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Showing posts with the label St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology

A Lenten Bible Study: Genesis to Jesus Lesson Six: Our Father in Faith

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Here is the sixth lesson in the Saint Paul Center for Catholic Biblical Theology 's Lenten Scripture study, Genesis to Jesus. Follow along, and by the end of Lent, you'll understand the importance of Easter in light of God's plan for our salvation. Sign up to receive new video lessons [ here ] and buy related study materials. ___________________________________________________ In our last lesson, we examined the story of God’s covenant with humanity through Noah. We saw the parallels between the original creation story, and the account of the great flood in which the world experienced a kind of rebirth. Now we’ll look at how God’s covenant blessing passes to all nations, through the great patriarch Abraham. Among other things, we will see the connection between covenant blessing, and the trials that God’s faithful children undergo. We’ll also examine how God rewards Abraham’s obedience by renewing the covenant he made with him. That renewal comes with an incredible p

A Lenten Bible Study: Genesis to Jesus Lesson Five: A New Beginning

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Here is the fifth lesson in the Saint Paul Center for Catholic Biblical Theology 's Lenten Scripture study, Genesis to Jesus. Follow along, and by the end of Lent, you'll understand the importance of Easter in light of God's plan for our salvation. Sign up to receive new video lessons [ here ] and buy related study materials. _____________________________________________________ The second covenant God enters into with man is God’s covenant with Noah. The story of Noah and his ark is one of the most famous of all time. It’s inspired a multitude of books, movies, and countless homilies. But there’s a whole lot more than just the story of how humanity was saved from a terrible flood safe within an immense wooden boat filled with all kinds of animals. This is a story of how God renews his covenant with creation, a rebirth of sorts, which foreshadows the sacrament of baptism. There are also parallels between Noah and Adam, as well as the flood and creation. But let’s b

A Lenten Bible Study: Genesis to Jesus Lesson Four: Fall from Grace

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Here is the second lesson in the Saint Paul Center for Catholic Biblical Theology 's Lenten Scripture study, Genesis to Jesus. Follow along, and by the end of Lent, you'll understand the importance of Easter in light of God's plan for our salvation. Sign up to receive new video lessons [ here ] and buy related study materials. _____________________________________________________ In our last lesson, we learned how, in the beginning, God established a covenant with creation. We learned that the seventh day, the Sabbath, is a sign of the covenant. It completed and crowned God’s cosmic temple. We also saw that man and woman were created in the image and likeness of God. And that God designed marriage to be a covenant between man and woman. It is a sign, an icon of the Divine Family of the Trinity. Now we will consider how everything went wrong in Adam and Eve’s fall from grace and how it happened. But as noted at the end of lesson three, this story ends with an incredib

A Lenten Bible Study: Genesis to Jesus Lesson Three: Covenant with Creation

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Here is the third lesson in the Saint Paul Center for Catholic Biblical Theology 's Lenten Scripture study, Genesis to Jesus. Follow along, and by the end of Lent, you'll understand the importance of Easter in light of God's plan for our salvation. Sign up to receive new video lessons [ here ] and buy related study materials. ________________________________________________________ In the first two lessons we looked at how to study the Bible. We talked about how Scripture tells the story of salvation history. It’s history from God’s perspective. It’s all about God’s plan to save us from our sin, and bring us back into his divine family. We also discussed how understanding God’s covenant with the human family is the key to understanding salvation history. If you don’t understand covenants you can’t really understand Scripture. In this lesson, we’re going to put what we’ve learned into practice. And appropriately, we’ll start at the very beginning of salvation histor

A Lenten Bible Study: Genesis to Jesus Lesson Two: The Old and the New Testaments

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Here is the second lesson in the Saint Paul Center for Catholic Biblical Theology 's Lenten Scripture study, Genesis to Jesus. Follow along, and by the end of Lent, you'll understand the importance of Easter in light of God's plan for our salvation. Sign up to receive new video lessons [ here ] and buy related study materials. ________________________________________________________ In our first lesson, we talked about how the Bible has both a literary meaning and an historical meaning. But that’s not all. Since God is the principle author of Sacred Scripture, it also has a divine meaning. And together, the literary sense and historical truth of Scripture reveal that divine meaning. They reveal the way God is directing the course of human history. As we’re going to see, God writes the world like we write words. As human beings, we use words as signs that stand for particular realities. For example, the word “chair” signifies something tangible and real that you may

A Lenten Bible Study: Genesis to Jesus Lesson One: Reading Scripture with the Church

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From the Saint Paul Center for Catholic Biblical Theology , the following is a transcript of their Lenten Scripture study, Genesis to Jesus. Genesis to Jesus presents the whole sweep of salvation history, to help you make sense of the Bible. By the end of Lent, you'll understand the importance of Easter as the eighth day of creation in light of God's unified plan for our salvation. You may sign up to receive new video lessons [ here ] and buy related study materials. ____________________________________________________ Welcome to Genesis to Jesus part of the St. Paul Center’s Journey Through Scripture Bible Study. To many people, the Bible is simply a giant book that doesn’t make a lot of sense. And that’s a shame. Because actually it’s a beautiful story. In fact, it’s our story. It’s the story of where we come from, what went wrong, and God’s incredible, merciful plan to save us and make everything right again. Certainly, you could say that plan – that story – culminat