Joseph

"Reason" is used in a number of ways: support or basis, inference, experience, empirically verifiable, or human intelligence proceeding without divine grace or revelation. Thomas Aquinas proposes that people may know through reason or through faith. The First Vatican Council rejected both faith without reason and reason without faith, both fideism and rationalism. John Paul II continued that approach in his encyclical, Faith and Reason.

We distinguish the form from the function of linguistic use. Language can function to express feeling, for instance. Meanwhile, literal meaning may be culturally shaped; metaphor extends or carries beyond or over. For God, there is a positive phase of meaning, a negative phase of meaning, and a superabundant or eminent phase of meaning. Apophatic theology keeps to silence or indirection about God, while kataphatic theology uses words to speak about...

"Faith-ing" is a newly created word, parallel to believing. Uses of these terms include: believing that some statement is true; believing in or trusting; and believing someone giving testimony (i.e. accepting someone's word). Whereas some opinions and beliefs must proceed from evidence, the faith by which Christians are saved includes and is shaped by love and allegiance.

An experience is a happening I am conscious of. William James suggests that religious experiences are ineffable, noetic, transient, and passive. The worth of experiences has to do with how they are understood, and understanding often has to do with explanation. How can one recognize the significance or genuineness of a religious experience?

The miraculous includes what has power, is infrequent, provides benefit, is a sign, and has a relationship to nature. In this segment, consider the different definitions of miracles offered by Catholic teaching and the philosopher David Hume. Violations of the laws of nature? Extraordinary events? Signs of the supernatural? The jury hasn't come back yet.

An Augustinian theodicy understands evil as a defect, a lack, a disorder. Moral evil began with the first human beings and spills over into non-moral consequences of human malice. Evil continues in judgment, heaven, and hell. An Irenaean theodicy (after Saint Irenaeus) proposes a negative theodicy: A permanent hedonistic paradise would provide no occasions for virtues such as courage, patience, loyalty. A theodicy of divine goodness in the face of...

The last segment of the series addresses hope. Hope is not knowledge. Applied to Catholicism, hope for sustainability faces the future of the physical cosmos and the embodied future of each of us. It seeks understanding beyond the superficial. It looks for bodily resurrection, beyond what we take as historical. It considers final conditions, being joined to God with God's people.

The idea of God could be summarized as the good qualities of humanity. Or the idea could be constructed as a socially useful idea. Or the idea of God could come from God. Ways of thinking about God include: one, eternal, infinite, independent, creator, knowing, powerful, loving, trustworthy, personal; and triune and savior.

The Rocky Mountains are the second largest mountain range on Earth, stretching some 2,000 miles from central New Mexico to the northern edge of Canada. Journey deep into the wild heart of the Rocky Mountains and experience this rugged land as never seen before, through the eyes of its iconic wildlife.

Claire is a high-powered attorney whose perfect life comes crashing down around her when her husband is charged with high crimes of murder. Enlisting the aid of a shrewd military attorney, Claire will risk her career and even her life to find out the truth.