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2.!
Jesus Christ is the full Truth (Jn 1:14-16), the goal of our desire to
know. It is through dialogue between faith and reason that enables
humanity to reach the fullness of truth. Divorced from faith, reason
falters and becomes enmeshed in errors such as reductionisms and
self- deception.
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Jesus Christ, the full Truth (Jn 1:14-16), the God who is Agape, selfgiving Love, in the Incarnation, is not just the center of Christian Faith
but also the center of all humanity, the whole cosmos, reason, morality
and hope. This divine Agape has the power to liberate humanity
from self-deception, since God who is Love embraces us in spite of
what seems unacceptable to us. The God of revelation is not an object
to be mastered but a Subject who invites us to be mastered by an
infinite Love. Jesus Resurrection opens the whole universe to a future
filled with hope in even in an ambiguous universe.
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John Haught: Our deeper truths are in the encounters with the other,
whom we know not by possessing or dominating them but by faith:
allowing ourselves to be claimed by them in love.
God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about
themselves. (Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio, 1).
c. Although faith is above reason, there can never be any real discrepancy
between faith and reason, since the same God who reveals mysteries and
infuses faith has bestowed the light of reason on the human mind; and God
cannot deny himself, nor can truth ever contradict truth. (Vatican I, Dei
Filius, 4).
d. They are of mutual aid one to the other; for right reason demonstrates the
foundations of faith, and, enlightened by its light cultivates the science of
things divine; while faith frees and guards reason from errors, and furnishes it
with manifold knowledge. (Vatican I, Dei Filius, 4).
e. Avery Dulles, S.J.: Reason prepares the way to faith, and when faith is
attained, reason helps the believer to understand what it believed. Faith and
reason in combination, enable the human spirit to soar to heavenly heights,
preparing it for eternal blessedness. Divorced from faith, reason falters and
becomes enmeshed in error. (The Voice of Reason and of Faith)
3.!
a. Karl Rahner: Freedom is the capacity of the subject ... to achieve his final
and irrevocable self .... It is the event of something eternal (Foundations,
96). In freedom we are performing the eternity which we ourselves are
and are becoming (Ibid.).
b. God is the ground and goal of our freedom, for only Gods love is able to
embrace ourselves as a totality: it alone is able to unite all mans many-sided
and mutually contradictory capabilities because they are all oriented towards
God whose unity and infinity can create the unity in man which, without
destroying it, unites the diversity of the finite (Rahner, Theology of
Freedom, 190).
damnation.
Though more tendential than volitional, primordial commitment naturally
evolve (horizontal freedom), or can be radically changed (vertical freedom),
that causes a complete horizon shift that creates new commitments and affect
previous ones.
Indwelling is the radical act of vertical freedom wherein the entire
reality of the person has moved from being to being-in-love, from a
solitary I am to a mutual we are, consequently enriching,
rejuvenating and becoming the paradigm of primary and secondary
commitments. Indwelling completes being and is its raison dtre.
Christian metanoia/conversion is an act of vertical freedom wherein one
makes an act of faith, which chooses God as ones new horizon through
indwelling in Christ (Jn 15:4-5), which is affirmed through daily individual
acts of freedom.
Overcommitment is the investing of more of the self in the object of ones
commitment than the object can or should deliver.
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conscience, for which myself must make answer unto God, and ...
leave every other man to his own conscience (Last Letters). !
Terrence Merrigan: In the experience of conscience, the subject
apprehends not only itself but also itself as a subject in [close] relation
to God. !
Newman: There are two and two only absolute and luminously selfevident beings, myself and my Creator .... If I am asked why I believe
in God, I answer that it is because I believe in myself, for I feel it
impossible to believe in my own existence (and of that I am quite sure)
without believing also in the existence of Him, who lives as a Personal,
All-seeing, All-judging Being in my conscience (Apologia Pro Vita
Sua). !
Merrigan: The God disclosed in conscience is the God whose presence
is always mediated, whose voice is never heard directly but only as it
is echoed in the chasms of our hearts and minds (GS 16). !
Merrigan: conscience is best understood as both the consciousness that
one exists in relationship to God as a responsible subject, or self, and
the summons to act in accord with this consciousness. !
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11.! The entire personhood of the Father, the Son and the Spirit of the
Triune God is constituted by the complete self-donation to one
another towards indwelling (perichoresis). The Triune God is the
final ground and archetype of human fidelity and commitment: we
are called to be an icon of the Trinity.
The Triune God, a Relational Ontology: The personhood of each of the
three divine Persons is constituted by their complete self-donation to
one another towards mutual indwelling (perichoresis, ). a.
The one God, or divine unity, is not to be interpreted exclusively in
essentialist terms, as a unity of nature of substance, but is also to be
understood as a unity established through the interrelationship or
koinonia (fellowship, St. Basil the Great) of the three distinct and
equal divine Persons who share a single will and a single energy
(Ware).
-! Haughey: The Father eternally confers the fullness of divine being on
his Son. The Son of Man receives dominion, glory and kingship, the
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very things that constitute the Ancient Ones own kingship (Dan 7:914; Phil 2:6-11).
-! Edwards: Perichoresis is a word used by John Damascene to describe
the being-in- one-another, the mutual dynamic indwelling of the
trinitarian persons (Jn 10:30; 14:9; 17:21). It comes from perichoreo,
meaning to encompass, and it describes reciprocal relations of intimate
communion. The word suggests a communion in which diversity and
unity are not opposed. Rather it is a unity in which individuality finds
full expression. Perichoresis expresses the ecstatic presence of each
divine person to the others, the being-in-one-another in supreme
individuality and freedom. It points to a relationship in which each
person is present to the other in a joyous and dynamic union of shared
life.
-! Haughey: Jesus total and free self-donating commitment to his Father
was always in process during his human life, creating an ever greater
capacity to love and commit himself to others, culminating in the cross.
St. Augustine: This self-giving love which binds the Father (Lover) and
the Son (Beloved) is itself subsisting divine person, the Spirit as Love
shared by both the Father and the Son.
St. John Damascene: The Persons of the Trinity are united yet not confused,
distinct yet not divided. God is a triunity of persons loving each other, and
in that reciprocal love the three persons are totally one without losing their
specific individuality.
Richard of St. Victor: If God is love, God has to be at least three Persons
loving each other; love is not only mutual, but shared. Where love is perfect,
the Lover (the Father) not only loves the Beloved (the Son), but wishes the
Beloved to have the joy of loving a Third, jointly with the Lover, and of
being jointly loved by that Third, the Holy Spirit, the Co-Beloved,
condilectus (the one who is loved by another (Ware)
Theology leads to anthropology: The Triune God is the final ground of
human fidelity and commitment, as well as the heart and source of all
creation and redemption. The Triune God as the radiating event of Love to
humanity and to the world. Each human person is called to be a living icon
of the Trinity, signifying and participating in the divine unity (Ware). a. God
creates the world out of love (ex amore) and not just ex nihilo (Ware). The
God of Trinitarian Love creates the world so that others besides Godself
would share in the movement of divine love (Ware). b. Catherine LaCugna:
Gods To-Be is To-Be-in-relationship, and Gods being-in-relationship-to-us
is what God is. The fundamental cosmological principle of evolution and of
the whole universe is relational because God is Persons-in- Relation. Every
creature springs from, depends upon, and in a creaturely way participates in ,
the being of divine Persons-in-Relation. It is communion that makes things
be. Nothing exists without it (Edwards).
John McMurray: The Self exists only in dynamic relation to the Other. ...
The Self is constituted by its relation to the Other ... I need You in order to
be myself. Precisely because God is Trinity, I need you in order to be
myself. To be a person after the image of God is to be a person-inrelationship. Without Trinitarian love, we cease to be truly human (Ware).
Noncommitment: (the rich man, Mk 10:17-31): The obstacle to
commitmentself- absorption in gathering religious and material wealth for
oneself; only self- donation leads to eternal life; follow me: one has to
entrust oneself to another, someone beyond himself, where one will find true
treasure outside of oneself (Haughey).
The evolution of Marys commitment: from Mary as the Jewish mother of
Jesus to Mary, the Woman, the first disciple, Behold, I am the
handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word (Lk
1:38).
Pauls symbiotic commitment to Jesus: I live now not I, but Christ lives
within me (Gal 2:20); commitment to the whole Christ leads to commitment
to his Body, the Church.
The revolutionary dogma of the Trinity is the foundation of the liberating and
transfiguring vision of humanity as participation in this divine community of
self- giving love (Migliore). a. The dogma of the Trinity constitutes a
revolution in our understanding of God.
Falsely we think of God as superior, controlling and dominating power. Such
a false theology is a reflection and projection of false anthropology of being
human as will-to-power. Juan Luis Segundo: Some sort of degradation of
12.! The Gospel of John is a call to believe, i.e., to be open to the truth
that is the glory of God revealed through Christ, which leads the
believer to commit ones entire self to life-giving abiding union with
Jesus, the Son who abides with the Father and with all humanity
through the Spirit.
The Gospel of John, an Invitation to Believe: But these are written that you
may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that
through this belief you may have life in his name (Jn 20:31).
a. To believe means openness to the truth which makes a person capable of
seeing the glory of God whenever and wherever it is revealed: Did I not tell
you that if would believe you would see the glory of God? (Jn 11:40); or
else one falls into unbelief, i.e., self-deception, blindly seeking ones own
glory rooted in idolatry (Jn 5:44).