Anthroposophy - a theory advanced by Rudolph Steiner (1861-1925) contending that the spiritual realm can be understood through the exercise of human intellectual faculties. Knowledge of "higher worlds" is possible according to this view. Apocalyptic - of or pertaining to religious revelation or to momentous spiritual occasions. From the Greek, meaning "uncovering". Apodictic - incontrovertibly true; demonstrably so, certain. Apollonian - having the classical beauty and strength of Apollo as opposed to the emotionally volatile and romantic attributes of Dionysus. The Apollonian/Dionysian - or classicist/romanticist - distinction is one of which many philosophers have made use since Hellenistic times. It was drawn upon by Nietzsche, for instance, in The Birth of Tragedy; the Apollonian was depicted as critical, rational, logical; the Dionysian as intuitive, creative, artistic. Archetypes - 1. an original model or prototype. 2. the quintessence or ideality of something. 3. in Jungian psychology (Carl Jung, 1875-1961), symbolic representations of established ways of responding to certain types of experience, contained in the collective unconscious. Arianism - a heretical doctrine associated with the teachings of Arius, an Alexandrian priest of the fourth century who taught that God created from nothing (ex nihilo) and begot a Son before He created all other things. The Son of God, according to Arius, was divine but not equal to God. This doctrine was condemned as heresy at the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.). The official Church teaching at Nicaea was that Jesus and God are consubstantial, of one and the same substance. Aristotelianism - of or pertaining to the philosophy of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), among the greatest philosophers who ever lived. Aristotle made prodigious contributions to the understanding of biology, epistemology, ethics, logic, metaphysics, and politics.
