested in Scripture?
Are they at BPC?
2.
Do the proclamation and practice of the community of faith give
adequate expression to the whole truth of the revelation of God in Jesus
Christ?
Does it at BPC? How have we contributed?
3.
Do the proclamation and practice of the community of faith represent
the God of Jesus Christ as a living reality in the present context?
Does it at BPC? Where do we lapse?
4.
Does the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ by the community
of faith lead to transforming practice in personal and social life?
How have any of us been transformed?
Faith Seeking Understanding 14
According to M, the 4 questions must be asked
continuously…does that make sense? In shorthand, man, what?
Read the bottom of page 15.
What are the 3 methods of asking theological
questions?
1. Christocentric or word of God
Reference to the living Word of God in Jesus Christ
2.
Correlation
Create a conversation between human culture and revelation
3.
Praxis
Bind together action, suffering, and reflection
Faith Seeking
Understanding 1/21/07
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Faith Seeking Understanding 16
What is the basis of Christian theology’s affirmations
about God?
How does theology answer questions of the source of
believer’s knowledge of God and the relationship of all
creatures to God?
What is the basis of the BPC community’s affirmations
about God?
What is the source of your knowledge of God and your
relationships with God and others?
One way, to M, is revelation.
What is revelation?
The disclosure of something previously hidden…
Faith Seeking Understanding 17
When knowledge unexpectedly comes to light, it is
referred to as revelation because it seems less a hard-won
achievement than a surprising gift.
Have you ever been so gifted?
To M, revelation is not a confirmation of something
that one already knows.
Have you resisted revelation?
To M, when God is revealed, everything is seen in a new
light.
Read the first 3 full sentences on p23.
What does this mean? What do you think?
Faith Seeking Understanding 18
Read the next two sentences of the next paragraph.
Is that the way that you live?
Is that a conscious effort?
Is it a struggle to maintain that approach in
consciousness?
Read the rest of the chapter on p23.
To M, Christian faith and life are inseparable from
reliable knowledge of the character and purpose of God.
Have you thought much about the c and p of God?
How do you see the c and p of God?
Why?
Faith Seeking Understanding 19
What is the nature of revelation to a person?
Is it always new?
Is it always new to others?
Are truths new to those who only recently come to
accept revelation?
Read the first 3 sentences of the last paragraph on p24.
Another reason on our list of what makes BPC different
by reckoning…
What do you think?
The next 4 paragraphs are passionately seminal for M
Faith Seeking Understanding 20
The mystery of God is a theme that is deeply rooted in
the Christian theological tradition.
Read the end of the last paragraph of this section on p26
after footnote 13 to its conclusion
Is revelation objective or subjective?
Is revelation derived meaning?
As you have experienced revelation(s) have you been
enabled to see?
Have you been enabled to appropriate?
Have you been enabled to bear witness
What is bearing witness?
Faith Seeking Understanding 21
Read the 1st full paragraph on p27
What a concept and paradox to non-coercively capture!
Have you been so captured?
When?
How?
What does M mean when he says that, “The revelation
of God does not force itself upon us. It frees us to see
the world as created and reconciled by God, but this
does not eliminate other possible ways of seeing.”
So, what do we have?
How has this opportunity manifested itself in your life?
Faith Seeking Understanding 22
Beginning with the last sentence on p27, read to the
end of the paragraph on p28.
How did you like the Niebuhr simile? p28
The six theses of revelation:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
God’s self-disclosure
Particular events and particular people
A hiding of God
Personal response and appropriation
Always disturbing, even shocking event
New interpretive focus
Are you comfortable with the 6 theses?
Faith Seeking Understanding 23
Revelation comes to us rather than from us
There is a “scandal of particularity”, a relentless specificity
and an inexpungible particularity about the reality
The presence of God in the least expected place
The goal of the event of revelation is not our possession
of secret doctrines but a transformed life with a new
understanding…new dispositions and affectations, new
sensibilities
Revelation is a radical paradigm change in our
interpretation of reality, and, as such it is an
inexhaustible source of creative imagination and of
transforming human action in the world.
Has revelation affected you in these ways?
Faith Seeking Understanding 24
The two media of revelation, general and special
Coincidental study with the Elder’s Retreat
Let’s read Acts 17:16-34 in Lectio Divina
What does it say to you?
Read the 1st full paragraph on p30
Read the 2nd full paragraph and the 1st sentence of the
next paragraph on p31
This reference to Calvin hearkens the “broken culture” of
the BPC Vision Statement
Read the 1st full paragraph on p32
What is the role of Christian self-criticism?
Faith Seeking Understanding 25
The 5 models of revelation:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Authoritative doctrine
Particular historical events
Special inner experience
Dialectical presence
New awareness that leads to transformative action
How have these models of revelation affected your
experience?
Read the 1st full paragraph on p35
How can the revelation of God ever be complete?
Read the 3rd sentence of the middle paragraph on p35
Faith Seeking Understanding 26
Is interpersonal communication the most satisfactory
analogy for the meaning of revelation for you?
What does M mean when he says of the reflection on
interpersonal communication,…”nor on the crisis of the
human condition before God (although it is impossible
to separate revelation and crisis),…”?
How do you understand the analogy as an attempt to
understand God’s self-revelation as “interpersonal
knowledge”?
“…and analogy in theology means similarity in great
difference.”
Man,…what?
Faith Seeking Understanding 27
How do you know another person?
1.
2.
3.
4.
According to M in 4 ways:
Attention to persistent patterns
Free disclosure of identity: a person is free to do new
and surprising things
An invitation to trust and to live in response to
promises
Rendered in narrative form
So, have you seen other ways of knowing someone?
Do you know God in these ways?
Faith Seeking Understanding 28
Niebuhr: “…We see the power of God over the strong of
earth made evident not in the fact that he slays them,
but in his making the spirit of the slain Jesus
unconquerable.”
Have the strong succumbed to this spirit?
How has the narrative pattern remained incomplete?
Read the 1st two paragraphs at the beginning of the
new section on Revelation, Scripture, and Church, p39
The nature of witness:
1.
2.
3.
Light of God shines through Jesus by the prism of biblical witnesses
Original witness mediated through the witness of the church
Attentive and trustful reading of Scripture
Faith Seeking Understanding 29
What do you make of the need for a critical
appropriation of revelation?
How do you resist bondage?
What do you make of the admonition, “…the
community of faith that is called to service by
the revelation of God must never presume to
have control of the revelation that it attests.”?
Read the last three sentences on p43.
Faith Seeking
Understanding 1/28/07
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Faith Seeking Understanding 31
The authority of Scripture
1.
2.
3.
In what ways is it authoritative?
Liberating
Non-coercive
Joyful
Define any of those words in your context or the
context of the faith community at BPC
M says that a major task of current theology is to
develop a liberative understanding of the authority of
Scripture…
What does that mean?
Faith Seeking Understanding 32
Also, to M, Scripture must be understood in relation to
its central content and particular function within the
faith community.
What are some of the particular functions within the
community of faith that exists at BPC to which Scripture
is foundational?
Scripture serves the purpose of relating us to God and
transforming our lives…
Has Scripture transformed your life?
How have you been transformed?
Faith Seeking Understanding 33
Authority must justify itself…
Is this a bad thing?
To M, “ …we have acquired a strong and persistent allergy to the
notion of authority.”
Read the first two and last two sentences of the penultimate
paragraph on p45.
Where have you experienced bondage?
To what have you been bound?
Did you like your bonds while in them?
How does our society become more critical of Scripture?
How has the church forgotten its scriptural imperative?
Faith Seeking Understanding 34
What is a biblical witness to M?
“There is relentless criticism of every authority that
identifies itself with the ultimate authority of God.”
What does M mean?
Read the middle of the middle paragraph on p46.
What are some ways that we can use Scripture to create
new community or “author new life” at BPC?
Inadequate approaches to Scriptural authority:
1.
2.
3.
4.
Supernatural origin
Historical source
Classical religious literature
Private devotional text
Faith Seeking Understanding 35
Where are the inadequacies in supernatural, historical,
literary, and private devotion as relates to Scriptural
authority?
Read the 2nd full paragraph on p50.
The Bible as attestation as opposed to belief in it
Scriptural indispensability
The Bible as a unique witness
How else have you experienced witness?
How do you react to the Barth quote on p50-51?
What is the sense of witness by this reference?
Faith Seeking Understanding 36
“The witness of Scripture accomplishes its purpose in a
polyphonic rather that homophonic manner”
And how does this resonate with you?
“Wisdom literature aptly gives expression not only to
the presence of God in everyday experience but also to
the radical hiddenness of God in the experience of
suffering and evil.”
What is “radical hiddenness”?
How is God found in evil?
How have you been found?
Read the 1st full paragraph on p52.
Faith Seeking Understanding 37
The Bible as witness…is/has this terminology been
confusing?
Has the new world’s announcement had an effect on
you? Bottom of p52-top of p53
1.
2.
3.
4.
How? What has been the effect?
Principles of Scriptural Interpretation
Use historical and literary sensitivity
Interpret theocentrically with the full sense of the triune nature
of God
Interpret ecclesially: use as the context the life and witness of the
church with the rules of faith, love, and hope
Interpret contextually: escape personal and local focus