Key Terms

This page provides definitions of important words and phrases that I use frequently in this blog. I will add to this list occasionally as new terms arise.

A – B – C – D – E – F – G – H – I – J – K – L – M – N – O – P – Q – R – S – T – U – V – W – X – Y – Z

Catholicism – Catholicism is the Christian religion professed and practiced by the Catholic Church.

Catholic Church – The Catholic Church is the institution headed by the Bishop of Rome, also known as the Pope, and governed by all the bishops around the world who are in full communion with him. It is sometimes called the Roman Catholic Church to distinguish it from other Christian communities that regard themselves as catholic but don’t accept the primacy of the Pope. The Catholic Church professes to be the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church founded by Jesus Christ to accomplish the unity and salvation of humanity. The word “catholic” simply means universal, and the word “church” is the common English translation for the Greek word ekklesia (Latin: ecclesia), which means an assembly, or literally a “calling forth.” Moreover, “church” is derived from another Greek word kyriake, which means “of the Lord.” So the name “Catholic Church” denotes the Universal Assembly of all God’s people, called forth from every nation, race, ethnicity, gender, and social class to build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.

History – History is the study of past events. The term typically refers to the discipline of studying events recorded in written documents. But I will often use it more broadly in the sense of “Big History,” the emerging and multidisciplinary examination of events from the Big Bang to the present.

Philosophy

Philosophy of religion

Religion – A religion is a system of beliefs, morals, and rituals engendered and sustained by profound experiences, usually involving metaphysical and nonphysical realities. This definition has six key parts:

1. Every religion has beliefs, especially about human beings’ relations to each other, to the world, and to whatever might transcend the world.
2. Every religion has morals that prescribe and proscribe certain ways of living and behaving.
3. Every religion has rituals, usually observed or performed at specific locations and times of the day, week, year, or a person’s lifetime.
4. In the context of a religion, these beliefs, morals, and rituals do not exist independently of each other but are interconnected and function together as a holistic system.
5. Such a system arises and endures because of profound experiences that deeply reorient or reinforce their subjects’ worldviews.
6. Such religious experiences can take various forms and objects but often involve metaphysical principles, such as the origin and nature of existence, and nonphysical entities, such as deities and spirits, that transcend ordinary human experience of the physical world.

Religion, in the more general sense of the word, is the human phenomenon of having one’s worldview shaped, in whole or in part, by such a system.

Religious studies – Religious studies, also called the study of religion, is the academic field that uses anthropological, historical, psychological, and sociological methods to research, explain, and compare religions. Unlike theology, religious studies approaches its subject matter as objectively as possible and thus requires no prior religious commitments. Religious studies is sometimes described as including the philosophy of religion, but I find it useful to distinguish these as separate disciplines to emphasize the former’s reliance on the sciences. Indeed, at one time, religious studies was known as the science of religion, and I prefer to retain the spirit of this bygone moniker. To this end, it is helpful to think of the study of religion as the scientific study of religion.

Science – Science is the systematic study of material reality by testing hypotheses through empirical observation and, whenever possible, experimentation. Unlike philosophy, the scope of science is limited to information that can be gathered via the senses or via instruments that translate information into sense-data. Today there are many branches of science, which I will sometimes refer to as “the sciences.” Some of the most relevant sciences for this blog include anthropology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, ecology, geology, history, linguistics, physics, psychology, and sociology.

Theology – In the general sense of this word, theology is the discipline of applying reason to faith. It is the task of constructing a rational understanding of the beliefs, morals, and rituals of a religion from a perspective of commitment to that religion. In the specific sense, a particular theology is one such constructed understanding, often associated with the theologian who constructed it. For example, we can say that Saints Augustine, Anselm, and Thomas Aquinas all practiced theology in the general sense of this word and that they each produced their own theology in the specific sense. I consider my theology to be merely one among many.