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Definition
"Suppose that we are in doubt as to what someone who gives vent to an utterance is asserting, or suppose that, mroeo radically, we are skeptical as to whether he is really asserting anything at all, one way of trying to understand his utterance is to attempt to find what he would regard as counting against, or as being incompatible with, its truth.
Anthony Flew and Alaisdair McIntyre-New Essays in Philosophical Theology |
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Term
| Ambivalence of Sacred Power |
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Definition
"...power awakens a profound feeling of awe which manifests itself both as fear and as being attracted. There is no religion whatever without terror, but equally none without love...Physical shuddering, ghostly horror, fear, sudden terror, reverence, humility, adoration, profound apprehension, enthusiasm---all theses lie in nuce within the awe experienced in the presence of Power.
Rudulf Otto-The Idea of the Holy |
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Term
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Definition
Hebrew Bible: "...sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, his train filled the temple.
Above it stood the seraphims: eacho one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twin he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.
And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.
And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. |
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Term
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Definition
1. Dharma is the refuge not the man
2. The meaning is the refuge, not the letter
3. Those sutras which are direct in meaning are the refuge, not those which are indirect in meaning
4. Direct intuition is the refuge, not discursive thought
Dharma, Meaning, Direct Sutras, Direct Intuition |
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Term
| Interpretation of Christian Bible |
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Definition
The letter shows what God and our fathers did;
The allegory shows us where our faith is hid;
The moral meaning gives us rules of daily life;
The anagogy shows us where we end our strife |
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Term
| Polytheism and the worship of nature |
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Definition
| The Earth is our mother, the SKy is our father. The Sky fertilizes the Earth with rain, the Earth produces grains and grasses |
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Definition
| Render devotion to all that is associated with the eternal female, which often is perceived as the active principle of the universe. |
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Term
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Definition
| Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all things that among men are shame and a reproach-theft and adultery and deceiving one another. Mortals think that the gods are begotten, and wear clothes like their own, and have a voice and a form. If oxen or horses or lions had hands or could draw with them and make works of art as men do, horses would draw the shapes of gods like horses, oxen like oxen; each kind would rpresent their bodies just like their own forms. The Ethiopians say their gods are black and flat-nosed; the Thracians that theirs are blue-eyed and red-haired |
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Term
| Dualism; I-Ching, Hsi Tz`u |
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Definition
| Heaven is high, earth is low; thus the ch`ien and the k`un are fixed. As high and low are thus ordered, honorable and humble have their places. Movement and rest have their constancy; according to these strong and weak are differentiated. Ways coincide according to eheir species and things fall into classes. Hence good fortune and bad fortune come about. In the heavens phenomena appear; on earth shapes occur. Through these, change and transformation becomes manifest...Things are roused by thunder and lightning; they are fertilized bby wind and rain. Sun and moon revolve on their courses with a season of cold and then a season of heat. The way of the ch`ien constitutes the male, the way of the k`un constitutes the female/ The ch`ien knows the great beginning the k`un gives things their completion. |
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Term
| Stoicism-Epicetus, Enchiridion |
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Definition
| We act very much as if we were on a voyage. What can I do? I can choose out the helmsman, the sailors, the day, the moment. The a stor arises. What do I care? I hvae fulfilled my task: another has not to act, the helmsman. Suppose even the ship goes down. What have I to do then? I do only what lies within my power, drowning if drown I must, without fear, not crying out or accusing heaven, for I know that what is born must needs also perish. For I am not immortal, but a man, a part of the universe as an hour pass away. What matters it then to me how I pass...for by some such means I must needs pass away |
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Term
| Stoicism-Marcus Aurelius: Thoughts |
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Definition
| Think often on the swiftness wiht which things that exist and are coming into existence are swept past us and carried out of sight...all is as a river in iceaseless flow...Is he not senseless who in such an environment puffs himself up, or is distracted or frets as over a trouble lasting and far reaching |
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Term
| Gilbert Murray-the Stoic Philosophy |
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Definition
| A good bootmaker is one who makes good boots; a good shepherd is one who keeps his sheep well; and even though good boots are, in the Day of Judgment sense, entirely worthless...yet the good bootmaker or shepherd must do his work well or he will cease to be good. To be good he must perform his function; and in performing that function there are certain things that he must "prefer" to others, even though they are not really good. He must prefer a healthy sheep or a well-made boot to ehri opposites. It is thus that Nature, or Phusis, herself works when she shapes the seed into the tree, or blind puppy into the good hound. The perfection of the tree or hound is in itlsef indifferent, a thing of no ultimate value. Yet the goodness of Nature liesin working for that perfection |
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Term
| Stoicism-Epictetus: Enchiridion |
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Definition
| Remember that you are an actor in a play, and the Playwright chooses the manner of it: if he wants it short, it is short; if long, it is long. If he wants you to act a poor man you must act the part with all your powers; and so if your part be a cripple or a magistrate or a plain man. For your business is to act the character that is given you and act it well; the choise of the cast is Another's |
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Term
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Definition
| The quality of being the image of God is co-essential to man because it is on with the rationality of his nature. To be a mind is to be naturally capable of knowing and loving God. To be able to do this is one with the very nature of thinking. It is as natural for man to be the image of God as to be a rational animal, that is, as to be man. [But there is also a special supernatural endowment.] The first effect of grace is, therefore, to perfect this resemblance of man to God by diviniging his soul, his mind and consequently his whole nature. From the moment he has grace, man can love God with a love worthy of God since his love is divine in its origin. |
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Term
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Definition
| The quality of being the image of God is co-essential to man because it is on with the rationality of his nature. To be a mind is to be naturally capable of knowing and loving God. To be able to do this is one with the very nature of thinking. It is as natural for man to be the image of God as to be a rational animal, that is, as to be man. [But there is also a special supernatural endowment.] The first effect of grace is, therefore, to perfect this resemblance of man to God by diviniging his soul, his mind and consequently his whole nature. From the moment he has grace, man can love God with a love worthy of God since his love is divine in its origin. |
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Term
| Reinhold Niebuhr: Christianity |
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Definition
| The human spirit has the special capacity of standing continually outsideitself in terms of indefinite regression...The rational capacity of surveying the world, of forming general concepts and analyzing the order of the world is thus but one aspect of what Christianity knows as "spirit." The self knows the world...because it stands outside both itself and the world, which means that it cannot understand itself except as it is understood from beyond itself and the world. |
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Term
| St. Augustine: Christianity |
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Definition
| For "pride is the beginning of all sin." And what is pride but an appetite for inordinate exaltation. Now, exaltation is inordinate when the soul cuts itself off from the very Source to which it should keep close and somehow makes itslef and becomes and end to itself. This takes place when the soul becomes inordinately please with itself...and falls away from the unchangeable Good which ought to please the soul far more than the soul can please itself. |
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Term
| John Calvin: Christianity |
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Definition
| The worship not him, but a figment of their own brains in his stead. This depravity Paul expressly remarks: "Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools." He had before said "they become vain in their imaginations." But lest any should exculpate them, he adds that they were deservedly blinded, because not content with the bounds of sobriety, but arrogating to themselves more than was right, they willfully darkened and even infatuated themselves with pride, vanity and perverseness. Whence it follows, that their folly is inexcusable, which originates not only in a vain curiosity, but in false confidence, and in immoderate desire to exceed the limits of human knowledge |
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Term
| St. Augustine: Christianity |
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Definition
| Man's nature, indeed, was created at first faultless and without any sin; but that nature of man in which every one is born from Adam, now wants the Physician, because it is not sound. All good qualities, which it still possesses...it has of the Most High God, its Creator and Maker. But the flaw, which darkens and weakens all those natural goods,...it has not contracted from its blameless Creator---but from that original sin, which it committed by free will. |
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Term
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Definition
| The grace, however, of Christ, without which neither infnats nor adults can be saved, is not bestowed for any merits, but is given freely, on account of which it is also called, grace |
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Term
| G.P. Malalasekera: Theravada Buddhism |
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Definition
| The five aggregates together constitute what is called the "I" or "personality" or the "individual." The aggregates are not parts or pieces of the individual but phases or forms of development, something like the shape, color, and smell of a flower...There is no "stuff' or substratum as such but only manifestations, energies, activities, processes...Every living being, since it is a process, is described as a flux, a flowering, a stretching forth, a continuity, or, more frequently, as a combustion, a flam. There is no "substance," no "self" or "soul," underlying the process, unifying it. |
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Term
| Samyutta-Nikaya: Theravada Buddhism |
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Definition
Thus have I heard:: at one time the Lord dwelt at Benares at Isipatana in the Deer Park. There the Lord addressed the five monks: These two extremes, monks are not to be practises by one who has gone forth from the world. What are the two? That conjoined with passions and luxury, low, vulgar, common, ignoble, and useless, and that conjoined with self-torture, painful, ignoble, and useless. Avoiding these two extremes the Tathagate ["one who has found the Truth," that is, Buddha} has gained the enlightenment of the Middle Path, which produces insight and knowledge and tends to calm, to higher knowledge, enlightenment, Nirvana. And what monks, is the Middle Path?...This is the noble Eightfold Way, namely right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. This, monks, is the Middle Path...
1. Now this, monks, is the noble truth of pain [dukkha]: birth is painful, old age is painful, sickness is painful, sorrow, lamentation, dejection an despair are painful. In short the five groups of grasping [khandhas] are painful.
2. Now this, monks, is the noble truth of the cause of pain [tanha]: the craving, which tends to rebirth, combined with pleasure and lust, finding pleasure here and there, anmely the craving for passion, the craving for existence, the craving for non-existence.
3. Now this, monks, is the noble truth of the cessation of pain: the cessation without a remainder of craving, the abandonment, forsaking, release, non-attachment.
4. Now this, monks, is the noble truth of the way that leads to the cessation of pain: this is the Noble Eightfold Way |
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Term
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Definition
| Most of us are inclined by nature to live in a fool's paradise, to look on the brighter side of life, and to minimize its unpleasant sides. To dwell on suffering runs normally counter to our inclinations. Usually we cover up suffering with all kinds of "emotional curtains."...This is illustrated by the widespread use of "euphemisms" which is nothing but the avoidance of words that call up disagreeable associations...A man does not "die," but he "passes away," "goes to sleep"...etc. |
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Term
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Definition
| Whence do the rules of decorum arise? From the fact that men are born with desires, and when these desires are not satisfied, men are bound to pursue their satisfaction. When the pursuit is carried on unrestrained and unlimited, there is bound to be contention. With contention comes chaos; with chaos dissolution. The ancient kings disliked this chaos and set the necessary limits by codifying rules of decorum and righteousness...It is through rites that Heaven and earth are harmonious...He who holds to the rites is never confused in the midst of miltifarious change; he who deviates therefrom is lost. |
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Term
| Walter Lippmann: Confucianism |
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Definition
| has to be transmitted from the old to the young, and the habits and the ideas must be maintained as a seamless web of memory among the bearers of the tradition, generation after generation...When the continuity of the tradition of civility is rputured, the community is threatened. Unless the rupture is repaired, the community will break down into factional...wars. For when the continuity is interrupted, the cultural heritage is not being transmitted. The new generation is faced with the task of rediscovering and reinventing and relearning by trial and error most of what [it] needs to know...No generation can do that. |
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Term
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Definition
| Yen Hui asked about humaneness. The Master said: "To subdue oneself and return to ritual is humane. If for one day a ruler could subdue himself and return to ritual, then all under Heaven would respond to the humaneness in him |
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Term
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Definition
| Of all things to which the people owe their lives the rites re the most important. If it were not for the rites, they would have noe means of regulating the services paid to the spirits of Heaven and Earth; if it were not for the rites, they would have no means of distinguishing the positions of rules and subject, high and low, old and young; if it were not for the rites, they would have no means of differentiating the relations between male and female, between father and son, and between elder and younger brother, and of linking far and near by the ceremony of marriage. |
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Term
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Definition
| If you lead the people by means of regulations and keep order among them by means of punishments, they will be without conscience in trying to avoid them. If you lead them by virtue [te] and keep order among them by ritual [li], they will have a conscience and will reform themselves. |
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Term
| Dharmapada Karmavarga: Persistent demand for theodicy |
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Definition
| Social ritual transforms the individual event [the crises encountered at various stages of life] into a typical case, just as it transforms biography into an episode in the history of society. The individual is seen as being born, living and suffering, and eventually dying, as his ancestors have done before him and his children will do after him. As he accepts and inwardly appropriates this view of the matter he transcends his own individuality as well as the uniqueness, including the unique pain and the unique terors, of his individual experience...He is made capable of suffering "Correctly."...In consequence, the pain becomes more tolerable, ther terror less overwhelming. |
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Term
| Theodicy of mystical participation: Luvien Levy Bruhl |
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Definition
| Every individual is both such and such a man or woman, alive at present, a certain ancestral individual, who may be human or semihuman...and at the same time he is totem, that is, he partakes in mystic fashion of the essence of the animal or vegetable species whose name he bears. The verb "to be"...encompasses both the collective representation and the collective consciousness in a participation that is actually lived, in a kind of symbiosis effected by identity of essence. |
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Term
| Theodicy of mystical participation: William James |
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Definition
| I was alone upon the seashore as all those thoughts flowed over me, liberating and reconciling...I was impelled to kneel down...before the illimitable ocean, symbol of the Infinite. I felt that I prayed as I had never prayed before, and knew now hwat prayer relaly is: to return from the solitude of individuation into the consciousness of unity with all that is, to kneel down as one that passes away, and to rise up as one imperishable. Earth, heaven, and sea resounded as in one vast world-encircling harmony. It was as if the chorus of all the great who had ever lived were about me. I felt myself one with them, and it appeared as if I heard their greeting: "Thou too belongest to the company of those who over came. |
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Term
| Future, this-worldly theodicy: Norman Cohn |
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Definition
| And they said that the elect of God would rule in the world for a thousand years with Christ, visibly and tangibly. And they preached that the elect of God who fled to the mountains would themselves possess all the goods of the destroyed evil ones and rule freely over all their estates and villages. And they said, "You will have such an abundance of everything that siilver, gold, and money will only be a nuisance to you." They also said and preached to the people, "Now you will not pay rents to your lords any more, nor be subject to them, but will freely and indisturbedly possess their villages, fish-ponds, meadows, forests, and all their domains. |
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Term
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Definition
1. Jerusalem the Golden, With milk and honey blest, beneath thy contemplation sink heart and voice oppressed; I know not, O I know now What joys await us there, What radiancy of glory, What bliss beyond compare...
4. O sweet and blessed country, The home of God's elect! O sweet and blessed country, That eager heart expect! Jesus, in mercy bring us, To that dear land of rest, Who are, with God the Father, And Spirit ever blest |
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Term
| Other-worldly theodicy: Hussain |
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Definition
| Trials, afflictions and pains, the thicker they fall on man, the better dear sister, do they prepare him for his journey heavenward. We rejoice in tribulations, seeing they are but temporary, and yet they work out an eternal and blissful end. Though it is predestined that I should suffer martyrdom in this shameful manner, yet the treasury of everlasting happiness shall be at my disposal as a consequent reward. Thou must think of that, and be no longer Sorry.... |
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Term
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Definition
| Is not a prevalent doctrine in the moder world religions, either East or West. However, as indicated earlier, its appeal was very great in the centuries just before and after the beginnings of Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Mithraism, Manichaeism, and Gnosticism. |
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Term
| Dualist theodicy: Werner Foerster |
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Definition
| 278. In the name of the great Life! I cry to you, I instruct you, and I say: (you) true and believing men (you) perceiving and separate ones: separate yourselves from the world of imperfection which is full of confusion and replete with error. First I gave you instruction about the King of Light, blessed be he in all eternity. And I told you about the blessed worlds of light in which there is nothing perishable...Now I will speak to you about worlds of darkness and what is in them, hideous and terrible whose form is faulty. Beyond the earth of light downwards and beyond the earth Tibil southwards is the heart of darkness...Darkness exists through its own evil nature, (is) a howling darkness, a desolate gloom which knows not the First of the Last. But the King of Light knows and perceives the First and the Last, that which is past and that which is to come...The worlds of darkness are numerous and without end. He (the King of LIght, or: One) said: "Broad and deep is the abode of evil, whose peoples showed no fidelity to the pleace which is their endless habitation, whose kingdome came into being from themselves. Their earth is black water and their heights of gloomy darkness." |
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Term
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Definition
| ...those who are of pleasant conduct here---the prospect is, indeed, that they will enter a pleasant womb, either the womb of a Brahmim [priest], or the womb of a ksatriya [warrior], or the womb of a vaisya [trader and agriculturist].. But those who are of stinking conduct here---the prospect is, indeed, that they will enter a stinking womb, either the womb of a dog, or the womb of a swine, or the womb of an outcast [candala]. |
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Term
| Karma-Samsara theodicy: Bhagavadgita |
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Definition
| Further, having regard for thine own duty, thou shouldst not falter; there exists no greater good for a ksatriya [warrior] than a war enjoined by duty...Therefore, arise, O Son of Kunti [Arjuna], resolve on battle. Treating alike pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, then get ready for battle. Thus thou shall not incur sin. |
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Term
| Karma-Samsara theodicy: Dharmapada Karmavarga |
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Definition
| Even a flight in the air cannot free you from suffering after the deed which is evil has been committed. Nor in the sky nor in the ocean's middle, nor if you were to hide in cracks i n mountains, can there be found on this wide earth's corner where Karma does not catch up with the cuplrit...The iron itself creates the rust, which slowly is bound to consmue it. The evil-doer by his own deeds is led to a life full of suffering. |
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Term
| Karma Samsara theodicy: Milindapanha |
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Definition
The King said: "Revered Nagasena, ,what is the reason that men are not all the same, some being shortlived, some weakly, others healhty, some ugly, others comely, some of few wishes, others of many wishes, some poor, others rich, some belonging to low familirs, othesr to high families...?"
The Elder said: "But why, sire, are trees not all the same, some being acid, some salt, some bitter, some sharp, some astringent, others sweet?" I think, revered sir, that it is becasue of a differences in seeds. Even so, sire, it is becasue of a differences in kammas [karmas] that men are not all the same |
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Term
| Karma-Samsara theodicy: U. Thittila |
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Definition
We must never forget that kamma [karma] is alwasy just---it neither loves or hates, it does not reward or punish, it is never angry, never pleased. It is simply the law of cause and effect.
Kamma knows nothing about us. It deoes not know us any more than fire knows us when it burns us. It is the nature of fre to burn, to give out heat; and if we use it properly it gives us light, cooks our food---but if we use it wrongly it burrns us and our property...It is foolish to grow angry and blame fire when it burns us because we made a mistake. In this respect kamma is like fire. |
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Term
| Karma-Samsara theodicy: Christmas Humphreys |
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Definition
| Only Karma can explain the mysterious problem of Good and Evil, and reconcile man to the terrible apparent injustice of life. For when one acquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him, and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees honour paid to fools and profligates, and ther nearest neighbor, with all his intellect and noble virtues, perishing of want and for lack of sympathy...that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men, as well as their supposed Creator. |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: suffering as recompense for sin |
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Definition
| And the Lord said by his servants the prophets, "Because Manasseh, King of Judah, has committed these abominations...and has made Judah also to sin wit his idols; therefore thus says the Lord, the GOd of Israel, Behold, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such evil that the ears of evry one who hears of it will tingle |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: Suffering as recompense for sin; Book of Job |
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Definition
| How long will you say these things and the words of your mouth be like a great wind? Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right? If you children have sinned against him he has delivered them into the power of their transgression. If you will seek God and make supplication to the Almighty, if you are pure and upright, surely then he willl rouse himself for you and reward you with a rightful habitation. And, though your beginning was small, your latter days will be very great. |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: Suffering as a test and as a necessary condition of "soul-making"; Book of Job |
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Definition
| And the Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and uprirght man, who fears God and turns away from evil?" THen Satan answered the Lord, "Does Job fear God for nought? Hast thou not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth your hand now and tough all that he has, and he will curse thee to they face." ANd the Lord said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your power..." |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: Suffering as a test and as a necessary condition of "soul-making"; Arthur J. Arberry: The Koran Interpreted |
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Definition
| Surely We [Allah} will try you with something of fear and hunger, and diminution of good/and lives and fruits, yet give thou good tidings/unto the patient/who, when they are visited by an affliction,/say, "Surely we belong to God, and/ to Him we return |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: Suffering as a test and as a necessary condition of "soul-making": Abu Hamid al-Ghasali: al-Mawsad al-asna |
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Definition
| THe mother feels tender conrenc for the little one and forbids cupping, but the father who is intelligent, infliicts it forcibly on him. THe ignoramus thinks that the mother, and not the father, is the compassionate one. But the reasonable person knows that the father''s infliction of cupping on the child represents perfect compassion...and that the mother is (the child's) enemy in the guise of a friend |
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Term
| Monotheistid theodicy: Theodicy of submission: The mystery of God's sovereignty; New English Bible, Job 31:35-37 |
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Definition
| Let me call a witness in my defense! Let the ALmight state his case against me! If my accuser had written out his indicctment, I would not keep silence and remaind indoors. No! I would flaunt it on my sholder and wear it like a crown on my head; I would plead the whole record of my life and present that in court as my defense |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: Theodicy of submission: The mystery of God's Sovereignty; New English Bible, Job 38:2-7, 16-18; 40;7-8 |
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Definition
| Who is this whose ignorant words cloud my design in darkness? Brace yourself and stand up like a man; I will ask questions, and you shall answer. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundaitons? Tell me ifyou know and understand. Who settled its dimensions? Surely you should know. WHo stretched his measuring-line over it? On what do its supporting pillars rest? Who set its cornerstone in place, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted aloud?...Have you descended to the spring of the sea or walked in the unfathomable deep? Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Hvae you ever seen the door-keepers of the place of darkness? Have you comprehended the vast expanse of the world? Come, tell me all this, if you know....Brace yourself and stand up like a man; I will ask questions and you shall answer. Dare you deny that I am just or put me in the wrong that you may be right? |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: Theodicy of submission: The mystery of God's Sovereignty; New English Bible, Job 42:1-6 |
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Definition
| The Job answered the Lord: I know that thou canst do all things and that no purpose is beyond thee. But I have spoken of great things which I have not understood, things too wonderful for me to know. I knew of thee then only by report but not I see thee with my own eyes. Therefore I melt away, I repent in idust and ashes. |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: Theodicy of Protest; Wiesel: A Jew Today |
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Definition
| One evening they collapsed with fatigue, They were four to fall asleep; they were three to rise. The father dug a grave for his wife, and the children recite the Kaddish. And they took up their walk again. The next day they were three to lie down; only two woke up. The father dug a grave for his older son and recited the Kaddish. ANd with his remaining son he continued the march. THen one night the two stretched out. But at dawn only the father opened his eyes. He dug a grave in the sand and this is how he addressed God: "Master of the Universe, I know what you want---I understand what you are doing. You want despair to overwhelm me. You want me to cease believing in You; to cease praying to You, to cease incoking Your name to glorify and sanctify it. Well, I tell you: No, no---a thousand ties no! You shall not succeed! In spite of me and in spite of You, I shal shout the Kaddish, which is a song of faith, for You and against You. This song you shall not still, God of Israel |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: Theodicy of submission: the mystery of God's Sovereignty; Al-Ghazali, in Ormsby, Theodicy, 69-70 |
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Definition
| Do not doubt in any way that God is the most compassionate of the compassionate...for beneath this is a mystery, disclosure of which the law forbids. Be content then with prayer if your are among his people. Reflect!...for I deem you one endowed with insight into God's secret of predestination |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: Theodicy of Protest; Elie Wiesel: The trial of God |
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Definition
| I lived as a Jew and it is as a Jew that I shall die---and it is as a Jew that, with my last breath, I shall shout my protest to God. And because the end is near [another pogrom is imminent], I shall shout louder! Because the end is near, I'll tell Him that He's more guilty than ever! |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: The free will defense; John Hick: The philosophy of religion |
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Definition
| An essential premise of this argumnt concerns the nature of the divine purpose in creating the world. The skeptic's assumption is that man is to be viewed as a complete creation and that God's purpose in making the world was to provide a suitable dwelling-place for the fully formed creature. Since God is good and loving, the environment which he has created for human life to inhabit is naturally as pleasant and comfortable as possible...Christianity, however, has never supposed that God's purpose in the creation of the world was to construct a paradise whose inhabitants would experience a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of pain. The world is een, instead, as a place of "soul-making" in which free beings, grappling with the tasks and challenges of their existence in a common environment, may become "children of God" and "heirs of eternal life." |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: The free will defense; from Ibid |
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Definition
| For example, no one could injure anyone else: the muderer's knife would turn to pper or his bullets to thin air...fraud, deceit, conspiracy, and treason would somehow always leave the fabric of society undamaged. Again, no one would ever be injured in an accident: the mountain climber, steeplejack, or playing child falling from a height would float unharmed to the ground....To make possible this continual series of individual adjustments, nature would have to work by 'special providences' instead of running according to general laws which men must learn to respect on penalty of pain or death. The lwas of nature would have to be extremely flexible: sometimes gravity would operate, sometimes not....there could be no sciences, for there would be no enduring world structure to investigate....Courage and fortitude would have no point in an environment in which there is, by definition, no danger or difficulty. Generosity, kindness, the agape aspect of love, prudence, unselfishness, and all other ethical notions which pre-suppose life in a stable environment could not even be formed. Consequently, such a world, however well it might promote pleasure, would be very ill-adapted for the development of the moral qualities of human personality. In relation to this purpose it would be the worst of all possible worlds. |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: Process theodicy; Schubert Ogden, "evil and Belief in God" The distinctive relevance of a process theology |
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Definition
| This means that even the greatest possible power over other things---even the omnipotent power than which no greater can be conceived---to hvae, consistently with there being other actual things having lesser power over which its omnipotent power could alone be exercised...The conclusion seems obvious, then, that the coherent meaning that "all-powerful" or "omnipotent" could have is not all the power there is---since nothing can have that...but only all the power that any one individual could conceivably have consistenly with their being other individuals who as such must themselves also have some power, however minimal |
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Term
| Monotheistic theodicy: Process theodicy; Ibid., 33 |
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Definition
| Process theologians argue that such a conception of diving power is mor ein keeping with the biblical picture of God's relations with his creatures; more-over, that it certainly is more consisten with the idea of divine love and omnibeneficence that, they insist, must presuppose the real freedome and responsibility of finite selves. Process theology can accept the real existence of evil as in no way incompatible with belief in a God whose power and goodness alike are the greatest conceivable "since such evil as exists may be attributed to decisions other than God's own for which God cannot be reasonably held responsible." |
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