DR. JEFFREY TIEL

RCIA Foundations explores what we think of as the “big” questions driving contemporary inquirers: does God exist, who is God, does God have a Son, is God good, how can we actually know anything about God, what is faith and why isn’t it irrational, who are human beings in relation to God, who are the angels and demons in relation to God and to human beings, what is human happiness, what is human destiny, and why does human destiny require the salvific and sacramental love of God?  RCIA Foundations seeks to answer these questions not just theologically but philosophically, because philosophy is what all human beings have in common prior to the revelation of faith, and that must be the starting point for contemporary inquirers and catechumens.  As such, RCIA Foundations offers answers to these foundational questions that are deeply Catholic in order to ground inquirers for what each individual parish will then add to bring them fully into a lived community of the Faith.

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What is faith? Why does it matter? How is it possible without turning us into dupes? Faith establishes what faith is in relation to truth, knowledge, and incredulity, showcases the significance of faith sacramentally and in epistemic contrast to the insidious deception of cults, and, finally, explores the rational practice of faith in the discernment of God’s will for the vocations of consecration and marriage, as well as the assessment of answered prayer and intercession.

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If you’ve grown up with religion like I did, you’ve probably also felt from time to time that it just doesn’t add up. Certain questions haunt you at two o’clock in the morning, questions that whatever group you practice your faith with tends to frown upon. You don’t find the provincially acceptable answers at all acceptable. But however much these questions prove to be forbidden, your mind remains unsettled. You keep coming back to them—hesitant, worried, and sometimes even angry.  I’ve spent my life tossing away the shackles of fear and facing these forbidden questions directly. I cannot understand why religious people should fear the truth, if the truth is supposed to set us free! So, let it out, I say. I offer you here the fruits of my lifetime of intellectual labors, both in the hopes that you can profit from my struggles but also in the expectation that you might add something to inspire our other travelers still facing those anxious nights.

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If you’ve grown up with religion like I did, you’ve probably also felt from time to time that it just doesn’t add up. Certain questions haunt you at two o’clock in the morning, questions that whatever group you practice your faith with tends to frown upon. You don’t find the provincially acceptable answers at all acceptable. But however much these questions prove to be forbidden, your mind remains unsettled. You keep coming back to them—hesitant, worried, and sometimes even angry.  I’ve spent my life tossing away the shackles of fear and facing these forbidden questions directly. I cannot understand why religious people should fear the truth, if the truth is supposed to set us free! So, let it out, I say. I offer you here the fruits of my lifetime of intellectual labors, both in the hopes that you can profit from my struggles but also in the expectation that you might add something to inspire our other travelers still facing those anxious nights.

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Who is God? What, if anything, can be known about him? For millennia, man has felt within himself a connection to the divine, sometimes rational, sometimes moral, sometimes aesthetic, but always a connection. Generation after generation passed down stories of divine origins, of divine interventions, of divine judgment. When the Greeks began first to philosophize, they too began to think about the gods. When the Christians first began to teach the love of Jesus, they too were soon drawn to reflection on God’s nature and act. Faith and reflection, sometimes different, sometimes the same, always drive us back to the same fundamental questions about meaning and value, and ultimately to this: What is religion for?

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Why bother being good, if you could get away with being bad? What do you do when you believe no one is looking? Can you be happy without being good? These questions go to the heart of one of the most important and troubling problems in our lives: the value of morality. But these problems do not belong solely to our own time, for every thoughtful person from any historical period at any age from child to grandparent feels their force. They are perennial philosophical questions about the very meaning of life. So, it comes as no surprise to discover that the greatest philosophical work ever written, Plato’s Republic, engages just these issues. Joining Plato’s character Socrates at the beginning of this quest for value in human life, Philosophy of Human Nature follows the trek of the ancients, the Christians, the moderns, and contemporary thinkers as they pursue this quarry.

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The ancient Epistle to the Hebrews contains a hitherto unnoticed enigma. It refers to a man without beginning or end—one who lives forever. So, who and where is he? The Jews knew him only as the Wanderer. T. S. Eliot called him the Witness. And the early Christians named him . . . Melchizedek.Federal Agent Roger Quarston can’t know that investigating an ancient, blood-stained manuscript will lead him to this same Melchizedek—whose revelation will threaten allegiances, challenge faiths, crack political foundations, enliven ancient dynasties, and open the promise of immortality and unimagined power.

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Federal Agent Roger Quarston returns in the sequel to The Search for Melchizedek. As an ancient god rises from the sands of Egypt, Quarston and his compatriots stand horrified as modern military technology fails to stop him. Forced to again seek out Melchizedek, Quarston enlists the now-chastened Michelle Andover in a redemptive bid to stop Osiris. But none of them are prepared for the revelation that awaits them as they learn just who Melchizedek truly is.

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The Christian revelation has provided a goldmine of enrichment to our understanding. But it has also led many of us to ponder, not just straightforward difficulties, but curiosities whose solution enhances our grasp of the divine mission of transforming selfish shadows into loving persons. As a medium, the sermon provides a remarkable platform for peering deeply into these matters, but in a way that never separates the theory from the heartfelt need and practice that confronts us in our daily lives. The tongue-in-cheek title suggests that we actually wonder about much more than we are comfortable disclosing, not only the sorts of questions illustrated by the title essay on why Adam fell, but many other challenges: how to retain hope in the midst of great loss, how divine forgiveness squares with our understanding of justice, what being creatures uniquely made in the divine image means for our lives, the value of grand-parenting and its inherent link to sainthood, and many other fascinating problems.

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