The Falsafa Prophetology in Modernist Discourse

Abstract

The article shows how the concept of «natural prophecy», which developed within the framework of Falsafa (the Hellenizing philosophy of classical Islam) and traditionally qualifi ed as heterodox, was revived in the works of Muslim modernists of the 19th-20th centuries (especially Jamalad-din al-Afghani, Muhammad Abdo and their followers), who focused on the reconstruction of theological discourse in the spirit of openness to religious and confessional diversity, scientifi c rationality and socio-cultural progress. In reformist theology were accumulated both rational substantiations of prophetism, which were characteristic of Falsafa: (1) socio-teleological, proceeding from the necessity of a prophet as a legislator, and (2) psycho-noetic, which appeals to the presence of a man with the ultimate exalted soul, especially in terms of intellectual intuition and creative imagination. Developing the Falsafa’s thesis about two types of miracle as proof of the authencity of prophetic missions — «external» (material) and «adequate» (spiritual), modernists teach about the Quranic message as focusing exclusively on the second type. This marks the transition of humanity to the phase of adulthood, and with it the «sealing of the prophethood».