Lesson Two: Part Two-God And His Perfection

Today we cover lesson number two in our catechism lesson "God and his perfections part two." This is a continuation from last week's lesson.

Now the overarching theme for today will be how can you and I know about God? There are two ways that we can come to know about God. Actually, there are many, but we're going to start with just these first two. The first one is through faith, and the second way is through reason. Faith is a supernatural gift that comes from God. It helps us to believe in him and all that he has revealed to us. On the other hand, we have reason.

Reason is the power of our mind to think, to understand and to form judgments. And we do this through a process of logic.

That's what reason is, so let's go ahead and dive deeper into that knowledge of God through reason.

I want you to consider the picture that Michael Angelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel at the Vatican. By studying a painting, such as this, we can learn a lot about the artist. Who is he? What was his artistic ability? What is his faith? What was his vision. In the same way that we can look at a painting and know about the artist, we too can look at earthly things created things, and we can come to know more about our God, the Creator. For instance, we can look at a great waterfall, and we can come to know the majesty of God. Or we can look at a beautiful sunrise or sunset, and we can see the beauty of God. Or we can go to the ocean and we can look at these waves crashing down upon the shore. And we can come to know the power of God. How can we come to know all these things? We come to know these things through the process of reason, we can use our minds to think, to understand and to form judgments about ourselves, about our earth. And at the end of the day, about our God, we can look at all that he's created and come to know that all these things including ourselves were created by, as we said last week, a self existing Supreme being who we know as God, the Father Almighty Creator of heaven and earth. Concerning the subject of having the knowledge of God through reasoning, Saint Paul says, "For Gods invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So we are without excuse." (Romans 1:20).

According to the previous verses, those who are unrighteous before God do not want to know about Him, so they try to suppress the truth about God. To some extent, this is true of all human beings, since we all sin (Romans 3:23). Paul has shown that God has plainly shown what is knowable about Him to everyone (Romans 1:18–19). How has He done that? This verse answers that it is obvious from what He has made. Specifically, Paul asserts that human beings can easily know at least some things about God by looking at creation. We should look at what is visible around us in nature, what God has made, and arrive at some obvious conclusions about what is not visible. Adding one and one together, we should understand from nature that God has eternal power and a divine nature. David said something similar in Psalm 19:1–6. After all, Paul seems to be saying, what kind of power would it take to make the world and all that is in it? Such a feat would require "eternal power," or endless and inexhaustible power. Such a Creator must also be divine and not merely human. He must be God, in other words. Human beings should look at creation and decide there must be a God who made it, a God we must answer to on some level. Especially in our era, some might argue that reaching such a conclusion by looking at nature is not a given. After all, the prevailing alternative theories about the origins of our universe may lead someone to decide that just the opposite is true: There is no God. God does not accept that argument. This passage is especially important when viewed in context with Jesus' comments in Matthew 7:7–8. God gives every single person enough knowledge that they should seek Him. Those who respond by seeking God will always find Him. If human beings do not "work out" the basic nature of God from what is seen in creation, and seek Him from there, they are simply "without excuse." They are willfully ignoring the obvious. God insists that He has made it plain to human reasoning and that to decide otherwise is to suppress the truth we know by nature.

Now we can also know God through what he's revealed to us. We call this divine revelation.

Divine revelation is what God has told us about himself and the purpose for our lives. So if we look at that word, Divine, we're thinking heavenly or godly When we're thinking of the word revelation, it's either to reveal or to remove the veil. Thinking of that, removing of the veil. Think of a bride and her father walking her down the aisle on that day of their wedding. When the father gets to the alter, he lifts up or removes the veil so that everyone in the church can see her beauty, her radiance, for the first time on that wedding day. You know, God does the same thing for us as well. God reveals himself to us. He removes the veil over time so that we can come to know him more, come to know him more deeply. We know this knowledge to be Divine revelation. It happens slowly over time.

Now there are many ways that God has revealed himself to us. Firstly, and I would say most importantly, he reveals himself in his son Jesus, who is his greatest revelation. Jesus tells us, "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father." (John 14:9-10).

But God also reveals himself in two additional ways. The first way is called through sacred scripture. The second way is through sacred tradition.

Now sacred scripture is the Word of God found in the Bible. Think of the acronym, B I B L E. Which stands for "basic instructions before leaving earth". You see sacred scripture is so important for us to read. When we read scripture, we come to know more about God, which leads us to a greater love of him, and that love, leads us to serve him in the church and in the world. But there is other reason that the reading of sacred scriptures is so important. Saint Paul told Saint Timothy that "All Scripture is inspired or breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in justice or righteousness." II Timothy 3:16. The Apostle uses two pairs of words to flesh out Scripture’s usefulness. The first pair—teaching and reproof—have to do with doctrine. Positively, all Scripture is “profitable for teaching.” That is why the whole of both Testaments must be studied—not just Romans, not just the Old Testament, not just the Gospels. “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching.” And of course when this is done, there will also be reproof. Together the teaching and the reproof help produce the benefits of sound doctrine.

The second pair—correction and training in righteousness—have to do with conduct. “Correction” comes from the Greek word for “straight,” which can be translated, “It straightens us out.” God’s Word is useful in a practical way. Those who accept its reproof will begin to find their lives straightening out. Then they will be ready for the Word’s positive effect of “training in righteousness.” The righteousness that has come to the believer by faith is actualized by the training of God’s Word.

God also reveals himself, not only in sacred scripture, not only in the person of Jesus Christ, but in sacred tradition. Sacred tradition is the unwritten Word of God that was taught by Jesus, his apostles and the early church fathers, which was given to us the Church by Jesus Christ, through the power and inspiration of the Holy Ghost. Remember the Bible was not put together for Catholics as we have it today for many years after Jesus died and rose from the dead. And therefore his teachings had to be passed on orally. And those teachings make up the sacred tradition of our Catholic faith. Now let's end with a quick summary of Sacred Scripture found in our Bible so that you can begin to dive into this glorious love letter from God to his people.

First, the Bible was written so that we could come to know and fulfill our purpose, which is to get to heaven.

Secondly, the Bible is the inspired God breathed Word of God. The author of this great book is God himself who moved the sacred writers to write everything that he wanted and only what he wanted. Nothing more, nothing less. This book is a living book because it's author lives.

This book is also effective. By that I mean, when we read it, we will receive teaching, reproof, correction and training, and our lives are transformed and we are never ever the same. There are two parts to the Bible, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament is where God revealed himself as Lord and leader of the chosen people, the Jews. At the fullness of time, Jesus comes, and then we have the New Testament that follows.

In the new Testament, God reveals himself in the person of Jesus Christ, which as I said earlier, is his greatest revelation. And He reveals him to all people. Not just the Jews, but to the Gentiles as well.

The Bible is a library of books. 73 in number. Books, such as historical books, wisdom literature, prophetic books, gospels, letters. There are 46 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament. I encourage you to read the Bible every single day. I once heard that a gospel a day keeps Satan away. In Matthew 10:24, it says a disciple is not above his teacher nor a servant above his master. That's what we learn when we open up scripture, that we're always supposed to come to the teacher to learn more, to sit at the feet of Jesus as his disciple.

I hope and pray that you found this lesson helpful.