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Secular Theology
Secular theology rejects the substance dualism of modern religion, the belief in two forms of reality required by the belief in heaven and hell. Secular theology can accommodate a belief in God, like many nature religions, but as residing in this world and not separately from it. Aristotle's conception of God as the Soul of the World was such a secular concept. Historians such as Charles Freeman hold that the AD 325 Council of Nicaea did much to establish dualism in Christian thought. Dualism has greatly influenced religion and science as well. By desacralizing the natural world, dualism has left it vulnerable to exploitation and damage. 20th-century Christianity Lutheran and sociologist Peter L. Berger states that Schubert M. Ogden's ''The Reality of God'' (1966), Paul van Buren's ''The Secular Meaning of the Gospel'' and Anglican bishop John A. T. Robinson's ''Honest to God'' "marked the rather loud inauguration of what came to be known as secular theology on the A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heaven
Heaven or the heavens, is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife or, in exceptional cases, enter Heaven alive. Heaven is often described as a "highest place", the holiest place, a Paradise, in contrast to hell or the Underworld or the "low places" and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply divine will. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a ''world to come''. Another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld. In Indian religions, heaven is considered a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , , ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christianity, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables. Much of his philosophical work deals with the issues of how one lives as a "single individual", giving priority to concrete human reality over abstract thinking and highlighting the importance of personal choice and commitment. He was against literary critics who defined idealist intellectuals and philosophers of his time, and thought that Swedenborg, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schlegel, and Hans Christian Andersen were all "understood" far too quickly by "scholars". Kierkegaard's theological work focuses on Christian ethics, the institution of the Church, the differences between purely ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christian Mythology
Christian mythology is the body of myths associated with Christianity. The term encompasses a broad variety of legends and narratives, especially those considered sacred narratives. Mythological themes and elements occur throughout Christian literature, including recurring myths such as ascending to a mountain, the ''axis mundi'', myths of combat, descent into the Underworld, accounts of a dying-and-rising god, a flood myth, stories about the founding of a tribe or city, and myths about great heroes (or saints) of the past, paradises, and self-sacrifice. Various authors have also used it to refer to other mythological and allegorical elements found in the Bible, such as the story of the Leviathan. The term has been applied to myths and legends from the Middle Ages, such as the story of Saint George and the Dragon, the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and the legends of the ''Parsival''. Multiple commentators have classified John Milton's epic poe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christian Eschatology
Christian eschatology, a major branch of study within Christian theology, deals with "last things". Such eschatology – the word derives from two Greek roots meaning "last" () and "study" (-) – involves the study of "end things", whether of the end of an individual life, of the end of the age, of the end of the world, or of the nature of the Kingdom of God. Broadly speaking, Christian eschatology focuses on the ultimate destiny of individual souls and of the entire created order, based primarily upon biblical texts within the Old and New Testaments. Christian eschatology looks to study and discuss matters such as death and the afterlife, Heaven and Hell, the Second Coming of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, the rapture, the tribulation, millennialism, the end of the world, the Last Judgment, and the New Heaven and New Earth in the world to come. Eschatological passages appear in many places in the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments. Many extra-biblical exam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christology
In Christianity, Christology (from the Ancient Greek, Greek grc, Χριστός, Khristós, label=none and grc, wiktionary:-λογία, -λογία, wiktionary:-logia, -logia, label=none), translated literally from Greek as "the study of Christ", is a branch of theology that concerns Jesus. Different denominations have different opinions on questions like whether Jesus was human, divine, or both, and as a messiah what his role would be in the freeing of the Jewish people from foreign rulers or in the prophesied Kingdom of God (Christianity), Kingdom of God, and in the Salvation in Christianity, salvation from what would otherwise be the consequences of sin. The earliest Christian writings gave several titles to Jesus, such as Son of Man, Son of God, Messiah, and , which were all derived from Hebrew scripture. These terms centered around two opposing themes, namely "Jesus as a Pre-existence of Christ, preexistent figure who Incarnation (Christianity), becomes human and then Se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jesus Christ
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious leader; he is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. Most Christians believe he is the incarnation of God the Son and the awaited Messiah (the Christ) prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically. Research into the historical Jesus has yielded some uncertainty on the historical reliability of the Gospels and on how closely the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament reflects the historical Jesus, as the only detailed records of Jesus' life are contained in the Gospels. Jesus was a Galilean Jew who was circumcised, was baptized by John the Baptist, began his own ministry and was often referred to as "rabbi". Jesus debated with fellow Jews on ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Personal God
A personal god, or personal goddess, is a deity who can be related to as a person, instead of as an impersonal force, such as the Absolute, "the All", or the "Ground of Being". In the scriptures of the Abrahamic religions, God is described as being a personal creator, speaking in the first person and showing emotion such as anger and pride, and sometimes appearing in anthropomorphic shape.Williams, W. Wesley, "A study of anthropomorphic theophany and Visio Dei in the Hebrew Bible, the Quran and early Sunni Islam", University of Michigan, March 2009 In the Pentateuch, for example, God talks with and instructs his prophets and is conceived as possessing volition, emotions (such as anger, grief and happiness), intention, and other attributes characteristic of a human person. Personal relationships with God may be described in the same ways as human relationships, such as a Father, as in Christianity, or a Friend as in Sufism. A 2008 survey by the Pew Research Center reported t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theism
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deities. In common parlance, or when contrasted with ''deism'', the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referred to as classical theism) – or gods found in polytheistic religions—a belief in God or in gods without the rejection of revelation as is characteristic of deism. Gnosticism is the belief in personal spiritual knowledge. Atheism is commonly understood as non-acceptance or rejection of theism in the broadest sense of theism, i.e. non-acceptance or rejection of belief in God or gods. Related, but separate, is the claim that the existence of any deity is unknown or unknowable: agnosticism.(page 56 in 1967 edition) Combined with theism, is agnostic theism. Etymology The term ''theism'' derives from the Greek (''theós'') or ''theoi'' meaning "god" or "gods". The term ''theism'' was first used by Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688). In Cudworth's de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biblical Literalism
Biblical literalism or biblicism is a term used differently by different authors concerning biblical hermeneutics, biblical interpretation. It can equate to the dictionary definition of wikt:literalism, literalism: "adherence to the exact letter or the literal sense", where literal means "in accordance with, involving, or being the primary or strict meaning of the word or words; not figurative or metaphorical". The term can refer to the historical-grammatical method, a hermeneutics, hermeneutic technique that strives to uncover the meaning of the text by taking into account not just the grammatical words, but also the syntactical aspects, the cultural and historical background, and the literary genre. It emphasizes the referential aspect of the words in the text without denying the relevance of literary aspects, genre, or figures of speech within the text (e.g., parable, allegory, simile, or metaphor). It does not necessarily lead to complete agreement upon one single interpretati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Shelby Spong
John Shelby "Jack" Spong (June 16, 1931 – September 12, 2021) was an American bishop of the Episcopal Church. From 1979 to 2000, he was the Bishop of Newark, New Jersey. A liberal Christian theologian, religion commentator, and author, he called for a fundamental rethinking of Christian belief away from theism and traditional doctrines.Interview. ABC Radio Australia, June 17, 2001 Early life and career Spong was born in , and educated in public schools there. He attended the |
Thomas J
Clarence Thomas (born June 23, 1948) is an American jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to succeed Thurgood Marshall and has served since 1991. After Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court and its longest-serving member since Anthony Kennedy's retirement in 2018. Thomas was born in Pin Point, Georgia. After his father abandoned the family, he was raised by his grandfather in a poor Gullah community near Savannah. Growing up as a devout Catholic, Thomas originally intended to be a priest in the Catholic Church but was frustrated over the church's insufficient attempts to combat racism. He abandoned his aspiration of becoming a clergyman to attend the College of the Holy Cross and, later, Yale Law School, where he was influenced by a number of conservative authors, notably Thomas Sowell, who dramatically shifted his worldview from progressive to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death Of God Theology
Death of God theology refers to a range of ideas by various theologians and philosophers that try to account for the rise of secularity and abandonment of traditional beliefs in God. They posit that God has either ceased to exist or in some way accounted for such a belief. Although philosophers since Friedrich Nietzsche have occasionally used the phrase "God is dead" to reflect increasing unbelief in God, the concept rose to prominence in the late 1950s and 1960s, before waning again. The Death of God movement is sometimes technically referred to as theothanatology, deriving from the Greek '' theos'' (God) and ''thanatos'' (death). The main proponents of this radical theology included the Christian theologians Gabriel Vahanian, Paul Van Buren, William Hamilton, John Robinson, Thomas J. J. Altizer, Mark C. Taylor, John D. Caputo, Peter Rollins, and the rabbi Richard L. Rubenstein. History Revisionist interpretations The theme of God's "death" became more explicit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
