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Bond with God as a Moderator of the Relationship between Prayer and Stress of Chilean Students
By Marcin Wnuk, Adam Mickiewicz University
Prayer is a spiritual coping method that can be effective both in extraordinary, life-threatening circumstances and in ordinary, stressful situations. To be beneficial, it requires a bond with God or the divine based on trust and faith. The purpose of this study was to examine the mediated moderation model in which spiritual experiences moderate the link between prayer and stress, which in turn, is negatively related to the subjective well-being of Chilean students. The study’s participants were 177 students from Chile. The following tools were used: Daily Spiritual Experiences Scale, two measures regarding the quality of life and negative feelings from the World Health Organization Quality of Life—BREF, one tool verifying stress from the National Health Interview Survey and one-item scale in reference to frequency of praying. This study confirmed the mechanism underpinning the relationship between prayer and subjective well-being, as well as the benefits of a bond with God and the harmful role of stress in this relationship. When students more frequently felt God’s love and direction, prayer was negatively related to stress, which in turn, negatively predicted subjective well-being. For students with a poor bond with God and fewer spiritual experiences, prayer was positively linked with stress. This study confirms the benefits of a close, trusting bond with God or the divine and the detrimental effects of lacking a positive connection with God on students’ stress when students used prayer as a coping method. The practical implications of this study are also presented.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14030345
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Tags: #God #Psychology #Religiosity #Sociology #Spirituality
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Simply the Best?
Ontological Arguments, Meinongianism, and Classical Theism
By Gregory R. P. Stacey, University of Leeds
Some critics claim that ontological arguments are dialectically ineffective against sceptics, whatever the sceptics’ broader metaphysical commitments. In this paper, I examine and contest arguments for this conclusion. I suggest that such critics overlook important claims about God’s nature (viz. divine simplicity and divine inimitability) typically advanced by proponents of ontological arguments who endorse classical theism. I reformulate two representative ontological arguments in light of this characterization of God, arguing that for philosophers prepared to endorse Meinongianism or modal Platonism, alongside divine simplicity and inimitability, such arguments are not invalid, question-begging, or obviously liable to parody. Accordingly, two species of ontological argument may possess some persuasive force, albeit for a select audience.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2021.38.4.2
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Tags: #OntologicalArgument #ClassicalTheism #God
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On Three Varieties of Concurrentism and the Virtues of the Moderate Version
By Timothy D. Miller, University of Kansas
Concurrentist views concerning Divine and secondary causes seek to establish both that secondary causes are fundamentally dependent upon God (contra deism) and that they make genuine, non-superfluous causal contributions (contra occasionalism). However, traditional (or strong) concurrentism struggles to establish a genuine, non-superfluous role for secondary causes, while weak concurrentism (aka, mere conservationism) has been accused of amounting to a sort of “weak deism” that grants too much independence to created beings. This essay introduces a moderate concurrentist alternative and argues that it preserves the most important benefits of the strong and weak varieties, while avoiding their most familiar difficulties.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2021.38.4.4
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Tags: #Occasionalism #Concurrentism #Plantinga #God #Deism
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Re-Visiting the Meaning of ‘ẓann’ in the Qurʾān
By Abdulla Galadari, Khalifa University of Science and Technology
The Qurʾānic term, ‘ẓann,’ is usually understood and translated as conjecture. However, I argue that the Qurʾān uses ‘ẓann’ to mean dogmatic zeal or, in other words, being zealous to a certain belief. For conjecture, the Qurʾān uses the root ‘ḥ-s-b,’ such as, ‘ayaḥsabu.’ Although the Qurʾān may criticize some people's conjectures, it does not criticize the act of formulating opinions with the root ‘ḥ-s-b.’ However, the Qurʾān does criticize the act of ‘ẓann.’ This further emphasizes the distinction between conjecture and ‘ẓann,’ according to the Qurʾān. The main emphasis is that when the Qurʾān requires people to shun most ‘ẓann,’ it is argued that it is asking to shun zealous beliefs and dogmas, and it is not asking to shun the formulation of conjectures. The method used is philological, in which the cognates are analyzed in their contexts and compared with their uses in the Qurʾān. Defining ‘ẓann’ as dogmatic zeal rather than conjecture has far-reaching implications in understanding Qurʾānic epistemology and the epistemic process it expects its audience to have.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12450
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Tags: #Islam #Quran #Hermeneutics
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The Ambiguity of Early Hadith Criticism: ʿAlī b. al-Madīnī's (161–234/778–849) Evaluation of Hadith Transmitters
By I-Wen Su, National Chengchi University
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12446
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Tags: #Islam #Hadith #History
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Struggling with and against the Governance of Islam in Spain
By Johanna M. Lems, Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Ana I. Planet Contreras, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
The process of accommodation of Islam in Spain is based on the Constitution of 1978, which guarantees the freedom of religion. Regarding Islam, the Cooperation Agreement signed in 1992 between the State and the Islamic Commission of Spain brought with it a formal recognition of the practice of the Islamic faith. Thirty years later, the sole interlocutor appointed by the State seems to be ineffective in the pursuance of compliance with Islamic religious rights. In various regions other actors have engaged in claims-making for rights that include, among others, the access to cemetery space for Islamic burials and Islamic religious education and halal food in publicly funded schools. This paper explores the governance of Islam and Muslims in Spain by presenting a case in which a number of grassroots organizations in the northern region of La Rioja have combined their efforts to achieve compliance with the religious rights they were granted decades ago. Through claims-making outside the institutionalized structure of interlocution with the State, they are contesting the external and internal top-down governance of Islam in Spain. Based on empirical data, we analyzed the nature of their claims, the varied ways of responding to specific practices of governance, as well as the spaces in which this claims-making takes place.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14030306
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Tags: #Islam #Politics #Secularism
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A nonreductive physicalist libertarian free will
By Dwayne Moore, University of Saskatchewan
Libertarian free will is, roughly, the view that the same agential states can cause different possible actions. Nonreductive physicalism is, roughly, the view that mental states cause actions to occur, while these actions also have sufficient physical causes. Though libertarian free will and nonreductive physicalism have overlapping subject matter, and while libertarian free will is currently trending at the same time as nonreductive physicalism is a dominant metaphysical posture, there are few sustained expositions of a nonreductive physicalist model of libertarian free will – indeed some tell against such an admixture. This paper concocts such a blend by articulating and defending, with some caveats, a nonreductive physicalist model of libertarian free will.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14030308
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Tags: #FreeWill #Libertarianism #Physicalism
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WHAT MAKES A QUANTUM PHYSICS BELIEF BELIEVABLE? MANY-WORLDS AMONG SIX IMPOSSIBLE THINGS BEFORE BREAKFAST
By Shaun C. Henson, University of Oxford
An extraordinary, if circumscribed, positive shift has occurred since the mid-twentieth century in the perceived status of Hugh Everett III's 1956 theory of the universal wave function of quantum mechanics, now widely called the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI). Everett's starkly new interpretation denied the existence of a separate classical realm, contending that the experimental data can be seen as presenting a state vector for the whole universe. Since there is no state vector collapse, reality as a whole is strictly deterministic. Explained jointly by the dynamical variables and the state vector, “this reality is not the reality we customarily think of, but is a reality composed of many worlds,” wrote Everett's colleague Bryce DeWitt. In this essay, I account briefly for the change of status in conventional scientific terms, yet chiefly in extended terms of three sets of ideas that I argue can be understood to affect believability in both scientific and religious contexts, illuminating helpfully the MWI phenomenon, and its engagement with theology: orthodoxy and heresy, language and reference, and faith and agnosticism. One's orientation relative to the variable content of these dynamic, socially oriented categories helps to make belief in ideas as metaphysically challenging as Everettian Quantum Mechanics, or particular ideas about God, either more or less believable. The categories will have the same function in a theology engaging Everett's theory, and in any theology at all written in a society deeply marked by what I further argue is a subtle, powerful, and pervasive mode of quasi-scientific thinking we can call societal constructive agnosticism, of which anyone doing theology today must be aware.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12872
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Tags: #QuantunMechanics #Physics #God #Metaphysics
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The Second Canonization of the Qur’ān: A Review Article
By Tareq Moqbel, University of Oxford
Shady Nasser's monograph The Second Canonization of the Qur’ān is a significant intervention in the field of qirā’āt. The present article provides an analysis of the book. The main themes of the book are surveyed, and some of its arguments are presented, though not always free from criticism. The review also includes a discussion of various technical points which require amendment, others that invite investigation, as well as issues on which the present author has his doubts.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1093/jss/fgac020
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Tags: #Quran #Hermeneutics #Islam #Review
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Truthmaking, resemblance, and divine simplicity
By Mahmoud Morvarid, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences
Abstract
According to the traditional doctrine of divine simplicity, if an intrinsic predication of the form ‘God is F’ is true, then God's F-ness exists and is identical with God. To avoid the absurdity of identifying God with a property, a number of philosophers have proposed that God's F-ness should be interpreted, not as a property God possesses, but as the truthmaker for ‘God is F’, which is God himself. I shall argue that given some plausible assumptions, the truthmaker interpretation would undermine the highly plausible idea that there are ‘natural’ predicates which apply univocally or (at least) analogically to both God and some created beings. The only way in which the advocate of the truthmaker interpretation can avoid this problem is to embrace wholesale radical nominalism (with its own costs). That is to say, the truthmaker interpretation is far more constrained than it might initially appear to be.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412521000123
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Tags: #God #Religion #Philosophy #DivineSimplicity
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Recollecting the Religious: Augustine in Answer to Meno’s Paradox
By Ryan Haecker; Daniel Moulin-Stożek, University of Cambridge
Abstract
Philosophers of education often view the role of religion in education with suspicion, claiming it to be impossible, indoctrinatory or controversial unless reduced to secular premises and aims. The ‘post-secular’ and ‘decolonial’ turns of the new millennium have, however, afforded opportunities to revaluate this predilection. In a social and intellectual context where the arguments of previous generations of philosophers may be challenged on account of positivist assumptions, there may be an opening for the reconsideration of alternative but traditional religious epistemologies. In this article, we pursue one such line of thought by revisiting a classic question in the philosophy of education, Meno’s Paradox of inquiry. We do this to revitalise understanding and justification for religious education. Our argument is not altogether new, but in our view, is in need of restatement: liturgy is at the heart of education and it is so because it is a locus of knowledge. We make this argument by exploring St Augustine’s response to Meno’s Paradox, and his radical claim that only Christ can be called ‘teacher’. Though ancient, this view of the relationship of the teacher and student to knowledge may seem surprisingly contemporary because of its emphasis on the independence of the learner. Although our argument is grounded in classic texts of the Western tradition, we suggest that arguments could be made by drawing on similar resources in other religious traditions, such as Islam, that also draw upon the Platonic tradition and similarly emphasise the importance of communal and personal acts of worship.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-021-09778-5
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Tags: #Epistemology #Religion #Philosophy
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Classical Kalām and the Laws of Logic
By Abdurrahman Mihirig, Ludwig-Maximilian University
Link: https://themaydan.com/2021/04/classical-kalam-and-the-laws-of-logic/
----------------------------------------------------
Tags: #Philosophy #Kalam #Islam #Logic
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Created goodness and the goodness of God: divine ideas and the possibility of creaturely value
By Dan Kemp, Baylor University
Abstract
Traditional theism says that the goodness of everything comes from God. Moreover, the goodness of something intrinsically valuable can only come from what has it. Many conclude from these two claims that no creatures have intrinsic value if traditional theism is true. I argue that the exemplarist theory of the divine ideas gives the theist a way out. According to exemplarism, God creates everything according to ideas that are about himself, and so everything resembles God. Since God is wholly good in every way, and since ethical supervenience is true, it follows that creatures have intrinsic value.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412521000032
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Tags: #Philosophy #Religion #God
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Racialized Religion and Civic Engagement: Insights into Intra-Muslim Racial Diversity on University Campuses
By Saugher Nojan, University of California
Abstract
Sociologists continue to debate the levels of civic participation of multiply marginalized groups. While scholarship traditionally portrayed marginalized groups as disengaged, others have theorized how group identity threat may incite higher engagement levels. Nevertheless, few examine the extent to which marginalized religious groups also have higher levels of civic engagement. This study contributes an empirical account of a racialized-religious community’s civic participation compared to other religious and nonreligious groups while accounting for complex religion (i.e., how religion is embedded with inequality). Drawing on large-scale undergraduate survey data, this article suggests that Muslims’ faith and collective racialized-religious identities enhance their civic participation compared to other religious groups. Findings extend group identity threat and complex religion theories to consider how a racialized-religious identity may produce different engagement patterns within and across religious communities.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sraa043
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Tags: #Religion #Sociology #Islam
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Divine Hiddenness
By Veronika Weidner, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen
Abstract
This Element provides an introduction to the hiddenness argument, as presented by John Schellenberg, and its up-to-date discussion in a comprehensible way. It concludes with a brief assessment of where things stand, from the author's point of view, and why divine hiddenness should not reduce a reflective theist's confidence in theism.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108612647
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Tags: #DivineHidenness #Philosophy #God
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Islam and Science
Past, Present, and Future Debates
By Nidhal Guessoum, American University of Sharjah; Stefano Bigliardi, Al Akhawayn University
This first Element in the series Islam and the Sciences is introductory and aims to give readers a general overview of the wide and rich scope of interactions of Islam with the sciences, including past disputes, current challenges, and future outlooks. The Element introduces the main voices and schools of thought, adopting a historical approach to show the evolution of the debates: Khan's naturalism, al-Jisr's hermeneutics, Abduh's modernist Islam, Nasr's perennialist and sacred science, al-Attas's Islamic science, Sardar and the Ijmalis' ethical science, al-Faruqi's Islamization of knowledge/science, Bucaille's and El-Naggar's 'miraculous scientific content in the Qur'an,' Abdus Salam's universal science, Hoodbhoy's and Edis's secularism, and the harmonization of the 'new generation.' The Element also maps out new and emerging topics that are beginning to reignite the debates, before a concluding section examines how issues of Islam and Science are playing out in the media, in public discourse and in education.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009266550
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Tags: #Islam #Science #ConflictThesis #Quran #Pedagogy
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Should Atheists Wish That There Were No Gratuitous Evils?
By Timothy D. Miller, University of Oxford
Many atheists argue that because gratuitous evil exists, God (probably) doesn’t. But doesn’t this commit atheists to wishing that God did exist, and to the pro-theist view that the world would have been better had God existed? This doesn’t follow. I argue that if all that evil still remains but is just no longer gratuitous, then, from an atheist perspective, that wouldn’t have been better. And while a counterfactual from which that evil is literally absent would have been impersonally better, it wouldn’t have been better for anyone, not even for those who suffered such evils.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.37977/faithphil.2021.38.4.3
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Tags: #Atheism #PoE #Evil #God
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Early Arabic logicians on the contraposition of the particular affirmative
By Asadollah Fallahi, Iranian Institute of Philosophy
The logical rule of contraposition as applied to a particular affirmative proposition (I-contraposition), despite its rejection in the medieval Latin logic, had a different history in the medieval Arabic logic, varying from common acknowledgement to total dismissal (it was accepted by Avicenna and by all of his followers in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and rejected by all of Arabic logicians in the late thirteenth century onwards). This paper is a narrative of the fate of I-contraposition in the early Arabic logic. I will study Avicenna’s, al-Suhrawardī’s, al-Rāzī’s, al-Kashshī’s, and al-Khūnajī’s views on this rule. Although Avicenna explicitly acknowledged I-contraposition in a brief note, and in an apparently Meinongian language, the other four figures found I-contraposition problematic and listed some counterexamples to it. Nonetheless, they all attempted to justify Avicenna’s acceptance of the rule by restricting its application conditions. These efforts led to interesting syntactic and semantic analyses but gathered little attention from later medieval logicians. Finally, in the middle Arabic logic, the revised versions of I-contraposition were also declared invalid.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2023.2168251
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Tags: #Logic #Arabic #Razi #Avicenna
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Tutoring Bahmanyār “from behind a veil”: the Ishārāt in Avicenna’s professional career
By Yahya M. Michot, Hartford International University
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12430
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Tags: #Islam #Avicenna #History
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Could Sufism Have Been a Means of Spreading Ibn Taymiyya's Thought in the Ottoman Empire?
By Naser Dumairieh PhD, McGill University
Current studies on Ibn Taymiyya's influence on the intellectual life of the Ottoman Empire focus on the mid-sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries. In this paper, I argue that Ibn Taymiyya's influence on some aspects of Ottoman intellectual life can be traced, indirectly, to the beginning of the fifteenth century. Through studying the attitudes of some scholars toward Ibn ʿArabī and his ideas, I argue that these attitudes were affected by the outflow of Ibn Taymiyya's ideas. How did these ideas leak into the Ottoman intellectual milieu? Unexpectedly, it seems that Sufism played an important role in spreading some of Ibn Taymiyya's ideas in an indirect way. This paper discusses three possible ways through which Ibn Taymiyya's thought may have circulated in the Ottoman Empire as early as the fifteenth century: a scholar, a book, and a Sufi order.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/muwo.12447
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Tags: #Islam #IbnTaymiyyah #Sufism
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Chinese Islam’s understanding of Zhongxiao 忠孝: Jin Tian-zhu’s 金天柱 Qing Zhen Shi Yi 清眞釋疑
By Lee Oh Ryun, Sungkyunkwan University
The scholar Jin Tian-zhu (1690 ~ 1765) was a Muslim of the Hui 回 ethnic group in the Qing dynasty who adhered to Islamic traditions handed down from generation to generation. In Qing Zhen Shi Yi, Jin Tian-zhu attempts to combine Confucianism and Islam through a simple comparison of their rituals. Jin Tian-zhu expresses his respect for Allah by attesting Allah’s existence and insisting that humans should obey Allah. He admits that in reality, besides Allah, the ruler is also clearly an object of loyalty. In addition, he asserts that it is basic propriety for Muslims to be filial to their parents and that the scope of practice of filial piety must also apply to their ancestors beyond their parents. Jin Tian-zhu further expands his view of zhongxiao 忠孝 by asserting that the ultimate Muslim interest is in renlun 人倫, which he believes must be rectified.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2023.2183567
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Tags: #Islam #Confuscianism #Tradition
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Modern Western Thought and Islamic Reformism: Intellectual Challenges, Prior Discourse, and Future Prospects
By Zia Ul Haq, University of Sharjah
Muslims were introduced to modern Western philosophy during the time of Western colonization, when they were not emotionally or mentally ready to absorb it and were generally skeptical of anything Western. This has caused an intellectual crisis, and some Muslims saw new ideas from the West as a direct threat to Islamic identity. The point here is why Muslim societies have always been skeptical of modern Western philosophy, even though Western societies accepted all new ideas without any trouble, and it does not stop the West from moving forward as a civilization. This study uses a comparative analytical method to look at how modern Western philosophy is received in Islamic societies, what it has caused, and where it might go in the future. It focuses on the issue of faith and reason as a talking point to show how Western and Islamic ways of knowing are different. Finally, the study makes important suggestions about how to deal with the effects of modern Western philosophy on Islamic societies.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14030308
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Tags: #Islam #IslamicReformism #Muslims
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Does Religious Community Participation Matter for Shaking off Poverty?
By Yugang He, Sejong University
Religion, which is more of an informal system than anything else, permeates every aspect of our lives. As a result of this context, this article uses China as a case study to investigate the effect of religious community participation on income (a proxy for shaking off poverty). Using the 2018 Chinese General Social Survey and the ordinary least squares approach to conduct an empirical study, our results indicate that participation in religious communities has a favorable effect on income and is a means by which individuals may escape poverty. Additionally, we conducted the robustness test using the two-stage least squares approach and the findings indicate that the conclusions in this study are trustworthy and effective. In the meantime, the examination of heterogeneity revealed that religious community participation has a larger effect on rural residents’ alleviation of poverty than on urban residents. In conclusion, the results presented in this study may serve as new evidence for the Chinese government to further religious freedom.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14030304
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Tags: #Religion #Sociology #ReligiousFreedom
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Economic Rationale of the Prohibition of Interest: A New Aspect
By MUHAMMAD MAZHAR IQBAL, CUST University; ANWAR SHAH, Quaid-i-Azam University
Abstract
Conventional economist, in particular neo-classical, assumes that self-interest is the guiding principle of economic behaviour and there exist no fallacies of composition. That is, whatever is in the interest of an individual is also in the interest of a society. Keynesian school of thought, on the other hand, though admits fallacies of composition such as “paradox of thrift” and “liquidity trap,” but they believe that such anomalies can be resolved by appropriate government intervention. History has, however, shown that government intervention, on average, worsens the issues of an economy instead of resolving it. One such issue which could not be resolved through government intervention is of “interest.” In this paper we investigate that why interest requires divine intervention for its prohibition. After explaining the economic rationale of prohibition of interest from Islamic perspective, we show through numerical illustration that how interest-based investment project, on one side, allows individual lenders to shift risk to borrowers and on the other side, generates a negative externality in the shape of financial and bankruptcy risk, which is an addition to the investment risk for the stakeholders of interest based investment. This might be one of the reasons that all divine religion including Islam give more weight to the societal or other stakeholders’ interests than the interest of lenders only and prohibit interest based lending completely. We conclude that Islam not only admits the existence of fallacies of composition, as do Keynesian school of thought, but also takes steps to resolve such fallacies through divine rules.
Link: http://irigs.iiu.edu.pk:64447/ojs/index.php/islamicstudies/article/view/731
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Tags: #Islam #Econimics #Riba #Interest
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Differences and similarities between the later-Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion and the Islamic mystical tradition
By Vahid Taebnia, Sharif University of Technology
Abstract
Despite all fundamental divergences, the similarities formed between some interpretations of the later-Wittgenstein’s philosophy of religion and the tradition of Islamic Mysticism (Sufism), can yet be philosophically recognized. These basic analogies are as follows: 1) The inextricability of belief and practice and the priority of practice over knowledge 2) The characterization of the core religious beliefs as the primal ground of man’s perception and understanding, in contrast to the view that considers fundamental religious beliefs as theoretical conclusions derived from purely rational courses of reflection 3) A new practice-laden narrative of religious realism. Given that, one can even shed a new Wittgensteinian light on even the most abstract and metaphysical elements of the mystical worldview. If fundamental religious beliefs are interpreted not as metaphysical doctrines but as a set of descriptions arising from a specific form of practical life, then the ability to see a sort of transcendent and sacred unity in the whole universe will be based on a way of purposive engagement and wayfaring in the natural and social world.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2021.1917157
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Tags: #Sufism #Religion #Philosophy
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Cognitive Creationism Compared to Young-Earth Creationism
By Shuichi Tezuka
Abstract
“Cognitive creationism” is a term for ideologically based rejection of concepts from differential psychology or behavioral genetics. Various authors have compared this practice to young-Earth creationism, but the parallels between the two have not previously been subjected to an in-depth comparison, which is conducted for the first time in this paper. Both views are based on a similar set of psychological needs, and both have developed epistemologically similar worldviews, which draw certain conclusions ahead of time and then interpret all evidence in light of these assumptions. This reversal of the scientific method leads both young-Earth creationists and cognitive creationists to reject large swaths of otherwise well-established research due to its potential to support conclusions they have chosen a priori to reject. Both views also tend to rely on nonparsimonious ad hoc explanations, which are usually not able to reliably predict any future results. The risks posed by cognitive creationism will be discussed, along with potential implications for science education.
Link: http://10.0.140.155/jci01010003
Alternative link: https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/1/1/131/htm
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Tags: #Evolution #Religion #Science
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Christianity and Violence
By Lloyd Steffen, Lehigh University
Abstract
How Christian people have framed the meaning of violence within their faith tradition has been a complex process subject to all manner of historical, cultural, political, ethnic and theological contingencies. As a tradition encompassing widely divergent beliefs and perspectives, Christianity has, over two millennia, adapted to changing cultural and historical circumstances. To grasp the complexity of this tradition and its involvement with violence requires attention to specific elements explored in this Element: the scriptural and institutional sources for violence; the faith commitments and practices that join communities and sanction both resistance to and authorization for violence; and select historical developments that altered the power wielded by Christianity in society, culture and politics. Relevant issues in social psychology and the moral action guides addressing violence affirmed in Christian communities provide a deeper explanation for the motivations that have led to the diverse interpretations of violence avowed in the Christian tradition.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108859271
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Tags: #Christianity #Religion #Violence
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Islam from the Inside Out: ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī’s Reconception of Islam as Vector
By Nicholas Boylston, Harvard University
Abstract
Against the backdrop of recent work on how ‘Islam’ should be understood as a scholarly category, this article focuses in on one particularly striking insider definition of Islam: ‘Islam is whatever takes a man to God, and infidelity (kufr) is whatever prevents a man from the Way of God’. Articulated by the sixth/twelfth century Sufi ʿAyn al-Quḍāt Hamadānī, who was executed on charges of heresy in 526/1131, this definition works as a key component in its author’s critical and constructive projects. Whilst forming part of a vociferous critique of interpretations of Islam as presented by the scholars of jurisprudence and theology, the definition also plays a central role in ʿAyn al-Quḍāt’s reconceptualization of Islam as the dynamic and ever-changing Way to God, rather than a set of fixed doctrines and practices. In this article, I interpret this definition in light of ʿAyn al-Quḍāt’s complex, multifaceted and highly original theory of religious difference, which I suggest provides a theoretical framework in which it becomes evident that ʿAyn al-Quḍāt meant his definition to be taken literally.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etab015
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Tags: #Religion #Theology #Islam
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Trinity, Number and Image. The Christian Origins of the Concept of Person
By Graziano Lingua, University of Turin
Abstract
The studies on the history of the notion of “personhood” have largely recognized that Christian thought had a central role in the development and significance of this concept throughout the history of Western civilization. In late antiquity, Christianity used some terms taken from the classic and Hellenistic vocabulary in order to express its own theological content. This operation generated a “crisis” of classical language, namely a semantic transformation in the attempt to address some aspects of reality which were not envisioned by the previous usage of these words. The term person is a paradigmatic example of this process. In fact, from the outset, it played a strategic role in formulating the idea of Incarnation, one of the central doctrines of Christianity. This essay aims to show how, during the first centuries of Christianity, the terms commonly used in order to express the notion of “personhood” (prosōpon, hypostasis and persona) became pivotal elements for the formulation of the discourse about the Trinity and progressively acquired new meanings. The analysis focuses only on the initial stage of the elaboration of this concept in Christianity and, based on some of the most significant texts, tries to bring out a series of theoretical problems that may be useful to understand the subsequent debate. In order to do so, the author divides the text in two parts. In the first one, he analyses two features strictly connected to the theological use of the term “persona”, which remained central also when this term was later referred to man. These features are individuality and ontological stability, along with the structurally relational status of personhood. In the second part, the author offers more details about the theology of the Cappadocian Fathers, in particular of Basil of Caesarea, and analyses two sectorial languages—mathematical and iconic language—used by Basil in order to describe the intra-trinitarian relationships.
Link: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11196-021-09835-9
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Tags: #Christianity #Trinity #God
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Reconciling the God of Traditional Theism with the World’s Evils
By Robin Attfield, Cardiff University
Abstract
Replying to James Sterba’s argument for the incompatibility of the world’s evils with the existence of the God of traditional theism, I argue for their compatibility, using the proposition that God has reasons for permitting these evils. Developing this case involves appeal to an enlarged version of both the Free Will Defence and Hick’s Vale of Soul-Making Defence, in the context of God’s decision to generate the kind of natural regularities conducive to the evolution of a range of creatures, including free and rational ones. Sterba writes as if God would be required to authorise frequent infringements of these regularities. Sterba’s arguments from ethics and from the inadequacy of post-mortem compensation are problematised. Predicates used of God must bear a sense appropriate to the level of creator, and not of a very powerful cosmic observer. The ethics that applies within creation should not be confused with the ethics of creating.
Link: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12010064
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Tags: #ProblemOfEvil #Philosophy #Theodicy #God
