Why do we believe in God? Is it reasonable to believe in God? What is religion? What is the difference between supernatural (revealed &inspired religion) and natural religion (non revealed & inspired religion)? What makes Christ different than everybody else that has and will ever live? What is the Church that Christ founded? Does His Church have authority? What is the Church? What makes it up?

1. The Case for Christ &
His Church
Why do we believe in Christ and
His Church?

2. God, Religion, Christianity and the
Church
• Why do we believe in God?
• Do we need religion?
• Is there a right religion?
• How can we know which one is the right one?
• How can the true religion be discerned through both natural
And supernatural causes?
• What role does history play?
• What roles do prophecy, miracles and sound reason teachings play?
• Did Christ found a Church?
• Does the Church have authority?

3. Is it reasonable to believe in God?
• God is metaphysically necessary
• Act vs potency
• Accidental vs Essentially ordered series
• Hierarchy of actuality and potentiality
• Proofs for God’s existence
• 1) God is pure act (the unmoved mover) 2) God’s
essence is existence 3) God is the necessary being 4)
God is the perfect being 5) God is intelligent (four
causes) and finality
• Divine Attributes: God must be 1) Simplicity, 2)
perfection, 3) goodness, 4) infinity, 5) ubiquity, 6)
immutability, 7) eternity, and 8) unity.

5. Called to be religious!
The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by
God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God
will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:
The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion
with God. This invitation to converse with God is addressed to man as soon
as he comes into being. For if man exists it is because God has created him
through love, and through love continues to hold him in existence. He
cannot live fully according to truth unless he freely acknowledges that love
and entrusts himself to his creator.1 (CCC 27)

6. What is religion?
Religion: (Etym. Latin religare, to tie, fasten, bind, or relegere, to gather up,
treat with care.) Lactantius and Augustine state that religion has to do
fundamentally with being bound to God by means of a binding relationship.
This relationship is based on the moral virtue by which a person is disposed
to render to God the worship and service he deserves. It is sometimes
identified with the virtue of justice toward God, whose rights are rooted in
his complete dominion over all creation. Religion is also a composite of all
the virtues that arise from a human being's relationship to God as the
author of his or her being, even as love is a cluster of all the virtues arising
from human response to God as the destiny of his or her being. Religion
thus corresponds to the practice of piety toward God as Creator of the
universe.
• Sacrifice is the highest act of religion

7. Natural vs. Supernatural religion
• Natural Religion: the subjection of oneself to God,
based on such knowledge of God and
of man's moral and religious duties as
the human mind can acquire by its own unaided
powers. It does not, however, exclude theophanies and
Divine revelations made with the view
to confirm religion in the natural order.
• Supernatural Religion: implies a special Divine
revelation, through which man comes to know this end
as well as the Divinely appointed means for its
attainment. Subjection of oneself to God, based on
this knowledge of faith and kept fruitful by grace,
is supernatural religion.

8. Natural vs. Revealed
• Natural vs Supernatural God to man or man to God?
• Non revealed Christian religions are man’s attempt to come to
know God
• No religion in the world without a segment of truth
• Some have more truth than others
• Such truth consists of moral truths derived at by human reason
• Some Truths are however beyond human reason
• Christianity is God’s revelation of Himself to Man
• Fulton Sheen’s analogy of hierarchy of creation and God
• Only God can come down to man
• Christianity is the fullness of truth because everything that is
necessary for salvation has been revealed and is continulously
being developed

11. Line up the claimants! (Christianity
on trial)!
• In order to find the True Religion and hence the God of
the True Religion we must use natural reason and
history. Christ is bound up with history. There are three
things we must ask
1. Were you preannounced?
• Did people expect you? Were people prophecizing about you?
2. Did you perform miracles?
• Did you do them by your own power? Did you rely on an
external power?
3. Were your teachings reasonable?
• Did your teachings at any point contradict reason?

12. The Necessity for prophecy
• We expect our friends to tell us if they are coming
• Appointments are made in business
• God chose to make a historical revelation
• Such revelation began with the Jewish People
• He Made Covenants, Sent Judges, Kings, Prophets,
• And as we will later see founded a Church with Israel
• There must be a Divine Person essential to the religion

13. Christ is Preannounced
• Christ is essential to Christianity
• Pope Benedict XVI states in Jesus of Nazareth that “Christianity is
an encounter with a Person”
• Fulton Sheen says that “Hardly no religion demands that you
believe and enter in a personal relation with the founder” than with
Christianity and not merely follow the moral precepts of the religion
• Christ fulfilled everything of the Old Testament
• Pagans themselves said that a “great one” would come. This
is true of Buddha, Confucious, Plato, Socrates, and Vigil
• Genology of Christ (Matthew 1 and Luke (3:23-38)
• “Descended from Adam and Abraham (Gen 12:2)

15. The Fullness of Time
• Fulton Sheen says that “at the time of
Christ the Rabbis had gathered together
456 prophecies concerning the Messiah,
the Christ, the Conqueror of evil who
was to be born in to the long line of
Israel and enter into a new Testament”
• Simeon and Anna spoke of Christ and
the fullness of time (Luke 2:28-39)
• Father John Laux (Church History Chapt
1)
• Isaiah 61 and Luke 4:18 (Good tidings to
the poor)

16. What are miracles?
Some points about miracles:
• Miracles are not a violation of the laws of nature
• Rather they are a suspension of such laws by God
• They are the intervention of God
• They can only be known because of reason and the
laws of nature
• God can suspend some of his actions because God is
the Lord of creation

17. Miracles of Jesus
• Our Lord worked many miracles
• God worked them as signs to convince man of His Divinity
• No miracle was silly, unreasonable or private
• There was always a public witness
• A great multitude
• Inseperable from his person
• Christ did it through His own power; not through intercessory prayer
• 35 explicit miracles in Scripture
• They may be divided into five classes: nature miracles; miracles of
healing; deliverance of demoniacs; victories over hostile wills; cases of
resurrection.
• 3 tell of raising the dead
• 9 relate to nature
• 23 to healing
• Not only those miracles! (John 21:25)

19. Were the teachings of Christ
reasonable?
• No teaching of Christ was unreasonable.
• Meaning that they did not contradict
human reason.
• Such teachings could be above reason
• But they could not contradict it.

20. The Church of God: The Old
Testament
• God had always been in search of man
• He had always thought of man
• “Let us man men in our image and likeness”
(Gen 1:26)
• Adam where art thou?” (Gen 3:9)
• “Where is thy brother Abel?” (Gen 4:9)
• God will not let man go
• God chose a people to be His people
• The people of Israel
• God made many covenants 1) Adam 2) Noah 3) Abraham 4)Moses 5) David
• God had sent many to spread His people 1)Abraham, Moses, Judges, Kings, Prophets
• The “Qahal” the assembly of God’s people

21. The Catholic Church: The New Israel
• Jesus founded a Church (Matthew 16: 18)
• What is the Church?
• The Mystical Body of Christ
• Began in Pentecost (Acts 2:1-13)
• The Church has four marks:
• 1)One 2)Holy 3)Catholic 4)Apostolic
• The Church is visible
• The Church has authority
• Saint Peter: The First Pope (Matt 16:18)
• Given the keys of the Kingdom (Matt 18:18)
• Power of binding and losing
• Authority to interpret
• Church of Christ: The New Israel
• Where the old Israel was according to the flesh; the New one was
according to faith
• A Branch that is grafted to Israel

24. Further Reading/Viewing (Existence
of God)
A reasonable belief in God
• Aquinas A Beginner's Guide- Edward Feser (book)
• Understanding 5 proofs for God’s existence (Youtube Video)
• An Aristotelian Proof of the Existence of God - Edward C. Feser, PhD (Youtube
Video)
• Ite Ad Thomam (Thomistic website)
• Summa Theologiae- Saint Thomas Aquinas (Online Book)
• Summa Contra Gentiles (Aquinas Online Book)
• Saint Thomas Aquinas Online Bibiliography

25. Further Reading/Viewing (Continued
2)
Fundamentals of Religion
• New Advent: New Religion (Catholic Encyclopedia)
• Catholic Dictionary: Fr. John Hardon (Online Dictionary)
• New Advent: Modernism
Why Christianity?
• How to Compare world Religions (Fulton Sheen video)
• Line Up The Claimants (Fulton Sheed talk)
• Revealed Truth (Fulton Sheen Talk)
• Miracles (Fulton Sheen talk)
• New Testament Revelation (Fulton Sheen talk)
• Miracles of Jesus: John Hardon's Dictionary (Online)
• Messiah (Catholic Encyclopedia)

26. Further Reading/Viewing (Continued
3)
The Catholic Church founded by Christ and its authority
• Pillar of Fire, Pillar of Truth (Catholic Answers article and pamphlet)
• The Church: The Body of Christ (Fulton Sheen talk)
• Peter: The Vicar of Christ (Fulton Sheen Talk)
• Authority and Infallibility (Fulton Sheen Talk)
• Patrick Madrid: Pope Fiction (Search in database)
• Church (Catholic Encyclopedia)
• Where we got the bible: Our Debt to the Catholic Church (book)