BOCF-Midterm

Theology

The study of God

Omnibenevolence

All-Good

Omnipotence

All-powerful

omniscience

all-knowing

Omnipresence

God is everywhere

Impassibility

Does not suffer

Immuntability

Does not change

simplicity

God as non-composite "No Parts"

Eternity

More than just lasting forever

Transcendence

God as radically "other" from the created universe

Immanence

God as radically participating in the universe

"God is Love"

God is love itself

Creation ex nihilo

creation out of nothing

Creation ex divino

divine substance of god

Christian Doctrine of conservation

Gods act of creation is not just a single moment at the beginning of time

Good-evil dualism

Sees evil as a rival force that is co-eternal

Manichaeism

early christian dualism heresy that sees spiritual reality as inherently good and material reality as inherently bad

Gnosticism

Early christian heresy that emphasized access to a secret knowledge of the divine. Believes the material world is mostly bad

Theism

belief in a god or gods

Athiesm

Believing that God does not exist

Agnosticism

Belief that nothing can be known about whether God exists

Monotheism

Belief in one God

Polytheism

Belief in many gods

Pantheism

Belief that material creation itself is divine

Diesm

Belief in an ultimate metaphysical being who acts once to create the universe but does not interact with the universe much (or at all) after that. The image of the "divine watch-maker."

Abrahamic religions

Christianity, Judaism, Islam. Three major world religions that trace their authority back to Abraham's covenant with God.

Privation

The Christian understanding of evil as not "a thing in itself," but evil as an absence or corruption of the good.

Problem of evil

If God is all-powerful and all-good, then why does evil exist?

free will defense

Response to the problem of evil that explains evil as consequence of our free will.

Theodicy

An attempt to justify or explain the apparent existence of evil in the world.

Augustinian theodicy

A theodicy which explains evil as consequence of our own wrongdoing and original sin.

Ireneaen theodicy

A theodicy which explains suffering as part of our spiritual growth.