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Intellectual Humility and the Argument from Evil: A Reply to Zain Ali
By John Bishop, University of Auckland; Ken Perszyk, University of Waikato-Tauranga
This is a response to Zain Ali’s critique in this journal of our presentation of a ‘right relationship’ normatively relativised ‘logical’ Argument from Evil. Our argument aims to show that the existence of horrendous evils (as defined by Marilyn Adams) is incompatible with the existence of the personal omniGod (a person or personal being who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good), given certain reasonable judgments about what a personal God’s perfect goodness would imply about the way God relates to those caught up in horrendous evils. We reply to Ali’s main criticism that our assumptions about divine goodness are unjustified, and show a lack of intellectual humility. We defend the claim that, if God is a person, then God’s goodness is moral goodness according to our best human theory of what that implies. We accept that God’s situation as creator and sustainer of all that exists may justify ‘divine exceptionalism’: God’s personal moral goodness may be consistent with ways of relating to others that would fall far short of perfection in human-to-human relationships. But in that case, we argue, intellectual humility may be better served by accepting that God is so exceptional that God should not be understood as a person at all, which is the prevailing Muslim view, as Ali himself acknowledges.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050522
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Tags: #God #Evil #PoE
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Against God of the truth-value gaps
By T Parent, Nazarbayev University
Beall and Cotnoir propose that ‘God can create an unliftable stone’ is a truth-value gap (neither true nor false). However, this yields a revenge paradox on whether God can eschew gaps. Can God avoid gappy ascriptions of power? Either way, God’s power seems to have limits. In response, it may be said that ascribing God the power to avoid gaps is itself gappy – it concerns a power that God neither has nor lacks. Yet this ends up being inconsistent, for it implies that God definitely lacks that power. Following Aquinas, perhaps Beall and Cotnoir could accept this lack and still uphold omnipotence, suggesting that the power to avoid gaps is impossible for God. Yet the Aquinian stratagem is enough to block the original paradox, which saps the motivation to proffer truth-value gaps in addition. I conclude that the gappy solution is either inadequate or insufficiently motivated.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/anad090
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Tags: #God #Metaphysics #Logic
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A Thomish Epistemic Cartography of the Question “Can We Know God?”
By T. Adam Van Wart, Ave Maria University
The following article maps the various ways in which the expressions “knowledge” and “to know” are diversely used with reference to the Triune Lord of historic Christian orthodoxy. The reason for this epistemic cartography of Christian grammar stems from a desire to help dissolve and bring quiet to the decades of confusion that have arisen in theological conversation as a function of the failure to specify just what one means by the relevant terms (chiefly, “knowledge” and “to know”) in questions like “Can we know God?” I therefore list the various ways “to know” and “knowledge” are traditionally used to give shape both to the differing versions of the question “Can we know God?” and to their respective answers as displayed within the grammar of the Christian faith. Making use of St. Thomas Aquinas's contributions when helpful, the resulting analysis yields that, though we can truly say it is possible for us to know or have knowledge of God that is of the unitive, conventional, demonstrative, and nominative sort (i.e., the form of the question under those intentional conditions leads to an affirmative answer), we can in no way meaningfully assert the same of definitional knowledge with respect to God. Through God's self-revelation in/as Jesus Christ, however, I argue that an infallible and superlative expansion of the possibilities for our unitive, conventional, demonstrative, and nominative knowledge of God is on offer.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/moth.12943
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Tags: #Religion #Thomism #Christianity #God
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The making of living ḥadīth: a new direction of ḥadīth studies in Indonesia
By Saifuddin Zuhri Qudsy, UIN Sunan Kalijaga
Ḥadīth studies identifies Islamic practices that originate from the text of the ḥadīths or the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad. The term ‘living ḥadīth’ has emerged as a new direction to ḥadīth studies. This article seeks to explore the dynamics of living ḥadīths as they have emerged in and revitalised ḥadīth studies, especially within academic discourse of Indonesian Islamic universities. Important findings include that the living ḥadīth has become a subdiscipline of ḥadīth studies that examines on how Muslims interpret and express the ḥadīths in their daily lives, as well as how Indonesian Muslims link, communicate, and relate ḥadīths to local traditions and how local cultures assimilate and interact with the texts. This article also finds that the paradigm of living ḥadīth differs from the disciplines of sociology and anthropology of religion, presenting its epistemology through five areas of focus: practice, reception, text, transmission, and transformation.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2024.2336461
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Tags: #Islam #Hadith #Prophet
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Revisiting the Crucifixion of Jesus within Islam
By Mohamad Younes, Independent Researcher
This article demonstrates that Muslim teachings on the historical crucifixion event of Jesus are by no means monolithic. While the Qur’ān’s reference to the crucifixion has typically been interpreted as fostering explicit rejection of the belief that Christ was crucified, its meaning on this issue constitutes neither denial nor affirmation of its historicity. Over time, discussion of the crucifixion within the Islamic tradition was formed to accommodate a rejection that obscured the neutrality of the original Qur’ānic position. One school of Islamic thought which affirmed the historicity of the crucifixion on a Qur’ānic basis is the tradition of Shi’a Isma’ili Islam. This article focuses on the conceptualisation of the crucifixion within Isma’ilism and its connection with Sunnism. From the Isma’ili perspective, the Qur’ān does not deny the crucifixion of Jesus; rather, it only denies that the People of the Book crucified him, in apparent response to their boasting. The ambiguity of Surah 4:157 remains a vigorous debate among classical and later Muslim scholars with references to the crucifixion as preserved in early and medieval literature furnishing distinctively divergent accounts of its unfolding. Even classical scholars such as al-Ghazali were persuaded by the views about the crucifixion expressed by leading Isma’ili thinkers such as Abu Ḥatim al-Razi (d. 934 CE) and Naṣir Khusraw (d. 1078 CE). Ultimately, the objective of this article is twofold: to demonstrate that the Qur’ān offers a neutral account of the crucifixion and to examine Shi’ite exegetical analysis on the crucifixion event in contrast to mainstream Islam.
Link: https://doi.org/10.55831/ajis.v9i1.585
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Tags: #Islam #Christianity #Quran #Jesus
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The Application of Islamic Principles on Entrepreneurship Competence Development Framework
By Rinto Muhammadsyah Azhar, Charles Sturt University
Entrepreneurship is when you act on opportunities or ideas and transform them into value for others. The value that is created can be financial, cultural, or social. Entrepreneurship has been proven as an important key to propelling economic growth and the world is in an urgent need of more competent entrepreneurs.
Several institutions and scholars have attempted to create a framework to develop this important competence. The European Union has developed the most comprehensive one, which is called the Entrepreneurship Competence Development Framework (EntreComp). Despite its comprehensiveness, the framework is based on a humanism perspective, which negates the supernatural existence and advocates achieving immediate worldly goals and unconstrained creativity. Consequently, EntreComp is incompatible with the Islamic perspective, which puts a transcendental being (God) as the foundation and axis of all things.
The vision of this research is to develop a competent Muslim entrepreneur (Muslimpreneur) through establishing a practical framework called Muslimpreneurship Competence Development Framework (MCDF). The research was qualitative and exploratory. The Islamisation of Knowledge methodology was applied to synthesise the EntreComp to establish a practical MCDF. The EntreComp was instilled and enriched with core Islamic principles and teachings, making the competence development framework more compatible, comprehensive, and effective for Muslim end users.
Link: https://doi.org/10.55831/ajis.v9i1.583
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Tags: #Islam #Muslim #Pedagogy
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The Barelvi movement in South Asian Islam
By Mohammad Waqas Sajjad, Beaconhouse National University
The Barelvi movement in South Asia—particularly in Pakistan—has long been regarded as the indigenous Islam of the region. It is equated with Sufism, and highlighted as the peaceful and moderate Islam of the majority of Muslims. In doing so, it is contrasted with competing Sunni traditions such as the Deobandis, as an explicit binary is created between the two. However, the narrative has seen a shift since 2011, with the rise of Mumtaz Qadri, who murdered a politician due to allegations of blasphemy. In this article, I trace these developments in the perceptions of, and discourses about, Barelvis in South Asia, especially over the last twenty years. In doing so I explore four key ways of being Barelvi, including love for the Prophet Muhammad, an affiliation with the founder of the movement, Sufi practices and shrines, and opposition to Deobandi Islam.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/rec3.12492
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Tags: #Islam #History #Sufism
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The Abrahamic Vernacular
By Rebecca Scharbach Wollenberg, University of Michigan
Contemporary thought typically places a strong emphasis on the exclusive and competitive nature of Abrahamic monotheisms. This instinct is certainly borne out by the histories of religious wars, theological polemic, and social exclusion involving Jews, Christians, and Muslims. But there is also another side to the Abrahamic coin. Even in the midst of communal rivalry, Jews, Christians, and Muslim practitioners have frequently turned to each other to think through religious concepts, elucidate sacred history, and enrich their ritual practices. Scholarship often describes these interactions between the Abrahamic monotheisms using metaphors of exchange between individuals-as if one tradition might borrow a theological idea from another in the same way that a neighbor might borrow a recipe. This Element proposes that there are deeper forms of entanglement at work in these historical moments.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009286787
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Tags: #Monotheism #History #Islam #Christianity
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Islam and Environmental Ethics
By Muhammad Yaseen Gada, Central University of Kashmir
This Element explores environmental ethics in Islam. Its core argument is that Islamic culture and civilization are rich in environmental concerns; Islam has unique considerations and directions about what sort of human-nature relationship there should be. Muslim environmental commentators have explored basic environmental or eco-ethical principles that are deeply embedded in the Qur'an and Sunnah. Protecting and conserving the environment are not only moral duties but also an obligation in Islam. The Islamic environmental ethical system offers both conceptual paradigms and operational components to realize environmental justice and sustainable development.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009308236
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Tags: #Islam #Ethics #Quran
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Fasting in Early Sufi Literature
By Atif Khalil, University of Lethbridge
This article offers an analysis of conceptions of fasting in early Islamic spirituality. By drawing on the literature of Sufism, with special attention to the writings of al-Sarrāj (d. 378/988), al-Makkī (d. 386/996), al-Kharkūshī (= Khargūshī; d. 407/1016), al-Hujwīrī (d. ca. 465/1071), al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1072) and al-Sīrjānī (d. 470/1077), it thematically outlines (1) the value placed on fasting in early tradition, (2) the dangers believed to lie in the practice, and finally, (3) the need to transcend, in the final scheme of things, any attachment one may form with it, through ‘detachment from detachment’. In the process, the article aims not only to decipher and make sense of the various aphorisms and stories that make up the early literature of taṣawwuf, but also to resolve their apparent contradictions.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etae003
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Tags: #Islam #Sufism #History
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From Daʿwah to Shahādah: A Move beyond Vatican II and the Common Word
By Mohammed Gamal Abdelnour, University of Bristol
The Second Vatican Council and the Common Word document constitute turning points in the history of Christian–Muslim Relations. Nostra Aetate and Lumen Gentium appealed to a shared Abrahamic heritage between Christianity and Islam, and the Common Word appealed to a God-based theology, as opposed to the long-standing Prophet-based theology. Authorities in both traditions did so in the search for a shared theological foundation. While the article recognizes the vitality of the two steps, it equally recognizes that there is still much that can be done to advance Christian–Muslim relations. In this context, this article aims to achieve three primary goals: first, to demonstrate the successes of the two initiatives; second, to critically engage with them by examining their limitations; and third, to suggest “practical theology” as a medium through which the aspirations of Vatican II and the Common Word can reach a greater audience. In doing so, it proposes the concept of shahādah “bearing witness”, as opposed to the Islamic concept of daʿwah “making invitation” and the Christian concepts of preaching and messianism.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15040469
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Tags: #Religion #Islam #Christianity
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Does God Intervene in Our Lives? Special Divine Action in Aquinas
By Mirela Oliva, University of St. Thomas
Does God intervene in our lives? In this paper, I respond “yes” and work out a Thomistic account of special divine action in human life. I argue that God intensifies His action in moments that are particularly significant for our salvation. In such moments, God intervenes in a contingent mode and reorients our lives for the sake of our final good. First, I present Aquinas’ terminological choice of specialis and intervenire and address concerns expressed in the contemporary divine action debate against the term “intervention”. Second, I discuss the special divine action as a subtype of the special providence that rules over human beings. The special providence mirrors the special place of humans in the created order on account of their reason and freedom. Third, I show that divine interventions occur through irregular contingency. I refer to several interventions: test, habitual grace, God’s moving of the will, God’s enlightenment of the intellect, and punishment. Since it occurs contingently, the special divine action can be known through interpreting signs (a kind of conjectural knowledge). Fourth, I show that not all contingencies are divine interventions. To differentiate between them, I introduce an orientational criterion of interpretation: the transfiguration of a person’s life toward her final good.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15040417
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Tags: #Religion #Aquinas #DivineAction #God
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Continuity and Change of Traditional Islamic Law in Modern Times: tarjīḥ as a Method of Adaptation and Development of Legal Doctrines
By Ahmed Gad Makhlouf, University of Vienna
In addition to ijtihād (independent legal reasoning), tarjīḥ (weighing up and preference) serves as a fundamental instrument of traditional Islamic law's operational work and was used on different levels. In modern times, tarjīḥ is still applied not only by individual scholars but also by collective fiqh institutions. However, the conception of tarjīḥ is undergoing a transformation in its current application. In the scope of this article, the first purpose is to provide a comprehensive overview of the conception and the diverse practical forms of the tarjīḥ in traditional Islamic law. The focus then lies on setting out how to apply tarjīḥ in modern Islamic jurisprudence. This article also aims to illustrate the conceptual and operational changes of tarjīḥ, paying special attention to the relation between tarjīḥ and ijtihād. Overall, this article intends, on the one hand, to contribute to the study of present Islamic law's developments; on the other hand, it examines the continuity and change of tarjīḥ from traditional Islamic law to contemporary fiqh institutions. It is argued that tarjīḥ in the modern age is not only used as a method of weighing and choosing a legal view that among the diverse views of pre-modern law most closely adapts to the current social circumstances, but that it is also integrated in the process of development of new legal doctrines.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/ojlr/rwad010
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Tags: #Islam #IslamicLaw #Shariah
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Divine authority as divine parenthood
By Nicholas Hadsell, Baylor University
In this article, I argue that God is authoritative over us because he is our divine, causal parent. As our causal parent, God has duties to relate to us, but he can only fulfil those duties if he has the practical authority to give us commands aimed at our sanctification. From ought-implies-can reasoning, I conclude that God has that authority. After I make this argument, I show how the view has significant advantages over extant arguments for divine authority and can help solve other significant problems in philosophy of religion.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412524000027
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Tags: #God #Morality #Ethics #Religion
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A Defense of Global Theological Voluntarism
By Justin Morton, University of California
In this paper, I challenge the recent consensus that global versions of theological voluntarism—on which all moral facts are explained by God’s action— fail, because only local versions—on which only a proper subset of moral facts are so explained—can successfully avoid the objection that theological voluntarism entails that God’s actions are arbitrary. I argue that global theological voluntarism can equally well avoid such arbitrariness. This does not mean that global theological voluntarism should be accepted, but that the primary advantage philosophers have taken local views to have over global views is, in fact, no advantage at all.
Link: https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2022.39.3.5
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Tags: #God #Theism #Metaphysics #Voluntarism
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The Death of God as Source of the Creativity of Humans
By Franke William, Vanderbilt University
Although declarations of the death of God seem to be provocations announcing the end of the era of theology, this announcement is actually central to the Christian revelation in its most classic forms, as well as to its reworkings in contemporary religious thought. Indeed provocative new possibilities for thinking theologically open up precisely in the wake of the death of God. Already Hegel envisaged a revolutionary new realization of divinity emerging in and with the secular world through its establishment of a total order of immanence. However, in postmodern times this comprehensive order aspired to by modern secularism implodes or cracks open towards the wholly Other. A hitherto repressed demand for the absolute difference of the religious, or for “transcendence”, returns with a vengeance. Th is difference is what could not be stated in terms of the Hegelian System, for reasons that poststructuralist writers particularly have insisted on: all representations of God are indeed dead. Yet this does not mean that they cannot still be powerful, but only that they cannot assign God any stable identity. Nietzsche’s sense of foreboding concerning the death of God is coupled with his intimations of the demise of representation and “grammar” as epistemologically bankrupt, but also with his vision of a positive potential for creating value in the wake of this collapse of all linguistically articulated culture. He points the way towards the emergence of a post-secular religious thinking of what exceeds thought and representation.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9030055
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Tags: #God #Atheism #Secularism
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A Contemporary Aristotelian–Thomistic Perspective on the Evolutionary View of Reality and Theistic Evolution
By Mariusz Tabaczek, Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas
This article presents a coherent and comprehensive proposal of a renewed contemporary Aristotelian–Thomistic approach to the evolutionary view of reality and the position of theistic evolution. Beginning with a proposal of a hylomorphically–grounded essentialist definition of species—framed within a broader revival of biological essentialism—a constructive model of the Aristotelian–Thomistic metaphysics of evolution is being offered, together with a reflection on the alleged violation of the principle of proportionate causation in evolutionary transitions and the role of teleology and chance in evolution. The theological part of the article addresses a number of questions concerning the Thomistic school of theology in its encounter with the evolutionary worldview, including the question of whether God creates through evolution, the query concerning the concurrence of divine and created causes in evolutionary transitions, and the question regarding evolutionary and theological notions of anthropogenesis. A list of ten postulates grounding a contemporary Thomistic version of theistic evolution is offered as a conclusion to the research presented in the text.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15050524
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Tags: #Religion #Thomism #Evolution #God
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Emotions and Monotheism
By John Corrigan, Florida State University
The emotional turn in scholarship has changed the way in which historians of religion think about monotheistic traditions. New histories of religion have adapted and incorporated the totalizing sensibilities of twentieth century annalistes, the granular view of social historians, groundbreaking philosophical investigations, and the spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration between historical analysis, anthropology, and psychology. Religion as a principal bearer of culture has shaped emotional life profoundly, just as human emotion has constituted religious life. Taking a qualified constructivist approach to emotion enables understanding of the dynamism, fluidity, and ambiguity in emotional experience, alongside continuities, and facilitates analysis of how that feeling has animated religious life in monotheistic traditions. It equally sharpens insight into how monotheistic religion itself has made emotion. Affect, emotion, and mixed emotions are three categories of feelings evidenced in monotheistic religions. Each is illustrated with respect to the similarities and differences among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108980807
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Tags: #Monotheism #Religion #Islam #Judaism #Christianity #Psychology
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Dead Men Talking: Ibn ‘Arabī’s Interactions with Messengers and Saints
By Ismail Lala, Gulf University for Science & Technology
The mystical thinker Muhyi al-Din ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) had many audiences with the dead. This article explores who Ibn ‘Arabī interacted with, and how. Usually as dreams and visions, the meetings Ibn ‘Arabī had with messengers were generally at key milestones in his life, or to confer particular distinctions upon him. A special subset of these visions was of Prophet Muḥammad specifically, and these were to derive a legal ruling from him, or because he was under the special care of the Prophet. Conversely, the audiences he had with departed saints were largely to do with more quotidian issues, either regarding his relationship with spiritual masters, or to correct a misapprehension about someone. Finally, but more seldom, he had physical interactions with corporealised spirits from beyond. As these betrayed a higher rank than mere visions, they were reminiscent of his audiences with messengers in that they confirmed his exalted spiritual rank.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15040504
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Tags: #Islam #Sufism #Prophet
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Islamic Pluralism and the Muslim Voice: Western Attitudes that Define Islamic Identity in the West
By Hayba Abouzeid, Monash University
This article examines the parameters of what constitutes the Muslim voice in the West through analysis of Islamic pluralism and modernity. It uses the voices of Said Nursi and Fazlur Rahman to complement the perspectives of outsider voices, Bernard Lewis and John Esposito, who have impacted the attitudes behind the bias in the West towards Islamic identity and practice. Further, it highlights the examination of Islamic pluralism in the West alongside the consideration of Muslim spoken word artists who use their mediums to express the pain and struggles they have endured. This article bridges academic and societal attitudes towards understanding the perceptions of Islamic pluralism in the West.
Link: https://doi.org/10.55831/ajis.v9i1.575
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Tags: #Islam #Muslim #Pluralism
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Evaluating Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Views on Adherence to Islam in Heretic
By Rizwan Sahib, Western Sydney University
This study investigates Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s view that adherence to Islam is not viable in secular liberal societies of the West, owing to a so-called clash of norms and values. For Hirsi Ali, this clash causes cognitive dissonance in Muslims and makes them withdraw to Muslim enclaves or become radicalised. This study evaluates these claims by comparing them to findings from ethnographic research with Muslims in the West. The data on Muslim religious life shows, for the most part, Muslims in the West can practice Islamic rituals and behaviours owing to social, individual and religion factors, such that what emerges is a fluid way of life that fits into a secular liberal society. Hirsi Ali’s views are thus a misrepresentation of adherence to Islam. The study takes this to be the outcome of her lack of empirical research with Muslims.
Link: https://doi.org/10.55831/ajis.v9i1.567
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Tags: #Islam #ExMuslim #Secularism
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An Arab Jew Reads the Quran: On Isaac Yahuda’s Hebrew Commentary on the Islamic Scripture
By Mostafa Hussein, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
How did an Arab Jew read the Quran against the backdrop of contradictory ideologies and the rise of key movements, including nationalism, colonialism, and Zionism, in Mandate Palestine? Approaching Isaac Yahuda as an Arab Jew challenges the binary opposition between Arabs and Jews in Zionist discourse, a linkage perceived as inconceivable, and on the other hand, that linkage is asserted, contested, and tested in the context of nationalism. This article also challenges the advancement of Jewish singularity and superiority by exploring how Jewish writers interacted with the Islamic scripture in Mandatory Palestine rather than dismissing it. This article examines Hebrew interpretation of various passages from the Quran that produced an understanding of the Quran that advanced Zionist ideals, including the nationalization of contested religious sites and the consolidation of the indigeneity of Jews in the East. Isaac Yahuda’s Hebrew commentary on the Quran challenged his Arab Jewishness in such a divisive nationalist atmosphere in Mandate Palestine. His hybrid background and dynamic connections with both Jews and Arabs enabled him to navigate these turbulent times by invoking the Quran, demonstrating respect for it, and at the same time challenging the understanding of his contemporary Muslims while utilizing German Jewish scholarship on the origins of Islam.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15040495
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Tags: #Islam #Judaism #Quran
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Monotheism and Fundamentalism
Prevalence, Potential, and Resilience
By Rik Peels, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
This Element explores the relation between monotheism and fundamentalism. It does so from both an empirical perspective and a more theoretical one that combines theological and philosophical insights. The empirical part addresses how as a matter of fact, particularly quantitively, monotheism and fundamentalism relate to one another. The more theoretical part studies the relation between the two by considering the doctrine of God and the issue of exclusion, theories of revelation, and ethics. Finally, the book considers whether monotheism has particular resources that can be employed in mitigating the consequences of or even altogether preventing fundamentalism.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009309653
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Tags: #Monotheism #God #Ethics
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Mary’s Prophethood Reassessed: Overlooked Medieval Islamic Perspectives in Contemporary Scholarship
By Halim Calis, Respect Graduate School
This paper offers a reevaluation of contemporary Western scholarship concerning the historical discourse on Mary’s prophethood within Islamic tradition. Recent research has primarily focused on Andalusian scholars, such as Ibn Ḥazm and al-Qurṭubī, and has neglected an essential aspect: the acknowledgement of Mary’s prophethood by Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ash‘arī, one of the founders of Orthodox Sunni theology. As a result, modern studies have reached conclusions lacking a solid foundation, due to their failure to consider this significant perspective. By incorporating this overlooked perspective, this study seeks to provide a more thorough and coherent understanding of the historical debates surrounding Mary’s prophethood.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15040461
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Tags: #Islam #Seerah #History #Theology
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‘Where did you learn to write Arabic?’: A Critical Analysis of Some Ḥadīths on the Origins and Spread of the Arabic Script
By Joshua J Little, University of Groningen
According to some ḥadīths, the art of writing Arabic in the pre-Islamic Hijaz was learned from the city of al-Ḥīra (the capital of the Lakhmid kingdom) in southern Iraq, whilst al-Ḥīra in turn learned writing from the city of al-Anbār in central Iraq. Based on a combined isnād-cum-matn analysis, form-critical analysis, and geographical analysis of these ḥadīths, the earliest iteration of this material can be dated back to the middle of the eighth century CE (i.e., the early second century AH) in Kufa, but no earlier. A further historical-critical analysis also exposes the broader cultural and ideological tendencies at play behind the creation and elaboration of this material, including salvation history, a ‘great man’ theory of history, and—above all—the creation and elaboration of an Iraq-focused Arabian folk history in eighth-century CE Iraq. This small set of reports thus exemplifies the rich potential of ḥadīth in general as both a tool and an object of historical analysis: by applying my combined approach to ḥadīth, we can trace the creation, transmission, and elaboration of the material; we can locate its geographical origins; and we can identify the broader context that ultimately produced it.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etae008
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Tags: #Islam #Hadith #Arabic #History
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Thomas Aquinas and Some Neo-Thomists on the Possibility of Miracles and the Laws of Nature
By Ignacio Silva, Universidad Austral
This paper discusses how Thomas Aquinas and some Neo-Thomists scholars (Juan José Urráburu, Joseph Hontheim, Édouard Hugon, and Joseph Gredt) analysed the metaphysical possibility of miracles. My main goal is to unpack the metaphysical toolbox that Aquinas uses to solve the basic question about the possibility of miracles and to compare how his late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century followers solved the issue themselves. The key feature to differentiate the two approaches will reside in their use of different notions to account for the possibility of miracles, namely obediential potency for Aquinas and the laws of nature for the Neo-Thomists. To show why neo-Thomist scholars source to this notion, I also briefly discuss how the notion of the laws of nature emerged in the seventeenth century.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15040422
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Tags: #Religion #Aquinas #Miracles #God
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Monotheism and Pluralism
By Rachel S. Mikva, Chicago Theological Seminary
Can monotheistic traditions affirm the comparable value of diverse religions? Can they celebrate our world's multiple spiritual paths? This Element explores historical foundations and contemporary paradigms for pluralism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Recognizing that there are other ways to interpret the traditions, it excavates the space for theological parity.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009273374
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Tags: #Islam #Christianity #Judaism #Pluralism
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Islam and the Challenge of Epistemic Sovereignty
By Joseph E. B. Lumbard, Hamad bin Khalifa University
The search for knowledge has been central to the Islamic tradition from its inception in the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad (aḥādīth). The injunctions to obtain knowledge and contemplate the signs of God in all things undergird a culture of ultimate questions in which there was an underlying epistemic unity among all fields of knowledge, from the religious sciences to the intellectual sciences to the natural sciences. Having lost sight of the underlying metaphysic that provides this epistemic unity, many thinkers in the modern period read the classical Islamic texts independently of the cognitive cartography and hierarchy of which they are a part. This approach leads to further misunderstandings and thus to a sense of hermeneutical gloom and epistemic subordination characteristic of coloniality. Postcolonial theory provides effective tools for diagnosing the process by which this epistemic erosion produces ideologically and epistemically conscripted subjects. But as it, too, arises from within a secular frame, it is only by understanding the cognitive cartography of the sciences within Islam that epistemic confidence and sovereignty can be reinstated.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15040406
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Tags: #Islam #Epistemology #Secularism
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Incompatible and incomparable perfections: a new argument against perfect being theism
By Jashiel Resto Quiñones, Purdue University
Perfect being theism is the view that the perfect being exists and the property being-perfect is the property being-God. According to the strong analysis of perfection, a being is perfect just in case it exemplifies all perfections. On the other hand, the weak analysis of perfection says that a being is perfect just in case it exemplifies the best possible combination of compatible perfections. Strong perfect being theism accepts the former analysis while weak perfect being theism accepts the latter. In this paper, I argue that there are good reasons to reject both versions of perfect being theism. On the one hand, strong perfect being theism is false if there are incompatible perfections; I argue that there are. On the other hand, if either no comparison can be made between sets of perfections, or they are equally good, then there is no best possible set of perfections. I argue for the antecedent of this conditional statement, concluding that weak perfect being theism is false. In the absence of other analyses of perfection, I conclude that we have reason to reject perfect being theism.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-024-09910-8
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Tags: #God #Theism #Metaphysics
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Non-belief as self-deception?
By Lari Launonen, University of Helsinki
The suppression thesis is the theological claim that theistic non-belief results from culpable mistreatment of one's knowledge of God or one's evidence for God. The thesis is a traditional one but unpopular today. This article examines whether it can gain new credibility from the philosophy of self-deception and from the cognitive science of religion. The thesis is analysed in terms of the intentionalist and the non-intentionalist model of self-deception. The first proposed model views non-belief as intentional suppression of one's implicit knowledge of God. It is less feasible psychologically but has a good theological fit with Paul's and Calvin's versions of the thesis. This model also helps the argument for the culpability of non-belief. The second model views suppression as a process of subconscious motivated reasoning driven by a desire to avoid an uncomfortable truth. It fits Pascal's view that one's desire for or against God determines whether one sees general revelation as providing sufficient evidence for God. There is some empirical and anecdotal evidence for both models, but obvious cases of non-resistant non-belief present a major problem for the suppression thesis. Also, it is hard to see what might motivate anyone to deceive oneself about God's existence.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412524000052
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Tags: #God #Atheism #Theism #Metaphysics
