theology

Since Kant is a son of his time, his thought is originally rooted in the Enlightenment. The distinction between theoretical and practical reason, formal and material conscientiousness, authentic and doctrinal theodicy, sincerity and falsehood, and finally, historical and moral faith religion, are implications of the court held by Kant for metaphysics. Meanwhile, Kantian distinction between deism and theism in one hand, and inclination toward Job and Christ as the symbols of moral faith of religion in the other hand, can be explained by the German Protestantism of the age of Fredrick the Great and his successor. The theology based on practical reason criticizes rationalism in faith and suggests perception of religion through morality. But, Aquinas as a Christian catholic emphasizes on historical religion, revealed religion, Divine legislation, faith in Divine worship and ecclesiastical faith. Aquinas is the most distinguished supporter of rational theology. However, he believed to other kind of theology named theologia sacrae scripturae or sacred theology which its main subject is Divine beings. The main bases of Aquinas‘s ethics are revelation and foundations of church. Kant, in the contrary, tries to make room for faith inside the realm of morality and speak of practical reason theology through denial of theoretical reason.  

In different parts of Metaphysics , Aristotle presents different (and apparently, conflicting) views on the nature and subject matter of the discipline in question. These different characterizations led to wide-ranging interpretations of the relation between metaphysics and philosophical theology. Muslim Philosophers adopted two different views. Al-Kindi and al-Farabi (in some of his works) endorsed the view that metaphysics is the same as theology as far as its subject matter is the First Cause (God) and it deals essentially with incorporeal entities. After Avicenna, however, a second view became dominant according to which metaphysics has a broader realm that embraces theology as its most noble part. The rationale behind this view is that the subject matter of metaphysics is “being qua being”, or unconditioned existent, in its broad sense so that philosophical theology can be taken as discussing some of the proper accidents of the unconditioned existent. This view requires that metaphysics cannot be a secular discipline and should be totally consistent with theology. It also provides us with a certain interpretation of what is usually called “Islamic philosophy.”

Muslims are consensus on the principles of Islamic beliefs (‘usūl), though wide differences have appeared among them on the secondary beliefs (furūāt), including the infallibility (‘isma) of the prophets, especially the holy Prophet of Islam (PBUH). Some believe in the fallibility of the prophets and hence the holy Prophet of Islam, referring to some verses of the Holy Qur’an. They argue that although the prophet’s infallibility can be proved by rational reasons, rather than the words from God Almighty, as he himself took them from Him, if there are verses indicating the fallibility, then such infallibility shall be criticized and refuted through such verses. In this article, based on the analytical-citation method, different opinions on the holy Prophet’s (PBUH) immune from sin and their evidences are mentioned. In addition, the verses argued by the critics of the infallibility of the Prophet are mentioned. An investigation of the interpretations of these verses show that they not only do not indicate to this claim, but also prove the infallibility of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) at the highest level.

Somewhat surprisingly, a number of scholars have recently claimed to find an implied theology in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. This surprising because the author does not state anywhere in the body of his work that he seeks to align his philosophy with a theology, in fact he states just the opposite, as we shall see. While it is true that Merleau-Ponty does dialogue with certain views of Christianity, and while it is true that he does argue for a religion that treats the divine as “horizontal” rather than “vertical,” that is, as part of human life rather than beyond it, the sympathetic goal of his reflection here is to suggest a Christianity that is more humane and less dogmatically hierarchical, that is more centered in human experience rather than an absolute other. His goal here is certainly not to claim this theology as an essential part of his philosophy. As he says, the role of the philosopher should not be to prove or disprove the existence of God but to consider what God means to human beings in the movement of history. A number of Merleau-Ponty’s own texts will be consider here in some detail along with a variety of texts that claim that his works harbor a hidden theology.

This article provides a brief background of how Comparative Theology is understood today, to point out features of how it is practiced that are responsive to issues peculiar to contemporary Catholicism, and to suggest how a version of CT might be developed that is more consistent with Islamic traditions of thought on related issues. In order to accomplish this last goal, a brief introduction to the traditional “Islamic sciences” is provided. It will be suggested that an Islamic Comparative Theology (ICT) can be understood as a multidisciplinary field that draws on several Islamic sciences, as well as research in religious studies. I argue in favor of a blurring of the distinction between Comparative Religion and Comparative Theology, and point out that relevant discussions are to be found across a variety of traditional Islamic sciences, but that it would be advantageous to collect these discussions together and to augment them with information gleaned from both secular and Islamic approaches to the teachings of Muslim thinkers about theological issues, broadly understood, in comparison with what is found in non-Islamic traditions in such a manner to enrich our own understandings of the issues and those with whom we engage in dialogue.

Contemporary theology is realizing the importance of integrating the knowledge of modern/contemporary physics into the metaphysical and ontological categories used to consider God and the God-world relationship. Time is a complex notion with different meanings, characterized by a plurality of uses. The concept of time opens up to broader conceptions than those of physics, mathematics, and philosophy and reveals that the human being, the earth, and the cosmos are not the center of space or time. The concepts of space, time, and matter, to which the concept of vacuum is connected, are of central importance in any modern physical theory, and particularly in the theories of unification. It is being discovered that spacetime is absent at the most fundamental level and only emerges at an appropriate limit. This emerging image of time leads to new conceptual challenges that must be faced in parallel with philosophy and theological researchto achieve its correct understanding. It is a comparison of the viewpoints of the three investigative domains concerned with understanding the nature of consciousness, namely science, philosophy, and metaphysics. This thought process is connected to the intuitions of the contemplative and mystical traditions and seems to be in line with current scientific thought, which can be mathematically expressed. Recent scientific research struggles to grasp the subjective aspect of consciousness; subjective experience is in conflict with the figure of the observer classically understood in the scientific sense. The evolution of life and the relationship with the transcendent could have their information basis in a hyper-complex multi-dimensional space; recent efforts try to explain how mental states exist in the higher dimensions of this hyperspace; some recent models of unification integrate matter and consciousness through the use of this primordial multi-dimensional dynamic space. Ontological interpretations of quantum theory have been given, leading to patterns of bidirectional flow of consciousness between an explicate and an implicate order, supporting both local and non-local phenomena in the cosmos. The paper aims to offer an overview of the indicated issues with a trans-disciplinary method and through interesting hints for thought.