Catechetical Exam I
Ver:
Theology
What is meant by Theology?
a) The Holy Trinity
b) Who God is, in an of himself, apart from and prior to
any created thing
c) Positive knowledge of God
d) Doctrine
e) Both a and b.
What is apophasis and apophatic
theology? _________________________________________________
What is the difference
between theology and religious philosophy? _______________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
What is the goal of theology?
a) positive knowledge of God
b) correct use of the Bible
c) theosis
What is the source of unity and simplicity in the Holy
Trinity?
E.g. In what is the Holy Trinity one?
a) Persons
b) energies
c) essence
d) energies and essence
In what is the Holy Trinity three?
a) Persons
b) energies
c) essence
What distinguishes the persons of the Holy Trinity?
The Father is
__________________________________________________
The Son is
____________________________________________________
The Spirit
_____________________________________________________
From whom is the Son begotten?
a) the Father alone
b) the Father and the Spirit
c) the Father and the Mother
d) Wisdom
From whom does the Spirit proceed?
a) the Father alone
b) the Father and the Son
c) Wisdom
Who is the monarchial source of essence or essential
unity in the Holy Trinity?
E.g. Of whom is the essence?
a) the Father
b) the Son
c) the Spirit
d) The Father, the Son, and the Spirit equally
God is, in essence:
a) definable, observable, and visible
b) unknowable, indescribable, incomparable, and unapproachable
c) attainable, reachable, and analogous to the world
d) love
If God is unknowable in Essence, how do the Persons
reveal themselves?
a) by Grace (in the Economy)
b) by emanation (of necessity)
c) through the uncreated energies
d) in the Incarnation
e) All of the above, except b.
To what does Grace refer?
a) the goodness of God
b) God’s love
c) the uncreated energies (energia) of God
d) God’s mercy
Why are icons of the Holy
Trinity, Icons of the Father, and Icons of the Holy Spirit not permitted,
except as icons of the Visitation to Abraham and of the Theophany?
______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
The Economy
What is meant by the Economy (Oikonomia)?
a) Creation and all of God’s involvement with what is not
God
b) The Incarnation
c) One of several dispensations of time in which the
rules of God have been changed
d) Both a and b.
The Holy Incarnation
God became man by nature, that we may become God by _____________?
Who killed Our Lord?
_____________________________.
What is the Incarnation?
_________________________________________________
Christology
Christ in His Incarnation
recapitulated (summed up) in his flesh and blood all universals proper to _________
and all universals proper to _________.
Our Lord, in his Incarnation,
is (how many) ________ person(s) with ________ will(s) of _________ nature(s).
According to the Creed of the
apostles, Our Lord is Incarnate of the _________________ and of ______________________.
The Holy Theotokos
Theotokos means literally _____________________.
The Holy Theotokos is:
a) mother of God
b) mother of Christ’s humanity only
c) mother of Christ’s flesh only
d) merely a tube through which God entered the world
The Holy Theotokos is:
a) the wife of
b) the mother of multiple children in the flesh
c) the betrothed of
d) Ever-Virgin
e) Mother of us all
f)
c, d, and e above
The Holy Theotokos is (check all that apply):
c
The
c
The New Eve
c
The Bush that is
Burned but Not Consumed
c
The Portal once
opened forever shut
c
Our Champion
Leader
c
Ladder of Divine
Ascent
c
Panagia (“All Holy”)
Soteriology, Theosis
What is salvation,
and how is one saved? __________________________________________
What is theosis or
deification or divinization?
a) man becomes like god (god-like)
b) man is perfectly united to god, without loss of
distinction as a person
c) by union with god, man’s nature is divinized so that man
becomes god
d) all of the above
How is the soul immortal?
a) by nature
b) by grace
What would be the results if
Our Lord were either not fully human or not fully God, i.e. if He was not
flesh, had either no human nature, or no divine one, had either no human will
or no divine one?
______________________________________________________________________________________
Anthropology
According to the Fathers, Man consists of:
a) mind, will, and emotion
b) body and soul, united by spirit as person, operation,
nature
c) mind, body, and spirit united in the soul
Person is:
a) that which is utterly unique in each individual
b) that which is shared with all members of the species
c) the character of an individual person
d) the character of the human species
e) the operations appropriate to human nature
Operations are:
a) the proper functions of man’s nature
b) the proper functions of man’s person
c) the proper functions of man’s nature enhypostacized in a unique person
Nature is:
a) that which is utterly unique in each individual
b) that which is shared with all members of the species
c) the character of an individual person
d) the character of the human species
e) the operations appropriate to human nature
Man is:
a) a spirit living in a body
b) a soul living in a body
c) a spirit, soul, and body
d) a soul and a body, united by spirit
Spirit is:
a) the residue of the dead
b) the part of the person that can go to Heaven
c) the integration of soul and body
d) the grace of God in the person
e) the apparition of the soul
f)
the eternal part
of man
g) c & d
What is the inheritance from Adam and curse of the
world?
a) sin
b) a sin nature
c) death
d) the physical flesh
Why will all who die or fall
asleep in Our Lord be resurrected in precisely the same bodies in which they
lived?
___________________________________________________________________________________
Mystagogy
While there are many Mysteries,
the Holy Mysteries are often numbered seven. These are:
________________________ ________________________ ________________________
________________________ ________________________ ________________________
________________________
Why must the Holy Mysteries
be material and not only spiritual? _________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
How is one
normally received into the Orthodox Church (What is the proper order of the
mysteries)?
______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________
We worship the Holy Gifts
because _________________________________________________________
What is a symbol in Orthodox
thinking? _____________________________________________________
Match the following:
a) symbol/icon of the Faith The Household
b) icon of the Word The
Creed
c) icon of Christ and the Church The Holy Scriptures
d) icon of the Church (“The Little Church”) Marriage
Patrology
What is the consensus patrum?
_____________________________________________
What is meant by the Orthodox
phronema? ____________________________________
For most of the year, we sing
The _______________ Liturgy of
_________________________________.
The Bishop is:
a) source of unity of the local church
b) an unscriptural innovation
c) an elected ruler determined by democratic means
d) an appointed ruler determined by a higher religious
ruler
Worship of saints, relics, and icons is:
a) adoration
b) veneration
c) improper and unscriptural
We pray to the Saints because _____________________________________________________________
Why are Saints mentioned in
the Old Testament considered Orthodox Saints? _______________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Why is it
there can be no development of doctrine?
____________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
The Calendar
We live the calendar in
conjunction with the Church, because it is an icon of
____________________________________________ and of all the Saints.
Of the many feasts and fasts:
The Holy Annunciation is _____________________________________________________________.
The Holy Nativity is
_________________________. It’s significance is
_________________________.
The Holy Theophany
is _______________________. It’s signifance
is __________________________.
Holy Pascha
is _______________________________________________________________________.
The Triumph
of Orthodoxy _____________________________________________________________.
Why does Holy Pascha occur after the Passover, rather than coinciding
with it? ___________________
___________________________________________________________________________________.
We fast and pray, in part, to
overcome the death at work in our nature, which manifests itself in
_________________________________, such as harshness, trickery, malice,
perversity, mindlessness, licentiousness, enticement, dullness, lack of
understanding, idleness, sluggishness, stupidity, flattery, silliness.
Why does Orthodoxy have
special clothes, smells, tastes, architecture, postures, gestures, sounds,
candles, water, icons, prescribed prayers, days and seasons, etc.? Be as
comprehensive in your answer as you can:
_____________________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Synergy
Salvation and holy acts are:
a) works of man’s will which God blesses
b) works of God alone, which man can achieve only through
getting out of the way
c) joint works of man and God in synergy
In the Holy Mysteries:
a) apparent changes in matter merely represent something
else – no actual change occurs
b) only the appearance of matter is retained, the matter
being replaced by what it represents
c) there is both the created matter and the presence of
what the matter represents
Miracles:
a) are merely ‘symbolic’ acts, but nothing out of the
ordinary affects the matter involved
b) are the violation of material laws, so that the matter
is replaced by something else entirely
c) involve the existing matter and a change to it, rather
than a destruction to or loss of it
The Holy Icons:
a) are merely honored paintings of Saints, but the Saint
is not mystically present
b) are both representations of Saints and the presence of
the Saint
c) are all icons of Christ (e.g. Christ in the Saint)
d) both b and c
The Holy Scriptures
The Holy Scriptures are:
a) the Word of God, in the sense of being inherently
divine
b) the Words of God, in the sense of coming directly from
God w/o human agency
c) the Word of God as the Icon of the Word
Why are the
Holy Scriptures kept in varous places in the
Church, and not merely read as a single holy book?
_________________________________________________________________________________
What is the canonical text of
the Orthodox Old Testament? _________________________________
What is the canonical text of
the Orthodox New Testament? _________________________________
We venerate the Holy Gospels because _________________________________________________
Ecclesiology
What does it mean for the Church to be Apostolic?
a) It preserves the canon of books of the Scriptures
transmitted by the Holy Apostles
b) It preserves the texts of the Scriptures transmitted
by the Holy Apostles
c) It preserves the interpretation of the Scriptures
transmitted by the Holy Apostles
d) It preserves the apostolic Creed, the confession of
faith of the Holy Apostles
e) It continues in the Apostles’ teaching
f)
It retains
Apostolic Succession of Bishops
g) All of the above
What does it mean for the Church to be Catholic?
a) it is universal, in the sense that everyone submits to
one supreme hierarch or see
b) it is universal, in the sense that there it represents
the consensus beliefs of its universal members at any given time
c) it is universal, in the sense that it holds to what
has been held in every place, at all times, by all
d) it is universal, in the sense that it is not dependent
on any particular culture or ethnicity
e) c and d
Orthodoxy is the Church of
the _________ Ecumenical Councils.
Are these councils
infallible? _______________
According to the Holy
Apostles, there is ____ God(s), ____ Faith(s), and ____ Baptism(s).
Why is there but one Church?
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
Why is communion with other
religious groups forbidden? ______________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
How is the Church infallible?
_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
How is the Church spotless
and without blemish? _____________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
What is hierarchy in Orthodox thinking? ____________________________________________________
Heresy
The ________________ heresy represents
the sum of heresies that led to the situation commonly called the “Great Schism”.
Heresies that would reinforce the “Great Schism” include:
a) Papal Supremacy
b) Development of Doctrine
c) Transubstantiation
d) All of the above
Protestant innovations as the dialectical counterpart Papal
Supremacy, Development of Doctrine, and Transubstantiation, include:
a) The Branch Theory
b) Sola Scriptura
c) Anti-sacramentalism
d) All of the above
Christological Heresies
The word “physis”
means nature. What is the
Christological heresy of Monophysitism?
The Monophysite
asserts that ______________________________________________________________.
What is the Christological
heresy of Monotheletism?
The Monothelete
asserts that ________________________________________________________________.
The Nestorian asserts that Our Lord, in His Incarnation is
______________ person(s) and that therefore, it is improper to refer to Mary as
___________________.
Arius asserts that Our Lord is a divine being that at some
point did not exist but was ____________ by the Father. The Arians believe, therefore, that the Son
is _______________ to the Father.
The Neoplatonist asserts that matter
_____________________________________________ and that the universal principle
is ________________________.