Notes on Fundamental Systematic Theology Article

1. DOING THEOLOGY
- This book will focus on process o method.
- To understand theology not so much as a particular content, but as an activity, a process.
2. DOING CATHOLIC THEOLOGY
- Doing catholic theology is not the only way of doing theology:
o Place strong emphasis on the Tradition, and not only in the Scripture.
o A Catholic does theology always in dialogue with the Church’s teaching authority,
the magisterium.
- Catholics are convinced of the sacramentality of the world, where anything and everything –
an event, an object, a person – can become transparent to God’s grace. (US Anglo
Theologian Richard McBrien)
- They value Community- Catholicism is one in which Christians are formed by age-old
traditions, cherished pratices, and constant elbow-rubbing with others. (McBrien)
- Catholicism is about meditation
o Christians can do have immediate access to God
o God can also be approached through others (holy men and women, saints)
o God’s will and teachings are ordinarily channeled through those in authority (the
magisterium), and others (Holy men and women, saints) can be occasion for a
special manifestation of God’s presence.
3. DOING CATHOLIC SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY
- Every doctrine is connected with every other doctrine, and every doctrine is a kind of lens or
prism with which to view THE Christian doctrine: the reality that God, Holy Mystery, has
revealed God’s true self to women and men in the warp and woof of history, through the
presence of the Spirit and in the life , death/resurrection, and especially the person of Jesus
of Nazareth, and calls them into friendship and partnership.
- Christian doctrinal tradition is a system, with which every doctrine explaining every other
one, and each explaining and being explained by THE doctrine, THE mystery, at the center.
4. DONG CATHOLIC SYTEMATIC THEOLOGY IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE
- Theology today needs to be done in a dialogue with one’s own contextual perspective and
the briad and deep tradition of the Christian church, and in dialogue as well with the results
of the interaction and the perspectives of Christians from every part of our world.
- They will learn how to be faithful to their own particular culture , gender, generation,
national identity while at the same time expnding their understanding beyond their own
particularity to embrace, learn from, and even challenge other ways of thinking and
expression.

FAITH SEEKING UNDERSTANDING: The Nature of Theology

Theology- is the result of GRACE!

The Best definition of theology- FAITH SEEKING UNDERSTANDING (St. Anselm of Canterbury)

1. Mystery and Revelation

On the nature of Theology:
- John Macquarrie- God-talk
- Rene Latourelle- is a knowledge that has God as its object, or knowledge of God.
- Thomas Aquians- the science of God

Problem: God cannot be an OBJECT!

- Stanley J. Samartha- God is never the object of Human knowledge. God always remains the
ETERNAL SUBJECT.
- Chilean Ronaldo Munoz- we cannot make God into an ‘object’ in the scientific sense of the
word, something we can place in front of ourselves, to examine its contours and understand
it intellectually.
- GOD CAN ONLY BE THE SUBJECT, GOD IS ALWAYS INEFFIABLE HOLY MYSTERY.

a. Knowing the unknowable God

I. In Christianity, negative theology is deeply rooted in the Bible

1. Exodus 5. 1Cor. 13:12

2. Isaiah 6 and 45:15 6. 1 Tim. 6:16
3. Book of Job 7. Rom. 11:33
4. Gospel of John
II. Biblical insight about God’ radical ineffability is articulated throughout the
Christian tradition as well, both in the east and west.
1. Gregory of Nyssa
2. Augustine
3. Isidore of Seville
4. Thomas Aquinas
5. Meister Eckhart
6. Nicholas of Cusa
7. Blaise Paschal
8. Soren Kierkegard
9. Paul Tillich
10. Micheal McCauley
11. Elizabeth Johnson
12. Other religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Chinese, Islam, Judaism)
b. Knowing the Mystery
- In Christian tradition, God is fully known in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ.
o Jesus manifests the real nature of God… the God who comes to us in history is a God
who relates, adapts, responds and loves. The is what God is actually like. (John
Sanders)
- Problem VS Mystery
o For Gabriel Marcel:
 PROBLEM- is something tht is unknown , but that somehow, eventually ,
through human intelligence or just serendipity, I can figure out or solve: it is
“something I meet, which I find complete before me, but which I can
therefore lay siege or reduce.”
  MYSTERY- isn’t something unknown or unknowable but something that is
already known, but absolutely impossible to be figured out , solved, or
controlled.
 It is something in which i myself am involved.
o Solving problem, in other words, is like going from dark into
the light. Knowing mystery is like being blinded by the light.
o The question is not that Mystery is unknowable, but HOW WE COME TO KNOW
MYSTERY
- The Knowledge of Revelatiom
o The paradox of human person
 How we come to know the mystery of a human person
 We have to encounter persons in their mystery to really know them;
we have to meet them in person, we have to experience them for
ourselves.
 We can knowthe full mystery of a person if that person allows me to know
him or her—or to put it another way, it happens only through a slef-gift of
the person’s self – REVELATION
o God is mystery precisely because God is personal—and in fact the origin of all
personhood. (Catherine La Cugna
o Revelation is a free gift on God’s part. Knowing God as God really is the result of
GRACE. God always takes the first step toward human beings.
- The mystery of Revelation
o At certain times in our lives, God gracious presence becomes manifest in our lives as
God communicates God’s subjectivity through objectivity. Through concrete events
in our lives, or concrete persons, or particular words- very ordinary things—God
becomes present and palpable to us in all god’s incomprehensible , inexpressible ,
mysterious reality.
o THE PATTERN OF DIVINE REVELATION: the finite reveals the infinite, the objective
reveals the subjective, what is ordinary reveals what is Mystery.
o Revelation points to the fact that at certain graced, really uneplanable moments,WE
BECOME AWARE OF GOD’S CONSTANT PRESENCE WITHIN OUR WORLD, AND
WITHIN OUR LIVES.
 We just need to pay more attention so that the painting could reaveal them
to us.
- The revelation is found
o God’s presence is found chiefly in three places:
1. Human Experience
 God manifest Godself to us in our everyday experience.
 Up experiences/ limit of: birth of a child, passing the exam, etc.
o We realize that our experience, as it were, opens up a
doorway to a whole other dimension of existence.
o Experience of “take our breath away”
 Down experiences/ limit to: failures in life, not getting accepted for
profession, breakup between lovers, etc.
o These are times when we recognize the extreme
contingency or limitedness of our lives; it is like a door being
 slammed in our face in the opposite experience of the
“limited of” experience
o But so often in these bleak moments we can experience the
presence and strength of God who walks with us, suffer
with us, even helps us bear our burden.
 The main point: through any kind of object or experience or person, God
reveals God’s constant presence in our lives.
2. Sacred Scriptures
 What is important is not the scriptures itself, but the fact that Scriptures
reveal the person and presence of God.
 God’s Word is so much in the words of Scriptures but between the lines.
 Scriptures becomes God’s word; the story of Scrpture—THE Story—
becomes My Story.
 The word touches us just where we need to be touched.
 God’s word can often satisfy our questions and needs in aparticularly
powerful way.
 Sciptures can open up an experience of God’s presence that was not in our
lives before.
 Faith looks through the Scripture, not at them (Douglas Hall)
3. The Christian Tradition
 Doctrines can also be the means by which that original experience is re-
experienced by believers.
 The doctrine is one of that was formulated to protect Christian fith in the
fact that, in Jesus, God really did walk among men and women on this earth,
shared our experience and pain, our pleasure and joys.
 God is like Jesus (Juan Luis Segundo)
 The whole point of the doctrine of Homoousios was to express the fact that
Jesus as one of us.
 The tradition can also be revelatory og God’s presence through the men and
women who have both made and handed on the Christian tradition, both
living and the dead—in a real sense our ancestors.
- Revelation as personal encounter
o REVELATION:
 the speech of God to human beings, by means of teaching (Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange)
 A word derived from Latin meaning “to remove the veil,” has the general
sense of making known some truth to another. (G. van Noort
o Revelation is the very self- communication of God, the offer of God’s very
persnhood by means of objective data: the events of our lives, the Sacred Scripture,
and the content and persons of the Christian tradition.
 Revelation is not in the first place a matter of propositions but a new
personal and relationship of God through Christ to Humanity (Aidan Nichols)
o Revelation is communication of knowledge that reveals the person, that is, the
mystery of God.
o God’s ultimate goal in offering women and en revelation is to offer FRIENDSHIP AND
RELATIONSHIP.
- Revelation in context
o God’s revelation ad God’s will were concepts that were closely interconnected in
Filipino culture, woven together in the Filipino concept of LOOB (deep within)- one
most authentic self.
o For Filipinoes, Kagandahan -loob:
 Denotes not only ethically good but also winsomely good.
 refers to a goodness that is not cold, but warm; a kindness which is not
enslaving, but liberating.