protology

plural protologies

1. countableuncountablelifestyleThe branch of theology pertaining to origins and first things.

   And hence the progress of the history of salvation is the progress of protology in the progressive development of its starting-point.

   1975, Karl Rahner, Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi, →ISBN, page 320

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   The Chalcedonian defender of thoroughgoing aphtharsia, driven into a corner, now seeks refuge in protology, that is, in referring to the original condition of Adam in Paradise, with whom he compares Christ.

   1995, Aloys Grillmeier, Theresia Hainthaler, Christ in Christian Tradition, →ISBN, page 226

   Our task, in what must necessarily be a longer section than those previous, will be first to explore the eschatological dimension of the protological image, then to show how these dual dimensions of protology and eschatology ground Irenaeus' focus on history and salvation as 'recapitulation'.

   2009, M. C. Steenberg, Of God and Man: Theology as Anthropology from Irenaeus to Athanasius, →ISBN

2. countableuncountableA text or oral history giving the origins of a people.

   Or, alternatively, perhaps they are the first human beings as described in tribal protologies.

   1997, Jace Weaver, That the People Might Live, →ISBN

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   Their fear, it is claimed, is that analysis of remains will "disprove" traditional tribal protologies, which often state that the tribe in question has been on its ancestral lands since creation.

   2001, Jace Weaver, Other Words: American Indian Literature, Law, and Culture, →ISBN, page 165

   Once the first principle starts to unfold into something other than itself, difference inevitably becomes uncontrollable, and that is why Valentinian protologies typically describe long chains of generation where the successful mediation of unity and duality is constantly being deferred from one level of being to the next: once the monad becomes a dyad it will multiply itself into a tetrad, an ogdoad and a triakontad, and the continued unity of the whole depends on the precarious unity of each of its constituent aeons, they themselves being "syzygies", double beings consisting of a masculine and feminine component, one but at the same time two.

   2009, Turid Karlsen Seim, Jorunn Økland, Metamorphoses: Resurrection, Body and Transformative Practices in Early Christianity, →ISBN

   Linking slavery to the Christian myth of origins and cosmogony is curious; origin myths and protologies describe not so much how things came into being, but why things are the way they are in the present, and they also insinuate how things ought to be.

   2015, Chris L. de Wet, Preaching Bondage, →ISBN

1. misconstructionuncountableMisconstruction of proctology.

   Instruction in the principles and practices of protology and proctological problems of the institutionalized patient has been given to staff physicians, interns and others who are qualified and interested.

   1941, The Illinois Psychiatric Journal - Volumes 1-2, page 27

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   The writer states that: (1) during the past decade protology has come to include diseases of the colon, and that the extension is beneficial inasmuch as it encourages and provides for a better diagnosis, and for a more thorough search after etiology.

   1914, The Wisconsin Medical Recorder - Volumes 16-18, page 283

   In some specialties, however, no place was seen for assistants of this kind. These specialties were general medicine, general surgery (including urology and protology), obstetrics and gynaecology (practised together), cardiology, dermatology, otolaryngology, neurology, neuro-surgery, plastic surgery and thoracic surgery.

   1963, Scotland Ministry of Health, Report of the Joint Working Party on the medical staffing structure in the Hospital Service