Supreme Being

About: Supreme Being is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 192 publications have been published within this topic receiving 1615 citations.

The Supreme Being in the Igbo Traditional Religion in the South Eastern Nigeria: A Critical Analysis

Abstract: The Igbo are an ethnic group in the south eastern part of Nigeria. The Igbo people are said to be deeply religious. Before the advent of the Western missionaries in their midst, they were practicing their traditional religion. They had many gods in their pantheon. Some scholars, including Igbo scholars, however, believe that the Igbo people did not have the idea of God originally in their pantheon. This is to say that they did not have the idea of the Supreme Being before the arrival of the missionaries. In his own contribution to the debate J. O. Oguejiofor articulated an argument which casts doubt on the belief that the Igbo had the idea of the Supreme Being prior to their reception of the Christian message. This paper examines critically his argument. It points out the weaknesses of his argument. This paper maintains that the Igbo indeed had the idea of the Supreme Being before the missionaries arrived in their midst.

The Confucian Body

Abstract: © 2004 by University of Hawai'i Press There was a time, as late as the first half of the twentieth century, when Western academic readers were likely to come across the statement that Buddhism was not a religion but rather a secular system of philosophy or mental cultivation. Such a claim would be based on a very selective reading of Buddhist texts; an absence of other kinds of investigation, such as observation of Buddhist practices other than meditation; and a set of assumptions about what constitutes religion that was based on a Western, primarily Christian, standard. When religion is defined as the belief in a supreme being, for example, Theravada Buddhism clearly falls out side that category~especially if one limits investigation to normative religious texts. (Asking ordinary lay Buddhists in Sri Lanka what they believe might yield different conclusions.) Those days are, happily, over. The Western understanding of Buddhism has grown broader and deeper, while implicit theological agendas informing scholarship, when they exist at all, are no longer as simplistic as they once were (although they will probably seem so to our successors). But to those scholars who consider Confucianism to be a religious tradition (and I am one), the cur rent state of scholarship may still seem like the dark ages. Precisely the same con ditions that gave rise to the misunderstanding of Buddhism in the past are today continuing to reinforce old notions of Confucianism as merely a socio-ethical political system of thought. We occasionally find this even in sophisticated sinological scholarship on Chinese religions.1 Further reinforcement often comes from Chinese from the People's Republic~where there are five officially recog nized religions, and Confucianism is not one of them—many of whom have grown up under a regime that had very specific things to say about Confucianism. There are two ways of examining this question, one falling roughly under the humanities disciplines and the other under the social sciences. The humanities approach often starts by proposing or choosing a definition of religion and then proceeds to demonstrate that Confucian writings—not limited to the Analects or the Classics~display the necessary characteristics of a religious tradition. An ex ample of this kind of approach is Rodney Taylor's collection of essays, The Reli gious Dimensions of Confucianism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990). Taylor, relying pri marily on Frederick Strengs definition of religion, shows convincingly that

Philosophical Progression, Causality, and the “Principles” of Dante’s Commedia

Abstract: This article focuses on the external features of Dante’s epistemology (i.e., objects of knowledge) as they materialize in the Commedia through the Scholastic notion of principles, understood as “beginnings”or “sources” (rather than more narrowly as “fundamental truths”). While causal knowledge appears throughout Dante’s poem, I show how each canticle significantly culminates in thematic beginnings: Lucifer for the Inferno, Earthly Paradise for the Purgatorio, and God for the Paradiso. By embedding these historic beginnings into the conclusions of each canticle, the poet is able to highlight the pilgrim’s philosophical progression conceived as an epistemological movement toward principles which parallels the protagonist’s metaphysical advancement toward the First Principle. As the physical and metaphysical journey ends with God as the Supreme Being, this similar development applies to the philosophical journey concluding with God as Truth.

The Biblical Concept of Victory over Evil In the Great Controversy Between Good and Evil in Yoruba Contest

Abstract: The basis for a theology of triumph or victory in the form of prevention and protection is that there exist two systems: the system of evil, consisting of evil higher beings (the ajogun in YTR or Satan and his angels in biblical teaching) and the system of good, consisting of good higher beings (the Supreme Being and divinities in YTR, or God and His angels in biblical teaching). The opposition between these two systems results in constant conflicts in the universe. While the evil higher beings are there to harm and inflict man with evil things, the good higher beings help mankind in prevention of and protection from evil. Human beings need to offer sacrifices in order to be sure that he/she receives constant protection from the good higher beings. The focus of the discussion in this work is influenced by this theological concept. The major elements for consideration in the discussion include the existence of good and bad spirits, the activities of the evil spirits, and the superior power of good spirits over the evil spirits, the essence of the conflicts in the universe, and the means of triumphing over the evil spirits in Yoruba context.