Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 9, 2025
We can comprehend the work of Paul, one of the main founders of Christianity, only when we see him as the mystical interpreter weaving the Jewish traditions of the soberer type, the apocalyptic outlook of such books as Daniel and Ezra, the mystery cults of the Hellenistic world and the theories of the Stoic philosophy into one whole, dominantly supernaturalistic.
Moreover, it bears witness to a consciousness of the decay of the supernaturalistic perspective which dominated and misled the world for so many centuries. The spirit and knowledge of the present age has undermined the traditional beliefs, and the average protestant is too well educated and too much in touch with current movements to be unaware of this situation.
Again, Satan was pictured as a demon leading the unwary astray by the desires of this world. Ethics was an affair of external fighting for the souls of men. The whole setting was mythical and supernaturalistic and full of picture-thinking. We have already referred to the doctrine of original sin. This doctrine was taken up by St. Augustine who had been a Manichean.
In emphasising this it must not be taken to imply that because social institutions and human actions are in primitive times moulded by religious beliefs, they stand to them in a relation of complete dependence. It only means that the psychological medium is of such a character that supernaturalistic reasons are found for doings things that are susceptible to a totally different explanation.
Gavran Sarn exceeded his Paratime permit, and took one of his pets along. A Venusian nighthound." Tortha Karf's expression did not alter; it merely grew more intense. He used one of the short, semantically ugly terms which serve, in place of profanity, as the emotional release of a race that has forgotten all the taboos and terminologies of supernaturalistic religion and sex-inhibition.
One need not go far in search of the extra-terrestrial as to fall into perfervid Catholicism. Perhaps spiritualism would give one all one required to formulate a supernaturalistic method. He rose and went into his tiny workroom. His pile of manuscript notes about the Marshal de Rais, surnamed Bluebeard, looked at him derisively from the table where they were piled.
But a truer idea of the nature of the spiritual, united with a decay of the old supernaturalistic sanctions, will change all that. Religion will become active and militant, intensely concerned with everything human, a loyal enthusiasm for all the significant phases of life.
Thus, by degrees, the free-thinking, or the indifference, prevalent among us in the first half of the eighteenth century, was replaced by a strong supernaturalistic reaction, which submerged the work of the free-thinkers; and even seemed, for a time, to have arrested the naturalistic movement of which that work was an imperfect indication.
It is certain that such an epidemic could not occur save in a society saturated with supernaturalism. It is equally certain that once such an epidemic occurs it must in turn strengthen the tendency towards supernaturalistic beliefs. Thanks to the long reign of the religious idea, and to the overwhelming influence of the Church, the people of Europe were prepared for such an outbreak.
On the contrary, to a naturalist blessed now and then with a supernaturalistic mood, it made the place, on occasion, a welcome retreat.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking