Sister Resens de Insula and the Desire for Certainty

This chapter covers the experience of Sister Resens de Insula, a thirty-seven-year-old nun at the Holy Cross convent, who captured the limitations of the sacrament of penance succinctly. It reviews how Resens has lived through the first and second mortalities, the mercenary invasions, and manifestations of the political unrest linked to the transfer of power from King Robert I of Naples to Queen Johanna I. It also looks at the turbulent decades of the fourteenth century, from 1343 to 1363, when women like Resens found that Countess Delphine’s words resonated with the people who gathered to listen at the Holy Cross convent. The chapter talks about Resens’ memory of being present when Delphine spoke divine words at the Holy Cross convent in 1351. It discusses Resens’s description of her experience, which shows that she expected not to feel doubts of conscience after completing the sacrament.

The Necessity of Redefining and Presenting a New Perception on the Comprehensive Interpretation of the Holy Quran

The Holy Quran is an infinite ocean which benefits everyone to the extent of their scientific ability and scope of existence. This divine book would not be only a text; rather, its interpretation and explanation open various chapters of science, wisdom, and knowledge to human beings. Therefore, the only way to enter this gate of science, wisdom, and knowledge is its interpretation. Up to now, various approaches and interpretive books have been emerged to decipher and decode this divine blessing, but non of them has been perfect, and each is considered as a defect. Therefore, the best and the safest way would be to refer to a new definition of the “comprehensive” interpretation. In the following research paper, we will try to express the need and necessity of applying a comprehensive approach to the interpretation of the Holy Quran, providing a new definition of it in the description of the divine words.

Creation as Text: The Graphological Trope in Said Nursi's Risāle-i nūr

Reading the act of creation as written or spoken narrative seems to have gained currency across the faith traditions from very early on. The Muslim tradition is no exception. As the ‘pen and ink’ verse in the Qur'an shows, the notion of creation as an assemblage of divine words is as old as Islam itself. It was not until the advent of Muslim mysticism, however, that writers began to build on the image's revelatory foundations. The present study is an introductory analysis of extended metaphor in the work of the Ottoman theologian Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, with particular reference to the use of the ‘graphological trope’ in his six-thousand-page exegesis of the Qur'an known as the Risale-i Nur (‘The Epistles of Light’). The aim is to draw attention to Nursi's use of a particular literary conceit that is deserving of further study. Of the few works on Nursi and his teachings that stand up to serious academic scrutiny, nothing of substance has been written about the language of the Risale-i Nur. It is hoped that this exploratory article will spur other scholars on to a more extensive survey and analysis of imagery in Nursi's oeuvre.

Words in the World

Using the analogy of the two Divine Words, this chapter begins by exploring pressing debates in contemporary Islamic feminist and Muslima theological engagement with the Qur’an, debates that arise out of the underlying problematic of the Word in the world. The chapter, then, explores Christian perspectives on Jesus Christ from Rosemary Radford Ruether, Jacquelyn Grant, Kwok Pui-lan, and Ada María Isasi-Díaz. These theologians discuss topics ranging from the language and symbols invoked to describe Jesus to the value assigned to particular human markings of Jesus (inclusive of but not limited to Jesus’s maleness) to the affiliations of Jesus with power and marginal groups. The chapter concludes by returning to Muslima theology and constructively proposing an approach to the Qur’an that embraces hybridity, human experience, and a preference for the marginalized.

Divine Words, Female Voices

Interreligious feminist engagement is a legitimate and vital resource for Muslim women scholars seeking to articulate egalitarian interpretations of Islamic traditions and practices. Acknowledging very real challenges within interreligious feminist engagement, Divine Words, Female Voices: Muslima Explorations in Comparative Feminist Theology uses the method of comparative feminist theology to skillfully navigate these challenges, avoid impositions of absolute similarity, and propose new, constructive insights in Muslima theology. Divine Words, Female Voices reorients the comparative theological conversation around the two “Divine Words,” around the Qur’an and Jesus Christ, rather than Prophet Muhammad and Jesus Christ, or the Qur’an and the Bible. Building on this analogical foundation, it engages diverse Muslim and Christian feminist, womanist, and mujerista voices on a variety of central theological themes. Divine Words, Female Voices explores intersections, discontinuities, and resultant insights that arise in relation to divine revelation; textual hermeneutics of the hadith and Bible; Prophet Muhammad and Mary as feminist exemplars; theological anthropology and freedom; and ritual prayer, tradition, and change.

Muslima Theology as Comparative Feminist Theology

This chapter focuses on Muslima theology and outlines its unique combination of constructive, theological, and comparative lenses. It situates Muslima theology within the larger method of comparative theology, and argues for the suitability of this method due to its requirement of deep knowledge of other traditions, its capacity to foster identification of more precise and meaningful points of comparison, and its relegation of assumptions of parity. The chapter then outlines the unique specifics of this project as a form of comparative feminist theology, including its Islam-to-Christianity orientation and its focus on feminist theological methods and concerns. The chapter concludes by introducing the new starting analogy of the two “Divine Words” (the Qur’an and Jesus) and resultant reorientation of the comparative project and methodological form.

Chaldaean Oracles

The Chaldaean Oracles were a collection of revelatory verses purportedly compiled in the second century ad. Along with the Orphic texts, Neoplatonists regarded them as divine words. When the Oracles appear in philosophical works, they lend support to select cosmological, metaphysical or psychological propositions which have already been formulated.