God

Giovanni Villani (Italian pronunciation: [dʒoˈvanni vilˈlaːni]; c. 1276 or 1280 – 1348) was an Italian banker, official, diplomat and chronicler from Florence who wrote the Nuova Cronica (New Chronicles) on the history of Florence. He was a leading statesman of Florence but later gained an unsavoury reputation and served time in prison as a result of the bankruptcy of a trading and banking company he worked for. His interest in and elaboration of economic details, statistical information, and political and psychological insight mark him as a more modern chronicler of late medieval Europe. His Cronica is viewed as the first introduction of statistics as a positive element in history.However, historian Kenneth R. Bartlett notes that, in contrast to his Renaissance-era successors, "his reliance on such elements as divine providence links Villani closely with the medieval vernacular chronicle tradition." In recurring themes made implicit through significant events described in his Cronica, Villani also emphasized three assumptions about the relationship of sin and morality to historical events, these being that excess brings disaster, that forces of right and wrong are in constant struggle, and that events are directly influenced by the will of God.

Villani was inspired to write his Cronica after attending the jubilee celebration in Rome in 1300 and noting the venerable history of that city. He outlined the events in his Cronica year for year, following a strictly linear narrative format. He provided intricate details on many important historical events of the city of Florence and the wider region of Tuscany, such as construction projects, floods, fires, famines, and plagues.

The School of Salamanca (Spanish: Escuela de Salamanca) was an intellectual movement of 16th-century and 17th-century Iberian Scholastic theologians rooted in the intellectual and pedagogical work of Francisco de Vitoria. From the beginning of the 16th century, the traditional Catholic conception of man and of his relation to God and to the world had been informed by internal developments in the Italian Rennaissance and its humanism, but also been challenged by the Protestant Reformation and the new geographical discoveries and their consequences. These new problems were addressed by the School of Salamanca.

The name is derived from the University of Salamanca (Spain), where de Vitoria and other members of the school were based. The Salamanca School of economic thought is frequently regarded as an early precursor to the Austrian School of Economics. This is due to its development of the subjective theory of value, its advocacy for free-market principles, and its focus on the supply and demand of money—ideas that would eventually contribute to the modern concept of sound money.

Divine retribution (also known as divine punishment or divine abuse) is the supernatural punishment of a single person, a group of people, or everyone, by a deity in response to some action. Mythology and folklore about how a deity imposed punishment on previous inhabitants of their land, causing their doom, can be found in several cultures.

An example of divine retribution is the story found in many religions about a great flood destroying all of humanity, as described in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Hindu Vedas, or the Christian Book of Genesis (6:9–8:22), but leaving one principal 'chosen' survivor. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the survivor is Utnapishtim. In the Hindu Vedas, it is Manu. In the Christian book of Genesis, it is Noah. References in the Old Testament and the Quran to a man named Nuh (Noah), who was commanded by God to build an ark, suggest that one man and his followers were saved in a great flood.

The Clergy Project (TCP) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that provides peer support to current and former religious leaders who no longer believe in a God or other supernatural elements. The group's focus is to provide private online forums for its participants, career transition assistance (including career coaching grants), and subsidized psychotherapy sessions in partnership with Recovering from Religion's Secular Therapy Project.

Historically, many rulers have assumed titles such as the son of God, the son of a god or the son of heaven.

The term "Son of God" is used in the Hebrew Bible as another way to refer to humans who have a special relationship with God. In Exodus, the nation of Israel is called God's firstborn son. Solomon is also called "son of God" (2 Samuel 7:14, 1 Chronicles 28:6). Angels, just and pious men, and the kings of Israel are all called "sons of God" (Genesis 6:2-4, Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7).

The Book of Jeremiah (Hebrew: ספר יִרְמְיָהוּ) is the second of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, and the second of the Prophets in the Christian Old Testament. The superscription at chapter Jeremiah 1:1–3 identifies the book as "the words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah". Of all the prophets, Jeremiah comes through most clearly as a person, ruminating to his scribe Baruch about his role as a servant of God with little good news for his audience.

His book is intended as a message to the Jews during the Babylonian exile, explaining the disaster of exile as God's response to Israel's pagan worship: the people, says Jeremiah, are like an unfaithful wife and rebellious children, their infidelity and rebelliousness made judgment inevitable, although restoration and a new covenant are foreshadowed. Authentic oracles of Jeremiah are probably to be found in the poetic sections of chapters 1 through 25, but the book as a whole has been heavily edited and added to by the prophet's followers (including, perhaps, his companion, the scribe Baruch) and later generations of Deuteronomists.

Yahwism, also known as the Israelite religion, was the ancient Semitic religion of ancient Israel and Judah and the ethnic religion of the Israelites. The Israelite religion was a derivative of the Canaanite religion and a polytheistic religion that had a pantheon with various gods and goddesses. The primary deity of the religion and the head of the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The majority of scholars hold that the goddess Asherah was the consort of Yahweh, though some scholars disagree. Following this divine duo were second-tier gods and goddesses, such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, with each having priests and prophets, and numbering royalty among their devotees.

The practices of Yahwism included festivals, ritual sacrifices, vow-making, private rituals, and the religious adjudication of legal disputes. For most of its history, the Temple in Jerusalem was not the sole or central place of worship dedicated to Yahweh, with many locations throughout Israel, Judah, and Samaria. However, it was still significant to the Israelite king, who effectively led the national religion as the worldly viceroy of the national god.

The concept of the kingship of God appears in all Abrahamic religions, where in some cases the terms kingdom of God and kingdom of Heaven are also used. The notion of God's kingship goes back to the Hebrew Bible, which refers to "his kingdom" but does not include the term "Kingdom of God".

The "Kingdom of God" and its equivalent form "Kingdom of Heaven" in the Gospel of Matthew is one of the key elements of the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. The Gospel of Mark indicates that the gospel is the good news about the Kingdom of God. The term pertains to the kingship of Christ over all creation. The phrase "Kingdom of heaven" appears in Matthew's gospel due primarily to Jewish sensibilities about uttering the "name" (God). Jesus did not teach the kingdom of God per se so much as the return of that kingdom. The notion of God's kingdom (as it had been under Moses) returning became an agitation in Roman Palestine 60 years before Jesus was born, and continued to be a force for nearly a hundred years after his death. Drawing on Old Testament teachings, the Christian characterization of the relationship between God and humanity inherently involves the notion of the "Kingship of God".

Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity and the history behind religion. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the supernatural, but also deals with religious epistemology, asks and seeks to answer the question of revelation. Revelation pertains to the acceptance of God, gods, or deities, as not only transcendent or above the natural world, but also willing and able to interact with the natural world and to reveal themselves to humankind.

Theologians use various forms of analysis and argument (experiential, philosophical, ethnographic, historical, and others) to help understand, explain, test, critique, defend or promote any myriad of religious topics. As in philosophy of ethics and case law, arguments often assume the existence of previously resolved questions, and develop by making analogies from them to draw new inferences in new situations.

Allah (/ˈælə, ˈɑːlə, əˈlɑː/ A(H)L-ə, ə-LAH; Arabic: الله, IPA: [ɑɫˈɫɑːh] ) is the Arabic language term for God, specifically the monotheistic God of Abraham. Outside of Arabic languages, it is principally associated with Islam (in which it is also considered the proper name), although the term was used in pre-Islamic Arabia and continues to be used today by Arabic-speaking adherents of any of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism and Christianity. It is thought to be derived by contraction from al-ilāh (الاله, lit. 'the god') and is linguistically related to other semitic God names, such as Aramaic (ܐܲܠܵܗܵܐ ʼAlāhā) and Hebrew (אֱלוֹהַּ ʾĔlōah).

The word "Allah" now conveys the superiority or sole existence of one God, but among the pre-Islamic Arabs, Allah was a supreme deity and was worshipped alongside lesser deities in a pantheon. Many Jews, Christians, and early Muslims used "Allah" and "al-ilah" synonymously in Classical Arabic. The word is also frequently, albeit not exclusively, used by Bábists, Baháʼís, Mandaeans, Indonesian Christians, Maltese Christians, and Sephardic Jews, as well as by the Gagauz people.