God the Holy Spirit, Mentor's Guide, MG14

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G O D T H E H O L Y S P I R I T

Put away your notes, gather up your thoughts and reflections, and take the quiz for Lesson 1, The Person of the Holy Spirit.

Quiz

Scripture Memorization Review

Review with a partner, write out and/or recite the text for last class session’s assigned memory verse: Romans 8.5-17.

Turn in your summary of the reading assignment for last week, that is, your brief response and explanation of the main points that the authors were seeking to make in the assigned reading (Reading Completion Sheet).

Assignments Due

Making God Known

How do we know things? How do we know with certainty that a chair is red, or that there is such a thing as red, or even such a thing as color? In the modern age, not even looking at something with our own eyes is completely reliable because technology is affecting our ability to know what is real and what is not. Films and photographs can be altered so seamlessly that even so-called “experts” are not always sure that it has happened. The old saying, “seeing is believing” is rapidly becoming untrue. Epistemology is the academic discipline that tries to define what knowledge is and how we can obtain it and evaluate it. There are many ways to know things. For example:

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• Observation and testing - This is the way that scientists know things.

• Reason, logic, and deduction - This is the way philosophers know things.

• Experiences, senses, hunches, insight, and imagination - This is the way artists know things.

Each of these ways of knowing has certain strengths and weaknesses but all of these have some severe limitations when it comes to knowing God. (What are some of those limits? Can we know God through science, philosophy, or art? Why or why not?) Karl Barth says: “The attempt is made [by the Church] to speak of God with the intention that others shall hear of Him. This attempt and intention are as such