SEMESTER 4
150 – Terminology – Part 1
BIBLE INSTITUTE OF CORRESPONDENCE
COURSE: THEOLOGY IV LESSON # 50
WORDS AND TERMS DESCRIBING THE PHILOSOPHIES OF GOD
THEISM:
From the Greek (theos), The belief in a divine existence.
ATHEISM:
A denial of any divine existence.
AGNOSTICISM:
The denial that God is knowable. Agnosticism is not a denial of God’s existence, as is atheism, but simply a denial of His knowability.
INFIDELITY:
No faith or unfaithful. The proper description of a person’s way of life, who neither claims nor pursues any faith. Also used to describe the act or practice of violating commitments to faith or faithfulness which have been made.
MATERIALISM:
Materialism is the system which ignores the distinction between matter and mind, and attributes all the phenomena of the world, whether physical, vital, or mental, to the functions of matter. All random mutation evolutionists basically must subscribe to this religious philosophy.
MONOTHEISM:
The belief that there is but one God.
POLYTHEISM:
The belief that there are many gods.
HYLOZOISM:
The doctrine that all matter is endued with life. This doctrine is friendly to Materialism, and is the philosophical companion of Hinduism.
PANTHEISM:
The denial of the personality of God. The belief that God and the universe are synonymous, as opposed to God being a personality.
ARIANISM:
The teaching of Arius (AD. 250 – 336) who denied that Jesus Christ was co-eternal, co-equal, and co-essential with God. Many other doctrines are effected by this.
GNOSTICISM:
The teaching of the Gnostics. They taught that God was utterly remote from the material creation, and that He ruled intermediately through other beings (gods) who diminished in dignity according to their nearness to the world of created matter.
DEISM:
Analytically, belief in a deity or God. Definitively, it is a religious philosophy that God created the earth and it’s inhabitants, and set certain laws in motion, the obedience to which will determine all tranquility success and reward, thus advocating a natural religion. In times past they have insisted on the doctrine that God never interferes with these “Laws of nature.” This would thus necessarily conclude that salvation, of whatever nature it might be, would be strictly by works.
SABELLIANISM:
The teaching of Sabellius. He taught that the Trinity of the Godhead was not, in fact, three persons, but merely three manifestations of God that is as one man is a brother, a father and a son.