The Conception of God: Address by Professor Royce
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The Invention Of
How Did God Get Started? COLIN WELLS the usual suspects One day in the Middle East about four thousand years ago, an elderly but still rather astonishingly spry gentleman took his son for a walk up a hill. The young man carried on his back some wood that his father had told him they would use at the top to make an altar, upon which they would then perform the ritual sacrifice of a burnt offering. Unbeknownst to the son, however, the father had another sort of sacrifice in mind altogether. Abraham, the father, had been commanded, by the God he worshipped as supreme above all others, to sacrifice the young man himself, his beloved and only legitimate son, Isaac. We all know how things turned out, of course. An angel appeared, together with a ram, letting Abraham know that God didn’t really want him to kill his son, that he should sacrifice the ram instead, and that the whole thing had merely been a test. And to modern observers, at least, it’s abundantly clear what exactly was being tested. Should we pose the question to most people familiar with one of the three “Abrahamic” religious traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam), all of which trace their origins to this misty figure, and which together claim half the world’s population, the answer would come without hesitation. God was testing Abraham’s faith. If we could ask someone from a much earlier time, however, a time closer to that of Abraham himself, the answer might be different. The usual story we tell ourselves about faith and reason says that faith was invented by the ancient Jews, whose monotheistic tradition goes back to Abraham. -
St. Augustine and the Doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ Stanislaus J
ST. AUGUSTINE AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST STANISLAUS J. GRABOWSKI, S.T.D., S.T.M. Catholic University of America N THE present article a study will be made of Saint Augustine's doc I trine of the Mystical Body of Christ. This subject is, as it will be later pointed out, timely and fruitful. It is of unutterable importance for the proper and full conception of the Church. This study may be conveniently divided into four parts: (I) A fuller consideration of the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ, as it is found in the works of the great Bishop of Hippo; (II) a brief study of that same doctrine, as it is found in the sources which the Saint utilized; (III) a scrutiny of the place that this doctrine holds in the whole system of his religious thought and of some of its peculiarities; (IV) some consideration of the influence that Saint Augustine exercised on the development of this particular doctrine in theologians and doctrinal systems. THE DOCTRINE St. Augustine gives utterance in many passages, as the occasion de mands, to words, expressions, and sentences from which we are able to infer that the Church of his time was a Church of sacramental rites and a hierarchical order. Further, writing especially against Donatism, he is led Xo portray the Church concretely in its historical, geographical, visible form, characterized by manifest traits through which she may be recognized and discerned from false chuiches. The aspect, however, of the concept of the Church which he cherished most fondly and which he never seems tired of teaching, repeating, emphasizing, and expound ing to his listeners is the Church considered as the Body of Christ.1 1 On St. -
The Need to Believe in Life After Death Questions About Islam?
“To the righteous soul will be said: O (thou) soul, in In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful (complete) rest and satisfaction! Come back to your Lord, well pleased (yourself), and well pleasing unto Him! Enter you, then, among my devotees! And enter you My “To the righteous soul will be said: O (thou) soul, in (complete) rest and satisfaction! Heaven!” [Al-Qur’an 89:27] Come back to your Lord, well pleased (yourself), and well pleasing unto Him! Enter you, then, among my devotees! And enter you My Heaven!” [Al-Qur'an 89: 27-28] In Islam, an individual's life after death or Him in the heavens or in the earth,but it is in a clear their Hereafter, is very closely shaped by Record.That He may reward those who believe and do their present life. Life after death begins with good works.For them are pardon and a rich provision. the resurrection of man, after which there will But those who strive against our revelations, come a moment when every human will be shaken as challenging (Us), theirs will be a painful doom of they are confronted with their intentions and wrath.” [Al-Qur’an: 34: 3-5] deeds, good and bad, and even by their failure to do good in this life. On the Day of Judgment the entire record of people from the age of puberty The need to believe in life after death will be presented before God. God will weigh Belief in life after death has always been part of the ath Lifeafter De everyone’s good and bad deeds according to His teachings of the Prophets and is an essential condition Questions about Islam? Mercy and His Justice, forgiving many sins and of being a Muslim.Whenever we are asked to do or would you like to: multiplying many good deeds. -
Kant's Theoretical Conception Of
KANT’S THEORETICAL CONCEPTION OF GOD Yaron Noam Hoffer Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy, September 2017 Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Doctoral Committee _________________________________________ Allen W. Wood, Ph.D. (Chair) _________________________________________ Sandra L. Shapshay, Ph.D. _________________________________________ Timothy O'Connor, Ph.D. _________________________________________ Michel Chaouli, Ph.D 15 September, 2017 ii Copyright © 2017 Yaron Noam Hoffer iii To Mor, who let me make her ends mine and made my ends hers iv Acknowledgments God has never been an important part of my life, growing up in a secular environment. Ironically, only through Kant, the ‘all-destroyer’ of rational theology and champion of enlightenment, I developed an interest in God. I was drawn to Kant’s philosophy since the beginning of my undergraduate studies, thinking that he got something right in many topics, or at least introduced fruitful ways of dealing with them. Early in my Graduate studies I was struck by Kant’s moral argument justifying belief in God’s existence. While I can’t say I was convinced, it somehow resonated with my cautious but inextricable optimism. My appreciation for this argument led me to have a closer look at Kant’s discussion of rational theology and especially his pre-critical writings. From there it was a short step to rediscover early modern metaphysics in general and embark upon the current project. This journey could not have been completed without the intellectual, emotional, and material support I was very fortunate to receive from my teachers, colleagues, friends, and family. -
Schelling and the Future of God
SSN 1918-7351 Volume 5 (2013) Schelling and the Future of God Jason M. Wirth For Sean McGrath and Andrzej Wiercinski It seems, at least largely among the world’s educated, that Nietzsche’s prognosis of the death of God is coming to pass. Not only is belief in a transcendent being or a grand, supremely real being (ens realissimum) waning, but also the philosophical grounds that made such objects in any way intelligible are collapsing. In such a situation, despite the recent and quite scintillating renaissance of serious interest in Schelling’s philosophy, his various discourses on the Godhead (die Gottheit) are generally ignored, perhaps with mild embarrassment. For better or worse, however, what Schelling understood by the Godhead and even by religion has little in common with prevailing theistic traditions. Schelling did not take advantage of the great ontological lacuna that opened up with the demise of dogmatism in critical philosophy after Kant to insist on an irrational belief in a God that was no longer subject to rational demonstration. Schelling eschews all dogmatic thought, but does not therefore partake in its alternative: the reduction of all thought regarding the absolute to irrational beliefs in (or rational gambles on) the existence of God and other such absolutes. As Quentin Meillassoux has shown, “by forbidding reason any claim to the absolute, the end of metaphysics has taken the form of an exacerbated return of the religious.”1 This gives rise to the reduction of religion and anti- religion to fideism. Since both theism and atheism purport to believe in a rationally unsupportable absolute position, they are both symptoms of the return of the religious. -
REFLECTIONS on the DOCTRINE of the TRINITY Faith in the Living
REFLECTIONS ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY RAOUL DEDEREN Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan Faith in the living God has been rejected time and again by the ignorant and the indifferent, as well as by many of the learned and the thoughtful. It has been especially chal- lenged today. Such theologians as Bishop John A. T. Robinson of Woolwich, honestly seeking to be Honest to God, urge Christians to abandon most of the phrasing which historically has been used to convey Christian thought. Similarly, the late Bishop James A. Pike of California dismisses many traditional doctrines as old bottles which will inevitably burst and whose bursting should occasion no regrets. In this kind of context many men, even ministers, feel uneasy when they think about the Trinity. The question before us is whether it is time to renounce a doctrine which, by affirming that there are three persons in God, seems to have produced confusion rather than clarification, or whether it was designed to embody values that are a vital and necessary part of the Christian faith. From the days of Arius it has been a chosen scheme with his disciples to represent the doctrine of the Trinity as an artificial theological construct, and consequently unimportant. To a large number of Christians, however, it is a doctrine fundament4 to Christianity since it deals with a correct knowledge of God. Related to the divine Being, his nature and mode of being, this knowledge affects every man's understanding of God as the object of his worship, whether he regards him as one in essence and one in person, or admits that in the unity of the Deity there are three equally divine persons. -
In Defense of the Development of Augustine's Doctrine of Grace By
In Defense of the Development of Augustine’s Doctrine of Grace by Laban Omondi Agisa Submitted to the faculty of the School of Theology of the University of the South in Partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Sacred Theology January 2020 Sewanee, Tennessee Approved ____________________________ _______________ Adviser Date ____________________________ _______________ Second Adviser Date 2 DECLARATION I declare that this is my original work and has not been presented in any other institution for consideration of any certification. This work has been complemented by sources duly acknowledged and cited using Chicago Manual Style. Signature Date 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT My study of theology was initiated in 2009 by the then Provost of St. Stephens Cathedral, Nairobi, the late Ven. Canon John Ndung’u who was a great encouragement to me. This was further made possible through my bishop the Rt. Rev. Joel Waweru and the Rev. Geoffrey Okapisi who were sources of inspiration. My studies at Carlile College (Church Army Africa) and St. Paul’s University laid a strong theological foundation and I appreciate among others the influence of the Rev. Dr. John Kiboi who introduced me to Philosophy, Systematic Theology, Ethics, and African Christian Theology that eventually became the foundation for my studies at the University of the South. I also appreciate the encouragement of my lecturers Mrs. Tabitha Waweru and Dr. Scholarstica Githinji during my Study of Education at Kenya Technical Trainers College and at Daystar University respectively. My interest in this topic came as a result of many sittings with two professors at the University of the South, Dr. -
Archons (Commanders) [NOTICE: They Are NOT Anlien Parasites], and Then, in a Mirror Image of the Great Emanations of the Pleroma, Hundreds of Lesser Angels
A R C H O N S HIDDEN RULERS THROUGH THE AGES A R C H O N S HIDDEN RULERS THROUGH THE AGES WATCH THIS IMPORTANT VIDEO UFOs, Aliens, and the Question of Contact MUST-SEE THE OCCULT REASON FOR PSYCHOPATHY Organic Portals: Aliens and Psychopaths KNOWLEDGE THROUGH GNOSIS Boris Mouravieff - GNOSIS IN THE BEGINNING ...1 The Gnostic core belief was a strong dualism: that the world of matter was deadening and inferior to a remote nonphysical home, to which an interior divine spark in most humans aspired to return after death. This led them to an absorption with the Jewish creation myths in Genesis, which they obsessively reinterpreted to formulate allegorical explanations of how humans ended up trapped in the world of matter. The basic Gnostic story, which varied in details from teacher to teacher, was this: In the beginning there was an unknowable, immaterial, and invisible God, sometimes called the Father of All and sometimes by other names. “He” was neither male nor female, and was composed of an implicitly finite amount of a living nonphysical substance. Surrounding this God was a great empty region called the Pleroma (the fullness). Beyond the Pleroma lay empty space. The God acted to fill the Pleroma through a series of emanations, a squeezing off of small portions of his/its nonphysical energetic divine material. In most accounts there are thirty emanations in fifteen complementary pairs, each getting slightly less of the divine material and therefore being slightly weaker. The emanations are called Aeons (eternities) and are mostly named personifications in Greek of abstract ideas. -
The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Doctrinal Preaching
THE BOYCE SOCIETY of THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY DOCTRINAL PREACHING a lecture presented February 18, 2004 Gregg R. Allison, Ph.D. Introduction A. “There have been few times in the history of the church when solid doctrinal preaching and teaching have been more needed. Yet seldom has such preaching been more difficult and problematic” (Millard J. Erickson and James L. Heflin, Old Wine in New Wineskins: Doctrinal Preaching in a Changing World, p. 9). “No longer can we take for granted a fundamental understanding of the basics of the faith” (Robert G. Hughes and Robert Kysar, Preaching Doctrine for the Twenty-First Century, p. 1) B. the importance of doctrine • sound doctrine important for the church o The sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God (1 Tim. 1:10-11) o For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine (2 Tim. 4:3) o If anyone teaches false doctrines and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, he is conceited and understands nothing (1 Tim. 6:3-4) o What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 1:13) • sound doctrine important for leaders of the church o Command certain men not to teach false doctrines any longer (1 Tim. 1:3) o The overseer must be…able to teach (1 Tim. 3:2) o He (the elder) must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it (Titus 1:9) o You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine (Titus 2:1) o Watch your life and doctrine closely. -
I. the Word of God Is Everything We Need II. God Has Given Us
What people need to understand today is that the truth is important. What you beLieve to be true is important, because it wiLL determine how you see Life and how you Live your Life. It wiLL determine your abiLity to understand Life and obey God. Truth exists because God is trustworthy. The biblical understanding of truth is that all truth comes from God. God has breathed life into all of Scripture. It is useful for teaching us The entirety of Your word is truth, and every one of Your what is true. It is useful for correcting our mistakes. It is useful for righteous judgments endures forever. PsaLm 119:160 making our lives whole again. It is useful for training us to do what is right. By using Scripture, a man of God can be completely prepared Truth is a gift that God gives to mankind. As we honor that to do every good thing. 2 Timothy 3:16-17 NIRV truth by believing in it and living by it we are blessed and preserved because of it. I. The Word of God is Everything We Need 4. God’s Word is to be obeyed as God directLy telling us what to do. It has been written, Man shall not live and be upheld and sustained by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of When God commands, we are to obey. When he asserts, we are God. Matthew 4:4 (AMP) to believe Him. When he promises, we are to embrace and trust those promises; thus, we respond to the sheer authority of For the Christian, the Bible is the measuring rod, and final word God’s word. -
A Peircean Panentheist Scientific Mysticism1
International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Volume 27 | Issue 1 Article 5 1-1-2008 A Peircean Panentheist Scientific ysM ticism Søren Brier Copenhagen Business School Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.ciis.edu/ijts-transpersonalstudies Part of the Philosophy Commons, Psychology Commons, and the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Brier, S. (2008). Brier, S. (2008). A Peircean panentheist scientific ysm ticism. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 27(1), 20–45.. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 27 (1). http://dx.doi.org/10.24972/ijts.2008.27.1.20 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals and Newsletters at Digital Commons @ CIIS. It has been accepted for inclusion in International Journal of Transpersonal Studies by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ CIIS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Peircean Panentheist Scientific Mysticism1 Søren Brier2 Copenhagen Business School Copenhagen, Denmark Peirce’s philosophy can be interpreted as an integration of mysticism and science. In Peirce’s philosophy mind is feeling on the inside and on the outside, spontaneity, chance and chaos with a tendency to take habits. Peirce’s philosophy has an emptiness beyond the three worlds of reality (his Categories), which is the source from where the categories spring. He empha- sizes that God cannot be conscious in the way humans are, because there is no content in his “mind.” Since there is a transcendental3 nothingness behind and before the categories, it seems that Peirce had a mystical view on reality with a transcendental Godhead. -
Experiencing God: God Speaks by the Holy Spirit Through Bible and Prayer
• OCTOBER 5 • EXPERIENCING GOD: GOD SPEAKS BY THE HOLY SPIRIT THROUGH BIBLE AND PRAYER Reality #4: God speaks by the Holy Spirit through the Bible, prayer, circumstances, and the church to reveal Himself, His purposes, and His ways. Hebrews 1:1, “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets…” When God spoke: 1. It was usually unique to that individual 2. He gave enough specific directions to do something now (Exodus 3:16-22) God speaks by the Holy Spirit 1 Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” John 14:26, “But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.” John 16:13-14, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” 1. God reveals Himself - because He wants you to have faith to believe He can do what He says. Leviticus 19:1-2, “And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.’” 2.