Systematic Theology

Ch. 1

1. What are the two general theories about the origin of religion?
It is a genuine response to a human experience deeply rooted in the nature of man.
It is a distorted and inauthentic response caused by superstition and ignorance.
2. How have archaeologists, anthropologists and philologists contributed to the study of
religion?
Archeologists have excavated the physical evidence of ancient civilizations.
Anthropologists have investigated the civilization and culture of ancient peoples.
Philologists have studied the ancient myths and fables.
All of this research assumes that the most authentic expression of religion is the earlier
versions before the religious enterprise was camouflaged by rational justifications.
3. What did Muller say about the origins of religion?
Mans fascination with the sun was at the origin of all myths and therefore the beginnings
of all religious activity.
4. According to the Evolutionists what are the three stages of religion?
Religion began with animism, the belief that all physical objects were inhabited by
spirits, then advanced to polytheism, the belief in many gods, then finally advanced to
monotheism, the belief in one God.
5. How did Schmidts theory on the beginnings of religion challenge the Evolutionary
Theory?
Schmidt said that primitive peoples originally believed in one God and only later did this
belief degenerate into polytheism and animism.
6. What is Eliades position regarding the evolutionary vs. the degeneration theory of the
origin of religion?
Religious life was from the very beginning rather complex and that elevated ideas
coexisted with lower forms of worship and belief from the beginning until now.
7. What was the general theory of religion of Marx and Nietzsche?
Religion is an illusion of people who were either frightened, alienated resentful or
neurotic.
8. What was Freuds theory about the origin of Religion?
Primitive men revolted against a dominant male in a tribal horde and killed him in order
to gain access to females. They ate his flesh to gain his power. This creates guilt and
conflicts and disorder. To restore order they create a system of Totem and Taboos. They
create absolute laws (Taboos) that come from the iconic Father figure of the alpha male
(The Totem).

9. How did Jung disagree with Freud?

For Jung the unconscious is not a hidden reservoir of repressed wishes. It can actually
lead to solutions for our conscious psychic conflicts and can promote spiritual maturity.
Also there is a collective unconscious from which individuals in a culture can draw in
establishing a wider meaning and purpose for existence. Freud said that religion is a
neurosis; Jung said that the absence of religion leads to neuroses.
10. What was the purpose of Phenomenologists? What did Otto say about the
phenomenon of religious consciousness?
Phenomenologists analyze the structure of religious consciousness without attempting to
explain their origins or to make judgments about their validity. Otto said that the essence
of religious experience is in feeling, not rational thought. Religion is the human response
to the power and majesty of the cosmos. The numinous is the sense of the holy, of
sinfulness and the assurance of salvation.
11. What is Feurbachs psychological argument against God? What is von Hartmans
response?
Feurbach says God is a product of wishful thinking. Man craves happiness and security
but cannot attain it so he invents God to provide the illusion of security. Von Hartman
says that just because we want something to be so, does not mean it exists nor is it
evidence that it does not exist.
12. What was Marxs analysis of the origin of religion? How was the demise of religion
to be accomplished?
Marx said that religion was caused by unjust and inhuman social conditions. Religion
was created to console and comfort people who experience such suffering and
degradation. As to the demise of religion Marx said that it would automatically disappear
when unjust social and economic conditions were corrected because there would then no
longer be a need for religion.
13. Is Christian Marxism a contradiction in terms? What was Webers analysis?
No. An essential part of Marxs theory emphasizes the inherent dignity and rights of man
and the importance of community and mutual support, all of which are very Christian.
Weber said that religion both influenced culture and was influenced by it.
14. What was Durkheims analysis of religion?
Religion was based on Totemism. The totem was a sacred representation of the people
and is a necessary expression of the collective sentiments of the people. But religious
claims can no longer b e taken literally as a source of accurate scientific or historical
claims about reality.
15. How does Coleman distinguish secular from sacred? Does he say that secularism is
on the rise?
The secular is that which we can control; the sacred is that which we cannot control.
Secularism is difficult to measure. We cannot measure our own age vs another. Moreover,
the reduction in the numbers of churchgoers says nothing about spirituality.

16. According to Greeley, does belief in God have to be part of a religious experience?
No. In its primordial form it is simply a powerful propensity to hope. We invest symbols,
especially we tell stories, that express and reinforce our condition of hope.

Ch. 2
1. What are the three types of atheism?
Intellectual Atheism based on modern philosophy. Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, et al.
Protest Atheism- The incompatibility of belief in God with human freedom and
fulfillment. Feuerbach.
Pessimistic Atheism the presence of evil argues against the existence of God.
2. What does it mean to experience the Death of God?
Most people (94%) believe in a God, but for many people the traditional images of God
no longer make sense. They feel Gods absence and this has led to a loss of any sense of
meaning in their lives.
3. What was the Biblical view of a two-story universe?
Reality was divided into earth and heaven. Earth can be experienced and to some extent
controlled. Heaven is beyond the senses where God dwells and directs earthly affairs.
4. What are the four kinds of limits that we experience?
-Physical: Material objects. Organic: Exhaustion, illness, aging. Personal: Conflicts
with others. Normative: legal, moral, aesthetic.
5.What is the traditional meaning in our culture for the term God? What are the
consequences for this symbol?
The one who creates and sustains all things whom we must obey and serve. A loving,
forgiving but just deity. The consequences are that the idea of God is a basis for seeing
life as a purposeful experience. It helps us experience the world as having meaning and
order and purpose.
6. What does the author mean when he says that the way we act presupposes a certain
outlook on life.
In our day to day life we cannot avoid a decision about the purposefulness of existence.
Life forces us to act and way we act expresses our outlook on life.
7. If the question about God is not whether God exists, then what is the fundamental
question about God?
The question is whether the symbol of God is the most appropriate one to anchor our life
on, to be the basis for religious belief.
8. Is the author saying that God is merely an imaginary construction?
No. Just that verification of the reality of God is not speculative but depends on how
effective the belief in God is in finding meaning in an apparently absurd world. The
question we should ask is whether the symbol of God is the best means of interpreting the
world as we experience it and whether it helps us to enhance and deepen life.
9. What are the four forms of the classical argument for Gods existence?
-Cosmological: Need for a first cause.

-Teleological: Order and purpose in the universe need an intelligent creator.

-Ontological: existence is necessary in the idea of a perfect being.
-Moral: man is intrinsically moral and this demands a goal that corresponds to this innate
tendency, namely, the ultimate good.
10. What are Kungs criticisms of these arguments? Summarize Kungs argument from
fundamental trust.
-Cosmological: if the universe is absolute and infinite there is no need for a first cause.
-Teleological: Darwins theory of evolution can explain order and design.
-Ontological: only the idea of a perfect being has to exist.
-Moral: Just because we have the idea of an ultimate good does not mean that it must
exist.
Fundamental Trust: We experience reality as good and evil thereby creating the
possibility of trust and mistrust in reality, in the goodness of existence. God would be a
basis for trust. We are faced with a choice either to believe or not. Either way we take a
risk. It is a decision for or against reality as such. To deny God takes away the primary
justification for fundamental trust.

Ch. 3
1. What is the fundamental problem in modern theology? What is a general
definition for revelation?
Revelation. Some communication by God of what could otherwise not be known
about him/her, and his/her purpose and plan for us. It also involves an invitation by
God to enter into a personal covenant with him/her.
2. What is the understanding of revelation that is found in the Hebrew Scriptures and
the Christian Scriptures?
Hebrew Scriptures: God manifests his will in history and sends prophets to interpret his
actions in history. A prophet is a spokesman for God calling the people to repentance.
Christian Scriptures: JC is the definitive revelation of God who by his words and deeds
announces the good news of salvation to all mankind.
3. What was Augustines notion of Revelation?
An inner light with which God illumines the soul so it can accept the truths in scripture
and in the church.
4. How did Aquinas agree and disagree with Augustine? What are the two kinds of
truths that Aquinas identifies?
Aquinas agrees that a divine interior illumination makes the mind receptive to revelation.
But this illumination is not revelation. For Aquinas revelation is a body of knowledge that
God has communicated to mankind. The two types of truths are Natural Truth that can be
discovered by the use of unaided reason; and Revealed Truth that comes from God and
can be known only by faith.
5. How did the Church and the Reformers view revelation?
Luther and Calvin rejected Oral Tradition as revelation but they did not identify
Revelation strictly with Scripture. Both the Reformers and the Church excessively
intellectualized the concept of Revelation. They reduced Revelation to concepts and
ideas.
6. What was the Enlightenment attitude toward Revelation? What was the Catholic
reaction to it?
The Enlightenment thinkers said that everything worthwhile in Christianity was naturally
knowable and already found in other religious traditions such as Confucianism.
The Catholic reaction was to insist that Revelation was the supernatural and infallible
linguistic communication of propositional truths.
7. How did Schleiermacher and Hegel understand Revelation?
Schleiermacher said that revelation is rooted in the consciousness of ones complete
dependence on God. This was perceived as much more a matter of feeling than intellect
and therefore that revelation is not embodied in doctrines. Hegel said that doctrines are
only tentative and symbolic representations of the experience of the revelation of God.
The purpose of doctrines is to elicit the same religious experience as Jesus did.

8. Summarize the conflict between Pius X and the Modernists.

The Modernists said that revelation was experienced in historical events and the workings
of nature and that the objective expressions of these experiences in verbal propositions
was tentative and temporary and that revelation was not to be equated with the doctrines.
Pius X equated revelation with the objective collection of unchanging supernatural truths
that constituted the doctrines of the Catholic Church.
9. What did Vatican II say about Revelation?
Revelation continues in every age. It is primarily the concrete historical events in which
man encounters God. Revelation is not a deposit of timeless truths but involves the kind
of knowledge we acquire from another person when we grow in our understanding and
sensitivity toward the person. Revelation is first and foremost the personal encounter with
another person, in this case God. The other person still remains mysterious in some way.
10. Distinguish between scientific and revealed knowledge.
Scientific knowledge requires us to be completely objective and neutral; revealed kn.
demands commitment. In scientific knowledge we master the subject; in revealed
knowledge it masters us in that it results in us submitting to God. Scientific knowledge
changes our understanding of the world; revealed knowledge changes us. Scientific
knowledge does not lead to community but revealed knowledge aims for community.
11. What is the current status of the Protestant and Catholic positions on Revelation?
They agree that the Scriptures are inspired but they say nothing specific of the impact of
inspiration on the authors of scripture. They agree that the Bible is inerrant but only as
regards the fundamental message of salvation, not about scientific claims or historical
knowledge or political philosophy. They also agree that there is a dynamic relationship
between scripture and tradition and the life of the community.

Ch. 4
1. How does the author explain Faith?
Faith is the basic experience of putting ones trust in someone. Faith does not need, in
fact cannot get, rational justification, but rather is based on a sense of communion with
the other.
2. What role does Faith play in the active ministry of Jesus
Jesus demands faith from his hearers. But it is a faith in God not in himself.
3. What was the traditional Catholic understanding of Faith?
Faith was seen as a kind of knowledge achieved by detachment from the world. It was an
intellectual understanding of faith that focused on assent to a determined body of doctrine
provided by the officials of the Church.
4. How did Luther and Calvin view faith?
Both emphasized the trust and commitment aspect of faith. What really for them was the
absolutely firm commitment to the notion of a beneficent God.
5. What do Dulles and Ramsey say about Faith?
They both emphasize the commitment aspect of faith, a commitment to a world view of
meaning and value that is communicated in an experience of discernment. Dulles adds
that the commitment involves a dedication not just to ideas but to struggle for justice in
the real world.
6. What does the phrase historical praxis of liberation mean?
Historical means that God is revealed to us in the voice of the oppressed not in the
teachings of the Church or even the words of Scripture.
Praxis means that a Christians primary aim should be to transform social reality and
make the world more human.
Liberation is preferred to salvation because it stresses the need to help people here and
now and not emphasize an otherworldly involvement.
7. What is Dulles response to Liberation theology?
He says that it is faithful to the biblical stress on justice and mans responsibility for the
world. But, he sees danger in reducing faith to action. A genuine believer may not always
act on this faith. Moreover, God does not only speak through the poor and oppressed.
Finally, it is dangerous to identify the Gospel with one social theory movement.
8. What is secular faith?
There are many people today who have trouble accepting the traditional idea of God.
Secular faith is the attempt to find a transcendent meaning in life by being open to others
and a commitment to be there for others in need. It is a fundamental trust in the meaning
and value of existence despite all the suffering and evil in existence.
9. What does Tillich mean by faith as the courage to be?

It is the courage to affirm ones existence and the value of life in the face of the three
fundamental anxieties: fear of death, the experience of meaninglessness and the
experience of guilt and condemnation. Each of these anxieties is the threat of nonbeing.