Final Exam Study - Concepts Flashcards
Learn the concepts of the Christian Traditions.
What is Monasticism in both the East and West? How are they different? How are they the same?
East:
- Orthodox Christianity
- Stressed communal life
- Encouraged Monks to practice manual labor, obedience, prayer, and work.
- Follow wisdom of St. Basil
- Did not want to recognize the pope as the outward authority.
West:
- Monasticism
- Stresses work and prayer
- Supposed to live a traditional monastic life, but called to teach, be political advisors, be missionaries, etc.
- Based on rule by Benedict
“Outer” Different: Outward authority
“Inner” Same: Inward religious devotion/experience.
What is Mysticism?
Christian beliefs and practices directed toward an immediate personal and intense experience of God.
- A spiritual sense as union with God.
- Breaking the boundaries of thought and language about the sacred, beyond what is ordinary.
- Themes: “Ascent of Soul to God” and “Intimacy of Soul with Christ”
What is the “Cloud of Unknowing?”
Written in 1329
- Medieval religious manuscript written in fourteenth century England.
- Read by Contemplative Christians from different denominations: Quaker, Catholic, etc.
- Has influenced poets such as T.S. Eliot in “Four Quartets”
- Underneath the difference between medieval and modern is a similar searching and experience that can enlarge awareness.
- Written anonymously and most likely by a male Carthusian Monk.
- Black Plague
- Dangerous Age
- Institutional manual for younger students to help them make the “next step”: Contemplation.
- Find a new way of beingness in the cloud
- Don’t focus on an object, rather have objectless awareness.
- Lower contemplative = separated self pondering the infinite, bring attention within, develop/realize a “New Operating System”
Love and God
- God can’t be accessed as an object of attention.
- Love - objectless awareness
- God = Love = Objectless awareness
Do you think that the Cloud of Unknowing, Contemplative Christianity, and/or Mysticism is too radical for most Christians and others today? Why or why not?
Yes, too many rules to follow. Creates uncertainty about whether or not, one is doing it right. It should be just a relationship with God. No rules about Subject/Object perception and non-dual awareness etc. People are in a world where everything is so fast paced, it’s hard to pray and contemplate life.
Who was Martin Luther (personality and character)? What was the role of the church in the lives of people during Luther’s time? What was the message of John Tetzel and what effect do you think his message would have had on the people when he lived?
- Luther had a special love for children
- Disputed the claim that freedom from God’s punishment for sin could be purchased with money.
- Taught that salvation is not earned by good deeds, but received only as a free gift of God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ as redeemer from sin.
- Churches tried to teach non-biblical truths.
- John Tetzel, a Dominican friar, sold indulgences and Luther was extremely against this and wrote the 95 theses in confrontation.
What is the difference between deism and pietism? What is the relationship between deism, democracy and America’s founders?
Deism abandoned the beliefs of the bible. Pietism retained it’s biblical truths.
- Deism tried to combine Enlightenment insights with religious impulses.
- A religion of logic that believed God was sufficiently revealed in the natural world.
- Relates to democracy and America’s founders because they knew that God was the savior, but that’s all that was accounted for.
- No need for supernatural revelation: God created the world and filled it with reasonable people and discernible natural laws.
In terms of Enlightenment thinking, how did Hume “awaken Kant from his dogmatic slumber?”
- Immanuel Kant saw rationalist metaphysics as “dogmatic” because it didn’t question the most primary and very ground on which claims are justified.
- David Hume awoke Kant from this “dogmatic slumber” by showing the difficulty of justifying knowledge claims at all.
- Hume argues that we have no rational justification for believing that every effect has a cause; we simply believe this out of habit.
- This leads to questioning and “deconstructing” all forms of knowledge/authority, even one’s own sense of self-being in the world.
- How can one “believe” in God when one can’t even believe one’s own sense perception of the world is accurate?
- Rather than prove God doesn’t exist, prove that he DOES exist.
What is the connection between the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution?
The Protestant Revolution questioned religious authority and made it easier for scientists to question established patterns.
What is John Wesley’s “hermeneutical theory of textual interpretation”?
In “An Address to the Clergy,” Wesley goes over 7 points of his own interpretation of the bible and knowledge.
- Interested in a “more heartfelt religious experience” (a religious awakening)
- People should be aware of both the religious texts and sciences of the world.
What is the relationship between Christianity and Slavery during 18th and 19th century America?
African Americans were excluded from democratic participation, but found a kind of spiritual freedom from the Methodist and Baptist churches.
- Granted religious right to be Christian, but NOT civil right to be free.
- Religion was the “Opiate of the masses”
- Used for social and behavioral control as well as a source for liberation: “Christianity provided legitimation for slavery and promised liberation from slavey. African American Christianity created a distinctive religious space for freedom in the midst of oppression” (Chidester, p. 405)
How is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints like the Puritans (in terms of both being a type of “American Zion”)?
- Embodied both the impulse to restore an original Christianity and the assumption that the world was in its latter days prior to the return of Christ (Chidester)
- Like Puritans, believed they were “chosen” and also under public scrutiny.
- Emphasis on conversion experience as well as having a church “calling”
- American Zion would be built in Salt Lake City, UT/Independence, MO.
- Temple building and worship
- Priesthood restored by Peter, James, and John as the “only authentic restoration of the original church of Christ”
- Mormons have seen Zion in America as the holy city of God that will be the center of a new heaven and a new earth.
Deism vs. Pietism in LDS and early Mormonism.
- Joseph Smith set out to “check … displays of enthusiasm.”
- Tension between religious experience and religious authority.
- Importance/significance of “discernment” of spirits.
- Mormons are open to revelation/religious outpourings, etc.; yet their meetings today do not indicate this.
- LDS scripture: Old and New Testament; Book of Mormon; Doctrine and Covenants; Pearl of Great Price.
- You get your own planet when you die if you were really good in life.
- No Alcohol, no caffeine.
Main differences in the 13 Articles of Faith (Mormons)
3) States that by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel mankind will be saved.
- Christianity: saved by God’s grace.
8) Book of Mormon is the word of God.
- Christianity: Only the Bible = God’s word.
5) A little too strict on who may be called to preach the Gospel (must be accepted by those in authority from the church).
- Christianity: God qualifies the called.
Similarities in the 13 Articles of Faith (Mormons)
1) Holy Trinity
7) Gifts of the Spirit
12) Give to Ceaser what is Ceaser’s and to God what is God’s. (Obeying/Honoring the law)
What is a connection between a view on women in Mormon doctrine and Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “The Women’s Bible”?
Mormon Doctrine:
- Polygamy
- Revisiting the story of Eve in the Garden (she is viewed as a heroine rather than the cause for all evil).
- Little known seeds for a unique type of feminism not unlike Stanton’s idea.
The Woman’s Bible
- Women should be obedient to man.
