Alvin J. Reines
American rabbi and theologian
Alvin J. Reines (1926–2004) was an American Reform rabbi, philosopher and theologian. He was professor of Philosophy and Theology at Hebrew Union College.
He is known for his pluralistic religious philosophy and theology of polydoxy. Polydoxy emphasizes individual autonomy and religious freedom. For Reines religious believers should be free to choose which beliefs and practices they adopt whilst respecting the right of other religious believer to do the same. Rather than there being one correct conception of God there are many.
Reines personally conceives of God as "'the enduring possibility of being," explained as "the permanent ongoing potentiality from which the universe is continually being realized," calling this position Hylotheism.
Polydoxy is presented as the opposite of orthodoxy. A religion can be polydox or an orthodox. Reines calls for a 'polydox' approach to Judaism and religion in general.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alvin J. Reines” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.