Deity (Part II) * Chapter 8

1. Deity (Part II) * Chapter 8 Concepts of God/gods: pantheism monism monotheism

2. 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

3. p.167 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.

4. 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.

5. 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).

6. Anaximander: all isapeiron(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.

7. 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)

8. 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 finallyBrahman 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.

9. The First Monotheisms • PharoahAmenhotep IV in Egypt (1375 BC) Aton 1. Zoroaster in Persia (Iran) Babylonian captivity Israel’s monotheism 2. Israel’s henotheism •  Jews read back monotheism into Torah 3. Greek logos Christianity: a Greek/Jewish synthesis Spreads through, Levant and the Mediterranean throughout the Roman Empire (Europe, Western Civilization)

10. 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 people • p. 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

11. 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

12. Omniscience: all knowing • Omnipresent: present in all places at all times.