“Then He Stabbed Me with a Spear”: Aggressive Sacred Images and Interreligious Polemics

This paper studies Coptic communal identity in early Islamic Egypt by analyzing two hagiographical narratives from the Christian Copto-Arabic text The History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria. The narratives relate incidents of sacred images that become ‘aggressive’ when they retaliate against insults. Although the relation between religious violence and sacred art has merited much scholarly attention, the focus is usually on humans as the aggressors and sacred art as the victim. The reverse is scarcer, and its rarity means we miss an opportunity to rethink such narratives as communicative modes of rhetoric to be contextually interpreted. Here I argue that these aggressive sacred images were tools of power within a polemic religious discourse aimed at proclaiming divine truth, undergirding it with supernatural power, and ultimately shaping Coptic communal identity around this discourse.

The travel story as the structure-forming basis for Attar poems

There is no consensus among scholars about the Masnavi composition by Farid ad-Din ‛Attar (fl. 12th–13th cent. AD), the great Persian Sufi poet. The question of whether these poems were written spontaneously or whether there is a structure, which was thought out in advance remains open. The article offers an attempt to answer this question. It comprises a comparative analysis of the structure of three Masnavi poems by Farid ad-Din ‛Attar: Mantiq at-Tayr (“Language of the Birds”), Musibat-nameh (“Book of Suffering”) and Ilahi-nameh (“Book of God”). The starting point is the poem Mantiq at-Tayr, which illustrates the ‛Attar concept of the so-called “valleys”, i.e. the stages, which mark the spiritual path of those striving for the Eternal and Divine Truth. This Path is alluded to by the flight of birds. All three Masnavis are considered in the article as a unity where the pivotal points of the narrative are determined by the stages of the path described in the Mantiq at-Tayr. At the same time, the poems do not duplicate, however, enlarge and enrich each other.

Theodora Wilkin’s Wandering Soul

Sometime in the early eighteenth century, an Anglo-Dutch woman named Theodora Wilkin began translating into English an important Mennonite devotional work, Jan Philipsz Schabaelje’s Wandelende Ziele met Adam, Noach, en Simon Cleophas. Her translation (or, better, adaptation) survives in a manuscript of about one thousand pages. Wilkin’s text sheds considerable light on the state of intellectual history and literary adaptation in the early eighteenth century. Specifically, Theodora Wilkin’s Wandering Soul foregrounds three concerns. 1) It demonstrates the centrality of women to providential history. 2) It reconciles biblical wisdom and natural philosophical knowledge. 3) It closely considers the Ancients, both insofar as they reflected divine truth and promulgated idolatry.

Michael Psellus on Philosophy and Theology

"This paper explores the use of the terms theologia and philosophia in the philosophic opuscula of Michael Psellus, especially those which are dedicated to the Chaldaean Oracles. It begins with a review of previous pagan and Christian usage, the conclusion of which is that Christians rejected the pagan distinction between theologoi, as inspired conduits of divine truth, from philosophers who interpreted such revelations under the rubric of theologia. For Christians Greek theologoi were mere purveyors of myth; theologia was not a branch of philosophy but the exposition of truths revealed in scripture. Since the revealers were already theologians, and the interpreters were theologoi in their own right, the terms became synonymous when applied to Christian practice. Psellus is on the whole faithful to this tradition, reserving the term theologia for Christian teaching in contrast to philosophy, except in one passage that speaks of the ""philosophy and theology"" of the Chaldaeans. The purpose of this phrase, in which the latter term seems to be epexegetic to the former, is to intimate that even the best theology of the pagans, being ignorant of the biblical revelation, can rise no higher than philosophy. Keywords: Chaldaean Oracles, Opuscula, philosophy, theology, revelation. "

The Saving Word of All Things

The presence of the divine ideas in the eternal Word permits mystical theologians to consider the cosmic implications of the Incarnation, and also provides a unique mode of understanding the soteriological significance of Christ’s death and resurrection—in which the world’s false construction of creatures is undone and the divine truth of every creature is vindicated. Pseudo-Dionysius, Aquinas, and Catherine of Siena emphasize the Trinitarian matrix of the divine ideas, bringing to light the divine love and delight in all creatures as the motivation for salvation. Maximus and Hadewijch point to the saving encounter between a person’s earthly self, suffering the distortions of sin, and their true identity in God, made possible in Christ. Eriugena, Aquinas, and Bonaventure all employ the divine ideas teaching in order to reflect upon the power of the Word incarnate to re-create the creatures according to God’s eternal knowing and loving of them.

“Lightnings and Thunderings, and Voices”

The egalitarian energy of the American Revolution powered a wave of popular anti-authoritarianism reacting against Federalist influence in the Washington and Adams administrations. Egalitarian evangelicalism constituted a rebuttal to Enlightenment republicanism. The same process transformed American Christianity into a populist, radically egalitarian and anticlerical religion. Dramatically increased numbers of Baptists and Methodists gave these denominations legitimacy, and many new sects appeared throughout the post-revolutionary period. Against the vocal concerns of established clergymen, evangelical itinerants urged people to read the Scriptures for themselves and come to their own conclusions of what it means to be a Christian, and that no formal education was necessary to understand divine truth. Taking Christ as their example, men and especially women from old and new denominations let their individualistic readings of the Bible, visions, and dreams guide them toward Truth, and convinced many that the Second Coming was near at hand.

Islam dan Masyarakat Ideal (Ummatan Wasathan) dalam Perspektif Para Mufassir dan Relevansinya dengan Kontak Keindonesiaan Masa Kini dan Depan

Islam as the source and path of truth that comes from Allah is a view of life which is not only intended for the welfare and happiness of Muslims, but is a blessing for all nature. Islam which is derived from divine truth, both contained in the verses of the Koran and the sunnah of the Prophet, is a guide for the way of all times. Likewise, Islam regulates the relationship between humans and others, with God and with their natural environment. The key to the personality of the Islamic community is akidah, syari'at and morals. If the creed provides the direction of the movement of society, while the syari'at provides limits on how and the method to take that direction properly, then morals will decorate the path of the goal so that it is beautiful and pleasant. The ideal society or in this study is referred to as the "Wasathan ummatan" is a social order that is needed by the era to give birth to a society with noble character in order to continue a civilized life. In the Indonesian context, ummatan wasathan should be born as a solution to various problems of the ummah which are now spreading and becoming epidemics in the survival of religion and state. Sayyid Qutb's Method of Interpretation and several other interpreters compared with his interpretation of Quraish Shihab becomes an analysis which then gives birth to the true meaning of how the ideal society should be in the perspective of the Koran to be applied in all the dynamics of Indonesian society today and beyond.

Konsep Mahabbah Rabi'ah Al-Adawiyah

In sufistic discourse, the real journey of life can be said to be a journey to seek God and at the same time a journey to God or at least to God. When the endeavor in that direction is taken seriously, then there are three potential choices that can be made by someone who believes in the existence of God based on the three basic potentials that humans have. If someone is trying to use her services with the potential of using her services, she will strive (mujahid) and try to become a martyr in the way of Allah. If he maximizes the potential of his mind, then he will emigrate with his reasoning power to get closer to the divine truth. If he tries to use his Ruhiyah potential, he will worship to upgrade his piety to the Creator. Rabi'ah al-Adawiyah seems to have sought his sincerity to approach and approach God in a third way. Through the concept of mahabbah that he coined, Rabi'ah al-Adawiyah consistently upgraded his love from ordinary love to extreme love. This effort has tremendous implications for the presence of expressions of love for Allah without any conditions or tendencies. With this extreme expression of love, Rabi'ah believes that she can meet and unite with the Creator. This concept might be judged to leapfrog the epistemology of the Shari'a, but it is personally worthy of being valued as an endeavor that utilizes the spiritual power that potentially belongs to Allah swt., entrust every human being.

An Old Materialism

This article takes a new approach to the conflicts represented in the thirteenth- century saints’ lives of the Katherine Group. Identifying saints and idols as contrasting poles in these conflicts, it argues that the category of sentience is a key distinguisher that is consistently employed to denigrate idols and idolators. Pagan antagonists are systematically identified as nonagential and material; by contrast, the saints communicate divine truth unimpeded and resist attempts to disrupt their highly integrated performances. The category of sentience is shuttled to-and-fro between parties as various antagonists attempt to reduce the saint to the status of an object. While superficially victorious, the saints finally fall prey to the binary logic of hagiography: to triumph over interrogation, torture, and death, the saint ultimately sacrifices her own sentience. This analysis reveals the investments of a medieval theory of sentience with implications for both hagiography at large and the twenty-first-century material turn.

Dikotomi Moral dan Hukum sebagai Problem Epistemologis dalam Konstitusi Modern

This article discusses dichotomy between moral and legal consideration occuring in the modern constitutions that can be traced back in the thoughts of Thomas Aquinas and Niccolo Machiavelli. The analysis focuses on the epistemological aspects of this dichotomy that are rooted for long in the moral and legal concepts in the modern constitution.Through epistemological analysis, the authors conclude that the epistemic root of the dichotomy lie in the contrasting paradigm between supernatural law and modern positivism. While modern constitutionalism constructs moral concepts that presummes Divine truth, the legal concepts oriented to rational truth. These two concepts should be intergrated without dichotomy through the dictum 'moral exaltation in the primacy of the law' so that the law will be able to answer legal issues in the society.