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Teacher Formation Reading #3: Awakening Wonder!


Formation reading #3 is from the text listed below. It only includes Chapter 4, but as with all the text selected for this study the other chapters will provide rich information. This choice is not specifically Catholic. It was chosen because it concisely focuses on the transcendentals of truth, beauty, and goodness and provides us with a classical approach for comparison. (Sample answers are provided under Teacher Formation Reading #3 in Resources).

Awakening wonder: A classical guide to truth, goodness, & beauty by Stephen Turley PhD. Classical Academic Press. (2014). “Chapter 4: Truth, goodness, and beauty in the Christian world, Part II”.

1.)  According to St. Augustine (354-430 AD), how do we come to truly know God?

2.)  What happens when one truly knows oneself?

3.)  What awakened the desire of a “meaning and purpose outside himself?”

4.)  Describe Truth for St. Augustine. 

5.)  What is the difference between knowledge (scientia) and wisdom (sapientia), and why/how is Jesus important to this difference?

6.)  Explain the hierarchy of Goods.

7.)  Describe how Augustine views Beauty.

8.)  What qualities does St. Thomas Aquinas add to Beauty? 


Thought Provokers 

What is it about these transcendentals that are useful to a Catholic education? What is Catholic education like without these?


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