Philo of Religion

Religion comes from the word "religare" which means to bind together. You are binding together 2 entities, namely God and a community or a person. Religion as a relationship is composed of 2 poles: Revelation (God's initiative) and Response.

* Every religion is founded on Revelation, a foundational event which happened within human history. It is essentially God making himself known. Without it, the whole belief system, the religion will collapse.

* The human response to the revelation is Faith, the intellectual assent to the content of revelation. It is the unconditional commitment to God. But this faith should be justified by rational thought and explanation. {PHILO AND THEO APPROACHES}

1.) The first dimension of religion is the Experiential Dimension. This is the encounter with God referred to as "the Holy", the "ultimate reality."

* It has a set of doctrines called Theology which contains the nature of the Holy based on the revelation.

* The Original Revelation is a series of events found in the SS. (EG) It is constitutive of religion.

* Through revelation, God's grace is given to the people

* It contains the nature of God and the divine understanding of reality. These are all preserved in the Sacred Scriptures.

* There is also Derived Revelation which is basically an application to contemporary times but it should not conflict with the original revelation because every believer is bound by the OR.

2.) The second dimension is the Metaphysical Dimension (Mythical), which is the divine understanding of reality, beyond the physical, from the perspective of the Holy.

* The Holy tells the believer reality is not what it appears to be, there is a deeper reality.

* Metaphysical doctrines which are truths revealed by God about reality include Cosmology, anthropology, soteriology, and eschatology.

o Cosmology is the origin and nature of the universe. God himself tells us that he created the universe from nothing. He is the beginning.

o Anthropology is the study of human nature and conditions of human existence.

o Soteriology is the study of religious doctrines of deliverance or salvation. It is related to human suffering.

o Eschatology is the study of the end of things, whether the end of human life, or end of the world. It is basically the destiny of human kind. [All the Greatest hits].

* The metaphysical dimension also has a mythical dimension. Myths are vehicles for expressing theological-metaphysical truths.

o They need not be factual or historical events.

o The creation story, the fall of Adam and Eve need not be taken literally.

o The expressions of the Holy as