تفاوتِ دیدگاه اسلام و مسیحیّت نسبت به ماهیتِ وحی و پیامبر باعث تمایز آشکاری بین این دو دینِ وحیانی شده است. وحی در منابع اسلامی از مقوله قول و گفتار است و متکلمان مسلمان بر این باوراند که خداوند برای «ارتباط با بشر»، با او سخن می‌‌گوید و خود را به‌ واسطۀ زبانی که برای بشر قابلِ فهم است، آشکار می‌‌سازد، اما مسیحیّتِ رایج «وحی» را از مقولۀ فعل و یک واقعه می‌‌داند و معتقد است که خدا برای «ارتباط با (...) بشر» در قالب یک شخصِ ‌انسانی تجسّد پیدا می‌‌کند. مرکز ثقل نازلۀ الاهی در اسلام، قرآن و در مسیحیّت، شخصِ ‌مسیح است. بر اساس این دو نگاه متفاوت به وحی، اسلام را دین «متن‌‌محور» و مسیحیّت را دین «شخص‌محور» می‌‌نامیم. پرسشی که در این‌جا مطرح می‌شود این است که آیا این دو نگاهِ متفاوت به وحی - به لحاظ قوّت استدلال - در یک سطح هستند؟ برای پاسخ به این پرسش لازم است تا ابتدا ‌‌پیش‌فرض‌های هر دیدگاه ‌‌بررسی شود و ‌‌پس از آن به مقایسه میزانِ استدلال‌‌پذیریِ آن‌ها پرداخت و سپس لازم است لوازم هردو دیدگاه را - در حوزه‌های مختلف مانند کلام، نوع دینداری و علومی که پیرامون هر کدام شکل می‌‌گیرد - ارزیابی کرد. (shrink)

For as long as the Christian church has been working out its understanding of the second person of the Trinity, it has employed analytic philosophical reflection to sharpen theological comprehension. In recent times, there has been a rekindled appreciation for the employment of analytic reflection in the service of theology. Analytic theology has established itself as a way of doing theology that employs analytic philosophical analysis in the project of faith in divinely revealed truths seeking understanding. In this issue, the (...) fresh insights of analytic theology are applied to a theme most central to Christian theology—the Son of God. (shrink)

On the one hand, Confucianism and Christianity advocate universal love for all humans on the ultimate basis of particular love for parents or for God respectively. On the other hand, they have to sacrifice the former for the latter in cases of conflict since they give top priority merely to the latter. In order to overcome this paradox in theory and realize the ideal of universal love in practice, they should transform their particularistic frameworks into universalistic ones and assign a (...) supreme position to their ideas of universal love for all humans, which imply in a potential way a modern, humanistic principle ‘respect the deserved rights of every human being’. (shrink)

Through a comparative analysis of the stories of Abraham and Guo, this article tries to argue that some particularistic claims of Christianity and Confucianism, which regard faith in God or filial piety to parents respectively as the sole ultimate principle of human life, may constitute the spiritual mainstay of such serious evils as murdering the innocent in certain in-depth paradoxes. Only by assigning a supreme position to their universal ideas of loving all humans through their self-transformations could the two ethico-religious (...) traditions prevent those morally unacceptable evils motivated by their particularistic claims and overcome their in-depth paradoxes. (shrink)

Thisarticle aims to provide an explication of the doctrine of the Incarnation. A ‘Transformational Model’of the doctrine is formulated within the metaphysicaland ontologicalframework of Jonathan Lowe (i.e. hisNon-Cartesian Substance Dualismand Four-Category Ontology). Formulating this modelwithinthisspecificframework will enable the doctrine of the Incarnationto be explicated in a clear and consistent manner, and the oft-raised objections against it can be answered.

The Chalcedonian Definition states that the incarnate Christ is both fully human and fully divine. But spelling out what the Chalcedonian Definition entails continues to be a subject of intense controversy among philosophers and theologians alike. One of these controversies concerns what I call the problem of the bearer question. At the heart of this question lies whether or not the two natures of Christ require two distinct bearers. In section I, I will explain the problem of the bearer question (...) and how it arises directly due to the Chalcedonian Definition. In section II, I will propose a solution to the problem of the bearer question within the framework of what I call, a ‘Multi–Track Disposition Model of the Incarnation’. At the heart of this model lies the notion that the manifestation of properties is multi–directional in the sense that there is a reciprocal partnership among property manifestations. In section III, I will contrast the solution proposed to the bearer question by the Multi–Track Model to that of a ‘Kenotic Model of the Incarnation’. I will argue that the Multi–Track Model provides us with better conceptual resources to make sense of the bearer question. Finally, in section IV, I will briefly point out why ultimately a conclusive answer to the bearer question may still prove to be elusive because the bearer question gives rise to a host of other unresolved questions. (shrink)