Study Guide for Theology 11 1st Quarter Test

I. Background/Overall Topics
- Lens/worldview (Definition, impact, and whose lens Christians are called to see the world through)
- Definitions of myth, legend, and fundamentalism
- Reading Biblical notation
- Organization of the Old Testament (especially what the Pentateuch is and the five books in it)
- Definition of agape
- YHWH/Yahweh and Adonai (translations; why translating YHWH is complicated; when Adonai was used)

II. Trinity
- Textbook Chapter 1
- How’re the persons of the Trinity still one God? And what’s the distinction among the persons?
- Himes 1
- Why/how is God ultimately a mystery to us?
- What is the “least wrong” thing we can say about God?
- Understanding God as an action/verb
- Augustinian formulation of the Trinity
- Relational/social nature of God
- Parable of the Good Samaritan (story itself and the two deeper meanings Himes addresses)
- Basics of the formation of Trinitarian doctrine (mostly from Textbook Chapter 2)
- Broad scale timeframe
- Two important ecumenical councils for Trinitarian doctrine
- Language used for the Trinity
- How the mystery of the Trinity is routinely worded/described/formulated
- Includes ousia and hypostases
- Analogies we emphasized: coding, song, H2O, family (ask about family one if we didn’t do it in your section)

III. Nature (philosophically, not as in trees and rivers)

- Nature of Jesus
- Hypostatic union (think of the marker analogy)
- Important ecumenical council for defining nature of Jesus (besides the two from above)
- Jesus as the Logos
- What constitutes human nature and what constitutes divine nature

IV. The State of the World – Creation and The Fall

- View of creation as the doing of love among the persons of the Trinity overflowing beyond the Trinity
- Creatureliness (from Himes Chapter 2)
- What it means for us to be creatures and why we often seem to deny our creatureliness
- Connecting creatureliness to the Our Father/Lord’s Prayer
- Overall Catholic view of Genesis 1-11
- Genesis accounts of creation
- Why are there two?
- Understand this from JEDP Theory and other key takeaways from JEDP Theory
- Similarities & differences between 1st account (Gen 1:1 – 2:3) and 2nd account (Gen 2:4-25)
- Underlying truths they express about reality, God, creation, humanity, etc.
- Intelligent design
- The Fall
- Storyline of Genesis 3 and that it continues from 2nd creation account
 - Explaining original sin as a blueprint/prototype more than a story about our ancestors
- Consequences of The Fall
- Magnet metaphor
- Be able to draw/label the two halves of the diagram (pre-Fall & post-Fall) and use it to explain
the original state of things, the impacts of the Fall, and God’s role in the consequences

V. Free Will
- The automatic assumption of basically every human culture and interaction
- Abrahamic Religions’ argument that we have free will
- Materialism (in this context specifically)
- Philosophical approach: Determinism, Libertarian Free Will, Compatibilism
- Neuroscience approach: What do we know/not know; What factors complicate the research?
- Psychological factors: subconscious conditioning and observational learning
- What do you think???