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#Post#: 1270--------------------------------------------------
Theology for Beginners
DIR By: Piper
Date: April 20, 2015, 2:02 pm
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I'm reading a Kindle book called Theology for Beginners, by F.J.
Sheed, and I've found I can copy and paste my highlighting to
the forum, so thought I would. The author gives us things of
depth to think about, and I love having things to consider while
I go about daily tasks.
Mr. Sheed is a Catholic author, so some mention of Catholicism
will occur, but not an overwhelming amount. Much of the text is
good for all interested in theology. I really enjoy his writing
style.
I'll copy a bit at a time.
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--- Quote ---
> . . . the joy and excitement of theological knowledge is like
the joy and excitement of any other love— it cannot be explained
to one who has not experienced it; it need not be explained to
one who has. I shall keep, therefore, to the plainest of
reasons. Truth is food and truth is light.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> Revealed truth, then, is food. Now it is a peculiarity of food
that it nourishes only those who eat it. We are not nourished by
the food that someone else has eaten. To be nourished by it, we
must eat it ourselves.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> Truth is light too. Not to see it is to be in darkness, to see
it wrong is to be in double darkness. The greater part of
reality can be known only if God tells us: doctrine is what He
tells: lacking it, we lack light. To be stumbling along in the
dark, happy in the knowledge that our guides can see, is not at
all the same thing as walking in the light. It is immeasurably
better than stumbling through the dark with blind guides but it
is poverty all the same.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> A Catholic, thank God, never can be wholly unnourished or
wholly in the dark. But he may be living an undernourished life
in the half-dark, and that is a pity.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> . . . it is obvious that an ignorant man can be virtuous, it
is equally obvious that ignorance is not a virtue.
--- End Quote ---
#Post#: 1307--------------------------------------------------
Re: Theology for Beginners
DIR By: Piper
Date: April 21, 2015, 2:35 pm
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--- Quote ---
> Knowledge serves love— it can turn sour of course and serve
pride or conceit and not love, and against this we poor sons of
Eve must be on our guard. Knowledge does serve love. It serves
love in one way by removing misunderstandings which are in the
way of love, which at the best blunt love’s edge a little.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> . . . knowledge serves love in a still better way— because
each new thing learned and meditated about God is a new reason
for loving Him.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> The most obvious fact of our day is that we are surrounded by
millions who are starved of food that Christ Our Lord wanted
them to have— they are getting too small a ration of truth, and
of the Eucharist no ration at all. We regret their starvation,
of course, but we do not lose any sleep over it; which raises
the question of whether we really appreciate the food we
ourselves get from the Church. We should not take it so calmly
if their starvation were bodily: for we do know the value of the
bread that perishes. If spiritual starvation is to be relieved,
it must be largely the work of the laity, who are in daily
contact with starvation’s victims.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> it is intolerable that men should be perishing for want of
truth that we could bring them. But not only for their sake. For
our own sake too: for it is not good for us, or our children, to
be the sane minority in a society that is losing contact with
God.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> . . . it is possible for a man to possess the truth, while yet
the truth does not possess him.
--- End Quote ---
#Post#: 1317--------------------------------------------------
Re: Theology for Beginners
DIR By: Kerry
Date: April 21, 2015, 11:56 pm
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I agree that the only knowledge worth having serves love. I
believe too that willful ignorance can be a sin. Turning away
from things we do not want to see can be too.
I think of the rich man happy inside his house while Lazarus was
miserable outside. He could pretend everything was fine if he
didn't have to see it. In the story of the Good Samaritan, we
see people going to the other side of the road to get past the
wounded man. I think of them averting their eyes once they saw
him, so they could ignore him. Willful ignorance dulls the
conscience.
#Post#: 1319--------------------------------------------------
Re: Theology for Beginners
DIR By: Twinc
Date: April 22, 2015, 3:06 am
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yes....I remember as I was weaned on them, there are actually
three in the set......I remember the feeling and the joy when I
came across them - twinc
#Post#: 1336--------------------------------------------------
Re: Theology for Beginners
DIR By: Piper
Date: April 22, 2015, 10:14 am
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--- Quote from: Twinc link ---
>
> yes....I remember as I was weaned on them, there are actually
three in the set......I remember the feeling and the joy when I
came across them - twinc
>
--- End Quote ---
Ahh! There you are, twinc. :)
Yes, there is also A Map to Life and To Know Christ Jesus.
I do like his writing style and gentle teaching methods.
#Post#: 1337--------------------------------------------------
Re: Theology for Beginners
DIR By: Piper
Date: April 22, 2015, 10:38 am
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--- Quote ---
> It (knowledge) serves love in one way by removing
misunderstandings which are in the way of love, which at the
best blunt love’s edge a little.
--- End Quote ---
Hi Kerry. After the above, Mr. Sheed explained how we might
have misconceptions about God that place a barrier between Him
and us, for example: "Hell can raise a doubt of God’s love in a
man who has not had his mind enriched with what the Church can
teach him; so that he is driven piously to avert his gaze from
some truth about God in order to keep his love undimmed."
I think it a good point. How many of us "avert our gaze" in
this way, rather than seeking to understand more clearly. We
want to love God without reservation, and only by seeking to
have more knowledge can we dispel misunderstandings that make us
doubt Him in any way.
I've begun to ask myself what causes me to "avert my eyes" that
my love be undimmed? It is better to seek understanding than
to harbor doubt that we try to ignore.
#Post#: 1338--------------------------------------------------
Re: Theology for Beginners
DIR By: Piper
Date: April 22, 2015, 10:59 am
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The book now enters discussion of "Spirit":
--- Quote ---
> In theology, spirit is not only a key-word, it is the
key-word. Our Lord said to the Samaritan woman, “God is a
spirit.” Unless we know the meaning of the word spirit, we do
not know what He said. It is as though He had said “God is a—.”
Which tells us nothing at all. The same is true of every
doctrine; they all include spirit. In theology we are studying
spirit all the time. And the mind with which we are studying it
is a spirit too.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> Spirit is the element in us by which we know and love, by
which therefore we decide.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> Spirit knows and loves. A slightly longer look at ourselves
reveals that spirit has power , too.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> . . . as we shall see, the direct power the human mind has
over its own body, mightier spirits have over all matter.
--- End Quote ---
--- Quote ---
> Our ideas are not material. They have no resemblance to our
body. Their resemblance is to our spirit. They have no shape, no
size, no color, no weight, no space. Neither has spirit whose
offspring they are. But no one can call it nothing; for it
produces thought, and thought is the most powerful thing in the
world— unless love is, which spirit also produces.
--- End Quote ---
#Post#: 1339--------------------------------------------------
Re: Theology for Beginners
DIR By: Piper
Date: April 22, 2015, 11:06 am
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Ideas are the "offspring" of spirit. They are similar in that
neither ideas nor spirit have shape, size, color, weight, nor do
they take up space.
So . . . While they are very "real", they are not matter.
#Post#: 1340--------------------------------------------------
Re: Theology for Beginners
DIR By: Piper
Date: April 22, 2015, 11:25 am
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How inspiring, then, to think that we, like God, also possess
spirit and our spirit need not be dependent on matter. Yet, our
spirit seems helplessly anchored to our bodies. In Scripture,
though, I think we see instances of this anchor being overcome;
spirit leaves body, then returns.
If spirit leaves body, then is it no longer assigned to time and
space? It stretches my mind to think of a realm where time does
not exist; it would always ever be "now." It also stretches my
mind to think of a realm where all that exists does not take up
space. What exists in such a realm would therefore be pure
energy. I think.
#Post#: 1712--------------------------------------------------
Re: Theology for Beginners
DIR By: Twinc
Date: May 4, 2015, 7:47 am
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--- Quote from: Piper link ---
>
> Ahh! There you are, twinc. :)
>
> Yes, there is also A Map to Life and To Know Christ Jesus.
>
> I do like his writing style and gentle teaching methods.
>
--- End Quote ---
yes I have read those two too but the two others I meant that I
could not then recall were 'Society and Sanity' and 'Theology
and Sanity' - twinc
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