Category Archives: Virtues

03/6/08

A Free AND Responsible Search For Truth And Meaning

Quite often, religious titles are fairly descriptive and clear-cut.  Baptist Christians are distinguished by their belief in the importance of baptism.  Shi’i, or شيعي meaning “partisan” in Arabic, are partisans of Imam ‘Ali.   In Hinduism, a Shaiva is a follower of Shiva and a Vaishnava is a follower of Vishnu.  Zen/Ch’an (禅) Buddhists emphasize meditation, which is the meaning of zen/ch’an.  The names of these denominations are accurate descriptors of the principles they hold.

As we’ve discussed before, when the words we use to describe religion are clear, it keeps our discussion of religion from becoming irrational and incoherent.  On the other hand, when the terminology is needlessly confused, truth and meaning become impossible goals. Continue reading →

02/14/08

Taking Religion Seriously

Today I would like to talk about the lack of seriousness in religion.  Religion, whether conservative or liberal, often fails to take its subject matter as something real.  Conservatives are more concerned with the sancrosanctity of  received stories about God than God Himself, and liberals are more concerned with God as a story than as a Creator. 

When studying religion, I could not help but notice that the way we talk about religion typically focuses on the terminology and ideology of the religions themselves rather than exploring the subject matter referenced by those terms and ideologies. 

For example, does it make sense to use the same word “god” when talking about the Latin Jupiter and the Jewish El (אל), since Jupiter is a creature while El is uncreated?   If a god (little “g”) is just a divine creature, isn’t that more like an angel, ghost, jinn, or fairy than like uncreated God?  

And, don’t most of these multiple-god religions have some uncreated entity backstage of the universe, bringing it all into existence, as some forms of Hinduism have their Ishvara?   If our definition of what constitutes a theos (θεός) is unclear or equivocal, then isn’t all of our talk about monotheism vs. polytheism just a lot of bunk: not just our coffee-shop-and-sports-bar talk but even the professional work of religious scholars? 

Why should the terminology of Religious Studies (as it is being called lately) be defined any less precisely than any other field of knowledge? Continue reading →

01/7/08

The Meaning of Love, Faith, and Hope

Our English word “faith” comes from the Latin fides, meaning “fidelity” or “loyalty,” and in Christian usage it was employed to translate the Hebrew emunah (אמונה) which carried a meaning of security, supportiveness, and firmness.

Faith originally did not mean credulity, believing something simply because someone tells you to believe. It meant being secure in what you know, a meaning closer to “confidence,” although there is an element of non-thinking: emun means “craftsman” in Hebrew, someone who is confident of his ability without having to think about it.

Many Christians derive their conception of faith from the Letter to the Hebrews:

11:1 And faith is confidence in things hoped for, a conviction in matters not seen, 2 the elders were recognized for this; 3 by faith we understand the universe to have been caused by the Word of God, that visible things did not arise from something visible.

Far from justifying blind acceptance of dogma, this definition of faith merely distinguishes the “invisible God” (Letter to the Colossians 1:15) from created things, which we can detect with our senses, and establishes faith as applying specifically to the former. Even so, there is a much richer vision of faith in AUR, giving it an integral meaning in the Christian idiom beyond merely justifying belief in the unseen.

Faith has been described as one of the three “theological virtues” alongside love and hope, and it helps to think of it in relation to the other two. Continue reading →