- Packer, J. I.
-
J. I. Packer
- Professor of Theology.
- Wrote
- Fundamentalism and the Word of God
- Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God
- Knowing God
- God has Spoken
- Knowing Man
- Palamas, Gregorius
- (c1296-1359)
Gregorius Palamas
- Greek Orthodox theologian
- defended hesychasm mystical, direct experiences with God after contemplating one's navel)
- Paley, William
- (1743-1805)
William Paley
- Anglican theologian
- liberal
- wrote
- Natural Theology
- Evidences of Christianity to refute the Deists and prove that there was a God by the use of his teleological argument.
- Palmer, Benjamin Morgan
- (1818-1902)
Benjamin Morgan Palmer
- US Presbyterian pastor
- Wrote Theology of Prayer
- PANENTHEISM
-
- "the view that deity is in some real aspect distinguishable from and independent of any and all relative items, and yet, taken as an actual whole, includes all items" (Hartshorne)
- Pannenberg, Wolfhart
- (1928-____)
Wolfhart Pannenberg
- theologian at University of Munich
- wrote Jesus, God and Man
- holds a rational, historical theology which is a reversal of Bultmann's approach
- PARADOX
-
- A condition or situation where two true statements are mutually contradictory.
- A true or false statement which is self-contradictory and often circular
- Example: "I am a consistent liar." If that is true, then the statement is a lie, if the statement is a lie then I am telling the truth.
- See Zeno's paradoxes
- PARALLELISM AS A THEORY OF MIND
-
- The theory that mind and body are separate realities which do not interact but that events in each accompany events in the other.
- PARAPSYCHOLOGY
-
- The attempt to prove life after death by communicating with those who have died.
- Emphasizes psychokinesis (moving objects by the mind), telepathy, extrasensory perception (ESP).
- Parham, Charles
- (1873-1929)
Charles Parham
- Head of a small Bible school in Topeka Kansas
- asked his students to investigate the topic of the baptism of the Holy Spirit
- he developed thesis that "speaking in tongues" was a sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit
- thus charismatic phenomena resulted
- beginning of modern Pentecostal movement
- Parker, Joseph
- (1830-1902)
Joseph Parker
- British Congregational
- wrote autobiography A Preacher's Life
- Parker, Matthew
- (1504-1575)
Matthew Parker
- English Reformer
- chaplain to Anne Boleyn
- friend of Bucer
- forced into hiding under Mary Tudor
- Archbishop of Canterbury
- had weak theology
- opposed Puritans
- Parker, Theodore
- (1810-1860)
Theodore Parker
- Unitarian preacher but broke away from them
- graduate of Harvard
- emphasized social reform
- Parmenides of Elea
- (c515-___)
Parmenides
- Greek philosopher and politician
- Head of Eleatic school
- The changing phenomenal world is too perishable and unstable to be ultimate reality.
- The Real implies an unchanging Being, in contrast to things that come into existence and later perish.
- The real Being was never born and will never die.
- It simply is, and is the same throughout.
- Ultimate truth can refer only to Being because that never changes.
- Pascal, Blaise
- (1623-1662)
Blaise Pascal
- French mathematician, scientist
- with Pierre de Fermat, he invented the theory of probability
- also invented a calculating machine
- Joined the Jansenists
- wrote Pensees (thoughts on religion)
- God is not known through reason but intuitively by the heart
- faith is a better guide than reason
- Known for Pascal's wager
- PATRIS
-
- See Aeterni Patris
- Patton, Francis Landey
- (1843-1932)
Francis Landey Patton
- US Presbyterian
- president of Princeton from 1888-1902
- conservative
- Paul of Samosata
- (c 230-280)
- Bishop of Antioch
- excommunicated
- dynamic monarchian
- God worked through Jesus, but Jesus was not the Second Person of the Trinity
- denied distinction of persons in God
- Christ was a mere man raised above other men by the indwelling Logos (the impersonal power of God)
- his followers are called Paulianists
- PAULICIANS
-
- 7th century heretical group which was restricted to the Eastern church
- declined in 12th century
- Dualistic, docetic, emphasized epistles of Paul, but rejected OT and epistles of Peter
- similar to teachings of Marcion
- rejected all external religious exercises
- very ascetic
- Peano, Giuseppe
- (1858-1932)
Giuseppe Peano
- Italian mathematician who wrote Arithmetices Principia Nova Methodo Exposita
- Pearson, Karl
- (1857-1936)
Karl Pearson
- Science professor at London
- wrote
- The Ethic of Freethought
- The Grammar of Science
- Positivist
- Naturalist
- Pecock, Reginald
- (c1395-1460)
- Bishop of Chichester
- historical critic
- said "Donation of Constantine" was not authentic
- tampered with Apostles' Creed
- charged with heresy but recanted
- Peerman, Dean
-
- Edited A Handbook of Christian Theologians with Martin Marty
- Peirce, Charles Sanders
- (1839-1914)
Charles Sanders Peirce
- In government service
- father of Pragmatism
- wrote
- Collected Papers
- Perfection
- He also edited several religious magazines
- The pragmatic method is interpreted more nearly as the scientific method.
- Knowledge is more social in nature, and verification more public in emphasis, than in William James.
- Theory of knowledge turns on semiotic or theory of signs and is realistic.
- Knowledge can never attain complete verification or absolute certainty; this is the principle of fallibilism.
- Reality is a many-sided pluralistic process realizing limited actualities but possessing unlimited possibilities.
- Matter is directly apprehended through sensation as a "brutal fact."
- The only legitimate metaphysics is empirical or phenomenological and seeks to identify three universal and pervasive aspects of all phenomena: quality, fact, and law.
- Peirce labels these as categories of firstness, secondness, and thirdness.
- PELAGIANISM
-
- Everyone is responsible for his own sin, not for the sin of Adam. (Adam's sin was only a bad example for us).
- Some men can be saved simply by living up to the light they have been given (apart from the Bible)
- Thus, the gospel is not necessary for salvation
- Man, on his own, can choose to follow God or refuse to do so
- he does not need God to remove any "blindness"
- he does not need special grace or illumination from God
- In his lifetime, he may receive many opportunities to choose to be saved
- The Bible, the Holy Spirit, and the officers of the church may present the choice, but they cannot go beyond making the alternative to follow God both reasonable and beneficial
- God does not save the lost, He only ratifies the sinner's decision to be saved
- Pelagius
- (c 360-420)
- British monk
- human nature essentially good
- emphasized human ability and free will
- conflicted with Augustine
- PERCEPTION
-
- A term used by Protagoras of Abdera which states that all mental activity consists in, or is reducible to, perceptions, which are the product of the motion of the knower and the motion of the things known.
- PERSONAL IDEALISM
-
- See Personalism
- PERSONALISM
-
- Also called Personal idealism.
- It says "Religion is concern about experiences which are regarded as of supreme value" (Brightman).
- Peter of Blois
- (c 1130-1204)
- French theologian
- Archbishop of Canterbury
- allegorical and mystical sermons
- Peter of Damian
-
- See Damian, Peter
- Peter of Lombard
-
- See Lombard, Peter
- Peter of Ravenna
- (1205-1252)
Peter of Ravenna
- AKA Peter the Martyr
- Peter Verona
- Roman Catholic Dominican
- assassinated by his enemies
- PHENOMENALISM
-
- Phenomena, not things, are known.
- Agrees with Skepticism and Subjectivism in denying the possibility of a knowledge of objective reality.
- Only objective phenomena are known.
- Knowledge is limited to the totality of actual or possible sense data, including the sense data of internal experiences, such as feelings, dreams, hallucinations, and fantasies.
- Objects are logical constructs of sense data.
- PHENOMENOLOGY
-
- The philosophy that attempts to analyze phenomena as contents of experience without reference to causes or metaphysical presuppositions.
- See
- Philip of Hesse
- (1504-1567)
Philip of Hesse
- The political leader of the German Lutherans in the first half of the 16th century.
- Converted to Lutheranism by Melanchthon in 1524
- wanted to united Protestants within the empire politically and theologically.
- Unable to end his marriage by divorce, he took a second wife (bigamy).
- For political reasons, Luther and Melanchthon approved his action.
- This bigamy threatened his rule so much that he was forced into a non-aggression pact with the emperor and thus weakened the Schmalkaldic League.
- Philo
- (c 20 BC-AD 42)
Philo
- Jewish philosopher
- joined OT thought with Greek Platonism
- influenced early Christian exposition of Scripture
- PHYSICALISM
-
- See Carnap's epistemological realism, wherein he held that "every descriptive term in the language of science is connected with terms designating observable properties of things intersubjectively confirmable by observation."
- The theory is related to what is characterized by scientific empiricists as empirical realism, a form of objectivism wherein the world known is "that which is located in space-time and is a link in the chains of causal relations capable of empirical test" (Carnap).
- Pidgeon, George Campbell
- (1872-1971)
- first moderator of United Church of Canada
- Pastored 33 years in Toronto
- Pierson, Arthur Tappin
- (1837-1911)
A. T. Pierson
- US Presbyterian preacher
- wrote
- Evangelistic Work in Principle and Practice
- The Divine Art of Preaching
- Seed Thoughts for Public Speakers
- Pink, Arthur Walkington
- (1886-1952)
A. W. Pink
- British independent Bible teacher and writer
- pastored several churches in US
- retired in Scotland in 1934
- wrote periodical Studies in the Scriptures which later became books
- began as a strong dispensationalist, but gradually changed to the Puritan position
- Planck, Max
- (1858-1947)
Max Planck
- professor at Kiel and Berlin
- founder of the quantum theory
- wrote
- Where is Science Going?
- The Universe in the Light of Modern Physics.
- Plato
- (427-347 BC)
Plato
Plato
- Greek philosopher
- emphasized two planes: ideal (noumena) and real (phenomena)
- pre-existence theory of souls
- innate knowledge
- learning is recalling what was known perfectly in the noumena before birth
- greatly influenced Western philosophy
- With Democritus, Plato starts from Protagoras's perception theory of knowledge.
- Reason and insight discover in perceptual phenomena the universals, i.e., the Ideas, or intelligible forms of reality (rationalism and intuitionism).
- Knowledge develops through three stages, corresponding to the relative
development of the three levels of the soul:
- doxa (opinion or mere belief deriving directly from senses)
- dianoia (rational or discursive understanding)
- noesis (direct intuition of the Ideas)
- Knowledge has as its object what really is, i.e., being, essence (ousia), the Ideas or the Forms; and virtue.
- "Virtue is to be gained only through right knowledge and knowledge is cognition of true Being."
- See Plato's discussion of the divided line in Book VI of the Republic.
- The moral universals or ideals of Socrates acquire ontological status (i.e., become the basis of reality).
- The Ideas are eternal and perfect; real; suggested, approximated, or imitated by the things of the world of phenomena; grasped by reason and intuition; objective (independent of minds or knowers); ordered in a hierarchy under the higher and more universal ideas of being, virtue, beauty, and truth, which in turn participate in the absolutely universal Idea of the Good; ordered toward the idea of the good as the ultimate limitation, purpose (teleology); the intelligible ideals that structure the endless flux or becoming of phenomena; revealed to the soul (mind) by a process of recollection or memory of a past existence.
- The two fundamental kinds of reality are the Ideas, which are independently real; and phenomena, which are dependently real.
- To these could be added the agent or creator (God) who forms the world according to the Ideas.
- Phenomena comprise the space-time world that approximates the eternal and real world of the Ideas.
- The soul (mind) is preexistent and immortal.
- The soul (mind) links the body as phenomena (becoming) to the Ideas (being).
- The soul (mind) brings life and knowledge to the body.
- the soul (mind) establishes this link through three functions:
- appetite (impulses or sensuous desires originating in the belly)
- will (ambitions or spiritual energies originating in the breast)
- reason (insight or understanding originating in the mind) and corresponding to, as well as yearning for, the immortal world of the Ideas (which is its source).
- The soul (mind) is likened to a chariot. Two horses (appetite and will) move it, under the guidance of reason.
- The three functions of the soul are correlated to the three kinds of knowledge (mentioned above); three classes of the ideal state; nature and goals of education.
- The harmony of society is compared to the harmony of the functioning of the soul.
- Realization of the ideal harmony of functioning is justice.
- The supreme good (summum bonum) is justice.
- Justice is obtained with temperance of appetite and courage of will guided by wisdom of the soul.
- Wisdom is desire and search for (eros) and finally knowledge (episteme) of the Good.
Plato
- PLATONISM
-
- Intuition or insight (noesis) is the goal of the philosopher.
- The knower grasps reality as a whole in terms of the ideas and particularly in terms of the highest and most inclusive idea of the good.
- Plotinus
- (c 205-270)
Plotinus
- Neo-Platonist
- all things have emanated from God.
- Wrote Enneads.
- Reality is the One from which all existence emanates and to which all strives to return.
- It is of the nature of the One to emanate.
- Emanation begins with the ideas that structure existence and link Being (the One) to Non-being.
- Ideas emanate souls, which in turn emanate bodies or matter.
- Matter exhausts emanation in a plurality of physical beings that have a kind of negative existence but are essentially Non-being or absence of Being.
- Souls are individual and animate bodies.
- Souls participate in the world mind.
- Souls find their ultimate destiny in escape from matter (Non-being) and return to the One (Being).
- PLURALISM
-
- All things are forms of several substances.
- Democritus said reality is atoms and space.
- Epicurus said reality is atoms and space qualified by a kind of spontaneity of atoms; motion is inherent in the atoms.
- Empedocles said there are four elements: earth, weather, air, and fire, moved by love and hate.
- Anaxagoras said there are countless elements matching the countless qualities of experience guided by an active element or mind.
- Poincare, Jules Henri
- (1854-1912)
Poincare
- theory of knowledge called Conventionalism
- Popper, Karl Raimund
- (1902-1994)
Karl Popper
- falsifiability test distinguishes between science from pseudo-science.
- Wrote The Logic of Scientific Discovery
- POSITIVIST ETHICS
-
- See Emotivism
- Poteat, Edwin McNiel
- (1892-1955)
- US Baptist
- missionary to China
- President of Colgate Rochester Divinity School
- PRAGMATIC THEORY
-
- The idea or proposition is true which works or satisfies or is capable of doing so.
- PRAGMATICISM
-
- A form of pragmatism associated with Charles S. Peirce and contrasted with William James.
- James interpreted knowledge and truth in terms of personal needs, verification, or consequences.
- Peirce emphasized the social and objective nature of knowledge and truth.
- PRAGMATISM
-
- A theory of meaning and truth which stresses the genetic and instrumental character of knowledge.
- It emphasizes the experimental method.
- See
- PREDESTINATION
-
- A view that the final destiny after death (i.e., heaven or hell) of some or all people has been determined prior to their birth.
- PRINCIPLE OF UTILITY
-
- If an act or rule is right, it will produce the greatest happiness or the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
- Pringle-Pattison, Andrew Seth
- (1856-1931)
Andrew Pringle-Pattison
- professor at Cardiff, St. Andrews, Edinburgh
- wrote
- Hegelianism and Personality
- The Idea of God
- The Idea of Immortality
- moderate Personal Idealist
- emphasized individual minds, not one great mind
- like W. E. Hocking
- PROBABILISM
-
- The view that certainty is unattainable and that belief and action must rest on probability.
- PROBLEM OF EVIL
-
- See Theodicy
- PROCESS THEOLOGY
-
- Also called Whiteheadian Philosophy of Religion.
- Teaches a process philosophy and a Platonism modified by the theory of relativity
- three factors are enumerated: formative principle, indeterminate matter, and ideal forms (eternal objects).
- God is the principle of concretion.
- He determines which forms will actualize out of limitless possibilities.
- God and World are mutually interdependent but not identical.
- Teaches a panentheism which is "the view that deity is in some real aspect distinguishable from and independent of any and all relative items, and yet, taken as an actual whole, includes all items" (Hartshorne).
- God is limited by a "primordial" and "consequent" nature, hence is developing.
- Produls (Proclus)
-
- Patriarch of Constantinople
- sermons provoked the Nestorian controversy
- PROLIFERATION OF SPECIES
-
- One of the factors of Darwin's principle of natural selection.
- Each species tends to increase geometrically.
- Protagoras of Abdera
- (c480-410 BC)
Protagoras of Abdera
- All mental activity consists in, or is reducible to, perceptions, which are the product of the motion of the knower and the motion of the things known.
- What is known is sense data, not independent objects.
- What is known is relative to the knower and to the instant of perception.
- Hence "man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are and of things that are not that they are not."
- Secondary qualities (e.g., color, taste) are subjective.
- PROTESTANT EVANGELICALISM
-
- See Evangelicalism
- PSYCHOLOGICAL EGOISM
-
- A pseudo-scientific theory which says it is impossible for you to act contrary to what you believe to be in your best interest.
- If it is true, Ethical Egoism is pointless since you cannot help acting in what you believe to be your best interest.
- PSYCHOLOGY
-
- See Epistemology for contrast.
- Also see
- Pusey, Edward Bouverie
- (1800-1882)
Edward Pusey
- Leader of Tractarian or Oxford movement in Church of England
- PYRRHONIAN SKEPTICISM
-
- See Aenesidemus
