Throughout Christian history, countless heresies—Gnosticism, Arianism, etc.—have challenged its legitimacy. Humanity, being of physical nature, delights to view encounters with God in the physical. This trait makes a relationship with God more understandable to human nature. Many heresies place themselves as mediators for God, or man being the center of existence, as the Gnostics for example. However, Theocentrism is a belief in which God is center to existence. The importance and worth of people or the environment are ascribed to God’s one-time creation, while ignoring the trinities work in the world—much like the Deist ideology. Theocentrism, through the costume of meekness, equability, and mindfulness is believed to contribute to the formation …show more content…
With the concept of God being the center of one’s life, it becomes perfectly natural to focus life events and circumstances on God, and to give God credit for accomplishment in life. Theocentrism holds to an entirely different view, which does not reflect the Christian belief. Theocentrism has a couple of different interpretations. One where God is still God, but he is attached to all creation (nature has the same value as humanity); the other where God is creation and human beings should worship God by witnessing and caring for all of creation. The bottom line is Theocentrism is a belief that God is everything and within everything. This belief is similar to pantheism. However, Theocentrism focuses on physical connections to God instead of spiritual. Therefore, the knowledge of God instructs humanity in their proper dealing with creation. One of the essential gifts within knowledge of God is “a perfect knowledge of the nature of the animals, the herbs, the fruits, the trees, and the remaining creatures. Unlike pantheism, Theocentrism believes there is one God who created and works within the world, yet dwells within all of his creation. In this, God is more than the trinity, which implies that the importance and worth of people and the environment, are ascribed to God’s one time creation, while ignoring the trinities work in the world—much like the Deistic …show more content…
Whenever someone holds nature and how man is connected to all of creation—nature and man—one is thinking in a Theocentric way. Theocentrism can rationally be considered the apologetic bridge between “theology and science.” Gordon Kaufman is considered a leading figure in the Theocentric theology in the 20th century. The author Thomas James wrote a journal on Gordon Kaufman, stating that Kaufman discussed the Theocentric theology as being “deeply responsive to the naturalistic picture of the world being worked out in the natural sciences.” Kaufman believed in the theories from science, but had a conviction aimed at the belief in One God over all. This led him to participate in the discussion of Theocentrism because of his belief in one God; Kaufman was left with a dilemma so he concluded that God was more than just creator, God must indwell creation itself. To describe actions of creation such as the big bang theory, or evolution, Kaufman would argue that, as science, good things, or an outcome of something good, was an act of God, while also saying that the action was God Himself. This brought the view that everything must have a value attached to it, naming it good or bad. This is the beginning of meekness, equability, and mindfulness, contributing to the formation of natural
The foundation of a Christian worldview is the belief in a personal God, creator and ruler of the universe. The Christian worldview views the world through God’s word, providing the framework for humanity to live by giving meaning and purpose to life. It defines who Jesus is, human nature, and how salvation is achieved. In essence it is the basis of which Christians behave, interact, interpret life and comprehend reality. A Christian worldview imparts confidence, answers to life’s problems, and hope for the future. In this paper I will discuss the essentials of a Christian worldview and an analysis of the influences, benefits, and difficulties sustaining the Christian faith.
Richmond, B.A. "Deism: It's History, Beliefs, & Practices." Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance. 25 July 2000. http://www.religioustolerance.org/deism.htm.
Scripture,” the idea that the Bible is God’s perfect word, the clearest expression of God’s plan
In Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcy's essay, "Worldviews in Conflict," the authors evaluate the shifting culture context of today's society and how Christianity fits into this situation. The essay compares the differing views between Christianity and today's worldview, and informs the reader on how to engage today's culture. "Worldviews in Conflict" is a reliable source because its authors, audience, publication, and purpose make it
I will divide this paper in a few key points. The first is what Gnosticism is. The second is the
After Sir Charles Darwin had introduced his original theory about the origins of species and evolution, humanity’s faith in God that remained undisputed for hundreds of years had reeled. The former unity fractured into the evolutionists, who believed that life as we see it today had developed from smaller and more primitive organisms, and creationists, who kept believing that life in all its diversity was created by a higher entity. Each side introduced substantial arguments to support their claims, but at the same time the counter-arguments of each opponent are also credible. Therefore, the debates between the evolutionists and the creationists seem to be far from ending. And though their arguments are completely opposite, they can co-exist or even complement each other.
Unlike the Eastern Orthodox Church, the “truly Trinitarian framework [of] our worship and life has rarely been found” in the Western Church (pg. 6). Possibly due to the early church’s Hellenistic influence, emphasis has always been placed on worshiping the ONE high God. So much focus on one God created an irrelevance to the requirement of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. Similarly, when the doctrine was attacked by reason in the enlightenment period, Christians st...
People are in search of understanding life and the happenings that surround them. When things go wrong, people turn to God for hope and understanding. As we look at the Jewish and the Christian faiths, both of which trace their origins back past Abraham and Moses, to the original stories of the Garden of Eden, we notice basic similarities and major differences between the two religions. The three main differences between Jewish and Christianity is the concept of God, judgment, and salvation. The most eminent difference between both religions is the concept of God. Christianity believes that God is trinity which means three persons in one the father, the son and the holy spirit. However Judaism sees God as a single entity, and viewsTrinitarianism as a violation of the Bible's teaching that ...
“Christianity, along with all other theistic belief systems, is the fraud of the age. It serves to detach the species from the natural world, likewise, each other. It supports blind submission to authority[control of the masses].”(Zeitgeist 2007) In this essay, we will explore the different roots of religion and the plagiarism that Christianity and a number of different religions have committed.
Pope, in his Essay on Man, takes the religious approach when thinking about the common man. In the epistles, Pope suggests that the common man is ungrateful of God. He claims that man only blames God for their hardships, but does not thank him for their bounty. Pope brings to light a theological theory that man attempts to claim that they are better than God, to which he responds with scathing regard. Pope regards the common man as disrespecting because of their blasphemous lack of appreciation of their lord. In this philosophical poem, it could be seen that his distaste for the common man’s disregard of God is relates to Pope’s presentation of his view on the Universe; that no matter how imperfect, complex, inscrutable and disturbing the Universe
Smart, Ninian. "Blackboard, Religion 100." 6 March 2014. Seven Dimensions of Religion. Electronic Document. 6 March 2014.
The problem of reconciling an omnipotent, perfectly just, perfectly benevolent god with a world full of evil and suffering has plagued believers since the beginning of religious thought. Atheists often site this paradox in order to demonstrate that such a god cannot exist and, therefore, that theism is an invalid position. Theodicy is a branch of philosophy that seeks to defend religion by reconciling the supposed existence of an omnipotent, perfectly just God with the presence of evil and suffering in the world. In fact, the word “theodicy” consists of the Greek words “theos,” or God, and “dike,” or justice (Knox 1981, 1). Thus, theodicy seeks to find a sense of divine justice in a world filled with suffering.
Political texts are representative of individual, shared and competing ideologies within a society and can be constructed in various forms to enhance their diverse contexts and inherent perspectives. Ultimately, political perspectives and society shape one another; they’re inextricably linked and cyclical in nature.
Throughout the modern age the subject of Gnosticism has stood in contrast to the concepts of traditional, orthodox Christianity. The subject of Gnosticism has served to represent the ideas and practices of Christianity that were not sanctioned by orthodox Christianity. Generally, we have come to understand that the world of Christianity has been assembled and constructed in the first five centuries after the death of Christ. In a sense, events such as the Council of Nicaea represent arbitrary decisions to compile the official church-sanctioned version of Christianity. Any writings or practices that fell outside of the formal circle of Christian doctrine became candidates for the label of Gnosticism.
ABSTRACT: Curiously, in the late twentieth century, even agnostic cosmologists like Stephen Hawking—who is often compared with Einstein—pose metascientific questions concerning a Creator and the cosmos, which science per se is unable to answer. Modern science of the brain, e.g. Roger Penrose's Shadows of the Mind (1994), is only beginning to explore the relationship between the brain and the mind-the physiological and the epistemic. Galileo thought that God's two books-Nature and the Word-cannot be in conflict, since both have a common author: God. This entails, inter alia, that science and faith are to two roads to the Creator-God. David Granby recalls that once upon a time, science and religion were perceived as complementary enterprises, with each scientific advance confirming the grandeur of a Superior Intelligence-God. Are we then at the threshold of a new era of fruitful dialogue between science and religion, one that is mediated by philosophy in the classical sense? In this paper I explore this question in greater detail.