I’ve become convinced that its important for the Church to inoculate our young people with a healthy dose of catechesis before we ship them off to college, just enough so that when they first hear about Nietzsche or really study Darwin they won’t freak out and presume that what the Church taught them in 6th grade confirmation is the only wisdom the Church has to offer.
I’ve been working on writing a catechism, a distillation of the faith into concise questions and answers with brief supporting scriptures that could be the starting point for a conversation.
You can find the previous posts (questions 1-32 of section I) here.
II. The Witness
1. What is the Bible?
The Bible is the witness of Israel, the prophets and the Church to the Logos, the One Word of God made flesh in Jesus Christ.
Like John the Baptist pointing to Christ, the Bible is testimony which points to the One Word God speaks to us in Jesus.
Therefore, we do not believe in the Bible; we believe in the One to whom the Bible bears witness.
We do not have faith in the Bible; we trust that the Bible’s words are reliable- not inerrant- testimony about the Word of God, Jesus Christ, in whom we have faith.
“
HeScripture came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe throughhimscripture.Hescripturehimselfitself was not the light, butheit came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.”– John 1.7-9
2. What does the Bible say about the First Human?
The Bible says that Jesus is the first human.
By calling Jesus the ‘2nd Adam’ scripture makes the audacious claim that Jesus, not Adam, is the 1st genuine human.
Jesus is the first one to live a fully human life by always trusting that he was beloved by God, which set Jesus free to love fully and to live faithfully as though the whole world was a new and different creation.
That Jesus’ life met with the Cross reveals not that he wasn’t really human but that we are not human. His faithfulness all the way to the Cross is proof of Jesus’ full humanity and proof of our inhumanity.
Thus, Jesus is the first human in that the word ‘human’ has no content apart from the character of his life.
“God has recapitulated all things in heaven and on earth in Jesus Christ.”
– Ephesians 1.9-10