Qur’an

Author(s):  
Gerhard Bowering

This chapter discusses the historical origin and development, religious scholarship, political elements, and legacy of the Qur'an. The Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, is the most recent of the major sacred scriptures to have appeared in human history. It includes the prophetic proclamations of Muhammad (570–632) in Arabic, collected after his death in definitive written form and meticulously transmitted through the centuries. More than a billion Muslims around the globe consider the Qur'an to be the eternal word of God, who “sent down” the scripture as his final divine revelation and commissioned Muhammad to be the last prophet to proclaim his divine will for all of humanity to follow.

Author(s):  
Gerald O’Collins, SJ

Tradition as process and as object needs to be understood in the light of divine revelation and the inspired Scripture. Primarily interpersonal or relational and secondarily propositional or cognitive, revelation involves a past fullness in Christ, a present experience, and a future, definitive consummation. As process, tradition is pre-given and always part of us, collective, richly polymorphous, sacramentally communicated through words and actions, often in tension with present experience, open to change or reform, and ending only with the close of human history. At the heart of innumerable traditions (plural and in lower case) is the Tradition (singular and in upper case), the risen Christ made present through the Holy Spirit, not an object we possess but a reality by which we are possessed. While they frequently overlap, ‘culture’ differs from tradition by not being so clearly an ‘action word’.


2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
Hollis Gause

AbstractThe doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the product of divine revelation, and is a doctrine of divine worship. The expressions of this doctrine come out of worshipful response to divine revelation demonstrating the social nature of the Trinity and God's incorporating the human creature in His own sociality and personal pluralism. The perfect social union between God and the man and woman that he had created was disrupted by human sin. God redeemed the fallen creature, and at the heart of this redemptive experience lies the doctrine of Holy Trinity, with the Holy Spirit as the communing agent of all the experiences of salvation. The Spirit is especially active in the provision and fulfillment of sanctification, which is presented here as the continuum of 'holiness-unity-love'. He produces the graces of the Holy Spirit – the fruit of the Spirit. He implants the Seed of the new birth which is the word of God. He purifies by the blood of Jesus. He establishes union and communion among believers and with God through His Son Jesus. This is holiness.


2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-390
Author(s):  
Rob McDonald

AbstractThis article proposes a way of reading Karl Barth'sChurch Dogmaticsbackwards or ‘from the end’. Employing this method to exploreThe Doctrine of GodandThe Doctrine of the Word of Godhighlights two aspects of Barth's theology. The first is the importance of communion to Barth's account of the immanence and economy of God, especially in his understanding of God as the ‘Lord of Glory’. The second is Barth's careful balancing of christology and pneumatology across the first two volumes of theDogmaticsthrough the use of a chiastic structure that underpins his construal of divine election and his account of divine revelation.


1967 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-160
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Idinopulos
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
Gerald O’Collins, SJ

Dealing with biblical inspiration within the scheme of the Word of God in its threefold form (as preached, written, and revealed), Karl Barth distinguished between divine revelation and the inspired Bible. He insisted that the revelation to prophets and apostles preceded proclamation and the writing of Scripture. He interpreted all the Scriptures as witness to Christ. While the human authors of the Bible ‘made full use of their human capacities’, the Holy Spirit is ‘the real author’ of what is written. Raymond Collins, in dialogue with Thomas Aquinas, Barth, and others, interpreted biblical inspiration in the light of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on Divine Revelation. He spoke of the Holy Spirit as the ‘principal, efficient cause’ (with the human authors as the ‘instrumental’ causes), rejected dictation views of inspiration, and examined the scope of biblical truth and the authority of the Bible for the Church.


2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Smit

Should the teaching and practice of theology be dictated by the church? In this article it is argued that the practice of theology as a science, based on the presupposition that the Bible is the word of God, is inherently part of the calling and responsibility of the church. Therefore, practising theology as a science rooted in faith should also be ecclesiastically subservient to theology in general, and should indicate the way for the training of ministers of the Word. In this article it is argued that practising theology as a science rooted in faith is not to be regarded as an old-fashioned approach as this way of practising theology can be related to one of the positive trends in post-modernism: the increasing need for expressed presuppositions. This view stands in opposition to the rationalistic approach of theology in which the Bible is seen as a collection of texts of historical origin. According to the rationalistic view point, the Bible represents a collection of texts which reflect narratives of people’s experiences and should be studied historically-critically. Thus the Bible becomes an object of rational analysis. Should the focus of theology (in contemporary postmodern times) move to the phenomenon of religions emphasizing rational analysis, churches will have to take the sole responsibility for the training of future ministers – even if the consequence implies that the involvement of universities in theological training be excluded.


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