From: ed
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2015
HZL
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2015
It is a well known fact that God
Chose to make His people suffer
Watching Arabs get oil rich
While they were given the barren ditch.
ON FAITHS
monotheism is like being married
and monolatrism is like having something on the side
so when your principal G-d makes you feel harried
you may with a lesser deity abide.
Or even, can
though it seems hazy,
rely on man
and believe in democracy
with a very small d
despite the repeated lessons
of history.
7/212/15
PS: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
Aristotle
Aristotle
Monotheism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Monotheism is defined by the Encyclopædia Britannica as belief in the existence of one god or in the oneness of God.[1] The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church gives a more restricted definition: "belief in one personal andtranscendent God", as opposed to polytheism and pantheism.[2] A distinction may be made between exclusive monotheism, and both inclusive monotheism and pluriform monotheism which, while recognising many distinct gods, postulate some underlying unity.[3]
Monotheism characterizes the traditions of Babism, the Bahá'í Faith, Cao Dai (Caodaiism), Cheondoism (Cheondogyo), Christianity, Deism, Eckankar, Islam, Judaism, Rastafari, Ravidassia religion, Seicho no Ie,Shaivism, Shaktism, Sikhism, Tenrikyo (Tenriism), Vaishnavism, and Zoroastrianism and elements of the belief are discernible in numerous other religions including Atenism and Ancient Chinese religion.[4]
Contents
[hide]Origin and development[edit]
The word monotheism comes from the Greek μόνος (monos)[5] meaning "single" and θεός (theos)[6] meaning "god".[7] The English term was first used by Henry More (1614–1687).[8]
According to Christian tradition, monotheism was the original religion of humanity but was generally lost after the fall of man.[citation needed] This theory was largely abandoned in the 19th century in favour of an evolutionary progression from animism via polytheism to monotheism, but by 1974 this theory was less widely held.[2] Austrian anthropologist Wilhelm Schmidt had postulated an Urmonotheismus, "original" or "primitive monotheism" in the 1910s.[9] It was objected that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam had grown up in opposition to polytheism as had Greek philosophical monotheism.[2] Furthermore, while belief in a "high god" is not universal, it is found in many parts of Africa and numerous other areas of the world.[10]
Monolatrism can be a stage in the development of monotheism from polytheism. Three examples of this are the Aten cult in the reign of the Egyptian pharaohAkhenaten, the rise of Marduk from the tutelary of Babylon to the claim of universal supremacy, and the rise of Yahweh from among the Canaanite gods to the sole God of Judaism.[11]
In Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda appears as a supreme and transcendental deity. Depending on the date of Zoroaster (usually considered to be contemporary with the Vedas[12]), this may be one of the earliest documented instances of the emergence of monism in an Indo-European religion.
In the cities of the Ancient Near East, each city had a local patron deity, such as Shamash at Larsa or Sin at Ur. The first claims of global supremacy of a specific god date to the Late Bronze Age, with Akhenaten's Great Hymn to the Aten (speculatively connected to Judaism by Sigmund Freud in his Moses and Monotheism). However the historicity of the Exodus is disputed. Furthermore it is not clear to what extent Akhenaten's Atenism was monotheistic rather thanhenotheistic with Akhenaten himself identified with the god Aten.[citation needed]
Currents of monism or monotheism emerge in Vedic India earlier, chiefly with worship of Lord Krishna, which is full-fledged monotheism, but also with e.g. theNasadiya Sukta. In the Indo-Iranian tradition, the Rigveda exhibits notions of monism, in particular in the comparatively late tenth book, also dated to the early Iron Age, e.g. in the Nasadiya sukta.
Ethical monotheism and the associated concept of absolute good and evil emerge in Zoroastrianism and Judaism, later culminating in the doctrines ofChristology in early Christianity and later (by the 7th century) in the tawhid in Islam.
More detailed definitions[edit]
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- Deism posits the existence of a single creator god, who has little or no continued involvement with the world.[13] Samuel Clarkedistinguished four types of deist: those who believed in a creator with no further interest in the world; those who also saw a certain providential ordering of the material universe but not in the moral and spiritual spheres; those who in addition, believed God had some moral attributes but did not believe in a future life; and those who, while rejecting revelation, accepted all the truths of natural religion.[14]
- The term Henotheism has two distinct uses. In the context of biblical studies it normally means the exclusive worship of a tribal-national deity which does not deny the reality of patron deities of other peoples, while elsewhere it often becomes a synonym formonolatry, that is belief in or the worship of one god without denying the existence of others.[15] Hinduism is sometimes overgeneralized to as henotheistic.[16]
- Monism is the philosophical stance that explains all that is in terms of a single reality and thus conflicts with any belief which distinguishes radically between different grades of being (e.g. Christianity).[17] The type of monotheism found in Hinduism, encompassing pantheism and panentheism is monistic.
- Panentheism is a form of monistic monotheism which holds that the being of God includes and penetrates all the Universe but unlike pantheism (see below) the universe is not identical with God.[18]
- Pantheism holds that the universe and God are identical.[19] Philosophically, it maintains that there is only one substance which is absolute, eternal and infinite so all things, including human beings, are not independent substances but only modes or manifestations of the Absolute.[20] The existence of a transcendent being extraneous to nature is denied.
- Substance monotheism, found in some indigenous African religions, holds that the many gods are different forms of a single underlying substance.
- Trinitarian monotheism is the Christian doctrine of belief in one God who is three distinct "persons": God the Father, God the Son (Jesus) and God the Holy Spirit. When used in this context, the word "person" is a technical term and means "something very different from what it does in common speech".[21] In particular, the idea of self-consciousness found in contemporary usage was not at all prominent.[22]
Abrahamic religions[edit]
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Further information: Abrahamic religions
Abrahamic religions are monotheistic faiths of Middle Eastern origin, emphasizing and tracing their origins to Abraham[23] or recognizing a spiritual tradition identified with him.[24][25][26] As of the early twenty-first century, the majority of the world's population (54% or 3.8 billion people) consider themselves as monotheists and adherents of the Abrahamic religions.[27][28]
While adherents of Abrahamic religions consider themselves to be monotheists, Judaism and Islam only recognize each other as being monotheistic.
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