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Hard questions about religious philosophy, theology and comparative religion!
1. What is "eschatology" in theology?
💡 Eschatology studies "last things" — death, resurrection, judgment, heaven, hell, and the end of history. Every major religion has eschatological beliefs about how individual lives and the cosmos will ultimately conclude.
2. What is the "Cosmological Argument" for God's existence?
💡 The Cosmological Argument (Kalam version): everything that begins to exist has a cause; the universe began to exist; therefore the universe has a cause — an uncaused, timeless, spaceless creator (God).
3. What is "Gnosticism" and why was it declared heresy in early Christianity?
💡 Gnosticism held that the material world was created by an evil or ignorant demiurge, not the true God — salvation came through secret knowledge of one's divine nature. Early church councils condemned it as incompatible with orthodox Christian teaching.
4. What is "negative capability" as applied to mystical religious experience?
💡 Keats coined "negative capability" for remaining comfortably in uncertainty — religious scholars (especially in mysticism) apply it to the apophatic tradition of dwelling in divine mystery without demanding rational explanation.
5. What is "apocrypha" in religious texts?
💡 Apocrypha (Greek: "hidden") refers to texts excluded from the official biblical canon — accepted by Catholics and Orthodox Christians (Deuterocanonical) but not by Protestants or Jews. Includes Tobit, Judith, and Maccabees.
6. What is "natural religion" as opposed to "revealed religion"?
💡 Natural religion (Deism, natural theology) derives knowledge of God from reason and observation of the natural world — contrasted with revealed religion (Christianity, Islam) that claims special divine revelation through scripture.
7. What is the "Axial Age" concept proposed by philosopher Karl Jaspers?
💡 Karl Jaspers identified the Axial Age (800-200 BCE) — when Confucius, Laozi, Buddha, Zoroaster, the Hebrew prophets, and Greek philosophers emerged simultaneously, fundamentally transforming human consciousness and religion.
8. What is "hermeneutics" in religious studies?
💡 Hermeneutics (from Hermes, divine messenger) is the theory of text interpretation — in religious studies, it addresses how to read ancient scripture meaningfully: literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical levels of meaning.
9. What is the "Ontological Argument" for God's existence?
💡 Anselm's ontological argument (1078): God is "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." A being that exists in reality is greater than one existing only in the mind — therefore God must exist in reality.
10. What is "demythologization" in biblical scholarship?
💡 Rudolf Bultmann (1941) argued the New Testament's mythological worldview (three-tier universe, miracles, resurrection as physical event) must be reinterpreted existentially to make it credible to the modern mind.
11. What is the "Problem of Evil" in philosophy of religion?
💡 The problem of evil (Epicurus): if God exists and is omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good, evil should not exist. Since evil clearly exists, at least one divine attribute must be false — a major challenge to theistic belief.
12. What is "religious pluralism" in theology?
💡 Religious pluralism (John Hick) holds that the major world religions are equally valid responses to the same ultimate divine reality — different cultural lenses on the same transcendent truth.
13. What is the "Myth of the Eternal Return" as analyzed by Mircea Eliade?
💡 Mircea Eliade's foundational religious studies concept: religious ritual allows sacred time (illud tempus) to break into profane time — the Eucharist recreates the Last Supper, Passover recreates the Exodus, restoring primordial sacred reality.
14. What is "apophatic theology" (via negativa) in religious thought?
💡 Apophatic (negative) theology holds that God transcends all human concepts — we can only say what God is not (not finite, not limited, not comprehensible). Practiced in Neoplatonism, Christian mysticism, and Jewish Kabbalah.
15. What is "syncretism" in religion and give a historical example?
💡 Religious syncretism combines elements from different traditions — Greco-Egyptian syncretism merged Zeus with Amun (Zeus-Ammon), while modern Santeria blends Yoruba deities with Catholic saints.
16. What is "comparative mythology" as an academic discipline?
💡 Comparative mythology (Frazer, Jung, Campbell, Lévi-Strauss) analyzes myths across cultures — identifying universal themes like the hero's journey, flood narratives, dying-and-rising gods, and creation myths that appear worldwide.
17. What is "Pascal's Wager" in philosophy of religion?
💡 Pascal argued: if God exists and you believe, you gain everything; if God doesn't exist and you believe, you lose little. If God exists and you don't believe, you lose everything — so belief is the rational wager.
18. What is the "Perennial Philosophy" as described by Aldous Huxley?
💡 The Perennial Philosophy (Leibniz's term, Huxley's 1945 book) proposes a universal mystical core beneath all religions — the experience of divine unity (Brahman, God, the Tao, Sunyata) reached by mystics of every tradition.
19. What is the "Euthyphro Dilemma" in philosophy of religion?
💡 Plato's Euthyphro Dilemma poses: if God commands good things because they are good, then goodness exists independently of God. If things are good because God commands them, then morality is arbitrary — either way problematic for theism.