DEITY (PART II) * CHAPTER 8Concepts of God/gods:pantheism monism monotheism

IMMANENCE VS TRANSCENDENCE (P. 154)

Immanence = to dwell within

Transcendence = above or apart from

God in nature

God in the super-natural

The profane

The sacred/holy

PANTHEISM & MONISM Pantheism = all is God = the sacred is in all things. Monism = there is one reality and one divine being.

A 1-dimensional universe. What appears a s separate things are just different manifestations of one essence.

What we see as different separate things are just different ways (modes) or appearances (manifestations) of the One being/one reality.

p.167

MONISM IN PHILOSOPHY CAN BE DEFINED ACCORDING TO THREE KINDS:

Idealism, phenomenalism, or mentalistic monism which holds that only mind is real.

Neutral monism, which holds that both the mental and the physical can be reduced to some sort of third substance, or energy.

Materialism, which holds that only the physical is real, and that the mental or spiritual (everything) can be reduced to the physical.

PRE-SOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS Described reality as being monistic: Thales: all is water. Anaximenes: all is air. Heraclitus: all is change, symbolized by fire.

(in that everything is in constant flux).

Anaximander: all is apeiron (meaning 'the undefined infinite'). Reality is some, one thing, but we cannot know what.

Parmenides: all is Being. Reality is just one thing: like an unmoving perfect sphere, unchanging, undivided. We say there are things that exist and things that don't exist; Parmenides wrote that such thinking is incorrect: nothing doesn't exist, only existence does.

GREEK STOIC PHILOSOPHERS MOVE FROM POLYTHEISM TO MORE ELEVATED GODS

personified the logos as Zeus; sang hymns of praise to him and prayed to him.

Logos = spark of divine reason that dwells in each person (seeking a unifying principle in religion)

HINDUISM: PANTHEISM AND MONISM 4 earliest vedas show polytheism Later Upanishads (700-300 BC) speak of many gods

being an expression of one divine principle. Early ideas of the primal element 1)fire ---later 2)space being and non-being and finallyBrahman which animates all living things (like pantheism). See p.158, bottom.

See page 159. Parable of the Bees on how many things can in fact be one.

Soul = inner self called Atman, a temporary state. It comes from Brahman and then dissolves back into it.

Philosopher Sankara (c. 800 A.D) later says we must realize that Atman itself is an illusion; all is Brahman.

THE FIRST MONOTHEISMS

Pharoah Amenhotep IV in Egypt (1375 BC) Aton

2. Israel’s henotheism

Jews read back

monotheism into Torah

Israel’s monotheism

3. Greek logos

Christianity: a

Greek/Jewish synthesis

Babylonian captivity

Spreads through, Levant and the Mediterranean throughout the Roman Empire (Europe, Western Civilization)

1. Zoroaster in Persia (Iran)

THEOPHANY: AN APPEARANCE OF GOD Jews: God appears (personal reveals Himself) in

the desert and on Mt. Sinai Abraham Moses

A new type of monotheism where a personal God has a special relationship to a particular peoplep. 173-4:

-Jewish prophets develop full monotheism during exile (6th century BC).

--al-Ghazali (11th century A.D) p.175

-- Thomas Aquinas (13th century A.D.) p.176

VOCABULARY P. 176-178 Anthropomorphism: making gods that look and behave like

people Immutable: unchanging Eternal, timeless. Creation ex nihilo: out of nothing, not out of stuff that pre-

dates God. Deism: belief in a God that made the world (prime mover) but

then kept away from it and doesn’t interact with it. (Popular among 18th century intellectuals in Europe and America).

Cosmological proof of Aristotle, and later developed Aquinus, that the universe is a complex creation and therefore implies a creator.

God’s creativity is continuous in the 3 Western monotheisms ofg Judaism, Christianity and Islam. See Aquinas’ efficient cause on p. 178

Omniscience: all knowing Omnipresent: present in all places at all

times.