Week Three: What is Faith?
1) One paragraph summary of the key idea summarizing the topic of the week.
Faith has a secular and Catholic meaning. The secular definition of faith is complete belief and trust. This means believing in something even though even though you're not completely certain of it. Catholic Faith is defined as an intellectual assent to a loving God and His revelation. Catholics define Faith as a grace, a risk, a virtue- something reasonable and certain that seeks understanding and requires free human response. The four characteristics of the biblical idea of faith are that faith is more a loving trust, involves periods of doubt and struggle, involves risk and periods of darkness, and is an ongoing series of decisions. I believe that these characteristics accurately describe a person of faith.
2) List and explain three of the most important ideas you want to remember from this week.
a.)Nihilism- a viewpoint that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless; a doctrine that denies any objective ground of truth. Nihilists try to reason without faith, and have no beliefs.
b.)Cardinal virtues- Justice: showing fairness toward others, prudence: having good judgement in practical matters, fortitude: the ability to patiently handle misfortune, and temperance: the ablity to take everything in moderation and control one's urges.
c.)Faith as the golden way- It is foolish to either only reason or believe. We must live between radicalism and nihilism by having faith supported by reason.
3) One image of that reminds you of the topic. Attribute, link, your source.
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4) One good question you should keep with you to ponder.
If faith is supposed to be more of a loving trust than intellectual, shouldn't faith, instead of being the mean between radicalism and nihilism, be closer to radicalism?
5) What should you try to do to make you a better person, a more faithful person, from this study?
In order for me to grow in my faith, I need to learn more about what is I believe in. I think I need to start reading the Bible regularly as well as educating myself on what exactly the Catholic Church stands for and believes and why they have those beliefs. Instead of dismissing things about the Catholic Church that I don't understand (like Genesis and its contradictions with science), I need to think about these issues and ask leaders in my youth group for their knowledge.