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Power and Dominion in the bible, meaning and difference

Power and Dominion in the bible, meaning and difference Power and Dominion in the bible, meaning and difference

The book Genesis speaks about the creation of the world and the man, God created man in his image and likeness to exercise power and dominion over the creatures.
The Bible explains: "And God said: let us make man in our image, after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea"...Genesis 1:26
This expression is a metaphor, in the man there is a certain resemblance, certain likeness to God as the whitish to the white explains Thomas Aquinas. Two beings are similar if they share the same essence, that is, two men are similar because they share reason as essence, whereas image means "perfect similarity", perfect similarity occurs only between twins. The concepts of similarity and image are metaphysical concepts that the Bible uses to describe the creation of man. The resemblance to God as such and properly occurs only in those people "full of the spirit", that is to say, it is the nature of man to be God's image and likeness (see metaphysical concept of nature). Let see now the concept of dominion.
The Spiritual power is the Dominion perfecting the Power.
The power is the aptitude to transform the reality, the power is empirical, it is in a philosophical  way of speaking a phenomenon.It is important to make the distinction between Dominion and Power we can not know one without the other.
The power has will and purpose, that's why it is properly human. These are the distinctive characteristics of the power, that's why we cannot speak about a power in the nature or in the animals.
However so to have a purpose means there has to be will and here a problem is caused, since we know that the desires of the passion and the reason can be opposed between them. If for the circumstances in the decision making this conflict takes place, the power can lose its purpose. It is here where the concept of “domain“ appears. The domain over oneself.
Domain and Power are complementary concepts. The domain has internal direction, the power externarl. Only the persons who control oneself, we speak about Proper Domain, are the truly free.
The Power can be good or bad, depends on the one who uses it, but it becomes ethical across the Dominion. The Proper Domain is a perfection of the character and as such this is related to the selfknowledge, to the metanoia, and the real freedom. The concept of Dominion complements the concept of the Power and gives emergence to a type of different power, the Blessed Power, the Power that acts reasonably, that it liberates and does not oppress, the Spiritual Power.

1 comment

  • Comment Link Mary y Thursday, 11 December 2014 23:17 posted by Mary y

    WOW. This has extraordinary depth. It makes quite a bit of sense. Thank you for this concept. If you are not a native English speaker, I can, and would love to, just make what you are saying flow just a little more clearly so that more people will be able to appreciate what you are saying. Let me know.

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