Dictionary of Philosophy of Religion

219

SPINOZA, BENEDICT DE

interprets omens, engages in witchcraft.”
And Acts 8:9–11 says: “Now for some
time a man named Simon had practiced
sorcery in the city and amazed all the
people of Samaria. He boasted that he was
someone great, and all the people, both
high and low, gave him their attention
and exclaimed, ‘This man is the divine
power known as the Great Power.’ They
followed him because he had amazed
them for a long time with his magic.” See
also WICCA.

SORLEY, WILLIAM R. (1855–1935). A
British philosopher, strongly opposed to
utilitarianism and a mechanical view of
the natural world. Sorley developed a
theistic argument on the grounds of
objective moral values. He reasoned that
objective moral values were, by nature,
dependent upon mind, and that merely
human minds could not secure such
objective value. Rather, only an unchang-
ing, omnipotent God can provide a secure
grounding for objective values. His works
include The Ethics of Naturalism (1885),
Recent Tendencies in Ethics (1904), Moral
Values and the Idea of God (1918), and
A History of English Philosophy (1920).

SOTERIOLOGY. From the Greek sote-
rion meaning “salvation” (soter means
“savior” or “redeemer”) + logos meaning
“study.” Thus, soteriology refers to the
theology of salvation. For instance, Chris-
tian soteriology focuses on the salvific

nature of Jesus Christ, Buddhist soterio-

logy emphasizes liberation from suffer-

ing, and so on. See also UNIVERSALISM.

SOUL. Sometimes used interchangeably

with self or selfhood, “soul” is often used

informally to refer to someone’s integrity

(“he lost his soul by getting an academic

post through selective, sycophantish

praise of the appointment committee”)

or technically, as a nonphysical locus of

personal identity (“when he dies, his soul

will be with the Lord”). Aristotle used the

term we translate as “soul” in a more

general sense to refer to the form or prin-

ciple of life of an organism. On this view,

plants have souls.

SPACE. In some religious traditions, par-

ticular places have religious significance:

Mecca (for Muslims), for example, and

Jerusalem (for all three Abrahamic tradi-

tions). Classical theism holds that God

is omnipresent and so there is no place

where God is absent. Newton proposed

that space itself is a divine attribute so

that we (literally) live and move in God.

Some late twentieth-century theo logians

such as Sallie McFague have proposed

that the spatial cosmos should (at least

metaphorically) be regarded as God’s body.

SPINOZA, BENEDICT DE (a.k.a.

Baruch de Spinoza) (1632–1677). R atio-

nalist philosopher of Portuguese Jewish