A Wisdom Archive on Faith and Belief

Introduction and links to related topics

Below are some short introductions. Click on the blue hyperlinked word to get more related articles.


Faith Healing - Healing that is associated with prayer or belief in Divine power.

Faith - A belief; in the religious sense, faith is a belief in the supernatural or whatever other force brings the believers together. Faith has nothing to do with fact.

Four Ways - Belief/faith;
Interpretation/discernment;
Practice/performance;
Verification/assurance.

These are the cyclic process in learning a truth.

Faith - Current sloppiness of language attaches the same simple-minded and lackluster meaning to "belief" and "faith" alike. Faith is not a synonym for superstition, nor does it even mean strong belief. It is a state of mind characterized by a supreme trust in the rightness of whatever may happen and a sublime indifference to one''s future well-being or survival. It need not be based on any religion at all. It doesn''t even have to be specific.

Affirmation Of Faith - A brief statement of one''s faith and essential beliefs.
See: anbe Sivamayam Satyame Parasivam.

Faery Faith - A pagan religion based on animism, the belief that everything in this and the Otherworlds is alive and the faery folklore.

Faery Faith - The Faery Faith is based upon the belief that everything in this and the otherworlds is alive. That each thing is possessed of its own soul or spirit. This belief is called animism and was prevalent in the Western world before the advent of the Christian religion, which insists that only man has souls or spirits and everything else in the world has been placed here for the use of mankind. This attitude, that humankind is superior to all of the rest of creation, does not prevail in those parts of the world were animistic beliefs are still held.

Monotheism - "Doctrine of one God."

Contrasted with polytheism, meaning belief in many Gods. The term monotheism covers a wide range of philosophical positions, from exclusive (or pure) monotheism, which recognizes only one God (such as in Semitic faiths), to inclusive monotheism, which also accepts the existence of other Gods.

Generally speaking, the sects of Hinduism are inclusively monotheistic in their belief in a one Supreme God, and in their reverence for other Gods, or Mahadevas. However, such terms which arose out of Western philosophy do not really describe the fullness of Hindu thinking. Realizing this, the author of The Vedic Experience, Raimundo Panikkar, has offered a new word: cosmotheandrism, "world-God-man doctrine," which describes a philosophy that views God, soul and world (Pati, pashu, pasha) as an integrated, inseparable unity.
See: Advaita Ishvaravada, monistic theism, Pati-pashupasha, polytheism.

Pentacle - A circle surrounding a five-pointed, upright star (pentagram). Worn as a symbol of a witch''s beliefs. Many witches consider wearing it inverted to be blasphemy of their faith and is commonly associated with Satanism.

Vodou - Vodou is an animistic Caribbean spiritual tradition, most usually associated with Haiti, which traces its lineage to the shamans of ancient Africa. It blends together (through a process known as "syncretisation") a number of traditional African beliefs with elements from other faiths, most notably Catholicism (the religion of the French slave traders who took the shamans of Africa to the Caribbean New World), but also those of the indigenous Haitian Taino and Arawak people and the European pre-Christian pagans who also came to settle there.

Vodou believes in one creator-God called Gran Met ("Great Master") and a pantheon of lesser deities known as the Lwa. These entities, as well as the spirits of the ancestors (''zanset yo'') are directly available to man through the mechanism of possession, a trance-like state where a person is taken over by one of these spirits so it may dispense healing, advice, or wisdom to the community faithful, who are known as Vodouissants.

The shaman-priest of Vodou is known as the Houngan and the priestess as the Mambo. Often accomplished healers, magicians, and leaf doctors (herbalists), these spiritual leaders are also experts on the nature, desires, and ways of interacting with the spirits, as well as therapists, counsellors, and doctors for their community.

Inspiration - The belief that human actions of extraordinary insight, worth or power are due to inspiration - an inflow of psychic force, life-giving breath. The idea of inspiration in Christian theology may be traced to Hebrew prophecy and to Greek philosophy.

The most important theological problems of inspiration concern the subjects, the sources, the means and the criteria of true inspiration as distinguished from false, rather than the reality if inspiration itself.

The question of the proper subject of inspiration - whether a person, a community or a book may properly be said to be inspired - has been greatly confused in history by getting involved in the problem of church authority,. thus the doctrine of the inspiration of scriptures was largely developed to secure the Roman church against Protestantism when the Protestants made claims the inspiration for their special leaders.

The doctrine that ecumenical councils or popes are inspired when speaking on matters of faith and morals was developed partly to deal with the Protestants'' rigid scriptural “const itutionalism”. The problem of the source of inspiration was raised in Hebrew thought by the appearance of false prophecy, and by the consequent question for monotheism in what sense such inspiration came from God. In Christian theology the questions were to what extent the inspiring principle in the Godhead was distinct from the creating and redeeming principle, in what sense it proceeded from one or both of these. The question about the means of inspiration has been dealt with indirectly and in confusion with the question of subject and criteria.

The orthodox Protestant and Catholic churches have emphasized the importance of Scriptures, of church discipline and instruction as the ordinary means through which inspiration comes.

Mystic and sectarian groups have shown a larger interest in other means - asceticism, the practice of silence, etc. In the Protestant doctrine of the “testimony ~ the Holy Spirit”” which must accompany the reading of the word if there is to be true inspiration and in Roman as well as Eastern Catholic acceptance of monasticism the great churches have made some approach to the interests of the sects and mysticism.

Among the criteria employed by religious thought to distinguish true from false inspiration the most important are:
the consistency of the product of inspiration not only in itself but also and primarily with accepted norms, i. e. , with the moral laws, the “spirit of Jesus Christ,” the Scriptures, the common understanding of the community.

Investigative Judgment - A unique doctrine of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. First taught in by Hiram Edson, F. B. Hahn, and O. R. L. Crosier. It was accepted as doctrine after it was confirmed and taught in visions received by Ellen G. White.

The doctrine teaches that in the Holy of Holies in the Heavenly Sanctuary Christ is now conducting an investigation into the lives of all who have ever professed belief in him. He is judging all their works, by the standard of God''s Law. All those whose lives fail to measure up to the standard of the Law are rejected and condemned as not having true faith.

Those whose lives meet that standard and thus manifest the perfect character and righteousness of Christ are recognized as having true faith, and so their sins are “blotted out. ”

Arminianism - The system of Christian doctrine begun by Jakobus Armnius and codified later by his disciple Simon Episcopius. There are five main tenets of Arminianism:
God elects or reproves on the basis of foreseen faith or unbelief,
Christ died for all men and for every man, although only believers are saved,
Man is so depraved that divine grace is necessary unto faith or any good deed,
This grace may be resisted,
Whether all who are truly regenerate will certainly persevere in the faith is a point which needs further investigation

Shraddhadharana - (Sanskrit) "Collection or concentration of faith or belief."

A term used in Dancing with Siva for creed, a concise synopsis of religious doctrine.
See: creed, faith.

Codex Nazaraeus - Codex Nazaraeus (Latin) The "Book of Adam" - the latter name meaning anthropos, Man or Humanity.

The Nazarene faith is called sometimes the Bardesanian system, though Bardesanes (B.C. 155 to 228) does not seem to have had any connection with it. True, he was born at Edessa in Syria, and was a famous astrologer and Sabian before his alleged conversion. But he was a well-educated man of noble family, and would not have used the almost incomprehensible Chaldeo dialect mixed with the mystery language of the Gnostics, in which the Codex is written. The sect of the Nazarenes was pre-Christian.

Pliny and Josephus speak of the Nazarites as settled on the banks of the Jordan 150 years B.C. (Ant.Jud. xiii. p. 9); and Munk says that the "Naziareate was an institution established before the laws of Musah" or Moses. (Munk p. 169.) Their modern name is in Arabic - El Mogtasila; in European languages - the Mendeans or "Christians of St. John". (See "Baptism".)

But if the term Baptists may well be applied to them, it is not with the Christian meaning: for while they were, and still are Sabians, or pure astrolaters, the Mendeans of Syria, called the Galileans, are pure polytheists, as every traveller in Syria and on the Euphrates can ascertain, once he acquaints himself with their mysterious rites and ceremonies. (See Isis Unv. ii. 290, et seq.)

So secretly did they preserve their beliefs from the very beginning, that Epiphanius who wrote against the Heresies in the14th century confesses himself unable to say what they believed in (i. 122); he simply states that they never mention the name of Jesus, nor do they call themselves Christians (loc. cit. 190. Yet it is undeniable that some of the alleged philosophical views and doctrines of Bardesanes are found in the codex of the Nazarenes. (See Norberg’s Codex Nazareous or the "Book of Adam", and also "Mendeans ".)

Mesopaganism - A general term for a variety of movements both organized and nonorganized, started as attempts to recreate, revive or continue what their founders thought were the best aspects of the Paleopagan ways of their ancestors (or predecessors), but which were heavily influenced (accidentally, deliberately and/or involuntarily) by concepts and practices from the monotheistic, dualistic, or nontheistic worldviews of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or early Buddhism.

Examples of Mesopagan belief systems would include Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Spiritualism, etc., as well as those forms of Druidism influenced by those movements, the many Afro-Diasporatic faiths (such as Voudoun, Santeria, Candomble, etc.), Sikhism, several sects of Hinduism that have been influenced by Islam and Christianity, Mahayana Buddhism, Aleister Crowley’s religion/philosophy of Thelema, Odinism (most Norse Paganism), most “Family Traditions” of Witchcraft (those that aren’t completely fake), and most orthodox (aka “British Traditionalist”) denominations of Wicca.

Some Mesopagan belief systems may be racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. There are at least a billion Mesopagans living and worshiping their deities today.

See Paleopaganism and Neopaganism.

Shraddha - (Sanskrit) "Faith; belief."
See: pancha shraddha.

Superstition - One man''s faith is another man''s superstition. Our society, however, for all its so-called sophistication, is not immune from consensual beliefs that are as dangerous as they are unfounded. One of these superstitions is that Time is a moving force and runs on an undeviating track. Another piece of 20th Century nonsense is the importance of matter.

Animism - The belief that everything (including inanimate objects) is alive with soul or spirit, a conviction pervasive among most indigenous (tribal/pagan/shamanistic) faiths, including Hinduism, Shintoism and spiritualism.

Pentateuch - Pentateuch [from Greek pente five + teuchos books]

A work in five books; the first five books of the Bible, containing stories of creation, of a flood, of the wanderings and settlement of the Hebrews, and the so-called Law of Moses. To these is sometimes added Joshua, sometimes also Judges and Ruth.

Jewish belief in the authorship of Moses was adopted by the Christian Church, but internal evidence has now caused this to be rejected; and the form in which we have the present Pentateuch is usually attributed to Ezra, who reestablished the Jewish religion after the return of the Jews from the Babylonian captivity. If he did not write it, he certainly rewrote it. For Christians, the literal acceptance of this work as being divinely inspired has thrown a dark cloud over their faith.

The Pentateuch forms part of one of the world''s sacred scriptures, being preceded by the Hindu, Mazdean, Egyptian, and Chaldean, counting only some of those well known to modern scholarship; so that we find the ancient teachings as they have reached us in a very confused and altered form.

The Pentateuch is, exoterically, a collection of allegorical legends; but, in the light of the Zohar, the main book of the modern Jewish Qabbalah, the first four chapters at least of Genesis are a fragment of a highly philosophical page in archaic cosmogony. "Left in their symbolical disguise, they are a nursery tale, an ugly thorn in the side of science and logic, an evident effect of Karma. To have let them serve as a prologue to Christianity was a cruel revenge on the part of the Rabbis, who knew better what their Pentateuch meant" (SD 1:11).

If the Jehovistic portions are eliminated, the Mosaic books are found full of occult and priceless knowledge, especially in the first six chapters, even changed as they are and often veiled with thick garmentings of allegory. The Elohistic texts were written, according to the ideas of some Biblical scholars, 500 years after the date of Moses, and the Jehovistic 800 years. But these dates seem to be wholly arbitrary and repose upon modern Biblical speculation. Archeological excavations on the Biblical sites may or may not support to some extent the Bible narratives, but such narratives, at least those of the early part of Genesis, are merely the raw material for the later allegory constructed around them.