DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Chapter I -- Knowledge

1) "If it is any comfort to others, I have never found it easy to believe in God. Even though I am the Archbishop of Canterbury, honesty requires me to say that my search for God and my finding of him have not been simple or painless. There have been times of great agonizing doubt but I have never lost sight of the need to come to a decision on this important issue. "

George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, from Chapter 1, Why I Believe in a Personal God

"I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist; so may the Gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other; they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them."

Bertrand Russell, from Why I am Not a Christian

Have you ever questioned God’s existence? What closure did you reach?

2) Of the five ways of acquiring knowledge in general, mentioned on pages 11-14, which do you most rely on? Which do you think is most reliable?

3) Read “Can God’s Existence be Proved?” pp. 15-17 and this from Russell:"If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may as well be the world as God, so there cannot be any validity in that argument....It is exactly of the same nature as the Hindu's view, that the world rested upon an elephant and the elephant rested on a tortoise; and when they said, "How about the tortoise?" the Indian said, "Suppose we change the subject? ....There is no reason why the world could not have come into being without a cause; nor, on the other hand, is there any reason why it should not have always existed. There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our imagination." (Why I am Not a Christian, pp. 6-7)

Which arguments strike you as most cogent? How would you answer Russell?

4) Distinguish conocer from saber. Which of the ways of knowing God mentioned in T 14-20 has been most important to you?

5) Distinguish subjective from objective certitude. Know one example of a limit on each of the ways of knowledge mentioned on pp. 20-24.

6) What role does belief play in secular knowledge? (T 24f)

7) Distinguish technology from magic (T 25) and faith from belief. (T 26-29)

8) Do you identify with any element of Samantha’s Story? (T 29-34)

Chapter 2 GOD

9) What does the word “God” mean? What is problematic about defining it as “ultimate reality”? … as “a divine being”?

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

10) What is eros? What is agape? How is the reality of God correlated with the triumph of love? (T 36f)

11) What is goodness grounded in if not God?

12) Compare the treatment of justice in T 38f to this:"Then there is another very curious form of moral argument, which is this: they say that the existence of God is required in order to bring justice into the world. In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying; but if you are going to have justice in the universe as a whole you have to suppose a future life to redress the balance of life on earth. So they say that there must be a God, and there must be heaven and hell in order that in the long run there may be justice. That is a very curious argument. If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of view, you would say, "After all, I know only this world. I do not know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue it all on probabilities one would say that probably this world is a fair sample, and if there is injustice here, the odds are that there is injustice elsewhere also." Supposing you got a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found the top layer of oranges bad, you would not argue, "The underneath ones must be good, so as to redress the balance." You would say, "Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment." (Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian.)

How would you respond to Russell?

13) In what sense, according to T 39ff, is human life meaningless without God? Would you agree?

14) What does the Church offer in place of proof? (T 41) In what sense is God mysterious? List some words that express what God is not. (T 42) What of him can we know?

15) How are God the Son and God the Holy Spirit analogous to sunlight and heat?

16) How is dimensionality analogous to the persons of the Trinity?

17) How is the Bible ambivalent toward images of God? (T 47)

18) What does the word power mean?

Chapter 3 – Creation

19) How would you distinguish the provinces of science and theology? (v. T 54f)

20) What does the word “substance” mean? Of what stuff is the universe made? What glues the stuff together? (T 55, 62)

21) Name some aspects of the creation’s finitude. (T 63f)

22) Is the creation good? How do we answer that question existentially? Is the creation morally significant? (T 64ff)

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

23) What does the word “grace” mean? How is grace related to gratitude? What does the phrase “amor con amor se paga” mean? (T 67ff)

24) What does the word “stewardship” mean? (T 69f)

25) In what sense can the creation be sacramental? Have you ever experienced it as sacramental? (T 71ff)

Chapter 4– Man

26) Name some aspects of your finitude. Do you consider your finitude problematical?What does the word “humility” mean?

27) What is the “naked ape fallacy”?

28) What is virtue? List some traits you consider virtuous.

29) Do you have free will? (T 83ff) What do you think of Russell’s view:"Materialists used the laws of physics to show, or attempt to show, that the movements of human bodies are mechanically determined, and that consequently everything we say and every change of position that we effect fall outside the sphere of any possible free will. If this be so, whatever may be left for our unfettered volition is of little value. If, when a man writes a poem or commits a murder, the bodily movements involved in his act result solely from physical causes, it would seem absurd to put up a statute to him in the one case and hang him in the other...."....When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behavior is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of the imagination." Why I am not a Christian, p. 38 and 40.

30) “Human nature gives us a ground for ethics” (T 84). Why?

31) Distinguish natural from revealed law.

32) What is righteousness?

33) What is sin? Distinguish pride from decadence. What is concupiscence?

34) What did the phrase “original sin” mean to St. Augustine? (T 92) What was the meaning of the phrase “And there is no health in us” in the old confession (1928 BCP p. 4)? Why do you suppose that it does not appear in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer? What does the catechism of the present Prayer Book say about original sin? What do you think about it?

35) Distinguish original from actual sin. Do you see any resemblance between sin and addiction?

36) Why did God not make us better than we are? What should he do about human sinfulness?

Chapter 5 – Christ

37) How does the Greek philosophical concept of God differ from the Biblical portrait of God? (T 96f)

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

38) What was Richard Hooker’s answer to the question of whether God needs us? (T 97, 194)

39) What does the Incarnation show us about ourselves? What does it show us about God? What, according to Gregory of Nazianzus, was the purpose of the Incarnation? (T 101, 194)

40) What does the word “gospel” mean? What, according to Mark 1:14, was the gospel Jesus proclaimed?

41) What is the Kingdom of God? Who deserves to enter it?

42) What aspects of the Mosaic Law does Jesus dispense with? Which aspects did he make more stringent? (T 103) Why did he?

43) How does Jesus illustrate God’s generosity? (cf. Mt. 5:20; Lk. 12)

44) The Old Testament usually refers to God as Lord. How does Jesus characteristically refer to him?

45) What is the point of the Parable of the Prodigal Son?

46) Why might forgiveness be considered the highest form of love? (T 109) What is the economy of forgiveness in God’s kingdom? (T 112)

47) How, according to Jesus, will our love for God be evaluated?

48) Who is Satan? How does Jesus reverse Adam’s legacy? Why might healing be perceived as a battle in a cosmic conflict? What does the word “miracle” mean?

49) What was Jesus’ greatest implicit claim to authority? (T 118f)

50) What was the essence of Jesus’ conflict with the Pharisees? What are the limitations of the Law?

51) Jesus commanded his disciples to “love one another as I have loved you” (Jn. 13:34). How, in the last twenty-four hours of his earthly life, did Jesus love them? (T 121ff) What, according to Jesus, was the significance of his death? (Mt. 20:25ff; 26:26ff; Jn 15:11ff)

52) Why did Pilate condemn Jesus? What was the point of the titulus nailed above Christ’s head? (Mk 15:26) In what sense is the Resurrection God’s answer to Pilate’s taunt?

Chapter 6 – Church

37) Who is the Holy Spirit? What is the relationship between grace and the Holy Spirit? 38) What is righteousness? (T 135)

39) What effect does the Law have on sin?

40) Why, according to Paul, did God make Christ “one with the sinfulness of men” (II Cor.5:21)

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

41) Why might life in grace entail my surrendering to God both my pride and guilt? (T 138)

42) What does being “born of the Spirit” mean? How might your new life differ from your former one?

43) What is discipleship?

44) What four things are called the “body of Christ” in the New Testament? (T 141) Are they the same body? What do they have in common?

45) In what sense is the Church the continuation of the Incarnation? (T 142)

46) How is Paul’s concept of the Church at odds with American individualism?

47) Consider the following:“A dogmatic faith, unsupported by personal experience, remains empty; mere personal faith, unrelated to the faith of the church, remains blind.”

Pope Benedict XVI, quoted by Newsweek, August 29,2005 Special Edition

Do you identify with any of the types of Christians mentioned in T 143f? How would the Church be impaired if everyone were like you?

48) How are prayer and study comparable to the body’s nervous system?

49) Relative to the Church’s hypocrisy and fidelity (T 146ff), how would you respond to this passage from Russell?

“The most important thing about Christianity, from a social and historical point of view, is not Christ but the church, and if we are to judge of Christianity as a social force we must not go to the Gospels for our material. Christ taught that you should give your goods to the poor, that you should not fight, that you should not go to church, and that you should not punish adultery. Neither Catholics or Protestants have shown any strong desire to follow His teaching in any of these respects…consider such a text as “judge not, that ye be not judged,” and ask yourself what influence such a text has had upon the Inquisition and the Ku Klux Klan....That is the idea—that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period, and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.”

Bertrand Russell, Why I am not a Christian, p. 25

50) What is worship? (T 148) What is a sacrament? How is baptism a sacrament of identity? What is the grace of the sacrament of marriage? What is required of a penitent to receive the grace of reconciliation? (T 156)

51) What relevance does Christ’s image of the vine and the branches have for the Christian life? (T 157ff)

52) What does St. James say about the connection between faith and action? (Jam 2:17, T 160) Do you agree? Did Christ urge us to do evangelism or outreach? Which did he himself do?

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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

53) What is the objective of charity?

54) Is the separation of church and state a good thing? Why?

55) What is oppression? (T 165) How should the Church promote justice?

56) What moral might powerful people draw from God’s own use of power? (T 165f)

Chapter 7 – Hope 57) What good does it do to think about the end of the world?

58) Where is heaven? What is hell? (T 172)

59) What is glory?

60) Do you think it reasonable to believe in an afterlife? Why?

61) Is religious sincerity a saving grace?

62) According to Jesus, can one do the will of the Father while verbally rejecting the Father? (Mt 21:28ff) Can people who have never heard of Christ still love him and serve him? (Mt 25:31ff)

63) Can Hitler be saved? (T 181ff) What do you think?

64) Where are Christ’s lost sheep?

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