A GLOSSARY OF KEY TERMS
RELIGION AND THE HUMAN QUEST
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ORAL PRESENTATION TIPS
• USE A DATA STICK—
EMAIL TAKES TOO LONG!
• PREPARE, ORGANIZE
• LIMIT SLIDE INFO—
FONT READABLE IN BACK OF ROOM
• SPEAK CLEARLY, LOUDLY,
SO ALL CAN HEAR
• MONITOR TIME- STAY ON SCHEDULE
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RELIGION AND THE HUMAN QUEST
• Governing Themes:
•
cosmos, human destiny, society, individual , suffering and evil
• The Human Being: What is human nature (the human condition)? What
does it mean to be a human being? What is the social meaning of human
beings?
• The Cosmos: What is the (nature of the) cosmos? Relationship to “natural
world”? Relationship to the other beings.
• Human Life? How do humans find and sustain life? (How relate to Holy?)
What is holy/Holy power? What goes wrong in human life, and how is it to
be remedied? (The problem of evil and suffering)
• Human destiny? What is the outcome, purpose, meaning of human
existence
• The Human Quest and Human Experience: What can we learn from the
great traditions of human experience? (What constitutes an adequate
sample
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WHAT’S THIS?
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WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?
ASK 25 PEOPLE TO COMPOSE
25 TRUTHFUL, ACCURATE,
GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT,
ENGLISH SENTENCES
THAT DESCRIBE WHAT’S GOING
ON IN THE PICTURE
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WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?
USING JUST THE WORDS IN THE
SENTENCES, HOW MANY
TRUTHFUL, ACCURATE,
GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT,
ENGLISH SENTENCES COULD YOU
COMPOSE?
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HOW MANY?
19.8 BILLION
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WORDS ARE TOOLS
for thinking, communicating, storing, retrieving
HUMAN EXPERIENCE
• WORDS ARE REALLY SOUNDS
• LANGUAGES ARE SYSTEMS OF SOUNDS
• WE USE THESE SOUNDS TO CAPTURE
EXPERIENCE TO STORE AND RE-MEMBER IT
• BY SHARING THESE SOUNDS, WE CAN SHARE
OUR EXPERIENCE
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LET ME COUNT THE WAYS!
THERE ARE LOTS OF WAYS TO SAY
ANYTHING!
WORDS CALL FOR MORE WORDS?
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WORDS ARE TOOLS
for thinking, communicating,
storing, retrieving
human experience
• DIFFERENT CULTURES EXPRESS THEIR
EXPERIENCE DIFFERENTLY, IN THEIR OWN
DISTINCTIVE WAYS
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METAPHOR
•
•
•
•
•
Meta-pharein (Greek)
Meta- “after,” “beyond”
Pharein- “to carry”
“Meta-pharein” has the sense two people
carrying something over a distance
Hence, shared experience
Qunitillian: “Nearly everything we say is
metaphor.”
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METAPHOR
SHARING EXPERIENCE
OR
TRANSLATING ONE KIND OF EXPERIENCE INTO
ANOTHER KIND OF EXPERIENCE:
“What does it taste like?”
“Kumquats?”
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AN EXPERIMENT IN THINKING
HAVE YOU HEARD THE WORD
“TRADITION”?
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
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“TRADITION”
• GREEK SIMILARS:
– Para-dosis/ para-didomi : “to put, hand over,
allow, grant, offer, share” (Mt 11.27, 25.14,20,22;
Rom 5.15, 6.17; 2 Th 2.15, 3.6)
– para-theke/ para-tithemi: “to put, lay (upon,
up, in), entrust, commit (maintain, preserve)”
(1 Tim 1.18, 6.20; 2 Tim 1.12, 14, 2.2)
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“TRADITION”
LATIN: trans-dare, tradere, traditio
trans: prefix “across”
dare: verb “to give”
“To give over or across” (time or
space)
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“TRADITION AS --”
A VARIETY OF WAYS THE WORD IS USED OR
UNDERSTOOD
TRADITION AS—
1. LORE– Vestigial relics of a disappearing past as opposed
to the contemporary or modern; the enemy of
progress
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“TRADITION AS--”
2. CONTENT (MATTER)
– Accumulated material inherited from the past, usually
accompanied by an attitude (+ or -);
– What has been passed on in fixed form
(birthday cake; Christmas tree; Thanksgiving turkey)
3. PROCESS OF INHERITING/RECEIVING (ACT)
– The act (or acts) of inheriting, cultivating, transferring,
practicing, performing
(baking the cake, buying the tree, cooking the turkey)
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“TRADITION”
4. THE MEANS OF PASSING ON (FORM)
– The techniques by which one passes on or
receives
(using Grandma’s recipe, putting the decorations up
in a certain way)
5. CANON (A COLLECTION OF…)
– Recognized, authorized, normative, official
content to be passed on or received
– Guaranteed by history, long practice
– Resists to innovation, fashion, idiosyncrasy
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“TRADITION AS BODY”
6. EMBODIMENT (MODE OF PRESENCE IN)
• The Universe: 16 Billion Years
– If 1” = 1 million years: 1331 feet
• The Earth: 4.5 Billion Years
– If 1” = 1 million years: 375 feet
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“TRADITION AS BODY”
The material in our bodies is
– 16 billion years old
– The elements developed almost instantly
– This matter has been evolving ever since
– The are billions of galaxies
– The Universe continues to expand
– Completely replaced every 7 years
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“TRADITION AS BODY”
Genetically speaking—
• Each of us embodies the unbroken
chain of DNA of our ancestors
• Yet each of us is unique:
–I am not my grandfather
–This is not my grandfather's body
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LET’S STRETCH OUR MIND A BIT!
HOW MANY
ANCESTORS
DO YOU HAVE?
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“TRADITION AS--”
7. EXPERIENCE:
- Gives us the ability to retain, to
retrieve, to enter into the
experience of our ancestors
- Experience is embodied in
language, culture, art, history,
institutions
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“TRADITION AS--”
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
AN-AMNESIS – “not-forgetting”
RE-MEMBERING – “putting together again”
RE-CALLING- …to mind
RE-COLLECTING – assembling the pieces anew
RE-CORDING - literally, “re-heart-ing”
RE-TELLING – recomposing the story
RE-PEATING -“going somewhere again”
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Greek: Soter/ soteria / sozo (“cure,” “make
healthy”
(hagios= “holy” power-ful)
Latin: Salus / Salvus (“salve,”
German: Heil, Heilige
Anglo-Saxon: Hal, Halig
•
•
•
•
[Hosanna! (Aram.) = “save now”]
Salvation, save, salud, salutary
Health, healthy, holy, whole, hale
Wealth, wealthy, (common-)weal
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LATIN
SALUS, SALVUS, SALVARE:
–“save,” “salvation,” “safety,”
“salutation,” “salute,” “salve”
–Spanish: “salud”
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GERMAN
HEIL, HEILIGE:
“hail,” “health, “holy”
ANGLO-SAXON
HAL, HALIG
“health, hale, holy, wealth, weal,
whole”
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RELIGION AND THE HUMAN QUEST
Governing Themes: cosmos, human destiny, society,
individuality, being a person (WHO vs. WHAT), suffering and
evil
The Human Being: What is human nature/ What is the human
condition? What does it mean to be a human being? What
does it mean to be a WHO? What is the social meaning of
human beings? How is our way of being something shared?
The Cosmos: What is the (nature of the) cosmos? What is
humans’ relationship to the “natural world”? Relationship to the
other beings that are not human?
Human Life? How do humans find and sustain life? How do
they relate to what is Holy? What is holy/Holy power? What
goes wrong in human life, and how is it to be remedied? Must
humans consider the problem/mystery of evil, suffering and
death? How? Human destiny? What is the outcome, purpose,
meaning of human existence
The Human Quest and Human Experience: What can we learn
from the great traditions of human experience? (What
constitutes an adequate sample?)
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PERSPECTIVES/ATTITUDES
• Experience: awareness, consciousness,
• Quest-ion-ing/seek-ing/search-ing—purpose
• What do we (you) want as humans being?
Why do we desire? What do we desire?
• Spirituality: How does it all fit together? Does
it? An it? How?
• Framing questions
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Mystery vs. problem/puzzle(?)
PROBLEM: pro-blema: Greek.: “something thrown
forward”, from pro-, “before, forward, forth,” + ballein,
“to throw.”
MYSTERY: mysterion: Greek.: “an event of disclosure
that both reveals and leads toward something that gets
deeper the more it is pursued”.
WHERE HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED
“MYSTERY”?
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MYSTERY VS. PROBLEM/PUZZLE
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Friendship?
Love?
Birth?
Death?
Curiosity?
?????????
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