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The title page to the 1611 first edition of the Authorized Version Bible by Cornelius Boel shows the Apostles Peter and Paul seated centrally above the central text, which is flanked by Moses and Aaron. In the four corners sit Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, authors of the four gospels, with their symbolic animals. The rest of the Apostles stand around Peter and Paul. At the very top is the Tetragrammaton "יהוה". The title page's central text is: "THE HOLY BIBLE, Conteyning the Old Teſtament, AND THE NEW: Newly Tranſlated out of the Originall tongues: & with the former Tranſlations diligently compared and reuiſed, by his Maiesties speciall Comandement. Appointed to be read in Churches. Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the Kings moſt Excellent Maiestie. ANNO DOM. 1611 ." At bottom is: "C. Boel ſecit in Richmont.".
Full name:	Authorized Version King James
Abbreviation:	KJV or AV
Complete Bible published:	1611
Textual Basis:	NT: Textus Receptus, similar to the Byzantine text-type; some readings derived from the Vulgate. OT: Masoretic Text with Septuagint influence. Apocrypha: Septuagint with Vulgate influence.
Reading Level:	US and Canada Grade 12,^[1] US and Canada Grade 8-10^[2]
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teachin-n-preachin

Biblical Base, God Given Diet, meant to cure all disease!!!

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:53:14 +0100

Bible Diet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Bible Diet (also known as the Maker's Diet) is a diet promoted on radio and in books by writer and motivational speaker Jordan S. Rubin, who says it is based on teachings from the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy and other books of the bible, that certain foods are either forbidden ("unclean") or acceptable ("clean") to God. Rubin also markets supplements associated with the diet though his company Garden of Life, Inc.

Rubin claims that the diet was responsible for his recovery from Crohn's disease at the age of 19.^[1]^[2] As of 2008, there are no peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that evaluate this diet. In 2004 the United States Food and Drug Administration ordered Rubin's company, Garden of Life, Inc., to stop making unsubstantiated claims about eight of its products and supplements.^[2]

The diet classifies food according to certain factors such as how the food was raised, cooked or cleaned; how a particular animal lived, such as if it was a so-called "creeping" animal or not; and its physical form, such as whether a certain fish had fins and scales or not. While the Bible diet is largely influenced by Jewish dietary law, the rules for determining clean and unclean foods are derived from certain passages from the Bible in the books of Genesis, Proverbs, Luke, Paul, Exodus, Peter, Leviticus, Judges, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Corinthians, Habakkuk, and Daniel.^[1]

In short features based on Rubin's book The Maker's Diet that aired on Christian radio in the United States, Rubin was previously promoted as a "Biblical Health Coach". As of September 2009 these features are titled "Take a Moment for Your Health" and he is instead listed as an author giving "lifestyle advice" based on his book.

[hide]

1 Permitted foods
2 Prohibited Foods
3 Phases of the Diet
4 Claimed benefits
5 Scientific acceptance and criticism
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Permitted foods

The foods incorporated in this diet are organic vegetables, fruits and legumes. The diet also encourages the removal of unclean and unacceptable foods from the individual's diet. This natural, organic approach to eating suggests that one should only eat things created by God in the way they were intended. That means no processed foods or those produced with contact to hormones, pesticides or fertilizers. Rubin takes two of his main dietary laws from Leviticus. Leviticus (11:9-10) states that one should eat “whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters” but not to eat "all that have not fins and scales in the seas."^[2] Rubin says that this means that fish with scales are intended to be eaten, such as salmon and trout, but smooth fish such as catfish and eels should not be eaten. It also means that crustaceans with hard shells such as lobsters, crabs, and clams are not to be eaten. The other main dietary law taken from The Bible is also taken from Leviticus (11:3 and 11:7-8). Here The Bible says that man should eat “whatsoever parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, and cheweth the cud”. Man should not eat “the swine, though he divide the hoof, and be cloven footed, yet he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you.”^[2] This means that most animals can be eaten, such as cows, goats, and sheep because all these animals chew their cud. The dietary laws that Rubin derives from these passages are generally the same as the Kosher laws followed by Jewish people. In addition to the dietary laws taken directly from The Bible, Rubin believes in eating a variety of whole foods that have not been processed, or that have not been greatly processed. This generally means choosing foods like brown rice, which has not been processed much, over white rice, which is significantly processed. Rubin also believes that organic foods and meat from animals that were raised eating grass instead of wild grain is more in line with the foods man was intended to eat. Snacks are not mandated in this diet, but it is advised to feel free to snack on the foods listed as acceptable.^[1]

The types of foods that can be eaten include:

Grains - barley, corn, millet, oats, rice, rye, wheat
Seeds - sunflower, sesame, flax, pumpkin
Legumes - soybeans, lentils, peas, peanuts, other beans
Succulent foods containing seed - bell peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, green beans, melons, okra, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes
Fruits - citrus fruits such as lemons and limes, palm fruits, sweet fruits
Nuts - almonds, Brazil nuts, cashew nuts, pecans, walnuts
Herbs (vegetables): beet greens, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, collard, globe artichoke, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beets, potatoes, turnips

The types of animals that can be eaten include:

Livestock - cow, deer, lamb, caribou, buffalo, elk, goat, moose
Fish - bass, bluefish, crappie, perch, pike, salmon, sunfish, trout
Birds - chicken, turkey, pheasant, grouse, quail
Insects - locusts, crickets, grasshoppers

[edit] Prohibited Foods

Phase One of the Bible diet restricts foods high in carbohydrates such as grains, pastas, breads, sugar, potatoes, corn, beans, and legumes. Although the people on the diet consumed foods containing carbohydrates, they were of high quality and less processed.^[3]

Phase One restricts meats such as pork, bacon, ostrich, ham, sausages, emu and imitation meat. Fish and sea foods such as fried fish, breaded fish, eel, shark, crab, clams, oyster, mussels, lobster, shrimp, scallops, and craw fish are prohibited. Poultry such as fried chicken and breaded chicken is restricted. Phase one inhibits luncheon meats such as turkey, ham, roast beef, and corned beef. Imitation eggs are restricted. Dairy products such as soy milk, almond milk, and rice milk are not allowed. Fats and oils such as lard, shortening, sunflower oil, cotton seed oil, margarine, soy oil, canola oil, corn oil, and any partially hydrogenated oil may not be consumed. Phase one restricts vegetables such as corn, white potato and sweet potato. Beans and legumes such as soy beans, black beans, kidney beans, white beans, and lima beans are forbidden. Nuts and seeds such as honey-roasted nuts, peanuts, cashews, nuts, or seeds dry or roasted in oil are inhibited. condiments, spices, and seasonings such as all spices that contain added sugar, commercial ketchup with sugar and barbecue sauce with sugar may not be consumed. All fruits except berries, grapefruit, limes, and lemons must be avoided. Beverages such as alcohol, fruit juices, sodas, chlorinated tap water, and pre-ground commercial coffee are not allowed. All grains and starchy foods including bread, pasta cereal, rice, oatmeal, pastries, and baked goods must be avoided. Sweeteners such as sugar, heated homey and all artificial sweeteners are forbidden. Milk or whey protein powder from cow's milk, soy protein powder and rice protein powder are restricted.

[edit] Phases of the Diet

The diet is divided into three phases over a 40 day period and broken into three levels: basic, intermediate, and advanced. According to Rubin, the dieter should choose a beginning phase based on their overall starting health and their desired improvements. The chief purpose of the diet is to achieve optimal health by means of nutrition and spirituality.^[3]

[edit] Prayer, Purpose and “Partial-fast" Days

The diet begins and ends each day with prayers of thanksgiving, healing, and petition. The individual should perform exercises of "Life Purpose" for two to five minutes before the day gets too stressful. The exercise should be used as a time of alignment and reflection with realignment cycles taking place every ninety minutes.^[1] Rubin recommends that one day per week in each phase, a partial fast day is taken to allow the body to cleanse and rebuild. On these partial fast days, breakfast and lunch should not be consumed, although, if supplements are being taken, they should still be consumed. Fluid consumption is crucial during these days especially raw vegetables juices and pure water. To achieve the utmost spiritual benefits from the partial fast days, it is suggested to pray each time hunger is experienced.^[4]

[edit] Daily Regimens

The daily regimens help the dieter keep track of their diet while concurrently providing guidelines to achieve optimum results. It consists of morning and evening prayers, regular consumption of breakfast, lunch and dinner, morning and evening exercise, good hygiene practices and the consumption of cleansing drinks. The hygiene factor involves eliminating germs and aromatherapy practices in the morning and evening. The cleansing drink is a mixture of two tablespoons of a whole-food fiber blend and 1-2 tablespoons of a green superfood blend in 8 to 12 ounces of purified water or diluted vegetable juice, shaken vigorously and drunken immediately. The regimen also insists that the dieter be in bed before 10:30 p.m. every night.^[4]

[edit] Phase One

The diet begins with Phase One, which encompasses the first two weeks of the diet (days 1-14). Phase One is designed to stabilize insulin and blood sugar while reducing inflammation and infection, enhancing digestion and helping to balance the hormones in the body.^[1] This phase restricts disaccharide-rich carbohydrate foods such as grains, pastas, breads, sugar, potatoes, corn, beans, and legumes. The object of this, according to Rubin, is to achieve a detoxifying effect while simultaneously improving the overall health and helping to manage the individual’s weight in a healthy manner. This phase should greatly reduce the risk of incurring disease by effectively helping the body reduce insulin sensitivity and balancing the omega-3/omega-6 ratio.^[1] Since Phase One is designed to correct harmful imbalances, it must temporally limit healthy, high sugar foods such as fruits, whole grains, and honey while allowing for the liberal consumption of protein foods, vegetables, and healthy oils. Phase one is considered to most difficult phase of the diet due to the commitment factors. Water intake should be increased and rest should be taken when necessary.^[5]

[edit] Phase Two

Phase Two consists of weeks three to four (days 15-28). According to Rubin, digestion should have improved along with energy level. Weight loss will continue during this phase, but at a slower pace than Phase One.^[6]

[edit] Phase Three

The final phase of the diet beings in the fifth week and continues for the duration that the individual maintains the diet (days 29-40 and beyond). It is considered to be the maintenance phase of the diet and is specifically designed to allow and encourage healthful eating of foods from each of the permitted groups.^[1] In this phase, healthy grains and foods higher in sugars and starches, such as potatoes, are reintroduced. Weight should stabilize in this phase and only key areas of the health scheme, such as overall body health, continue to improve. If one deviates from the diet, it is advised to go back to Phase One or Two for a week or two to get back into the flow of the diet.^[7]

[edit] Claimed benefits

Rubin claims that his recommendations will enable dieters to concentrate better, and will enhance their moods. He also says that his diet can reduce arthritis pain and inflammation, and can reduce the risk of cancer and heart disease. He also says that it can reverse the "accelerated aging" caused by the way people eat and live today.^[2]

[edit] Scientific acceptance and criticism

Jordan Rubin has been criticized because his education in nutrition is a degree in Naturopathic Medicine from the Peoples University of the Americas, which is not accredited by the Council on Naturopathic Medical Education nor licensed by the North American Board of Naturopathic Examiners, and a Ph.D. in Nutrition from the Academy of Natural Therapies, which is not accredited by the American Dietetic Association or other mainstream nutrition organizations.^[2]

As of 2008, there are no peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that evaluate the claims made by Rubin. In line with the general knowledge that exercise is beneficial for health, The Gale Encyclopedia of Diets praised the Bible diet for this aspect. It found, however, that the emphasis on organic foods is not directly supported by scientific evidence.^[2]

Another area of concern have been the supplements that are required or recommended for the Bible's diet program. These supplements are made by Rubin's company Garden of Life, Inc. In a letter dated May 11, 2004 the United States Food and Drug Administration ordered the company to stop making unsubstantiated claims about eight of its products and supplements. The claims were made in brochures, on labels, and in Rubin’s book Patient Heal Thyself.^[2]

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Rubin, Jordan S. The Maker’s Diet. New York: Penguin, 2004.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Helen Davidson (2008). "“Maker’s Diet". in Jacqueline L. Longe. The Gale Encyclopedia of Diets: A Guide to Health and Nutrition. Thomson Gale. pp. 643-46. ISBN 1414429916. .
^ ^a ^b Rubin, Jordan S. The Maker’s Diet. New York: Penguin, 2004.
^ ^a ^b *Rubin, Jordan S. The Maker’s Diet. New York: Penguin, 2004.
^ Phase 1: Correcting Harmful Imbalances.” makersdiet.17 Oct.2008. http://www.makersdiet.com/public/about-the-diet/phase1.aspx
^ Phase 2: Returning to Optimal Health.” Makersdiet.17 Oct. 2008. http://www.makersdiet.com/public/about-the-diet/phase2.aspx
^ Phase 3: Claiming Health for Life.” Makersdiet.17 Oct.2008. http://www.makersdiet.com/public/about-the-diet/phase3.aspx

[edit] External links

“An Explanation of the Phases and Levels of the Maker’s Diet.” The makers diet.19 Oct.2008. http://www.themakersdiet.info/makers-diet-instructions.php
Ministries. 09 Sept. 2008. http://www.biblelife.org/biblediet.htm
Jordan's Story at jordanrubin.com
Jordan Rubin and Garden of Life Ordered to Stop Making Unsubstantiated Advertising Claims at Quackwatch

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Diet"

The Seven Deadly Sins...

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:45:51 +0100

Seven deadly sins

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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For other uses, see Seven deadly sins (disambiguation) and Cardinal sin (disambiguation).

Hieronymus Bosch's The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things.

The Seven Deadly Sins, also known as the Capital Vices or Cardinal Sins, is a classification of the most objectionable vices which has been used since early Christian times to educate and instruct followers concerning (immoral) fallen man's tendency to sin. It consists of "Lust", "Gluttony", "Greed", "Sloth", "Wrath", "Envy", and "Pride".

The Catholic Church divided sin into two principal categories: "Venial sins", which are relatively minor, and could be forgiven through any Sacramentals or Sacraments of the church, and the more severe "Capital" or Mortal sins. Mortal sins destroyed the life of grace, and created the threat of eternal damnation unless either absolved through the sacrament of Confession, or forgiven through perfect contrition on the part of the penitent.

Beginning in the early 14th century, the popularity of the seven deadly sins as a theme among European artists of the time eventually helped to ingrain them in many areas of Christian culture and Christian consciousness in general throughout the world. One means of such ingraining was the creation of the mnemonic "SALIGIA" based on the first letters in Latin of the seven deadly sins: superbia, avaritia, luxuria, invidia, gula, ira, acedia.^[1]

[edit] Biblical Lists

In the Book of Proverbs, it is stated that "the Lord" specifically regards "six things the Lord hateth, and the seventh His soul detesteth." namely^[2]:

Haughty eyes
A lying tongue
Hands that shed innocent blood
A heart that devises wicked plots
Feet that are swift to run into mischief
A deceitful witness that uttereth lies
Him that soweth discord among brethren

While there are seven of them, this list is considerably different from the traditional one, the only sin on both lists being pride. Another list of bad things, given this time by the Epistle to the Galatians, includes more of the traditional seven sins, although the list is substantially longer: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, "and such like"^[3].

[edit] Development of the Traditional Seven Sins

The modern concept of the Seven Deadly Sins is linked to the works of the 4th century monk Evagrius Ponticus, who listed eight evil thoughts in Greek as follows ^[4]:

Γαστριμαργία (gastrimargia)
Πορνεία (porneia)
Φιλαργυρία (philargyria)
Λύπη (lype)
Ὁργῆ (orge)
Ἀκηδία (akedia)
Κενοδοξία (kenodoxia)
Ὺπερηφανία (hyperephania)

They were translated into Latin, as follows^[5]:

Gula (gluttony)
Fornicatio (fornication, lust)
Avaritia (avarice/greed)
Tristitia (sorrow/despair)
Ira (wrath)
Acedia (acedia)
Vanagloria (vainglory)
Superbia (Pride)

These 'evil thoughts' can be broken down into three groups^[5]:

lustful appetite (Gluttony, Fornication, and Avarice)
irascibility (Anger)
intellect (Vainglory, Sorrow, Pride, and Discouragement)

In 590 AD, some years after Ponticus, Pope Gregory I revised this list to form the more common Seven Deadly Sins, by folding sorrow into despair, vainglory into pride, and adding extravagance and envy, while removing fornication from the list. In the order used by both Pope Gregory and by Dante Alighieri in his epic poem The Divine Comedy, the seven deadly sins are as follows:

luxuria (extravagance)
gula (gluttony)
avaritia (avarice/greed)
acedia (acedia/discouragement)
ira (wrath)
invidia (envy)
superbia (pride)

The identification and definition of the seven deadly sins over their history has been a fluid process and the idea of what each of the seven actually encompasses has evolved over time. Additionally, as a result of semantic change:

Lust was substituted for luxuria in all but name
socordia (sloth) was substituted for acedia

This process of change has been aided by the fact that the personality traits are not collectively referred to, in either a cohesive or codified manner, by the Bible itself; other literary and ecclesiastical works were instead consulted, as sources from which definitions might be drawn. Part II of Dante's Divine Comedy, Purgatorio, has almost certainly been the best known source since the Renaissance.

The modern Roman Catholic Catechism lists the sins as: "pride, avarice, envy, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth/acedia".^[6]. Each of the seven deadly sins now also has an opposite among corresponding seven holy virtues (sometimes also referred to as the contrary virtues). In parallel order to the sins they oppose, the seven holy virtues are humility, charity, kindness, patience, chastity, temperance, and diligence.

[edit] The sins

[edit] Extravagance

Main article: Extravagance

Extravagance (Latin, luxuria) is unrestrained excess. Extravagant behaviour includes the frequent purchase of luxury goods, and forms of debauchery.

In the Romance languages, the cognates of luxuria (the Latin name of the sin) evolved to have an exclusively sexual meaning; the Old French cognate was adopted into English as luxury, but this lost its sexual meaning by the 14th century^[7]. The church found it more practical and politically expedient to allow this more restricted interpretation to become dominant, resulting in lust replacing extravagance in the list.

[edit] Lust

This article may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (May 2009)

This article or section may contain previously unpublished synthesis of published material that conveys ideas not attributable to the original sources. See the talk page for details. (May 2009)

Main article: Lust

Lust or lechery, is usually thought of as excessive thoughts or desires of a sexual nature. Aristotle's criterion was excessive love of others, which therefore rendered love and devotion to God as secondary.

Giving in to lusts can lead to sexual or sociological compulsions and/or transgressions including (but not limited to) sexual addiction, fornication, adultery, bestiality, rape, perversion, and incest. In Dante's Purgatorio, the penitent walks within flames to purge himself of lustful/sexual thoughts and feelings. In Dante's "Inferno" unforgiven souls of the sin of lust are blown about in restless hurricane like winds symbolic of their own lack of self control to their lustful passions in earthly life.

[edit] Gluttony

Main article: Gluttony

"Excess"
(Albert Anker, 1896)

Derived from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow, gluttony (Latin, gula) is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste. In the Christian religions, it is considered a sin because of the excessive desire for food, or its withholding from the needy.^[8]

Depending on the culture, it can be seen as either a vice or a sign of status. Where food is relatively scarce, being able to eat well might be something to take pride in (although this can also result in a moral backlash when confronted with the reality of those less fortunate). Where food is routinely plentiful, it may be considered a sign of self-control to resist the temptation to over-indulge.

Medieval church leaders (e.g., Thomas Aquinas) took a more expansive view of gluttony,^[8] arguing that it could also include an obsessive anticipation of meals, and the constant eating of delicacies and excessively costly foods.^[9] Aquinas went so far as to prepare a list of six ways to commit gluttony, including:

Praepropere - eating too soon.
Laute - eating too expensively.
Nimis - eating too much.
Ardenter - eating too eagerly (burningly).
Studiose - eating too daintily (keenly).
Forente - eating wildly (boringly).

[edit] Greed

Main article: Greed

Greed (Latin, avaritia), also known as avarice or covetousness, is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of excess. However, greed (as seen by the church) is applied to the acquisition of wealth in particular. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that greed was "a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things." In Dante's Purgatory, the penitents were bound and laid face down on the ground for having concentrated too much on earthly thoughts. "Avarice" is more of a blanket term that can describe many other examples of greedy behavior. These include disloyalty, deliberate betrayal, or treason,^{[citation needed]} especially for personal gain, for example through bribery . Scavenging^{[citation needed]} and hoarding of materials or objects, theft and robbery, especially by means of violence, trickery, or manipulation of authority are all actions that may be inspired by greed. Such misdeeds can include simony, where one profits from soliciting goods within the actual confines of a church.

[edit] Acedia

Main article: Acedia

Acedia (Latin, acedia) (from Greek ακηδία = neglect to take care of something - and in this case neglect to do whatever one should do in order to be saved) is apathetic listlessness; depression without joy. It is similar to melancholy, although acedia describes the behaviour, while melancholy suggests the emotion producing it. In early Christian thought, the lack of joy was regarded as a wilful refusal to enjoy the goodness of God and the world God created; by contrast, the apathy was regarded as a spiritual affliction that discouraged people from their religious work.

When Thomas Aquinas described acedia in his interpretation of the list, he described it as an uneasiness of the mind, being a progenitor for lesser sins such as restlessness and instability. Dante refined this definition further, describing acedia as the failure to love God with all one's heart, all one's mind and all one's soul; to him it was the middle sin, the only one characterised by an absence or insufficiency of love.

[edit] Despair

Main article: Despair

Despair (Latin, Tristitia) describes a feeling of dissatisfaction or discontent, which causes unhappiness with one's current situation, especially involving thoughts of hopelessness. Since unhappiness inherently results from the sin, the sin was sometimes referred to as sadness. Since sadness often results in acedia, Pope Gregory's revision of the list subsumed Despair into Acedia.

This section requires expansion.

[edit] Sloth

Main article: Sloth (deadly sin)

Gradually, the focus came to be on the consequences of acedia, rather than the cause, and so, by the 17th century, the exact deadly sin referred to was believed to be the failure to utilize one's talents and gifts.^{[citation needed]} In practice, it came to be closer to sloth (Latin, Socordia) than acedia. Even in Dante's time there were signs of this change; in his Purgatorio he had portrayed the penance for acedia as running continuously at top speed.

The modern view goes further, regarding laziness and indifference as the sin at the heart of the matter. Since this contrasts with a more wilful failure to, for example, love God and his works, sloth is often seen as being considerably less serious than the other sins, more a sin of omission than of commission.

[edit] Wrath

Main article: Wrath

Wrath (Latin, ira), also known as anger or "rage", may be described as inordinate and uncontrolled feelings of hatred and anger. These feelings can manifest as vehement denial of the truth, both to others and in the form of self-denial, impatience with the procedure of law, and the desire to seek revenge outside of the workings of the justice system (such as engaging in vigilantism) and generally wishing to do evil or harm to others. The transgressions born of vengeance are among the most serious, including murder, assault, and in extreme cases, genocide. Wrath is the only sin not necessarily associated with selfishness or self-interest (although one can of course be wrathful for selfish reasons, such as jealousy, closely related to the sin of envy). Dante described vengeance as "love of justice perverted to revenge and spite". In its original form, the sin of wrath also encompassed anger pointed internally rather than externally. Thus suicide was deemed as the ultimate, albeit tragic, expression of wrath directed inwardly, a final rejection of God's gifts.

[edit] Envy

Main article: Envy

Like greed, Envy (Latin, invidia) may be characterized by an insatiable desire; they differ, however, for two main reasons. First, greed is largely associated with material goods, where as envy may apply more generally. Second, those who commit the sin of envy resent that another person has something they perceive themselves as lacking, and wish the other person to be deprived of it. Dante defined this as "love of one's own good perverted to a desire to deprive other men of theirs." In Dante's Purgatory, the punishment for the envious is to have their eyes sewn shut with wire because they have gained sinful pleasure from seeing others brought low. Aquinas described envy as "sorrow for another's good".^[10]

[edit] Pride

Main article: Pride

In almost every list Pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris, is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and indeed the ultimate source from which the others arise. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God). Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbor." In Jacob Bidermann's medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus, pride is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the damnation of the titulary famed Parisian doctor. In perhaps the best-known example, the story of Lucifer, pride (his desire to compete with God) was what caused his fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the penitents were forced to walk with stone slabs bearing down on their backs in order to induce feelings of humility.

[edit] Vainglory

Main article: Vainglory

Vainglory (Latin, vanagloria) is unjustified boasting. Pope Gregory viewed it as a form of pride, so he folded vainglory into pride for his listing of sins.

The Latin term gloria roughly means boasting, although its English cognate - glory - has come to have an exclusively positive meaning; historically, vain roughly meant futile, but by the 14th century had come to have the strong narcissistic undertones, of irrelevant accuracy, that it retains today^[11]. As a result of these semantic changes, vainglory has become a rarely used word in itself, and is now commonly interpreted as referring to vanity (in its modern narcissistic sense).

[edit] Catholic virtues

The Roman Catholic Church also recognizes Seven virtues which correspond inversely to each of the seven deadly sins.

Vice	Virtue
Lust	Chastity
Gluttony	Temperance
Greed	Charity
Sloth	Diligence
Wrath	Patience
Envy	Kindness
Pride	Humility

[edit] Associations with demons

In 1589, Peter Binsfeld paired each of the deadly sins with a demon, who tempted people by means of the associated sin. According to Binsfeld's classification of demons, the pairings are as follows

Lucifer: Pride (superbia)
Mammon: Greed (avaritia)
Asmodeus: Lust (luxuria)
Leviathan: Envy (invidia)
Beelzebub: Gluttony (gula or gullia)
Satan/Amon/Azzarox: Wrath (ira)
Belphegor: Sloth (acedia)

There are also other demons who invoke sin, for instance Lilith and her offspring, the incubi and succubi, invoke lust. The succubi sleep with men in order to impregnate themselves, so that they can spawn demons. The incubi sleep with women to lead them astray and to impregnate them with demon spawn.

Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles.

[edit] Cultural references

The seven deadly sins have long been a source of inspiration for writers and artists, from morality tales of the Middle Ages to modern manga series and video games.

[edit] Enneagram Integration

The Enneagram of Personality integrates the seven with two additional sins, deceit and fear. The Enneagram descriptions are broader than the traditional Christian interpretation and are presented in a comprehensive map.^[12]^[13]

[edit] Literary works inspired by the seven deadly sins

John Climacus (7th century) in The Ladder of Divine Ascent places victory over the eight thoughts as individual steps of the thirty-step ladder: wrath (8), vainglory (10, 22), sadness (13), gluttony (14), lust (15), greed (16, 17), acedia (18), and pride (23).
Dante's (1265–1321) The Divine Comedy is a three-part work composed of "Inferno", "Purgatorio", and "Paradiso". "Inferno" divides Hell into nine concentric circles, four of which directly correspond to some of the deadly sins (Circle 2 to lust, 3 to gluttony, 4 to greed, and 5 to wrath, as well as sloth). The punishment of these two sins take place in the Stygian lake, the wrathful being punished atop the lake, attacking one another with the various members of their person, including fangs.^[14]. The slothful are punished underneath the lake breathing sighs in bubbles, singing a dolorous song, as told by Virgil in Canto VII.^[15] The remaining circles do not neatly map onto the seven sins. In "Purgatorio", Mount Purgatory is scaled in seven levels and follows the sin sequence of Aquinas (starting with pride).^{[citation needed]}
William Langland's (c. 1332–1386) Vision of Piers Plowman is structured around a series of dreams that are critical of contemporary errors while encouraging godly living. The sins are mentioned in this order: proud (pride; Passus V, lines 62–71), lechour (lecherousness; V. 71–74), envye (envy; V. 75–132), wrathe (wrath; V. 133–185), coveitise (covetousness; V. 186–306), glutton (gluttony; V. 307–385), sleuthe (sloth; V. 386–453) (using the B-text).^{[clarification needed]}[1]
John Gower's (1330-1408) Confessio Amantis centres on a confession by Amans ("the Lover") to Genius, the chaplain of the goddess Venus. Following confessional practice of the time, the confession is structured around the seven deadly sins, though focuses on his sins against the rules of courtly love.[2]
Geoffrey Chaucer's (c. 1340–1400) Canterbury Tales features the seven deadly sins in The Parson's Tale: pride (paragraphs 24–29), envy (30–31), wrath (32–54), sloth (55–63), greed (64–70), gluttony (71–74), lust (75–84).[3]
Christopher Marlowe's (1564–1593) The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus shows Lucifer, Beelzebub, and Mephistophiles coming from hell to show Dr. Fastus "some pastime" (Act II, Scene 2). The sins present themselves in order: pride, greed, envy, wrath, gluttony, sloth, lust. [4]
Edmund Spenser's (1552–1599), The Faerie Queene addresses the seven deadly sins in "Book I (The Legend of the Knight of the Red Cross, Holiness)": vanity/pride (Canto IV, stanzas 4–17), idleness/sloth (IV. 18-20), gluttony (IV. 21-23), lechery/lust (IV. 24-26), avarice/greed (IV. 27-29), envy (IV. 30-32), wrath (IV. 33-35). [5]
Garth Nix's "The Keys to the Kingdom" is a seven-book children's series in which the main nemesis of each book is afflicted by one of the seven deadly sins.

[edit] Art and music

Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (1485).
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, The Seven Deadly Sins (Die sieben Todsünden) (1933)
Modern artist Paul Cadmus painted a series of graphically disturbing, anthropomorphic depictions of the seven deadly sins, in the style of comic books. After his death, this series was willed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The album Heaven and Hell by Joe Jackson is a modern musical interpretation of the seven deadly sins.
The Tiger Lillies's new album and stage show 7 Deadly Sins is based on the sins being experienced by a modernized version of Punch and Judy (in itself a reworking of Adam and Eve) called "Punch and Jude".
The album Melankolia / XXX Couture by Danish rapper L.O.C. focuses on how the artist came into contact with each of the sins, and then how these sins have come to be culturally accepted.
Kendell Geers, "The Seven Deadly Sins" 2006: Series of 7 Ultra Violet neons exhibited at Stephen Friedman Gallery in London, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent Belgium, DA2 in Salamanca Spain and the 2007 Venice Biennial

[edit] Film, television, radio, comic books and video games

The film The Devil's Nightmare is about a succubus who kills a group of tourists who are each guilty of one of the seven sins.
The original version of the film Bedazzled (1967) (remade in 2000) includes all seven sins, most notably Raquel Welch as lust, Barry Humphries as envy, and Peter Cook as Lucifer, representing pride.
In the film Se7en (1995), directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, a mysterious serial killer punishes transgressors of each of the deadly sins through his crimes.
The Magnificent Seven Deadly Sins (1971) is a British film built around a series of comedy sketches on the seven deadly sins, and referencing the classic Western film The Magnificent Seven.
In the video game Overlord, the seven heroes that the protagonist must defeat are based on the seven sins.
In the second pilot of The Muppet Show, "Sex and Violence", The Muppets host a Seven Deadly Sins Paegant, with each of the sins personified in Muppet form. (http://www.muppetcentral.com/guides/episodes/tms/pilots/2_sex_and_violence.shtml)
The Seven Deadly Sins (traditionally given as "The Seven Deadly Enemies of Man") figure prominently in the mythos of Fawcett/DC Comics superhero Captain Marvel, and have appeared several times as supervillains in recent DC Comics publications.
In the manga and anime Digimon, the Seven Great Demon Lords, each of whom represent one of the sins, are a major group of antagonists.
In the visual novel computer game series Umineko no Naku Koro ni, the seven deadly sins are represented by the seven Stakes of Purgatory and each of them are named after the devils corresponding to the sin.
In the manga and anime Reborn! the members of the group of assassins Varia are named after each one of the seven deadly sins (such as Superbia Squalo, Superbia meaning pride in Latin; Lussuria, meaning Lust in Italian) or after the demons that represent the sins (such as Mammon and Belphegor)
In the manga and anime Fullmetal Alchemist, each sin is used as the name of each member of a group of powerful false humans called "homunculi", with each homunculi's personality being based on the sin he or she is named after.
In the videogame Devil May Cry 3, the seven deadly sins are represented by a group of common enemies, as well as by seven infernal bells. Fallen angels that personify the sins also feature heavily in the prequel manga, in which they are important in summoning the bell-containing tower in the first place.
In the Philippines TV series Lastikman each major villain represents one of the deadly sins.
In the Norwegian TV show De syv dødssyndene (The Seven Deadly Sins), Christopher Schau attempts to invoke the wrath of God by carrying out each of the seven deadly sins. When Schau was talking about the show on the talk show Senkveld (Late Night), he said "If I don't end up in Hell, then there is no Hell." The program caused a great deal of public debate surrounding the issue of censorship.
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The Utilitarianism series
part of the Politics series
Utilitarian Thinkers
Jeremy Bentham John Stuart Mill Henry Sidgwick Peter Singer
Forms
preference utilitarianism rule utilitarianism act utilitarianism Two-level utilitarianism Total utilitarianism Average utilitarianism Negative utilitarianism animal welfare Abolitionism (bioethics) Hedonism Enlightened self-interest
Predecessors
Epicurus David Hume William Godwin
Key concepts
Pain Suffering Pleasure Utility Happiness Eudaimonia Consequentialism Felicific calculus
Problems
Mere addition paradox Paradox of hedonism Utility monster
See also
Rational choice theory Game theory Social choice Economics
Portal: Politics
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Consequentialism refers to those moral theories which hold that the consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action (or create a structure for judgment, see rule consequentialism). Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence. This view is often expressed as the aphorism "The ends justify the means".

Consequentialism is usually understood as distinct from deontology, in that deontology derives the rightness or wrongness of an act from the character of the act itself rather than the outcomes of the action, and from virtue ethics, which focuses on the character of the agent rather than on the nature or consequences of the action itself. The difference between these three approaches to morality tends to lie more in the way moral dilemmas are approached than in the moral conclusions reached. For example, a consequentialist may argue that lying is wrong because of the negative consequences produced by lying — though a consequentialist may allow that certain foreseeable consequences might make lying acceptable. A deontologist might argue that lying is always wrong, regardless of any potential "good" that might come from lying. A virtue ethicist, however, would focus less on lying in any particular instance and instead consider what a decision to tell a lie or not tell a lie said about one's character and moral behavior.

[edit] Definition

The term "consequentialism" was coined by G.E.M. Anscombe in her essay "Modern Moral Philosophy" in 1958, to describe what she saw as the central error of certain moral theories, such as those propounded by Mill and Sidgwick.^[1] Since then, the term has become common in English-language ethical theory.

The defining feature of consequentialist moral theories is the weight given to the consequences in evaluating the rightness and wrongness of actions.^[2] In consequentialist theories, the consequences of an action or rule generally outweigh other considerations. Apart from this basic outline, there is little else that can be unequivocally said about consequentialism as such. However, there are some questions that many consequentialist theories address:

What sort of consequences count as good consequences?
Who is the primary beneficiary of moral action?
How are the consequences judged and who judges them?

[edit] Kinds of consequences

One way to divide various consequentialisms is by the types of consequences that are taken to matter most, that is, which consequences count as good states of affairs. According to hedonistic utilitarianism, a good action is one that results in an increase in pleasure, and the best action is one that results in the most pleasure for the greatest number. Closely related is eudaimonic consequentialism, according to which a full, flourishing life, which may or may not be the same as enjoying a great deal of pleasure, is the ultimate aim. Similarly, one might adopt an aesthetic consequentialism, in which the ultimate aim is to produce beauty. However, one might fix on non-psychological goods as the relevant effect. Thus, one might pursue an increase in material equality or political liberty instead of something like the more ephemeral "pleasure". Other theories adopt a package of several goods, all to be promoted equally. Whether a particular consequentialist theory focuses on a single good or many, conflicts and tensions between different good states of affairs are to be expected and must be adjudicated.

[edit] Consequences for whom

Moral action always has an effect on certain people or things, the consequences. Various kinds of consequentialism can be differentiated by beneficiary of the good consequences. That is, one might ask "Consequences for whom?"

[edit] Agent-focused or agent-neutral

A fundamental distinction can be drawn between theories that demand that agents act for ends in which they have some personal interest or motivation and theories that demand that agents act for ends perhaps disconnected from their own interests and drives. These are called "agent-focused" and "agent-neutral" theories respectively. Agent-neutral consequentialism ignores the specific value a state of affairs has for any particular agent. Thus, in an agent-neutral theory, an actor's personal goals do not count any more than anyone else's goals in evaluating what action the actor should take. Agent-focused consequentialism, on the other hand, focuses on the particular needs of the moral agent. Thus, in an agent-focused account, such as one that Peter Railton outlines, the actor might be concerned with the general welfare, but the actor is more concerned with the immediate welfare of herself and her friends and family^[3]. These two approaches could be reconciled by acknowledging the tension between an agent's interests as an individual and as a member of various groups, and seeking to somehow optimize among all of these interests. For example, it may be meaningful to speak of an action as being good for someone as an individual but bad for them as a citizen of their town.

[edit] Human-centered?

Many consequentialist theories may seem primarily concerned with human beings and their relationships with other human beings. However, some philosophers argue that we should not limit our ethical consideration to the interests of human beings alone. Jeremy Bentham, who is regarded as the founder of Utilitarianism, argues that animals can experience pleasure and pain, thus demanding that 'non-human animals' should be a serious object of moral concern^[4]. More recently, Peter Singer has argued that it is unreasonable that we do not give equal consideration to the interests of animals as to those of human beings when we choose the way we are to treat them^[5]. Such equal consideration does not necessarily imply identical treatment of humans and non-humans, any more than it necessarily implies identical treatment of all humans.

[edit] Action guidance

One important characteristic of many normative moral theories such as consequentialism is the ability to produce practical moral judgements. At the very least, any moral theory needs to define the standpoint from which the goodness of the consequences are to be determined. What is primarily at stake here is the responsibility of the agent.

[edit] The ideal observer

One common tactic among consequentialists, particularly those committed to an altruistic (selfless) account of consequentialism, is employ an ideal, neutral observer from which moral judgements can be made. John Rawls, a critic of utilitarianism, argues that utilitarianism, in common with other forms of consequentialism, relies on the perspective of such an ideal observer^[3]. The particular characteristics of this ideal observer can vary from an omniscient observer, who would grasp all the consequences of any action, to an ideally informed observer, who knows as much as could reasonably be expected, but not necessarily all the circumstances or all the possible consequences. Consequentialist theories that adopt this paradigm hold that right action is the action that will bring about the best consequences from this ideal observer's perspective.

[edit] The real observer

In practice, it is very difficult, and at times arguably impossible, to adopt the point of view of an ideal observer. Individual moral agents do not know everything about their particular situations, and thus do not know all the possible consequences of their potential actions. For this reason, some theorists have argued that consequentialist theories can only require agents to choose the best action in line with what they know about the situation.^[2] However, if this approach is naïvely adopted, then moral agents who, for example, recklessly fail to reflect on their situation, and act in a way that brings about terrible results, could be said to be acting in a morally justifiable way. Acting in a situation without first informing oneself of the circumstances of the situation can lead to even the most well-intended actions yielding miserable consequences. As a result, it could be argued that there is a moral imperative for an agent to inform himself as much as possible about a situation before judging the appropriate course of action. This imperative, of course, is derived from consequential thinking: a better informed agent is able to bring about better consequences.

[edit] Varieties of consequentialism

[edit] Utilitarianism

Main article: Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill, an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century and a teacher of utilitarianism, albeit his teachings are a bit different from Jeremy Bentham's philosophy

Jeremy Bentham, best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism

“	Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think...	”
	— Jeremy Bentham , The Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789) Ch I, p 1

Summarily, Jeremy Bentham states that people are driven by their interests and their fears, but their interests take precedence over their fears, and their interests are carried out in accordance with how people view the consequences that might be involved with their interests. "Happiness" on this account is defined as the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain.

Historically, hedonistic utilitarianism is the paradigmatic example of a consequentialist moral theory. This form of utilitarianism holds that what matters is the aggregate happiness; the happiness of everyone and not the happiness of any particular person. John Stuart Mill, in his exposition of hedonistic utilitarianism, proposed a hierarchy of pleasures, meaning that the pursuit of certain kinds of pleasure is more highly valued than the pursuit of other pleasures.^[6] However, some contemporary utilitarians, such as Peter Singer are concerned to maximize the satisfaction of preferences, hence "preference utilitarianism". Other contemporary forms of utilitarianism mirror the forms of consequentialism outlined below.

[edit] Ethical egoism and altruism

Main articles: Ethical egoism and Altruism (ethics)

Ethical egoism can be understood as a consequentialist theory according to which the consequences for the individual agent are taken to matter more than any other result. Thus, egoism may license actions which are good for the agent, but it is generally seen as detrimental to general welfare. Some like Henry Sidgwick, however, argue that a certain degree of egoism promotes general welfare for two reasons: because individuals know how to please themselves best, and because if everyone were an austere altruist then general welfare would inevitably decrease.^[7]

Ethical altruism can be seen as a consequentialist ethic which prescribes that an individual take actions that have the best consequences for everyone except for himself.^[8] This was advocated by Auguste Comte, who coined the term "altruism," and whose ethics can be summed up in the phrase: Live for others.^[9]

[edit] Rule consequentialism

In general, consequentialist theories focus on actions. However, this need not be the case. Rule consequentialism is a theory that is sometimes seen as an attempt to reconcile deontology and consequentialism - and in some cases, this is stated as a criticism of rule consequentialism ^[10]. Like deontology, rule consequentialism holds that moral behavior involves following certain rules. However, rule consequentialism chooses rules based on the consequences that the selection of those rules have.

Various theorists are split as to whether the rules are the only determinant of moral behavior or not. For example, Robert Nozick holds that a certain set of minimal rules, which he calls "side-constraints", are necessary to ensure appropriate actions.^[3] There are also differences as to how absolute these moral rules are. Thus, while Nozick's side-constraints are absolute restrictions on behavior, Amartya Sen proposes a theory which recognizes the importance of certain rules, but these rules are not absolute.^[3] That is, they may be violated if strict adherence to the rule would lead to much more undesirable consequences.

One of the most common objections to rule-consequentialism is that it is incoherent, because it is based on the consequentialist principle that what we should be concerned with is maximising the good, but then it tells us not to act to maximise the good, but to follow rules (even in cases where we know that breaking the rule could produce better results).

Brad Hooker avoided this objection by not basing his form of rule-consequentialism on the ideal of maximising the good. He writes:

"…the best argument for rule-consequentialism is not that it derives from an overarching commitment to maximise the good. The best argument for rule-consequentialism is that it does a better job than its rivals of matching and tying together our moral convictions, as well as offering us help with our moral disagreements and uncertainties" ^[11]

Derek Parfit described Brad Hooker's book on rule-consequentialism Ideal Code, Real World as the "best statement and defence, so far, of one of the most important moral theories." ^[12]

Rule consequentialism exists in the forms of rule utilitarianism and rule egoism.

[edit] Negative consequentialism

Most consequentialist theories focus on promoting some sort of good consequences. However, one could equally well lay out a consequentialist theory that focuses solely on minimizing bad consequences. (Negative utilitarianism is an actual example.) Of course, the maximization of good consequences could also involve the minimization of bad consequences, but the promotion of good consequences is usually of primary import.

One major difference between these two approaches is the agent's responsibility. Positive consequentialism demands that we bring about good states of affairs, whereas negative consequentialism may only require that we avoid bad ones. A more strenuous version of negative consequentialism may actually require active intervention, but only to prevent harm from being done. An alternative theory (using the example of negative utilitarianism) is that some consider the reduction of suffering (for the disadvantaged) to be more valuable than increased pleasure (for the affluent or luxurious).

[edit] Teleological ethics

Teleological ethics (Greek telos, “end”; logos, “science”) is an ethical theory that holds that the ends or consequences of an act determines whether an act is good or evil. Teleological theories are often discussed in opposition to deontological ethical theories, which hold that acts themselves are inherently good or evil, regardless of the consequences of acts.

Teleological theories differ on the nature of the end that actions ought to promote. Eudaemonist theories (Greek eudaimonia, "happiness") hold that ethics consists in some function or activity appropriate to man as a human being, and thus tend to emphasize the cultivation of virtue or excellence in the agent as the end of all action. These could be the classical virtues — courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom — that promoted the Greek ideal of man as the "rational animal", or the theological virtues — faith, hope, and love — that distinguished the Christian ideal of man as a being created in the image of God.

Utilitarian-type theories hold that the end consists in an experience or feeling produced by the action. Hedonism, for example, teaches that this feeling is pleasure — either one's own, as in egoism (the 17th-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes), or everyone's, as in universalistic hedonism, or utilitarianism (the 19th-century English philosophers Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Henry Sidgwick), with its formula of the "greatest pleasure of the greatest number."

Other utilitarian-type views include the claims that the end of action is survival and growth, as in evolutionary ethics (the 19th-century English philosopher Herbert Spencer); the experience of power, as in despotism (the 16th-century Italian political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli and the 19th-century German Friedrich Nietzsche); satisfaction and adjustment, as in pragmatism (20th-century American philosophers Ralph Barton Perry and John Dewey); and freedom, as in existentialism (the 20th-century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre).

The chief problem for eudaemonist theories is to show that leading a life of virtue will also be attended by happiness — by the winning of the goods regarded as the chief end of action. That Job should suffer and Socrates and Jesus die while the wicked prosper, then seems unjust. Eudaemonists generally reply that the universe is moral and that, in Socrates' words, “No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death,” or, in Jesus' words, “But he who endures to the end will be saved.”

Utilitarian theories, on the other hand, must answer the charge that ends do not justify the means. The problem arises in these theories because they tend to separate the achieved ends from the action by which these ends were produced. One implication of utilitarianism is that one's intention in performing an act may include all of its foreseen consequences. The goodness of the intention then reflects the balance of the good and evil of these consequences, with no limits imposed upon it by the nature of the act itself — even if it be, say, the breaking of a promise or the execution of an innocent man. Utilitarianism, in answering this charge, must show either that what is apparently immoral is not really so or that, if it really is so, then closer examination of the consequences will bring this fact to light. Ideal utilitarianism (G.E. Moore and Hastings Rashdall) tries to meet the difficulty by advocating a plurality of ends and including among them the attainment of virtue itself, which, as John Stuart Mill affirmed, "may be felt a good in itself, and desired as such with as great intensity as any other good."

[edit] Consequentialism and other moral theories

[edit] Deontology

Consequentialism is often contrasted with deontological moral theories. Deontological theories hold that we have a duty to perform or refrain from certain types of actions and that this duty derives from the nature of the act itself, rather than from the consequences produced by the action. Consequently, a deontologist might argue that we should stick to our duty regardless of the consequences. For example, Kant famously argued that we have a moral duty to always tell the truth, even to a murderer who asks where the would-be victim is.

However, consequentialist and deontological theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive. For example, T.M. Scanlon advances the idea that human rights, which are commonly considered a "deontological" concept, can only be justified with reference to the consequences of having those rights^[3]. Similarly, Robert Nozick argues for a theory that is mostly consequentialist, but incorporates inviolable "side-constraints" which restrict the sort of actions agents are permitted to do^[3].

[edit] Virtue ethics

Consequentialism can also be contrasted with aretaic moral theories such as virtue ethics. Whereas consequentialist theories posit that consequences of action should be the primary focus of our thinking about ethics, virtue ethics insists that it is the character rather than the consequences of actions that should be the focal point. Some virtue ethicists hold that consequentialist theories totally disregard the development and importance of moral character. For example, Philippa Foot argues that consequences in themselves have no ethical content, unless it has been provided by a virtue such as benevolence^[3].

However, consequentialism and virtue ethics need not be understood to be entirely antagonistic. Consequentialist theories can consider character in several ways. For example, the effects on the character of the agent or any other people involved in an action may be regarded as a relevant consequence. Similarly, a consequentialist theory may aim at the maximization of a particular virtue or set of virtues. Finally, following Foot's lead, one might adopt a sort of consequentialism which argues that virtuous activity ultimately produces the best consequences.

[edit] Ultimate End

The Ultimate end is a concept in the moral philosophy of Max Weber, in which individuals act in a faithful, rather than rational, manner.

"We must be clear about the fact that all ethically oriented conduct may be guided by one of two fundamentally differing and irreconcilably opposed maxims: conduct can be oriented to an "ethic of ultimate ends" or to an "ethic of responsibility." This is not to say that an ethic of ultimate ends is identical with irresponsibility, or that an ethic of responsibility is identical with unprincipled opportunism. Naturally nobody says that. However, there is an abysmal contract between conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of ultimate ends—that, is in religious terms, "the Christian does rightly and leaves the results with the Lord"—and conduct that follows the maxim of an ethic of responsibility, in which case one has to give an account of the foreseeable results of one's action." [1] (From Politics as a Vocation, Max Weber, 1918).

[edit] Criticisms of consequentialism

[edit] General criticisms

William Gass argues that moral theories such as consequentialism are unable to adequately explain why a morally wrong action is morally wrong. Gass uses the example of an "obliging stranger" who agrees to be baked in an oven. Gass claims that the rationale that any moral theory might attempt to give for this wrongness, e.g. it does not bring about good results, is simply absurd. According to Gass, it is wrong to bake a stranger, however obliging, and nothing more can or need be said about it^[13].

G. E. M. Anscombe, whose previously mentioned paper coined the term "consequentialism"^[1], objects to consequentialism on the grounds that it does not provide guidance in what one ought to do, since the rightness or wrongness of an action is determined based on the consequences it produces. Furthermore, she argues that consequentialism since Henry Sidgwick denies that there is any distinction between consequences that are foreseen and those that are intended (see Principle of double effect). Finally, Anscombe objects to the very character of consequentialism itself insofar as it is concerned with determining the rightness and wrongness of actions. She argues that the distinction between right action and wrong action only makes sense within the framework of Judeo-Christian divine law—and, according to Anscombe, Judeo-Christian divine law is incompatible with consequentialism.

[edit] Character-based criticisms

Bernard Williams has argued that consequentialism is alienating because it requires moral agents to put too much distance between themselves and their own projects and commitments. Williams argues that consequentialism requires moral agents to take a strictly impersonal view of all actions, since it is only the consequences, and not who produces them, that is said to matter. Williams argues that this demands too much of moral agents — since (he claims) consequentialism demands that they be willing to sacrifice any and all personal projects and commitments in any given circumstance in order to pursue the most beneficent course of action possible. He argues further that consequentialism fails to make sense of intuitions that it can matter whether or not someone is personally the author of a particular consequence. For example, that having "dirty hands" by participating in a crime can matter, even if the crime would have been committed anyway, or would even have been worse, without the agent's participation.

Some consequentialists — most notably Peter Railton — have attempted to develop a form of consequentialism that acknowledges and avoids the objections raised by Williams. Railton argues that Williams's criticisms can be avoided by adopting a form of consequentialism in which moral decisions are to be determined by the sort of life that they express. On his account, the agent should choose the sort of life that will, on the whole, produce the best overall effects^[3].

However, more recently, there have been attacks upon consequentialism in a similar vein. For example, Thomas Nagel holds that consequentialism fails to appropriately take into account the people affected by a particular action. He argues that a consequentialist cannot really criticize human rights abuses in a war, for example, if they ultimately result in a better state of affairs^[3].

[edit] Applications of Consequentialist Theory

Consequentialist theory has a number of potential applications. For instance, Richard Mullender sees consequentialist theory as providing a rationale and foundation for a new understanding of social democracy.^[14] James Page sees consequentialist theory as providing a rationale and foundation for peace education.^[15]

[edit] Notable consequentialists

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), whose book The Prince argues that rulers must be consequentialists
Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746)
Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832)
William Godwin (1756-1836)
James Mill (1773-1836)
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900)
G.E. Moore (1873-1958)
Richard B. Brandt (1910-1997)
R.M. Hare (1919-2002)
John Harsanyi (1920-2000)
J. J. C. Smart (born 1920)
Henry Kissinger (born 1923)
Amartya Sen (born 1933)
R. M. Adams (born 1937)
Philip Pettit (born 1945)
Peter Singer (born 1946)
Shelly Kagan
Peter Railton (born 1950)
Brad Hooker

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

Darwall, Stephen (Ed.) (2002). Consequentialism. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-631-23108-0.
Honderich, Ted (2003). Consequentialism, Moralities of Concern and Selfishness. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/ted9.htm.
Scheffler, Samuel (1994). The Rejection of Consequentialism: A Philosophical Investigation of the Considerations Underlying Rival Moral Conceptions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-823511-8.

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b Anscombe, G. E. M. (1958). "Modern Moral Philosophy". Philosophy 33: 1–19. doi:10.1017/S0031819100037943. http://www.philosophy.uncc.edu/mleldrid/cmt/mmp.html.
^ ^a ^b Mackie, J. L. (1990). Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-013558-8.
^
Natural Law...

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Natural law

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"Law of nature" redirects here. For other meanings, see Law of nature (disambiguation).

For other uses, see Natural law (disambiguation).

Natural law or the law of nature (Latin: lex naturalis) is a theory that posits the existence of a law whose content is set by nature and that therefore has validity everywhere.^[1] The phrase natural law is opposed to the positive law (which is man-made) of a given political community, society, or nation-state, and thus can function as a standard by which to criticize that law.^[2] In natural law jurisprudence, on the other hand, the content of positive law cannot be known without some reference to the natural law (or something like it). Used in this way, natural law can be invoked to criticize decisions about the statutes, but less so to criticize the law itself. Some use natural law synonymously with natural justice or natural right (Latin ius naturale), although most contemporary political and legal theorists separate the two.

Natural law theories have exercised a profound influence on the development of English common law,^[3] and have featured greatly in the philosophies of Thomas Aquinas, Francisco Suárez, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hobbes, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, John Locke and Emmerich de Vattel. Because of the intersection between natural law and natural rights, it has been cited as a component in United States Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

Contents
[hide]

1 History

1.1 Aristotle
1.2 Stoic natural law
1.3 Christian natural law
1.4 Islamic natural law
1.5 Hobbes' natural law
1.6 Liberal natural law

2 Contemporary Catholic understanding
3 In contemporary jurisprudence
4 See also
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links

[edit] History

The use of natural law, in its various incarnations, has varied widely through its history. There are a number of different theories of natural law, differing from each other with respect to the role that morality plays in determining the authority of legal norms. This article will deal with its usages separately rather than attempt to unify them into a single theory.

[edit] Aristotle

Greek philosophy emphasized the distinction between "nature" (physis, φúσις) on the one hand and "law", "custom", or "convention" (nomos, νóμος) on the other. What the law commanded varied from place to place, but what was "by nature" should be the same everywhere. A "law of nature" would therefore have had the flavor more of a paradox than something which obviously existed.^[1] Against the conventionalism that the distinction between nature and custom could engender, Socrates and his philosophic heirs, Plato and Aristotle, posited the existence of natural justice or natural right (dikaion physikon, δικαιον φυσικον, Latin ius naturale). Of these, Aristotle is often said to be the father of natural law.^[4]

Aristotle's association with natural law is due largely to the interpretation given to his works by Thomas Aquinas.^[5] This was based on Aquinas's conflation of natural law and natural right, the latter of which Aristotle posits in Book V of the Nicomachean Ethics (Book IV of the Eudemian Ethics). Aquinas's influence was such as to affect a number of early translations of these passages,^[6] though more recent translations render them more literally.^[7] Aristotle notes that natural justice is a species of political justice, viz. the scheme of distributive and corrective justice that would be established under the best political community;^[8] were this to take the form of law, this could be called a natural law, though Aristotle does not discuss this and suggests in the Politics that the best regime may not rule by law at all.^[9]

The best evidence of Aristotle's having thought there was a natural law comes from the Rhetoric, where Aristotle notes that, aside from the "particular" laws that each people has set up for itself, there is a "common" law that is according to nature.^[10] The context of this remark, however, suggests only that Aristotle advised that it could be rhetorically advantageous to appeal to such a law, especially when the "particular" law of one's own city was averse to the case being made, not that there actually was such a law;^[11] Aristotle, moreover, considered two of the three candidates for a universally valid, natural law provided in this passage to be wrong.^[1] Aristotle's theoretical paternity of the natural law tradition is consequently disputed.

[edit] Stoic natural law

The development of this tradition of natural justice into one of natural law is usually attributed to the Stoics. The rise of natural law as a universal system coincided with the rise of large empires and kingdoms in the Greek world.^[12] Whereas the "higher" law to which Aristotle suggested one could appeal was emphatically natural, in contradistinction to being the result of divine positive legislation, the Stoic natural law was indifferent to the divine or natural source of the law: the Stoics asserted the existence of a rational and purposeful order to the universe (a divine or eternal law), and the means by which a rational being lived in accordance with this order was the natural law, which spelled out action that accorded with virtue.^[1] Stoics emphasized the universal ideas of individual worth, moral duty, and universal brotherhood. These theories became highly influential among Roman jurists, and consequently played a great role in subsequent legal theory.

[edit] Christian natural law

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A number (though not all) of the early Church Fathers sought to incorporate it into Christianity. This was true in the West more so than in the East. The most notable among these was Augustine of Hippo, who equated natural law with man's prelapsarian state; as such, a life according to nature was no longer possible and men needed instead to seek salvation through the divine law and grace of Jesus Christ. In the Twelfth Century, Gratian reversed this, equating the natural and divine laws. Thomas Aquinas restored Natural Law to its independent state, asserting that, as the perfection of human reason, it could approach but not fully comprehend the Eternal law and needed to be supplemented by Divine law. See also Biblical law in Christianity.

All human laws were to be judged by their conformity to the natural law. An unjust law was in a sense no law at all. At this point, the natural law was not only used to pass judgment on the moral worth of various laws, but also to determine what the law said in the first place. This could result in some tension.^[13]

The natural law was inherently deontological in that although it is aimed at goodness, it is entirely focused on the ethicalness of actions, rather than the consequence. The specific content of the natural law was therefore determined by a conception of what things constituted happiness, be they temporal satisfaction or salvation. The state, in being bound by the natural law, was conceived as an institution directed at bringing its subjects to true happiness. In the 16th century, the School of Salamanca (Francisco Suárez, Francisco de Vitoria, etc.) further developed a philosophy of natural law. After the Church of England broke from Rome, the English theologian Richard Hooker adapted Thomistic notions of natural law to Anglicanism.

[edit] Islamic natural law

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The Maturidi school, the second largest school of Sunni theology, posits the existence of a form of natural law. Abu Mansur al-Maturidi stated that the human mind could know of the existence of God and the major forms of 'good' and 'evil' without the help of revelation. Al-Maturidi gives the example of stealing which is known to be evil by reason alone due to man's working hard for his property. Killing, fornication, and drinking alcohol were all 'evils' which the human mind could know of according to al-Maturidi.

The concept of Istislah in Islamic law bears some similarities to the natural law tradition in the West, as exemplified by Thomas Aquinas. However, whereas natural law deems good that which is known self-evidently to be good, according as it tends towards the fulfilment of the person, istislah calls good whatever is connected to one of five "basic goods". Al-Ghazali abstracted these "basic goods" from the legal precepts in the Qur'an and Sunnah: they are religion, life, reason, lineage and property. Some add also "honour".

Ibn Qayyim al-Jawzi also posited that human reason could discern between 'great sins' and good deeds.

Abū Rayhān al-Bīrūnī, an Islamic scholar and polymath scientist, understood natural law as the law of the jungle. He argued that the antagonism between human beings can only be overcome through a divine law, which he believed to have been sent through prophets. This is also the position of the Ashari school, the largest school of Sunni theology.^[14]

Averroes (Ibn Rushd), in his treatise on Justice and Jihad and his commentary on Plato's Republic, writes that the human mind can know of the unlawfulness of killing and stealing and thus of the five maqasid or higher intents of the Islamic sharia or to protect religion, life, property, offspring, and reason. The concept of natural law entered the mainstream of Western culture through his Aristotelian commentaries, influencing the subsequent Averroist movement and the writings of Thomas Aquinas.^[15]

[edit] Hobbes' natural law

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By the Seventeenth Century, the Medieval teleological view came under intense criticism from some quarters. Thomas Hobbes instead founded a contractualist theory of legal positivism on what all men could agree upon: what they sought (happiness) was subject to contention, but a broad consensus could form around what they feared (violent death at the hands of another). The natural law was how a rational human being, seeking to survive and prosper, would act. It was discovered by considering humankind's natural rights, whereas previously it could be said that natural rights were discovered by considering the natural law. In Hobbes' opinion, the only way natural law could prevail was for men to submit to the commands of the sovereign. Because the ultimate source of law now comes from the sovereign, and the sovereign's decisions need not be grounded in morality, legal positivism is born. Jeremy Bentham's modifications on legal positivism further developed the theory.

As used by Thomas Hobbes in his treatises Leviathan and De Cive, natural law is "a precept, or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that which is destructive of his life, or takes away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that by which he thinks it may best be preserved."

According to Hobbes, there are nineteen Laws. The first two are expounded in chapter XIV of Leviathan ("of the first and second natural laws; and of contracts"); the others in chapter XV ("of other laws of nature").

The first Law of nature is that every man ought to endeavour peace, as far as he has hope of obtaining it; and when he cannot obtain it, that he may seek and use all helps and advantages of war.
The second Law of nature is that a man be willing, when others are so too, as far forth, as for peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.
The third Law is that men perform their covenants made. In this law of nature consisteth the fountain and original of justice... when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust and the definition of injustice is no other than the not performance of covenant. And whatsoever is not unjust is just.
The fourth Law is that a man which receiveth benefit from another of mere grace, endeavour that he which giveth it, have no reasonable cause to repent him of his good will. Breach of this law is called ingratitude.
The fifth Law is complaisance: that every man strive to accommodate himself to the rest. The observers of this law may be called sociable; the contrary, stubborn, insociable, froward, intractable.
The sixth Law is that upon caution of the future time, a man ought to pardon the offences past of them that repenting, desire it.
The seventh Law is that in revenges, men look not at the greatness of the evil past, but the greatness of the good to follow.
The eighth Law is that no man by deed, word, countenance, or gesture, declare hatred or contempt of another. The breach of which law is commonly called contumely.
The ninth Law is that every man acknowledge another for his equal by nature. The breach of this precept is pride.
The tenth law is that at the entrance into the conditions of peace, no man require to reserve to himself any right, which he is not content should be reserved to every one of the rest. The breach of this precept is arrogance, and observers of the precept are called modest.
The eleventh law is that if a man be trusted to judge between man and man, that he deal equally between them.
The twelfth law is that such things as cannot be divided, be enjoyed in common, if it can be; and if the quantity of the thing permit, without stint; otherwise proportionably to the number of them that have right.
The thirteenth law is the entire right, or else...the first possession [in the case of alternating use), of a thing that can neither be divided nor enjoyed in common should be determined by lottery.
The fourteenth law is that those things which cannot be enjoyed in common, nor divided, ought to be adjudged to the first possessor; and in some cases to the first born, as acquired by lot.
The fifteenth law is that all men that mediate peace be allowed safe conduct.
The sixteenth law is that they that are at controversie, submit their Right to the judgement of an Arbitrator.
The seventeenth law is that no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause.
The eighteenth law is that no man should serve as a judge in a case if greater profit, or honour, or pleasure apparently ariseth [for him] out of the victory of one party, than of the other.
The nineteenth law is that in a disagreement of fact, the judge should not give more weight to the testimony of one party than another, and absent other evidence, should give credit to the testimony of other witnesses.

[edit] Liberal natural law

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Liberal natural law grew out of the medieval Christian natural law theories and out of Hobbes' revision of natural law, sometimes in an uneasy balance of the two.

Hugo Grotius based his philosophy of international law on natural law. In particular, his writings on freedom of the seas and just war theory directly appealed to natural law. About natural law itself, he wrote that "even the will of an omnipotent being cannot change or abrogate" natural law, which "would maintain its objective validity even if we should assume the impossible, that there is no God or that he does not care for human affairs." (De iure belli ac pacis, Prolegomeni XI). This is the famous argument etiamsi daremus (non esse Deum), that made natural law no longer dependent on theology.

John Locke incorporated natural law into many of his theories and philosophy, especially in Two Treatises of Government. There is considerable debate about whether his conception of natural law was more akin to that of Aquinas (filtered through Richard Hooker) or Hobbes' radical reinterpretation, though the effect of Locke's understanding is usually phrased in terms of a revision of Hobbes upon Hobbesean contractualist grounds. Locke turned Hobbes' prescription around, saying that if the ruler went against natural law and failed to protect "life, liberty, and property," people could justifiably overthrow the existing state and create a new one.

While Locke spoke in the language of natural law, the content of this law was by and large protective of natural rights, and it was this language that later liberal thinkers preferred. Thomas Jefferson, echoing Locke, appealed to unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The Belgian philosopher of law Frank van Dun is one among those who are elaborating a secular conception[1] of natural law in the liberal tradition. However, a secular critique of the natural law doctrine was stated by Pierre Charron in his De la sagesse (1601): "The sign of a natural law must be the universal respect in which it is held, for if there was anything that nature had truly commanded us to do, we would undoubtedly obey it universally: not only would every nation respect it, but every individual. Instead there is nothing in the world that is not subject to contradiction and dispute, nothing that is not rejected, not just by one nation, but by many; equally, there is nothing that is strange and (in the opinion of many) unnatural that is not approved in many countries, and authorized by their customs."

[edit] Contemporary Catholic understanding

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The Roman Catholic Church holds the view of natural law set forth by Thomas Aquinas,^[16] particularly in his Summa Theologica, and often as filtered through the School of Salamanca. This view is also shared by some Protestant churches.^[17]

The Catholic Church understands human beings to consist of body and mind, the physical and the non-physical (or soul perhaps), and that the two are inextricably linked.^[18] Humans are capable of discerning the difference between good and evil because they have a conscience.^[19] There are many manifestations of the good that we can pursue. Some, like procreation, are common to other animals, while others, like the pursuit of truth, are inclinations peculiar to the capacities of human beings.^[20]

To know what is right, one must use one's reason and apply it to Aquinas' precepts. This reason is believed to be embodied, in its most abstract form, in the concept of a primary precept: "Good is to be sought, evil avoided."^[21] St. Thomas explains that:

there belongs to the natural law, first, certain most general precepts, that are known to all; and secondly, certain secondary and more detailed precepts, which are, as it were, conclusions following closely from first principles. As to those general principles, the natural law, in the abstract, can nowise be blotted out from men's hearts. But it is blotted out in the case of a particular action, insofar as reason is hindered from applying the general principle to a particular point of practice, on account of concupiscence or some other passion, as stated above (77, 2). But as to the other, i.e., the secondary precepts, the natural law can be blotted out from the human heart, either by evil persuasions, just as in speculative matters errors occur in respect of necessary conclusions; or by vicious customs and corrupt habits, as among some men, theft, and even unnatural vices, as the Apostle states (Rm. i), were not esteemed sinful.^[22]

However, while the primary and immediate precepts cannot be "blotted out", the secondary precepts can be. Therefore, for a deontological ethical theory they are open to a surprisingly large amount of interpretation and flexibility. Any rule that helps man to live up to the primary or subsidiary precepts can be a secondary precept, for example:

Drunkenness is wrong because it injures one's health, and worse, destroys one's ability to reason, which is fundamental to man as a rational animal (i.e. does not support self preservation).
Theft is wrong because it destroys social relations, and man is by nature a social animal (i.e. does not support the subsidiary precept of living in society).

Natural moral law is concerned with both exterior and interior acts, also known as action and motive. Simply doing the right thing is not enough; to be truly moral one's motive must be right as well. For example, helping an old lady across the road (good exterior act) to impress someone (bad interior act) is wrong. However, good intentions don’t always lead to good actions. The motive must coincide with Aquinas's cardinal or theological virtues. Cardinal virtues are acquired through reason applied to nature; they are:

Prudence
Justice
Temperance
Fortitude

His theological virtues are:

Faith
Hope
Charity

According to Aquinas, to lack any of these virtues is to lack the ability to make a moral choice. For example, consider a man who possesses the virtues of justice, prudence, and fortitude, yet lacks temperance. Due to his lack of self control and desire for pleasure, despite his good intentions, he will find himself swaying from the moral path.

[edit] In contemporary jurisprudence

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In jurisprudence, natural law can refer to the several doctrines:

That just laws are immanent in nature; that is, they can be "discovered" or "found" but not "created" by such things as a bill of rights;
That they can emerge by the natural process of resolving conflicts, as embodied by the evolutionary process of the common law; or
That the meaning of law is such that its content cannot be determined except by reference to moral principles. These meanings can either oppose or complement each other, although they share the common trait that they rely on inherence as opposed to design in finding just laws.

Whereas legal positivism would say that a law can be unjust without it being any less a law, a natural law jurisprudence would say that there is something legally deficient about an unjust law. Legal interpretivism, famously defended in the English speaking world by Ronald Dworkin, claims to have a position different from both natural law and positivism.

Besides utilitarianism and Kantianism, natural law jurisprudence has in common with virtue ethics that it is a live option for a first principles ethics theory in analytic philosophy.

The concept of natural law was very important in the development of the English common law. In the struggles between Parliament and the monarch, Parliament often made reference to the Fundamental Laws of England which were at times said to embody natural law principles since time immemorial and set limits on the power of the monarchy. According to William Blackstone, however, natural law might be useful in determining the content of the common law and in deciding cases of equity, but was not itself identical with the laws of England. Nonetheless, the implication of natural law in the common law tradition has meant that the great opponents of natural law and advocates of legal positivism, like Jeremy Bentham, have also been staunch critics of the common law.

Natural law jurisprudence is currently undergoing a period of reformulation (as is legal positivism). The most prominent contemporary natural law jurist, Australian John Finnis, is based in Oxford, but there are also Americans Germain Grisez, Robert P. George, and Canadian Joseph Boyle. All have tried to construct a new version of natural law. The 19th-century anarchist and legal theorist, Lysander Spooner, was also a figure in the expression of modern natural law.

"New Natural Law" as it is sometimes called, originated with Grisez. It focuses on "basic human goods," such as human life, knowledge, and aesthetic experience, which are self-evidently and intrinsically worthwhile, and states that these goods reveal themselves as being incommensurable with one another.

[edit] See also

Aristotle
Thomas Aquinas
Jean Barbeyrac
Richard Cumberland
John Finnis
Hugo Grotius
Thomas Hobbes
John Locke
Samuel von Pufendorf
Legal positivism
Lysander Spooner
Natural justice
Natural order
Natural rights
Naturalistic fallacy
Orders of creation
School of Salamanca
Spontaneous order
Stoicism
Substantive due process
Unenumerated rights

[edit] References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d "Natural Law," International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
^ Natural Law
^ Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England
^ Shellens, "Aristotle on Natural Law."
^ Jaffa, Thomism and Aristotelianism.
^ H. Rackham, trans., Nicomachean Ethics, Loeb Classical Library; J. A. K. Thomson, trans. (revised by Hugh Tedennick), Nicomachean Ethics, Penguin Classics.
^ Joe Sachs, trans., Nicomachean Ethics, Focus Publishing
^ Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. V, ch. 6–7.
^ Politics, Bk. III, ch. 16.
^ Rhetoric 1373b2–8.
^ Shellens, "Aristotle on Natural Law," 75–81
^ Lloyd's Introduction to Jurisprudence Seventh Edition.
^ Burns, "Aquinas's Two Doctrines of Natural Law."
^ Corbin, Henry. History of Islamic Philosophy, Translated by Liadain Sherrard, Philip Sherrard. London; Kegan Paul International in association with Islamic Publications for The Institute of Ismaili Studies. pp. 39. ISBN 0710304161.
^ Roeber, A. G. (October 2001), "What the Law Requires Is Written on Their Hearts: Noachic and Natural Law among German-Speakers in Early Modern North America", The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series 58 (4): 883–912 [887]
^ Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, n. 44; International Theological Commission, The Search for Universal Ethics: A New Look at the Natural Law, n. 37.
^ A Biblical Case for Natural Law, by David VanDrunen. Studies in Christian Social Ethics and Economics, no. 1. Grand Rapids: Acton Institute, 2006.
^ Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, n. 48.
^ Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, n. 54 ff.
^ International Theological Commission, The Search for Universal Ethics: A New Look at the Natural Law, n. 46.
^ Summa Theologica I-II, Q. 94, A. 2.
^ Summa Theologica I-II, Q. 94, A. 6.

[edit] Further reading

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by H. Rackham. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by J. A. K. Thomson (revised by Hugh Trennedick). New York: Penguin.
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Joe Sachs. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing.
Aristotle. Rhetoric.
Aristotle. Politics.
Barzilai, Gad. 2007. Law and Religion. International Library of Essays on Law and Society. Ashgate.
Blackstone, William. 1765–9. Commentaries on the Laws of England.
Burns, Tony. 2000. "Aquinas's Two Doctrines of Natural Law." Political Studies 48. Pp. 929–946.

Definition of Sacred..

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:27:03 +0100

Sacred

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"Sanctity" redirects here. For other uses, see Sanctity (disambiguation).

"Holy" redirects here. For other uses, see Holy (disambiguation).

For other uses, see Sacred (disambiguation).

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Holiness, or sanctity, is in general the state of being holy (perceived by religious individuals as associated with the divine) or sacred (considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion; or inspiring awe or reverence among believers in a given set of spiritual ideas). In other contexts, objects are often considered 'holy' or 'sacred' if used for spiritual purposes, such as the worship or service of gods. These terms can also be used in a non-spiritual or semi-spiritual context ("sacred truths" in a constitution). It is often ascribed to people ("a holy man" of religious occupation, "holy prophet" who is venerated by his followers), objects ("sacred artifact" that is worshipped), times ("holy days" of spiritual introspection, such as during winter holidays), or places ("sacred ground", "holy place").

Contents
[hide]

1 FU
2 Etymology
3 Holiness in Judaism
4 Holiness in Christianity

4.1 Holiness in Catholicism
4.2 Holiness in Protestantism

5 Holiness in Buddhism
6 Hierology
7 Sacred ground
8 Notes
9 References
10 See also

[edit] FU

[edit] Etymology

Main article: Hailag

The word "sacred" descends from the Latin sacrum, which referred to the gods or anything in their power, and to sacer, priest; sanctum, set apart. It was generally conceived spatially, as referring to the area around a temple.

The English word holy dates back to at least the 11th Century with the Old English word hālig, an adjective derived from hāl meaning whole and used to mean 'uninjured, sound, healthy, entire, complete’. The Scottish 'hale' (health, happiness and wholeness.) is the most complete modern form of this Old English root. The modern word 'health' is also derived from the Old English hal. As “wholeness”, holiness may be taken to indicate a state of religious completeness or perfection. The word holy in its modern form appears in Wyclif's Bible of 1382.

In non-specialist contexts, the term "holy" is used in a more general way, to refer to someone or something that is associated with a divine power, such as water used for Baptism.

[edit] Holiness in Judaism

See also: Q-D-S

The Hebrew word for "holiness," "kedushah" (Hebrew: קדושה‎) has the connotation of "separateness." That which is holy in Judaism is set apart, and the separation is maintained by both legal and spiritual measures. Certain places and times are intrinsically sacred, and strictures are placed on one's actions in those situations. However, holiness is not a single state, but contains a broad spectrum. The Mishnah lists concentric circles of holiness surrounding the Temple in Jerusalem: Holy of Holies; Temple Sanctuary; Temple Vestibule; Court of Priests; Court of Israelites; Court of Women; Temple Mount; the walled city of Jerusalem; all the walled cities of Israel; and the borders of the Land of Israel. Distinctions are made as to who and what are permitted in each area. Likewise, the holidays, including and especially the Sabbath, are considered to be holy in time; the Torah calls them "holy [days of] gathering. Work is not allowed on those days, and rabbinic tradition lists 39 categories of activity that are specifically prohibited.

The Torah describes the Aaronite priests and the Levites as being selected by God to perform the Temple services; they, as well, are called "holy." A righteous person (tzadik) is also considered to be holy.^{[citation needed]}

Beyond the intrinsically holy, objects can become sacred through consecration. Any personal possession may be dedicated to the Temple of God, after which its misappropriation is considered among the gravest of sins. The various sacrifices are holy; those which may be eaten have very specific rules concerning who may eat which of their parts, and time limits on when the consumption must be completed. Most sacrifices contain a part to be consumed by the priests - a portion of the holy to be consumed by God's holy devotees.

The encounter with the holy is seen as eminently desirable, and at the same time fearful and awesome. For the strongest penalties are applied to one who transgresses in this area - one could in theory receive either the death penalty or the heavenly punishment of karet, spiritual excision, for mis-stepping in his close approach to God's domain.

[edit] Holiness in Christianity

[edit] Holiness in Catholicism

Catholicism has inherited much of the Jewish vision of the world in terms of holiness, with certain behaviour appropriate to certain places and times. The calendar gives shape to Catholic practice, which tends to focus on the Eucharist, in which the Real Presence of Christ is manifested. Holy days, celebrating Catholic saints and events of the life of Christ are celebrated throughout the year. Many features of the Jewish temple(although now seen as having Christian significance) are imitated in churches, such as the altar, bread, lamp, incense, font, etc, to emphasise the extreme holiness of the Eucharistic elements, which are reserved in a tabernacle. In extension of this focus on the Sacrament as holy, many objects in Catholicism are also considered holy. They are called sacramentals and are usually blessed by a priest. Such items include rosaries, crucifixes, medals, and statues and icons of Jesus, angels and saints (Virgin Mary). While Catholics believe that holy places and objects (i.e., objects dedicated to God for sacred use) should be respected and not put to profane use, the Catholic Church condemns worshiping the object itself, as any worship given to something other than God is considered idolatry.

People in a state of sanctifying grace are also considered holy in Catholicism. A central notion of Catholicism as articulated in contemporary theology is the "[personal] call to holiness," considered as a vocation shared by every Christian believer. Profound personal holiness has traditionally also been seen as a focus for the kind of contagious holiness primarily associated with the Sacrament. So the communion of saints in Catholicism is not only the acclamation of their piety or morality, but also reverence for the tangible holiness that flows from their proximity to the divine. Hence the places where saints lived, died, performed miracles, or received visions frequently become sites of pilgrimage, and notable objects surviving a saint (including the body or parts of it) are considered relics. The holiness of such places or objects, resulting from contact with a deeply holy person, is often connected with the miraculous long after the death of the saint.

Sanctus is the name of an important hymn of Christian liturgy. The Trisagion ('Thrice Holy') is a standard hymn of the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Churches.

[edit] Holiness in Protestantism

The Protestant Reformation stood in opposition to the beliefs of tangible holiness in the Catholic Church and rejected most of its teachings regarding devotional practice, language and imagery. The early Protestant Reformers, who were often scholars of Ancient Greek and also borrowed from Jewish scholarship, recognized that holiness is an attribute of God, and holiness is always part of the presence of God. Yet they also recognized that practical holiness was the evidence of the presence of God in the converted believer. Martin Luther viewed God's grace (and therefore God's holiness), as an invasion of the life. Actions that demonstrated holiness would spring up, not premeditated, as the believer focused more and more on his or her relationship with Christ. This was the life of faith, according to Luther, a life in which one recognizes that the sin nature never departs, yet grace invades and draws the person after Christ.

Calvin, on the other hand, formulated a practical system of holiness that even tied in with culture and social justice. All unholy actions, Calvin reasoned, resulted in suffering. Thus he proved out to the city fathers of Geneva that dancing and other social vices always ended with the wealthy oppressing the poor. A holy life, in his outlook, was pietistic and simple, a life that shunned extravagance, excess, and vanity. On a personal level, Calvin believed that suffering would be a manifestation of taking on the Cross of Christ, but suffering was also part of the process of holiness. He expected that all Christians would suffer in this life, not as punishment, but rather as participation in union with Christ, who suffered for them. And yet, socially, Calvin argued that a holy society would end up as a gentle, kindly society (except to criminals) where the poor would be protected from the abuses of the wealthy, the lawyers, and others who normally preyed upon them.

In Protestantism, especially in American branches of Protestantism of the more Pentecostal variety, holiness has acquired the secondary meaning of the reshaping of a person through spiritual rebirth. The term owes its origin to John Wesley's concept of "scriptural holiness" or Christian perfection.

The Holiness movement began within Methodism in the United States, among those who thought the church had lost the zeal and emphasis on personal holiness of Wesley's day. In the latter part of the 19th century revival meetings were held, attended by thousands. In Vineland, N.J in 1867 a camp meeting was begun and the National Holiness Camp Meeting Association, which went on to establish many holiness camp meetings across the nation. Some adherents to the movement remained within their denominations; others founded new denominations, such as the Free Methodist Church, the Church of the Nazarene, and the Church of God (Anderson). Within a generation another movement, the Pentecostal movement was born, drawing heavily from the Holiness Movement. Around the middle of the 20th century, the Conservative Holiness Movement was born - a conservative offshoot of the Holiness movement.

The Higher Life movement appeared in the British Isles during the mid 1800's.

In the contemporary Holiness movement, the idea that holiness is relational is growing. In this thought, the core notion of holiness is love. Other notions of holiness, such as purity, being set apart, perfection, keeping rules, and total commitment, are seen as contributory notions of holiness. These contributory notions find their ultimate legitimacy when love is at their core (Thomas Jay Oord and Michael Lodahl).

Commonly recognized outward expressions or "standards" of holiness among more fundamental adherents frequently include applications relative to dress, hair, and appearance: e.g., short hair on men, uncut hair on women, and prohibitions against shorts, pants on women, make-up and jewelry. Other common injunctions are against places of worldly amusement, mixed swimming, smoking, minced oaths, as well as the eschewing of television and radio.

More traditional or mainline Protestant denominations, such as the Anglican, Lutheran, and some Methodist denomninations, believe in Holy Sacraments that the clergy perform, such as Holy Communion and Holy Baptism. As well as strong belief in the Holy Catholic Church, Holy Scripture, Holy Trinity, and the Holy Covenant. They also believe that angels and saints are called to holiness.

[edit] Holiness in Buddhism

In Theravada Buddhism one finds the designation of 'noble person' or ariyapuggala (Pali). The Buddha described four grades of such person depending on their level of purity. This purity is measured by which of the ten fetters (samyojana) and klesha have been purified and integrated from the mindstream. These persons are called (in order of increasing sanctity) Sotapanna, Sakadagami, Anagami and Arahant. The latter term designates an enlightened human being and is sometimes rendered into English as the Holy One.

[edit] Hierology

For the study of hieroglyphics, see hieroglyphology. For the study of sacred writings, see hierographology.

Hierology (Greek ιερος, hieros, "sacred" or "holy", + λογος, logos, "word" or "reason") refers to the study of the sacred and sacredness. It is generally pursued by those who find real truth in many faiths and especially refers to philosophical speculations about religion that involve the traditions of multiple cultures or belief systems. It differs from theology in that a god or gods are not necessarily a focus and in that it may include sources with no origin in Western philosophy or religion.

[edit] Sacred ground

Sometimes a social or religious group considers an area sacred or holy, e.g. a cemetery. See also most sacred sites.

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

Durkheim, Emile (1915) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: George Allen & Unwin (originally published 1915, English translation 1915).
Eliade, Mircea (1957) The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Translated by Willard R. Trask. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World).
Thomas Jay Oord and Michael Lodahl (2006) Relational Holiness: Responding to the Call of Love. Kansas City, Missouri: Beacon Hill.
Pals, Daniel (1996) Seven Theories of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. US ISBN 0-19-508725-9 (pbk).
Sharpe, Eric J. (1986) Comparative Religion: A History, 2nd ed., (London: Duckworth, 1986/La Salle: Open Court). US ISBN 0-8126-9041-9.

[edit] See also

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article holy.

Buddhology
Hallow
Joseph Campbell
Neopaganism
New Age
Polytheistic reconstructionism
Theology
Theosophy
Traditionalist School

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred"

Categories: Holiness

Definition of Religion...

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:24:05 +0100

Religion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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This article is about a general set of beliefs about life, purpose, etc.. For other uses, see Religion (disambiguation).

"Religious" redirects here. For a member of a Catholic religious order, see Religious (Catholicism).

Map of majority religions in the world

A religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth.^[1] Religion is commonly identified by the practitioner's prayer, ritual, meditation, music and art, among other things, but more generally is interwoven with society and politics. It may focus on specific supernatural, metaphysical, and moral claims about reality (the cosmos and human nature) which may yield a set of religious laws, ethics, and a particular lifestyle. Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and religious experience.

The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction. "Religion" is sometimes used interchangeably with "faith" or "belief system,"^[2] but it is more socially defined than personal convictions, and it entails specific behaviors, respectively.

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Religion Portal v • d • e

The development of religion has taken many forms in various cultures. It considers psychological and social roots, along with origins and historical development.

In the frame of western religious thought,^[3] religions present a common quality, the "hallmark of patriarchal religious thought": the division of the world in two comprehensive domains, one sacred, the other profane.^[4] Religion is often described as a communal system for the coherence of belief focusing on a system of thought, unseen being, person, or object, that is considered to be supernatural, sacred, divine, or of the highest truth. Moral codes, practices, values, institutions, tradition, rituals, and scriptures are often traditionally associated with the core belief, and these may have some overlap with concepts in secular philosophy. Religion is also often described as a "way of life" or a life stance.

Contents
[hide]

1 Definitions of religion
2 Specific religious movements
3 Religion and superstition
4 History

4.1 Development of religion
4.2 Middle Ages
4.3 Modern period

5 Religious belief
6 Related forms of thought

6.1 Religion and science
6.2 Epistemology
6.3 Eastern religions
6.4 Religion and philosophy
6.5 Mysticism and esotericism
6.6 Spirituality
6.7 Myth
6.8 Cosmology

7 Criticism of religious belief

7.1 Memetic theory of religion

8 Criticism of the concept of "religion"
9 See also
10 References

10.1 Notes
10.2 Bibliography

11 External links

Definitions of religion

Further information: Sociology of Religion, Transcendence, Theism, Sacred (comparative religion), Religion and mythology, and Myth and ritual

Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism are one, a painting in the litang style portraying three men laughing by a river stream, 12th century, Song Dynasty.

Religious scholars generally agree that writing a single definition that applies to all religions is difficult or even impossible, because all people examine religion with some kind of critical eye, and the term is therefore fraught with ideological consequences for anyone who might want to construct a universal definition. Talal Asad writes that "there cannot be a universal definition of religion ... because that definition is itself the historical product of discursive processes"^[5]; Thomas A. Tweed, while defending the idea of religion in general, writes that "it would be foolish to set up an abstract definition of religion's essence, and then proceed to defend that definition from all comers."^[6]

The earliest definition of religion is from Johnson's Dictionary, which simply calls it "a system of faith and worship". Friedrich Schleiermacher in the late 18th century defined religion as das schlechthinnige Abhängigkeitsgefühl, commonly translated as "a feeling of absolute dependence".^[7] His contemporary Hegel disagreed thoroughly, defining religion as "the Divine Spirit becoming conscious of Himself through the finite spirit."^[8] Clifford Geertz's definition of religion as a "cultural system" was dominant for most of the 20th century and continues to be widely accepted today.

Sociologists and anthropologists tend to see religion as an abstract set of ideas, values, or experiences developed as part of a cultural matrix. For example, in Lindbeck's Nature of Doctrine, religion does not refer to belief in "God" or a transcendent Absolute. Instead, Lindbeck defines religion as, "a kind of cultural and/or linguistic framework or medium that shapes the entirety of life and thought… it is similar to an idiom that makes possible the description of realities, the formulation of beliefs, and the experiencing of inner attitudes, feelings, and sentiments.”^[9] According to this definition, religion refers to one's primary worldview and how this dictates one's thoughts and actions. Thus religion is considered by some sources to extend to causes, principles, or activities believed in with zeal or conscientious devotion concerning points or matters of ethics or conscience, and not necessarily including belief in the supernatural.^[10]

The English word religion has been in use since the 13th century, loaned from Anglo-French religiun (11th century), ultimately from the Latin religio, "reverence for God or the gods, careful pondering of divine things, piety, the res divinae".^[11]

The ultimate origins of Latin religiō are obscure. It is usually accepted to derive from ligare "bind, connect"; probably from a prefixed re-ligare, i.e. re (again) + ligare or "to reconnect." This interpretation is favoured by modern scholars such as Tom Harpur and Joseph Campbell, but was made prominent by St. Augustine, following the interpretation of Lactantius. Another possibility is derivation from a reduplicated *le-ligare. A historical interpretation due to Cicero on the other hand connects lego "read", i.e. re (again) + lego in the sense of "choose", "go over again" or "consider carefully".^[12]

Specific religious movements

Main article: Major religious groups

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the academic practice of comparative religion divided religious belief into philosophically-defined categories called "world religions." However, some recent scholarship has argued that not all types of religion are necessarily separated by mutually exclusive philosophies, and furthermore that the utility of ascribing a practice to a certain philosophy, or even calling a given practice religious, rather than cultural, political, or social in nature, is limited.^[13]^[14]^[15] The list of religious movements given here is an attempt to summarize the most important regional and philosophical influences, but it is by no means a complete description of every religious community.

Abrahamic religions are practiced throughout the world. They share in common the Jewish patriarch Abraham and the Torah as an initial sacred text, although the degree to which the Torah is incorporated into religious beliefs varies between traditions.

Judaism accepts only the prophets of the Torah, but also relies on the authority of rabbis. It is practiced by the Jewish people, an ethnic group currently centered in Israel but also scattered throughout the Jewish diaspora. Today, Jews are outnumbered by Christians and Muslims.
Christianity is centered on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the Gospels and the writings of the apostle Paul (1st century CE). The Christian faith is essentially faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, and as Savior and Lord. As the religion of Western Europe during the time of colonization, Christianity has been propagated throughout the world. However, Christianity is not practiced as a single orthodoxy but as a mixture of Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, and many forms of Protestantism. In the United States, for example, African-Americans^[16] and Korean-Americans^[17] usually attend separate churches from Americans of European descent. Many European countries as well as Argentina have established a specific church as the state religion, but this is not the case in the United States nor in many other majority Christian areas.
Islam refers to the religion taught by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a major political and religious figure of the 7th century CE. Islam is the dominant religion of northern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. As with Christianity, there is no single orthodoxy in Islam but a multitude of traditions which are generally categorized as Sunni and Shia, although there are other minor groups as well. Wahhabi Islam is the established religion of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There are also several Islamic republics, including Iran which is run by a Shia Supreme Leader.
The Bahá'í Faith was founded in the 19th century in Iran and since then has spread worldwide. It teaches unity of all religious philosophies and accepts all of the prophets of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as additional prophets including its founder Bahá'u'lláh.
Smaller Abrahamic groups that are not heterodox versions of the four major groupings include Mandaeism, Samaritanism, the Druze, and the Rastafari movement.

Indian religions are practiced or were founded in the Indian subcontinent. Concepts most of them share in common include karma, caste, reincarnation, mantras, yantras, and darśana. Islam in India has also been influenced by Indian religious practices.

Hinduism is a synechdoche describing the similar Indian religious philosophies of Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and related groups, and is the predominant religion of the Indian subcontinent^[18] Hinduism is not a monolithic religion in the Romannic sense but a religious category containing dozens of separate philosophies amalgamated as Sanātana Dharma.
Sikhism is a monotheistic religion founded on the teachings of Guru Nanak and ten successive Sikh Gurus in 15th century Punjab. Sikhs are found mostly in India.
Jainism, taught primarily by Parsva (9th century BCE) and Mahavira (6th century BCE), is an ancient Indian religion that prescribes a path of non-violence for all forms of living beings in this world. Jains are found mostly in India.
There are dozens of new Indian religions and Hindu reform movements, such as Ayyavazhi and Swaminarayan Faith.

Buddhism was founded by Siddhattha Gotama in the 6th century BCE. Buddhists generally agree that Gotama aimed to help sentient beings end their suffering by understanding the true nature of phenomena, thereby escaping the cycle of suffering and rebirth (saṃsāra), that is, achieving Nirvana.

Theravada Buddhism, which is practiced mainly in Southeast Asia alongside folk religion, shares some characteristics of Indian religions. It is based in a large collection of texts called the Pali Canon.
Under the heading of Mahayana (the "Great Vehicle") fall a multitude of doctrines which began their development in China and are still relevant in Vietnam, in Korea, in Japan, and to a lesser extent in Europe and the United States. Mahayana Buddhism includes such disparate teachings as Zen, Pure Land, and Soka Gakkai.
Vajrayana Buddhism, sometimes considered a form of Mahayana, was developed in Tibet and is still most prominent there and in surrounding regions.
Two notable new Buddhist sects are Hòa Hảo and the Dalit Buddhist movement, which were developed separately in the 20th century.

Yazdânism is a non-Abrahamic monotheistic category including the traditional beliefs of the Yazidi, Alevi, and Ahl-e Haqq.
Religious movements centered in the United States are often derived from Christian tradition. They include the Latter Day Saint movement, Christian evangelicalism, and Unitarian Universalism among hundreds of smaller groups.
Folk religion is a term applied loosely and vaguely to disorganized local practices. It is also called paganism, shamanism, animism, ancestor worship, and totemism, although not all of these elements are necessarily present in local belief systems. The category of "folk religion" can generally include anything that is not part of an organization. The modern neopagan movement draws on folk religion for inspiration.

African traditional religion is a category including any type of religion practiced in Africa before the arrival of Islam and Christianity, such as Yoruba religion or San religion. There are many varieties of religions developed by Africans in the Americas derived from African beliefs, including Santería, Candomblé, Umbanda, Vodou, and Oyotunji.
Folk religions of the Americas include Aztec religion, Inca religion, Maya religion, and modern Catholic beliefs such as the Virgin of Guadalupe. Native American religion is practiced across the continent of North America.
Australian Aboriginal culture contains a mythology and sacred practices characteristic of folk religion.
Chinese folk religion, practiced by Chinese people around the world, is a primarily social practice including popular elements of Confucianism and Taoism, with some remnants of Mahayana Buddhism. Most Chinese do not identify as religious due to the strong Maoist influence on the country in recent history, but adherence to religious ceremonies remains common. New religious movements include Falun Gong and I-Kuan Tao.
Traditional Korean religion was a syncretic mixture of Mahayana Buddhism and Korean shamanism. Unlike Japanese Shinto, Korean shamanism was never codified and Buddhism was never made a social necessity. In some areas these traditions remain prevalent, but Korean-influenced Christianity is far more influential in society and politics.
Traditional Japanese religion is a mixture of Mahayana Buddhism and ancient indigenous practices which were codified as Shinto in the 19th century. Japanese people retain nominal attachment to both Buddhism and Shinto through social ceremonies, but irreligion is common.

A variety of new religious movements still practiced today have been founded in many other countries besides the United States and Japan, including Cao Đài in Vietnam.

Shinshūkyō is a general category for a wide variety of religious movements founded in Japan since the 19th century. These movements share almost nothing in common except the place of their founding. The largest religious movements centered in Japan include Soka Gakkai, Tenrikyo, and Seicho-No-Ie among hundreds of smaller groups.

Sociological classifications of religious movements suggest that within any given religious group, a community can resemble various types of structures, including "churches", "denominations", "sects", "cults", and "institutions".

Religion and superstition

Further information: Superstition, Magical thinking, and Magic and religion

While superstitions and magical thinking refer to nonscientific causal reasoning, applied to specific things or actions, a religion is a more complex system about general or ultimate things, involving morality, history and community. Because religions may include and exploit certain superstitions or make use of magical thinking, while mixing them with broader considerations, the division between superstition and religious faith is hard to specify and subjective. Religious believers have often seen other religions as superstition.^[19] Likewise, some atheists, agnostics, deists, and skeptics regard religious belief as superstition. Religious practices are most likely to be labeled "superstitious" by outsiders when they include belief in extraordinary events (miracles), an afterlife, supernatural interventions, apparitions or the efficacy of prayer, charms, incantations, the meaningfulness of omens, and prognostications.

Greek and Roman pagans, who modeled their relations with the gods on political and social terms scorned the man who constantly trembled with fear at the thought of the gods, as a slave feared a cruel and capricious master. Such fear of the gods (deisidaimonia) was what the Romans meant by superstitio (Veyne 1987, p 211). Early Christianity was outlawed as a superstitio Iudaica, a "Jewish superstition", by Domitian in the 80s AD, and by AD 425, Theodosius II outlawed pagan traditions as superstitious.

The Roman Catholic Church considers superstition to be sinful in the sense that it denotes a lack of trust in the divine providence of God and, as such, is a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states superstition "in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion" (para. #2110).

Superstition is a deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand is to fall into superstition. Cf. Matthew 23:16-22 (para. #2111)

History

This section needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2009)

Main articles: History of religion and Timeline of religion

Detail from Religion, Charles Sprague Pearce (1896). Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C.

Ideally, a history of religion could include all human religious practices, but archaeological study of religion is a relatively new and undeveloped field.^[20] Therefore, the history of religion is largely limited to those practices which have been described in writing.

Development of religion

Main articles: Evolutionary origin of religions, Development of religion, Anthropology of religion, and Prehistoric religion

Like the definition of religion, the construction of religious history is a task fraught with ideological implications. Early studies of religions were often written to imply that the author's own religion was the most accurate. Even in a secular history, to imply that religion "progresses" towards better understanding of reality makes a value judgment about past religions; likewise, to consider religion an essentially social construction with no transcendent meaning denies the claims of every religious authority.

There is no time or place in human history where religious movements are not being founded, and religious practice is not merely a matter of founding prophets but also of local traditions and reforms. There is not even a single era when the Abrahamic religions were developed; the Jewish prophets lived some centuries before Jesus, Muhammad came six centuries after him, and Bahá'u'lláh founded the Bahá'í Faith over a millennium later.

Middle Ages

A rare Tanjore style painting from the late 19th century depicting the ten gurus of Sikhism with Bhai Bala and Bhai Mardana.

The

Prayer, by definition...

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:21:04 +0100

Prayer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

For other uses, see Prayer (disambiguation).

Mary Magdalene by Ary Scheffer (1795-1858).

Prayer is the act of addressing a god or spirit for the purpose of worship or petition.^[1] Specific forms of this may include praise, requesting guidance or assistance, confessing sins, as an act of reparation or an expression of one's thoughts and emotions. The words used in prayer may take the form of intercession, a hymn, incantation, words of gratitude, or a spontaneous utterance in the person's praying words. Praying can be done in public, as a group, or in private.

Most major religions in the world involve prayer in one way or another in their rituals. Although in many cases the act of prayer is ritualized and must be followed through a sometimes strict sequence of actions (even going as far as restricting who may pray), other religions, mainly the Abrahamic religions, teach that prayer can be done spontaneously by anyone at any moment.

Scientific studies regarding the use of prayer have mostly concentrated on its effect on the healing of sick or injured people. The efficacy of petition in prayer for physical healing to a deity has been evaluated in numerous studies, with contradictory results.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5] There has been some criticism of the way the studies were conducted.^[6]^[7]

Contents
[hide]

1 Etymology
2 Forms of prayer
3 The act of worship
4 Pre-Christian Europe

4.1 Etruscan, Greek, and Roman paganism
4.2 Germanic paganism

5 Abrahamic religions

5.1 Bible
5.2 Judaism

5.2.1 Rationalist approach to prayer
5.2.2 Educational approach to prayer
5.2.3 Kabbalistic approach to prayer

5.3 Christianity

5.3.1 Pentecostalism
5.3.2 Christian Science
5.3.3 Prevalence

5.4 Islam
5.5 Bahá'í

6 Eastern religions

6.1 Buddhism
6.2 Hinduism
6.3 Jainism
6.4 Shinto
6.5 Sikhism
6.6 Taoism

7 Animism

7.1 America
7.2 Australia

8 Neopaganism
9 Theurgy and Western Esotericism
10 Approaches to prayer

10.1 Direct petitions to God
10.2 Educational approach
10.3 Rationalist approach
10.4 Experiential approach

11 Prayer groups
12 Prayer healing

12.1 Efficacy of prayer healing

13 See also
14 References and footnotes
15 External links

[edit] Etymology

Part of a series on
Prayer

Variants and related concepts

Recitation
Invocation
Incantation
Meditation
Mantra
Hymn (cf. "Psalm")
Praise
Chant

Aspects

Veneration
Reverence
Glorification
Deification
Mantra (term) (English)

Prayer in various traditions

Prayer in Judaism
Prayer in Christianity

Prayer in Roman Catholicism

Prayer in Islam
Prayer in Buddhism

Aum (also Hinduism)

Prayer in Hinduism

Fundamental concepts

God

Divine love
Divine presence

Holy Spirit

Spirituality
Religion

This box: view • talk • edit

Pray entered Middle English as preyen, prayen,and preien around 1290, recorded in The early South-English Legendary I. 112/200: And preide is fader wel ȝerne, in the sense of "to ask earnestly." The next recorded use in 1300 is simply "to pray."^[8] The word came to English from Old French preier, "to request" (first seen in La Séquence de Ste. Eulalie, ca. 880) In modern French prier, "to pray," the stem-vowel is leveled under that of the stem-stressed forms, il prie, etc. The origin of the word before this time is less certain. Compare the Italian Pregare, "to ask" or more rarely "pray for something" and Spanish preguntar, "ask."

One possibility is the Late Latin precare (as seen in Priscian), classical Latin precari "to entreat, pray" from Latin precari, from precor, from prec-, prex "request, entreaty, prayer." Precor was used by Virgil, Livy, Cicero, and Ovid in the accusative. Dative forms are also found in Livy and Aurelius Propertius. With pro in the ablative, it is found in Plinius Valerianus’s physic, and Aurelius Augustinus’s Epistulae. It also could be used for a thing. From classical times, it was used in both religious and secular senses. Prex is recorded as far back as T. Maccius Plautus (254 B.C. – ?). Other senses of precor include "to wish well or ill to any one," "to hail, salute," or "address one with a wish."

The Latin orare "to speak" later took over the role of precari to mean "pray." The Middle English word Orison, whose meaning in modern English has been taken over by Prayer, has been derived from this word via the Old French word oraison.^[9]

The Spanish form preguntar was first recorded in El Cantar de Mio Çid (ca. 1150) and possibly comes from Vulgar Latin praecontare, an alteration of the Classical Latin percontari, perconto, percontor "interrogate" although the Spanish verb for "pray" today is (among Catholics) rezar, which previously meant "to say" from the Latin recitare. Among Spanish-speaking Protestants, the verb orar is used instead, and a prayer is called oración. The Portuguese word pregar "to preach," or less commonly, "to exhort," is also mentioned at times, although it is from the Latin praedicare, "to cry in public, proclaim," hence "to declare, state, say," in medieval Latin "to preach," and in Logic "to assert," from præ "forth" + dicare "to make known, proclaim." Compare the Spanish predicar. More closely related is the Portuguese perguntar, "to ask" and by extension "ask for."

Pray is akin to Old English gefræge "hearsay, report," fricgan, frignan, frinan to ask, inquire, Old High German fraga question, fragen "to ask" (in modern German, "pray" is beten, "question" frage), Old Norse frett "question," fregna "to inquire, find out," Gothic fraihman "to find out by inquiry," Tocharian A prak- "to ask," Sanskrit roots, pracch- prask-, pras "interrogation," and prcchati "he asks"

[edit] Forms of prayer

Christians at prayer

Muslims at prayer

Various spiritual traditions offer a wide variety of devotional acts. There are morning and evening prayers, graces said over meals, and reverent physical gestures. Some Christians bow their heads and fold their hands. Some Native Americans regard dancing as a form of prayer.^[10] Some Sufis whirl.^[11] Hindus chant mantras.^[12] Orthodox Jews sway their bodies back and forth^[13] and Muslims kneel and prostrate as seen on the right. Quakers keep silent.^[14] Some pray according to standardized rituals and liturgies, while others prefer extemporaneous prayers. Still others combine the two.

These methods show a variety of understandings to prayer, which are led by underlying beliefs.

These beliefs may be that

the finite can actually communicate with the infinite
the infinite is interested in communicating with the finite
prayer is intended to inculcate certain attitudes in the one who prays, rather than to influence the recipient
prayer is intended to train a person to focus on the recipient through philosophy and intellectual contemplation
prayer is intended to enable a person to gain a direct experience of the recipient
prayer is intended to affect the very fabric of reality as we perceive it
prayer is a catalyst for change in one's self and/or one's circumstances, or likewise those of third party beneficiaries
the recipient desires and appreciates prayer
or any combination of these.^{[citation needed]}

The act of prayer is attested in written sources as early as 5000 years ago.^[15] Some anthropologists, such as Sir Edward Burnett Tylor and Sir James George Frazer, believed that the earliest intelligent modern humans practiced something that we would recognize today as prayer.^[16]

Friedrich Heiler is often cited in Christian circles for his systematic Typology of Prayer which lists six types of prayer: primitive, ritual, Greek cultural, philosophical, mystical and prophetic.^[17]

[edit] The act of worship

Mujahideen in prayer during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Praying has many different forms. Prayer may be done privately and individually, or it may be done corporately in the presence of fellow believers. Prayer can be incorporated into a daily "thought life," in which one is in constant communication with a god. Some people pray throughout all that is happening during the day and seek guidance as the day progresses. This is actually regarded as a requirement in several Christian denominations,^[18] although enforcement is not possible nor desirable. There can be many different answers to prayer, just as there are many ways to interpret an answer to a question, if there in fact comes an answer^[18]. Some may experience audible, physical, or mental epiphanies. If indeed an answer comes, the time and place it comes is considered random. Some outward acts that sometimes accompany prayer are: anointing with oil;^[19] ringing a bell;^[20] burning incense or paper;^[21] lighting a candle or candles;^[22] facing a specific direction (i.e. towards Mecca^[23] or the East); making the sign of the cross. One less noticeable act related to prayer is fasting.

A variety of body postures may be assumed, often with specific meaning (mainly respect or adoration) associated with them: standing; sitting; kneeling; prostrate on the floor; eyes opened; eyes closed; hands folded or clasped; hands upraised; holding hands with others; a laying on of hands and others. Prayers may be recited from memory, read from a book of prayers, or composed spontaneously as they are prayed. They may be said, chanted, or sung. They may be with musical accompaniment or not. There may be a time of outward silence while prayers are offered mentally. Often, there are prayers to fit specific occasions, such as the blessing of a meal, the birth or death of a loved one, other significant events in the life of a believer, or days of the year that have special religious significance. Details corresponding to specific traditions are outlined below.

[edit] Pre-Christian Europe

[edit] Etruscan, Greek, and Roman paganism

In the pre-Christian religions of Greeks and Romans (Ancient Greek religion, Roman religion), ceremonial prayer was highly formulaic and ritualized.^[24]^[25] The Iguvine Tables contain a supplication that can be translated, "If anything was said improperly, if anything was done improperly, let it be as if it were done correctly."

The formalism and formulaic nature of these prayers led them to be written down in language that may have only been partially understood by the writer, and our texts of these prayers may in fact be garbled. Prayers in Etruscan were used in the Roman world by augurs and other oracles long after Etruscan became a dead language. The Carmen Arvale and the Carmen Saliare are two specimens of partially preserved prayers that seem to have been unintelligible to their scribes, and whose language is full of archaisms and difficult passages.^[26]

Roman prayers and sacrifices were often envisioned as legal bargains between deity and worshipper. The Roman formula was do ut des: "I give, so that you may give in return." Cato the Elder's treatise on agriculture contains many examples of preserved traditional prayers; in one, a farmer addresses the unknown deity of a possibly sacred grove, and sacrifices a pig in order to placate the god or goddess of the place and beseech his or her permission to cut down some trees from the grove.^[27]

[edit] Germanic paganism

The valkyrie Sigrdrífa says a pagan Norse prayer in Sigrdrífumál. Illustration by Arthur Rackham.

An amount of accounts of prayers to the gods in Germanic paganism survived the process of Christianization, though only a single prayer has survived without the interjection of Christian references. This prayer is recorded in stanzas 2 and 3 of the poem Sigrdrífumál, compiled in the 13th century Poetic Edda from earlier traditional sources, where the valkyrie Sigrdrífa prays to the gods and the earth after being woken by the hero Sigurd.^[28]

A prayer to the major god Odin is mentioned in chapter 2 of the Völsunga saga where King Rerir prays for a child. His prayer is answered by Frigg, wife of Odin, who sends him an apple, which is dropped on his lap by Frigg's servant in the form of a crow while Rerir is sitting on a mound. Rerir's wife eats the apple and is then pregnant with the hero Völsung. In stanza 9 of the poem Oddrúnargrátr, a prayer is made to "kind wights, Frigg and Freyja, and many gods," although since the poem is often considered one of the youngest poems in the Poetic Edda, the passage has been the matter of some debate.^[29]

In chapter 21 of Jómsvíkinga saga, wishing to turn the tide of the Battle of Hjörungavágr, Haakon Sigurdsson eventually finds his prayers answered by the goddesses Þorgerðr Hölgabrúðr and Irpa (the first of the two described as Haakon's patron goddess) who appear in the battle, kill many of the opposing fleet, and cause the remnants of their forces to flee. However, this depiction of a pagan prayer has been criticized as inaccurate due to the description of Haakon dropping to his knees.^[30]

The 11th century manuscript for the Anglo-Saxon charm Æcerbot presents what is thought to be an originally pagan prayer for the fertility of the speaker's crops and land, though Christianization is apparent throughout the charm.^[31] The 8th century Wessobrunn Prayer has been proposed as a Christianized pagan prayer and compared to the pagan Völuspá^[32] and the Merseburg Incantations, the latter recorded in the 9th or 10th century but of much older traditional origins.^[33]

[edit] Abrahamic religions

[edit] Bible

In the common Bible of the Abrahamic religions, various forms of prayer appear; the most common forms being petition, thanksgiving and worship. The largest book in the Bible is the Book of Psalms, 150 religious songs which are often regarded as prayers. Other well-known Biblical prayers include the Song of Moses (Exodus 15:1-18), the Song of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1-10), and the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). But perhaps the best-known prayer in the Bible is the Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6:9–13; Luke 11:2-4).

See also: Tanakh, New Testament, Prayer in the Hebrew Bible, and Prayer in the New Testament

[edit] Judaism

Main article: Jewish services

Captain Samuel Cass, a rabbi, conducting the first prayer service celebrated on German territory by Jewish personnel of the 1st Canadian Army near Cleve, Germany,18 March 1945.

Jews pray three times a day, more on special days, such as the Shabbat and Jewish holidays. The siddur is the prayerbook used by Jews all over the world, containing a set order of daily prayers. Jewish prayer is usually described as having two aspects: kavanah (intention) and keva (the ritualistic, structured elements).

The most important Jewish prayers are the Shema Yisrael ("Hear O Israel") and the Amidah ("the standing prayer").

Communal prayer is preferred over solitary prayer, and a quorum of 10 adult males (a minyan) is considered a prerequisite for several communal prayers.

Orthodox Jewish women praying in Jerusalem's Western Wall tunnel

[edit] Rationalist approach to prayer

In this view, ultimate goal of prayer is to help train a person to focus on divinity through philosophy and intellectual contemplation. This approach was taken by Maimonides and the other medieval rationalists

[edit] Educational approach to prayer

In this view, prayer is not a conversation. Rather, it is meant to inculcate certain attitudes in the one who prays, but not to influence. This has been the approach of Rabbenu Bachya, Yehuda Halevy, Joseph Albo, Samson Raphael Hirsch, and Joseph Dov Soloveitchik. This view is expressed by Rabbi Nosson Scherman in the overview to the Artscroll Siddur (p. XIII); note that Scherman goes on to also affirm the Kabbalistic view (see below).

[edit] Kabbalistic approach to prayer

Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) uses a series of kavanot, directions of intent, to specify the path the prayer ascends in the dialog with God, to increases its chances of being answered favorably. Kabbalists ascribes a higher meaning to the purpose of prayer, which is no less than affecting the very fabric of reality itself, restructuring and repairing the universe in a real fashion. In this view, every word of every prayer, and indeed, even every letter of every word, has a precise meaning and a precise effect. Prayers thus literally affect the mystical forces of the universe, and repair the fabric of creation.

Among Jews, this approach has been taken by the Chassidei Ashkenaz (German pietists of the Middle-Ages), the Arizal's Kabbalist tradition, Ramchal, most of Hassidism, the Vilna Gaon and Jacob Emden.

[edit] Christianity

Main articles: Prayer in Christianity and Christian Worship

18th c. Byzantine-style bronze panagia from Jerusalem, showing the Virgin Mary in the orans prayer posture.

Christian prayers are quite varied. They can be completely spontaneous, or read entirely from a text, like the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Probably the most common and universal prayer among Christians is the Lord's Prayer, which according to the gospel accounts is how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. Some Protestant denominations choose not to recite the Lord's Prayer or other rote prayers.

Christians generally pray to God or to the Father. Some Christians (e.g., Catholics, Orthodox) will also ask the righteous in heaven and "in Christ," such as Virgin Mary or other saints to intercede by praying on their behalf (intercession of saints). Formulaic closures include "through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, through all the ages of ages," and "in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

It is customary among Protestants to end prayers with "In Jesus' name, Amen" or "In the name of Christ, Amen"^[34] However, the most commonly used closure in Christianity is simply "Amen" (from a Hebrew adverb used as a statement of affirmation or agreement, usually translated as so be it).

There is also the form of prayer called hesychast which is a repetitious type of prayer for the purpose of meditation. In the Western or Latin Rite of Catholic Church, probably the most common is the Rosary; In the Eastern Church (the Eastern rites of the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church), the Jesus Prayer.

Roman Catholic tradition includes specific prayers and devotions as acts of reparation which do not involve a petition for a living or deceased beneficiary, but aim to repair the sins of others, e.g. for the repair of the sin of blasphemy performed by others.^[35]

[edit] Pentecostalism

In Pentecostal congregations, prayer is often done by speaking in a foreign tongue, a practice now known as glossolalia.^[36] Practitioners of Pentecostal glossolalia may claim that the languages they speak in prayer are real foreign languages, and that the ability to speak those languages spontaneously is a gift of the Holy Spirit;^[37]^[38] however, many people outside the movement have offered alternative views. George Barton Cutten suggested that glossolalia was a sign of mental illness.^[39] Felicitas Goodman suggested that tongue speakers were under a form of hypnosis.^[40] Others suggest that it is a learned behaviour.^[41]^[42] Some of these views have allegedly been refuted.^[43]^[44]

[edit] Christian Science

Christian Science teaches that prayer is a spiritualization of thought or an understanding of God and of the nature of the underlying spiritual creation. Adherents believe that this can result in healing, by bringing spiritual reality (the "Kingdom of Heaven" in Biblical terms) into clearer focus in the human scene. The world as it appears to the senses is regarded as a distorted version of the world of spiritual ideas. Prayer can heal the distortion. Christian Scientists believe that prayer does not change the spiritual creation but gives a clearer view of it, and the result appears in the human scene as healing: the human picture adjusts to coincide more nearly with the divine reality. Christian Scientists do not practice intercessory prayer as it is commonly understood, and they generally avoid combining prayer with medical treatment in the belief that the two practices tend to work against each other. (However, the choice of healing method is regarded as a matter for the individual, and the Christian Science Church exerts no pressure on members to avoid medical treatment if they wish to avail of it as an alternative to Christian Science healing.) Prayer works through love: the recognition of God's creation as spiritual, intact and inherently lovable.^[45] The Christian Scientists' aim is "to reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing" (Manual of The Mother Church, p.17) which, they believe, was lost after the early centuries of Christianity. They cite such Bible texts as Mark 16:17-18; Matthew 10:8 in support of their contention that Christian faith demands demonstration in healing. This is a faith in the omnipotence of God, which according to the Christian Science interpretation of the Bible, logically rules out any other power: Luke 17:5-6. The Christian Science view is that Jesus taught that we should claim good as being present, right here and now, and that this will result in healing: (Matthew 21:22; Matthew 7:7-11). Christian Scientists point to Jesus' teaching that his followers would do "greater works" than he did (John 14:12) and that a person who lived in conformity with his teachings would not be subject even to death: (John 8:51)

[edit] Prevalence

Some modalities of alternative medicine employ prayer. A survey released in May 2004 by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health in the United States, found that in 2002, 43% of Americans pray for their own health, 24% pray for others' health, and 10% participate in a prayer group for their own health.

[edit] Islam

Muslims praying during the Hajj at Masjid al-Haram, Mecca.

Main article: Salat

Muslims pray a brief ritualistic prayer called salat or salah in Arabic<

Which Bible, King James Version, Translated, Not revised!!!

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:16:41 +0100

Authorized King James Version

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"King James Version" redirects here. For other uses, see King James Version (disambiguation).

Authorized Version

The title page to the 1611 first edition of the Authorized Version Bible by Cornelius Boel shows the Apostles Peter and Paul seated centrally above the central text, which is flanked by Moses and Aaron. In the four corners sit Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, authors of the four gospels, with their symbolic animals. The rest of the Apostles stand around Peter and Paul. At the very top is the Tetragrammaton "יהוה".
The title page's central text is:
"THE HOLY BIBLE,
Conteyning the Old Teſtament,
AND THE NEW:
Newly Tranſlated out of the Originall tongues: & with the former Tranſlations diligently compared and reuiſed, by his Maiesties speciall Comandement.
Appointed to be read in Churches.
Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the Kings moſt Excellent Maiestie.
ANNO DOM. 1611 ."
At bottom is:
"C. Boel ſecit in Richmont.".

Full name: Authorized Version
King James

Abbreviation: KJV or AV

Complete Bible published: 1611

Textual Basis: NT: Textus Receptus, similar to the Byzantine text-type; some readings derived from the Vulgate. OT: Masoretic Text with Septuagint influence. Apocrypha: Septuagint with Vulgate influence.

Reading Level: US and Canada Grade 12,^[1] US and Canada Grade 8-10^[2]

Copyright status: Public domain due to age, publication restrictions until 2039 in the United Kingdom
(See Copyright status)

Genesis 1:1-3 [show]

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Genesis 1:1 in other translations

John 3:16 [show]

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

John 3:16 in other translations

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Anglicanism portal

The Authorized King James Version is an English translation of the Christian Bible begun in 1604 and completed in 1611 by the Church of England.^[3] Printed by the King's Printer, Robert Barker,^[4] the first edition included schedules unique to the Church of England; for example, a lectionary for morning and evening prayer.^[5] This was the third such official translation into English; the first having been the Great Bible commissioned by the Church of England in the reign of King Henry VIII, and the second having been the Bishop's Bible of 1568.^[6] In January 1604, King James I of England convened the Hampton Court Conference where a new English version was conceived in response to the perceived problems of the earlier translations as detected by the Puritans, a faction within the Church of England.^[7]

James gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy. The translation was done by 47 scholars, all of whom were members of the Church of England. In common with most other translations of the period, the New Testament was translated from the Textus Receptus (Received Text) series of the Greek texts. The Old Testament was translated from the Masoretic Hebrew text, while the Apocrypha were translated from the Greek Septuagint (LXX), except for 2 Esdras, which was translated from the Latin Vulgate.

While the Authorized Version was meant to replace the Bishops' Bible as the official version for readings in the Church of England, it was apparently (unlike the Great Bible) never specifically "authorized", although it is commonly known as the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom. However, the King's Printer issued no further editions of the Bishops' Bible; so necessarily the Authorized Version supplanted it as the standard lectern Bible in parish church use in England. In the Book of Common Prayer (1662), the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible — for Epistle and Gospel readings — and as such was "authorized" by Act of Parliament.^[8] In the United States, the Authorized Version is known as the King James Version. The earliest appearance in print of the phrase "authorized version", to mean this particular version of the bible, was published in 1824.^[9] The phrase 'King James version' first appeared in print in 1884.^[10]

By the first half of the 18th century, the Authorized Version was effectively unchallenged as the English translation used in Anglican and Protestant churches. Over the course of the 18th century, the Authorized Version supplanted the Latin Vulgate as the standard version of scripture for English speaking scholars.

In most of the world the Authorized Version has passed out of copyright and is freely reproduced. In the United Kingdom, the British Crown restricts production of the Authorized Version per transitional exemptions from the Copyright Act 1775 (which implemented this clause) in the Copyright, Designs and patents Act 1988 (Schedule 1, section 13(1)), which expire in 2039. Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, HarperCollins and the Queen's Printers have the right to produce the Authorized Version.

Contents
[hide]

1 Earlier English translations
2 New version

2.1 Committees

3 Apocrypha
4 Authorized Version
5 Copyright status
6 Printing
7 Literary attributes

7.1 Translation
7.2 Style and criticism

8 Standard text of 1769
9 See also
10 Notes
11 References
12 Further reading
13 External links

[edit] Earlier English translations

See also: English translations of the Bible

The followers of John Wycliffe undertook the first complete English translations of the Christian scriptures in the 15th century. These translations were banned in 1409 due to their association with the Lollards.^[11] The Wycliffe Bible pre-dated the printing press but was circulated very widely in manuscript form, often inscribed with a date earlier than 1409 to avoid the legal ban. As the text translated in the various versions of the Wycliffe Bible was the Latin Vulgate, and as it contained no heterodox readings, there was in practice no way by which the ecclesiastical authorities could distinguish the banned version; and consequently many Catholic commentators of the 15th and 16th centuries (such as Thomas More) took these manuscript English bibles to represent an anonymous earlier orthodox translation.

William Tyndale translated the New Testament into English in 1525.

In 1525, William Tyndale, an English contemporary of Martin Luther, undertook a translation of the New Testament.^[12] Tyndale's translation was the first printed Bible in English. Over the next ten years, Tyndale revised his New Testament in the light of rapidly advancing biblical scholarship, and embarked on a translation of the Old Testament.^[13] Despite some controversial translation choices, the merits of Tyndale's work and prose style made his translation the ultimate basis for all subsequent renditions into Early Modern English.^[14] With these translations lightly edited and adapted by Myles Coverdale, in 1539, Tyndale's New Testament and his incomplete work on the Old Testament became the basis for the Great Bible. This was the first "authorized version" issued by the Church of England during the reign of King Henry VIII.^[6] When Mary I succeeded to the throne in 1553, she returned the Church of England to the communion of the Roman Catholic faith and many English religious reformers fled the country,^[15] some establishing an English-speaking colony at Geneva. Under the leadership of John Calvin, Geneva became the chief international centre of Reformed Protestantism and Latin biblical scholarship.^[16]

These English expatriates undertook a translation that became known as the Geneva Bible.^[17] This translation, dated to 1560, was a revision of Tyndale's Bible and the Great Bible on the basis of the original languages.^[18] Soon after Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558, the flaws of both the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible (namely, that the Geneva Bible did not "conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy") became painfully apparent.^[19] In 1568, the Church of England responded with the Bishops' Bible, a revision of the Great Bible in the light of the Geneva version.^[20] While officially approved, this new version failed to displace the Geneva translation as the most popular English Bible of the age - in part because the full Bible was only printed in lectern editions of prodigious size and at a cost of several pounds.^[21] Accordingly, Elizabethan lay people overwhelmingly read the Bible in the Geneva Version - small editions were available at a relatively low cost. At the same time, there was a substantial clandestine importation of the rival Douay-Rheims New Testament of 1582, undertaken by exiled Roman Catholics. This translation, though still derived from Tyndale, claimed to represent the text of the Latin Vulgate.^[22]

In May 1601, King James VI of Scotland attended the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland at St Columba's Church in Burntisland, Fife, at which proposals were put forward for a new translation of the Bible into English.^[23] Two years later, he acceded to the throne of England as King James I of England.

[edit] New version

The newly crowned King James convened the Hampton Court Conference in 1604. That gathering proposed a new English version in response to the perceived problems of earlier translations as detected by the Puritan faction of the Church of England. Three examples of problems the Puritans perceived with the Bishops' and Great Bibles were:

First, Galatians iv. 25 (from the Bishops' Bible). The Greek word susoichei is not well translated as now it is, bordereth neither expressing the force of the word, nor the apostle's sense, nor the situation of the place. Secondly, psalm cv. 28 (from the Great Bible), ‘They were not obedient;’ the original being, ‘They were not disobedient.’ Thirdly, psalm cvi. 30 (also from the Great Bible), ‘Then stood up Phinees and prayed,’ the Hebrew hath, ‘executed judgment.’^[24]

Instructions were given to the translators that were intended to limit the Puritan influence on this new translation. The Bishop of London added a qualification that the translators would add no marginal notes (which had been an issue in the Geneva Bible). King James cited two passages in the Geneva translation where he found the marginal notes offensive:^[25] Exodus 1:17, where the Geneva Bible had commended the example of civil disobedience showed by the Hebrew midwives; and also II Chronicles 15:16, where the Geneva Bible had criticized King Asa for not having executed his idolatrous grandmother, Queen Maachah. Further, the King gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology of the Church of England. Certain Greek and Hebrew words were to be translated in a manner that reflected the traditional usage of the church. For example, old ecclesiastical words such as the word "church" were to be retained and not to be translated as "congregation". The new translation would reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and traditional beliefs about ordained clergy.

James' instructions included several requirements that kept the new translation familiar to its listeners and reader. The text of the Bishops' Bible would serve as the primary guide for the translators, and the familiar proper names of the biblical characters would all be retained. If the Bishops' Bible was deemed problematic in any situation, the translators were permitted to consult other translations from a pre-approved list: the Tyndale Bible, the Coverdale Bible, Matthew's Bible, the Great Bible, and the Geneva Bible. In addition, later scholars have detected an influence on the Authorized Version from the translations of Taverner's Bible and the New Testament of the Douai-Rheims Bible.^[26] It is for this reason that the flyleaf of most printings of the Authorized Version observes that the text had been "translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty's special command."

The task of translation was undertaken by 47 scholars, although 54 were originally approved.^[27] All were members of the Church of England and all except Sir Henry Savile were clergy.^[28] The scholars worked in six committees, two based in each of the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and Westminster. The committees included scholars with Puritan sympathies, as well as High Churchmen. Forty unbound copies of the 1602 edition of the Bishops' Bible were specially printed so that the agreed changes of each committee could be recorded in the margins.^[29] The committees worked on certain parts separately and the drafts produced by each committee were then compared and revised for harmony with each other.^[30] The scholars were not paid directly for their translation work, instead a circular letter was sent to bishops encouraging them to consider the translators for appointment to well paid livings as these fell vacant.^[28] Several were supported by the various colleges at Oxford and Cambridge, while others were promoted to bishoprics, deaneries and prebends through royal patronage.

The committees started work towards the end of 1604. King James I of England, on 22 July 1604, sent a letter to Archbishop Bancroft asking him to contact all English churchmen requesting that they make donations to his project.

Right trusty and well beloved, we greet you well. Whereas we have appointed certain learned men, to the number of 4 and 50, for the translating of the Bible, and in this number, divers of them have either no ecclesiastical preferment at all, or else so very small, as the same is far unmeet for men of their deserts and yet we in ourself in any convenient time cannot well remedy it, therefor we do hereby require you, that presently you write in our name as well to the Archbishop of York, as to the rest of the bishops of the province of Cant.[erbury] signifying unto them, that we do well, and straitly charge everyone of them ... that (all excuses set apart) when we prebend or parsonage ... shall next upon any occasion happen to be void ... we may commend for the same some such of the learned men, as we shall think fit to be preferred unto it ... Given unto our signet at our palace of West.[minister] on the 2 and 20 July, in the 2nd year of our reign of England, France, and of Ireland, and of Scotland xxxvii."^[31]

They all had completed their sections by 1608, the Apocrypha committee finishing first.^[32] From January 1609, a General Committee of Review met at Stationers' Hall, London to review the completed marked texts from each of the six committees. The General Committee included John Bois, Andrew Downes and John Harmar, and others known only by their initials, including "AL" (who may be Arthur Lake), and were paid for their attendance by the Stationers' Company. John Bois prepared a note of their deliberations (in Latin) - which has partly survived in two later transcripts.^[33] Also surviving is a bound-together set of marked-up corrections to one of the forty Bishops' Bibles - covering the Old Testament and Gospels,^[34] and also a manuscript translation of the text of the Epistles, excepting those verses where no change was being recommended to the readings in the Bishops' Bible.^[35] Archbishop Bancroft insisted on having a final say, making fourteen changes; of which one was the term "bishopricke" at Acts 1:20.^[36]

[edit] Committees

First Westminster Company, translating from Genesis to 2 Kings:

Lancelot Andrewes, John Overall, Hadrian à Saravia, Richard Clarke, John Layfield, Robert Tighe, Francis Burleigh, Geoffrey King, Richard Thomson, William Bedwell;

First Cambridge Company, translated from 1 Chronicles to the Song of Solomon:

Edward Lively, John Richardson, Lawrence Chaderton, Francis Dillingham, Roger Andrewes, Thomas Harrison, Robert Spaulding, Andrew Bing;

First Oxford Company, translated from Isaiah to Malachi:

John Harding, John Rainolds (or Reynolds), Thomas Holland, Richard Kilby, Miles Smith, Richard Brett, Daniel Fairclough, William Thorne;^[37]

Second Oxford Company, translated the Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, and the Book of Revelation:

Thomas Ravis, George Abbot, Richard Eedes, Giles Tomson, Sir Henry Savile, John Peryn, Ralph Ravens, John Harmar, John Aglionby, Leonard Hutten;

Second Westminster Company, translated the Epistles:

William Barlow, John Spenser, Roger Fenton, Ralph Hutchinson, William Dakins, Michael Rabbet, Thomas Sanderson;

Second Cambridge Company, translated the Apocrypha:

John Duport, William Branthwaite, Jeremiah Radcliffe, Samuel Ward, Andrew Downes, John Bois, Robert Ward, Thomas Bilson, Richard Bancroft.^[38]

Archbishop Richard Bancroft was the "chief overseer" of the production of the Authorized Version.

[edit] Apocrypha

For more details on the Apocrypha, see Biblical canon.

English-language Protestant Bibles in the 16th Century included the books of the Apocrypha—generally in a separate section between the Old and New Testaments; and there is evidence that these were widely read as popular literature, especially in Puritan circles.^[39]^[40] By the mid—17th Century, however, Puritan theologians were increasingly uneasy at the intermingling of Biblical scripture with popular culture in general, and with the Apocrypha in particular. Further, these theologians were also inclined to reject books which owed their inclusion in the Biblical canon to ecclesiastical authority. Starting in 1630, volumes of the Geneva Bible were occasionally bound with the pages of the Apocrypha section excluded. After the Restoration in 1660, Dissenters tended to discourage the reading of the Apocrypha in both public services and in private devotion.

The Church of England in the Thirty-Nine Articles had included the Apocrypha within the canon of "Holy Scripture". Article VI Of the Sufficiency of the holy Scriptures for salvation asserts:

And other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine

The Authorized Version included the Apocrypha; all the books and sections of books present in the Latin Vulgate's Old Testament — the translation of Jerome (Hierome) — but missing in the Hebrew. Indeed, the Book of Common Prayer specifies lectionary readings from the Apocrypha to be read in Morning and Evening Prayer in October.

The standardisation of the text of the Authorized Version after 1769 together with the technological development of Stereotype printing made it possible to produce Bibles in large print-runs at very low unit prices. For commercial and charitable publishers, editions of the Authorized Version without the Apocrypha reduced the cost, while having increased market appeal to non-Anglican Protestant readers.^[41] With the rise of the Bible societies, most editions have omitted the whole section of Apocryphal books.^[42]

The Apocrypha were excluded from most Bibles following a withdrawal of subsidies by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1826, which resolved ^[43]

That the funds of the Society be applied to the printing and circulation of the canonical books of Scripture, to the exclusion of those books and parts of books which are usually termed Apocryphal

The society revised its position in 1966.

[edit] Authorized Version

While the Authorized Version was meant to replace the Bishops' Bible as the official version for readings in the Church of England, it was apparently (unlike the Great Bible) never specifically "Authorized", although it is commonly known as the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom. However, the King's Printer issued no further editions of the Bishops' Bible; so necessarily the Authorized Version supplanted it as the standard lectern Bible in parish church use in England. In the 1662 Book Of Common Prayer, the text of the Authorized Version finally supplanted that of the Great Bible in the Epistle and Gospel readings - though the Prayer Book Psalter nevertheless continues to use the older version.

The case was different in Scotland, where the Geneva Bible had long been the standard Church Bible. It was not till 1633 that a Scots edition of the Authorized Version was printed - in conjunction with the Scots coronation in that year of Charles I.^[44] The inclusion of illustrations in the edition raised accusations of Popery from opponents of the religious policies of Charles, and of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. However, official policy favoured the Authorized Version, and this favour returned during the Commonwealth - as London printers succeeded in re-asserting their monopoly of Bible printing with support from Oliver Cromwell – and the "New Translation" was the only edition on the market.^[45] F.F. Bruce reports that the last recorded instance of a Scots parish continuing to use the "Old Translation" (i.e. Geneva) as being in 1674.^[46]

The Authorized Version's acceptance by the general public took longer. The Geneva Bible continued to be popular, and large numbers were imported from Amsterdam, where printing continued up to 1644 in editions carrying a false London imprint.^[47] However, few if any genuine Geneva editions appear to have been printed in London after 1616, and in 1637 Archbishop Laud prohibited their printing or importation. In the period of the English Civil War, soldiers of the New Model Army were issued a book of Geneva selections called "The Soldiers' Bible" (1643, Herbert #577). In the first half of the 17th Century the Authorized Version is most commonly referred to as "The Bible without notes", thereby distinguishing it from the Geneva "Bible with notes". There were several printings of the Authorized Version in Amsterdam - one as late as 1715 (Herbert #936) - which combined the Authorized Version translation text with the Geneva marginal notes;^[48] and one such edition was printed in London in 1649. During the Commonwealth a commission was established by Parliament to recommend a revision of the Authorized Version with acceptably Protestant explanatory notes;^[47] but the project was abandoned when it became clear that these would be nearly double the bulk of the bible text. After the English Restoration, the Geneva Bible was held to be politically suspect and a reminder of the repudiated Puritan era. Furthermore, disputes over the lucrative rights to print the Authorized Version dragged on through the 17th Century, so none of the printers involved saw any commercial advantage in marketing a rival translation. The Authorized Version became the only current version circulating among English speaking people.

Slowest of all was acceptance of the text by Biblical Scholars. Hugh Broughton, who was the most highly regarded English Hebraist of his time (but who had been excluded from the panel of translators because of his utterly uncongenial temperament), issued in 1611 a total condemnation of the new version;^[49] criticising especially the translators' rejection of word-for-word equivalence.^[50] Walton's London Polyglot of 1657 disregards the Authorized Version (and indeed the English Language) entirely.^[51] Walton's reference text throughout is the Vulgate. The Vulgate Latin is also found as the standard text of scripture in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan of 1651,^[52] indeed Hobbes gives Vulgate chapter and verse numbers (i.e. Job 41:24; not Job 41:33) for his head text. In Chapter 35: 'The Signification in Scripture of Kingdom of God' , Hobbes discusses Exodus 19:5, first in his own translation of the 'Vulgar Latin' , and then subsequently as found in the versions he terms "...the English translation made in the beginning of the reign of King James", and "The Geneva French" (i.e. Olivetan). Hobbes advances detailed critical arguments why the Vulgate rendering is to be preferred. For most of the 17th Century the assumption remained that, while it had been of vital importance to provide the scriptures in the vernacular for ordinary people, nevertheless for those with sufficient education to do so, Biblical study was best undertaken within the international common medium of Latin. It was only in 1700 that modern bilingual Bibles appeared in which the Authorized Version was compared with counterpart Dutch and French Protestant vernacular Bibles.^[53]

In consequence of the continual disputes over printing privileges, successive printings of the Authorized Version were notably less careful than the 1611 edition had been – compositors freely varying spelling, capitalisation and punctuation;^[54] and also, over the years, introducing about 1,500 misprints (some of which, like the omission of "not" from the commandment "Thou shalt not commit adultery" in the "Wicked Bible" (1631, Herbert #444), became notorious). The two Cambridge editions of 1629 and 1638 attempted to restore the proper text – while introducing over 200 revisions of the original translators' work, chiefly by incorporating into the main text a more literal reading originally presented as a marginal note.^[55] A more thoroughly corrected edition was proposed following the Restoration, in conjunction with the revised 1662 Book of Common Prayer, but Parliament then decided against it.

By the first half of the 18th Century, the Authorized Version was effectively unchallenged as the sole English translation in current use in Protestant churches;^[8] and was so dominant that the Roman Catholic church in England issued in 1750 a revision of the 1610 Douay-Rheims Bible by Richard Challoner that was very much closer to the Authorized Version than to the original.^[56] However, general standards of spelling, punctuation, typesetting, capitalisation and grammar had changed radically in the 100 years since the first edition of the Authorized Version, and all printers in the market were introducing continual piecemeal changes to their bible texts to bring them into

Deity, expectations and definition...

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:13:40 +0100

Deity

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Jump to: navigation, search

See also: List of deities

Look up deity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

A deity is a postulated preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers.

Part of a series on

God

General conceptions
Atheism · Deism · Henotheism · Monolatrism
Monotheism · Panentheism · Pantheism

Specific conceptions
Creator · Architect · Demiurge · Sustainer
Lord · Father · Monad · Oneness
Supreme Being · The All · Personal
Unitarianism · Ditheism · Trinity
in Abrahamic religions · in Ayyavazhi
in the Bahá'í Faith · in Buddhism · in Christianity
in Hinduism · in Islam · in Jainism
in Judaism · in Sikhism · in Zoroastrianism

Attributes
Eternalness · Existence · Gender · Names ("God")
Omnibenevolence · Omnipotence · Omnipresence
Omniscience

Experience and practices
Faith · Prayer · Belief · Revelation
Fideism · Gnosis · Metaphysics
Mysticism · Hermeticism · Esotericism

Related topics
Philosophy · Religion · Ontology
God complex · Neurotheology
Euthyphro dilemma · Problem of evil
Portrayal in popular media

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Deities are depicted in a variety of forms, but are frequently expressed as having human or animal form. Some faiths and traditions consider it blasphemous to imagine or depict the deity as having any concrete form. They are usually immortal, and are commonly assumed to have personalities and to possess consciousness, intellects, desires, and emotions similar to those of humans. Such natural phenomena as lightning, floods, storms, other 'acts of God', and miracles are attributed to them, and they may be thought to be the authorities or controllers of various aspects of human life (such as birth or the afterlife). Some deities are asserted to be the directors of time and fate itself, to be the givers of human law and morality, to be the ultimate judges of human worth and behavior, and to be the designers and creators of the Earth or the universe. Noted deities include, Zeus, Odin, and Ra.

Contents
[hide]

1 Pronunciation
2 Etymology
3 Relation with humanity
4 Forms of theism
5 Hinduism
6 Buddhism
7 Polytheism
8 Monotheism
9 Scientific positions on deities
10 See also
11 Footnotes

[edit] Pronunciation

More traditional pronunciation (UK/US) (help·info): [diːəti]
Variant becoming more common, but still disapproved of by many [1] (UK/US) (help·info): [deɪ.ɪ.ti]

[edit] Etymology

Main articles: Dyeus and God (word)

The word "deity" derives from the Latin "dea", ("goddess"), and '"deus", ("god"), and other Indo-European roots such as from the Sanskrit "deva", ("god"), "devi", ("goddess"), "divya", ("transcendental", "spiritual"). Related are words for "sky": the Latin "dies" ("day") and "divum" ("open sky"), and the Sanskrit "div," "diu" ("sky," "day," "shine"). Also related are "divine" and "divinity," from the Latin "divinus," from "divus."

The English word "god" comes from Anglo-Saxon, and similar words are found in many Germanic languages (e.g. the German "Gott" — "God").

[edit] Relation with humanity

Theories and narratives about, and modes of worship of, deities are largely a matter of religion. At present, the majority of humans are adherents of some religion, and this has been true throughout recorded human history. Human burials from between 50,000 and 30,000 B.C. provide evidence of human belief in an afterlife and possibly in deities, although it is not clear when human belief in deities became the dominant view.

Some deities are thought to be invisible or inaccessible to humans, dwelling mainly in otherworldly, remote or secluded and holy places, such as Heaven, Hell, the sky, the under-world, under the sea, in the high mountains or deep forests, or in a supernatural plane or celestial sphere. Typically, they rarely reveal or manifest themselves to humans, and make themselves known mainly through their effects. Monotheistic deities are often thought of as being omnipresent, though invisible.

Often people feel an obligation to their deity, although some view their deity as something that serves them.

Folk religions usually contain active and worldly deities.

In polytheism, deities are conceived of as a counterpart to humans. In the reconstructed and hypothetical Proto-Indo-European, humans were described as chthonian ("earthly") as opposed to the deities which were deivos ("celestial"). This almost symbiotic relationship is present in many later cultures: humans are defined by their station subject to the deities, nourishing them with sacrifices, and deities are defined by their sovereignty over humans, punishing and rewarding them, but also dependent on their worship.

The boundary between human and divine in most cultures is by no means absolute. Demigods are the offspring from a union of a human with a deity, and most royal houses in Antiquity claimed divine ancestors.

Beginning with Djedefra (26th century BC), the Egyptian pharaohs called themselves "Son of Ra" as well as "Bull (son) of his Mother" among their many titles. One, Hatshepsut, who ruled from 1479 BC to 1458 BC, traced her heritage not only to her father, Thutmose I, who would have become deified upon his death—but also to the deity, Mut, as a direct ancestor.

Some human rulers, such as the pharaohs of the New Kingdom, the Japanese Tennos, and some Roman Emperors have been worshipped by their subjects as deities while still alive. The earliest ruler known to have claimed divinity is Naram-Suen of Akkad (22nd century BC). In many cultures, rulers and other prominent or holy persons may be thought to become deities upon death (see Osiris, ancestor worship, canonization).

[edit] Forms of theism

Some religions are monotheistic and assert the existence of a unique deity. In the English language, the common noun god is equivalent to deity, while the proper noun God (capitalized) references the unique deity of monotheism. Pantheism considers the universe itself to be a deity. Dualism is the view that there are two deities: a deity of good who is opposed and thwarted by a deity of evil, of equal power. Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, and Gnostic sects of Christianity are, or were, dualist. Polytheism asserts the existence of several deities, who together form a pantheon. Monolatry is a type of polytheism in which deities are believed to exert power only on those who worship them. Henotheism is a form of monolatry in which one deity is worshipped as supreme. Animism is the belief that spirits inhabit every existing thing, including plants, minerals, animals, and, including all the elements, air, water, earth, and fire. The anthropologist E. B. Tylor argued that religion originally took an animist form. Theism is the view that at least one deity exists.

It may not be readily apparent what form a religion takes. Religions that avow monotheism may, in fact, be henotheistic in that they recognize the existence of several echelons of supernatural, immortal beings in addition to the central deity, such as angels, saints, Satan, demons, and devils, although these beings may not be considered deities. Adherents of polytheistic religions, such as certain schools of Hinduism, may regard all deities in the pantheon as manifestations, aspects, or multiple personalities of the single supreme deity, and the religions may be more akin to pantheism, monotheism, or henotheism than is initially apparent to an observer.

The many religions do not generally agree on which deities exist, although sometimes the pantheons may overlap, or be similar except for the names of the deities. It is frequently argued that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all worship the same monotheistic deity, although they differ in many important details. Comparative religion studies the similarities and contrasts in the views and practices of various religions. Philosophy of religion discusses philosophical issues related to theories about deities. Narratives about deities and their deeds are referred to as myths, the study of which is mythology. The word "myth" has an overtone of fiction, so religious people commonly (although not invariably) refrain from using this term in relation to the stories about deities which they themselves believe in.

[edit] Hinduism

The worship of Shiva is a pan-Hindu tradition, practiced widely across all of India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Shaivism has many different schools showing both regional variations and differences in philosophy.Shaivism has a vast literature that includes texts representing multiple philosophical schools, including non-dualist (abheda), dualist (bheda), and non-dual-with-dualism (bhedābheda) perspectives. Some people believe that artifacts from Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and other archaeological sites of northwestern India and Pakistan indicate that some early form of Shiva worship was practiced in the Indus Valley. These artifacts include lingams and the "Pashupati seal" that has been the subject of much study. The Indus Valley civilization reached its peak around 2500-2000 BCE, when trade links with Mesopotamia are known to have existed, was in decline by 1800 BCE, and faded away by 1500 BCE.^[2]

It is very difficult to determine the early history of Shaivism.

[edit] Buddhism

In Buddhism, devas are beings inhabiting certain happily-placed worlds of Buddhist cosmology. These beings are mortal (being part of saṃsāra), numerous, and are not worshipped; it is also common for Yidams to be called deities, although the nature of Yidams are distinct from what is normally meant by the term.

The Buddhist Madhyamaka argue strongly against the existence of a universal creator or essential being (such as Brahman), yet Buddhists are not atheist or agnostic - due to these terms being strongly tied to concepts of existence. Some Prasangikas hold that even the conventional existence of universal (monotheistic) deities is a non-existent, whereas others consider that the conventional existence of such a being is an existent.

Some modern Buddhists, especially in the west, believe that deities exist in the same manner that elves or unicorns do - as an archetypal consensual entity that serves a symbolic purpose in the popular imagination.

Though this may seem a rather weak basis of existence for some, as Buddhists (such as the Yogacara) deny any objective existence (of e.g. a chair), and many more deny any sort of essential existence of phenomena at all, the distinction between the existence and non-existence of consensual entities is important to Buddhist philosophy. However, a necessary requirement of Candrakirti's (Prasangika) view is that existents must not conflict with essencelessness, and it is generally agreed by them that monotheistic assertions of deity do not make much sense without some assertion of essence, which itself is vehemently rejected, so thereby monotheistic (objectively/essentially existing) deities are non-existent even in a conventional sense.

[edit] Polytheism

Main articles: Polytheism and Pantheon (gods)

A pantheon, (from Greek Πάνθειον, from πᾶν, all + θεός, god), is a set of all the deities of a particular polytheistic religion or mythology, such as the Egyptian pantheon, or Greek pantheon. A pantheon may include deities of vastly differing importance and scope.

Max Weber's 1922 opus, Economy and Society discusses the link between a pantheon of deities and the development of monotheism.

[edit] Monotheism

Main article: monotheism

In some cases, especially the monotheistic Abrahamic god or the supreme deity of henotheistic religions, the divine entity is not thought of by some believers in the same terms as deities - as a powerful, anthropomorphic supernatural being - but rather becomes esoteric, the reification of a philosophical category - the Ultimate, the Absolute Infinite, the Transcendent, the One, the All, Existence, or Being itself, the ground of being, the monistic substrate, etc.

In this view, God (Allah, Brahman, Elohim, Jesus Christ, Waheguru, etc) is not a deity, and the anthropomorphic myths and iconography associated with him are regarded as symbolism, allowing worshippers to speak and think about something which otherwise would be beyond human comprehension. From an objective linguistic point of view, however, this concept still falls under the definition of a deity.

There also are many such deities from ancient times, such as in Egypt, Greece, and Rome who were "the" local or regional deity, and who became lost in our view of these cultures only as a whole. According to Plutarch, who lived from circa 46 - 120 A.D., the Egyptian temple of Neith bore the inscription: I am All That Has Been, That Is, and That Will Be. No mortal has yet been able to lift the veil that covers Me. This is a creator deity who was worshipped by devotees in the western delta region of Egypt for over three thousand years. That worship assigned many roles to the deity and took many forms—even including one of earliest known oracle traditions and a resurrection cult—and that worship spread to other regions of Egypt and, some suspect, to other ancient cultures that arose during the beginning of recorded human history. Herodotus describes the annual festival of lights associated with this deity in late December—thousands of years after the earliest records attest an already-established worship of the deity.

Not many of these endured so long, but records of such deities exist from the beginning of human records of their beliefs. Tantalizing images of what may be tens of thousands of years of worship of deities who seem to have been unchallenged and essentially unchanged, therefore easily suggesting that perhaps, humans believed in a single deity initially, that some later developed pantheons and returned again to single deities, and that others developed cosmological concepts that were quite abstract and not dependent upon deities.

[edit] Scientific positions on deities

See also: Evolutionary origin of religions and Evolutionary psychology of religion

Pascal Boyer argues that while there is a wide array of supernatural concepts found around the world, in general, supernatural beings tend to behave much like people. The construction of gods and spirits like persons (anthropomorphism) is one of the oldest characteristics of religion. He cites examples from Greek Mythology which is, in his opinion, more like a modern soap opera than other religious systems. Anthropologist Stewart Guthrie, contends that people project human features onto non-human aspects of the world because it makes those aspects more familiar.^[3] Sigmund Freud also suggested that god concepts are projections of one's father.^[4]

Likewise, Émile Durkheim was one of the earliest to suggest that gods represent an extension of human social life to include supernatural beings. In line with this reasoning, psychologist Matt Rossano contends that when humans began living in larger groups, they may have created gods as a means of enforcing morality. In small groups, morality can be enforced by social forces such as gossip or reputation. However it is much harder to enforce morality using social forces in much larger groups. He indicates that by including ever watchful gods and spirits, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.^[5]

[edit] See also

List of deities

List of people considered to be deities

Æsir
Chthonic deities
Death deity
Deifying
Deva (Buddhism)
Deva (Hinduism)
Fairy
Goddess
God (male deity)
Life-death-rebirth deity
Lunar deity
Mother deity
Misanthropy
Misotheism
Murthi
Personhood
Saint
Solar deity
Triad
Triple deities
Vaishnava Theology
War deities

[edit] Footnotes

^ The American Heritage Book of English Usage. A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Shaivism
^ Boyer, Pascal (2001). Religion Explained,. New York: Basic Books. pp. 142–243. ISBN 0-465-00696-5.
^ Barrett, Justin (1996) (PDF). Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts. http://www.yale.edu/cogdevlab/People/Lab_Members/Frank/Frank%27s%20papers%20pdfs%20/Frank%27s%20articles/conceptualizingnonnaturalentity.pdf.
^ Rossano, Matt (2007) (PDF). Supernaturalizing Social Life: Religion and the Evolution of Human Cooperation. http://www2.selu.edu/Academics/Faculty/mrossano/recentpubs/Supernaturalizing.pdf. Retrieved 2009-06-21.

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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deity"

Categories: Deities

Godess, by definition...

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:10:22 +0100

Goddess

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from Godess)

Jump to: navigation, search

For other uses, see Goddess (disambiguation).

This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (December 2007)

A goddess is a female deity. Often deities are part of a polytheistic system that includes several deities in a pantheon. In some cultures goddesses are commonly associated with the Earth, motherhood, love, and the household, often reflecting the historical gender roles of that culture. In other cultures, goddesses may also be associated with functions such as war, death, and destruction as well as healing.

The primacy of a monotheistic or near-monotheistic "Great Goddess" is advocated by some modern matriarchists as a female version of, preceding, or analogue to, the Abrahamic God associated with the historical rise of monotheism in the Mediterranean Axis Age.

Some currents of Neopaganism, in particular Wicca, have a ditheistic concept of a single goddess and a single god, who in hieros gamos represent a united whole. Polytheistic reconstructionists focus on reconstructing polytheistic religions, including the various goddesses and figures associated with indigenous cultures.

Contents
[hide]

1 Etymology
2 Historical polytheism

2.1 Ancient Near East

2.1.1 Ancient Egypt
2.1.2 Mesopotamia
2.1.3 Canaan
2.1.4 Pre-Islamic Arabia

2.2 Indo-European

2.2.1 Indo-Iranian
2.2.2 Greco-Roman
2.2.3 Celtic
2.2.4 Germanic

3 Folk religion and animism

3.1 African religions
3.2 Chinese folk religion

4 Hinduism
5 Abrahamic religions

5.1 Judaism
5.2 Christianity

6 Feminism and Neopaganism
7 Metaphorical use
8 See also
9 Notes
10 References

[edit] Etymology

The English term goddess consists of two elements; the noun god and the feminine suffix -ess. The suffix -ess was originally -esse and was borrowed into Middle English from Middle French -esse, deriving from Late Latin -issa, deriving from Greek -issa (a feminine noun suffix). -esse replaced Old English -icge.^[1] Robert Barnhart comments that with the exception of goddess and abbess and spinster, "feminine agent nouns are disappearing under social pressure" in American English.^[1]

The Germanic words for god were originally neuter—applying to both genders—but during the process of the Christianization of the Germanic peoples from their indigenous Germanic paganism, the word became a masculine syntactic form. Goddess is attested in Middle English from 1350.^[2]

[edit] Historical polytheism

Further information: Polytheism

[edit] Ancient Near East

[edit] Ancient Egypt

Main article: netjeret

A statue of the Egyptian war goddess Neith wearing the Deshret crown of northern (lower) Egypt, which bears the cobra of Wadjet.

Goddesses of the Ennead of Heliopolis: Isis, Nut, Nephthys, Tefnut
Goddesses of the Ogdoad of Hermopolis: Naunet, Amaunet, Kauket, Hauhet; originally a cult of Hathor
Satis and Anuket of the triad of Elephantine

[edit] Mesopotamia

Main articles: Assyro-Babylonian religion and Sumerian religion

Ishtar (Inanna) was the main goddess of Babylonia and Assyria. Other Mesopotamian goddesses include Ninhursag, Ninlil, Antu

[edit] Canaan

Main article: Baalat

Further information: The Hebrew Goddess

Goddesses of the Canaanite religion: Ba`alat Gebal, Astarte, Anat.

[edit] Pre-Islamic Arabia

In pre-Islamic Mecca the goddesses Uzza, al-Manāt and al-Lāt were known as "the daughters of god". Uzzā was worshipped by the Nabataeans, who equated her with the Graeco-Roman goddesses Aphrodite, Urania, Venus and Caelestis. Each of the three goddesses had a separate shrine near Mecca. Uzzā, was called upon for protection by the pre-Islamic Quraysh. "In 624 at the battle called "Uhud", the war cry of the Qurayshites was, "O people of Uzzā, people of Hubal!" (Tawil 1993).

According to Ibn Ishaq's controversial account of the Satanic Verses (q.v.), these verses had previously endorsed them as intercessors for Muslims, but were abrogated. Most Muslim scholars have regarded the story as historically implausible, while opinion is divided among western scholars such as Leone Caetani and John Burton, who argue against, and William Muir and William Montgomery Watt, who for its plausibility.

[edit] Indo-European

See also: Proto-Indo-European religion

Pre-Christian and pre-Islamic goddesses in Indo-European cultures.

[edit] Indo-Iranian

Further information: Proto-Indo-Iranian religion and Rigvedic deities

Ushas is the main goddess of the Rigveda. Prithivi, the Earth, also appears as a goddess. Rivers are also deified as goddesses.

[edit] Greco-Roman

Statue of Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture

Main articles: Greek religion and Roman religion

Eleusinian Mysteries: Persephone, Demeter, Baubo
Aphrodite: Goddess of love, lust and beauty.
Artemis: Goddess of the moon, fertility, childbirth, and the hunt. She is the protector of children and maidens and she is also virgin goddess.
Athena: Goddess of crafts, strategy, wisdom and war. Athena is also virgin goddess.
Cybele
Eris: Goddess of discord (chaos).
Hera: Goddess of family and marriage. She is the wife of Zeus and the queen of the Olympians. Mother of Ares.
Hekate: Goddess of sorcery, crossroads and magic. Often considered an chthonic or lunar goddess. She is either portrayed as a single goddess or a triple goddess (maiden, woman, crone).
Iris: Messenger of the gods.
Nike: Goddess of victory. She is predominantly pictured with Zeus or Athena.
Potnia Theron
Selene: The original moon goddess but later gave her powers to Artemis. Her twin brother Helios is the sun god.
Ravonne : Goddess of caring, analyzing,and courage.

[edit] Celtic

Main article: Celtic pantheon

Goddesses in Celtic polytheism:

Celtic antiquity: Brigantia
Gallo-Roman goddesses: Epona, Dea Matrona
Goddesses of Insular (Welsh, Irish) mythology: Mórrígan-Nemain-Macha-Badb, Brigid, Ériu, Danu

[edit] Germanic

The goddess Freyja is nuzzled by the boar Hildisvíni while gesturing to Hyndla (1895) by Lorenz Frølich.

Further information: List_of_Germanic_deities_and_heroes#Goddesses

Surviving accounts of Germanic mythology and later Norse mythology contain numerous tales and mentions of female goddesses, female giantesses, and divine female figures. The Germanic peoples had altars erected to the "Mothers and Matrons" and held celebrations specific to them (such as the Anglo-Saxon "Mothers-night"), and various other female deities are attested among the Germanic peoples, such as Nerthus attested in an early account of the Germanic peoples, Ēostre attested among the pagan Anglo-Saxons and Sinthgunt attested among the pagan continental Germanic peoples. Examples of goddesses attested in Norse mythology include Frigg (wife of Odin, and the Anglo-Saxon version of whom is namesake of the modern English weekday Friday), Skaði (one time wife of Njörðr), Freyja (wife of Óðr), Sif (wife of Thor), Gerðr (wife of Freyr), and personifications such as Jörð (earth), Sól (the sun), and Nótt (night). Female deities also play heavily into the Norse concept of death, where half of those slain in battle enter Freyja's field Fólkvangr, Hel receives the dead in her realm of the same name, and Rán receives those who die at sea. Other female deities such as the valkyries, the norns, and the dísir are associated with a Germanic concept of fate (Old Norse Ørlög, Old English Wyrd), and celebrations were held in their honor, such as the Dísablót and Disting.

[edit] Folk religion and animism

Further information: Folk religion and Marian devotion

[edit] African religions

Further information: Traditional African religions and African diasporic religions

Further information: Mami Wata, Asase Ya, Oshun, Oya, and Yemaja

In African and African diasporic religions, goddesses are often syncretized with Marian devotion, as in Ezili Dantor (Black Madonna of Częstochowa) and Erzulie Freda (Mater Dolorosa).

A rare example of henotheism focussed on a single Goddess is found among the Southern Nuba of Sudan. The Nuba conceive of the creator Goddess as the "Great Mother" who gave birth to earth and to mankind.^[3]

[edit] Chinese folk religion

Main article: Chinese folk religion

Further information: Queen Mother of the West

Mazu is the goddess of the sea who protects fishermen and sailors, widely worshipped in the south-eastern coastal areas of China and neighbouring areas in Southeast Asia.

[edit] Hinduism

The Hindu warrior goddess Durga killing the buffalo-demon Mahishasura.

Main article: God and gender in Hinduism

Further information: Devi and Shakti

Hinduism is a complex of various belief systems that sees many gods and goddesses as being representative of and/or emanative from a single source, Brahman, understood either as a formless, infinite, impersonal monad in the Advaita tradition or as a dual god in the form of Lakshmi-Vishnu, Radha-Krishna, Shiva-Shakti in Dvaita traditions. Shaktas, worshippers of the Goddess, equate this god with Devi, the mother goddess. Such aspects of one god as male god (Shaktiman) and female energy (Shakti), working as a pair are often envisioned as male gods and their wives or consorts and provide many analogues between passive male ground and dynamic female energy.
For example, Brahma pairs with Sarasvati. Shiva likewise pairs with Parvati who later is represented through a number of avatars (incarnations): Sati and the warrior figures, Durga and Kali. All goddesses in Hinduism are sometimes grouped together as the great goddess, Devi.

A further step was taken by the idea of the Shaktis. Their ideology based mainly on tantras sees Shakti as the principle of energy through which all divinity functions, thus showing the masculine to be dependent on the feminine. Indeed, in the great shakta scripture known as the Devi Mahatmya, all the goddesses are shown to be aspects of one presiding female force, one in truth and many in expression, giving the world and the cosmos the galvanic energy for motion. It is expressed through both philosophical tracts and metaphor that the potentiality of masculine being is given actuation by the feminine divine. Local deities of different village regions in India were often identified with "mainstream" Hindu deities, a process that has been called "Sanskritization". Others attribute it to the influence of monism or Advaita which discounts polytheist or monotheist categorization.

While the monist forces have led to a fusion between some of the goddesses (108 names are common for many goddesses), centrifugal forces have also resulted in new goddesses and rituals gaining ascendance among the laity in different parts of Hindu world. Thus, the immensely popular goddess Durga was a pre-Vedic goddess who was later fused with Parvati, a process that can be traced through texts such as Kalika Purana (10th century), Durgabhaktitarangini (Vidyapati 15th century), Chandimangal (16th century) etc.

[edit] Abrahamic religions

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Monotheist cultures, which recognise only one central deity, generally characterize that deity as male, implicitly grammatically by using masculine gender, but also explicitly by terms such as "Father" or "Lord". In all monotheistic religions, however, there are mystic undercurrents which emphasize the feminine aspects of the godhead, e.g. the Collyridians in the time of early Christianity, who viewed Mary as a goddess, the medieval visionary Julian of Norwich, the Judaic Shekinah and the Gnostic Sophia traditions.

[edit] Judaism

Further information: The Hebrew Goddess and Shekhina

The Hebrew cosmogony originally told a story of God creating Adam to marry a local Goddess-associated figure named Lilith. Lilith was a follower of the Great Mother Goddess, Inanna- later known as both Ishtar and Asherah. In The Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh was said to have destroyed a tree that was in a sacred grove dedicated to the goddess Ishtar/Inanna/Asherah. Lilith ran into the wilderness in despair. She then is depicted in the Talmud and Kabbalah as first wife to God's first creation of man, Adam. In time, as stated in the Old Testament, the Hebrew followers continued to worship "False Idols", like Asherah, as being as powerful as God. Jeremiah speaks of his (and God's) displeasure at this behavior to the Hebrew people about the worship of the goddess in the Old Testament. Lilith is banished from Adam and God's presence when she is discovered to be a "demon" and Eve becomes Adam's wife. Lilith then takes the form of the serpent in her jealous rage at being displaced as Adam's wife. Lilith as serpent then proceeds to trick Eve into eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge and in this way is responsible for the downfall of all of mankind. It is worthwhile to note here that in religions pre-dating Judaism, the serpent was known to be associated with wisdom and re-birth (with the shedding of its skin).

Judaism is a Patriarchal religion, with emphasis being placed on God as having creating Adam is his own image. Eve is a secondary addition to creation, having been created from Adam's rib. God is referred to as "He" and family lines through Abraham are followed in a Patrilinear fashion. The concept of a Goddess seems to be absent from all but the original Creation myth which some scholars say appears have roots in the nearby Babylonian creation myth, Enuma Elis.

[edit] Christianity

Main articles: Marian veneration and Sophia (wisdom)

In Christianity, belief in a feminine deity was deemed characteristic of heresy, but veneration for Mary, the mother of Jesus, as an especially privileged human being, though not as a deity, has continued since the beginning of the Christian faith. Mary is venerated as the Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Mother of the Church, Our Lady, Star of the Sea, and other goddess-like titles.

Virgin Sophia design on a Harmony Society doorway in Harmony, Pennsylvania, carved by Frederick Reichert Rapp (1775-1834).

In some Christian traditions (like the Orthodox tradition), Sophia is the personification of either divine wisdom (or of an archangel) which takes female form. She is mentioned in the first chapter of the Book of Proverbs.

In Christian mysticism, Gnosticism, as well as some Hellenistic religions, there is a female spirit or goddess named Sophia who is said to embody wisdom and who is sometimes described as a virgin. In Roman Catholic mysticism, Hildegard of Bingen celebrated Sophia as a cosmic figure both in her writing and art. Within the Protestant tradition in England, 17th Century Christian Mystic, Universalist and founder of the Philadelphian Society Jane Leade wrote copious descriptions of her visions and dialogues with the "Virgin Sophia" who, she said, revealed to her the spiritual workings of the universe. Leade was hugely influenced by the theosophical writings of 16th Century German Christian mystic Jakob Böhme, who also speaks of the Sophia in works such as The Way to Christ.^[4] Jakob Böhme was very influential to a number of Christian mystics and religious leaders, including George Rapp and the Harmony Society.

[edit] Feminism and Neopaganism

Main articles: Feminist theology and Goddess movement

Further information: Goddess (Wicca) and Triple Goddess

At least since first-wave feminism in the United States, there has been interest in analyzing religion to see if and how doctrines and practices treat women unfairly, as in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Woman's Bible. Again in second-wave feminism in the U.S., as well as in many European and other countries, religion became the focus of some feminist analysis in Judaism, Christianity, and other religions, and some women turned to ancient goddess religions as an alternative to Abrahamic religions (Womanspirit Rising 1979; Weaving the Visions 1989). Today both women and men continue to be involved in the Goddess movement (Christ 1997). The popularity of organizations such as the Fellowship of Isis attest to the continuing growth of the religion of the Goddess throughout the world.

While much of the attempt at gender equity in mainstream Christianity (Judaism never recognized any gender for God) is aimed at reinterpreting scripture and degenderizing language used to name and describe the divine (Ruether, 1984; Plaskow, 1991), there are a growing number of people who identify as Christians or Jews who are trying to integrate goddess imagery into their religions (Kien, 2000; Kidd 1996,"Goddess Christians Yahoogroup").

Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, a 1988 interview with Bill Moyers,^[5] links the image of the Earth or Mother Goddess to symbols of fertility and reproduction.^[6] For example, Campbell states that, "There have been systems of religion where the mother is the prime parent, the source... We talk of Mother Earth. And in Egypt you have the Mother Heavens, the Goddess Nut, who is represented as the whole heavenly sphere".^[7] Campbell continues by stating that the correlation between fertility and the Goddess found its roots in agriculture:

Bill Moyers: But what happened along the way to this reverence that in primitive societies was directed to the Goddess figure, the Great Goddess, the mother earth- what happened to that?
Joseph Campbell: Well that was associated primarily with agriculture and the agricultural societies. It has to do with the earth. The human woman gives birth just as the earth gives birth to the plants...so woman magic and earth magic are the same. They are related. And the personification of the energy that gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female. It is in the agricultural world of ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptian Nile, and in the earlier planting-culture systems that the Goddess is the dominant mythic form.^[8]

Campbell also argues that the image of the Virgin Mary was derived from the image of Isis and her child Horus: "The antique model for the Madonna, actually, is Isis with Horus at her breast".^[9]

In Wicca "the Goddess" is a deity of prime importance, along with her consort the Horned God. In the earliest Wiccan publications she is described as a tribal goddess of the witch community, neither omnipotent nor universal, and it was recognised that there was a greater "Prime Mover", although the witches did not concern themselves much with this being.^[10] Within many forms of Wicca the Goddess has come to be considered as a universal deity, more in line with her description in the Charge of the Goddess, a key Wiccan text. In this guise she is the "Queen of Heaven", similar to Isis; she also encompasses and conceives all life, much like Gaia. Much like Isis and certain late Classical conceptions of Selene,^[11] she is held to be the summation of all other goddesses, who represent her different names and aspects across the different cultures. The Goddess is often portrayed with strong lunar symbolism, drawing on various cultures and deities such as Diana, Hecate and Isis, and is often depicted as the Maiden, Mother and Crone triad popularised by Robert Graves (see Triple Goddess below). Many depictions of her also draw strongly on Celtic goddesses. Some Wiccans believe there are many goddesses, and in some forms of Wicca, notably Dianic Wicca, the Goddess alone is worshipped, and the God plays very little part in their worship and ritual.

The lunar Triple Goddess symbol.

Goddesses or demi-goddesses appear in sets of three in a number of ancient European pagan mythologies; these include the Greek Erinyes (Furies) and Moirae (Fates); the Norse Norns; Brighid and her two sisters, also called Brighid, from Irish or Keltoi mythology.

Robert Graves popularised the triad of "Maiden" (or "Virgin"), "Mother" and "Crone", and while this idea did not rest on sound scholarship, his poetic inspiration has gained a tenacious hold. Considerable variation in the precise conceptions of these figures exists, as typically occurs in Neopaganism and indeed in pagan religions in general. Some choose to interpret them as three stages in a woman's life, separated by menarche and menopause. Others find this too biologically based and rigid, and prefer a freer interpretation, with the Maiden as birth (independent, self-centred, seeking), the Mother as giving birth (interrelated, compassionate nurturing, creating), and the Crone as death and renewal (holistic, remote, unknowable) — and all three erotic and wise.

[edit] Metaphorical use

The term "goddess" has also been adapted to poetic and secular use as a complimentary description of a non-mythological woman.^[12] The OED notes 1579 as the date of the earliest attestation of such figurative use, in Lauretta the diuine Petrarches Goddesse.

Shakespeare had several of his male characters address female characters as goddesses, including Demetrius to Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream ("O Helen, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!"), Berowne to Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost ("A woman I forswore; but I will prove, Thou being a goddess, I forswore not thee"), and Bertram to Diana in All's Well That Ends Well. Pisanio also compares Imogen to a goddess to describe her composure under duress in Cymbeline.

[edit] See also

Anima (Jung)

teachin-n-preachin

Biblical Base, God Given Diet, meant to cure all disease!!!

Bible Diet

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Contents

[edit] Permitted foods

[edit] Prohibited Foods

[edit] Phases of the Diet

[edit] Prayer, Purpose and “Partial-fast" Days

[edit] Daily Regimens

[edit] Phase One

[edit] Phase Two

[edit] Phase Three

[edit] Claimed benefits

[edit] Scientific acceptance and criticism

[edit] References

[edit] External links

The Seven Deadly Sins...

Seven deadly sins

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Contents

[edit] Biblical Lists

[edit] Development of the Traditional Seven Sins

[edit] The sins

[edit] Extravagance

[edit] Lust

[edit] Gluttony

[edit] Greed

[edit] Acedia

[edit] Despair

[edit] Sloth

[edit] Wrath

[edit] Envy

[edit] Pride

[edit] Vainglory

[edit] Catholic virtues

[edit] Associations with demons

[edit] Cultural references

[edit] Enneagram Integration

[edit] Literary works inspired by the seven deadly sins

[edit] Art and music

[edit] Film, television, radio, comic books and video games

Contents

[edit] Definition

[edit] Kinds of consequences

[edit] Consequences for whom

[edit] Agent-focused or agent-neutral

[edit] Human-centered?

[edit] Action guidance

[edit] The ideal observer

[edit] The real observer

[edit] Varieties of consequentialism

[edit] Utilitarianism

[edit] Ethical egoism and altruism

[edit] Rule consequentialism

[edit] Negative consequentialism

[edit] Teleological ethics

[edit] Consequentialism and other moral theories

[edit] Deontology

[edit] Virtue ethics

[edit] Ultimate End

[edit] Criticisms of consequentialism

[edit] General criticisms

[edit] Character-based criticisms

[edit] Applications of Consequentialist Theory

[edit] Notable consequentialists

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

[edit] References

Natural Law...

Natural law

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Contents

[edit] History

[edit] Aristotle

[edit] Stoic natural law

[edit] Christian natural law

[edit] Islamic natural law

[edit] Hobbes' natural law

[edit] Liberal natural law