GCSE Religious Studies: Beliefs & Values

The History of Salvation: How Did the Church

Come to Believe in the Trinity?

The Beginning of time …

• Genesis:• God’s Spirit ‘hovered

over the waters of chaos’

• God creates the universe but …

• … saves the best to last• Gen1:27 Man is created

in God’s image!!!

Human Society• Adam = ‘Adamah’

Hebrew ‘of the Earth’• Adam is lonely “It is

not good for man to live alone”

• Adam’s rib – the closest thing to his heart

• Eve is created • Perfect bliss in

paradise!• Does it last?

The Fall (Sin)

• Gen 3:12 “The snake tricked me …”

• Hiding “Where are you?”

• Exile – “So the Lord God sent him out of the Garden of Eden …” Gen 3:23

• Murder – Cain kills …• Homelessness

God purges the Earth (the end of ‘pre-history’

• Noah – a ‘righteous man’

• God makes a covenant – promise and commitment

God Calls … (2000 BC)

• Abraham

• Covenant

• A land for a new nation

Moses (1500 BC)

• God’s great act of salvation – the Jews continue to tell this story at Passover

David (1000 BC)

• The nation has a king• The nation has a

temple

The Prophets (from David to the time of Jesus)

• People chosen by God to be his mouthpiece and spread his message

• Failure to listen

• Failure in war understood as God’s punishment

The Incarnation• God becomes one of us• God becomes the Word made

flesh and walks among us (John 1:14)

• Jesus meets sin and illness with forgiveness and healing

• Jesus shows us how to be like him so we can be adopted as children of the Father

Death

• Jesus begins the new and everlasting Covenant

• Jesus shows how even suffering and death cannot defeat God’s message and sets us free

Resurrection

• The proof of who Jesus was and what he proclaimed

Pentecost

• The Church begins• God’s Spirit drives the

Church to fulfilment• The disciples become apostles

• What’s different?

The time of the Church

• The time of the sacraments• The sacraments give us the grace to turn

away from sin and be like Christ as we become adopted children of the Father (Our Father …)

• The Church has a mission – no one should miss out on what Christ came to offer 2000 years ago. It doesn’t matter where or when

The Fullness of Time

• At the end of time there will be a Final Judgment (Matthew 25)

• Our destiny• God desires us to be

with Him• ‘The gates of hell are

locked from the inside’

Comments / Questions?

• Take 5 mins

• Where is the evidence of the Spirit today?

• What is your experience of people who are driven to achieve wonderful things?

• What should the Church’s mission be today?

Possible questions:

1. Outline what Christians believe about God the Father.(6)

2. Outline what Christians believe about the incarnation of Jesus. (6)

3. Explain the symbolism used to represent the Holy Spirit. (8)

‘One’

• John 17:21 – ‘May they be one, so that the world will believe …’

• One in faith, worship and succession to the Apostles

• Scandal

• Three major Christian groups

Holy

• Set apart for a special task

• Grace – the source of holiness

• Close relationship to Christ

• Charity

Catholic

• ‘catholic’ means universal

• ‘kata holou’ Greek for ‘embracing the whole

• ‘Catholic’ means united with the worldwide Church faithful to the teaching of the Pope and Bishops

Apostolic

• The domino effect

• ‘Laying on of hands’

• Catholic generations

• The promise to Peter Matthew 16:18 “And so I tell you, Peter: you are a rock and on this rock I will build my Church …”

Practice

1. What is meant by the word ‘catholic’? (2)

2. Explain two of the main characteristics of the Church? (8)