God, concepts of

Those whose conceptions of God stem from the major Eastern and Western religions think of God as an ultimate reality, the source or ground of all else, perfect ...

God, concepts of

By Leftow, Brian

We think of God as an ultimate reality, the source or ground of all else, perfect and deserving of worship. Such a conception is common to both Eastern ...

Kabbalah

By Leaman, Oliver

Kabbalah is the body of Jewish mystical writings which became important at the end of the twelfth century in Provence and has been taken up with varying degrees ...

Bible, Hebrew

By Cohn-Sherbok, Dan

Although the Bible is not a work of systematic philosophy, it none the less contains a wide variety of philosophical and theological ideas which have served as the ...

Godfrey of Fontaines (c.1250–c.1306/9)

By Wippel, John F.

Godfrey of Fontaines studied philosophy and theology at the University of Paris and subsequently taught theology there. A theologian by profession, he developed a highly interesting philosophy, especially ...

John of St Thomas (1589–1644)

By Doyle, John P.

The seventeenth-century Portuguese Dominican, John of St Thomas or John Poinsot, was a major figure in late scholastic philosophy and theology. Educated at Coimbra and Louvain, he taught ...

Omnipresence

By Leftow, Brian

Western Scripture and religious experience find God present everywhere. Western thinkers make sense of this as their concepts of God dictate. Pantheists hold that God’s being everywhere is ...

Open theism

By Sanders, John

Open theism is the name for a model of God which emphasizes divine love and responsiveness to creatures. It arises from a family of theologies known as free-will ...

Giles of Rome (c.1243/7–1316)

By Del Punta, Francesco; Trifogli, Cecilia

Giles of Rome was one of the most eminent theologians and commentators on the works of Aristotle at the University of Paris in the second half of the ...

Tian

By Hall, David L.; Ames, Roger T.

Tian, conventionally translated as ‘Heaven’, is both what our world is and how it is. The myriad things are not the creatures of tian or disciplined by ...

God, Indian conceptions of

By Bhattacharyya, Sibajiban

In the Ṛg Veda, the oldest text in India, many gods and goddesses are mentioned by name; most of them appear to be deifications of natural powers, such ...

Freedom, divine

By Rowe, William L.

In the theistic tradition, many thinkers have held that God is infinitely powerful, all-knowing, perfectly good and perfectly free. But since a perfectly good being would invariably follow ...

Tonghak

By Ch’oe, Yông-Ho

Tonghak is an indigenous religion in Korea. Founded by Ch’oe Cheu (1824–64), it presently flourishes under the new name of Ch’ôndogyo. An eclectic religion, Tonghak borrowed from Confucianism, ...

Ibn Hazm, Abu Muhammad ‘Ali (994–1063)

By Leaman, Oliver; Albdour, Salman

Ibn Hazm was the originator of a school of interpretation which based its understanding of religious texts on the apparent meaning of scriptural concepts as opposed to their ...

David of Dinant (fl. c.1210)

By Mann, William E.

A twelfth- and early thirteenth-century philosopher who may have taught at Paris, David of Dinant was noted for a heretical, pantheistic view that identified God, mind and matter. ...

Geulincx, Arnold (1624–69)

By Verbeek, Theo

Rediscovered in the middle of the nineteenth century, for a long time it was only because of his relation with other more conspicuous philosophers, such as Spinoza, Leibniz ...

Ibn al-‘Arabi, Muhyi al-Din (1164–1240)

By Robinson, Neal

Ibn al-‘Arabi was a mystic who drew on the writings of Sufis, Islamic theologians and philosophers in order to elaborate a complex theosophical system akin to that of ...

Theology, Rabbinic

By Botwinick, Aryeh

The Talmud, a shelf of folio volumes built up out of the expansive reflections of generations of scholar/thinkers whose discourse formed a commentary or complement (Gemara) to the ...

Simplicity, divine

By Leftow, Brian

To be complex is to have many parts. To be simple is to have few. Theists of all religious traditions have asserted that God is completely simple – ...

Matthew of Aquasparta (c.1238–1302)

By Brown, Stephen F.

Matthew walked in the footsteps of Bonaventure, which were widened by his first followers, Walter of Bruges, John Pecham and William of Mare. For them, the knowledge of ...

Augustine (AD 354–430)

By Matthews, Gareth B.

Augustine was the first of the great Christian philosophers. For well over eight centuries following his death, in fact until the ascendancy of Thomas Aquinas at the end ...

Salvation

By Yandell, Keith E.

For there to be such a thing as salvation, there must be someone to be saved, something from which they need to be saved, and some way in ...

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770–1831)

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is one of the most influential thinkers of the nineteenth century. His thought had a profound impact on later philosophers, social theorists and theologians, ...

Religion, philosophy of

Philosophy of religion comprises philosophical reflection on a wide range of religious and religiously significant phenomena: religious belief, doctrine and practice in general; the phenomenology and cognitive significance ...

Kaplan, Mordecai (1881–1983)

By Ellenson, David

Kaplan argued that Judaism was the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people. He attempted to recast an inherited faith in rational and natural terms. His advocacy of ...