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Ḥamza's Consideration of Ibn Masʿūd's Divergent Readings
By Redwan B. Refat Albakri, University of Madinah
This study deals with the issue of Imām Ḥamza al-Zayyāt al-Kūfī – one of the seven reciters – and his acceptance of the reading of Ibn Masʿūd when it diverges from the muṣḥaf of ʿUthmān, so as to shed light on the early history of Qur’anic qirāʾāt. The article explores the ways in which Ḥamza was impacted by Ibn Masʿūd’s recitation, and the extent to which he followed it or implemented his own innovations, based on an applied study of the readings of Ibn Masʿūd that diverge from the ʿUthmanic codex as recorded in Ibn Abī Dāwūd’s al-Maṣāḥif and transmitted from al-Aʿmash. By comparing Ibn Masʿūd’s readings with the ten accepted qirāʾāt it seeks to analyse how close these recitations are to Ibn Masʿūd’s readings and to what extent they have been affected by them. This comparative analysis indicates that there is a strong relationship between the reading of Ḥamza and the recitations of Ibn Masʿūd, to an extent unseen in any of the other ten reciters. It reveals that, although Ḥamza does not follow all of Ibn Masʿūd’s readings, Ibn Masʿūd’s reading is clearly foundational to his recitation. The study concludes that Ḥamza’s use of Ibn Masʿūd’s readings indicates that he did not invent his own readings by opinion or ijtihād, while the fact he did not accept of all of Ibn Masʿūd’s readings testifies to the fact that he adhered only to what has been transmitted, and did not go beyond this to accept those of Ibn Masʿūd’s readings that were not.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0535
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Tags: #Ijaz #Quran #Hermeneutics #History
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‘A Precious Treatise’: How Modern Arab Editors Helped Create Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr
By Younus Y. Mirza, Georgetown University
Ibn Taymiyya’s Muqaddima fī uṣūl al-tafsīr (‘Introduction to the Principles of Qur’anic Hermeneutics’) is frequently used as a guide to the classical tafsīr tradition, and its hermeneutic is viewed as the normative way to understand the Qur’an. It is even presented as one of the ‘classics’ of the medieval Islamic tradition and one of Islam’s ‘great books’. This small treatise has inspired other works on the Qur’an, especially those which are more tradition based, such as those that seek to interpret the Qur’an through the Qur’an and the Prophetic tradition. However, this article demonstrates that the treatise was not historically one of Ibn Taymiyya’s major works, did not have a stable name, and was not copied or disseminated profusely. The various parts of the treatise operated independently of one another, with medieval scholars referencing different parts of it. It was only in the modern period when Arab editors ‘rediscovered’ the work and went through the process of editing, naming, commenting on, and publishing the treatise that it became such an essential factor in our contemporary understanding of the Qur’an. By tracing the endeavours of these editors, we better appreciate the nature of the treatise and how it has influenced modern Qur’anic interpretation.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0530
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Tags: #IbnTaymiyya #Quran #Hermeneutics #Exegesis
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What analytic metaphysics can do for scientific metaphysics
By Chanwoo Lee, University of California
The apparent chasm between two camps in metaphysics, analytic metaphysics and scientific metaphysics, is well recognized. I argue that the relationship between them is not necessarily a rivalry; a division of labour that resembles the relationship between pure mathematics and science is possible. As a case study, I look into the metaphysical underdetermination argument for ontic structural realism, a well-known position in scientific metaphysics, together with an argument for the position in analytic metaphysics known as ontological nihilism. I argue that we can ascribe the same schema to both arguments, which indicates that analytic metaphysics can offer an abstract model that scientific metaphysics may find useful.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/rati.12379
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Tags: #AnalyticalPhilosophy #Metaphysics #Science
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Rereading the Hudaybiyya Treaty: With Special Reference to Ibn ʿUmar’s Role in Fitan
By Mursal Farman and Salih Yucel, Australian Catholic University
The Treaty of Ḥudaybiyya is a brilliant chapter in Islamic history. It can be called umm muʿāhadāt al-salām (the mother of peace treaties) in Islamic history. Just as migration to Medina is a dividing line between the periods of religious oppression and political independence for Muslims, Ḥudaybiyya is a boundary between the phases of struggle and domination. The role of this treaty in the spread of Islam was evident from the beginning, and much has been written about it. However, nothing has been produced about the role of ʿAbd Allah b. ʿUmar, inspired by the Ḥudaybiyya treaty, in peacemaking. This paper argues that due to his circumstances, Ibn ʿUmar became the first person to discover the spirit of the Ḥudaybiyya treaty for procuring peace during the fitan (civil wars). His efforts were not limited to intellectual achievements, but amid the worst wars of the fitan, he tried to practically implement the soul of the Ḥudaybiyya agreement that impacted later generations. He believed that Islam could flourish in a peaceful society, as had happened after the Ḥudaybiyya treaty. The role he played in a tribal society without holding any official position makes Ibn ʿUmar’s leadership highly relevant to today’s world, where intellectual and spiritual leaders can play a role more pivotal than ever.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050666
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Tags: #Islam #History #Seerah
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‘We’re Islam in Their Eyes’: Using an Interpellation Framework to Understand Why Being a Woman Matters When Countering Islamophobia
By Susan Carland, Monash University
Australian Muslim women are far more likely to be the target of Islamophobic attacks than men, and common narratives often paint Muslim women merely as victims of Islamophobia. This article takes a new approach and considers how Muslim women may counter Islamophobia and the various audiences they must contend with in their work. Using de Koning’s interpellation framework, this research investigates why Australian Muslim women believe gender matters in public countering Islamophobia work and proposes new developments to the framework based on the way Australian Muslim women must mediate the ascriptions of both non-Muslims and Muslim men. This research draws on in-depth interviews with Sunni, Shi’i, and Ahmadiyya women from around Australia who are active in public countering Islamophobia education initiatives.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050654
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Tags: #Islamophobia #Islam #Sociology #Pedagogy #Gender
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Christianity and the Problem of Free Will
By Leigh Vicens, Augustana University
Central to the teachings of Christianity is a puzzle: on the one hand, sin seems something that humans do not do freely and so cannot be not responsible for, since it is unavoidable; on the other hand, sin seems something that we must be responsible for and so do freely, since we are enjoined to repent of it, and since it makes us liable to divine condemnation and forgiveness. After laying out the puzzle in more depth, this Element considers three possible responses—libertarian, soft determinist, and free-will skeptic—and weighs the costs and benefits of each.
Read More:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009270427
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Tags: #FreeWill #Christianity #Determinism
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A Sufi Conception of Order: Ibn ʿArabī’s Discourse on Governance
By Doha Tazi Hemida, Columbia University
This article outlines, through a reading of Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī’s Tadbīrāt al-ilāhiyya fī iṣlāḥ al-mamlaka al-insāniyya (Divine governance in the improvement of the kingdom of the self), a Sufi conception of order that encompasses a discourse on political governance and cuts across the realms of the cosmos, the self, and the polity. It explores the isomorphic relation and mutual ‘folding’ linking the governance of the worldly realm with that of the soul. In contrast to Montesquieu’s scheme of the ‘countervailing passions’, governance at both levels is built on the Sufi notion of ‘struggle against the self (jihād al-nafs)’ and on a theory of the human being as a microcosm. Within Ibn ʿArabī’s system, the political order is not an autonomous domain with its own rationality as developed by early modern European theorists of reason of state. A single rationality guides the governance of the microcosm and the macrocosm.
Read More:
https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etad016
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Tags: #IbnArabi #Metaphysics #Islam
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Life after life: Mullā Ṣadrā on death and immortality
By Muhammad U. Faruque, University of Cincinnati
The purpose of this article is twofold: first, I will reconstruct Mullā Ṣadrā's complex arguments for the soul's immortality based on its immaterial nature. Second and finally, I will briefly probe and assess various epistemological and metaphysical objections against Ṣadrā's immaterialist conception of the soul. Ṣadrā contends that our bodily death marks an awakening to the reality of our consciousness on the plane of the imaginal realm (the imaginal world is an isthmus between the sensible world and the world of intelligible forms). For Ṣadrā, ‘death’ does not mark an end or discontinuity in human consciousness, rather it signifies an awakening to a new mode of existence in which the soul, having once been the active principle controlling the actions of the physical body, now manifests itself as the passive recipient of the form given to it by its imaginal reality – a reality shaped by the actions it had performed in its earthly, embodied state. Thus, death is seen as the passage of the soul from the sensible to the imaginal world, until the soul unites with the intelligible world (ʿālam al-ʿaql).
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412523000422
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Tags: #MullaSadra #Metaphysics #Theology #AfterLife
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ChatGPT’s Significance for Theology
By Mark Graves, Fuller Theological Seminary
ChatGPT has captured the attention of AI researchers, educators, and journalists for its ability to produce consistently coherent text on a wide range of topics. Researchers have observed notable improvements in ChatGPT's responses to query prompts compared to previous natural language processing (NLP) systems. However, educators have expressed concern about the potential for high school and undergraduate students to use the tool for writing assignments, and journalists have noted the potential impact on jobs such as copywriting that overlap with their skills. Despite the occasional factual errors and its dependence upon human labor behind the scenes to avoid controversial responses, ChatGPT's writing is comparable to that of an average college student and is free of grammatical errors. Among researchers, practitioners, and close observers of AI technology, it appears that a significant performance threshold has been ...
Read More:
https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2188366
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Tags: #Religion #AI #Theology
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“We’re Looking for Support from Allah”: A Qualitative Study on the Experiences of Trauma and Religious Coping among Afghan Refugees in Canada Following the August 2021 Withdrawal
By Ravi Gokani, Lakehead University; Stephanie Wiebe, Saint Paul University; Bree Akesson, Wilfrid Laurier University; Hakmatullah Sherzad,
Thunder Bay Masjid
In August 2021, the United States withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years. The fall of the Afghan government to the Taliban resulted in the displacement of some Afghans. Canada committed to welcoming thousands of refugees. Research suggests that refugees tend to have higher rates of post-traumatic stress, and Afghan refugees, in particular, have among the highest rates. Another body of literature suggests that religious coping has positive effects. This paper presents qualitative data from interviews with 11 Afghan refugees who arrived in Ontario after August 2021 with the intent to combine these two findings. In so doing, we sought to understand how Afghan refugees described their experiences of displacement and the extent to which those experiences were traumatic, but also how they relied on Islam to cope with the traumatic effects of displacement. The interviews we conducted suggested that our participants experienced exposure to death, exposure to threat of death and/or injury, and described some of symptoms of the criteria for PTSD. The interviews also suggested that the participants coped using Islamic concepts, beliefs, and rituals. The qualitative data we present provide rich descriptions of the experiences of trauma in the face of displacement and religious coping.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050645
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Tags: #Religion #Spirituality #Psychology #Islam
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The Ethics of Integrating Faith and Science
By Kenneth Keathley, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Both faith and science can be defined in three ways: (1) a methodology; (2) a body of knowledge; and (3) an institution. In other words, each can be understood in terms of what it is, what it does, and who does it. The third way of understanding science—as an institution—seems to be often overlooked. Thus, the ethical underpinnings and implications are also underappreciated. In the 21st century, any model of the interaction between science and faith must include an ethical component. This essay briefly surveys significant areas of disagreement in which the conflicts are demonstrated to be essentially ethical in nature.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050644
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Tags: #Religion #Science #PoS #Ethics
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The silent speaker: A Nietzschean reading of Rūmī’s aesthetics of lyric poetry
By Hamidreza Mahboobi Arani, Tarbiat Modares University
Lyric poetry, often regarded as the epitome of subjectivity in the realm of artistic expression, emerges from the depths of the poet’s personal emotions. Hence, in the aesthetic landscape of the nineteenth-century Germany, it was excluded from the inventory of genuine art forms, all of which were deemed to be objective and disinterested. Associating lyric poetry with music in its origin and essence, Nietzsche extends his Schopenhauerian metaphysics of music to the lyric, making it a highly objective art reverberating from the abyss of existence, the Ur-Eine, expressing its intrinsic self-contradictory and agonizing nature. A similar understanding of the creative process of poetic composition in the lyric, which this article aims to elucidate, can also be found in some of Rūmī’s ghazals and observations. These include a metaphysics of the unseen, a reunion through ecstasy and rapture, and a reflection and mirroring, initially through music and then through the lyric.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2023.2210008
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Tags: #Art #Rumi #Nietzsche
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Appealing to the minds of gods: religious beliefs and appeals correspond to features of local social ecologies
By Theiss Bendixen, Aarhus University et al.
How do beliefs about gods vary across populations, and what accounts for this variation? We argue that appeals to gods generally reflect prominent features of local social ecologies. We first draw from a synthesis of theoretical, experimental, and ethnographic evidence to delineate a set of predictive criteria for the kinds of contexts with which religious beliefs and behaviors will be associated. To evaluate these criteria, we examine the content of freely-listed data about gods’ concerns collected from individuals across eight diverse field sites and contextualize these beliefs in their respective cultural milieus. In our analysis, we find that local deities’ concerns point to costly threats to local coordination and cooperation. We conclude with a discussion of how alternative approaches to religious beliefs and appeals fare in light of our results and close by considering some key implications for the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2023.2178487
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Tags: #Religion #Anthropology #CognitiveScience #Sociology
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Branching actualism and cosmological arguments
By Joseph C. Schmid, Purdue University; Alex Malpass, University of Bristol
We draw out significant consequences of a relatively popular theory of metaphysical modality—branching actualism—for cosmological arguments for God’s existence. According to branching actualism, every possible world shares an initial history with the actual world and diverges only because causal powers (or dispositions, or some such) are differentially exercised. We argue that branching actualism undergirds successful responses to two recent cosmological arguments: the Grim Reaper Kalam argument and a modal argument from contingency. We also argue that branching actualism affords a response to one popular defense of the classic contingency argument. What results are new difficulties for several cosmological arguments arising from the metaphysics of modality.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-023-01958-y
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Tags: #Kalam #CosmologicalArguments #God #Modality #KCA
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THE AIMS OF TYPOLOGIES AND A TYPOLOGY OF METHODS
By Adam J. Chin, University of California
Typologies like Ian Barbour's have been widely used—and critiqued—in religion-and-science. Several alternatives have been proposed by, for example, John Haught, Willem Drees, Mikael Stenmark, and Shoaib Ahmed Malik. However, there has been a surprising deficit in discussion of what we wish typologies to do in religion and science in the first place. In this article, I provide a general analysis of typologies in religion-and-science by (1) providing a classification of existing typologies as conclusion- or concept-oriented; (2) showing that typologies are used, or expected to be used, as first-order categorizations of how religion and science are related and as second-order classifications of scholars/scholarly works; (3) discussing several aims which we might want typologies to achieve in their second-order usage; and (4) presenting a new kind of typology focused on the methods used by scholars which achieves those aims in a unique way.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12890
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Tags: #Science #God #Religion #Evolution
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‘Qur’anic Metaphors: Between the Historicity of Poetic Imagination and the Continuity of Context
By Saad Mohammed Abdel-Ghaffar Yousef, New Valley University
Due to their contextual breadth and hermeneutic continuities, Qur’anic metaphors are held to be manifestations of Qur’anic iʿjāz that outshine the metaphors and imagery found in pre-Islamic poetry: they transcend temporal and spatial limits and are accessible to all languages and cultures.
The historicity of metaphors and rhetorical images that characterise the Arabic poetic heritage is contextualised by their location within the temporal and spatial regions in which they were produced, the conceptual connections to which have been lost due to changing cultural beliefs, ideas, and contexts. In contrast, Qur’anic rhetoric has enduring continuity due to its observance of similarities in the construction of its metaphors, as well as the fact these are revealed within a religious, legislative text, whose contexts enjoy a rich continuity that encompasses meaning and connotations that accommodate the knowledge paradigms of different cultures.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3366/jqs.2023.0536
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Tags: #Ijaz #Quran #Hermeneutics
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Being Commanded by God: Katharsis for Righteousness
By Paul Moser, Loyola University Chicago
Many people in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic monotheistic traditions testify to their experience of being commanded by God to do something or to be a certain way. Is this kind of testimony from experience credible in some cases, and, if so, on what ground? The main thesis of this article is that it is credible in some cases and a suitable ground is available in the morally purifying experience of human conscience. The article looks to the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and the Qur’an for relevant testimony to the importance of righteous divine commanding experienced by humans. The relevant commands are not abstract or merely theoretical but grounded in human moral experience and potentially motivating for righteous action. The article doubts that God would be God if there were no divine commanding given directly to receptive people in their moral experience. It contends that God would not be a morally righteous guide of the divine kind needed for worthiness of worship by humans in the absence of God’s commanding people directly in their experience.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.22091/JPTR.2023.9247.2870
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Tags: #God #Quran #Bible #Katharsis #Judaism
#Christianity #Morality
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The Long Ninth Century: Christian Reactions to Islamization and Islamication in Palestine and Al-Andalus
By Michael Ehrlich, Bar-Ilan University
Christian communities in Palestine and Al-Andalus faced similar challenges during the ninth century. Although Muslim authorities tolerated Christianity and enshrined a certain degree of religious freedom, they downgraded these communities and encouraged conversion to Islam. In the long span, Christian communities decreased because many of their leading members emigrated or converted. Moreover, many of those that remained adopted the Arabic language, dressed like Muslims, and became increasingly assimilated into the ruling elite Muslim culture. This article suggests that the contacts and reciprocal influence between Christian communities from Palestine and Spain during this period were more substantial than hitherto perceived. Thus, they used the same methods with some local adaptations to tackle their critical situation. They introduced a growing use of Arabic in religious life, established and upgraded important pilgrimage shrines, and some extremist monastic communities fostered and encouraged martyrdom.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050667
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Tags: #Islam #History #Culture
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Normative Reasons, Epistemic Autonomy, and Accountability to God
By Brandon Rickabaugh, Palm Beach Atlantic University
According to many, human autonomy is necessary for moral action and yet incompatible with being morally accountable to God’s divine commands. By issuing commands that ground normative facts, God demands our accountability without understanding our normative reasons for moral action, which crushes human autonomy. Call this the Autonomy Objection to Theism (AOT). There is an unexplored connection between models of normative reason and AOT. I argue that any plausible AOT must be stated in terms of an adequate model of normative reason. There are two broad metaethical categories for models of normative reason: anti-realist or realist views. I defend the thesis that both anti-realism and realism about normative reasons fail to support AOT by means of a dilemma. If the AOT defender adopts anti-realism about normative reasons (subjectivism and constructivism), AOT loses its force. However, if the AOT defender adopts moral realism, they face the same problem as the theist, as normative fact constrains autonomy. Consequently, AOT is a problem for all moral realists, including non-theists, such as Russ Shafer-Landau, David Enoch, and Erik Wielenberg, among others.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050662
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Tags: #God #Theism #DCT #Ethics #Subjectivism
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God and the Problem of Logic
By Andrew Dennis Bassford, University of Texas
Classical theists hold that God is omnipotent. But now suppose a critical atheologian were to ask: Can God create a stone so heavy that even he cannot lift it? This is the dilemma of the stone paradox. God either can or cannot create such a stone. Suppose that God can create it. Then there's something he cannot do – namely, lift the stone. Suppose that God cannot create the stone. Then, again, there's something he cannot do – namely, create it. Either way, God cannot be omnipotent. Among the variety of known theological paradoxes, the paradox of the stone is especially troubling because of its logical purity. It purports to show that one cannot believe in both God and the laws of logic. In the face of the stone paradox, how should the contemporary analytic theist respond? Ought they to revise their belief in theology or their belief in logic? Ought they to lose their religion or lose their mind?
Read More:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009272391
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Tags: #Logic #God #Metaphysics
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The blessed tree in the Works of Ibn Barrajān of Seville (d. 536/1141)
By Sam Jaffe and Yousef Casewit, University of Chicago
In his commentary on the Light Verse (Q. 24:35), the Andalusian mystic and Qurʾān exegete Abū al-Ḥakam Ibn Barrajān (d. 1141) presents the blessed tree (al-shajara al-mubāraka) not simply as a terrestrial olive tree in Syria or even as a mystical allegory, but as the ultimate locus of divine disclosure and the highest metaphysical entity in the cosmos that subsumes the world of creation. This article assesses the originality of Ibn Barrajān’s contribution to the heavenly tree motif by examining his unique mystical and exegetical theories informing his ontological reading of the blessed tree, including the concept of the ‘reality upon which creation is created’ and the ‘universal servant’. In addition to analysing the internal logic of Ibn Barrajān’s discourse, this article explores the larger interpretive themes recurrent across exoteric, Sufi, and philosophical interpretations of the Light Verse up to the twelfth century that the author may have had access to in al-Andalus, including the treatises of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-ṣafā) and Biblical sources. Finally, this article highlights how Ibn Barrajān weaves the Qurʾānic good tree (al-shajara al-ṭayyiba) and the lote tree of the furthest boundary (sidrat al-muntahā) into his overarching understanding of the blessed tree. It also considers how his reading may have contributed to later readings by Ibn ʿArabī (d. 1240) and some of his intellectual heirs.
Read More:
https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etad015
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Tags: #IbnArabi #Metaphysics #Islam #Quran
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Muḥammad as the Qur’an in Ibn ‘Arabī’s Metaphysics
By Ismail Lala, Gulf University for Science and Technology
Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ‘Arabī (d. 638/1240) is regarded as one of the foremost mystical thinkers in Islam. This paper explores the ways in which he and his followers distinguish between the reality of Muḥammad (al-ḥaqīqa al-Muḥammadiyya) or the light of Muḥammad (al-nūr al-Muḥammadī), as the metaphysical reality of Muḥammad, and his metahistorical manifestation as Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abd Allāh. In his metaphysical reality, Muḥammad is the manifestation of the qur’ān, which ‘brings together’ the divine and His creation. Muḥammad’s metaphysical reality, as the primary recipient of the divine outpouring, enables further differentiations of the divine to emerge in the form of the universe, and establishes his connection to the divine. Yet the Qur’an is also temporal in terms of being an historical act of revelation. Likewise, Muḥammad Ibn ‘Abd Allāh, in terms of his physical reality, was temporally circumscribed. It is in these ways, argues Ibn ‘Arabī and his acolytes, that Muḥammad, as reality and personality, brings together the divine and the temporal, in the same manner as the qur’ān/Qur’an respectively.
Read More:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-022-00941-0
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Tags: #IbnArabi #Quran #Metaphysics #Islam #Mysticism #Sufism
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AI Is Calling from Rome, Once Again
By Muzaffar Iqbal, Center for Islamic Sciences
On the morning of January 10, 2023, Pope Francis was pleased to receive representatives of the three Abrahamic faiths at the Vatican. They had come to add their names to the “Rome Call for AI Ethics” which had first been signed on February 28, 2020 by the Pontifical Academy for Life, Microsoft, IBM, FAO, and the Italian Ministry of Innovation. As it happened, a massive failure of intelligence had prevented the original signatories to foresee that a tiny virus, identified in Wuhan, China in December 2019, would forestall their efforts by its worldwide spread and the shattering of the intelligence of all our intelligently designed systems.
Yet, on that fine morning of January 2023, there were no traces of that deadly virus which had prevented...
Read More:
https://doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2023.2188367
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Tags: #Religion #AI #Theology #Nursi
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Divine Contradiction
By JC Beall, University of Notre Dame
Christian theology is supposed to be monotheistic: the number of gods is 1. A longstanding problem comes with the trinity: each of Father, Son and Spirit is God, but Father isn’t Son, and Son isn’t Spirit, and Spirit isn’t Father. The doctrine confronts two longstanding problems: a ‘logical’ problem (viz., apparent contradiction) and a ‘counting convention’ problem. In his paradigm-shifting Divine Contradiction Jc Beall charts a strikingly new account of divine reality. Unlike the many philosophers and theologians before him, Beall provides a simple but logically rigorous solution to target problems, arguing that the apparent contradictions of the trinity cannot be rejected without thereby rejecting fundamental truths of divine reality. With the clarity and precision that only a logician could provide, Beall provides theology and the christian church in general with a very simple and viable model of divine reality. Unlike the vast number of theologians and philosophers before him, Beall rejects the quest for a logically consistent account of divine reality. The triune god (viz., God) is truly and fully described only via contradiction. As such, attempts to remove the contradiction are attempts to remove truths of God.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192845436.001.0001
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Tags: #Religion #Christianity #AnalyticalTheology #Trinity
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Exploring religious/spiritual pathways between practical wisdom and depression: Testing the importance of the divine relationship in later life
By Laura Upenieks, Baylor University; Neal M. Krause, University of Michigan
The last several decades have witnessed the topic of wisdom gaining momentum in the field of positive psychology. In this study, we focus on the potentially important role of religion/spirituality, specifically beliefs about God, as a mediating mechanism underlying the relationship between practical wisdom and depression among older adults. Drawing on a nationally representative sample of older adults from the 2013 wave of the Religion, Aging, and Health Survey (n = 1,497), our results show that practical wisdom is associated with lower depressive symptoms. We also document that three God-related constructs, God-mediated control, trust in God, and gratitude towards God each partially explained the relationship between wisdom and well-being. Taken together, Christian conceptions of God as a personal, divine being, the ultimate attachment figure who is an unconditional source of love and support for believers, may be a target of older adults who have cultivated practical wisdom.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1080/15528030.2023.2206676
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Tags: #Religion #Science #Psychology #Sociology #God
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Religious conversion, philosophy, and social science
By Oliver Thomas Spinney, University of London
I argue that empirical studies into the phenomenon of religious conversion suffer from conceptual unclarity owing to an absence of philosophical contributions. I examine the relationship between definition and empirical result in the social sciences, and I show that a wide divergence in conceptual approach threatens to undermine the possibility of useful comparative study. I stake out a distinctive role for philosophical treatments of studies into religious conversion. I conclude with the suggestion that use of the terms ‘convert’ and ‘conversion’ may not in fact be conducive to clarity in the present context, and that subsequent studies may improve their precision through replacing them.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11153-023-09873-2
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Tags: #Religion #Sociology #Humanities
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BLESSING: Exploring the Religious, Anthropological and Ethical Meaning
By Roger Burggraeve, KU Leuven
The point of departure for this essay, which reflects on the religious, anthropological and ethical meaning of the act of blessing, is the multifaceted tradition of all kinds of blessings in the Catholic faith community, both in a sacramental and non-sacramental context. To properly understand the act of blessing, it is necessary to outline the existential and religious background of the blessing as an experience and condition. Starting from the general biblical background of blessing as an earthly reality, attention is paid to the transition from the implicit to the explicit religious meaning of blessing as a gift. Subsequently, the act of blessing in its bi-dimensional modality, namely as word and gesture, receives the necessary attention. This is accomplished by a shift from a theological to a philosophical understanding; this is anthropological and existential understanding of blessing. First, the specificity of the blessing as a language event is examined. Then, the bodily and possibly material form of the act of blessing is explored phenomenologically. Thus, it will appear that what is specifically Christian also has universal significance, is literally “catholic”, that is, “kat’ holon”, meaningful “for everyone”. Last but not least, consideration is given to the “power” of the act of blessing, both its “founding” power and the risk of magical derailment.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14050599
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Tags: #Religion #Anthropology #Christianity #Ethics
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Quranic Arabic: From its Hijazi Origins to its Classical Reading Traditions By MARIJN VAN PUTTEN
By Tareq Moqbel, University of Oxford
Marijn van Putten’s Quranic Arabic is an illuminating and highly original addition to important scholarly articles on the study of Qurʾānic linguistics and the Qurʾānic consonantal text (hereafter, QCT). In seeking to answer the question (p. 1), ‘What is the language of the Quran?’, the author refers to the QCT as found in various early manuscripts. This central feature of his approach, intended to enable the Qurʾān ‘to tell its own linguistic history’ (p. 8), sets it apart from previous scholarship on the language of the Qurʾān. Self-evidently, the issues taken up in the book are such that many of the arguments depend on hypotheses and venture into speculation. Van Putten is properly alert to this and, to his credit, frequently reminds readers of alternative possibilities.
After the Introduction, ch. 2 explores the nature of the ʿarabiyya. Van Putten rejects the idea—widespread in Western scholarship—that the Arabic of the Qurʾān is identifiable with what became the standard Classical Arabic. He argues instead that the ʿarabiyya, as described by the grammarians, does not form a single, homogeneous linguistic entity. He attempts to prove this (convincingly, in my opinion) by presenting cases where the grammarians—mainly Sībawayh (d. 180/796) and al-Farrāʾ (d. 207/822), but also al-Mubarrad (d. 285/898) and al-Akhfash (d. 215/830)—describe linguistic features that go beyond what is known in the textbooks of Classical Arabic.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etad017
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Tags: #Quran #History #Linguistics #Arabic #Review
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HUMAN UNIQUENESS FROM A BIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW
By David Reich, Harvard University
This article seeks to provide some genetic perspectives on the question “Just How Special Are Humans—Really?” It begins with an introduction to how genetic variation can provide information about the past. It continues by discussing two ways in which genetic analyses has, on multiple occasions, shown that humans are less unique than we thought we are. We have a cognitive bias to toward thinking we are special. Our species has colonized an ecological niche not exploited by any other species on our earth, but how much of our adaptation to that niche is cultural rather than genetic?
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12897
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Tags: #Science #Religion #Metaphysics
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Mental Disorder, Meaning-making, and Religious Engagement
By Kate Finley, Hope College
Meaning-making plays a central role in how we deal with experiences of suffering, including those due to mental disorder. And for many, religious beliefs, experiences, and practices (hereafter, religious engagement) play a central role in informing this meaning-making. However, a crucial facet of the relationship between experiences of mental disorder and religious engagement remains underexplored—namely the potentially positive effectsof mental disorder on religious engagement (e.g. experiences of bipolar disorder increasing sense of God’s presence). In what follows, I will present empirical findings from two recent studies of mine which shed light on the extent to which participants experienced these positive effects, specific components of these effects, and how they fit into their understanding of their mental disorder and its relationship to their religious identity. In doing so, I will draw on and expand Tasia Scrutton’s Potentially Transformative view (2015a, 2015b, 2020)according to which mental disorders may provide opportunities for spiritual growth. My empirical results align with and help deepen an account according to which mental disorders are potentially spiritually transformative by providing further insight intosuch instances: specifically,which symptoms and internal and external factors are often involved, as well as which religious beliefs, experiences, and/or practices are often affected. After presenting these results and articulating their relevance for a potentially transformative view of mental disorder, I will then address some potential objections to the theoretical account as well as some limitations of the empirical work, before sketching possible promising directions for future research.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.14428/thl.v7i1.64203
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Tags: #Christianity #God #Religion #Spirituality
