"Jesus:Model of Faith, Model of Humanity" Journal



The main topic of the "Faith and Apologetics" section were the five teleological arguments for the existence of God. These arguments were: William Paley's "Watch and the Watchmaker", The Golden Ratio , The Anthropic Principle, Kalam's Argument, and Plato's and St. Thomas' Argument from Degrees of Perfection. The "Watch and the Watchmaker" argument says that living organisms are so complex that there must have been a great designer, God. The Golden Ratio is a number so intricate and important throughout nature that suggests an existence of a high power. The Anthropic Principle states that the sciences of chemistry and physics are tuned just right for life. Kalam's Argument begins with the question,"Did the universe have a beginning?" The Degrees of Perfection argument points to a Being who is infinitely intelligent and free. We also talked about the knowledge of God via the human person in the arguments from: religious experience, conscience, and natural law.

3 Things I Want To Remember

For me, one main thing I would like to remember is the Golden Ratio. After watching the short clip on the Golden Ratio in class from you tube I was completely awestruck. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. To me, the complexity of a single number used in so many different fields today and even found in seashells is amazing and definetly leads me to God.

Another thing that I want to remember are the five inclinations of human nature: seek happiness, preserve oneself in existence, unite sexually, be in a community, and free will and knowledge. By learning these inclinations, I am able to relate them to me and my life and see how they are affecting me. Often times I have noticed that maybe these inclinations draw me away from God. Sometimes I think that I get so caught up in trying to seek happiness for my own self that I forget about others and distance myself from God.

Another thing that I want to remember from this section was our listening to the modern story of Jesus on National Public Radio . For those few minutes that I closed my eyes and listened to the story, I truly felt like I was bettering my relationship with God. I think it was a great story to listen to because it put the story of Jesus in a modern perspective, something we all could relate to. I think the story opened my eyes to the way Jesus was treated and viewed in his time, ultimately bringing us closer.

Who Do I Say Jesus Is?

I believe that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine. I believe that he was a great moral teacher who brought the loving message of God to us on earth. He washed away the idea that God was vengeful, and instilled the idea that God has an unconditional love for us. Because Jesus was fully human, He was able to relate to us and he suffered the pain's of life and witnessed life's difficulties. Also, because Jesus was fully divine, he was the only one capable of fulling understanding God, ultimately bringing forgiveness to the world.

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