Journal of Religious Studies
Year:2020 | Volume:13 | Issue:26|Papers Count:12

The Book of Isaiah is one of the three books of the second part of the Nevi’ im, the Major Latter Prophets, from three parts of the Hebrew Bible. Some of scholars believe that the entire sixty and six chapters of the Book of Isaiah are the product of a single author, the historical Isaiah of Jerusalem, by citing the linguistic, stylistic, and theological similarities. But majority of scholars divide it into three distinct parts, by citing the historical, linguistic, stylistic, and theological differences and assign them, respectively, to First Isaiah, Second Isaiah, and Third Isaiah. This article, written in descriptive and analytic way, deals with the historical background of the unity of authorship or the multiple authorship of this book, and the factors of the adherents of each of these views. Adherents of the unity of authorship consider use of the concepts such as a highway, Zion, the holy one of Israel, and pangs of a woman in travail throughout the book as justifying their views. Adherents of the multiple authorship respond to it by saying Second Isaiah, and Third Isaiah were the followers of Isaiah and then these similarities come from this point.

The vital role of St. Paul in the history of Christianity needs no proof. Christian life of Paul began with his own vision of Christ; This conversion resulted in his theological and ethical teachings. So that, his “ Christ-Mysticism” has been regarded as the heart of his ideas and thought. Accordingly, love, as the major element of Paul’ s ethic and the gift of “ spirit” , parallel to faith, as the main element of his theology and the fruit of grace, make the fulfillment of true Law possible. In Pauline mysticism, “ being-in-Christ” follows a “ new creation” in piety and edification. This attitude, together with a moral-mystical interpretation of sacraments substitutes Law of love for the Law of works. In this article, Paul’ s ethics is surveyed with regard to his special personality, his fanatical legalism, his following psychological crisis, and finally his visionary experience of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, Pauline and Stoic Ethics are comparatively discussed.

Law, Path and Truth are three inseparable stages of human perfection that can be likened to the skin, kernel and the oil of almond. Each religion is composed of three aspects of Law, Path, and Truth which respectively are the appearance, the meaning and the ideal or the main purpose religion. From this perspective, all religions have a mystical aspect, Path, which is called Sufism in Islam. Nevertheless the point here is that since in Islam due to its comprehensiveness, Law and Truth are equal and balanced. In other religions, one has usually dominated one another, for example in Christianity Path is dominant, in contrast, in Judaism, Law is dominant. That is, the Jewish religion is famous for its law and Christianity for its Path. However, Truth is something beyond the appearance so Law and Path are the ways to reach it. Therefore in the holy Quran, the word "religion" is not used collectively. This idea is clearly reflected in "Moses and Shepherd" of Romi's Masnavi. In this article we look at this story from two perspectives: firstly we survey the concepts of Law, Path and Truth and secondly interpret it according to the theological concepts of God Likeness and Uniqueness.

The Guru in Hindu mysticism is a master who has traversed the spiritual stages, has struggled through its difficult levels and attained the highest level of spiritual insight, namely, the mokś a. In Hindu monastic orders, the Guru is the incarnation of God, tradition, teachings, the path and the mediator of the divine grace that gives birth to the tradition. He is the source of the new spiritual life, the center of holiness, and the mediator of the seeker with supreme power. Accordingly, his role is significant in the education of the disciples, and being obedient to him is obligatory. He can take the guidance of someone who intends to follow the path, pass him through difficult journey, until he reaches to ultimate truth. Therefore, it is important to examine the role of Guru in order to explain the mystical journey in these traditions. In this study, the concept of Guru has been surveyed in Hindu texts especially from the Ŝ ankara's point of view.

The scope of religion and its role against the social transformations is an important subject to deal with. In this article we try to answer this question: Have Islam and Christianity been able to, on the one hand, follow their doctrines and on the other hand meet the changing needs of society? In fact, Christianity by removing the Jewish law and emphasizing on the fluid tradition based on its believers' understanding has succeeded in adapting to the new conditions. Shi'ite Islam by using the 250 hundred years traditions of its Imams has developed some flexible elements in itself. In Sunni Islam, qiyā s (deductive analogy), somehow played the same role but the lack of ijtihā d and the exclusive dominance of the four jurisprudential schools have erected strong barriers in its way.

The aim of this paper is to provide a systematic picture of Taoist epistemology. The research suggests that, by analyzing the concise contents of the Taoist texts, an epistemic system can be found in which the pillars of knowledge are unity. Understanding is possible and the certain recognition in the process of dissolution of individuality is achieved. Science is a light that realizes knowledge, but the absolute truth is darkness and there is no possibility of knowing it. In Taoist tradition, intuition and insight have a special place by which one can perceives the dynamic, variable and fluid existence. For them, knowledge is experiential and it realizes by eliminating the epistemic barriers such as rationalism, language, attention to the material self, the world itself and personal emotions. The criterion for the truth of knowledge is its agreement with the essence of the universe.

The principle that man is in the image of God is the basis of the teachings of Jewish scholars about the existence of mankind. From this phrase of Torah, it is understood that the man is virtuous for all the creatures of the world, and it shows that it is the highest point in the creation of creatures. Therefore, the subject of mankind and the path of his creation, his existential dimensions and his position in the system of being have always been the subject of interest by Jewish scholars and scholars in the field of Judaism. Among these, Zohar that considered to be the most important literary-mystical work of the Middle Ages, its main theme is the representation of man and divine realities. This work, as an interpretation of the five books of the Torah, is somewhat inaccessible and silent to us, as it deserves to be a work of esoteric wisdom. In this research, it has been attempted to explain the aspects of human cognition in the Jewish tradition as the background and foundations of Jewish anthropology, and to investigate the Kabbalah as the main tradition of Jewish mysticism in expressing the views of the Jewish mystical anthropology, provide the views of the Zohar from human beings.

In the Christian tradition, especially in the New Testament, Jesus is the source of salvation and the example of love. Jesus' love to human led him to accept to be a sacrifice and he scarified himself like a lamb in the Passover so that the human beings would free from sins. Union with Christ is the only way to enjoy this love. A person seeking liberation must become Christ-like, act like him in order to be saved. For union with God, one should follows the Golden Laws of the Gospels, i. e., love for God, love for the neighbor, and kindness and even love for the enemy. In this way, man will be promoted and his sins burn in love. He begets the Christ and Jesus will be born in him. At this time, the son of man works in him. Jesus sees with his eyes, listens from his ear and acts with his hands. In this essay, we try to focus on the conception of love in the New Testament.

In Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries some of the thinkers with adoption of a historical-critical attitude, research on the life and personality of Jesus Christ and drew a picture of him which was very different with the picture of Christian theology and Bible. In these researches, Jesus Christ sometimes presented as simply human person with messianic claims and political ideals who mistakenly was wishing in coming of kingdom of God and finally failed in his demands, hung on gallows. In contrast, Rudolf Bultmann with present the dual of the Jesus of history and Christ of faith, claimed that appearance and stability of the Christian faith need not to the awareness of historical personality and life of Jesus. Purpose of this research is to survey Bultmann's answer to the historical-critical researches on the historical Jesus. For this, after presentation of the outline of these researches, refer to Bultmann's works and show that according to him it is the Christ of faith that is object of Christian faith and not the historical Jesus. Therefore, Christian faith does not damage from critics of the historical-critical researches on Jesus.

Augustine creates his City of God according to ChristianDemonology and Angelology. In his opinion, God has bestowed the good nature upon all the angels but what makes some of them go astray is their negligence of God's love. In fact, arrogance is the first step in creating a gap between the angels, which divides them into two categories holy angels and evildoers, so they form two cities. This Augustine's perspective raises this question: why did the angels fall? Augustine himself relying on the teachings of the Bible answer that autonomous and self-initiated sin of pride caused the angles to divert from God's will. Augustine, in this way, arranges and explains one of the most important concepts of Christian theology on the basis of angelology, in such a way that no one has done this before in the Christian theology.

Humans' perception of time has always had important role in developing their belief system. Hebrews by having faith in an omnipotent God got free from the cycles of eternal growth and decline. Instead they believed in a unique ending of history. With Christianity history turned to a meaningful process and a Christian was believed to be a pilgrim going to an ultimate destination. Before Joachim, this ultimate was believed as the salvation of chosen believers and it was located out of universal history. But Joachim supposed history as a developmental process and brought the salvation into the universal history. It actually led to a hope for an earthly heaven. Pioneering reformist inspired by Joachim`s descriptions of apocalyptic chaos and Golden Age of Holy Spirit started a religious and anti-church reformation. John Wyclif, one of the first reformist, declared that the luxury of the church indicated that the end of the time was approaching. Believing in flourished minds and the relative self-autonomy of Christians in the last era of history led to the idea of spiritual church and objection against the authority of the existing church.

Liberating theology as a twentieth century theology is a defender of the gender equality in all cultural, religious, social matters, as well as realization of social justice especially in the Latin American countries. This article is an attempt to express the role, position and influence of women in different social, economic, cultural, political, and religious areas of this theology in order to achieve their goals. In this research, we firstly survey the origin of the liberation theology in Latin America. Then, we summarize the general characteristics of liberation theorem. Finally, we study the place of women in liberating theology.