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Christian mission and interreligious dialogue represents probably two of the hottest topics of contemporary Christian reflection,due to the fact that from the first four centuries after Christ, Christians have not intersected with so many non-Christians as till now. The Holy Trinity, the centre of gravity of Orthodox theology and ecclesial life, is the most conducive framework for authentic mission and credible interfaith dialogue and relations. The distinct Orthodox emphasis on the “economyof the Spirit” held alongside the “economy of the Son”, applied within the overarching Trinitarian ambit, is a helpful parameter both in missionand interreligious dialogue. Besides the dialogue on academic issues we can also discern, in the framework of multi-religious societies, various important opportunities for a “dialogue of life”, thus finding the right balance between mind and heart.
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The mental illnesses, their development and their consequences have been a subject of keen interest from ancient times until this day. This text provides us the opportunity to take a look at this matter through the perspective of the concept of essence through explication of some views on it. We would elaborate several of the beginning with the teaching of the Church Fathers and ending with the modern psychoanalytic view on illnesses of the soul and their relationship to the essence concept. The work examines four main views on the essence and on the problem how and to what extent the essence itself could be affected by mental illness. Of particular importance to the study is Aristotle's concept „mερική ουσία“, as well as the criticism on that view provided by Photios I of Constantinople.Taking into considerations the views of both Aristotle and Photios the paper examines the construction and the deconstruction of the subject through the link between the mental illness and the essence.
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The aim of this article is to present the role and contribution of St. Jerome in refuting some elements of Pelagianism, such as those connected to the grace of God, free will, infant baptism, and, in particular, human capacity to be without sin (impeccantia). Jerome was among the first to refute the heretical theses of Pelagius, which he came to know through the works of St. Augustine that were available to him at that time (De peccatorum meritis et remisione et baptismo parvulorum and Epistula ad Hilarium). After briefly reviewing the attitudes of Christians in this period when they had just been emancipated within the Roman Empire, the article deals with the historical events surrounding the beginnings of the Pelagian controversy, as well as with the main theses taught by Pelagius, which were not in accordance with the deposit of faith of that time, as Jerome noted. Therefore, on the basis of his works Epistula ad Ctestiphontem and Dialogus adversus Pelagianos the article presents his response to the Pelagian theses. The controversy greatly confused people at that time and continued to baffle many after the death of the main actors in the dispute. In any case, Jerome’s contribution was crucial in the sense that by his actions he helped to preserve the purity of our faith regarding Christ’s redemptive role on the cross. There is no doubt that the popes had in mind the commitment of this great Dalmatian when, ex cathedra, they condemned this heretical teaching.
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The Christian Church of the first centuries knew a quick and intense development within the oriental Arabian-Syrian area, maintaining a close connection with the Apostolic Church of Jerusalem. The Christianization of this geographic area led to the familiarity of the Arabian population with the Christian tenets, contributing to the genesis and affirmation of the theology thesaurus in the Syriac language. It is very important for our research to know the existence of the Christian communities in this pre-Islamic Arabian space. The Christian Churches entrance into the shadows within the Arabian communities was due to the occurrence and the spread of Islam.
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During the Middle Ages, most of theological and philosophical works, like Avicenna’s eş-Şifā: Ilahiyat (The Healing: Metaphysics), al-Ghazālī’s Maqāsıd al-Falāsifa (The Aims of Philosophers), and Averroes’s commentaries on Aristotle’s books were translated into Latin language. Through these translations, many controversial issues in the Islamic thought, like “whether God knows partials in their essence”, “whether God acts necessarily because of His nature”, and “whether reason and revelation can be reconciled or not” were conveyed into Latin West. In addition to these issues, the problem of scope of God’s absolute power has been known by Latin thinkers as well. In this paper, I tried to show the idea of “God can do logically possible affairs and this does not limit God’s absolute power” conveyed in to Latin West through translations of Avicenna’s al-Şifā and al-Ghazâlî’s Makāsıd. As far as I can see, there is a drastic textual similarity between the ideas of al-Ghazâlî and Thomas Aquinas about this matter. Based on the similarities between al-Ghazâlî and Thomas Aquinas, it should be assumed that it is highly probable that Thomas Aquinas’ idea about God’s power goes back to Islamic tradition.SUMMARY: Is there any limit to God’s Power? Many theist thinkers argue that God is omniscient, omnipotent and wholly good. Like other theist thinkers al-Ghazālī and Thomas Aquinas approve that God is omnipotent. But the problem is whether God’s power has a limit or not. If God is omnipotent, then He can do whatever He wants, like a square-circle or another logically impossible state of affairs. However, most of theist thinkers argue that God can do logically possible state of affairs. If He cannot do a square-circle, it does not limit God’s absolute power. According to some contemporary authors, the idea that “God can do logically possible state of affairs” is accepted since Thomas Aquinas time. According to them, since the time of Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274), it has been recognized that the exercise of God’s power must be limited to what is logically possible. Looking at this assertion, there is no one asserting that God can do logically possible state of affairs before Thomas Aquinas. In this study, I tried to show that these debates have their roots in Islamic tradition.The eminent Muslim thinkers Avicenna and al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) evaluated the issue whether God can do logically impossible. According to Avicenna, if something is possible itself, it should be connected with power. He writes “It is, hence evident -clear- that the meaning of a thing possible in itself is other than the meaning of its being enactable by power, even if, in subject, the two are the same. Its being enactable by power is necessary concomitant of its being possible in itself.” It is clearly seen that, for Avicenna, possibility and impossibility do not depend on an agent’s power.In order to explain this point, al-Ghazālī makes a distinction between propositions. According to him, some propositions are first principles (awwaliyāt), like “The number two is more than one” and “The whole is greater than its parts.” This kind of beliefs cannot be attained via senses, but they can be attained by the intellect. Some of the propositions are the judgment of perception (maḥsūsāt), like “The sun shines” and “The light of moon increases and decreases”; the judgment of experience (tajrubiyāt), like “The fire burns”; generally accepted opinions (mutawatirāt), like knowing that there is a city called Mecca; estimative opinions (wahmiyāt), like “everything that has no place, either in the world or outside of it, is impossible”; customary beliefs (mashḥūrāt), like “falsehood is improper”, “the justice is necessary”, “God is omnipotent”, etc.It is clearly seen, al-Ghazālī counts the proposition “God is omnipotent” in the customary beliefs. These beliefs are based on habits and depend on the socio-cultural situations. According to al-Ghazālī, while some of these propositions might be true, some of them are false. For this reason, we need to make a detailed examination of the proposition “God is omnipotent” in order to determine whether this proposition is true or not. Many people suppose this proposition is absolutely true, but for al-Ghazālī, this proposition is not absolutely true. When we closely examine the proposition, we can clearly see that God cannot create a being like Himself. For this reason, we need to say that “God can do everything is possible for Him to do”. Similarly, when we say that God is omniscient”, we need to understand that God can know everything that is possible for Him to know. Because God cannot know a being like Himself. He writes “…when we say that ‘God is omnipotent’, we cannot see immediately that there might be something over which He did not have power until we realized that He could not create another being like Himself. Then we became aware of the error of our assertion. But the true assertion is that ‘He can do everything that is possible for Him to do. This has no contradictory that is true.”It can be seen, al-Ghazâlî obviously states that the proposition “God is omnipotent” is not a first principle but a customary belief. He also states that the proposition “God is omniscient” can be understood as “God can know everything that it is possible for Him to know”. However, al-Ghazālī keeps on the same idea not only in Maqāsıd but also in his other works, like Mi’yār al-ʿİlm (Criterion of Knowledge in the Art of Logic) and al-Iqtisād fī al-İʿtiqād (Median in Belief).My suggestion is that al-Ghazālī might get this idea from Avicenna. According to Avicenna, the proposition “God is omnipotent and omniscient” is a customary belief, like “justice is necessary” and “falsehood is improper.” In this course, he writes in his work Dānişname-i Ālai (The Highest Knowledge), “It is impossible to say that “God can do impossible things” and “God is omniscient and knows everything because of an assistant.”Similarly, Thomas Aquinas, like Avicenna and al-Ghazālī, states that God can do everything that is possible. He says in Summa Theologica, “All confess that God is omnipotent; but it seems difficult to explain in what His omnipotence precisely consists: for there may be doubt as to the precise meaning of the word “all” when we say that God can do all things. If, however, we consider the matter aright, since power is said in reference to possible things, this phrase, “God can do all things” is rightly understood to mean that “God can do all things that are possible” and for this reason He is said to be omnipotent.”As we can see, there is a similarity between al-Ghazālī’s understanding of God’s absolute power and Thomas Aquinas’s. It is well known that Thomas Aquinas reads -Ghazālī’s Maqâsıd. Based on the textual similarity, it is possible to argue that Thomas inherited this idea from al-Ghazālī’s Maqasıd. Consequently, we can assert that the idea that “God can do possible itself and this cannot limit God’s absolute power” began with the Islamic tradition rather than Thomas Aquinas, unlike Micheal Peterson, William Haskers, and the others argued. Therefore, it is possible to say that Thomas Aquinas thanks to his reading of al-Ghazâlî’s Maqāsıd about this matter.
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The author, in his article, talks about tolerance as a believer. With regard to it, he addresses the following questions: Jesus and tolerance, the Church and tolerance, Orthodoxy and tolerance, the God of the Old Testament and tolerance, Islam, and tolerance and religious fundamentalism and tolerance. Apart from focusing on the mentioned issues, the author also addresses some other matters in his article.
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This paper seeks to contribute to the response to the question of how religions can contribute to the process of inter-ethnic reconciliation in the Western Balkans. Given that religious communities still enjoy a great reputation in this area and that people of the region express high levels of religious self-identification, it is expected of religions to give contribution to this process. It is evident that religious communities are not sufficiently candid and not evenly open to the process of reconciliation, probably because of the role they had in not too long ago completed clashes as well as lack of boldness to deal with that role. If we go back to sacred texts and documents of religious communities, we will find abound arguments which advocate peace, coexistence, respect, forgiveness etc. However, the problem is not in the scriptures, but in how they are interpreted. Religious communities can contribute to the reconciliation process through a variety of ways such as: coping with their own role in the past events, encouragment of mutual recognition and respect, making dialogue, preaching the necessity of peace, coexistence and tolerance, educational processes in order to promote the ethics of coexistence in peace, preaching about the lethality of hatred and affirming the ethics of forgiveness, through joint visiting of crime scenes by the religious leaders, etc. Given that reconciliation is a complex process that requires time, we should all be a part of it so that generations that are coming know how to live with the differences that are the main feature of these territories.
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Review of: Karimi, Ahmad Milad. Hingabe-Grundfragen der systematisch-islamischen Theologie [Kendini Adama-Sistematik Kelamın Temel Sorunları]. Freiburg-Berlin-Wien: Rombach Verlag. 2015.
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Review of: Topal, Şevket. İslam Hukuk Düşüncesinde Sedd-i Zerâi. İstanbul: Ensar Yayınları. 2015
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The pilgrimage to holy places is one of the oldest traditions of Hinduism. Sacred places can be found all over India and attract millions of pilgrims. According to their importance these places gather pilgrims from their close vicinity or from the whole India, and their very close interconnection opens multiple perspectives for the pilgrim’s freewill. There are so many sacred places in India that we can regard thecountry as a vast holy space organized in a system of sacred centers ofpilgrimage, together with their sacred complexes. These sacred sites have developed over the millennia, not through a central authority, but through the absortion of several religious and local customs. Among these sacred places, the pilgrimage place in Allahabad at kumbha-melā has a special importance which results from its age and the fact that it gathers the largest number of pilgrims.
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The Vatican Council II, whose solemn recess by Pope Paul VI celebrated last year 50 years, marks the entrance of the Roman-Catholic Church in the modern world. For the first time in its history, it merely admits that it is time for the ancient Church built in Rome to come under new patterns. The texts mentioned represent a first notification, solemn and grave, of this state of fact. In his opening speech, Pope John Paul XXIII had launched to the participants the challenge of expressing, through new words, the permanent truth of the Gospel: “One thing is the thesaurus of believing, another is the shape under which such truths are expressed”.
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U mojem istraživanju svjetskih religija i antropologije različitih etničkih zajednica otkrio sam da većina ljudi ima zajednička pitanja. Bez obzira na to što se njihova formulizacija ponekad razlikuje u nekim manjim detaljima, suština je uvijek ista. Da li to bila politeistička Indija, animistička Afrika, monoteistička Saudijska Arabija ili ateistička Evropa, svi svjetonazori će prije ili kasnije morati obratiti pažnju na te zajedničke ljudske dileme.
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Dosad smo se bavili razlikama između abrahamskih tradicija jednako kao i njihovim sličnostima. Pri tome smo razlike često uklapali u jednu širu zajedničku shemu. Premda je to poslužilo primarnoj svrsi našega promišljanja, nekome bi se moglo učiniti i odveć pomirljivo. Šta onda s klasičnim neuralgičnim pitanjima koja su dominirala srednjovjekovnim raspravama, od kojih se mnoga i danas javljaju kao udarni izazovi u neobaveznom razgovoru između Jevreja i kršćana, odnosno muslimana i kršćana? Očigledni kandidati bila bi uvelike različita tumačenja Svete knjige, trojstva, utjelovljenja te istočnog grijeha kao kršćanskih doktrina, kao i islamski stavovi prema središnjoj ikoni kršćanstva, prema raspetome, te krajnje nerazumijevanje koje su kršćani pokazali pred tvrdnjama o novoj objavi u Arabiji u sedmom stoljeću nakon Krista. Poslovična tvrdnja da se dijalog vodi između osoba a ne doktrina ukazuje na jedan početni pristup ublažavanju rezervisanih stanovišta različitih doktrina, kao što je tvrdnja u koju kršćani vjeruju, a koju muslimani pobijaju, naime, da Bog ima sina! U razgovoru osobe mogu ponuditi određene kvalifikacije koje bi ublažile nagovještaje kontradiktornosti u takvoj jednoj razmjeni stavova o tome ima li Bog sina ili ne. Uistinu, razlike će i dalje postojati, ali to su razlike koje svakog sagovornika mogu navesti da jasnije izrazi ono u što vjeruje ili koje čak mogu potpomoći bolje uzajamno razumijevanje.
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Poznato je da Bosna i Hercegovina dugi niz godina prolazi kroz veoma ozbiljan proces društvenoga, političkoga, nacionalnoga i vjerskoga raslojavanja. U tom procesu, između mnogih drugih tema koje se tiču budućeg razvoja bosanskohercegovačkoga društva, pitanje pomirenja i tolerancije, odnosno međureligijskoga dijaloga zauzima najistaknutije mjesto. Zauzima, jer je, prema mom mišljenju, jedan od najvažnijih instrumenata vjerskog i nacionalnog pomirenja autentično poimanje i dosljedno provođenje načela vjerske slobode i tolerancije bez kojih nije moguće graditi niti i jedan drugi oblik tolerancije u našemu društvu. Reafirmiranjem načela tolerancije, kakvog poznaje tradicionalna religijska metafizika (lex aeterna – sveta predanja), stvorile bi se mogućnosti otklanjanja tragičnih posljedica rata i učvršćivanja mira na prostoru Bosne i Hercegovine, pa tako i u njenome glavnome gradu Sarajevu.
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Contentious issues relating to meditation East was considered the West in the 70s of the twentieth century. Psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists even then, were divided into supporters and opponents of this method of exercise. At the present time, in the environment of the clergy they are also divided opinion as to the positive and negative effects of this eastern method of relaxation. The clergy involved in the Christian Zen and the Christian yoga claim that these methods will help to deepen the relationship with God. Priests who negatively evaluate this kind of spiritual development, emphasize the fact that meditation and yoga East, have occult roots and for that they are a spiritual threat to Christians. They also point out that the inclusion of these techniques into Christian prayer can lead directly to syncretism.
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From an anthropological point of view, Psalm 139:13-16 is an exciting addition to the classical reconstruction of ancient Israel's view on the creation of humanity. Although much less widespread and less influential than the classical biblical stories of creation, the ideas permeating Ps 139:13-16 appear to be rooted in folk religion. Making lavish use of motifs familiar from ancient Near Eastern mythological texts, the poem considers the divine act of creation a repetitive action taking place at the birth of every individual. In contrast to the historical (or historicising) interpretations of Gen 1-2, this text emphasises the personal character of creation. The present study examines the biblical and Near Eastern background of the language of these verses.
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This paper discusses the analog teachings of Christian mystics from the times of patristic and the Sufis of mystical experience. On both sides, the mystical experience is the only way to overcome the split between transcendence and immanence. The act of union with God is achieved by acts of the heart in which God makes himself present through two properties: love and knowledge. Therefore, unity is the most common term in the literature of Christian mystics from the times of the Church Fathers and Sufis. Everything is meaningless without the term-links finite and the infinite, man and God. What some philosophers say that thought is the essence of God's being, and some, though, that being the essence of God, mystics of both traditions believe that love is the essence of God's battle. It is an all-encompassing reality as are thought and being.
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The issue of pluralism – with all its range of accompanying issues – has entered the Romanian vocabulary of culture and theology particularly after the change of historical and social paradigm brought about by the December-1989 events. In this “brave new world”, the “expertise” on pluralism and the solutions proposed by Rahner for the Christians’ salvific cohabitation with a pluralist world might be a set of useful guidelines, without, however, being a canonical one. Such guidelines may be necessary in order to avoid, on the one hand, the defeatism and ghettoization of Christianity, and, on the other hand, a corrosive religious syncretism. To the famous Jesuite theologian Karl Rahner (1904-1984), considered the most influential Catholic theologian of the 20th century, religious diversity was never an abstract theological topic, but a reality of the world he lived in. While often meeting and confronting people with other faiths, Rahner knew how to respond with a Catholicism “open” to the challenges of religious pluralism. His writings on this topic gained a wide audience in the ‘60s and 70’s of the last century, and his thinking enjoyed a wide publicity, both in the Church (through sermons) and in the media (through conferences and radio programs).
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Theories of tolerance and interreligious cohabitation of the three monotheistic religions in Muslim Spain are always depicting this period as the highest example of such cohabitation and as an inception of what we now know as human rights. The short analysis of historical framework in which, to use the Arabic name – Al-Andalus came to exist and endured will more easily help us understand the circumstances in which this cohabitation developed, degree of tolerance that it incorporated and if we can at all talk about the human rights. The paper’s tendency is to give a picture of influence of Muslim government in the newly acquired territories, their relation with Muslims of non Arabic descends and their relation with the non Muslim subjects as well as their incorporation in the new society. Decline of Islamic power on the Iberian Peninsula give us the opportunity to compare the same relationship between new Christian rulers and Muslim and Jewish population in the process of the Reconquista. Special attention should be paid to the two new social subgroups that originated in these processes, the Mozarabs and the Mudejar that became symbols to this era in Spain.
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