The Theological and Spiritual relationship between Jesus Christ and John the Baptist in Sufism

God and Goddess Emerging

"Classical theism" designates an understanding of God in which God has no need of the world and is not internally related to it. In classical theism, God's joy is not increased by the world's beauty or diminished by its pain. God's being is perfectly and fully actualized apart from the world. Any alternation would only decrease it. In this understanding, God's being is immutable in a static sense, essentially unrelated to the world and unaffected by what happens in and to it. Thomas Aquinas is usually cited as representative of this position. But this concept of God has been present in Christian theology from the patristic. era on, when absoluteness and impassibility came to be seen as basic attributes of God that determined how the revelation of God in Jesus Christ could be understood. Classical theism, this understanding of God as impassible and statically perfect, has been sharply criticized by process philosophers and theologians as logically incoherent, an obstacle to faith and de-valuing creation. Feminist theologians have repeated and extended this, arguing that classical theism is a male idolatry that undermines peoples' humanity, especially women's.

Grundtvigs udfordring til moderne theologi

The Divine Feminine in Mormon Art

This paper examines how Franciscan apologetics and polemics over the status of St. Francis and the Rule of 1223 created a climate of inquisitorial suspicion over prophecy and prophetic claims.

ABSTRACTIn the god concept literature, little research has been conducted on how people think about and relate specifically to Jesus Christ. This study addresses the extent to which Christians distinguish between Jesus and God in terms of their concepts of Jesus and God, the pathways they use to connect with Jesus and God, and the benefits they seek and receive from Jesus and God. The study also tests whether participants’ concepts of Jesus have unique predictive power for psychological, social, and spiritual criterion variables after controlling for their concepts of God. The sample includes 165 college students and 107 church attendees who self-identified as Christians. Results indicate that although most participants view Jesus and God as being similar to each other, they perceive Jesus to be warmer but less transcendent and stern than God. Including participants’ concepts of Jesus in hierarchical multiple regressions accounted for significant additional variance after controlling for their concepts of God in predicting participants’ negative affect, social justice attitudes, spiritual emotions, and Christian orthodoxy. Participants generally used various pathways more to connect with God than with Jesus, and they reported seeking and receiving many benefits more from God than from Jesus. These results suggest that future research on god concepts among Christians ought to include separate measures of Jesus concepts and God concepts.

Book Reviews127 The biographer has been meticulous in discussing details of Henry Cadbury's life, passing from each one to something else in quick succession. In the earlier chapters we are given a grasp of his thought and activity, but little insight into his actual personality, perhaps because the author didn't known him then. But in the latter part of the book his boyish wit and attention to the funny side of a question came through. Pictures add a great deal, showing us a little of him at various stages of his life. George Williams, who taught with Henry Cadbury at the Harvard Divinity School, said of him, "His faith as a Friend allowed him to get through the white waters in his sturdy canoe . . . and to arrive at his destination with the calm with which he started out." And Moses Bailey, a contemporary Friend, wrote, "No Friend in his generation so fully bound together Quakers and our history, the Bible and our relation to it, and intelligent hope as we plant the future, as Henry Cadbury." Lincoln, MassachusettsDaisy Newman Apocalypse of the Word: The Life and Message of George Fox. By Douglas Gwyn. Richmond, Ind.: Friends United Press, 1986. 241 pp. $14.95. Douglas Gwyn's remarkable study of the message and witness of George Fox deserves a place alongside William C. Braithwaite and Rufus Jones' Rowntree Series on Quakerism, as well as beside Hugh Barbour's, Quakers in Puritan England and Lewis Benson's, Catholic Quakerism. As the first scholar since Lewis Benson to make full use of Lewis Benson's Notes on George Fox with alphabetical subject index to quotations on all major topics in the thought of George Fox, Gwyn supports his claims with a breadth of quotations from all parts of Fox's writings which is amazing. The author's focal point summary quotation of Fox's message is "Jesus Christ is come to teach his people himself." Many of us, with Lewis Benson as a goad, have come to see this phrase and not "There is that of God in everyone" as the essential summary statement of Quaker faith. Gwyn's book does a magnificent job of making this case. Also remarkable is Gwyn's use of Scripture and the experience of the New Testament Christian community as source and testing ground both for George Fox's message of the prophetic presence of Jesus Christ, God's living Word in our midst, and of its relevance and truth for us and all people. Many modern Friends have rejected the call of Lewis Benson and the New Foundation Fellowship as a call to return to "Fox-ism" or "Early Quaker Primitivism," relevant perhaps in the seventeenth century but certainly not to our own. Because of Gwyn's profoud use of Scriptural, early Christian and contemporary theological sources he clearly demonstrates the relevance of Fox's message of universal saving Light to this and any other age. The author's use of the term, "Apocalypse," may be difficult for modern secular people, or present day "Second Coming" Christians to grasp. As here presented, "Apocalypse" simply means "revelation," the revelation of God's presence and power here and now. For Fox, expectation of a climactic end to history is well and good, but what really counts is the immediate return of Christ in the power of the Spirit here and now. The second element of "Apocalypse" which needs comment is its "cosmic dimension." For Fox "apocalyptic" is not concerned exclusively with events at the end of history. It also deals with the cosmic significance of all God's 128Quaker History mighty acts in every age, especially in our own time. In Fox's view eternity breaks into time apocalyptically at every instant in which the inward light and voice of Jesus Christ is seen, heard and obeyed. No one who has read and studied most of George Fox's collected writings, as I have, can escape being struck by Fox's overwhelming faith in Jesus Christ in his offices as priest, ruler, prophet, servant, peacemaker and living Word of God. Perusal of this book convinces us that the Quaker message is inescapably Christ-centered in a...

The Theological Thought of Fazlur Rahman: A Modern Mutakallim

The Theological Thought of Fazlur Rahman: A Modern Mutakallim

Tennyson's central beliefs are well known, and his grandson summarizes them admirably at the end of his essay on 'Tennyson's Religion': 'the guidance of the Universe by a God who is Love,' 'the revelation of God's love and the divine law through Jesus Christ,' 'the immortality of the human spirit,' and 'the freedom of the human will.' Equally well known is the unsystematic way in which Tennyson held these beliefs: 'he was certainly no regular church-goer,' Robert Martin says of the about-to-bemarried poet, and Hallam Tennyson notes his father's consistent refusal to formulate his creed: "he thought, with Arthur Hallam, that 'the essential feelings of religion subsist in the utmost diversity of forms.'" This liberalism was neither hazy nor lazy; it was based on Tennyson's acute perception of actual human experience, particularly his own, with all its depths and heights, starts and hesitations, calms and alarms. Such experience was a fruitful source for the poetry, and accounts for the complex and sometimes contradictory ways in which In Memoriam, for instance, is organized. Alan Sinfield, James Kincaid, Dwight Culler, and others have explored these complexities skilfully, and their analyses give fresh force to the assertion that Tennyson bases his faith on actual experience. Revelation, the Bible, miracles, and the authority of the church were (and are) conventional foundations for faith, and Tennyson does not exclude these from consideration, but his central concern is life as it is actually lived. We know a great deal about Tennyson's life as he actually lived it, thanks to Robert Martin's superb biography, but we know less about the intellectual background of Tennyson's position. Not, I hasten to add, about his faith in the context of the science of his age, for Douglas Bush, Lionel Stevenson, Georg Roppen, and others have examined such matters as Tennyson's treatment of astronomy and evolution in relation to belief. But the view that human life itself is the basis of faith—that has a context that needs exploring.

This chapter explores Arnobius' understanding of the relationship between God and Christ, the second main category of Arnobius' concept of deity. Because he is writing as a new convert not sufficiently educated in the doctrines of the Christian faith to provide an exposition of the ontological relationship between God and Christ, Arnobius is usually found discussing Christ's revelation of God and of his mission to the world as the High God's emissary. This is the heart of his understanding of the relationship between God and Christ.

From the beginning of the discipline, biblical theologians have differed in their understandings of an accredited basis, task, and method for doing biblical theology. In accordance with the existing problems, the purpose of writing this paper are: In accordance with the existingproblems, the main motive and purposes of writing this research are: First of all, to show the continuity of the relation between the Old Testament and New Testament. Secondly, to explain methodology in doing Old Testament Theology through the investigation of historical and biblical understanding. Finally, to call and challenge every leader and church congregation together to analyze methodology of biblical theology in order to develop the proper methodology in doing Old Testament Theology. The conclutions are: The relationship between the Old Covenant and the New can be presented as follows: God has only one covenant of grace, and only one eternal people - in which a person obtains a share through faith in Christ alone, the Covenant Head and the Adam of the new humanity. Herein lies the unity of God's eternal plan of salvation, and of the Word as His special revelation to man. It must be put in mind that the God of the Old Testament is also the God of the New Testament. It should be clear that the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is the same God who created man and woman, who established marriage, and who redeemed Israel through the Exodus, foreshadowing the redemption of believers through Christ. The Lord Jesus’ concept of God as Father contained a truth not characteristic of the Old Testament, but yet not negating any Old Testament teaching about God.

From the beginning of the discipline, biblical theologians have differed in their understandings of an accredited basis, task, and method for doing biblical theology. In accordance with the existing problems, the purpose of writing this paper are: In accordance with the existingproblems, the main motive and purposes of writing this research are: First of all, to show the continuity of the relation between the Old Testament and New Testament. Secondly, to explain methodology in doing Old Testament Theology through the investigation of historical and biblical understanding. Finally, to call and challenge every leader and church congregation together to analyze methodology of biblical theology in order to develop the proper methodology in doing Old Testament Theology. The conclutions are: The relationship between the Old Covenant and the New can be presented as follows: God has only one covenant of grace, and only one eternal people - in which a person obtains a share through faith in Christ alone, the Covenant Head and the Adam of the new humanity. Herein lies the unity of God's eternal plan of salvation, and of the Word as His special revelation to man. It must be put in mind that the God of the Old Testament is also the God of the New Testament. It should be clear that the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ is the same God who created man and woman, who established marriage, and who redeemed Israel through the Exodus, foreshadowing the redemption of believers through Christ. The Lord Jesus’ concept of God as Father contained a truth not characteristic of the Old Testament, but yet not negating any Old Testament teaching about God.

Faith and Evolution: A Grace Filled Naturalism

Orientalism, as a phenomenon, has a long record in the West; and the orientalists are also varied in their motivations. The orientalists have attempted throughout the history to make believe that the Prophet of Islam had not been a Prophet and that the Qur’ān is a human achievement adopted from the Torah, Gospel, etc. To prove their claim, they have alluded to some texts in the Sunnī sources, one of which is Suhayl b. ‘Umar’s conversation with the Apostle of Allah (S.A.W.) during the Truce of Ḥudaybiya. The present article has examined this evidence of the orientalists and concluded that Suhayl b. ‘Umar had not said anything suggesting the Prophet’s ability to read and write before his Prophetic Mission. Besides, the orientalists’ claim is contrary to the clear assertion of the Qur’ān, the Islamic traditions, historical records, and the Muslim’s sīra, the details of which are to be found in the article. Keywords: writing, reading, reciting, taṣḥīf (misrepresentation), Ḥudaybiya.