• Does God Exist?
• What / Who is God?
• How do we know this?

Does God Exist

• Man is by nature and vocation a religious being. Coming from God, going towards God, man lives a fully human life only if he freely lives by his bond with God.
• Man is made to live in communion with God in whom he finds happiness (St. Augustine)
• When he listens to the message of creation and to the voice of conscience, man can arrive at certainty about the existence of God, the cause and end of everything.
• The Church teaches that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, can be known with certainty from his works, by the natural light of human reason (Vatican Council I).
• We really can name God, starting from the manifold perfection of his creatures which are like-nesses of the infinitely perfect God, even if our limited language cannot exhaust the mystery.
• "Without the Creator, the creature vanishes" – This is the reason why believers know that the love of Christ urges them to bring the light of the living God to those who do not know him or reject him.

Proofs of God’s Existence

• Teleological Argument
• Cosmological Argument
• Ontological Proof (St. Anslem)
• Moral Argument
• Arguments from Consciousness
• Other Arguments
• Logic and the inability for it to completely understand God
• Thus, Christianity – Divine Revelation

How did God reveal Himself?

• In the Beginning… (Adam and Eve)
• The Covenant with Noah
• God chooses Abraham
• God forms the People of Israel
• God sends his son Jesus (there will be no further ‘revelations’)
• Personal Experiences

The Church and The Transmission of Divine Revelation

• What Christ entrusted to the Apostles, they in turn entrusted it to their successors, now The Church
• Thus, people can use the two pillars of our faith (sacred scriptures and The Church) to reflect and use to contemplate God.
• The Church is set up to do just this – reflect on the scriptures and traditions.
• The Church teaches that "the task of interpreting the Word of God authentically has been entrusted solely to the Magisterium of The Church (Pope and Bishops)".

Sacred Scriptures

• Christ is the source of all Sacred Scripture
• The Sacred Scriptures, because they are divinely inspired, are The Word of God; thus God is the author.
• We must be attentive to what God wants to reveal through the scriptures when reading it.
• Bible = 46 books in OT, and 27 of the NT; by this we mean they are venerated.
• The most important are the four Gospels
• OT prepares for the new, and the NT fulfills the old / in this they are in unity

• The Trinity – the central mystery of the Christian faith. God alone can make it known by revealing himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• Example – "I am simultaneously (1) Your teacher, BUT, I am also (2) Rick Creed’s son, while ALSO being (3) A student at Brown University. Furthermore, I act in different ways when relating in these three situations". God does the same… he relates to Humanity through three manners – as a (1) omnipotent/omniscient deity, as (2) a peer, and as (3) a guiding force for our lives.
• It is important to remember that all three are God, deserving of worship and veneration.

• The Immaculate Conception of Mary
• Original Sin
• The Virgin Birth

• Discuss the origins of Jesus (half man, half divine)
• It is easy to see how ½ of him is pure and divine, right?
• Recall, Jesus was perfect
• Therefore, the other half of him must be free of original sin.
• If the other half is free of original sin, and Mary is the origin of the other half, Mary must have been born without the stain of original sin.
• There are also scripture references to this "Mary Full of Grace" (Archangel Gabriel)

Original Sin - Have someone read Genesis 3:1-24

What in the world is Original Sin?

• The 1st grade definition - The sin of Adam and Eve for eating an apple
• The 5th grade definition - The loss of innocence

- What does that mean? Does this mean the loss of innocence, or the creation of free will?

- Would you rather live in a pre-fall of Adam world? Why?

• Our Definition:

· What did Adam do? The sin was not JUST eating the apple, and thus disobeying God (although that was certainly a part of it - 397). The sin was also his preferring Himself over God (398), and I read that to be the sin of pride - hubris in the literature… it is the same story in many accounts of fiction. He wanted to "be like God" but "without God, before God, and not in accordance with God" (Gen 3:5, and St. Maximus the Confessor)

· What did they lose? They lost the grace of original holiness. They did not lose God’s love… this is a very important point - Some of the Church’s teachings on parenting are derived from the fact that God did punish Adam and Eve, but did not abandon them. How can we relate this to modern day parenting?

· The Church also teaches that this act allows death to enter into our existence - However, I don’t believe that it is the actual physical death that the church is meaning to say. I believe that the church states that the Original Sin caused a schism between Creation and Man - one that could not be bridged until Christ.

· … Great lead into the idea that Adam’s sin - the source of the sin of the world, has as its antithesis, Jesus Christ, who brought the end of sin to the world. It is those stupid SAT analogies… Bread is to eat as water is to __? Well, Jesus is to eternal salvation as Adam is to sin.

· How do we know it is true? (Derived from 390) - "The account of the fall in Genesis 3 uses figurative language, but affirms a primeval event, a deed that took place at the beginning of the history of Man. Revelation gives us the certainty of faith that the whole of Human History is marked by the original fault freely committed by our first parents.

· What does this have to do with me? Well - Adam’s actions condemned all of mankind. St. Paul writes (Romans 5:12,19) "By one man’s disobedience (all men) were made sinners…sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned"

· He contrasts this with one man (Jesus’) sacrifice to save all mankind in Romans 5:18, "Then as one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men."

· OK, but why do I have to pay for Adam’s sin? The full implications of this are one of the church’s mysteries… However, it may help to think of it in this way: Adam and Eve sinned - they then were in a ‘Fallen State’ - to which the human race all is a descendant of… thus we have contracted and not committed the sin. Thus we can think of it not in terms of personal fault, but in terms of lacking original holiness and justice… to which Jesus died to ensure that we can gain these gifts again.

· The sacrament of Baptism is the manner in which we let a child (or adult) into the community of Christ, and allow Him to save that person, if S/he so chooses. Therefore the GUILT is removed… however, Original Justice is not granted in this life.

· What is the end result of this - well, we have to accept the consequences of our actions - although the guilt may be forgiven. Thus, in the case of personal sin - we may be forgiven for stealing a candy bar, yet we still must pay the consequences. Intuitively, it follows that for Original Sin - the consequences (the loss of Original Justice) is gone, thus we still have impulses to do what is wrong. And this is seen in everyday society by people who cannot control their impulses.

· Jesus came down an assumed the form of man, to do many things.

· The first, and most often quoted is "to die for our sins"…. What does that mean, and how did he do it?

· A sin is a grave offence against God. It has an infinite reach, and scope. We, being finite beings, could not outlive that. What happens now, as I explained before, is that Jesus forgives our guilt - and thus we are not prevented from joining the Glory of God in Heaven.

· Jesus forgives our sins, and because he is infinite (and God), then we are saved.

· Jesus is also a guidebook on how to live… God gave us a "how to get into Heaven" book… it is a hell of a lot easier than the "How to get into Harvard Book", and it works every time. All you have to do is emulate Jesus Christ. When you are faced with a situation where your impulse is wrong, or if you don’t know the morality of the situation… ask yourself "What would Jesus do?"

· Jesus is both Man and God. The divinity and humanity of Jesus are both present, yet not mutually exclusive. This is another mystery.

· Jesus was conceived by the power of The Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary… I want to make some key points here:

· God and Mary did not conceive Jesus - God and Jesus, as one, was born of Mary. That is to say, Mary is NOT Jesus’ Biological Mother - God, through the Holy Spirit placed Jesus in the form of man into the Virgin Mother.

· The Immaculate Conception - Define: Mary was born without Original Sin due to her predestined fate to be the mother of Jesus.

· The Virginity of Mary - Jesus was born without Mary having sex… further, she never did - the Gospels clearly point out that there was "another Mary" (Matthew 27:55, 28:1) who was the mother of James and Joseph (the disciples).

· This allows her to be the mother to all who need her - in a sense, becoming the New Eve.