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Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit, otherwise known as the Holy Ghost, is a concept within the Abrahamic religions. In Judaism, the Holy Spirit is understood as the divine quality or force of God manifesting in the world, particularly in acts of prophecy, creation and guidance. In Nicene Christianity, this conception expanded in meaning to represent the third person of the Trinity, co-equal and co-eternal with God the Father and God the Son. In Islam, the Holy Spirit acts as an agent of divine action or communication. In the Baha’i Faith, the Holy Spirit is seen as the intermediary between God and man and "the outpouring grace of God and the effulgent rays that emanate from His Manifestation". Comparative religion The Hebrew Bible contains the term " spirit of God" (') which by Jews is interpreted in the sense of the might of a unitary God. This interpretation is different from the Nicene Christian conception of the Holy Spirit as one person of the Trinity. The Christian concept ten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Holy Spirit In Christianity
Most Christian denominations believe the Holy Spirit, or Holy Ghost, to be the third divine Person of the Trinity, a triune god manifested as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, each being God. Nontrinitarian Christians, who reject the doctrine of the Trinity, differ significantly from mainstream Christianity in their beliefs about the Holy Spirit. In Christian theology, pneumatology is the study of the Holy Spirit. Due to Christianity's historical relationship with Judaism, theologians often identify the Holy Spirit with the concept of the ''Ruach Hakodesh'' in Jewish scripture, on the theory that Jesus was expanding upon these Jewish concepts. Similar names, and ideas, include the ''Ruach Elohim'' (Spirit of God), ''Ruach YHWH'' (Spirit of Yahweh), and the ''Ruach Hakodesh'' (Holy Spirit). In the New Testament the Holy Spirit is identified with the Spirit of Christ, the Spirit of Truth, and the Paraclete (helper). The New Testament details a close relat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Abrahamic Religions
The term Abrahamic religions is used to group together monotheistic religions revering the Biblical figure Abraham, namely Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The religions share doctrinal, historical, and geographic overlap that contrasts them with Indian religions, Iranian religions, and East Asian religions. The term has been introduced in the 20th century and superseded the term Judeo-Christianity, Judeo-Christian tradition for the inclusion of Islam. However, the categorization has been criticized by some for oversimplification of different cultural and doctrinal nuances. For example, Islam shares cultural and doctrinal exchange from Asian religions, which Abrahamic religions are usually contrasted with. Usage The term ''Abrahamic religions'' (and its variations) is a collective religious descriptor for elements shared by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It features prominently in interfaith dialogue and political discourse but also has entered Academic discourse socializati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Personification
Personification is the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person, often as an embodiment or incarnation. In the arts, many things are commonly personified, including: places, especially cities, National personification, countries, and continents; elements of the natural world, such as trees, the Deities and personifications of seasons, four seasons, the "four elements", the Anemoi, four cardinal winds, and the Sense, five senses; moral abstractions, especially the four cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins; the nine Muses; and Personifications of death, death. In many polytheistic early religions, deity, deities had a strong element of personification, suggested by descriptions such as "god of". In ancient Greek religion, and the related ancient Roman religion, this was perhaps especially strong, in particular among the minor deities. Many such deities, such as the or tutelary deities for major cities, survived the arrival of Christianity, now as symbolic personif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anima Mundi
The concept of the (Latin), world soul (, ), or soul of the world (, ) posits an intrinsic connection between all living beings, suggesting that the world is animated by a soul much like the human body. Rooted in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, the idea holds that the world soul infuses the cosmos with life and intelligence. This notion has been influential across various systems of thought, including Stoicism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, and Hermeticism, shaping metaphysical and cosmological frameworks throughout history. In ancient philosophy, Plato's dialogue '' Timaeus'' introduces the universe as a living creature endowed with a soul and reason, constructed by the demiurge according to a rational pattern expressed through mathematical principles. Plato describes the world soul as a mixture of sameness and difference, forming a unified, harmonious entity that permeates the cosmos. This soul animates the universe, ensuring its rational structure and function according t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in ancient Greece and Rome. The Stoics believed that the universe operated according to reason, ''i.e.'' by a God which is immersed in nature itself. Of all the schools of ancient philosophy, Stoicism made the greatest claim to being utterly systematic. The Stoics provided a unified account of the world, constructed from ideals of logic, monistic physics, and naturalistic ethics. These three ideals constitute virtue which is necessary for 'living a well reasoned life', seeing as they are all parts of a logos, or philosophical discourse, which includes the mind's rational dialogue with itself. Stoicism was founded in the ancient Agora of Athens by Zeno of Citium around 300 BC, and flourished throughout the Greco-Roman world until the 3rd century AD, and among its adherents was Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Along with Aristotelian term logic, the system of propositional logic developed by the Stoics was one of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pneuma
''Pneuma'' () is an ancient Greek word for "breathing, breath", and in a religious context for "spirit (animating force), spirit". It has various technical meanings for medical writers and philosophers of classical antiquity, particularly in regard to physiology, and is also used in Greek translations of ''ruach'' :wikt:רוח, רוח in the Hebrew Bible, and in the Novum Testamentum Graece, Greek New Testament. In classical philosophy, it is distinguishable from ''Psyche (psychology)#Etymology, psyche'' (), which originally meant "breath of life", but is regularly translated as "spirit" or most often "soul#Philosophical views, soul". Presocratics , "air in motion, breath, wind", is equivalent in the material monism of Anaximenes of Miletus, Anaximenes to (, "air") as the element from which all else originated. This usage is the earliest extant occurrence of the term in philosophy. A quotation from Anaximenes observes that "just as our soul (''psyche''), being air (), holds us ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
History Of Religions School
The history of religions school (German: ''Religionsgeschichtliche Schule'') is a term applied to a group of German Protestant theologians associated with the University of Göttingen in the 1890s. Ideas The ''Religionsgeschichtliche Schule'' used the methodologies of higher criticism, a branch of criticism that investigates the origins of ancient texts in order to understand "the world behind the text." It compared Christianity to other religions, regarding it as one religion among others and rejecting its claims to absolute truth, and demonstrating that it shares characteristics with other religions. It argued that Christianity was not simply the continuation of the Old Testament, but syncretistic, and was rooted in and influenced by Hellenistic Judaism (Philo) and Hellenistic religions like the mystery cults and Gnosticism. Influence The school initiated new areas of research into Biblical history and textual analysis. Members The circle included Bernhard Duhm (1873), Alber ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pauline Epistles
The Pauline epistles, also known as Epistles of Paul or Letters of Paul, are the thirteen books of the New Testament attributed to Paul the Apostle, although the authorship of some is in dispute. Among these epistles are some of the earliest extant Christian documents. They provide an insight into the beliefs and controversies of early Christianity. As part of the canon of the New Testament, they are foundational texts for both Christian theology and ethics. Most scholars believe that Paul actually wrote seven of the thirteen Pauline epistles ( Galatians, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians), while three of the epistles in Paul's name are widely seen as pseudepigraphic ( 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus).New Testament Letter Structure fro < ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soul In The Bible
The concept of an immaterial and immortal soul – distinct from the body – did not appear in Judaism before the Babylonian exile, but developed as a result of interaction with Persian and Hellenistic philosophies. Accordingly, the Hebrew word , ''nephesh'', although translated as "soul" in some older English-language Bibles, actually has a meaning closer to "living being". ''Nephesh'' was translated into Greek in the Septuagint as ' ( ''psūchê''), using the Greek word for "soul". The New Testament also uses the word '. The textual evidence indicates a multiplicity of perspectives on souls, including probable changes during the centuries in which the biblical corpus developed. Relation to Greek "psyche" The only Hebrew word traditionally translated "soul" (''nephesh'') in English-language Bibles refers to a living, breathing conscious body, rather than to an immortal soul. In the New Testament, the Greek word traditionally translated "soul" () "psyche" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vitalism
Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things." Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is often referred to as the "vital spark", "energy", "'' élan vital''" (coined by vitalist Henri Bergson), "vital force", or "''vis vitalis''", which some equate with the soul. In the 18th and 19th centuries, vitalism was discussed among biologists, between those who felt that the known mechanics of physics would eventually explain the difference between life and non-life and vitalists who argued that the processes of life could not be reduced to a mechanistic process. Vitalist biologists such as Johannes Reinke proposed testable hypotheses meant to show inadequacies with mechanistic explanations, but their experiments failed to provide support for vitalism. Biologists now ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greco-Roman Mysteries
Mystery religions, mystery cults, sacred mysteries or simply mysteries (), were religious schools of the Greco-Roman world for which participation was reserved to initiation rite, initiates ''(mystai)''. The main characteristic of these religious schools was the secrecy associated with the particulars of the initiation and the ritual practice, which may not be revealed to outsiders. The most famous mysteries of Greco-Roman antiquity were the Eleusinian Mysteries, which predated the Greek Dark Ages. The mystery schools flourished in Late Antiquity; Julian the Apostate, Emperor Julian, of the mid-4th century, is believed by some scholars to have been associated with various mystery cults—most notably the mithraism, mithraists. Due to the secret nature of the schools, and because the mystery religions of Late Antiquity were Persecution of Pagans by the Christian Roman Empire, persecuted by the Christian Roman Empire from the 4th century, the details of these religious practices are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rudolf Bultmann
Rudolf Karl Bultmann (; ; 20 August 1884 – 30 July 1976) was a German Lutheran theologian and professor of the New Testament at the University of Marburg. He was one of the major figures of early 20th-century biblical studies. A prominent critic of liberal theology, Bultmann instead argued for an existentialist interpretation of the New Testament. His hermeneutical approach to the New Testament led him to be a proponent of dialectical theology. Bultmann is known for his belief that the historical analysis of the New Testament is both futile and unnecessary, given that the earliest Christian literature showed little interest in specific locations. Bultmann argued that all that matters is the "thatness," not the "whatness" of Jesus, i.e. only ''that'' Jesus existed, preached, and died by crucifixion matters, not what happened throughout his life. Bultmann relied on demythologization, an approach interpreting the mythological elements in the New Testament existentially. B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
