...Introduction to a Christian worldview A course in thinking Christianly about the whole of life Chris Gousmett (c) Chris Gousmett, 1996 This edition is produced solely for use as a course manual and is not to be sold, copied or otherwise reproduced in any form. i Contents Introduction 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7 8. 9. 10. The nature and function of worldviews Religion true and false . . . . . . . . .. . . . 1 16 30 The problem of dualism and synthesis in Christianity Major themes in a worldview: Human nature, truth, meaning, purpose . 46 Scripture as the source of a Christian worldview The contours of a Biblical worldview . . . . . . .. . . . . . 59 70 87 104 119 136 157 Structure and direction. Sin and evil. Common grace The task and calling of humankind: to care for the creation . The nature of Christian community. A Christian view of society. The Kingdom of God: God's righteous rule over the whole creation . Bibliography . . . . . . . . ii Introduction The creation of the Father, fallen in sin, is redeemed by the death of the Son of God and is being transformed by the Holy Spirit into the kingdom of God. Herman Bavinck This series of studies is designed to provide a basic introduction to a distinctively Christian worldview that seeks to see the whole gospel applied to the whole of life. This Christian worldview makes a difference, because it is significant for our life in the world. It shapes and directs our lives in important ways, because...
Words: 42727 - Pages: 171
...methods are generally the use of an electroencephalograph (EEG) to determine brain function, an examination of pupil size and reaction and obviously, a check of blood flow (pulse), heart beat and respiration. It is generally accepted that once a body exhibits brain stem death, i.e. that there is no activity in the most primitive part of the brain, that death has occurred. What makes a human being? Theories concerning life after death are all interested in whether or not there is a part of the human body which survives the death of all the physical parts and where (or indeed when) it goes. There are a number of theories exploring what makes up a human being, but the basic distinction that you need to be aware of, is the distinctions between the materialist, monist and the dualist approaches. The distinction was basically started by the divergent opinions of the two great Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle; Plato being a dualist and Aristotle being a monist. Later thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and...
Words: 4935 - Pages: 20
...Anna Calabrese Ch107 December 3, 2011 The Gnostic Movement(s) and the role of Women There is current pop cultural obsession with Gnosticism. A glimpse at the documentary section of Netflix will prove this to be true. Gnosticism is often presented as a mystical and poetic alternative to the patriarchal hierarchy of the Christian Church. It is also often presented as a safer and more holistic religious home for women, free of many of the misogynistic barriers of the larger institution of the church. But how much of this is true? What is Gnosticism anyway and what does it really have to say about women? This paper will explore these questions by giving an overview of what Gnosticism really is, beyond a new shelf in the Christian self-help section at Barnes and Noble. I will explore this through two Gnostic theologians, Valentinus and Ptolemy. From there, the second section will deal with women and Gnostic thought, giving focus to the role of Mary Magdalene in the Pistis Sophia, The Gospel of Mary, and The Gospel of Phillip. In order to being this exploration of Gnosticism, it is more accurate to begin by discussing Gnosticisms, acknowledging primarily that Gnosticism was more than just one movement but a series of movements that shared a common belief in salvation through knowledge.[1] These movements, or this style of “speculative religious metaphysics”[2], pre-exist Christianity and came to have largest impact on Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. According...
Words: 3143 - Pages: 13
...ACCRA, NOVEMBER, 2011 Table of content pages Introduction 1 1. Philosophy of history 1 2. Philosophy of religion 4 3. Logic 6 4. Ethics 8 5. Cosmology 10 6. Philosophy of mind 12 7. Metaphysics 14 8. Philosophy of beauty 16 9. Philosophy of language 18 10. Philosophy of science 20 11. Epistemology 21 Conclusion 23 Bibliography 24 Introduction Philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom. Philosophy at this contemporary world has gone through a lot of changes before getting to this stage. It can be seen in the historical perspective and also the topical perspective. The historical or chronological is when we look at the ideas of some philosophers in the past how they influence society with their way of thinking and the motive behind them. In these chronological system is the ancient era, the medieval era, the modern era and presently the contemporary era. In the beginning all systematic search for knowledge was philosophy. This is clearly seen in the modern university where the highest degree granted in all of the science and humanities is the Ph. D. the doctor of philosophy. But the children began to leave home. The first to leave was physics and astronomy. As they begun to develop experimental techniques of their own. This exodus, led by Galileo and Isaac Newton and Johannes...
Words: 6713 - Pages: 27
...During the early 1300s, Bishop Jacques Fournier, a “zealous churchman” (vii) who would eventually become Pope Benedict XII, was responsible for organizing a campaign to remove sacrilege from his diocese in southern France. Through his efforts, Fournier discovered a small village located in the Pyrenees, “close to the frontier between France and Spain” (vii). This village, Montaillou, was the home of hundreds of peasants who had not yet been converted to Catholicism. Because they were not practicing Catholics, Fournier had many inhabitants of Montaillou brought before him for questioning. Unlike other Inquisitors, Fournier took care to record every detail from his appointments with the peasants, hoping to develop a greater understanding of their culture and reasons for maintaining a society which, from his perspective, was founded upon heresy. Through his efforts, Fournier compiled a massive amount of information describing the Montaillou way of life. This information was later used by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie in his novel which reintroduced Montaillou to modern people. These records reveal that Montaillou was a society with many unique customs and beliefs, but our understanding of the village is, and will always be, incomplete. This stems from the facts that the peasants were not able to personally provide their history, due to a lack of literacy, and that Fournier was not entirely objective in his records. Montaillou was subject to investigation by Fournier because...
Words: 1948 - Pages: 8
...------------------------------------------------- A2 Religious Studies ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- A2 PHILOSOPHY REVISION NOTES ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- The Body and Soul Introduction * Materialism is the view that the mind cannot be separated from the body * Idealism is the view that the mind is the only reality and the body is unreal. * Dualism is the view that the mind and body both exist and are linked in some way. Plato Review Plato’s distinction between body and soul in the foundation unit so that you can make comparisons with the thinking of Hick and of Dawkins. John Hick Philosophy of Religion (1973); Death and Eternal Life (1976) * The soul is a name for the moral, spiritual self formed by the interaction of genes and environment. The human is a psychophysical person with a divine purpose. * The person shall be resurrected through a divine act of recreation or reconstitution in resurrection, rather than reincarnation as Plato would have it, through God’s creative love. * The new body is not the old one brought back to life but a spiritual body inhabiting a spiritual world just as the physical body...
Words: 8946 - Pages: 36
...A2 Religious Studies Revision Booklet To be used alongside the textbook and your classnotes. Contents G581: Philosophy of Religion Religious Language......................................................………p.1 Religious Experience........................................................…...p.7 Miracles..................................................................…………...p.12 Nature of God............................................................………...p.16 Life and Death.........................................................…………..p.20 G582: Religious Ethics Meta-ethics...........................…………………………………….p.25 Free Will and Determinism………………………………….……p.28 Conscience.......................…………………………………….…p.32 Virtue Ethics………………………………………………………..p.36 Sexual Ethics…………………………………………………...….p.40 Environment and Business Ethics……………………………….p.44 Religious Language Introduction The problems of religious language: • If we use language univocally about God, then we are limiting him / making him like a human • If we use language equivocally about God, we cannot be sure what the word means when applied to God • Are statements about God supposed to be cognitive – if so, what evidence proves / disproves them? • Are statements about God supposed to be non-cognitive – if so, do they have any meaning? The Verification...
Words: 22600 - Pages: 91
...------------------------------------------------- A2 Religious Studies ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- A2 PHILOSOPHY REVISION NOTES ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- The Body and Soul Introduction * Materialism is the view that the mind cannot be separated from the body * Idealism is the view that the mind is the only reality and the body is unreal. * Dualism is the view that the mind and body both exist and are linked in some way. Plato Review Plato’s distinction between body and soul in the foundation unit so that you can make comparisons with the thinking of Hick and of Dawkins. John Hick Philosophy of Religion (1973); Death and Eternal Life (1976) * The soul is a name for the moral, spiritual self formed by the interaction of genes and environment. The human is a psychophysical person with a divine purpose. * The person shall be resurrected through a divine act of recreation or reconstitution in resurrection, rather than reincarnation as Plato would have it, through God’s creative love. * The new body is not the old one brought back to life but a spiritual body inhabiting a spiritual world just as the physical body...
Words: 8946 - Pages: 36
...Transilvania University of Brașov Faculty of Letters MA Study Programme Anglo – American literature by woman MA student: Șerban Agurița Dorinela 1 st year – R.F. 2012 – 2013 Feminism is political label indicating support for the aims of the new woman’s movement which emerged in the late 1960s. This includes seeking to establish equal opportunities for women in education and employment. A feminist is an advocate or supporter of the rights and equality of women. Feminist theory, which emerged from these feminist movements, aims to understand the nature of gender inequality by examining women's social roles and lived experience; it has developed theories in a variety of disciplines in order to respond to issues such as the social construction of sex and gender. Some of the earlier forms of feminism have been criticized for taking into account only white, middle-class, educated perspectives. This led to the creation of ethnically specific or multiculturalism forms of feminism. The feminist movement produced both feminist fiction and non-fiction, and created new interest in women's writing. Nights at the Circus is a novel by Angela Carter, first published in 1984 and that year's winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. The novel focuses on...
Words: 4067 - Pages: 17
...Ang Konpusyanismo (Ingles: Confucianism; Tsino: 儒家; pinyin: rú jiā) ay isang sinaunang sistemang pang-etika at pampilosipiyang Tsino na unang pinaunlad mula sa mga turo ni Confucius, isang sinauang paham at pilosopong Tsino. Itinuturo nito ang tao ay sadyang itinulak ng tadhana upang makisalamuha sa kapwa tao sa lipunan. Kaya ang mga abnormal lamang at ang hindi "natural" na tao ang namumuhay sa labas ng mga pamayanan. Ang pakikisalamuha sa kapwa tao ang pinakamahalaga upang mabuhay sapagkat sa lipunan lamang malalaman ng tao sa lipunan ay tinatawag na "jen". Ipinaliwanag ang salitang ito bilang "pagiging mabuti at mapagbigay sa nangangailangan", "simpatya", "pusong makatao" at "makatuwid na kaugalian". Kasama sa jen ang "pagnanais na makatulong sa iba na maabot nila ang kanilang hangarin'. Dahil dito, ipinanukala na Konpusyanismo ang tamang aksyon na makikita sa pagtupad sa mga tungkulin sa lipunan: Pinuno at mga tagasunod; ama at anak; matandang kapatid at nakakabatang kapatid; asawang lalaki at asawang babae;at kaibigan sa kaibigan; at lahat ng relasyon maliban sa huli ay nangangahulugan ng pagkilala ng awtoridad ng isang tao sa nakabababa sa kanya. Subalit maisasakatuparan ng nagsabing awtoridad ng may responsibilidad at pagmamahal. Ang nakabababa ay may tungkulin sumunod nang may pagmamahal at katapatan sa nakakataas sa mantalang ang nakatataas ay may tungkuling magpakita ng responsibilidad ng may pagmamahal ng nakakababa sa kanya. Ang Konpusyanismo ay ang pamamalakad ng tao sa...
Words: 5627 - Pages: 23
...AS Religious Studies [pic] PHILOSOPHY & ETHICS Revision Summary Notes Revision Notes Foundation for the Study of Religion Part One: Philosophy of Religion Plato and the Forms Influence of Socrates • Socrates said that virtue is knowledge – to know what is right is to do what is right. • All wrongdoing is the result of ignorance – nobody chooses to do wrong deliberately. • Therefore, to be moral you must have true knowledge. The problem of the One and the Many Plato was trying to find a solution to the problem that although there is underlying stability in the world (sun comes up every morning), it is constantly changing (you never step into the same river twice). 1. An old theory about this problem is that we gain all knowledge from our senses – empirically. 2. Plato disagreed with this. He said that because the world is constantly changing, our senses cannot be trusted. Plato illustrated his idea in the dialogue, ‘Meno’: Socrates sets a slave boy a mathematical problem. The slave boy knows the answer, yet he has not been taught maths. Plato suggests that the slave boy remembers the answer to the problem, which has been in his mind all along. So, according to Plato, we don't learn new things, we remember them. In other words, knowledge is innate. Plato’s Theory of the Forms Plato believed that the world was divided into: 1. Reality and; 2. Appearance |REALITY ...
Words: 17188 - Pages: 69
...Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles, and Far-fetched Fables. In Man and Superman, especially the third act, the preface, and The Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion, Shaw touches on two main themes: the pursuit of man by woman and the direction of evolution, which Shaw sees as leading towards the development of the mind and brain. In Back to Methusalah, Shaw carries forward his vision of evolution as proceeding in the direction of mental development but introduces a seemingly new idea in the last play of the cycle, the antithesis of mind and body. Shaw's dualism receives its most explicit statement in the last play of the cycle although there may be indications of it in the earlier plays. The mind-body antithesis, however, derives as a philosophical problem from Descartes,1 although the antithesis also appeared in the Manichean and Gnostic heresies, the spirit, or mind, being regarded as good and the body as evil. Although the antithesis of body and mind makes its first open appearance in the Methusalah cycle, it is present, at least as an implicit assumption in Man and Superman. Don Juan continually expresses his longing for the life of contemplation, a life which is to be achieved at the expense of the body. We will deal with the presence of the mind body antithesis, and its possible source, in this paper. The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles is not one of Shaw's best plays; moreover, it is in a sense tangential to the main line of development that Shaw's evolutionary...
Words: 49397 - Pages: 198
...mTELECOURSE STUDY GUIDE FOR The Examined Life FOURTH EDITION author J. P. White Chair, Department of Philosophy Santa Barbara City College contributing author Manuel Velasquez Professor of Philosophy Santa Clara University This Telecourse Study Guide for The Examined Life is part of a collegelevel introduction to philosophy telecourse developed in conjunction with the video series The Examined Life, and the text Philosophy: A Text with Readings, tenth edition, by Manuel Velasquez, The Charles Dirksen Professor, Santa Clara University. The television series The Examined Life was designed and produced by INTELECOM Intelligent Telecommunications, Netherlands Educational Broadcasting Corporation (TELEAC/NOT), and Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company (UR) Copyright © 2007, 2005, 2002, 1999 by INTELECOM Intelligent Telecommunications All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of INTELECOM Intelligent Telecommunications, 150 E. Colorado Blvd., Suite 300, Pasadena, California 91105-1937. ISBN: 0-495-10302-0 Contents Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Lesson One — What is Philosophy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....
Words: 78103 - Pages: 313
...Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body A Cliff Notes’ Version Introduction A. The Theology of the Body is the term used to describe the teaching of Pope John Paul about the human person and human sexuality given during his Wednesday Catecheses in St. Peter’s Square between September 5, 1979 and November 28, 1984. John Paul II says that these catecheses could be called “Human Love in the Divine Plan” or “The Redemption of the Body and the Sacramentality of Marriage.” B. Various scholars, in different language groupings, will generally break the theology of the body found in these 129 catecheses down into four main sections, others six. I think the most logical way to do so is to break it down into seven interrelated sections: 1) The Original Unity of Man and Woman as found in the Book of Genesis • 23 catecheses from September 5, 1979-April 9, 1980 2) Purity of Heart versus Concupiscence: Catechesis on the Sermon on the Mount • 27 catecheses from April 16 to December 10, 1980 3) St. Paul’s Teaching on the Human Body: Life according to the Spirit • 13 catechesis from December 17, 1980 to May 6, 1981 4) Marriage and celibacy in light of the resurrection of the body • 9 catechesis from November 11, 1981 to February 10, 1982 5) Virginity or celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven • 14 catecheses from March 10, 1982 to July 21, 1982 6) The sacramentality of marriage based on Ephesians 5:22-33 • 27 catecheses from July 28, 1982 to July 4, 1984 7) Reflections...
Words: 32011 - Pages: 129
...A religion is an organized collection of beliefs, cultural systems, and world views that relate humanity to an order of existence.[note 1] Many religions have narratives, symbols, and sacred histories that aim to explain the meaning of life, the origin of life, or the Universe. From their beliefs about the cosmos and human nature, people may derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle. Many religions may have organized behaviors, clergy, a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership, holy places, and scriptures. The practice of a religion may include rituals, sermons, commemoration or veneration (of a deity, gods, or goddesses), sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trances, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, prayer, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture. Religions may also contain mythology.[1] The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with faith or set of duties;[2] however, in the words of Émile Durkheim, religion differs from private belief in that it is "something eminently social".[3] A global 2012 poll reports 59% of the world's population as "religious" and 36% as not religious, including 13% who are atheists, with a 9% decrease in religious belief from 2005.[4] On average, women are "more religious" than men.[5] Some people follow multiple religions or multiple religious principles at the same time, regardless of whether or not the religious principles they follow traditionally...
Words: 7947 - Pages: 32
