Nicene Creed, The

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The Nicene Creed is an early and lasting expression of Christian faith that was formulated for the dual purpose of (a) affirming shared beliefs within the Christian Church and (b) countering various “heretical” sects that Church leaders believed could potentially lead the faithful astray.

Since its formulation at the Council of Nicaea in 325 (CE), the Creed has been reworked to its current day form.

It is recited during the Eucharistic celebration in Catholic, Orthodox and many Protestant Churches:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

As with any public declaration, be it a secular or religious one, one has to wonder how many people recite the words without really believing in everything they say. This is a problem that has intrigued leading scholars of religion and myth, and the question may be applied to any kind of ancient or contemporary religious, mythological, political or ideological data.

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Newton, Sir Isaac

SIR ISAAC NEWTON – P.L.C. by nutfield2 / Jim Devlin (click on image for explanatory caption)

Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was an English physicist, mathematician and alchemist, educated at Cambridge.

In 1665 he developed a form of calculus, an achievement shared with Gottfried Leibniz.

Around 1666 he observed an apple falling in his garden. This prompted musings that lead to his Law of Universal Gravitation.

Newton’s Three Laws of Motion are still taught in just about every high school around the world.

In his studies of light he found that white light contains the entire spectrum. Newton also invented the first reflecting telescope.

Newton also had a slightly unorthodox religious side that many New Age writers are concerned to bring to light. He once said:

Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done.¹

And concerning his achievements, he was unusually modest, echoing sentiments found in a popular medieval metaphor:

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.²

Today, pop science and New Age theorists often contrast Newton with Einstein. Newton is sometimes and almost disparagingly said to represent mechanistic ‘old thought’ while Einstein is lauded as the herald of ‘new thought.’  However, Newton was a rare genius whose influence has been profound. And it’s likely that someday another innovative thinker (or group) will come along to replace Einstein’s iconic role as the great genius who revolutionized our way of seeing the world.

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¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Religious_views

² http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants

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“I’ve just invented gravity!”
“The patent’s mine! – Exclusively!”
“Should you not wish to float around?”
“Return this slip – Plus Fifty Pounds!”

Neptune

Neptune with Trident: smikulen / Steve

Neptune was originally the Roman god of fresh water, including rain and fertility. Later in 399 BCE Neptune become identified with the Greek sea god Poseidon.

Neptune had two main temples of worship in ancient Rome. And his festival was celebrated mid-summer, during which time huts were made out of tree branches and underbrush. Scholars mostly agree that the symbolism of these structures pointed to Neptune’s role as the giver of life via water.

Bernini’s magnificent sculpture of Neptune and Triton can be seen in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum. And many other depictions of Neptune are found around the world, as the one pictured here (right) at Coney Island, New York.

Neptune is also the name of the 8^th and, since August 24 2006, furthest planet from the sun.

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Natural Evil

Earthquake and tsunami in Chile: IFRC / International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

Natural Evil refers to the basic theological distinction made between natural evil and moral evil. Natural evil includes so-called “acts of God” such as floods, earthquakes and avalanches.

By way of contrast, moral evil involves the ideas of human free will and choice, and is more about ethics.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 –1778), however, argued that these two types of evil are not always mutually exclusive. Talking about the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, Rousseau suggested that human design had something to do with the suffering experienced there.

Jean Jacques Rousseau responded to Voltaire’s criticism of the optimists by pointing out that the value judgement required in order to declare the 1755 Lisbon earthquake a natural evil ignored the fact that the human endeavour of the construction and organization of the city of Lisbon was also to blame for the horrors recounted as they had contributed to the level of suffering. It was, after all, the collapsing buildings, the fires, and the close human confinement that led to much of the death.¹

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¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_evil

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Neoplatonism

"Apamea, one of the major cities in the Roman Province of Syria, also a centre for pre-Christian Neoplatonism" by Charles Roffey

Neoplatonism is the philosophical system of Plotinus (205-70 CE), extending into the 7^th century, that synthesizes Platonic, Aristotelian and Pythagorean ideas.

Essentially, Plotinus proposes a series of increasingly specific emanations from a single metaphysical Source. The first emanation from the Source is a ‘World Soul,’ regarded as a metaphysical repository of intelligence and knowledge, something like a Platonic Form.

From the Word Soul emanate individual souls.

Plotinus’ works were edited and put into six groups of nine, called the “Enneads,” by his disciple Porphyry.

Perhaps his most important contribution to the history of ideas is his notion of the One. For Plotinus the One is Goodness and Beauty existing before, and the ultimate source of all observable differentiations found in, our world of becoming. Our world emanates from the One, this process setting up a complicated and hierarchical series of arrangements, or dyads, all leading back up to the One.

Psycho-spiritual liberation, then, is best found in personal union with the One, described as an ephemeral experience of pure, insurmountable delight. According to Porphyry, Plotinus had four of these ecstatic experiences during the period in which these two men associated with one another.¹

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¹ http://earthpages.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/plotinus

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Nandi

Now this is Nandi Geethmala Sridaran

In Hindu mythology Nandi is generally regarded as the sacred bull that Siva employs as his vehicle.

Some scholars, however, suggest that Nandi originally was Siva, himself, in animal form. Considering Hinduism contains several deities in animal form, this is not a far-fetched proposal.

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Nineteen Eighty-Four

George Orwell: "1984" originally uploaded by surfstyle

Nineteen Eighty-Four is the title of George Orwell‘s dystopian novel in which totalitarian power rules in the bleak, technological society of Oceania.

The masses of this dismal state are kept in line with the Thought Police, whose vigilant surveillance creates a pervasive fear of punishment for Thoughtcrime. All privacy is lacking and Double Think (holding contradictory ideas) is the norm. Meanwhile, Newspeak simplifies and sanitizes the vocabulary to remove any negative connotations.

In a nutshell, to invoke the disapproval of the dictator of Oceana, Big Brother, is tantamount to suicide.

Orwell’s novel has been widely influential. Michael Radford directed a film adaptation of the novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, that was also released in 1984. And the pop star David Bowie released a song, “1984,” on the album Diamond Dogs (1974), with a haunting blend of disco, soul and 1970s TV cop music:

They’ll split your pretty cranium, and fill it full of air
And tell that you’re eighty, but brother, you won’t care
You’ll be shooting up on anything, tomorrow’s never there
Beware the savage jaw
Of 1984

On the Web:

• Cliff Notes Synopsis: About the Novel
• Marie Ewald, “Can the thought police be far behind?” in The Christian Science Monitor, May 15, 2003.

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Nominalism

All Saints, Ockham: Auntie P / Paula Bailey

Nominalism is a philosophical position developed in the Middle Ages. The intricate debates and resulting variations of this idea can get quite complicated.¹ So for instructional purposes nominalism is usually boiled down to two main forms.

One form of nominalism rejects the existence of abstract concepts.

Another form of nominalism contends that eternal, universal essences of things (e.g. cat, boat, diamond) are not real in themselves but merely concepts devised by human beings.

This second type of nominalism arose in response to one form of realism in which universal essences are taken as more real than any individual temporal manifestation.

In rejecting realism, William of Occam (circa 1288-1348) maintained that only individuals exist, and universal substances are only constructions from vocal sounds.

While this might seem an esoteric and irrelevant point at first, it’s important to realize that the claims of some contemporary skeptics and poststructuralists are quite similar to Occam’s, even though some say that poststructuralism and, more generally, postmodernism represent entirely new developments in the history of ideas.

Poststructuralists do, however, emphasize the role of social power in defining allegedly universal truths. Poststructuralists also examine the role of social power in creating, reproducing and legitimizing stereotypes.

But even this isn’t a particularly new development. For centuries writers and poets have done much the same—that is, they’ve deconstructed taken-for-granted truth claims, be these supposedly “eternal” or “natural” truths.

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¹ Probably the best secondary source covering these complexities is Frederick Copleston’s A History of Philosophy, Volumes 2-3.

On the Web:

• http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nominalism-metaphysics/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominalism
• http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11090c.htm
  

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http://earthpages.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/nominalism/

New Testament

Image credit: djringer / David Ringer

The New Testament is that part of the Christian Bible dealing with the birth, teachings, living examples, miracles, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is composed of the Four Gospels, the “Acts of the Apostles,” “The Epistles” and the “Apocalypse of John.”

The dominant scholarly view is that most if not all of the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, the common language during the time of the Eastern Roman Empire. Although some say parts or, perhaps, all of the New Testament was written in Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke.

Different translations of the New Testament may rely on different scriptural sources and also the biased agendas of translators.

For instance, The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), uses gender-neutral instead of originally masculine pronouns. And different translations of the Lord’s Prayer vary in length.

Meanwhile, the New International Version Bible (NIV) arguably tries to smooth out theological problems by firmly linking up the New and Old Testaments with the help of selective translating. Some see this as justified, others do not.

However, most Christians agree, in different ways and degrees, that the New Testament is a ‘fulfillment’ of the Old Testament, the latter being seen as a kind of blueprint for the arrival of Jesus Christ, the only true savior and messiah that the Jewish prophets had anticipated.

One of the most often cited passages of the Old Testament in support of this belief is (with the name Immanuel meaning “God with us”):

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14).

The Jewish people, of course, did not accept this idea because they believe it is blasphemous for any human being to claim equality with God, a view they share with Muslims. And some commentators say that the Jewish people expected their Messiah to be a kind of hero figure who would liberate them from the occupying Romans.

To this Christians reply that Jesus’ message is not about driving away enemies, gaining land or basking in Earthly glory. As Jesus says in the New Testament, his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).

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Numen

The Fire Goddess: Aubrey Arenas

Numen is a Latin noun variously translated as nod, command, will, consent, inspiration, divine will, divine power, divinity, deity, godhead, divine majesty, god, goddess.

Robert Schilling maintains that numen is based on the Greek neuma, which “signifies the manifestation, will or power of a divinity.” Schilling cites Festus’ (1913) definition: “The numen is, as it were, the nod or power of a god” and says some scholars “have tried to give a completely different orientation to the Latin term by identifying numen with a Melanesian word, mana.”

Schilling notes that R. H. Coddington defined mana in 1891 as an “autonomous, impersonal force,” likening numen and mana to “an impersonal active power” (Robert Schilling, ”Numen” in Mircea Eliade, ed. The Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. 11. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1987, pp. 21-22).

Rudolf Otto describes the numinous as conveying a strong sense of power. He says the numinous is an experience containing elements of “Awefulness,” “Overpoweringness” and “Energy” or “Urgency.”

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At Earthpages.org

• “An Outline of Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy“
• “C. G. Jung and Numinosity“
• “Celibacy, Sex and Spirituality“
• “Numinosity – Another Kind of Light“

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